Clouds are everywhere; they can be all different shapes, sizes, and colors. They are responsible for a lot of Earth’s weather, bringing precipitation and shade from the sun. Clouds can be used to predict the current or even future weather by classifying them in different categories.

Clouds are classified by appearance and altitude. There are high altitude, middle altitude, and low altitude clouds which are broken up into further classifications by their shape; for example, cirrus. Cirrus clouds are high altitude, with a wispy fur-like texture.

Here are some very rare and strange looking clouds:

Mammatus:

Mammatus clouds usually occur during thunderstorms, caused by the sinking of cool air.

Cumulonimbus incus:

A further classification of cumulonimbus, this towering cloud gets it’s mushroom-like shape when the cloud top hits the tropopause; as it has reached an inversion. Wind shear causes the top to spread out, forming the anvil.

Roll cloud:

This peculiar cloud usually also accompanies a storm, forming due to downdrafts from said storm. These downdrafts then cause warm moist air to rise and cool, eventually forming the cloud.

Lenticular:

These UFO-shaped clouds form over mountain peaks, when the air is completely stable and there are uniform winds blowing through. These can indicate that a storm is coming.

These are just a few examples of the cool clouds that can form, and there are many more out there.

In 2008 an author named Satoshi Nakamoto invented an idea called “Cryptocurrency.” However, the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto is unknown, and since December 2010, they have disappeared. The probable reason for this is because they believed that money shouldn’t have a leader, and since Satoshi is now gone, there is no way for Cryptocurrency to be changed. Now it is entirely decentralized.

The significant cryptocurrencies are Bitcoin which was invented by Satoshi, Ethereum, which Vitalk Buterin created, makes faster transactions than Bitcoin. There is also Cardano, which was created by Charles Hoskinson and is significantly more energy-efficient than Bitcoin. Lastly, Litecoin which was created by Charles Lee and has better technology than Bitcoin.

One of the most notable reasons that cryptocurrencies are so expensive is because of their really good security. When you make a transaction with cryptocurrency it is stored on a virtual ledger on an entire network of blocks which is called a blockchain. If you try to hack into a ledger to create a fraudulent transaction, the other ledgers would notice that something is wrong with one of the ledgers and get rid of the error.

Another reason why some people think that the blockchain or cryptocurrency is insecure, or there's no reason to invest in it, is because if you buy it you don’t have the rights to it. This is true, especially with NFT’s because you can copy the image. But with all cryptocurrencies and NFT’s, you still have ownership of it which is stored on the blockchain. As stated before would require you to try to steal the NFT on all of the ledgers on the entire network which would be impossible.

There are downsides to using cryptocurrencies though. The big one being that nobody actually knows how much it's actually worth. You’ve probably seen the big spike in the price of Bitcoin and it even fluctuates in price every day. The price fluctuation could be due to anything. If an article is created saying that bitcoin is bad, people will probably sell their bitcoins which would make the price go down. If someone says its good, then maybe some people will buy it which would make the price go up.

Another downside of cryptocurrency is its actual usage. Although cryptocurrency allows you to make transactions with other people, companies get to decide whether you can make purchases with cryptocurrency or not. Companies like Wikipedia and Booking.com do allow you to use cryptocurrency. But some other companies like Tesla, Burger King, and Microsoft did start allowing cryptocurrency transactions but stopped.

The last downside that I’ll cover is since cryptocurrencies have no real policing, it is the perfect currency for criminals. Even because of this, 0.34% of bitcoin transactions are criminal, and 5% of normal cash transactions are criminal. This is because, unlike cash, cryptocurrencies are “pseudonymous” which means it does have a user id attached to all transactions, unlike actual paper dollars which are completely untraceable.

So overall cryptocurrencies are a really good way to make transactions, other than the environmental issues that mining can create. If you know anything about web3 you’ll know that cryptocurrency will probably start being used a lot more and also cause bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to be more expensive. It definitely does have the potential to be the currency that we primarily use.

Experts are starting to believe that we are at the beginning of an era - the quantum era, where enterprises start seeing the value of quantum computers and processing. So what is quantum computing? Quantum computing is a technology that harnesses the laws of quantum mechanics to solve problems too complex for classical computers. They’re used when a traditional supercomputer can’t solve a problem because it’s too complex. They can solve problems that would take supercomputers 10,000 years to solve in less than 200 seconds (3 min 20 sec)! An example of one of these problems is figuring out all the possible ways to configure a string of amino acids. The normal supercomputer would use “brute force” to solve all the possible solutions, and since there are trillions of different solutions, it can’t store all possible answers and give us the result that we’re looking for. What the quantum computer does is very different; it uses quantum algorithms that create multidimensional spaces where the patterns linking the individual patterns emerge. This causes the computer to be faster and more efficient when compared to traditional supercomputers.

Because of all this processing power, it has to use super cooled superfluids to keep it at the appropriate temperature instead of using normal cooling fans to keep the computer’s processing tools cool. At those super-low temperatures, certain materials in our processors exhibit another important quantum mechanical effect: electrons move through them without resistance. This makes them "superconductors." When electrons pass through superconductors, they match up, forming "Cooper pairs." These pairs can carry a charge across barriers, or insulators, through a process known as quantum tunnelling. Two superconductors placed on either side of an insulator form a Josephson junction. Josephson junctions are used as superconducting qubits. By firing micro-waves at these qubits, their behaviour can be controlled and get them to either hold, change, or read out individual units of quantum information. A qubit itself isn't very useful. But it can perform a significant task: placing the quantum information it holds into a state of superposition, which represents a combination of all possible configurations of t4he qubit. Groups of qubits in superposition can create complex, multidimensional computational spaces. Complex problems can be represented in new ways in these spaces. This leads to entanglement. Entanglement is a quantum mechanical effect that associates the behaviour of two separate things. When two qubits are entangled, changes to one qubit directly impact the other. Quantum algorithms use those relationships to find solutions to complex issues.

Quantum computers are undeniably appropriate for creating complex optimization and performing quick tasks with f unstructured data, as Deloitte India said, “it can possibly bring problematic change across areas, including finding, medication research, dispersion store network, traffic flow, energy optimising and many more.” Quantum computing has a future full of possibilities and opportunities in the digital spectrum. So all together, these upcoming years are going to be a big year for quantum computing and technology.

Did you know that somewhere between 10 to 60 people die every year from Poisonous plants and or mushroom poisoning? That's about a 1 in 500 hundred chance that it could've been anywhere from the deadly nightshade to a toadstool mushroom, or from the 500 species that are in the United States alone.

On January 20th 2022 a woman had an invasive plant called "water hyacinths" and it got so invasive on her farm that it killed her horses and their baby horses.

So, as you can see, the outcome of poisonous plants is not a great one; the question is, why does it make them so poisonous or deadly?

According to the national library of medicine (NIH), "The reason why they're so deadly is that plant toxicity is due to a wide variety of chemical toxins that include alkaloids, glycosides, proteins and amino acids”. This means that if you or someone you know eats or touches and or smells or any other contact with something poisonous they might as well be dead in a short amount of time unless seeking medical help immediately.

But how do I tell if the plant is poisonous? Before you touch, take a bite or sniff certain plants you can feel a burning or itchy feeling, But if nothing happens within 15 minutes, that means that it is most likely not poisonous. Also, if it has a soapy or foamy taste to it, you are most likely eating something that can kill you. What you want to do is spit it out and wash out your mouth immediately.

Now that you know a little bit more about poisonous plants, hopefully, you have a little more knowledge about what to not go close to.

If I asked you, how big 1,000 gallons of water is, what would you say? The ordinary person wouldn’t have an answer. The average person doesn’t even know if 3,000 liters of water is bigger than 1,000 gallons. Humans aren’t very good at conceptualizing big numbers in our minds, which is why I will attempt to help you understand the large scale of our universe.

If you had 5 things, let's say coins, there is 5 factorial or 120 ways to rearrange those coins in a line. Now, if we take a standard deck of 52 cards, there are 52 factorial ways to order those cards. To tell you how big this number is, there are around 3.5 x 10 ^ 51 protons on earth. 52 factorial is around 8 x 10 ^ 67, so if I chose one proton on earth and told you to find it, you would have a more likely chance to find it than shuffling a deck of cards and getting the same exact order twice. I can guarantee that if you shuffle a deck of cards, that is the only time you’ve seen that order of cards ever.

