mercury Archives - usatoday24

the dark history of mercury in the fashion industry

February 1, 2026 by usatoday24

When we think of Alice in Wonderland one of the most recognized characters is ‘Mad Hatter’‘, an eccentric character with a top hat and a label that says 10/6. And although it may seem that the author of this story wanted to give that characterization to the famous rabbit, the truth is that all hats at that time had a serious problem which made them look too much like the classic rabbit. What’s behind. And the reality behind the character is much murkier and less colorful than in Disney or Tim Burton films. The expression “mad as a hatter” was not a literary invention in this case, but a quite popular medical diagnosis for the timesince for centuries the hat industry suffered a silent epidemic that led to serious neurological damage. and the culprit it was mercury. The ‘carroting’. To understand why hatters fell ill, we must look at how the felt was made between the 17th and 20th centuries that would give rise to hats. The raw material was usually rabbit, hare or beaver fur, and in order for these furs to become a high-quality, rigid and durable felt, they were subjected to a chemical process called “carroting”. This name came from the orange color of the carrots that the skins acquired when treated with a hot solution of mercury nitrate. But logically it was a death trap for the workshops of the time, just as collect NIOSH historical archives. Security issues. Although there are now strong regulations regarding safety at work, if we look back it was not like that. And the treatment was carried out in a poorly ventilated space, which caused mercury vapors to be released when the acid mixture was heated with the skins. By not being able to escape through any ventilation slits, the professionals who were constantly working with the skins ended up inhaling the mercury vapors. It was not a one-time accident, but rather a chronic exposure that accumulated in the body and directly attacked the central nervous system. A new reality. Although in the popular culture of the time the profession was directly related to being completely crazy, the truth is that current toxicological reviews indicate that chronic mercury poisoning produces a devastating and very specific clinical picture. And the hatters did not simply become ‘eccentric’, but also had Danbury tremorswhich are uncontrollable muscle spasms and intentional tremors that prevented fine movements. But there were also personality changes making pathological shyness, extreme irritability, depression and emotional lability the norm. The countries took note. Logically, this is something that had to be regulated to guarantee the safety of workers. France was one of the pioneers by prohibiting the use of mercury in the manufacture of hat boxes in 1898, but in Anglo-Saxon countries the industry was quite resistant to change. And the resentful. In the United States the process remained in force for decades. In this case, it took World War II for the tables to turn and it was not until 1941 when the use of mercury was definitively abandoned in key states such as Connecticut. But the reason was not the safety of its artisans, but rather that the war required a large amount of mercury to manufacture detonators, which forced the hat industry to look for substitutes such as hydrogen peroxide, as detailed in the industrial records of the time. Alice’s Hatter. It’s tempting to think that Lewis Carroll designed his character as a textbook case of erethism, but the evidence suggests otherwise. A classic analysis published in BMJ puts the dots on the i’s in this case, pointing out that Carrol knew the popular expression “mad as a hatter”, since he lived in a time where hatters with tremors were a visible social reality. However, the character of Alice in Wonderland It doesn’t quite fit the medical profile. The Hatter in the book is hyperactive, talkative, euphoric and a lover of riddles. Mercury erethism, on the other hand, is characterized by extreme shyness, social anxiety, and depression. It is likely that Carroll took the figure of the hatter and the idiom to create a caricature, but the identification of the character as “mercury poisoned” is a reading that we have made a posteriori. In Xataka | If you have ever thought that AI is useless, science has something for you: an antidote to cobras

