What I Learnt Last Week ; Black Snow is Falling in Siberia, Spoon Retrieved From a Man's oesophagus by Doctors, One Year After He Swallowed it, Rare Galápagos Tortoise believed to be extinct since 1906 was recently discovered by scientists etc

This is the second time I am actually doing something like this. This style of posting interesting science articles/news was actually inspired by @mobbs and this is my own episode of "What I Learnt Last Week". I made a lot of interestingly strange discoveries but I will stick to my five favourite discoveries from Monday through Friday.

Monday

Black Snowfall in Siberia -

Siberia is a massive region in Russia and just about two weeks ago, it was reported that black toxic snow was falling and probably still is falling in Siberia. This really strange and most of us may be wondering why this is an occurrence - if you take a quick guess you'd get the answer which is the mismanagement of the environment. The reason for this toxic black snowfall in Siberia is the mismanagement of factories in the area. It was reported that a shield that was supposed to stop the coal dust from leaving the coal pits and factories had gone bad, and nothing was done to fix it before the heavy snowfall started, which made the regular snow become tainted with toxic coal dust, hence the colour of the snow.

You can Read More About the Black Snowfall in Siberia here

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Tuesday

Spoon Retrieved From a Man's Oesophagus by Doctors, One Year After He Swallowed it -

As crazy and creepy as this may seem, this actually happened to a man in China. I know right? What crazy person would swallow a spoon out of impulse - Well this crazy person was identified as Mr Zhang and had swallowed this spoon since 2017 but surprisingly, the spoon did not give him any kind of discomfort and he did not feel any pain. Mr Zhang swallowed this spoon because he was dared by his friends and it was not a teaspoon, it was an 8 inches long regular spoon. From the reports, Mr Zhang only found the need to visit the hospital about this spoon when someone hit his chest and he started feeling uncontrollable pains. The doctors who attended to him confessed that they have never met someone and bizarre case as Mr Zhang's.

They conducted surgery on him and remove the spoon which was covered by a whole lot of mucus (Probably why he was able to live with a spoon inside his oesophagus for that long). The doctors classified the surgery as a near risk surgery and advised people to stop doing crazy things as a result of dares. Good news is, Mr Zhang survived the surgery and is expected to be well after a few days of rest, as he was relieved of so much pain after the spoon was removed.

You Can Read More About this Here

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Wednesday

Rare Galápagos Tortoise believed to be extinct since 1906 was recently discovered by scientists

I don't know about you but this is great news to me. As the day goes by many species of animal are being endangered, critically endangered and eventually extinct. I made some post about already extinct and critically endangered animals and it made people sad because most of these animals are put in this situation because of human activities. This particular animal has a different story for its believed extinction (Not to blame it all on the volcanic eruptions, humans also hunted them for their meat and oil) - La Cumbre is one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world and the continuous eruptions almost took over the island. This made people believe that this species of tortoise had gone extinct from this natural disaster until February 17th 2019 when it was found again.

The fact that this giant tortoise is back and its a female one makes me happy. This tortoise was discovered on the 17 of February on the Galápagos island of Fernandina during a tour by the U.S based Galápagos Conservancy and the regional Galápagos National Park. Reports got said that Scientist who found the tortoise strongly believe that they will find more of her species but for now, she was transferred to Santa Cruz Island where tortoise breeding takes place. Also, Scientist hopes for successful breeding and care of the tortoise with the plan to remove it from the critically endangered species list.

You Can Read More About this Here

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Thursday

Spinning Black Holes may Open Up pliable Entryways for Hypersonic Spacecraft

A question always to come to mind when I see the statistics of the daily growing population of the world? How will humans survive when they have run out natural resources to feed and clothe themselves? That would probably be the end of the world but how can they save the world from themselves when this happens? Will they have to travel back in time to change things using time machines? Unending questions and unanswered questions that I ask myself.

In the science fiction movie Interstellar a time came where the world ran out of food and everywhere was covered in dust. Human mortality rate drastically with no help from anywhere around the earth. The scientists had to go to space to look start a new life and for them to do that they had to go through a black hole. Recently, a physics Professor Gaurav Khanna shared his thoughts on the black hole which is one of the biggest mystery of astronomy. He mentioned that not all black holes are created the same and used Sagittarius A* as an example, stating that it is possible for an ultrasonic spacecraft to pass through it because of the relevant singularity of the black hole which is technically weak and may not necessarily destroy the spacecraft or anything that interacts with it. Basically, the spinning black holes with relative weak singularity will serve as a pathway for a scientist to go a totally new dimension.

You Can Read More About this Here

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Friday

Carmeltazite - An Extraterrestrial Mineral Harder than Diamond Recently found on Earth

Carmeltazite is an extraterrestrial mineral, from the name was only found in space until it was found by a precious stone mining industry name Shefa Yamim in northern Israel in January 2019. It was then tested and proven to be a mineral by the International Mineralogical Association ("IMA") Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification. Its density was tested and it showed that it is harder than diamond and of no doubt rarer than diamond. The mineral was given the name Carmel sapphire - Carmel because of its origin in volcanic rock on Mount Carmel and sapphire because it looks like sapphire but it can not be compared to sapphire as it is more precious and harder than sapphire. Also, it was given the name Carmeltazite because of its place of origin and the major chemical components which are Titanium, Aluminum and Zirconium T-A-Z, hence the "TAZ".

Carmeltazite has the chemical formula - ZrAl2Ti4O11, with its colour ranging from black, blue, green to brownish orange. The precious stone has been approved for marketing with the name carmel sapphire and is said to go for a very expensive price because of its quality and rarity. The largest carmeltazite stone found for now is 33.3 carats in weight and geologist in the company are hoping to find more this extremely rare mineral as they continue to search for it on the cracks of the volcanic rock on Mount Carmel.

You Can Read More About this Here

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Further Reading

Black Snowfall in Siberia
Spoon Retrieved From a Man's Oesophagus by Doctors, One Year After He Swallowed it
Rare Galápagos Tortoise believed to be extinct since 1906 was recently discovered by scientists
Spinning Black Holes may Open Up pliable Entryways for Hypersonic Spacecraft
Carmeltazite - An Extraterrestrial Mineral Harder than Diamond Recently found on Earth

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I hope you had a good read and learnt something today. Share your thought in the comment section below and also share interesting and strange science news you think we will be interested in. Thanks