Our universe is obviously big, scientists have attempted to measure it as well as they can. For clarification, the universe is made up of all space and matter. A light-year is the length of time light takes to travel one year, one is about 5 x 10^12 miles. Our solar system is not even one it's actually only .001 light-years. The entire universe is 93 billion light-years in diameter. Which is 9 x 10 ^ 13 x bigger than our solar system. That's roughly the same difference between the size of a small ant and the diameter of the sun.

Shannon’s number, the number of chess games possible, is between 10 ^ 111 and 10 ^ 123. Now you probably won’t believe me but there are about 10 ^ 81 atoms in the entire universe. Compared to Shannon’s number that's microscopic. It's actually the difference between the smallest cell on earth and 1 billion universes combined.

If you think of the hottest thing, you might say the sun or another star maybe. Well, you’d be technically right. Our sun is around 6,000 kelvins hot, or 10,340 Fahrenheit. At that point, the sun creates the 4th state of matter, plasma. This is when the sun uses nuclear fusion to break away the atoms to create chargers particles just because of how hot it is, but it gets even crazier. Scientists are able to break atoms, and as we know, when you break atoms, it creates plasmatic energy. Since scientists can break them so fine, it turns the atoms into a very soupy substance which makes the atom as hot as 13 exa-kelvins, or 23,400,000,000,000,000,000 Fahrenheit. Fortunately, because of the small number of particles, it creates the explosion for a very brief period not causing any damage.

I hope what I said helped, inspired, or even interested you. Our universe is an inexplicably insane place, and I hope one day we will be even close to understanding it. And hopefully, with the knowledge I bestowed upon you, you can help us.

On Nov 23rd, 2021, NASA’s DART satellite lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. DART stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test and is “the world's first full-scale mission to test technology for defending Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards," according to nasa.gov. DART is just one part of NASA’s larger planetary defense strategy and is set to impact the moonlet Dimorphos between September 26, 2022, and Oct 2, 2022. Dimorphos is a part of the Didymos asteroid system, which poses no threat to earth. Since Dimorphos orbits Didymos at much a slower relative speed than the pair orbits the Sun, the result of DART’s kinetic impact within the binary system can be measured much more easily than a change in the orbit of a single asteroid around the Sun.

According to Lindley Johnson, Planetary Defense Officer at NASA Headquarters in an interview for nasa.gov, ”We have not yet found any significant asteroid impact threat to Earth, but we continue to search for that sizable population we know is still to be found. Our goal is to find any possible impact, years to decades in advance, so it can be deflected with a capability like DART that is possible with the technology we currently have. DART is one aspect of NASA’s work to prepare Earth should we ever be faced with an asteroid hazard. In tandem with this test, we are preparing the Near-Earth Object Surveyor Mission, a space-based infrared telescope scheduled for launch later this decade and designed to expedite our ability to discover and characterize the potentially hazardous asteroids and comets that come within 30 million miles of Earth’s orbit.”

When DART slams into Dimorphos at roughly four miles per second, scientists estimate that the kinetic impact will shorten Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos by several minutes. Researchers will precisely measure that change using telescopes on Earth. Their results will validate and improve scientific computer models critical to predicting the effectiveness of the kinetic impact as a reliable method for asteroid deflection. DART will return unique information on an asteroid's strength, surface physical properties, and internal structure. Numerical simulation studies will support Earth-based optical and radar observations of the DART impact event.

Sophisticated guidance, navigation, and control systems working together with algorithms called Small-body Maneuvering Autonomous Real-Time Navigation (SMART Nav) will enable the DART spacecraft to identify and distinguish between the two asteroids. The system will then direct the spacecraft toward Dimorphos. This process will all occur within roughly an hour of impact. The last ten days before impact in 2022 are super-critical. As Dimorphos comes into view, essential, non-stop footage of the arrival, collision, and subsequent plume of materials will be streamed home via the LICIACube, a hand-sized CubeSat from the Italian Space Agency, ASI, that will be deployed before impact.

After the deflection impact, ESA’s Hera mission will head towards the Didymos binary system in November 2024, commencing its detailed ‘crime scene investigation’ of the asteroids in late 2026. By gathering data close-up, Hera will help turn DART’s grand-scale impact experiment into a well-understood and repeatable deflection technique. Which would be ready to be deployed if an asteroid should ever be spotted heading Earthward. Demonstrating new technologies from autonomous navigation around an asteroid to low gravity proximity operations, Hera will be humankind’s first probe to rendezvous with a binary asteroid system and Europe’s flagship Planetary Defender.

With Earth’s rising population and diminishing resources, many people are convinced that we need to look past our Earth and into the space of our solar system. Organizations like the L-5 Society have been promoting space colonization since 1975. Their goal was to create an O’Neill type space colony around, as the name suggests, the L5 point.

In 2016 the Space Exploration, Development and Settlement Act were introduced to Congress in March of 2016. If it were to pass then it would make space settlement an official goal of NASA. Recently, Elon Musk and SpaceX are planning to send humans to Mars by 2024, which is coming up. However, Space colonization is not an easy feat. It requires a great deal of time, patience, and money, and it seems that not many of today have that ability to stay focused on space (Darling).

Space colonization is the concept of permanent human habitation outside of Earth. It is a long-term goal for some space programs. Some sites for space colonies could include the Moon, Mars, asteroids and free-floating space habitats around the Lagrangian points. Quantities of all the necessary materials, for a successful space colony such as solar energy and water, are available from or on the Moon, Mars, near-Earth asteroids or other planetary bodies. It’s important for space colonies to be self-sufficient because it’s very hard and expensive to transport materials to and from each location where a space colony may exist (Yann Picand).

Some of the most accepted possibilities for space colonies is the O'Neill cylinders space colony, also called the Island three colony, which is a space habitat design proposed by physicist Gerard K. O'Neill in his book The High Frontier. In this book, he suggests that this colony be built from the materials in the moon. An O'Neill cylinder is made up of large, counter-rotating cylinders, each 8 km in diameter and 32 km long, that are connected at each end by a rod by a bearing system. They rotate to provide artificial gravity because of the centripetal force on their inner surfaces. They also have the necessities to sustain life and, keep themselves up and running (Yann Picand).

Space colonization can be a future goal for many of the upcoming generations as climate change starts to strengthen its grip on Earth, and as our resources to meet demands slowly diminishes. Maybe you’ll be the one with an outstanding scientific breakthrough that can save our world! Keep dreaming big!

Works Cited:

Darling, David. "Space Colony". Daviddarling.Info, 2022, https://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/S/spacecolony.html. Accessed 2 May 2022.

Yann Picand, Dominique Dutoit. "Space Colonization : Definition Of Space Colonization And Synonyms Of Space Colonization (English)". Dictionary.Sensagent.Com, 2022, http://dictionary.sensagent.com/Space%20colonization/en- en/#:~:text=Space%20colonization%20%28also%20called%20%22interstellar%20colonization%22%2C%20spa ce%20settlement%2C,proposals%20and%20speculations%20about%20the%20first%20space%20colony. Accessed 2 May 2022.

Technology is advancing faster than ever – and technology that was a science-fiction dream just years ago has become our reality, now. Curing cancer isn’t just a goal we hope to achieve anymore, we already have the technology to do so through genetic modification. Believe it or not, gene editing has been a concept that has become reality for quite some time now, implemented in items we use on a daily basis. But gene editing used to be a painstaking process, costing tremendous amounts of money and was generally extremely tedious with limited results. Not anymore. Clustered Regularly Interspaced Palindromic Repeats, more commonly known as CRISPR, is a new piece of technology that can make gene editing cheaper, easier, and more accessible. There’s a lot of science and complex machinery behind this, but on a very basic level, an enzyme in CRISPR, called Cas9, can cut DNA. Using CRISPR, it is also possible to add or delete base pairs, the “rungs” of the DNA ladder. It’s such a groundbreaking piece of machinery – there’s so much potential in curing diseases by literally “taking” them out of the DNA, including diseases that very commonly plague our world – like malaria and even cancer. CRISPR is great, there’s no doubt about it. But, like anything else in the world, there are risks that come with it. But exactly how risky are these risks? Is CRISPR really all that amazing? That question depends on our own choices. And when it comes to CRISPR, our own choices can affect us and our family for years to come. For example, using this technology, an individual could choose to alter their child’s appearance based on their personal preferences, such as height, eye color, or hair color, while their child is still in the womb. This could become the main use for CRISPR, even lowering diversity in the human population. Not just humans, CRISPR can modify plants, making petals of flowers more luscious, creating brighter colors. Appearances matter so much in our current society, more than many of us want to admit, and that can be dangerous. CRISPR has many sides to it, and with huge, groundbreaking devices like these, it’s important to realize that there is a balance to everything. Different choices we make can lead us down different paths – it’s up to us, as individuals, to choose the right one.