Neptune’s closest neighbor is Mercury

January 11, 2026 by usatoday24

There is information that we have stored in our heads since we learned it, such as prepositions or the planets that make up the Solar System. And that has its handicaps: having to enumerate the list to get to what interests you or if you are already a few years old, finishing the string of planets with Pluto. Old spoiler: Pluto was demoted in 2006, despite the fact that there are scientists who they question the definition of a planet and therefore, its appearance or not on that list. What is the closest planet to Earth? Faced with that question and with the temptation to recite the burned-in list, many people will probably say Venus and just as many will say Mars. Reality has its substance and although the situation changes frequently, it is generally considered that the correct answer is Venus. In fact, taking a look at the distances between each pair of planets We would reach that same conclusion. Well, yes, but no. Mercury is the winning horse. To NASA It refers to Venus as “our closest planetary neighbor” and although this is true if we stick to which planet is closest to Earth, it is not true if we are interested in knowing which planet is closest on average. Here things change and have a new winner: Mercury. Mercury is the innermost planet in the solar system, but on average it spends more time near Earth than Venus. What’s more, Mercury is on average the closest planet to all the other planets in the Solar System. How is the proximity between planets considered?. The usual method is limited to subtracting the mean radius of the inner orbit from that of the outer orbit. Thus, the average distance between Earth (1 AU) and Venus (0.72 AU) would be 0.28 AU. When they are furthest away, Venus is 1.72 AU from Earth. Although it is intuitive to consider the average distance between each point of two concentric ellipses as the difference of their radii, in reality that difference only determines the average distance of the closest points of the ellipses. A more precise mathematical method that considers time. The average of both scenarios above improves the calculation, but is still imprecise, they explain scientists Tom Stockman, Gabriel Monroe and Samuel Cordner. So the American Institute of Physics devised a more precise mathematical method that averages the distance over time of the planets and in this scenario everything changes and not only for the Earth, but also for all the planets. The method in question is called point-circle (PCM) and models orbits as concentric and coplanar circles. Since the planets spend the same time at each point in their orbit, the average distance can be calculated by integrating all possible positions. Using this method, Venus is an average of 1.14 AU from Earth and Mercury is only 1.04 AU. As they explain: “We observe that the distance between two orbiting bodies is minimum when the inner orbit is the smallest. That observation gives rise to what we call the whirly-dirly corollary (a reference to an episode of the series Rick and Morty): for two bodies with approximately coplanar, concentric and circular orbits, the average distance between them decreases as the radius of the inner orbit decreases.” The checks. This research team ran a simulation that calculated the position of the eight planets over 10,000 years and recorded their distance. The results differed by 300% compared to the traditional method, but less than 1% compared to the point-circle method. Mercury is the closest to all. This discovery not only affects Earth. In fact, it can be generalized to any pair of bodies with approximately circular, concentric and coplanar orbits. With this method, the average distance between two bodies depends on the radius of the inner orbit and the smaller the inner orbit, the smaller the average distance. In short: Mercury is the closest planet to Earth, but also to Neptune and even the degraded Pluto. This finding, beyond changing the paradigm of how to consider distances between planets, may also be useful for estimating communications with satellites. In Xataka | Poland and Spain are the European countries that have increased their contribution to space the most. For very different reasons In Xataka | A planet has just disappeared: NASA’s Hubble telescope has captured a violent cosmic event that changes everything Cover | NASA Hubble Space Telescope

Some say Mercury retrograde ruins their life, but the planet didn’t even move from its spot.

November 11, 2025 by usatoday24

Mercury retrograde season returns. From November 9 to 20, 2025, many people around the world – and especially on social networks– They will blame this curious planetary phenomenon for the argument they have had with their partner, the breakage of their refrigerator or the failure in an exam. But the question we must ask ourselves is if there is something behind this phenomenon that seems astronomical. What is ‘Mercury retrograde’. Despite its magical name, “Mercury retrograde” is described according to NASA as an optical effect: from Earth, Mercury (the planet closest to the Sun) appears to move backwards in its orbit for a few weeks. Astronomically, that “recoil” It is an illusion created by the difference in speed and position between Earth and Mercurybut nothing in the cosmos really changes, only our point of view. This is a phenomenon that occurs several times a year and has no physical effect on the Earth, our communications, travel or emotions. This is why astronomical science is clear: it is pure visual effect, not causality. Another interpretation. In the case of astrology the interpretation is very different. For this branch, Mercury is attributed powers over the communication, thought and movement. In this way, when it is ‘retrograde’, astrologers advise avoid signing contracts, taking trips or having difficult conversations. But this is something that has no scientific support behind it. A real meme. The interesting thing, according to experts in digital cultureis how Mercury retrograde has become a lifeline to cast our blame away. It is the perfect meme to explain everyday chaos: when WhatsApp crashes or the AI responds strangely, the fault is not ours, but Mercury’s. In this way, everything stops being our fault, and for psychology it is something that we use as a strategy to attribute the disorder to external factors that reduce anxiety and connect us with the community. In countries like Spain, each Mercury retrograde cycle activates dozens of interactions on TikTok, Instagram and X, full of jokes, astrological advice and memes. This narrative allows us to find order (or at least, poetic meaning) in digital unpredictability. There is no relationship. Whether the computer or the refrigerator stops working or you have had a fight with your boyfriend or girlfriend has nothing to do with the position of Mercury. However, the myth and the joke will live on. Perhaps it is therapeutic to look to the sky for an answer when reality surpasses logic, even if we know that looking at the sky will not change whether our router breaks or not. Images | Wikipedia Afif Ramdhasuma In Xataka Basics | 19 apps and tools to see and have more information about stars and constellations

