The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment, or SAGE, was highly sophisticated for the late 1950s. Spanning the US and Canada, it was an air monitoring system that scanned the skies for Soviet bombers during the Cold War. For it to work, it needed to be able to select targets on the radar, which was a problem because the computer mouse had yet to be invented. Enter the “Light Gun,” a pistol-shaped device that operators would point on the screen to select targets for track identification, interception, or ground-to-air missile targeting. Read full article here
Science
An Eerie Poisonous Fog
If you’re visiting a farm, keep an eye out for an ominous-looking bronze fog. Nitrogen tetroxide, a red-orange gas, is made by certain bacteria during fermentation when oxygen is lacking in the crop. The lack of oxygen causes the bacteria to use the nitrate within the crops, which then produces nitrogen tetroxide. Inhalation of the gas is known to cause permanent lung damage or kill people and livestock. To prevent this, farmers have started performing nitrate tests after four weeks of fermentation. Read full article here
Merv
November 30, 2022
