Am I The Only One Surprised By This?

In 2005 a manure fire started in a Nebraska feed lot, spread and burned for months. Manure stored in bags on a truck in Texas started a deadly fire. It seems that as manure breaks down, it produces both methane and hydrogen sulfide gases. If this happens in extremely hot weather, spontaneous combustion can occur. The manure can explode and catch fire. Exploding manure isn’t uncommon on farms and isn’t an uncommon cause of wildfires. Now knowing the danger of combining manure with hot air, it’s surprising that Washington, D.C. isn’t always exploding into flames.

In 2007 the painting “Profile of the Bella Principessa” was bought on behalf of a Swiss collector for $19.000. That was approximately the amount paid for the painting at auction by the gallery owner 11 years before. However, what was thought to be a 19th century, German painting is actually a painting by Leonardo da Vinci worth more than $150 million. Authenticity was proven by a digital scanner, which found the print of an index or middle finger on the painting. That fingerprint matched Leonardo’s fingerprint on his painting “St Jerome” in the Vatican. Who knew Leonardo da Vinci finger painted?

In 2009 the discovery of a vegetarian spider was published in “Current Biology”. Unlike the other 40,000 species of spiders known to science that are meat-eaters, 2 scientists working independently of each other in Costa Rica and Mexico discovered a neotropical jumping spider that eats leaf tips of acacia trees. Previously it had been thought that the stinging ants which feed on the melon-like acacia food protected the trees from all other plant-eaters. However, the eyesight, agility and cognitive skill of the “Bagheera kiplingi” allow it to avoid the ants. For arachnophobiacs this discovery unfortunately has legs.

In 2009 who knew NASA was running out of plutonium-238? Because plutonium-238 was a byproduct of the Cold War, none has been made since the 1980’s. NASA has enough for the next Mars Rover and the next major mission to outer planets, but the heat which is given off by plutonium-238 and converted into electricity is essential for future space missions that are too far from the sun for solar power. When or if Congress approves $30 million to restart production, it will take 8 years to make the 11 pounds NASA needs yearly. Thus the future of outer-planet space travel is left up in the air.