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Pat Shingleton: "An Anniversary and Fishy Smells..."

3 years 7 months 3 weeks ago Thursday, August 06 2020 Aug 6, 2020 August 06, 2020 9:00 AM August 06, 2020 in Pat Shingleton Column
By: Pat Shingleton:

Following the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, which resulted in 140,000 deaths, the Makurazaki Typhoon hit the city one month later killing 1,200. The second bombing of Japan was scheduled on August 11 but was moved up two days due to expected bad weather and the originally selected city of Kokura was later changed to Nagasaki. On August 9, 1945, a B-29 bomber, nicknamed Bockscar, after its commander, Frederick Bock, took-off from the island of Tinian carrying a 9,000 pound plutonium bomb named Fat Man with a blast equivalent of 21 kilotons of TNT. Two weather observation planes scouted conditions over both target areas. At 11:02 a.m. on August 9, 1945 the nuclear inferno was unleashed 500 meters above the surface. I questioned a recent observation that regular, good old, "spit" or Saliva has an identifiable smell? On your trips to the coast you know your close when you smell the salt air.  Science Magazine reported that the fishy, tangy smell is actually a bacteria gas. Andrew Johnson of the University of East Anglia posted a study and suggested that sea smell emanates from a pungent gas called dimethyl sulfide, originating in the emission of sulfur from the ocean. DMS is produced when bacteria feast on dying sea plants and plankton. He also believes that humans aren’t the only ones acclimated to the smell. Some seabirds use the odor to locate coastal food sources. During the experiment a scientific team opened a bottle containing DMS-producing bacteria and after the opening, the team was bombarded by hungry seabirds.

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