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132 year old message in a bottle found on West Australian beach

museum.wa.gov.au

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Re: 132 year old message in a bottle found on West Australian beach

#81

Post by mc32 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #52
selectodude wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that sticks out to me is that they expect lego pieces to hit washington state 23 years after the spill without biodegrading. I hope we're able to fix that someday.

That Lego are durable and don't rot is, I would say, a feature not a bug. (It would be better if they were practically recyclable, OTOH.)

I consider that a pro. Instead of buying new sets, the toys get down-cycled to younger children or gifted to some other kids. It's better than toys which because they don't last, they get bought at a higher velocity, thus producing waste.

Of interest, Lego will begin MFG 1-2% of their toys [apropos mostly "vegetation"] from plant-based plastics[1]. Possibly resulting in higher prices for sugar--which may also be a good thing.

[1]https://www.cips.org/supply-management/news/2018/march/lego-...

Re: 132 year old message in a bottle found on West Australian beach

#82

Post by perilunar »

TechnoCurious wrote: post #66

Does anybody know what material the bottle cap was made of? Since this was 1886 it couldn't have been plastic. Also I don't think any kind of metal (which most probably would have been non-stainless steel, copper or brass) would have survived the ocean and beach environments for that long.

The report says they were "corked and sealed". Probably with wax to prevent the cork rotting.

Re: 132 year old message in a bottle found on West Australian beach

#83

Post by perilunar »

k_sze wrote: post #54
theoh wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latency is the insurmountable problem. The bandwidth could be immense with modern storage tech.

Not to mention the ridiculous percentage of packet loss.

~90% according to the report.

Re: 132 year old message in a bottle found on West Australian beach

#84

Post by perilunar »

This is the sort of experiment I'd like to take part in. "Here's a hundred bottles of gin. All you need to do is drink the gin, fill in the form and the log, put the form in the bottle, seal it, and throw the bottle overboard. On second thought, fill in the paperwork before you drink the gin."

Re: 132 year old message in a bottle found on West Australian beach

#85

Post by skookumchuck »

LolWolf wrote: post #32
gpvos wrote: post #14

>>Between 1864 until 1933, thousands of bottles were thrown overboard from German ships, each containing a form on which the captain would write the date, the ship's coordinates and details about its route. It was part of an experiment by the German Naval Observatory to better understand global ocean currents. Now I wonder: did that actually work to get a better understanding of these currents?

Maybe; I mean, see [0] where an accidental experiment was made when a container with >28k rubber ducks and other floating toys, tipped. New evidence for some models was discovered using roughly the same idea—by tracking the floting toys to their final locations. —— [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_Floatees

I would imagine that since a large part of the duck sits out of the water, that the wind would introduce enough variance to render the data fairly useless.

Re: 132 year old message in a bottle found on West Australian beach

#86

Post by chrisper »

selectodude wrote: post #49
PoachedSausage wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite possibly. The Tokio Express[0] Lego spill[1] has provided some data on ocean currents. There was also a spill of yellow bath ducks that turn up on beaches around the world. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokio_Express#Accident [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28582621 Yaarr!!

The thing that sticks out to me is that they expect lego pieces to hit washington state 23 years after the spill without biodegrading. I hope we're able to fix that someday.

https://newatlas.com/lego-plant-plastics/53656/

Re: 132 year old message in a bottle found on West Australian beach

#88

Post by jerrre »

yosito wrote: post #71

I found a message in a bottle in Hamburg. Never did figure out what it says though. If anyone on HN is up for the challenge, here's a photo of it: https://photos.app.goo.gl/TximCkxHoliDmnwy1

Could you tell a bit more about where, when, how you found it?

Re: 132 year old message in a bottle found on West Australian beach

#89

Post by adrianN »

dragonwriter wrote: post #52
selectodude wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that sticks out to me is that they expect lego pieces to hit washington state 23 years after the spill without biodegrading. I hope we're able to fix that someday.

That Lego are durable and don't rot is, I would say, a feature not a bug. (It would be better if they were practically recyclable, OTOH.)

Lego are made from ABS, and ABS can be recycled.

Re: 132 year old message in a bottle found on West Australian beach

#90

Post by DonaldFisk »

yosito wrote: post #71

I found a message in a bottle in Hamburg. Never did figure out what it says though. If anyone on HN is up for the challenge, here's a photo of it: https://photos.app.goo.gl/TximCkxHoliDmnwy1

In the middle right (under BLOND) is the word Schlange, which is German for snake and also a German surname.

At the bottom, there appears to be a repeated sequence of characters which might be the Polish surname Zakrzewski. There's also a digit sequence 098765-543210 012345-567890.

Hope that helps.

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