Six Science posts #80

New interstellar visitor, Higgs Boson birthday, prolific Apple guy and more

Author

Harshal Chhaya
July 06, 2025

Six tweets that celebrate engineering and all things STEM.

I scroll so you don’t have to.

This is the mercury-related issue that I was excited about 😄 

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did putting it together.

And if you like it, share it with someone you like. They will appreciate it.

#1 🤯 

This is the third-ever interstellar object inside our solar system. And it’s a comet.

From https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/planetary-defense/2025/07/02/nasa-discovers-interstellar-comet-moving-through-solar-system/

On July 1, the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) survey telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile, first reported observations of a comet that originated from interstellar space. Arriving from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, the interstellar comet has been officially named 3I/ATLAS. It is currently located about 420 million miles (670 million kilometers) away.

The comet poses no threat to Earth and will remain at a distance of at least 1.6 astronomical units (about 150 million miles or 240 million km). It is currently about 4.5 au (about 416 million miles or 670 million km) from the Sun. 3I/ATLAS will reach its closest approach to the Sun around Oct. 30, at a distance of 1.4 au (about 130 million miles or 210 million km) — just inside the orbit of Mars.

#2 🤯 

The Smithsonian has the original book titled “The atom and the Bohr theory of its structure”

https://library.si.edu/digital-library/book/atombohrtheoryi00hols

#3 🤯 

The impact of well-funded, well-run public health programs is very real and very positive 👏 

#4 🤯 

Martin is a fantastic communicator who is very patient at explaining complex concepts. He has answered many questions in the thread above.

Background: in July 2012, physicists at @CERN discovered the Higgs particle, confirming the theory of how particles acquire mass. François Englert and Peter Higgs had independently postulated the existence of the Higgs in the 1960s. Its discovery led to a Nobel Prize for them both in 2013.

#5 🤯 

Tom Brown, a retired chemical engineer, spent over 25 years searching Appalachia for lost heirloom apple trees. He interviewed locals, located old orchards, collected scions, and grafted them onto rootstock in his North Carolina orchard, preserving about 1,200 varieties from extinction.

(He keeps doctors away with this one unexpected trick!)

#6 🤯 

Beware of ½ off sales 😂 

This is issue #80. Let’s see what makes 80 an interesting number:

  • palindromic in bases 3 (22223), 6 (2126), 9 (889), 15 (5515), 19 (4419) and 39 (2239).

  • a repdigit (repeated digit) in bases 3, 9, 15, 19 and 39.

  • the sum of the first 4 twin prime pairs ((3 + 5) + (5 + 7) + (11 + 13) + (17 + 19)).

  • The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

  • 80 is the atomic number of Mercury - symbol Hg. Mercury is the only metallic element that is known to be liquid at standard temperature and pressure. This leads to a lot of interesting applications incl. playing with it from broken blood pressure monitors (not a recommended activity 😀 )

    • The symbol Hg is an abbreviation of hydrargyrum, a romanized form of the ancient Greek name for mercury, ὑδράργυρος (hydrargyros). meaning 'water-silver'

    • Mercury is the only metal for which the alchemical planetary name survives, as it was decided it was preferable to quicksilver as a chemical name.

  • Smalltalk is a pioneering programming language that created several concepts in the object-oriented programming (OOP) approach. Smalltalk-80 was the first language variant made available outside of Xerox PARC.

  • IBM’s 80-column punch card, introduced in 1928, was very popular in the early computing days. It’s impact lives on - the default screen width of Windows terminal windows, even now in 2025, is 80 characters wide.

  • Around the World in Eighty Days (French: Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours) is an adventure novel by the French writer Jules Verne, first published in French in 1872. It is one of Verne's most acclaimed works.

  • The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog that played an important role in the evolution of early personal computing. Launched in 1976, it was designed to be software-compatible with the Intel 8080. IEEE Spectrum’s overview of this chip and it’s impact is at https://spectrum.ieee.org/chip-hall-of-fame-zilog-z80-microprocessor

    • (I have a very personal connection to this microprocessor. Super appreciative of the people who designed it and the folks who have made it perform technological miracles that the designers never dreamed of)

About

This newsletter is my way of sharing interesting science-related news with my curious friends. I enjoy finding science and math connections in our world.

Please share this newsletter with others. Let’s encourage curiosity.

- Harshal (@hschhaya on X/Twitter)

Here’s a bonus blog post:

July 5, 1687: When Newton Explained Why You Don’t Float Away

On this day in 1687, Isaac Newton published the Principia—a book that explained why apples fall, why planets don’t wander off, and why NASA is still lighting enormous tubes on fire to fling humans into orbit 337 years later.

multiverseemployeehandbook.com/blog/when-newton-explained-why-you-dont-float-away

That’s it for this issue.

Hit ‘reply’ to tell me what you think.

And hit ‘forward’ to share with your friends and family.

Let’s all celebrate science and engineering and curiosity.

Best wishes,

Harshal

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