GIANT SPACE VEG!

This is amazing. I read about it on the kids' page of the Times 2 that mum and dad brought with them last week (thanks!), and them immediately had to look it up....

It's not news per se, seeing as it happened in May 2008, but the genius Chinese decided to send some vegetable seeds into space to see what would happen (as you do!), and BAM! Giant vegetables were grown. Like pumpkins ten times their normal size, weighing the same as a man! For pics of this, see here.

Read more on the science on this website and this one.

I am troubled that the world food crisis hasn't yet been solved by these gigantic veg, so I will endeavour to find out what's happened since May 2008, and keep you posted....

On the same track, I'm wondering why we haven't taken cloud-seeding to Africa. Maybe we need to learn how to artificially create clouds first - anyone?

Beijing's first snow of winter 2009/10 - updated

Updated: I'm pretty sure you will have heard about the cloud-seeding and weather-fixing that is all the rage in China, so I thought I would update this post and include some info/links. The snow I posted above was Beijing's earliest winter snowfall since 1987 - and an unusually heavy one at that. The Times had a pretty interesting article which you can access here, and Time.com wrote with a slightly more techy focus - see this link.

Inevitably, there is a lot of controversy and debate (both informed and baseless, as far as I can tell) about the safety and morality of inducing rain and/or snow and playing with the weather in general. Silver iodide is the chemical of choice, though any of you trying this at home could substitute this with dry ice or salt, and then just find yourself a passing plane or rocket to do the business. Wikipedia doesn't say it's toxic, and I can confirm that the snow is white and does not glow in the dark or have any other peculiar qualities. I have a tendency to believe that such experiments are safe, or they wouldn't have been done... Any chemists want to offer enlightenment or invoke fear?

I understand that the 1st November snowfall was manufactured in order to combat Northern China's drought problem. However, I also heard that the snowfall was meant for the area northeast of Beijing, and the intention was not for the city itself to be covered in half a foot of snow, so maybe some fine-tuning still needs to be done. However, from past experiments, artificially inducing bad weather can certainly be effective in producing brilliant blue skies - for example, just look at the 2008 Olympics and this year's National Day celebrations!

More snow fell yesterday and still more is forecast for tomorrow, which is obviously pretty strange for a city that usually sees only 3 to 4 snowfalls per winter. However, word on the street that the government is keen to show off Beijing at its sunny best when Obama arrives in town on Sunday….. Oh to have that kind of influence when I go on holiday! Check out this weather forecast if you still aren't convinced - a coincidence? I think not.