Did you know that roughly 20% of the United States is powered by nuclear energy? It is a part of a system of machines and powers certain ones, but it also harms humans and other creatures for thousands of years. This means that we are also harming our future for our very temporary satisfaction.

Radiation can cause a variety of things from cancers, to radiation sickness, and skin burns. It's not just physical harm either! It can cost billions of dollars to build a single nuclear power plant and five to ten years to build them. We could be using this money for other things, such as finding new and healthier ways to receive energy.

An example of the dangers of nuclear power is the Chernobyl disaster that occured on April 26th of 1986 at the fourth reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat in the north of Ukrainian SSR in the Soviet Union. The cause of this disaster was the result of a flawed design and inadequately trained workers.

An odd design feature of the control rods in the reactors caused a dramatic power surge as they were put into the reactor. The interaction between sweltering fuel with the cooling water led to fuel fragmentation, which is the combustion of fuel which in turn, causes an explosion, there was also a startling increase in pressure and steam production. This caused an explosion with a 18.6 mile radius leading from ground zero, devastating the local human population, and the surrounding wildlife.

From every stage of nuclear power production, it has somehow affected animals in one way or another. A reactor in England threatens up to 250,000 sea creatures a day because the reactor draws in 130,000 liters of water (or about 34,000 gallons) a second. They will return the fish to the sea dead or alive. There is zero accountability within the industry.

What could or will happen regarding our environment and nuclear energies going into the future?

With web3 coming up, the standards for the internet will be a lot higher. This has resulted in a new form of web security resurfacing. Considering we are transitioning to web3 (hopefully) soon, it will be essential to know how this security works.

The blockchain is a database shared with the nodes of a computer network. It’s used exclusively for securing cryptocurrency transactions. When two people make a transaction, the transaction is represented as a block, and the block's data is broadcasted to the entire network. The network usually approves the block, then is added to the blockchain. At that point, the transaction is complete.

If you didn’t read my last article, this is important because web3 is the next iteration of the internet. It is primarily based on cryptocurrency and decentralized business, in other words, what the blockchain is used for. A counterargument for learning what a blockchain is, you just won’t do any e-commerce or have to use cryptocurrency at all, which could be objectively true, but 81% of Americans use amazon at least once, and that’s one instance where you could use cryptocurrency. Another example of cryptocurrency usage in the future would be things like apple, micro-purchases, and META things.

Some people might be hesitant about this change because they would think that the blockchain could be hacked and steal all of your electronic things: passwords, money, accounts and private data. However, we’ve used this technology for years, and in fact, it was first introduced in 2008. And for all 14 years, the blockchain has never been hacked. It’s more secure than actual banks, all social media, anything that can save your passwords, and it can’t be any more secure than it is right now. If that doesn’t convince you then nothing can.

Thank you for checking out my article. I really hope you learned something new. Or maybe I convinced you that web3 is gonna be a good change. I had a fun time writing this article and researching this topic. Also, make sure to buy crowd strike stock so Mr Rooke-ley can get money!

If you’re more of a visual learner this is another explanation of how the blockchain works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSo_EIwHSd4

Ammonium nitrate (NH₄NO₃) is a white, salt-like substance made of ammonium and nitrate ions. This powder is commonly used in fertilizers, since its high nitrogen content helps plant growth. However, there is another use for this substance. Because of the high nitrogen content in ammonium nitrate, it will react violently when heated. This makes it a good explosive. There have been many fatal accidents involving ammonium nitrate, including the Beirut explosion in 2020, and the Texas fertilizer plant explosion in 2013.

So, what makes it explode? Ammonium nitrate is created by combining nitric acid and ammonia. Heating up ammonium nitrate very fast will cause the molecules to decompose, creating oxygen gas; the creation of this gas along with the energy created in the making process will trigger an explosion. Ammonium nitrate isn’t that dangerous on its own; however, when stored in large quantities, it is a big risk. Storing it near oil or other flammable substances is also a bad idea. The explosion in Beirut, Lebanon in 2020 was caused by around 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, which was being stored next to fireworks in a warehouse. The explosion wiped out hundreds of buildings and killed almost 300 people and injured more than 5,000. In footage from the blast, before the explosion, little white flashes are visible coming from the center of the warehouse. These are the fireworks. As the warehouse blows up, there is first a large condensation shockwave, and then a dirty orange-brown smoke is seen. This is the toxic nitrogen dioxide gas created in the explosion. This color of smoke is usually an indicator that the explosion was somehow involved with ammonium nitrate.

Because of the big risks posed by this substance, it is not easily accessible. Ammonium nitrate has been used purposefully by terrorists, besides just accidental detonations. Fertilizers nowadays are usually made of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, instead of ammonium nitrate.

It’s important to maintain and monitor chemicals and substances that create risks, to help prevent devastating events like the ones mentioned in this article from happening again.

Samsung is a company that specializes in the production of a very wide variety of electronics including, appliances, devices, memory chips, and more. When Samsung was first created, it didn’t sell electronic products but instead sold and exported goods as a grocery store back in 1938. Samsung entered the electronic industry in 1968 with several electronic-focused products which also included their first released product, a black and white television. Samsung is one of the biggest electronic companies that still continues to release new products that a lot of people use. When it comes to their device section, much like other electronic device companies like Apple and LG, Samsung sells smartphones, Headphones, Speakers, and more.

Companies like Samsung and Apple tend to host an ‘event’ when they first show off their products. These products are shown and described in the events and are later on released. Apple and Samsung most of the time do the event once a year and since it’s the start of 2022, Samsung decided to show their latest products in February 2022. Below will be a list of some of the latest tech Samsung released in their unpacked event.

Galaxy S22| S22+| S22Ultra

The Galaxy S22 is the latest smartphone that Samsung has released continuing the Galaxy series from the Galaxy S21. Apart from the different names, the Galaxy S22 and S22+ are smaller than the S21 and S21+ which also means the Galaxy S22 has a smaller battery at 3,700mAh battery (mAh=Milliamp Hours) and the Galaxy S22+ has a 4,800mAh battery compared to the S21’s 4,000mAh battery and the S21+’s 4,800mAh battery. The Galaxy S22 series has a pro-grade camera quality with a new 50-megapixel wide lens with a larger sensor and a new 10-megapixel telelens with 3X optical zoom. The Galaxy S21 had an Ultra version and the Galaxy S22 does too.

The Galaxy S22 Ultra is the first of the Galaxy series to have an S Pen built inside the phone and the Galaxy S22 Ultra screen itself is 6.8 inches with dynamic AMOLED 2X Zoom. The starting price for the S22 Ultra is 1,199.99 dollars, the S22+ is 1,049.99 dollars and the S22 is 849.99 dollars.

Galaxy Tab S8| S8+| S8 Ultra

To start off, the Galaxy Tab S8 series is the first Galaxy Tab to have an Ultra version of itself. The Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra has a 14.6 inch super AMOLED display with a 6.3mm bezel and innovative auto framing to frame in stuff rather than leaving it cut out or small. The Galaxy Tab S8 has an 11 inch 120HZ (Hertz) refresh rate display with 6.3mm bezels and the Galaxy Tab S8+ has a 12.4-inch display with 6.3mm bezels.

