Testaments to the Boom Times to Come

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[chadlesbianjasontodd]

believing in the occult and trying to distill it down to some basic scientific and measurable origin; baby it’s the 1890s and it’s time to party!!

[leahsfiction]

#magic is real and it’s made of the same thing as the telegram and the photograph!! #hold on. im dipping this vampire in a nitrate solution and printing him to see what happens #dracula daily #‘how does he have these unholy vampire powers again?’ ‘he lives near a volcano and he went to university’ #favorite favorite favorite historical period in all of time. also measurably the worst one. but my favorite

[bookelfe]

for the record nosferatu is what happens i think

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[english-history-trip]

Jeanne Villepreux-Power went from being a dressmaker’s assistant to inventing the world's first aquarium and becoming one of the most groundbreaking marine biologists of her day -- yet few people know her name today.

Born in France in 1794, she first gained prominence after she made the wedding gown for Princess Caroline. This also led her to meeting English merchant James Power, who she married in 1818 in Sicily. They lived on the island for over twenty years and it was there that Villepreux-Power undertook a rigorous self-taught study of its flora and fauna with a particular interest in the marine ecology.

In 1832, she began to study the paper nautilus or Argonauta argo, pictured here. The prominent opinion at the time was that the nautilus took its shell from another organism. In order to test whether this was true, Villepreux-Power invented the first glass aquarium, which allowed her to study nautilus in a controlled environment. As a result, she discovered that the nautilus created its own shell. As she continued her research, Villepreux-Power also designed two aquarium variants, a glass apparatus within a cage, used for shallow-water studies, and another cage-like aquarium which scientists could raise and lower to different depths as needed.

In 1839, Villepreux-Power published “Physical Observations and Experiments on Several Marine and Terrestrial Animals”, her major work discussing the nautilus and other sea creatures she had studied. Increasingly renowned for her pioneering research, Villepreux-Power became the first female member of the Catania Accademia, as well as a member of over a dozen other scientific academies. In recent years, this trailblazing scientist and inventor was further recognized -- a major crater on Venus discovered by the Magellan probe was named in her honor in 1997.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[serpentwife]

[chainedcoffin]

free soup

[annabellioncourt]

you’re going to be so, so cursed.

[bogleech]

I mean, that’s not wrong, we just eventually decided to start cataloging curses and naming them things like “amoebic dysentery”

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[thekimonogallery]

DNA and breeding kimono and obi, by Gofukuyasan

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[lemonsharks]

Someone please start up a peer reviewed Journal of We Were So Wrong In Science (abbreviation: J. Wrong) so people can publish their work when it doesn't pan out. Preferably in multiple fields.

Because when the hypothesis is wrong we learn things and they're important like how the shit doesn't work.

Imagine a whole family of journals called We Were So Wrong In: Field and then the much anticipated We Were So Wrong In Science Annual which collects and reprints the best failures of the year with updates on where those failures led.

Wrongest team to lead to a discovery of gets the Innovators In Trying Again When You're Wrong Award which comes with a hilarious trophy inspired by the Nailed It! trophy and a nice piece of funding.

So anyway that's another one of my "I just won the billion dollar Powerball" projects.

[batbetbitbotbut]

I would like this and also unlimited funds for attempting to replicate other people's research (the more boring, the better). Journal of Are You Sure.

[lemonsharks]

If I ever win the billion dollar powerball I will ALSO fund the Journal Of Are You Sure About: Field? and the Journal Of Are You Sure About That? Annual (abbreviation: J. U. Sure?)

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[beardedmrbean]

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[souldagger]

im sorry i just found out that all steel made post-ww2 has like subtly higher levels of radioactivity….. bc the nuclear bombs increased the background radiation in the air slightly all across the world and so atmospheric air used in the production of steel contaminates it….. and it’s completely negligible in everyday life and not at all dangerous (really, truly do not worry about it) but apparently it also means that whenever we need Special No Radiation Steel (like for scientific/medical equipment, ex. geiger counters or xray machines) we have to use scavenged steel made before ww2. and apparently shipwrecks are a great source of such steel. so a lot of such equipment is made from recycled shipwreck metal. what the fuck. what the fuck

[souldagger]

for anyone who like me was worried we will one day run out of shipwreck steel: thankfully the background radiation levels in the atmosphere have been dropping ever since nuclear testing was moved underground, so this will become less and less of an issue with time. and now for another radioactive metal from shipwrecks fan fact:

apparently lead is really good for radiation shielding, which is why it’s important to many physics experiments, especially those concerned with studying dark matter and rare particles. unfortunately, lead is also inherently A Little Bit Radioactive (unrelated to nuclear bombs, it’s just a feature of the metal), but the radioactive element decays over time, so the older the lead, the less radioactive, and hence better for Physics Stuff. which is why ancient Roman lead is Ideal for this. so a lot of ancient bars of lead from Roman shipwrecks - tons of cargo that would’ve ended up as weapons or coins and stuff, if it didn’t sick to the bottom of the sea - are sold to physicists. it’s like a whole “preservation of cultural heritage vs revolutionary scientific research” thing. like a whole fucking feud btwn the archaeologists and physicists

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[souldagger]

im sorry i just found out that all steel made post-ww2 has like subtly higher levels of radioactivity….. bc the nuclear bombs increased the background radiation in the air slightly all across the world and so atmospheric air used in the production of steel contaminates it….. and it’s completely negligible in everyday life and not at all dangerous (really, truly do not worry about it) but apparently it also means that whenever we need Special No Radiation Steel (like for scientific/medical equipment, ex. geiger counters or xray machines) we have to use scavenged steel made before ww2. and apparently shipwrecks are a great source of such steel. so a lot of such equipment is made from recycled shipwreck metal. what the fuck. what the fuck

[archaeos]

This is true, and very much an issue in maritime archaeology. World War II wrecks in the South China Sea are particularly vulnerable to salvaging for low-background steel (usually by China, although other countries are involved) and there are a lot of ethical and legal issues surrounding this. There are two main challenges to disturbing war wrecks for metal: the first is that, as a rule of thumb, no matter where in the world a warship sank, under international law it is still considered property of its home nation, meaning that ships may be salvaged by companies or countries that have no legal right to salvage them (a great case study for this is the illegal salvaging of the Spanish treasure ship Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes by an American company, Odyssey Marine Exploration.) The second is that many of these sites are war graves, meaning that there is a major ethical dilemma to recovering them, as in order to recover the metal or other contents, what is in essence a graveyard will be disturbed (cf. the recovery of the Gairsoppa by the U.K. government involving, surprise surprise, the American salvage company Odyssey Marine Exploration.) For maritime archaeologists, there is also the third issue that salvage, like archaeology, is destructive, but unlike archaeology, specific material is prioritised over general material culture, meaning that valuable information can be lost in the process.

Tl;dr: pre WWII shipwrecks are often salvaged for metal and it’s a very complex and challenging issue.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[deathandmysticism]

Compendium Alchymist, 1706