All posts tagged: longest

Nasa’s Curiosity rover has found the longest chain carbon molecules yet on Mars. It’s a significant finding in the search for alien life

Nasa’s Curiosity rover has found the longest chain carbon molecules yet on Mars. It’s a significant finding in the search for alien life

Published by skeptic

Nasa’s Curiosity Mars rover has detected the largest organic (carbon-containing) molecules ever found on the red planet. The discovery is one of the most significant findings in the search for evidence of past life on Mars. This is because, on Earth at least, relatively complex, long-chain carbon molecules are involved in biology. These molecules could actually be fragments of fatty acids, which are found in, for example, the membranes surrounding biological cells. Scientists think that, if life ever emerged on Mars, it was probably microbial in nature. Because microbes are so small, it’s difficult to be definitive about any potential evidence for life found on Mars. Such evidence needs more powerful scientific instruments that are too large to be put on a rover. The organic molecules found by Curiosity consist of carbon atoms linked in long chains, with other elements bonded to them, like hydrogen and oxygen. They come from a 3.7-billion-year-old rock dubbed Cumberland, encountered by the rover at a presumed dried-up lakebed in Mars’s Gale Crater. Scientists used the Sample Analysis at Mars …

When William Faulkner Set the World Record for Writing the Longest Sentence in Literature: Read the 1,288-Word Sentence from Absalom, Absalom!

When William Faulkner Set the World Record for Writing the Longest Sentence in Literature: Read the 1,288-Word Sentence from Absalom, Absalom!

Published by José

Image by Carl Van Vecht­en, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons “How did Faulkn­er pull it off?” is a ques­tion many a fledg­ling writer has asked them­selves while strug­gling through a peri­od of appren­tice­ship like that nov­el­ist John Barth describes in his 1999 talk “My Faulkn­er.” Barth “reorches­trat­ed” his lit­er­ary heroes, he says, “in search of my writer­ly self… down­load­ing my innu­mer­able pre­de­ces­sors as only an insa­tiable green appren­tice can.” Sure­ly a great many writ­ers can relate when Barth says, “it was Faulkn­er at his most invo­lut­ed and incan­ta­to­ry who most enchant­ed me.” For many a writer, the Faulkner­ian sen­tence is an irre­sistible labyrinth. His syn­tax has a way of weav­ing itself into the uncon­scious, emerg­ing as fair to mid­dling imi­ta­tion. While study­ing at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty, Barth found him­self writ­ing about his native East­ern Shore of Mary­land in a pas­tiche style of “mid­dle Faulkn­er and late Joyce.” He may have won some praise from a vis­it­ing young William Sty­ron, “but the fin­ished opus didn’t fly—for one thing, because Faulkn­er inti­mate­ly knew his Snopses and Comp­sons and Sar­toris­es, as I did …

Meet the animals with the longest lifespans

Meet the animals with the longest lifespans

Published by skeptic

Alzheimer’s disease: An incurable brain disease that can cause confusion, mood changes and problems with memory, language, behavior and problem solving. No cause or cure is known. annual: Adjective for something that happens every year. Arctic: A region that falls within the Arctic Circle. The edge of that circle is defined as the northernmost point at which the sun is visible on the northern winter solstice and the southernmost point at which the midnight sun can be seen on the northern summer solstice. The high Arctic is that most northerly third of this region. It’s a region dominated by snow cover much of the year. Atlantic: One of the world’s five oceans, it is second in size only to the Pacific. It separates Europe and Africa to the east from North and South America to the west. average: (in science) A term for the arithmetic mean, which is the sum of a group of numbers that is then divided by the size of the group. basal: Of or relating to the base or bottom layer of …

The Longest Construction Projects in History: Why Sagrada Família, the Milan Duomo, Greek Temples & Other Famous Structures Took Generations to Complete

The Longest Construction Projects in History: Why Sagrada Família, the Milan Duomo, Greek Temples & Other Famous Structures Took Generations to Complete