The Galaxy Tab S8 has an 8,000mAh battery while the Galaxy Tab S8+ has a 10,090mAh battery and the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra has an 11,200mAh battery. The starting price for the Galaxy Tab S8 is $699, the Galaxy Tab S8+’s is $899 and finally, the starting price for the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra is $1,099 dollars (Pretty much the same price as the Galaxy S22 Ultra.) Overall the latest Galaxy Tab S8 series has better stats than last year's Galaxy Tab S7 series including the introduction of the first Galaxy Tab Ultra.

The Freestyle

Until now, all the tech that has been listed have been Galaxy products which are pretty normal since Samsung along with Apple releases new phones and sometimes tablets every year. So far there has been a new tablet and a new smartphone listed, and there was also a system (OS) update that didn’t get added to the list because it wasn’t that big. I don’t think The Freestyle was on the Unpacked event but The Freestyle is a product people are looking forward to. The Freestyle is a projector with 360-degrees sound and 180-degree flexibility meaning you can point it on the wall or the ceiling.

The Freestyle projector also optimizes the screen so that it can fit on almost any wall it's pointing at. It's also lightweight and portable so that you can take it to more places. The screen of The Freestyle can expand to 100 inches and you can freely move the screen around. You can also use The Freestyle as a speaker and a light source since it can shine regular light out of the projector. Some accessories to go with The Freestyle is a Colored Lens cap which if you shine light out of can be turned into colored light, there's also a socket adapter that can be used to put The Freestyle on an upside-down surface. Even though The Freestyle can do a lot of stuff, the price for it is 899.99 dollars which is expensive.

Samsung's Unpacked event only had a few stuff that was shown including the Galaxy S22 series, Galaxy Tab S8 series, an OS update, and maybe The Freestyle. Overall there were a lot of good electronic products that were shown even though some of them were kind of expensive. Besides that, all the products were pretty good and are coming out on February 25th.

I’m starting this article by saying you would not believe what poisonous stuff exists on earth. In my last article “Poisonous Plants and Fungi”, I talked about what deadly mushrooms and plants could be found in Oregon. I was a bit ashamed of myself when I realized my list of poisonous plants and mushrooms wasn't very long, but after weeks of extra research, I decided to write about what potential death could be found worldwide!

Fly Agaric (Amanita Muscaria)

The first mushroom I’ll be telling you about looks like it came out of a fairytale. Despite its beauty, it is extremely poisonous to both humans and animals. The toxins found in this mushroom are primarily ibotenic acid and muscimol. About one hour after someone consumes this mushroom they will experience nausea, vomiting, hallucinations, dizziness, and tiredness. In severe cases it may cause a coma and in rare cases, circulatory and respiratory failure leading to death.

The Fly Agaric could be a brilliant red, orange, or yellow with white spots on it with a white stem. To my surprise, this beautiful mushroom can be found in Oregon. The Fly Agaric can be found mostly in the northern hemisphere. This would include the US, Britain, Asia, Canada, and Ireland. This mushroom grows in woodland areas on light soil among birch, pine, or spruce trees.

White Snakeroot (Ageratina altissima)

White Snakeroot poisoning is caused by a poisonous alcohol. This plant is poisonous to both animals and humans. Poisoning symptoms include abdominal discomfort, reddened tongue, weakness, nausea, loss of appetite, and abnormal acidity of the blood. When cattle eat this plant they get extremely sick. Whoever drinks the milk of an infected cattle could get an illness called milk sickness which causes weakness, vomiting, and constipation and can be fatal.

White Snakeroot is a North American herb and grows in mostly roadsides, fields, woods, and under powerline clearances. This plant has triangular leaf blades that are more broadly angled or rounded at the base and the flowerheads are arranged in loose, terminal, flat-topped clusters. The flowers point upward and are a beautiful, pure white.

Podostroma Cornu-Damae

This is one of the craziest mushrooms I have ever researched! Before I tell you about this mushroom, I shall reward you with a tea fact for reading this far into the article. Fun fact: To celebrate their 75th Birthday, PG Tips commissioned the most expensive tea bag in the world to auction off for charity. Worth £7000, it has a diamond encrusted bag and was created by Boodles Jewelers. Now, back to the mushroom. This mushroom - sometimes known as the poisonous fire coral - can be the cause of a slow and painful death. If you eat this mushroom you could experience stomach pain, peeling skin, hair loss, multiple organ failure, low blood pressure, liver necrosis, and kidney failure. If this is left untreated for multiple days, it can be fatal.

This mushroom looks like red coral growing out of the ground so it's kind of difficult to not see it. It is native to Asia and has been responsible for many deaths in Japan and Korea.

Ricinus Communis, "Castor Bean"

The Castor Bean is a beautiful and exotic-looking plant. When this plant is eaten the consumer may experience stomach irritation, vomiting, bloody diarrhea, abdominal pain, increased heart rate, low blood pressure, profuse sweating, collapse, convulsions, and death within a few days.

This plant has glossy green leaves, but some may have black-purplish, dark red-metallic, bronze-green, maroon leaves, or bright green leaves with white veins. The flowers are often a cream color and the fruit is a spiny greenish or reddish-purple and contains large, oval, shiny, bean-like, highly poisonous seeds. This plant can also grow to about the height of a small tree. You can find this plant growing in both tropical and subtropical places on roadsides, riverbanks, and disturbed areas.

Deadly Dapperling (Lepiota Brunneoincarnata)

The next mushroom I will be talking about is one of the most terrifying. The poisoning symptoms of this mushroom takes about 6-12 hours to show and as the name suggests, it is extremely deadly and can easily kill someone within a few days. The Deadly Dapperling poisoning symptoms include abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, and can severely damage or destroy the liver and kidneys. If that isn’t terrifying enough, apparently the Deadly Dapperling also looks like a lot of edible mushrooms. Imagine eating a little mushroom you thought was completely safe and a few hours later the grim reaper comes to tell you about your car's extended warranty.

The Deadly Dapperling grows mainly in Europe, some parts of Asia, and as far east as China. This mushroom can be found in grassy areas such as fields, parks, and gardens. The Deadly Dapperling mushroom has a brown scaled cap up to 4 cm wide with a pinkish brown stem and white gills.

It doesn’t matter if you are planning on spending the rest of your life in Oregon or moving to somewhere else or even just visiting a new place, eating and touching unknown plants and fungi is never going to be a good idea. If you are unsure, there are several plants or mushroom identification apps you could download. A few of them would be PlantNet, iNaturalist, Book of Mushrooms, or Mushroom Identificator. If you think you ate something poisonous, call (800) 222-1222(Poison Control).

Electric cars, A solution to our energy crisis, minimizing our dependence on fossil fuels. Cell phones, A solution to global communication and increased human interaction. As our technological intelligence increases, we should also be aware of the dangers we are bringing with it.

Lithium, graphite, cobalt, and manganese are all used to make Lithium-ion batteries for things such as electric cars, toys, wireless headphones, handheld power tools, etc.

Lithium mining can contaminate water basins needed to keep local communities healthy and hydrated. Extracting lithium also uses approximately 500,000 gallons of water per metric ton of lithium. They extract lithium by drilling a hole into salt flats and pumping salty, mineral-rich brine. After this process, you must wait several months. The aftermath of this process leaves a mixture of manganese, potassium, borax and lithium salts afterwards. The lithium salts are filtered then placed into another evaporation pool. Repeat this process for 12 to 18 months then the mixture is filtered enough for lithium carbonate to be extracted. Lithium extraction harms the environment by contaminating the air and soil. In Tibet, there is the chance of toxic chemicals leaking from evaporation pools into their water supply during the process of mining and extracting lithium. Researchers have found that fish are affected by these chemicals for 150 miles downstream from a lithium processing operation located in Nevada.

Another problem with Lithium-ion batteries is that Lithium cathodes degrade over time. They cannot be placed into new batteries, making it way harder to recycle them. The mining process also has a negative environmental impact due to the heavy machinery used to perform the extraction. Heavy machinery uses fossil fuels to operate, they destroy the environment that they are used in, causing not only erosion control issues, but also negatively impacting the carbon dioxide levels that we are working so hard to lower. In addition, this process leads to “water loss, ground destabilization, biodiversity loss, increased salinity in rivers, contaminated soil and toxic waste“ states.