We take more and more mercury through fish. There are those who want to solve it with “design” probiotics

May 5, 2025 by usatoday24

The presence of mercury in fish (or in some fish) is A growing problem in the field of food security. Prolonged exposure to this pollutant is an important risk to people’s health, a risk that could go worse in the coming years. Detox, but real. A team of researchers has manipulated a bacterium present in the digestive system of humans to do it Able to eliminate methylmercury present in fish. In a study with mice, the mechanism allowed this toxin to reach other organs of the animal, such as brain or liver. An increasing problem. He methylmercury It is a cation, a molecule with a positive charge, which gives its name to a series of compounds that integrate this form of mercury. Methylmercurio is also the most common way in which we can find organic mercury naturally. Mercury in its different forms is a pollutant present not only in some pesticides but also in Gas emissions to the atmosphere. These mercury residues end up arriving at the sea and the trophic chain, a process called “biomagnification.” This heavy metal tends to accumulate more in larger fish and in those closest to the cusp of the “food pyramid.” And from there, to our kitchens. Design bacteria. The work It started from a known bacterium and abundant in our digestive system, Thetaiotaomicron bacteroids. It inserted coding DNA enzymes from another known bacterium present in the soil, a bacterium with a determining feature, its resistance to mercury. Probiotics The team first checked In vitro that these bacteria had managed to become resistant to methylmercury, and then administer bacteria to mice. These soon were integrated into the digestive system of mammals, which was administered orally to study the impact. The team first analyzed the effect of The administration of a large amount of this compound. They found that in the mice to whom the new bacterium had been administered, the mercury began to disappear shortly after its administration, a purification process that lasted for about four days. In the long term. The team also studied the effects of moderate but prolonged mercury consumption in time. The team altered the mice diet and made it rich in red tuna, one of the fish with higher heavy metal concentrations. Not only did they verify that the methylmercury continued to disappear from the digestive systems of the mice, they also verified that it did not permeate the body of these. The team studied the effect on pregnant mice, checking that methylmercury levels were kept low in maternal and fetal tissues, including less toxicity in the fetus’s brain. The details of the study were published In an article In the magazine Cell Host & Microbe. A problem that will go worse before better. The study opens the way to the use of “design” probiotics that could help us avoid the worst consequences of mercury pollution. This method does not attack the root problem but, as their own creators explain, it can help us address a problem without a short -term solution. “Despite global efforts to reduce mercury emissions and their accumulation in fish, metercurio levels are not expected stood out in a press release Amina Schartup, co -author of the study. In Xataka | Some researchers were following a tuna. Suddenly they discovered that I was on a road on the way to Birmingham Image | Ryutaro Tsukata

We have centuries contaminating the seas with mercury. We did not expect the solution to be genetic engineering

February 19, 2025 by usatoday24

There is something that have volcanic eruptions, oil combustion, waste incineration, chemical substances or gold extraction: they release mercury in the environment. A mercury that ends up deposited in the waters, transformed into methylmercury for millions of microorganisms, stored in fish and, finally, served in our houses at lunchtime. We have a problem with methylmercury. That is obvious. The problem is that it is very difficult to solve. And that is not forcing ideas in another place. What exactly is methylmercury? Mercury is already a global concern due to its persistence in the environment, its ability to bioaccumulation in ecosystems and their important adverse effects on human health. But methylmercury, the most frequent organic form in the marine environment takes the palm. None of this would be a problem if it were not because, in addition, methylmercury is the form “more toxic and the most easily absorbable For living organisms, since it is highly liposoluble and has a great capacity to fix proteins and also shows a high degree of bioaccumulation. “ Is it dangerous? Well yes. High doses of this compound They are very toxic to the central nervous system and especially “for the brain in development of the fetus and in early childhood.” It can cause “mild behavioral problems, language disorders, memory losses, vision and auditory, learning difficulties and development delays.” And we do nothing to avoid it? Yes, we have tried several approaches. In 2013, governments around the world adopted the Minamata Agreement to try to control the “anthropogenic liberations of mercury and other compounds” derivatives. In fact, in the last decade the European Food Security Authority (and its national equivalents) They have been establishing increasingly strict criteria for food with risk of exposure to these compounds. The problem is that it is not easy to control that release and, for now, we cannot do much more than reduce risks. A solution … original. Now, some Australian scientists say they have discovered a new effective way to clean the methylmercury. The Macquarie University Research Team and the Australian Csiro has managed genetically fruit flies and zebra fish to transform methylmercury into a much less harmful gas that is dispersed in the air. The team has modified the DNA of these two animals to insert variants of bacteria genes that make them create two enzymes that can convert the methylmercury into elementary mercury. In general terms, we could say that they inactivate it. It does not become harmless, but its toxicity and bioaccumulation falls very significantly. Oh really? “It still seems to me that we can use synthetic biology to convert the most harmful form of mercury and evaporate it,” Kate Tepper explainedsynthetic biologist and main author of the article. And, indeed, almost science fiction sounds. It must be said that, obviously, we talk about an investigation in the early development phases and much remains to be checked. However, it is a very interesting result. Very dangerous and very loaded with ethical issues, but very interesting for the development of the genetic engineering of the future. Another thing is that we dare to get so far. Image | John Cameron In Xataka | This researcher has been poisoning a lake with mercury for 15 years to see what happens to the fish living inside: now, he finally has an answer

