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Why Birds Can Fly over Mount Everest

52 points andsoitis 4 days ago 9 comments

Katharina01 4 days ago | parent

Interesting article and thank you a lot for this education!

shmerl 1 hour ago | parent

I was surprised that some birds can fly even higher. There is a record of Rüppell's vulture at 11+ kilometers altitude.

adonovan 1 hour ago | parent

Sadly this wonder of nature was deduced from the 5 feathers that were all that remained after the noble creature was ingested by a turbofan engine of an airliner.

https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7...

shmerl 38 minutes ago | parent

Yeah, unfortunately.

antics 1 hour ago | parent

Written by Walter Murch?? Like, the guy who is considered maybe the best editor and sound designer of all time, who was nominated for 9 Academy Awards, and won 3??? (Editing perhaps second only to Thelma Schoonmaker.)

ErroneousBosh 43 minutes ago | parent

From the footer of TFA:

Walter Murch has been working in film for more than 50 years, as an editor, sound designer, writer, and director. He edited and sound-designed many films for Francis Coppola (The Godfather Trilogy, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now) and Anthony Minghella (The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Cold Mountain). His interest in science can be seen in his editing of Mark Levinson’s film Particle Fever (2013), about the search for the Higgs Boson.

Yes, That Walter Murch.

In The Blink Of An Eye is on the bookshelf just behind the monitor I'm typing this on, with my headphones and BMD Speed Editor slightly blocking my view of it.

adonovan 54 minutes ago | parent

The part about coal coming from dead trees during a window of time before bacteria evolved lignin digestion is no longer the scientific consensus. Such bacteria existed earlier; not all coal is high lignin; and coal still formed later. Too bad; it was a lovely story!

cyberax 42 minutes ago | parent

It's not bacteria. The only organisms that can digest lignin are fungi, and they do it by blasting lignin with peroxides.

As such, this works only in aerobic environments (not swamps).

js2 33 minutes ago | parent

(2020). Previous submissions with comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23639294 (Jun 26, 2020 - 96 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28844872 (Oct 12, 2021 - 108 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34210508 (Jan 1, 2023 - 6 comments)

This submission is from 4 days ago, so it must've been placed into the second chance pool.