The environment has sacrificed a lot in the past to make everyday life somewhat enjoyable, the question is what are we able to sacrifice for it? Will we be willing to sacrifice using lithium products for a better environment and in the future, life overall?

There is a rocket that is going to crash into the moon on March 4th. Bill Gray has created a software called Project Pluto, which used to track things in space. Although recently, he announced that a SpaceX Falcon 9 would crash into the moon on March 4th, it is most likely the Chinese Long March 3C Rocket.The rocket is estimated to make about a 19 meter hole in the moon. The crash will end up being on the back side of the moon, so you most likely won't be able to see it.

The Chinese Long March 3C Rocket was launched on Oct 23 2014 and is expected to hit the moon at roughly 5,771 mph at 12:55 March 4th. What will happen to the moon? Not much besides making a crater, this won't mess things up too much but this is a really good reminder to clean up our space junk. There are about 27,000 pieces of orbital debris, also known as space junk, flying around at 15,700 mph.

What can we do about our space junk? There are many ways we hypothetically could, but recently a spacecraft was sent out into space that is meant to float around space and attach to any space junk. Once it has enough junk on it, it gets sent back onto earth where it burns up in the atmosphere therefore getting rid of all of the junk.

Everyone knows about the internet; we all use it in our everyday lives. As of 2020, the average person spends roughly two hours a day on the world wide web; that is a twelfth of your life. So obviously, the internet is a significant part of our world. As such, people want to take the internet to a whole new level.

Web1 is the first iteration of the WWW; it started in 1989 and ended in 2005. Web1 was completely read-only, meaning that the information on the internet was not interactive at all; it was only for businesses to broadcast information to the users. Web1 was also worse than the web we have right now because all of the files used were stored within the website instead of a separate database. Some examples of Web1 websites are Netscape, mp3.com, and Britannica online. They are not the best looking, well-optimized or anything; they are pretty bad websites, but when they were created, they were extreme.

Uncreatively, the next iteration of the WWW is Web2. It is the current version of the internet, but it will change soon. This version is mainly based on the Big 5, Google, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon. The purpose of Web2 is to make the internet more interactive; the most notable websites that you are probably familiar with are Youtube, Twitch, Facebook, and Instagram (which are all owned by the big 5.) Web2 is objectively better than Web1 with the websites being hosted on a separate server; the web developers have a lot more experience and, most importantly, the ability to create your own content. However, as the blockchain advances, people have seen an opportunity to change the internet that could be terrible or amazing.

The newest in the WWW sequence, Web3 (what a surprise), is still being developed, but it is close to being complete. Web3s primary purpose is to decentralize the internet, meaning getting rid of the “Big 5” idea, ultimately making it more available to other people and businesses. The other goal is to make it entirely based on a token-based economy. You have probably heard of NFTs or Non-fungible tokens. An NFT is a unique unit of data stored on the Ethereum blockchain, it can be traded and sold, and it is a form of a digital ledger. It is also based on, as stated before, Ethereum and Bitcoin. People do not understand how the blockchain works, or they think you can steal an NFT by downloading it, which is fair. However, if we completely transition to Web3, then everyone will be forced to understand it to participate at all in Web3, this will actually probably cause NFTs to be more popular, and that will then increase the demand, and then NFTs will end up being produced a lot more and also be more expensive, which could end up either good or bad. What is interesting about Web3 is that you will be able to buy and sell anything, from Minecraft worlds to Pixels on a website. It sounds stupid, but it can still be exciting, and it will be fun to see how it goes.

With the internet transitioning to the most significant change the WWW has ever seen, many people will probably be worried about how it ends up. A $10,000 Minecraft world seems silly, but how much different is it from other absurdly expensive status symbols that you see often? Like shoes, a second passport, or even paintings. Now, since some people rely on the internet to exist, this could be the worst thing to happen to our world ever. I encourage you to think about what Web3 could entail; you could be one of those people whose life gets ruined by this change. Despite being so close to Web3, most of what it offers is still a mystery. How do you think Web3 is going to change the internet?

Have you ever thought about how big our galaxy is? Well, it has a diameter of 130,000 light-years, meaning it would take 130,000 years to travel from one side to the other at the speed of light. That's a long time! So this enormous galaxy is three billion light-years away and 100 times bigger than ours, reaching five megaparsecs big. One Megaparsec is 3.26 million light-years, meaning this galaxy is 16.3 million light-years in diameter!

This giant galaxy is called Alcyoneus and is a radio galaxy. A radio galaxy consists of a host galaxy comprised of a cluster of stars, a galactic nucleus containing a black hole, and giant jet lobes. Jet lobes are created from the active black hole at the center. They produce synchrotron radiation, which is when electrons are moving close to the speed of light spiral through a magnetic field. Astronomers who discovered this galaxy say this is a reasonably typical radio galaxy aside from its size.

This giant galaxy was discovered by a team of astronomers, led by Martijn Oei, on the 16th of February. He is a PhD student who studied at both Cambridge and Leiden University. He discovered Alcyoneus using the largest radio telescope, the LOFAR (Low-Frequency Array).

Unlike single-dish telescopes, the LOFAR Radio telescope has multipurpose sensors that can handle large data volumes, perfect for large radio galaxies, and operates at the lowest frequencies possible. The LOFAR uses many small antennas that receive and send information that is then digitized. The digitized data is sent through a central digital processor and combined with software to imitate a conventional antenna.

In the end, space is a very mysterious, vast, and unexplored place where anything is possible. This discovery really proves we still have much more to learn and discover about space. Hopefully, you enjoyed reading this article and learned something new. Thanks!

Since oceans cover about 71% of the Earth’s surface, the world’s oceans have a two-way relationship with weather and climate. The oceans influence the weather, while changes in climate can seriously change many aspects of the oceans.

In order to understand how climate change affects the ocean, we must first understand what exactly climate change is. Climate change is a change in global or regional climate patterns. Human activities continue to emit extreme amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, even with our efforts to reduce emissions. Since the industrial revolution started, global temperatures have kept going up farther and farther. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the warmest 30-year period was between 1983 to 2012. It’s not even a small feat to warm the atmosphere, land, and oceans by one degree because changes that happen on a global scale usually take very long. That is why a one-degree increase in the surface temperature is a very big deal.

As greenhouse gasses trap heat in the atmosphere, the oceans absorb this excess heat, naturally affecting many ecosystems. The excess heat causes more high-intensity storms to form, destroying ecosystems all over the world. The oceans also absorb much more carbon causing the water to become much more acidic. This makes coral not able to make its skeleton and shellfish not able to create their shells. Climate change also can increase the ocean’s height causing floods to occur more often.

Climate change also affects a lot of the wildlife in the ocean. Climate change leads to events such as coral bleaching, which is when the algae that live within the coral get too hot the coral stresses out and expels the algae. Climate change also leads to more fish migrating closer to the poles.

Even if the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere stabilized, say, tomorrow, it would still take many, many years before the global temperature would cool back down to the “normal” temperature. This cycle will be repeated over and over again as long as climate change is still rising because acidification appears to be reducing the amount of sulfur coming out of the ocean into the atmosphere. This reduces the reflection of solar radiation back into space, resulting in even more warming. This is why it is so important to do your part to help lower emissions.

What is Neuralink?

Since 2016, Elon Musk has been working on a project called Neuralink. The main purpose of the device is to help people communicate through text or voice messages. It is also useful in the medical field, to help people with spinal-cord injuries or disabilities. It is like you have your phone, iPad, tablet, or computer but in your brain.

How Does it Work?

The neurons are connected to one another by the synapses which release neurotransmitters. The electrodes that are part of the Neuralink will read electrical signals that are produced by several neurons in the brain. The signals are then outputted in the form of an action or movement. The way the Neuralink is implanted in your head, they are developing surgical robots to implant its devices, essentially sewing tiny wires about a quarter of the diameter of a human hair to connect implants to the brain.

What is the Stuff in the Last Paragraph?

• Neurons: Neurons are information messengers. They use electrical impulses and chemical signals to transmit information between different areas of the brain, and between the brain and the rest of the nervous system.

