“Floating islands are common in Minnesota; it’s the size of this one that’s causing all the fuss. Sue Galatowitsch, a wetland ecologist at the University of Minnesota, says the island likely weighs at least 1,000 tons and could extend 30 feet below the water. Technically, it’s a floating bog. A natural assemblage of peat moss festooned with cattails and tamarack trees, the bog is more than four acres across—that’s about 64 tennis courts. ‘A bog that size,’ Galatowitsch says, “can kind of do whatever it wants.“
it amuses me to see people being surprised/impressed/amused by this setup, because it’s extremely common on the plains. if you don’t plant a windbreak, your heating and cooling bills are huge, and storms do things like throw the lawnmower through the living room window, take the roof off, or cake the entire north side of the house with six inches of solid ice.
evergreens remain bendy even in the coldest weather, so – wait, no, not the coldest. i remember when i was a kid it got down to like -45 and the norway pines around my house were cracking like gunshots as the sap froze.
maples, incidentally, make that noise around -20f, and i hear it at least once every winter here in southern minnesota. but i only ever heard norway pines make it that one time.
so anyway that’s why we plant pine trees around our houses. because otherwise the wind would freaking kill us.
This is informative and perfectly sensible under the circumstances but I also cannot resist the temptation to compare it to planting stuff all around the boundary of your lot in The Sims
This adorable little robot is designed to make sure its photosynthesising passenger is well taken care of. It moves towards brighter light if it needs, or hides in the shade to keep cool. When in the light, it rotates to make sure the plant gets plenty of light. It even likes to play with humans.
Oh, and apparently, it gets antsy when it’s thirsty.
The robot is actually an art project called “Sharing Human Technology with Plants” by a roboticist named Sun Tianqi. It’s made from a modified version of a Vincross HEXA robot, and in his own words, it’s purpose is “to explore the relationship between living beings and robots.”
