Why birds can fly over Mount Everest (2020)

Posted by andsoitis 4 days ago

Comments

Comment by antics 6 hours ago

Written by Walter Murch?? Like, the guy who is considered maybe the best editor and sound designer of all time, who was nominated for 9 Academy Awards, and won 3??? (Editing perhaps second only to Thelma Schoonmaker.)

Comment by ErroneousBosh 5 hours ago

From the footer of TFA:

Walter Murch has been working in film for more than 50 years, as an editor, sound designer, writer, and director. He edited and sound-designed many films for Francis Coppola (The Godfather Trilogy, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now) and Anthony Minghella (The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Cold Mountain). His interest in science can be seen in his editing of Mark Levinson’s film Particle Fever (2013), about the search for the Higgs Boson.

Yes, That Walter Murch.

In The Blink Of An Eye is on the bookshelf just behind the monitor I'm typing this on, with my headphones and BMD Speed Editor slightly blocking my view of it.

Comment by js2 5 hours ago

(2020). Previous submissions with comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23639294 (Jun 26, 2020 - 96 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28844872 (Oct 12, 2021 - 108 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34210508 (Jan 1, 2023 - 6 comments)

This submission is from 4 days ago, so it must've been placed into the second chance pool.

Comment by adonovan 5 hours ago

The part about coal coming from dead trees during a window of time before bacteria evolved lignin digestion is no longer the scientific consensus. Such bacteria existed earlier; not all coal is high lignin; and coal still formed later. Too bad; it was a lovely story!

Comment by cyberax 5 hours ago

It's not bacteria. The only organisms that can digest lignin are fungi, and they do it by blasting lignin with peroxides.

As such, this works only in aerobic environments (not swamps).

Comment by ordu 3 hours ago

> The difficult thing is that most old folks grew up thinking that oil, coal, and gas were great, and it is hard to teach old dogs new tricks.

Doesn't seem cynical enough to me. Some people make money on oil, coal, and gas, and it doesn't matter what they believe about the climate, they would do anything to continue enriching themselves. It is even worse, really, because they are not just some individuals, it is a big network of organizations. And some states too have their GDP dependent on a fossil fuel trade. You can probably talk a capitalist into surrendering their money-making practices, if they are damaging the Earth, but you can't convince an organization to dissolve or a state to go into a deep recession.

Comment by jojobas 2 hours ago

But oil, gas and coal are indeed cool, you get some of the highest chemical energy density substances on Earth for the price of digging. It sucks that burning them reverts the atmosphere to something life isn't really adapted anymore, but the substances themselves are still pretty cool.

Comment by saimiam 4 hours ago

The hero image is titled Murch_HERO. Big publishers get lazy with their titling too!

Comment by enjoyyourlife 4 hours ago

It needs better alt text for accessibility

Comment by jibalt 2 hours ago

Too much teleology.

Comment by dreamcompiler 59 minutes ago

> at 43 percent a lightning strike will cause the entire atmosphere to ignite since it is so high in flammable oxygen

Good article except oxygen is not flammable. Oxygen is the stuff that makes other stuff flammable.

Comment by shmerl 6 hours ago

I was surprised that some birds can fly even higher. There is a record of Rüppell's vulture at 11+ kilometers altitude.

Comment by adonovan 6 hours ago

Sadly this wonder of nature was deduced from the 5 feathers that were all that remained after the noble creature was ingested by a turbofan engine of an airliner.