The Daily Populous

Friday November 24th, 2017 evening edition

image for Russian billionaire wants to beat NASA in the search for alien life, and he’s moving forward with his plan

If you’ve been paying attention to the scientific search for extraterrestrial life you’ll already know that in recent months the frosty Saturn moon Enceladus is looking mighty tempting.

The ice-covered ocean world has a steamy hot center and plenty of life-giving water hidden beneath its thick layer of ice, and researchers have determined that if alien life does exist here in our own Solar System, Enceladus is probably our best bet at finding it.

Now, a fabulously wealthy Russian plans to beat NASA to the punch and launch a mission to explore Enceladus.

He recently announced his plans, which focus on examining the massive geysers which spew water from deep cracks on the moon’s souther pole, while noting that he believes he can do it well before NASA gets around to it.

At present, NASA has two potential missions on the table that would also focus on Enceladus, but funding is scarce, and the missions are competing against 10 others for a slice of the pie.

If NASA ever does send hardware to the icy moon, it’ll be a long while before that happens.

Milner hopes that his proposed mission could act as something of a supplementary effort to build up data about Enceladus before the space agency eventually gets around to checking it out. »

TIL 2000-year-old graffiti was discovered in the ancient city of Pompeii, such as "On April 19th, I made bread." and "If anyone does not believe in Venus, they should gaze at my girlfriend."

Authored by pompeiana.org

V.5 (just outside the Vesuvius gate); 6641: Defecator, may everything turn out okay so that you can leave this place.

Herculaneum (on a water distribution tower); 10488: Anyone who wants to defecate in this place is advised to move along.

Herculaneum (on the exterior wall of a house); 10619: Apollinaris, the doctor of the emperor Titus, defecated well here. »

FCC Releases Net Neutrality Killing Order, Hopes You're Too Busy Cooking Turkey To Read It

Authored by techdirt.com

ISPs have been very busy trying to claim that gutting this authority doesn't kill net neutrality protections, though we've already explained at length why that's nonsense.

Yet this argument that net neutrality is an entirely theoretical problem sits at the heart of the FCC's order.

You're not going to find a more unpopular policy than this myopic assault on net neutrality and the health of the internet. »

Living in the fallout zone from a nuclear disaster would be no worse for our health than living in London, due to its scale of pollution.

Authored by bristol.ac.uk

The results are published in a special issue of Process Safety and Environmental Protection, a journal from the Institution of Chemical Engineers.

Professor Thomas's team used the Judgement or J-value to balance the cost of a safety measure against the increase in life expectancy it achieves.

The J-value is a new method pioneered by Professor Thomas that assesses how much should be spent to protect human life and the environment. »