Published by José

Pub­lic-tran­sit projects are the reli­gious build­ing endeav­ors of twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca, less because they’re moti­vat­ed by the belief in any par­tic­u­lar deity than by how much time and mon­ey they now require to com­plete. Take New York’s Sec­ond Avenue sub­way, whose less than two-mile-long first phase opened in 2017: its con­struc­tion had cost $4.45 bil­lion, and the line itself had first been pro­posed 97 years ear­li­er. That’s noth­ing by ancient stan­dards: the Tem­ple of Apol­lo at Didy­ma took six cen­turies; the Tem­ple of Olympian Zeus at Athens lagged a full 650 years behind sched­ule; and the Heraion of Samos end­ed up pass­ing the 800-year mark. These facts come from the new Told in Stone video above on “the longest con­struc­tion project in his­to­ry.” Some of the struc­tures cov­ered will be famil­iar to Open Cul­ture read­ers: for instance, Notre-Dame de Paris, which took near­ly 200 years to build (and which reopened just this month after five years of fire-dam­age repair and restora­tion), or Sagra­da Família, which broke ground in 1882 and is sched­uled for com­ple­tion in 2026 …

Thames crossing delayed after planning it cost more than world’s longest road tunnel | Politics News

Thames crossing delayed after planning it cost more than world’s longest road tunnel | Politics News

Published by Sam

The fate of Britain’s biggest road scheme hangs in the balance after ministers delayed giving it the go ahead – despite over £800m being spent on it to date. The government said it needed more time to consider whether to grant a development order for The Lower Thames Crossing (LTC), including reviewing its cost. The 14 mile project was first proposed in 2009, and would connect Kent and Essex through a road and tunnel beneath the River Thames to reduce congestion. Politics Live: Sunak makes ‘fire and rehire’ jibe over Sue Gray’s exit Campaigners have reacted angrily to the news, saying more money has already been spent on seeking permission for it than what it cost to actually build the world’s longest road tunnel in Norway. National Highways revealed in a Freedom of Information (FoI) request earlier this year that £295m has been spent on the application process for the LTC. Overall spending, including technical surveys and land purchasing costs, has surpassed £800m – all before a spade has hit the ground. As pointed out …

The Longest Drivable Distance in the World: Discover the Ultimate Road Trip

The Longest Drivable Distance in the World: Discover the Ultimate Road Trip

Published by José

No mat­ter what coun­try we live in, we’ve all fan­ta­sized about tak­ing our own great Amer­i­can road trip, con­sid­er­ing a vari­ety of the infi­nite­ly many pos­si­ble routes. The most obvi­ous would be dri­ving between Los Ange­les and New York, a dis­tance of 2,800 miles that would take a bit over 40 hours straight through. I myself once took a more souther­ly route, road-trip­ping from Los Ange­les to Raleigh, North Car­oli­na over a week or two; these days, I dream of an east-coast jour­ney from Maine all the way down to Key West, a rel­a­tive­ly man­age­able 1,900 miles. But if you take your road-trip­ping seri­ous­ly, you’ve got to go to anoth­er con­ti­nent entire­ly. Such is the con­clu­sion to be drawn from the Half as Inter­est­ing video above, which finds the longest dri­vable dis­tance on Earth. “The North Amer­i­can road sys­tem goes as far as Prud­hoe Bay in Canada’s Cana­da, Alas­ka, and as far south as Yav­iza in Pana­ma,” says the video’s cre­ator Sam Den­by, “but this only clocks in at 7,500 miles.” That may require six …

Not suitable for trains: how Bridgerton’s longest ever sex scene set commuters’ pulses racing | Bridgerton

Not suitable for trains: how Bridgerton’s longest ever sex scene set commuters’ pulses racing | Bridgerton

