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The "Crown of Nobles" Noble Gas Tube Display

https://theshamblog.com/the-crown-of-nobles-noble-gas-tube-display/
55•Ivoah•1h ago

Comments

pfdietz•1h ago
> [xenon is] great for in-space propulsion because it’s fairly heavy (so you get more ooomph per atom)

More specifically, for a given exhaust velocity and grid spacing, the space charge limited thrust density (thrust/area) of an ion engine scales as the square of the mass/charge ratio of the ions. So you really want heavy singly charged ions. This is completely unlike thermal rockets, where you want low molecular weight exhaust gases.

rob74•10m ago
> (sorry Radon and Oganesson)

With Radon it might even be conceivably possible (not sure how hard it is to get and if any restrictions apply because of its radioactivity), and it would work for a few years, because it has a half-life of 3.825 days. In the quantities needed for a gas tube (and as long as it stays in the tube!), I guess it should also be relatively safe, but I'm not an expert. Apparently it produces red light when used in a tube. Oganesson however has a half-life of 0.7 ms, so, aside from how expensive it would be to synthesize enough of it, it's doesn't stay around long enough for any experiments...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oganesson

Sharlin•3m ago
A few years with a half-life of less than four days? In a year it would've undergone about a hundred halvings, so around one 10^30th of the original radon nuclei would be left. One mole worth of argon would've decayed down to the last atom after less than 300 days.
annshress•1m ago
Beautiful. Noble gases are so cool.

The "Crown of Nobles" Noble Gas Tube Display

https://theshamblog.com/the-crown-of-nobles-noble-gas-tube-display/
57•Ivoah•1h ago•4 comments

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http://blog.can.ac/2026/02/12/the-harness-problem/
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https://github.com/tonyyont/peon-ping
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https://www.vangemert.dev/blog/nothing
354•spmvg•4d ago•125 comments

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https://ntietz.com/blog/using-an-engineering-notebook/
242•evakhoury•2d ago•93 comments

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https://z.ai/blog/glm-5
425•CuriouslyC•1d ago•490 comments

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https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/31132
407•wrxd•2h ago•367 comments

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https://essays.fnnch.com/make-a-living
149•gwintrob•10h ago•73 comments

Quitting

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4•NaOH•3d ago•1 comments

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https://fluorite.game/
502•bsimpson•21h ago•280 comments

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https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/02/byte-magazine-artist-robert-tinney-who-illustrated-the-bi...
45•rbanffy•2h ago•4 comments

Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

https://www.reuters.com/world/ireland-rolls-out-pioneering-basic-income-scheme-artists-2026-02-10/
389•abe94•21h ago•466 comments

Text classification with Python 3.14's ZSTD module

https://maxhalford.github.io/blog/text-classification-zstd/
231•alexmolas•3d ago•51 comments

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https://audioconvert.ai/british-accent-generator
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HeyWhatsThat

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75•1970-01-01•2d ago•16 comments

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https://geo-racers.com/
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https://github.com/simplex-micro/riscv-vector-primer/blob/main/index.md
48•oxxoxoxooo•5d ago•15 comments

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72•bartblast•14h ago•17 comments

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https://netnewswire.blog/2026/02/11/netnewswire-turns.html
306•robin_reala•20h ago•83 comments

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https://www.openculture.com/2025/09/the-carl-sagan-baloney-detection-kit.html
29•nobody9999•7h ago•19 comments

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https://altermag.com/articles/kanchipuram-saris-and-thinking-machines
181•trojanalert•5d ago•38 comments

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410•mgh2•5d ago•173 comments

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132•ericpauley•17h ago•51 comments

Clay Christensen's Milkshake Marketing (2011)

https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/clay-christensens-milkshake-marketing
26•vismit2000•4d ago•14 comments

Lance table format explained with simple animations

https://tontinton.com/posts/lance/
15•wild_pointer•3d ago•2 comments

The other Markov's inequality

https://www.ethanepperly.com/index.php/2026/01/16/the-other-markovs-inequality/
45•tzury•4d ago•3 comments

I Regret to Inform You That the FDA Is FDAing Again

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/i-regret-to-inform-you-that-the-fda-is-...
4•asplake•13m ago•1 comments