Moon Dust
from fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz on 24 Jun 18:45
https://mander.xyz/post/32743891

#science_memes

threaded - newest

MossyFeathers@pawb.social on 24 Jun 19:32 next collapse

What I want to know is: how the fuck did he have an allergy to it in the first place?

PunnyName@lemmy.world on 24 Jun 19:43 next collapse

Shit happens.

zaphod@sopuli.xyz on 24 Jun 19:49 next collapse

I don’t know how you think allergies work but if it was actually an allergic reaction it probably went something like immune system encounters a foreign never seen before substance and overreacts. Alternatively he was just the unlucky guy who didn’t clean his suit enough and breathed in more of it than the others.

dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world on 24 Jun 20:04 collapse

IMO (not a scientist), moon dust is basically pulverized glass, only without the benefits of weathering and erosion. So think of lots of microscopic sharp, abrasive, shards of finely pulverized volcanic rock and obsidian. Get that stuff anywhere near a mucous membrane - eyes, nose, mouth, throat - and it’s going to irritate you. At the same time, it’s pretty much intert; well, at least the parts that don’t instantly react to oxygen or humidity that is. My guess is that Schmidt is just a little more sensitive to the physical sensation of it, or perhaps he rubbed his eyes with a glove by accident, giving him an extra big dose.

And for the uninitiated, it’s well documented that everyone in the lander was physically exposed to moon dust. There was no airlock on the lander, so every excursion resulted in bringing whatever was on the suits right into the cabin. They reported that it “smelled” like burned gunpowder, so they were at least all inhaling the stuff.

TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub on 24 Jun 20:55 next collapse

I think moon dust doesn’t qualify as an allergen because breathing sharp glass dust is not something people are supposed to do without harm. IIRC ithings that are intrinsically irritant, like smoke or pepper, don’t qualify as allergens.

Uli@sopuli.xyz on 24 Jun 23:33 next collapse

We should let him know he’s not allergic. He might be going out of his way to avoid moon dust for no reason.

pyre@lemmy.world on 25 Jun 08:05 collapse

astronauts are such goofballs

TheRedSpade@lemmy.world on 25 Jun 03:18 collapse

An allergy isn’t the allergen causing harm. An allergy is when your body FALSELY identifies something as a threat. The symptoms you experience are your body’s immune response.

So no, things that actually do the harm themselves are not allergens.

[deleted] on 25 Jun 07:09 next collapse

.

ouRKaoS@lemmy.today on 25 Jun 08:06 next collapse

Wait… So I’m not allergic to radiation!?

Superpowers here I come!!!

Klear@lemmy.world on 25 Jun 18:05 collapse

TIL I’m not allergic to conservative bullshit.

Rhaedas@fedia.io on 24 Jun 21:25 collapse

"I hate moon dust. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere."

"I hate Mars dust too."

It's actually a huge problem to solve before any rational long term settlement occurs in these places. The stuff is pretty bad.

burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de on 25 Jun 16:13 collapse

I thought mars wasn’t quite the same issue, since it has ‘weather,’ while the moon doesn’t. Its soil should have some measure of erosion, making the dust not quite as large and jagged.

Rhaedas@fedia.io on 25 Jun 17:11 collapse

You're correct in that it's not as sharp, but it still poses problems with getting into seals and lungs and sticking to everything. Plus it's very toxic, probably the bigger concern for living there.

WhiteHotaru@feddit.org on 24 Jun 19:33 next collapse

Relevant study. tl;dr Earth is more toxic: www.sciencedirect.com/…/S2214552425000252?via=ihu…

MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip on 25 Jun 11:41 collapse

But less shard dust.