• Synapses: The synaptic connection between a neuron and a muscle cell is called a neuromuscular junction.

• Neurotransmitters are a chemical substance that is released at the end of a nerve fiber by the arrival of a nerve impulse and, by diffusing across the synapse, causes the transfer of the impulse to another nerve fiber, a muscle fiber, or some other structure.

A Little More Facts About the Neuralink

The Neuralink was tested on monkeys and so far the test has been successful but they are testing it a lot more times before they start putting in it people. The estimated cost of the Neuralink is about $2,000 - $3,000 for most people. The Neuralink is supposed to come out sometime this year for humans but they don’t have a specific date.

My Opinion

In my opinion, I feel like this could be a step up in the medical field. It could be a miracle for someone who isn’t or wasn’t able to walk before and give them that chance to not feel like an outsider. I also feel it may be a bad idea because it has a risk of being hacked but they said it feels more like confusion and it doesn’t really harm the brain. I also think it’s not necessary for people that don’t have an injury or disabilities, since you’ll basically have a computer in your head you can just google stuff and take pictures of stuff but it won’t create any brain power because you're taking the easy way.

NASA/Johns Hopkins/APL

Space. An area so vast that no one can quite comprehend how large it is. And with things that we can’t comprehend comes things that we fear the most. And one of those things is a large rock hitting Earth, killing everything on it, just like what happened to our monolith predecessors. But that won’t happen to us. Right? Well, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA wants to make sure it won’t. To combat any danger against asteroids, NASA has built the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART to stop any asteroids from hitting Earth. But how?

DART plans to redirect the direction of an asteroid named Dimorphos, even though this asteroid won’t hit Earth. It, according to the New York Times, “will autonomously steer itself straight toward Dimorphos for a head-on collision at 15,000 miles per hour.”. The goal is not to completely eliminate the asteroid, but to simply change its course to make sure Earth is safe. You may be asking yourself: “Why is NASA doing this? Why doesn’t it do something simpler, like blowing the asteroid up?” Well, as cool as that sounds, the consequences of doing that outweigh the benefits: The asteroid will break into smaller pieces, ones that pose much more of a threat than Dimorphos does right now. Not only that, but it also is prohibited by the Outer Space Treaty to use nuclear weapons in space.

NASA has decided to test their DART machine on the asteroid known as Dimorphos, though this asteroid is most definitely not going to hit Earth, and no asteroid will for at least another century with the data collected currently. According to the New York Times, the only asteroid that remotely poses a threat to our knowledge is “Bennu, a gravelly, acorn-shaped asteroid about the size of a skyscraper. It has a 0.057 percent chance of impacting Earth sometime between the years 2178 and 2290.”. This doesn’t mean that NASA's mission is obsolete: IF the test is proven to be successful, NASA and other space agencies will be prepared in the future, even if that future seems lightyears away.

So now you may be thinking to yourself, “Wow, this really seems great and all, but how will NASA be able to see all of this from so far away?” Well, there they implement the use of incredible telescope technology, but even with the telescopes at NASA, you can’t get a good look at it crashing. NASA will see the asteroid and the DART ship as small blips of sunlight. The way they will see if DART successfully knocked it out of position is by measuring the time between one flicker of light and another, indicating the asteroids orbiting around Didymos. If this time is extended by around 1 minute, the DART mission was successful. Scientists at NASA think it will exceed this expectation by quite the margin, lengthening it around 10 minutes instead of just one.

All of this to me seems so fantastical and incredulous that I can’t believe that it isn’t science fiction: It’s a science fact. I feel like the world is being pulled closer to what we thought the future was going to be every time we decide to step out of the atmosphere, and into something unknown.

All information can be found in this article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/23/science/nasa-dart-launch-asteroid.html

The James Webb Telescope, a 20.2 by 14.2-meter wide space telescope, is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. It was built to help complete NASA’s dream of trying to figure out the history of the known universe. It can reach a broader band of wavelengths than Hubble. Hubble could only reach from visible light to the near-infrared wavelengths. However, the James Webb Telescope can reach from visible light to the Mid-infrared wavelengths. (For more info on wavelengths, check out the image carousel below). This allows the telescope to “see” past galaxies that formed near the Big Bang.

The James Webb Telescope was launched on Christmas day last year, on the Ariane 5 rocket in the Guiana Space Center located in Kourou, French Guiana. The telescope is so large that it had to be folded like origami to fit in the rocket!

Webb’s destination is the L2 point, 1,000,000 miles away from Earth. This point is one of the five points in space where the gravitational pull of the Earth and the sun balance the centripetal force^[1] that allows the telescope to orbit in a circular shape around the sun along with the Earth. The L2 point is useful because it minimizes the amount of fuel the spacecraft has to use to stay in its position. It also allows the telescope to work continuously with NASA’s Deep Space Network. The Deep Space Network is an international array of giant antennas that are managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

The telescope consists of 3 main parts, the primary mirror, the secondary mirror, and the sunshield. The primary mirror is over 6.5 meters in diameter and consists of 18 different mirror segments. The mirror segments are made out of beryllium with a microscopically thin layer of gold, which gives it its golden color. The secondary mirror is another smaller, circular mirror segment located in front of the primary mirror. The sunshield is 21 by 14 meters long, about as large as a standard size tennis court. It’s made of five layers of gossamer polymer membranes coated with aluminum. Its purpose is to keep the telescope part cool enough to function properly. Providing an SPF of 1,000,000!

Webb took 40 million hours to build from the idea to reality (almost 30 years), with thousands of scientists coming from 14 different countries (mainly from North America and Europe). The idea for Webb came from a Next Generation Space Telescope Workshop, where scientists and astronomers would discuss ideas for a potential heir to the Hubble Space Telescope. During that discussion, they decided that the telescope would operate at infrared wavelengths, and have a mirror larger than four meters (about 13 feet).

In 2002, NASA had the teams selected. Teams that would build the telescope, and teams that would observe the building, and provide guidance. Construction of the James Webb Telescope began in 2004 and by 2012, pieces of the satellite were beginning to arrive at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. In 2013 construction started on the sunshield. From 2013-2016 Webb’s instruments were packaged and tested. From 2015 to 2016 the telescope parts and structures were assembled and in 2017, the entire telescope part of the space telescope was completed and delivered to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas for cryogenic testing. In 2018, once all the parts were tested and verified, the telescope parts were delivered to Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, California, where the bus for the telescope was being built along with the sunshield. Then in 2019, the two halves were connected. The final bits of testing continued until 2021 where Webb was folded and stored for the 2021 launch.

Its purpose is to search for the first galaxies formed in the early universe, observe the formation of stars, from stellar nurseries to the formation of entire planetary systems, study galaxies near and far from us to learn about the evolution of galaxies, and measure physical and chemical properties of solar systems, including our own, and investigate them for potential signs of life.

The telescope has gone through four different processes so far and is more than halfway done before its L2 insertion. It has successfully opened its solar array, secondary mirror, and its primary mirror. It is currently adjusting the individual mirror segments on its primary mirror. If everything goes according to plan or “nominal^[2]” then the telescope should be inserted into the L2 point by the end of this month. But it’ll be another five months before it starts taking measurements.

1. Centripetal force : a force that acts on a body moving in a circular path and is directed toward the center around which the body is moving.

