The University of Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance has calculated that Bitcoin’s total energy consumption is somewhere between 40 and 445 terawatt hours (TWh) a year, with a central estimate of about 130 terawatt hours, reports the BBC: The UK’s electricity consumption is a little over 300 TWh a year, while Argentina uses around the same amount of power as the…
Tag: bubble
Dropping Nearly 20%, Bitcoin Suffers Worst Weekly Drop in a Year
“Bitcoin’s rally this year has hit a speed bump, putting it on track for the worst weekly slide in almost a year amid wider losses in risk assets,” reports Fortune: The largest cryptocurrency slumped as much as 20% this week, the most since March, and was holding at about $46,925 as of 10:22 a.m. in Hong Kong. The wider Bloomberg Galaxy…
Galaxies have magnetic fields, too! Images here
Until recently, magnetic fields in the outskirts of galaxies were too faint to be detected. Although it’s still not clear what causes them or how they’re maintained, astronomers have started to create images of their observations of galaxies’ magnetic fields producing beautiful aurora-like effects. See them here. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/images-of-magnetic-fields-in-galaxies…
To the Moon? Dogecoin Leaps 46% in 24 Hours After Tweets From Elon Musk, Snoop Dogg
Friday the 71-year-old former lead singer of the band Kiss tweeted “I bought Dogecoin…six figures,” to his 922,000 followers, along with other supportive tweets. Saturday rap artist Snoop Dogg tweeted an image of “Snoop Doge” to his 19.2 million followers. Later Elon Musk tweeted a picture from the Lion King with Musk’s head appearing on a monkey holding up a monkey…
When will Betelgeuse explode?
The red supergiant star will explode in a supernova, close enough to shine brightly during the day but far enough away that Earth won’t be in danger. Source: https://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/betelgeuse-will-explode-someday…
How Reddit’s Co-Founder, Jim Cramer, and Wall Street Reacted to GameStop’s Surge
Friday afternoon CNBC reported that “heightened speculative trading by retail investors” (later referred to as “GameStop mania”) had “continued to unnerve the market.”
The Dow Jones Industrial average lost 620.74 points, or 2%, to 29,982.62, the first time the 30-stock gauge has closed below the 30,000 mark since Dec. 14…. The market also experienced the highest trading volume in years as the…
Soap bubble freezes into an iridescent snow globe in cool new video
The whole bubble freezes over, creating a beautiful “snow globe” effect. Source: https://www.livescience.com/frozen-soap-bubbles-winnipeg.html
Pebble Founder Says His New App Brings iMessage To Android With a Little ‘Trickery’
Beeper is a forthcoming app from the founder of Pebble that claims to be a hub for all your messaging services, including support for iMessage on Android. Gizmodo reports: Instead of managing half a dozen apps for keeping in touch with friends, family, and co-workers, Beeper allows you to funnel everything to one interface. According to its website, the app supports…
Are Cryptocurrencies Becoming Mainstream Investments?
The last time the price of bitcoin hit $20,000 was December of 2017. But Matt Luongo, the CEO of a crypto venture builder, points out to NBC News that this time the market is seeing “significant, high-conviction plays from [a few] large funds and even CEOs of publicly traded companies.” “Names like Guggenheim Partners, [hedge fund managers] Paul Tudor Jones and…
Large ionized bubble around NGC 5585 X-1 investigated in detail
An international team of astronomers have conducted a detailed study of a large ionized bubble an ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) in the galaxy NGC 5585. Results of the research, presented in a paper published December 7 on arXiv.org, provide more insights into the nature of this bubble. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-12-large-ionized-ngc-x-.html…