9point6@lemmy.world on 24 Jun 19:33 next collapse

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/83452910-c502-49a1-8427-45bfd6a496ed.jpeg">

Edit: Ew I didn’t see the watermark, sorry

brown567@sh.itjust.works on 24 Jun 20:13 collapse

ifunny watermarks on memes are like sprinkles on sugar cookies

I don’t prefer them, I’d never go out of my way to add them, and I prefer their absence just barely enough that I’d pick one without over one with

That being said, I’d also never complain about it being there XD

samus12345@sh.itjust.works on 24 Jun 22:06 next collapse

“The bean counters told me we literally could not afford to buy seven dollars worth of moon rocks, much less seventy million. Bought ’em anyway. Ground ’em up, mixed 'em into a gel. And guess what? Ground up moon rocks are pure poison. I am deathly ill. Still, it turns out they’re a great portal conductor. So now we’re gonna see if jumping in and out of these new portals can somehow leech the lunar poison out of a man’s bloodstream."

HonoraryMancunian@lemmy.world on 25 Jun 06:27 next collapse

…that’s either a one-in-a-million chance or a VERY common allergy

Or anywhere in between

bampop@lemmy.world on 25 Jun 12:06 collapse

or less likely than one-in-a-million

Zoomboingding@lemmy.world on 25 Jun 14:14 collapse

Or more likely than 1 in 12

MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip on 25 Jun 11:44 next collapse

Far as i know it was overdose (and not allergic), because the sharp dust shards (because no erosion) got in the suit and the module? And the other two had symptoms too, just not as much?

lime@feddit.nu on 25 Jun 12:26 next collapse

isn’t this like saying some people are allergic to asbestos?

Zoomboingding@lemmy.world on 25 Jun 14:13 next collapse

What if the moon is haunted and he’s allergic to ghosts

Blackmist@feddit.uk on 25 Jun 14:24 next collapse

“The bean counters said we could literally not afford to buy seven dollars worth of moon rocks, much less seventy million. Did it anyway! Ground 'em up, mixed 'em into a gel. And guess what? Ground-up moon rocks are pure poison. I am deathly ill.”

dwindling7373@feddit.it on 25 Jun 14:44 next collapse

That’s funny and all but if it happened 1 in 12 the chances that it’s very common are orders of magnitudes higher than it being super rare DUH

bss03@infosec.pub on 25 Jun 15:14 collapse

It’s a very non-representative, very small sample. The error bars in the statistical inference to the whole population includes both “very common” and “one-in-a-million”.

senkora@lemmy.zip on 25 Jun 15:38 next collapse

Assuming a representative sample, the best point estimate is 1/12 (8.33%), and the 95% confidence interval is 0.21% to 39%.

Longer explanation here: lemmy.zip/comment/19753854

embed_me@programming.dev on 25 Jun 15:46 collapse

Assuming a representative sample

That’s the thing I doubt a team of highly skilled astronauts will be representative of the human population

senkora@lemmy.zip on 25 Jun 15:51 collapse

I think if anything they would be biased towards having fewer allergies than normal people. Which suggests that 0.21% (1 in 500) is a reasonable bound for how rare a moon dust allergy could be.

embed_me@programming.dev on 25 Jun 16:40 collapse

Never really verified it but I think allergies are more common in developed countries. If that’s true, that the data is skewed in the opposite direction

Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works on 25 Jun 17:00 collapse

Probably more commonly identified

dwindling7373@feddit.it on 26 Jun 07:00 collapse

What do the bar represent in 3d space?

What do they represent in 3d space?!? (aggressiveduck.jpg)

Gaussian distributions.

bss03@infosec.pub on 26 Jun 15:11 collapse

Not every error bar represents a Gaussian, if for no other reason that most error bars aren’t symmetric.

The error bars for small sample size relative to population size are Gaussian.

Error due to a non-representative sample can have a variety of shapes, but their distribution might also be unknown. We do frequently, almost implicitly, assume unknown distributions to be Gaussian, but we should recognize that’s not necessarily a true fact about the universe.

TheRealKuni@lemmy.world on 25 Jun 14:55 collapse

Turns out he’s also a climate change denier.

LanguageIsCool@lemmy.world on 25 Jun 17:59 collapse

Obviously the moon dust, which was adulterated by aliens specifically for this purpose, did that to him