Month: April 2023

Strange spiral over Alaska

Aside Markozen.com Space

Alaskan residents admiring the Northern Lights were taken by surprise when a rather sizeable spiral suddenly passed though the night sky. The wondrous event, which reportedly occurred a few hours after midnight this past Saturday, was spotted by both skywatchers observing the aurora borealis as well as bewildered witnesses who unexpectedly caught a glimpse of the curious ‘light show.’ Shortly thereafter, social media was flooded with photos and videos of the fantastic event with some wondering if the weird spiral could have been alien in nature. However, the mystery surrounding the strange shape was soon solved when it was determined to have had a terrestrial origin.

The peculiar scene, space physicist Don Hampton told the Associated Press, was the result of a SpaceX rocket that had been launched hours earlier from California. While passing over Alaska, he explained, it released excess fuel which subsequently turned into water vapor that in turn reflected sunlight. “When you’re in the darkness on the ground,” Hampton said, “you can see it as a sort of big cloud, and sometimes it’s swirly.” The incident over Alaska is not the first time that a SpaceX launched has spawned a proverbial viral spiral as a similar event occurred over New Zealand in June of last year.

Members of Indigenous Indonesian Tribe Have Electric Blue Eyes Due to Rare Genetic Condition

Aside Markozen.com Offbeat

Markozen.com's avatarThe MarkoZen Blog

Blue eyes are a rare sight in Indonesia, a country where the vast majority of the population has dark hair and dark eyes, but some members of an indigenous tribe have the most stunning blue eyes, because of a rare condition known as Waardenburg Syndrome.

Believed to affect about 1 in 42,000 people, Waardenburg Syndrome is characterized by some degree of hearing loss and pigmentation deficiencies, which can include bright blue eyes (or one blue eye and one black/brown eye). It is caused by mutations in any of several genes that affect the operation of neural crest cells in embryonic development. The visual effect of Waardenburg Syndrome is particularly impressive in ethnic groups where blue eyes are a rarity, as you can see in the photos of members of the Buton tribe taken by Indonesian geologist and amateur photographer Korchnoi Pasaribu.

Buton Island, which is located in Indonesia’s Sulawesi region, is home to the…

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Cruise Ship Graveyard

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Markozen.com's avatarThe MarkoZen Blog

The covid cruise ship graveyard: Passenger liners are stripped for scrap at Turkish dock after the multi-billion pound industry was smashed by the coronavirus crisis
Cruise ships were home to the some of the earliest clusters of COVID-19 as it spread around the world
US authorities have issued a no-sail order on cruises and the multi-billion pound industry has been hammered
But business is booming for a ship scrapyard in Turkey which has welcomed five colossal cruise ships
One of them, the Carnival Fantasy operated by Carnival Cruise Line, had only just been refurbished last year
On Friday, workers were seen taking apart the vessels, some with their pools and mini golf course still visible

Cruise ships from Britain and the United States are being scrapped at a Turkish dock after the multi-billion pound industry was smashed by the coronavirus crisis.

The coronavirus cruise liner graveyard at the port in…

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Heavy Lift Ships and their Incredibly Massive Cargoes

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Markozen.com's avatarThe MarkoZen Blog

When you need to transport large cargo, goods, and materials from one place to another, the ship is the ideal choice even though they are extremely slow. Thousands of cargo carriers ply the world’s seas and oceans each year, and they handle the bulk of international trade. Then there are heavy lift ships that are designed to carry excessively large loads that even cargo ships cannot bear, such as other ships, drilling rigs or anything else too large or heavy to be easily transported on a conventional ship.

Heavy lift ships are of two types: semi-submerging capable of lifting another ship out of the water and transporting it; and vessels that augment unloading facilities at inadequately equipped ports. Semi-submerging are more commonly known as a “flo/flo” for float-on/float-off. These vessels have a long and low well deck that can go down under water allowing oil platforms, other vessels, or other…

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Unique aerial cable car in Bratislava

Aside Markozen.com Technology

A unique aerial cable car, constructed specifically for the Volkswagen Slovakia (VW SK) car manufacturing plant in Bratislava keeps on moving. This one-of-a-kind aerial lift, which transports cars between the assembly hall and the test track, dominates the silhouette of the plant.

The lift is unique even within the entire Volkswagen operation; it was designed and constructed in connection with the arrival of the Volkswagen Touareg, for the purpose of transporting large numbers of vehicles from the assembly hall to the test track. A lot of innovation went into the project, as no similar cable car existed before it, VW SK wrote in a press release.

The aerial cable car war designed as a new transport carriage prototype on which the cars are transported to other loading stations. It is 455 metres in length, and runs 99.5 percent of the time that the factory is in operation. The trip from one station to the next lasts about 4.5 minutes, with a maximum speed of three metres per second. The steel cable on which the gondolas hang is 8-stranded and anticlockwise, and was used on this cable car for the very first time. Eight transport carriages are hung, each weighing 2.5 tons and bear a load capacity of an additional 2.5 tons.