Mercury in Aquarius 2025: How it impacts your horoscope

January 28, 2025 by usatoday24

Mercury has begun its transit by Aquarius and since it is the planet that governs the messages, the way we think and communicate, Transforms how to express your ideas and opinions. Aquarius is A fixed air signhis vision is eccentric, nonconformist and innovative, so this period is an opportunity to share creative and dreamy ideas. Then know what it means and how this energy affects The horoscope of your zodiac sign from January 27 to February 14. What does Mercury mean in Aquarius? Mercury, the planet of communication, governs our capacity for thought, expression and learning. When it travels by Aquarius, an air sign known to its eccentric and progressive nature, a Ideal period to innovate, break barriers, work as a team and focus on technology. In addition, on February 3, Mercury It will form a trigone With Jupiter, the planet of abundance, which brings an extra dose of luck and opportunities to reach intellectual and creative goals. How Mercury affects your horoscope aquarium According to the predictions of astrologer Maresa Brown to the Woman’s World site, this is how it affects your zodiac sign: Aries This transit activates your area of friendships and social networks. It is the perfect time to collaborate in group projects or raise your ideas in a team. Take advantage of February 3 to highlight in important presentations or meetings. Taurus Mercury travels your professional sector, leading you to rethink strategies in your career. Avoid stubbornness and consider new ways to advance. On February 10, an innovative approach could bring you recognition. Gemini Your curiosity and desire for learning will be to the fullest. It is an excellent period to travel, either physically or through knowledge. On February 3 will be key to establishing ambitious goals with a touch of optimism. Cancer Intimacy and emotional connections take prominence. Take advantage of this transit to strengthen your links and express your needs. The trigone of February 3 favors deep and intuitive conversations. Leo Mercury illuminates your association zone, inviting you to collaborate with others in important projects. The exchange of ideas will be especially fruitful, especially around February 3. Virgo Your regent Mercury activates your health area and daily routines. It is an excellent time to reorganize your habits and find more efficient ways to work. The trigone with Jupiter helps you advance in professional goals. Pound Creativity and self -expression will be your great allies. If you have artistic projects or looking for romance, this is your time. On February 3, it marks an ideal day to change your routine and explore new adventures. Scorpio Mercury traffic activates your home zone, which favors sincere conversations with relatives or improvements in your personal space. Use the energy of February 3 to reinforce your emotional ties. Sagittarius Mercury energizes your communication sector, multiplying opportunities to socialize and share ideas. A conversation on February 3 could open new doors both personally and professionally. Capricorn It is time to rethink your financial strategies. Explore new ways to save or generate income. Around February 3, an unexpected opportunity could improve your economic stability. Aquarium With mercury in your sign, you will be full of creative ideas and desire to express yourself. Take this time to show your authenticity and work on projects that reflect your unique vision. The trigone of February 3 amplifies your abilities. Pisces This transit invites you to reflect and connect with your spirituality. Practice meditation or have a newspaper to organize your thoughts. February 3 will be an ideal day to strengthen the connection with your loved ones. Keep reading:• Tips for the new moon of January 2025: What to do and not do• 2025 Aquarium Season: What predicts for your zodiac sign• 4 Zodiac signs face their own karma in the winter (Tagstotranslate) Aquarius

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