Six STEM Tweets #53 - Dec 1 2024

NASA's twin study, origin of 'software patch', scale of space and more

Author

Harshal Chhaya
December 01, 2024

Six STEM Tweets

Six tweets that celebrate engineering and all things STEM.

I scroll so you don’t have to.

Hello friends! A reminder that all previous issues of the newsletter are online at https://sixstemtweets.beehiiv.com/

Thanks for all the feedback and comments. Keep them coming! 😃 

Feel free to hit ‘forward’ and share this with friends and coworkers and family.

Thanks!

#1 🤯 

This experiment was really cool. It compared retired astronaut Scott Kelly while he was in space, to his identical twin brother, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, who remained on Earth.

More details about all the findings of this year-long study is at: https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/twins-study/

#2 🤯 

To clarify, these bacteria are from Earth. They contaminated the samples. They didn’t arrive from the asteroid.

Two things stand out:

* Earth-based life is pretty aggressive. It found its way to these rock samples as soon they were opened

* These rocks had enough of the right materials to support life as we know it.

#3 🤯 

Next time you hear or use the phrase “software patch”, give thanks for not having to deal with physical patches of paper

#4 🤯 

Science literacy is so important!

Just because one substance shares some elements with another doesn’t make them similar in safety or risk.

#5 🤯 

This reminds of the Douglas Adams quote:

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”

― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

#6 🤯 

It’s really amazing how Darwin used his observations about physical characteristics of birds to describe evolution.

This is issue #53 of the newsletter. Here’s a few fun facts about 53:

  • Country calling code for Cuba

  • Atomic number of Iodine - symbol I. Some German books use J as its symbol because it’s called Jod in German.

  • It’s a prime number (no divisors other than 1 and itself) but is also

    • A sexy prime (6 away from 2 other primes, 47 & 59)

    • A balanced prime - because it’s equal to the arithmetic mean of the nearest primes above and below.

  • 53 in hexadecimal (base 16) is 35 (the same digits in reverse)

  • Max players on an NFL roster

  • Bytes in an ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) packet - there’s an interesting story behind why the network protocol uses 53 bytes in the packet. It’s not a technical reason at all. If you are interested, hit ‘reply’ and let me know and I will share that in a future issue

  • 53rd day of the year is February 22nd (2/22 or 22/2)

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