2. Nominal : (chiefly in the context of space travel) functioning normally or acceptably.

For more information about the James Webb Telescope, go to: The James Webb Space Telescope Official Site

_{Name of Telescope}

_{There is a new invention of a space telescope. The name of the telescope is Next Generation Space Telescope(NGST), but most people know it as James Webb Telescope. The reason why the other name is James Webb is that James Webb did more science than any other government official and it is only fitting that the Next Generation Space Telescope is named after him.}

_{About the Person who Created it and When it Started to get Created}

_{James Webb was born October 7th, 1906, and died March 27th, 1992. He was an American government official who served as Undersecretary of State from 1949 to 1952. He was also the second appointed administrator of NASA from February 14, 1961, to October 7, 1968. 1968 is when they started to make the James Webb Telescope. The budget they had for it was $500 million.}

_{About the Launch}

_{They were planning to launch the telescope in 2007, but the telescope had several problems so they had to postpone it. The launch will take place on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s space spot in French Guiana on December 22, just a week from today! When the James Webb Telescope(JWST) launches on December 22, it’ll be on its way to the biggest observatory beyond Earth set so we can understand the universe a lot more. The European Space Agency is a partner on the project and agreed to take the responsibility to transfer the telescope to space. The rocket will get the telescope about one million miles from earth.}

_{How Far Can the Telescope See}

_{The telescope will be able to see what the universe looked like anywhere from 100 million years to 250 million years ago. This can help us know what the universe looked like before all the craziness of the universe forming happened. It also says the farthest the telescope can see is 13.8 billion light-years away. The Webb telescope will be able to look farther back in time than previous telescopes and will allow scientists to look through the dust to see stars forming inside.}

_{Their Goal for the Telescope}

_{The main goal for the James Webb telescope is to study galaxy, star, planet formation in the universe. To see the very first stars and galaxies that formed in the early universe. They want to look deeper into space to see back in time, because it takes light time to travel from there to here, the farther out they look the farther they can look back in time.}

Have you ever looked at a plant or mushroom and wondered if it was poisonous? Some of the deadliest plants and mushrooms in the world are simply hiding in plain sight and are a danger to unsuspecting children, pets, and even adults. This guide will help you and whoever you decide to share this info with stay safe.

Death Cap (Amanita phalloides)

Let's start off with one of the most poisonous and deadliest mushrooms in the world. Out of all species of mushrooms, the death cap is said to cause the most deaths, and unlike some other mushrooms, the poison from this mushroom cannot simply be removed. Just hearing or reading about how this thing kills is enough nightmare fuel to keep you staying at least 100 feet away from any small or medium white mushrooms you can see, and the fact this mushroom looks identical to a lot of edible mushrooms doesn’t help either. And yes, these human-killing fungi grow in Oregon.

Within about 6 to 24 hours of consumption, the death cap will cause violent abdominal pain, vomiting, and dehydrating diarrhea. At first, the person who had eaten the death cap might be diagnosed with the simple stomach flu, meanwhile, the poison will stealthily destroy their liver. It does this by disabling an enzyme responsible for making new proteins. Their cells can’t function without the enzyme. This will cause liver failure. If the victim is not treated, they will experience organ failure, coma, and death. One simple mistake can lead to a slow and painful death.

If you want to know what to avoid, then I'll explain what exactly a death cap looks like. It has a smooth yellowish-green to an olive-brown cap, white gills, white stem, a membranous skirt on the stem, and a cup-like structure around the base of the stem.

Destroying Angels (Amanita species)

The destroying angels are beautiful white mushrooms. They also have the same toxins as the death cap. Unfortunately, the destroying angel mushroom is one of the most common poisonous mushrooms in the Pacific Northwest. Destroying angels contain amatoxins, which destroy liver and kidney tissues within mere hours of consumption. The symptoms include vomiting, delirium, convulsions, diarrhea, liver, and kidney failure, and often lead to death.

Similar to a death cap, a destroying angel looks similar to a few different edible mushrooms. If you don’t want to die a painful death, then don’t eat a mushroom that is all white, with a ring on the stalk and a large cup around the stalk’s base (sometimes hidden underground). This mushroom also grows on the ground in mixed woods and in the grass near trees. The cap of the destroying angel is often 4-12cm diameter, round, convex to flat, and is near white to yellowish and olivaceous green.

Conocybe Filaris

Conocybe Filaris (also known as Pholiotina Filaris) is an innocent-looking lawn mushroom that is especially common in the Pacific Northwest. When consumed, the Conocybe Filaris will cause food poisoning or stomach flu-like symptoms. The patient may appear to recover, only to suffer from a life-threatening reappearance of gastrointestinal distress, coupled with liver and kidney failure.

The Conocybe Filaris has rust-colored brown gills and conical caps.

Deadly Nightshade (Atropa belladonna)

Deadly nightshade can be found in Oregon and it is extremely toxic. Typically, the consumer has a dry mouth, blurred vision, and increased temperature. Memory and orientation are disturbed, and hallucinations are common. In severe cases, depression and circulatory collapse may occur, followed by death from respiratory failure.

Deadly nightshade has reddish, bell-shaped flowers that bear glossy-coated, blackberries. Other names for the plant include belladonna, deadly nightshade, devil’s berries, naughty man’s cherries, death cherries, beautiful death, and devil’s herb.

This is definitely not all of the poisonous stuff we have here in Oregon. Don’t eat random plants and mushrooms and you should be fine. If you are unsure, there are several plants or mushroom identification apps you could download. A few of them would be PlantNet, iNaturalist, Book of Mushrooms, or Mushroom Identificator. If you think you ate something poisonous, call (800) 222-1222(Poison Control). Tea fact: The Lipton Tea Factory in Jebel Ali, Dubai, produces around 5 billion tea bags a year.

My friend here Miles wrote about an article in the History section about the shooting and assasination of JFK, and while I’m not saying he didn’t do a good job, I will say that he didn’t explain the future of this disastrous event. Many car companies, mostly Cadillac, offered their help in the future with the vehicles used in the present and future of our fellow Presidents.

Airplanes

The Air Force One is the official plane for many Presidents. This glorious Eden of a plane has everything a President could ask for, from their own office to a personal security team. From this aircraft, Presidents can have staff meetings on the go as there is a total of 4,000 square feet sprawled. This includes an oval office, a medical room, and a presidential office. The President can even launch a nuclear attack from his OWN OFFICE!

The Beast

The BEAST is considered one of the worlds MOST safe vehicles in the world! With eight inches of pure steel armor (weighing 59 pounds which is the weight of the cabin door on a Boeing 757). They form a 100% seal to protect the President from chemical attacks. In the front, there is a dispenser equipped with tear gas and a grenade launcher. The glass and windows are each five layers of glass and polycarbonate. The windows though can only open three inches and the only one that can open is the drivers. Speaking of, they are seriously trained for plucky saves. They are trained to cope with the most dangerous situations on the road, trained to perform a 180 turn incase of an evasion. The bottom of the car is equipped with steel plates to protect the vehicle from grenades and direct hits to the gas tank. The doors are also equipped with action pump shotguns for all you FPS gamers.

Seems like a lot huh? Well there’s more that the government hasn’t told us. A lot of precaution is taken into protecting our leaders, not to mention that the Presidents have a direct phone line in the rear to contact the Vice President or the Pentagon. There are still more things to The Beast that the government won’t tell us, which is understandable, but you gotta admit it’s impressive what $1.5m can get you.

AirCarFlying cars, which have been predicted to be a thing in 2020 Sci-Fi movies like Back To The Future 2, may finally be a real thing in the future. When these movies were made, flying cars seemed like fantasy but reality may be sooner than we think. There a lot of the cars are just concepts, but there are a few that are not concepts and have been made into prototypes that work. The difference between the two being that concepts may have been made into a prototype that might not work or just only having the design done. Below, I will talk about two cars that are concepts and two that are real.

Concept Cars:

The first concept car is one made by a French brand called Renault, and is called the AIR4. It is made for a world without roads. This car is fully electric and can go 58 miles per hour. It's capable of going up to 2296 feet in the air. Although this car has been built as a prototype and is in its test phases, it is made of carbon fiber body so it is lightweight, it sits in the middle of a base with four two-blade propellers.

This next concept car is being made by Boeing and Porsche and is gonna be more of an air taxi then a car that one can buy and drive it, just like the other car it will be electric and is also being finished, currently it can take off, hover, and land but it can't fly yet, according to CNN.com “The announcement did not include any details about the amount of money or other resources the two companies plan to invest in the effort, or a target date or price range.” So that just means that there isn't too much information on it right now as it is a work in progress.

Real Cars:

The first functioning flying car was made by a Japanese company named Sky Drive Inc. It is named SD-03 and in a test flight on the Toyota (city not company) test track and was able to do one four minute lap around it. The SD-03 is 13 feet in length and width and around six and a half feet tall, it can go up to 45 mph.

