Six Science posts #99

Sweet asteroid, feet headache, Pi-thagorous circle and more

Author

Harshal Chhaya
December 14, 2025

Hi friend,

This holiday season, give your loved ones the gift of knowledge. And curiosity.

Forward this email to them and ask them to sign up at https://sixstemtweets.beehiiv.com/subscribe

They will appreciate your thoughtfulness.

Love

Harshal

P.S. I scroll so you don’t have to.

#1 🤯 

This is a really important finding.

“The five-carbon sugar ribose and, for the first time in an extraterrestrial sample, six-carbon glucose were found. Although these sugars are not evidence of life, their detection, along with previous detections of amino acids, nucleobases, and carboxylic acids in Bennu samples, show building blocks of biological molecules were widespread throughout the solar system.”

More details are at https://www.nasa.gov/missions/osiris-rex/sugars-gum-stardust-found-in-nasas-asteroid-bennu-samples/

#2 🤯 

This is insane!

Here’s the root cause:

"A U.S. survey foot is expressed as a fraction — 1200/3937 meters — while an international foot is expressed as a decimal, exactly 0.3048 meters. That’s a difference of only one one-hundredth of a foot per mile."

Honestly, sometimes I wonder how things ever work and then I realize it because of diligent folks like the one who shared this bit of information.

#3 🤯 

I love seeing the world from a different perspective. This is all about price per pound of weight.

#4 🤯 

I can’t be the only person feeling a little bad for Pluto - first no one knows it exists. Then it’s classified as a planet. Then before it can complete a year, it’s downgraded to not be a planet.

Also happy 100th birthday to Dick Van Dyke! In hex, he is only 64 😀 

#5 🤯 

#6 🤯 

I LOVE this framing!

Engineers make stuff. Engineers build. Engineers add to the universe. Hence, “write access”

This is issue #99. Let’s see what makes 99 an interesting number:

99 is:

  • a “square prime” of the form 32 * q

  • a palindrome in base 10

  • the sum of the cubes of three consecutive integers: 99 = 23 + 33 + 43

  • often used in prices for psychological reasons

  • in the name of many movies, TV shows and songs

  • Atomic number of Einsteinium - a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol Es 

    • Einsteinium was discovered as a component of the debris of the first hydrogen bomb explosion in 1952.

    • As the effort which had led to the design of the first hydrogen bomb was codenamed Project PANDA, element 99 had been jokingly nicknamed "Pandemonium" but the official names suggested by the Berkeley group derived from two prominent scientists, Einstein and Fermi

    • The symbol for einsteinium was first given as "E" and later changed to "Es" by IUPAC

  • There is no country with 99 as the international country code

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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