Six Science posts #98

Airplane software downgrade, shorter sentences, origin of the week and more

Author

Harshal Chhaya
November 30, 2025

Hi friend,

Thank you for all your replies to my “Black Friday sale” email. 😄 

I hope you shared the “100% off” offer with a friend.

Thank you for reading, for sharing and for staying curious!

Here’s another issue of the newsletter with six interesting posts.

As always, hit ‘reply’ to let me know what you think. And hit ‘forward’ to share with a friend.

Love,

Harshal

P.S. I recently started sharing my love of fountains on Instagram. Check out “HarshalLovesFountains” if you want to follow along.

#1 🤯 

Airbus announced that they need to roll back the software on some of their models to avoid problems in a very specific scenario.

Airbus found that strong solar-flare activity can momentarily affect aircraft running the ELAC B L104 software. ELAC = Elevator Aileron Computer the system that commands pitch & roll on the A320 family. Arlines are downgrading to an earlier, stable version until a permanent patch is released.

Every single plane needed this software downgrade.

This is the specialized tool that they had to use to change the plane’s software config.

Just look at that cable! 😮 

(Also - aren’t we glad that they are allowing downgrades? I have worked on products where no downgrades were allowed - for good reason, for that product. If such a design were done here, it would have required a new release with a ton of testing and lots of planes out of commission 😱 )

#2 🤯 

The 7-day week is an entirely human construct. Feel free to use this defense if you don’t feel like working on a Monday!

#3 🤯 

This is interesting analysis and the entire article that has this graph is excellent!

If you like words, you will love this.

Read it at https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-logical-triumph-of-english/ 

One interesting note: The data is from Project Gutenberg - which only includes public domain texts. So it doesn’t contain book from the last 80 years.

But the examples in the article show how the thesis is true.

#4 🤯 

Enrico Fermi was a physicist, renowned for being the creator of the world's first artificial nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1, and a member of the Manhattan Project. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" and the "architect of the atomic bomb". Fermi was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity by neutron bombardment and for the discovery of transuranium elements.

He believed that his work with radioactive materials led to his cancer.

He is one of 16 scientists to have an element named after him - Fermium.

#5 🤯 

Geometry is all around us!

By contrast, the logo for X uses only two lines 😀 

#6 🤯 

There are cathedrals all around us for those with the eyes to see!

Air travel is such an amazing accomplishment and has been normalized to such an extent that we don’t marvel at how impressive it is!

And we even have special tools to help downgrade a plane’s software! 😮 

This is issue #98. Let’s see what makes 98 an interesting number:

  • 98 = 14 + 24 + 34  

    (Harshal’s note: That’s it?!? No other interesting number connections? To be honest, I am a little surprised and feel bad for 98.)

  • Windows 98 was a very popular operating system for the PC platform

  • 98 is the atomic number of Californium - a synthetic chemical element with symbol Cf. It was first synthesized in 1950 at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (then the University of California Radiation Laboratory) by bombarding curium with alpha particles.

    • From the Wikipedia article: The discoverers named the new element after the university and the state. This was a break from the convention used for elements 95 to 97, which drew inspiration from how the elements directly above them in the periodic table were named. However, the element directly above element 98 in the periodic table, dysprosium, has a name that means "hard to get at", so the researchers decided to set aside the informal naming convention.They added that "the best we can do is to point out [that] ... searchers a century ago found it difficult to get to California".

  • The international calling code for Iran

  • 98 Degrees (stylized as 98°) is an American pop and R&B vocal group

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)

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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