A Cable from New York to London

Three British/Irish businessmen have teamed up to put a power cable into the Atlantic Ocean. Their plan is to connect Canada to the U.K., or New York to France, to ease the exchange of energy created by renewables. Sounds crazy, I know, but it actually makes a lot of sense. Grid fluctuations from renewables are difficult to ease out by connecting neighbouring countries because these often face similar weather situations. Sending energy overseas could be good business for everyone involved. The project is called NATO-L, you can read more about it here.

This episode of Science News covers tachyons. Physicists recently published a new paper noting that tachyons, particles that move faster than the speed of light, can exist after all. Is this just more hype over nothing, or is this science fiction becoming reality? What do these tachyons have to do with wormholes and warp-drives? Let’s have a look. You can take the quiz here.

3-Dimensional Circuits

Image: NUS

Researchers from the National University of Singapore have found a way to print 3-Dimensional circuits. While 3-D printers (or even hand-held pens) can create unsupported structures, these are usually made of plastics and are bad conductors. The researchers found that an alloy of indium, bismuth, and tin works just fine. Since such circuits will not be particularly stable, I am not sure just what they would be good for, but it’s undeniably cool and I am sure a good use case will pop up eventually. Paper here, press release here, video here.

Suicide Contagion following Robin William’s Death

Suicides of popular people that are widely reported in the media sadly often trigger others to go through with their suicide plans. This phenomenon has widely been recognized, going back at least 1776, when the up-and-coming star-writer Goethe published a novel whose protagonist, Werther, eventually shoots himself in the head. The novel led to a suicide cluster of young men copying tragic Werther. Or did it? It’s hard to come by solid data from two centuries ago. But a team of American authors now filled that data-hole by counting calls to emergency hotlines and death reports following widely reported suicides by celebrities Robin Williams in 2014 and Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain in 2018. The data show clear and marked spikes that took several months to fade. Paper here. If you are thinking about suicide, please don’t do it. You can find a list of hotlines and resources here.

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