Rising from the ashes
Local weather change may gas extra wildfires that may survive winter underground and flare up after warmer-than-normal summers, Jonathan Lambert reported in “ ‘Zombie’ fires may turn into widespread” (SN: 6/19/21, p. 7).
Reader Mike Roddy wished to know if such fires may happen in temperate forests.
Zombie fires sometimes solely occur in boreal forests, which develop at excessive latitudes between 50° N and 60° N, Lambert says. “Most temperate forests, which exist at decrease latitudes in each the Northern and Southern hemispheres, lack the carbon-rich peat and soil that gas zombie fires.”
Crystal clear
Materials shaped from the primary atomic bomb take a look at comprises a quasicrystal, a uncommon kind of matter that has an orderly, nonrepeating construction, Emily Conover reported in “Atomic bomb take a look at made a quasicrystal” (SN: 6/19/21, p. 12).
Reader Lance N. Franke requested whether or not the quasicrystal was radioactive, given it shaped throughout a nuclear explosion.
The researchers didn’t report any proof of radioactivity inside the quasicrystal itself, Conover says. However trinitite, the fabric by which the quasicrystal was discovered, is mildly radioactive — although not sufficient to be harmful. “You’ll find inside trinitite traces of plutonium, uranium and different radioactive components that have been produced or launched within the explosion, however not in very massive quantities,” she says.
Franke additionally questioned if quasicrystals may have sensible makes use of.
Since quasicrystals are uncommon outdoors of the lab and normally extraordinarily tiny, researchers have but to discover a sensible use for them, Conover says. “Quasicrystals don’t observe the identical guidelines of symmetry as regular crystals, which suggests they might have properties not potential for regular crystals,” she says. Researchers are learning lab-made quasicrystals to find out in the event that they might be helpful in electronics and different applied sciences (SN: 1/21/17, p. 16).
Uncovering historical past
A century in the past, an eruption of racist violence left tons of useless and destroyed a thriving Black neighborhood in Tulsa, Okla. Now, researchers could have discovered a mass grave of among the victims, Helen Thompson reported in “Tulsa reckons with the 1921 race bloodbath” (SN: 6/19/21, p. 22).
Reader Norman Dolph praised Thompson’s reporting, which prompted him to mirror on his upbringing. “I used to be born in Tulsa in 1939. My father moved to Tulsa in 1929,” Dolph wrote. Rising up, “no one, neither my mother and father nor another ‘grownup’ Tulsan, went out of their strategy to point out this occasion to me till I used to be effectively into school. The occasion was a secret,” he wrote. “Your enlightening analysis and rendering of the occasion is a mind-opener.”
Inked up
Turkey leg bones discovered at an historic Tennessee web site are the oldest-known tattoo needles, Bruce Bower reported in “Historic Native People turned turkey bones into tattooing instruments” (SN: 6/19/21, p. 5). “How do we all know the bones have been used for tattooing?” reader Gary S. Flom requested. Maybe the bones have been for writing or drawing, Flom urged.
The sharpened bones “present distinctive harm on and close to their ideas that has been beforehand noticed on experimental tattooing instruments,” Bower says. “Pigment residue on the turkey bones additionally seems a number of millimeters from the guidelines, one other function of experimental instruments used to create tattoos.”
