I don’t know the answer to your questions off the top of my head, unfortunately, but they are most certainly answered in The Ants by E.O. Wilson. It’s a fascinating and artfully written book. I unfortunately gave my copy to a student, or I’d have found the relevant passage for you. (The biomass fact mentioned in a parent comment is mentioned in the book as well.)
This is a simple explanation of an interesting and useful mathematical application my 12-15 yo students can conceptually grab onto. Good to have, they’ll enjoy it.
I was wondering the same. I’m not in this industry, but perhaps rockets are not typically given human names, so it’s a joke? Also, it’s spelled Venessa rather than Vanessa, so maybe it’s humorous because of the misspelling.
> Gravity is always present. What you feel as “weightlessness” is actually freefall.
Article makes this seem true, regardless of whether or not you are in orbit. But doesn’t this matter of perspective become ridiculous if you are floating freely in space? As in, yes, you’re “falling” but only because Earth is moving away from you or toward you? Honest question here…
How to define "floating freely" is not easy to define. The potential energy surface of gravitation extends in 1/r wgich makes it a long range interaction. So if the earth attraction is small enough that you want to neglect it, you may still be trapped in the sun potential well. And if you can escape the sun attraction you are still prisoner of the galaxy. There is no 0 gravity, but there is various levels of neglectable gravity of course. But neglectable is always defined relative to whatever you want to measure.
You are never really floating freely, all gravitational wells extend to infinity. The curvature just becomes really small so the resulting acceleration is infinitesimally small too.
The statement is technically true, but slightly confusing because the article talked about orbit being free fall, and about microgravity being in the range of one millionth to one thousandth of earths gravity.
It is certainly possible to get far enough away from anything that gravity is far less than one millionth of earth’s gravity, so it’s no longer microgravity by the article’s criteria. Floating freely would be free fall, but that doesn’t exactly mean what it sounds like when gravity is negligible.
The article also didn’t clarify that at our typical orbital distances for ISS and satellites, gravity is not in the microgravity range, it’s still very strong.
I’m a teacher, so different than most folks posting here. I have a little coding experience, but it’s definitely not my thing professionally. I just made several utility apps with this that I’ll be using in the classroom.
> It turns out I don’t want a phone at all, but a camera that texts — and ideally one smaller than anything on the market now. I know I’m not alone, and yet this product will not be made.
Thanks for the tip, I went to investigate. I like everything about it except for the lack of third party messaging. I need to meet my friends where they are and that is on Signal or WhatsApp.
Maps is also non negotiable, having maps in your pocket is one of the true wins of a smartphone imo, giving you freedom to explore.
No problem. 3rd party messaging does seem like the biggest need being voiced by potential users right now. It does have a navigation app, by the way, but don’t know details yet.