Published by skeptic

This week I have seen more than one tweet from mortified people who thought it would be OK to watch the new batch of Bridgerton episodes on the train on their way to work. The reason they were mortified was the first new episode, in which a sex scene goes on and on. And on. And on. According to people who know these things, the sex scene – between Nicola Coughlan’s Penelope Featherington and Luke Newton’s Colin Bridgerton – was the longest in the show’s history, clocking in at almost six minutes. It was so long, in fact, that Coughlan and Newton managed to break the furniture they were filming on. Even more inexplicably, it’s a good sex scene, in that it’s absolutely vital to the storyline. It’s a key moment in the evolution of the characters, and an important part of the story. It’s romantic and tender, and also sexy enough to embarrass anyone who made the mistake of trying to watch it on public transport. But is it the longest sex scene ever …

Paddle under the Pennines: longest and deepest UK canal tunnel opens for canoe trips | North of England

Paddle under the Pennines: longest and deepest UK canal tunnel opens for canoe trips | North of England

Published by skeptic

“You’re in a canoe, not a boat, so you are very exposed,” said Gordon McMinn as he prepared to paddle into the UK’s longest, highest and deepest canal tunnel. “You’re vulnerable, you’re under your own steam, you are up and close to history … it is quite an experience.” McMinn, a volunteer team leader at the Canal & River Trust, has coordinated what it is hoped will become a bucket-list experience – the opportunity to paddle under the Pennines. The guided 3.5-mile canoe trips are through Standedge Tunnel, a jaw dropping feat of engineering which is 194 metres underground and 196 metres above sea level. The narrow canal tunnel from Marsden in West Yorkshire to Diggle in Greater Manchester opened in 1811 after 17 years of construction. The Guardian was invited for a preview before the trips are launched in a fortnight’s time. Emergency contact details were provided – “just in case” – and McMinn sought to reassure us that the risk of the disease leptospirosis was tiny. “It’s only really if you get wet …

Crews battle fire threatening longest wooden pier on US west coast | California

Crews battle fire threatening longest wooden pier on US west coast | California

Published by skeptic

A historic southern California pier caught fire on Thursday, burning for several hours until firefighters battling the blaze from boats were able to extinguish the flames. Flames tore through a restaurant at the end of the Oceanside Pier, the longest wooden pier on the US west coast, and heavily damaged the closed diner and a neighboring business. Crews worked through the night to extinguish the blaze and limit its spread to the far west end of the pier, the city said in a statement. They removed some planks across the structure to protect the rest of the pier. Pier fire update: Crews worked through the night and will continue to work today. The unstable restaurant structure means crews can’t attack the fire from inside, so the fight will continue from the exterior. pic.twitter.com/ty2IJEu6fQ — Oceanside Fire Department (@Oceanside_Fire) April 26, 2024 The pier in Oceanside, about 40 miles (64km) north of San Diego, stretches more than 1,900ft (579 meters), allowing visitors to walk out over the ocean waves. The fire started at a vacant restaurant …

Scientists in India may just have discovered longest snake to ever live

Scientists in India may just have discovered longest snake to ever live

Published by Sam

Scientists in India have discovered a new ancient giant snake that lived around 47 million years ago, reaching lengths of over 15m (50ft), making it one of the largest serpent species ever. The snake has been named Vasuki Indicus after the mythical snake around the neck of the Hindu deity Shiva. Fossil remains of the snake were recovered in the western state of Gujarat from a lignite mine which dates to the Middle Eocene period about 47 million years ago. Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee in Uttarakhand assessed 27 “mostly well-preserved” vertebrae remains of what appeared to be from a fully-grown snake. The snake’s vertebrae measure between 37.5 and 62.7mm in length, and about 62 and 111mm in width. Scientists estimate that the snake likely reached lengths from 11 to 15m, or about the length of a full-size school bus and comparable in size to the longest known snake to ever live, the extinct Titanoboa. These measurements also suggest that the snake was broad and cylindrical, likely slow-moving, and may have …