The Next 4

Issue 2: From Turbines To Bats

Thanks for your enthusiastic feedback. We are back with our next 4.

1. General Electric’s prototype for a new offshore wind turbine, the Haliade-X, is the largest ever built. They are about a third more powerful than the largest currently in commercial service. A single one is 853 feet in diameter (80% of the height of the Empire State Building at 1,050 feet) and will be able to turn out 13 megawatts of power, enough to light up a town of roughly 12,000 homes.

2. This video talk by David Tong, a professor of theoretical physics is utterly fascinating. It helped me update my understanding of the fundamental building blocks of matter – Quantum fields.  Tong is a brilliant communicator and has a masterful way with words. 

3. J is the only alphabet not in the Periodic Table of Elements. Q is the only alphabet not in the name of any US State.

   

4. There is a reason that some of the worst viral disease outbreaks in recent years — SARS, MERS, Ebola, Marburg and the Covid-19 virus — originated in bats. Bats have a fierce immune response to viruses which could drive viruses to replicate faster, so that when they jump to mammals with average immune systems, such as humans, the viruses wreak deadly havoc. In other words, a virus can increase its replication rate inside a bat without killing its host, essentially enhancing its virulence to a level that would be profoundly destructive in other organisms — such as us!