The next car is my favorite and is made by Klein Vision and is called the AirCar. It took a 35 minute flight between Nitra and the capital Bratislava which are in Slovakia, The AirCar is powered by a 160 horsepower bmw engine, it has a propeller. It can turn from a land vehicle into an aircraft in less than three minutes! AirCar has over 40 hours total of test driving flying at 8200 feet and reaching a max speed of 118 mph. I think this quote from CNN.com does a good job of summarizing these cars "AirCar is no longer just a proof of concept," Zajac said in the press release. "It has turned science fiction into a reality."

So although it still will be several years until we are starting to drive flying cars on the road, we are closer than we ever have been to that reality.

Sources:

Porsche/Boeing Concept

AirCar

SD-03

AIR4 Concept Car

Animal cloning is when scientists use genetic copies of genes, cells, tissues, and many more. Cloning isn’t only here for animals but for humans and plants too. In this article on National Geographic researchers take DNA from a living thing and place it in the mother like bacteria, every time the mother gives birth a new copy of genes is made. Animals can be cloned in one of two different ways, one way is that scientists take an embryo and split it in half and those halves are placed inside the mother. Each part of the embryo forms into a different animal and those said animals share the same genes.

The next method used is called Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer. This method uses somatic cells containing two sets of chromosomes then, scientists take the DNA from an animal's somatic cells and place it in an egg cell that has its nucleus and DNA gone. Then the egg develops into an embryo and the animal formed has the same genes as its cell donor. Animal cloning isn’t a new thing either it has been a thing for 22 years when in 1996 scientists cloned a sheep that was named Dolly, the cloned Finn Dorset sheep had her cells taken from an adult Scottish Blackface sheep.

Unfortunately, Dolly passed away from illnesses when she was only six years old but she did have offspring by giving birth a more normal way than cloning. So far there have been more clones than just sheep like cows, cats, deer and many more animals but no human clones have been born just yet due to illnesses that could kill clones like Dolly. For now it will remain to cloning animals until it becomes fully safe.

Are Oregon people prepared for a magnitude 9.0 earthquake? What would you do if I told you this article is actually a guide to helping you survive one of the world's largest earthquakes? Well, let me start you off with a bit of information: the last megathrust earthquake on the Cascadia Subduction Zone struck on 26 January 1700. Scientists know another one is coming and are predicting there is a chance it will happen within the next 50 years.

You're probably thinking, “ok, well I have about 50 years to get out of Oregon. So why should we know this now?” Well, the thing is, we’re already overdue for this earthquake (I'll tell you why later in the article). This article will tell you what a megathrust earthquake is, what it will do to us, and how you and your family can survive this.

What is a megathrust earthquake?

A megathrust earthquake is a very large earthquake that occurs in a subduction zone. A megathrust earthquake happens when one of the earth's tectonic plates is thrust under another.

How big are megathrust earthquakes?

Megathrust earthquakes are the largest earthquakes on earth. Over 300 years ago a Cascadia earthquake was estimated at a magnitude 9. In 1964 Alaska had a magnitude of 9.2 and Chile had a magnitude of 9.5 in 1960

When will the next one happen?

The Cascadia Subduction Zone has not had a major earthquake since 1700. For over 300 years the Juan de Fuca plate has been building up pressure and is moving under the North American plate. Current predictions state there is a 30 percent chance a megathrust earthquake will occur along this fault line in the next 50 years.

Over the last 10,200 years, there have been 46 major coastal quakes. On average, a major earthquake occurs in this area every 243 years. Like I said before, it's been over 300 years since the last one. Yep, we’re overdue!

Imagine this

Imagine getting up in the morning and it's just another normal day. You go on doing whatever you usually do with your day. Then suddenly, without any warning, the ground starts shaking. Old schools, daycares, stores, homes, and other buildings start to collapse and crumble. Some of your family is away from home. What are you going to do? You can’t take any transportation because most if not all roads and bridges are destroyed by now. Communication will be difficult because the phone lines will be jammed. The quake continues for about 3-6 minutes. What's going to happen to your family? What will happen to your friends? What about you, will you survive?

Don’t forget about the tsunami

Before I start talking about the destruction the tsunami will bring, I want to say thank you and congratulate you for making it this far into the article/guide thing. I apologize if this article is kinda boring but think of it this way - when this quake happens you, your family and whoever else is reading this are going to be the few people in Oregon that are truly prepared. All of you will be the ones to understand the situation and survive. As a hidden reward, you shall receive a fun fact about tea.

Fun fact: did you know that the leaves from the Raspberry plant can be steeped to produce a Herbal Tea!

Anyways, let's get back to the tsunami thing. How long do you think it would take you to get to higher ground? Hopefully, less than 15-20 minutes because when that shaking stops that's all the time you got before the tsunami comes for you. Too bad the roads are destroyed. I guess you better find a tall sturdy building and start climbing those stairs like your life depends on it and then climb even faster.

Hey, remember that time back in 2011 where Japan had a big earthquake and tsunami? Well, those tsunami waves were up to 33 feet high and over roughly 217 square miles were destroyed. I'll let that information sink in for a moment... Now, the tsunami we are going to get could get up to 85 feet high. How do you think that's going to go for us?

Come with me if you want to live

You're probably thinking, “how am I going to survive this monster of an earthquake AND an 85-foot tall tsunami on a time limit with keeping my family's and/or friend’s safety in mind!” I know it seems impossible to survive this, but, believe me when I say it is possible. Follow these steps to survive.

These are the supplies you need to have before the earthquake happens:

1. 1 gallon of water per person (this should last about a week)

2. Canned and boxed food that does not need to be refrigerated or cooked (make sure you have protein)

3. 1 hand-operated can opener

4. First aid kit

5. Flashlights (at least 2 of them)

6. Batteries

7. An extra leash or pet carrier for pets along with a duplicate set of their ID and license tags.

8. A local map

9. Toothbrushes and toothpaste

10. any other specific household items

What you should do before the earthquake happens:

1. Secure any moveable objects and identify any hazards

2. Create a plan (how will you communicate with each other)

3. Have 2 meeting spots (one outside your house and the other outside your neighborhood)

4. Organize your supplies and keep them in a safe place

5. Make sure you or any members of your family know where important documents are

How to survive an earthquake while it's happening:

1. Remember these words DROP, COVER, AND HOLD ON! If you are indoors, get underneath any sturdy furniture, cover your head and torso, and hold on to something.

2. If you are outside, get to an open area away from buildings and tall trees.

What to do after the earthquake:

1. Be thankful you read this article/guide thing

2. Make sure you and the people around you are ok

3. Get to some high ground because you got 15-20 minutes before that tsunami is after you

4. Just chill for a little while

5. Fun fact: tea is the second most consumed beverage on the planet – after water. It has even greater consumption than Coffee. Despite Coffee’s popularity in the West, much of the Middle East and Asia have tea drinking ingrained in their culture.

Have you noticed the sudden drop in water supplies lately? Going from buying as many gallons of water as you want to one gallon per person? Have you brushed it off thinking about how the same thing was happening at the beginning of the Pandemic? Well, this time it has nothing to do with Covid-19.

All of Oregon is currently experiencing some form of drought conditions and most of Oregon is in severe drought or higher. In the previous years, droughts haven’t been a concerning problem for the amount of rain that usually washed all over Oregon all year long. For the past 4 years, Oregon has been lacking the rain that seemed to fall non-stop in the previous years. Have you noticed it?

Last summer's heatwave didn't help this water crisis either as Oregon's gotten the least amount of water this past July than it has in nearly a century. Due to the heat, Oregon hasn't been able to bounce back from dry summers or springs, making this drought even worse.

Due to the lack of rain, the soil has been parched, which has harmed lots of plants and animals. Rivers and Reservoirs are below water average, causing irrigators to shorten their water supply. This has been causing fish to die due to the shortening water.

Larry O'Neill, a climatologist at Oregon State University, has said that this drought is historically significant with three-fourths of the state being in extreme or worse drought conditions. In the past years, overcoming such heats wasn't a problem, but now with less water, it is becoming harder for Oregon to stand back on its feet. We seem to be in an unceasing drought.

This heat will possibly become the new normal weather for Oregon, so I wonder how will these changes affect our state? Only time will tell, for now, all we can do is wait and see how our climate changes.

You can keep track of the drought here - https://www.drought.gov/states/oregon