# High Intelligence: Chernobyl series, winged aircraft and airless tires

While everyone is discussing the sensational series aboutChernobyl (by the way, we can find a lot of materials on this topic), the rest also do not stand still - they took and showed the wing aircraft (wait a minute, what?) And tires without airbags. So today there is something to talk about: they have made for you a small digest of the most interesting news of the week.

Wing aircraft

Airbus and Boeing aircraft today havealmost the same structure, the key elements of which are a cigar-shaped fuselage with a retractable chassis and engines located under the wings. The Dutch from KLM decided that it was boring to hurt (and we know how they came to this, Amsterdam after all) and teamed up with Delft Technical University to create a prototype V-winged aircraft that could replace all existing aircraft in the future. .

Generally, this ... plane-wing. It has practically no visible line between the fuselage and the wings - it turns out that passengers will sit almost inside the wings themselves. The advantage of this design is that it reduces drag and increases lift.

How to manage it? So far, it seems to me, even the dude from the movie “Miracle on the Hudson” could not have put him. It is not surprising that at the moment the plane exists only in the form of computer models. However, in October 2019, engineers want to demonstrate a flying prototype. Well, let's see ...

Tires without air

I do not know about you, but I'm tired of puncturing tires - thisthe main headache associated with driving a car. But thanks to the companies Michelin and General Motors (GM), which announced a joint effort to improve the technology of airless tires, this problem may soon become a relic of the past.

They showed a new generation of airless tires. They consist of an outer tread and an inner rim, between which the soft “spokes” of a mixture of composite rubber and polymeric fiberglass are stretched. Air chambers are not here. These tires will reduce the unsprung weight and increase the range without recharging.

In general, the thing is cool - such tires are not afraidpunctures, cuts and other damage, because they do not have a sealed chamber. Perhaps due to such tires, there will be no need for a spare wheel at all, which will generally make cars easier. But something I doubt that they will cope with the Russian impassability.

Electric car, which is not

Tesla's fame does not give the Russian auto industryrest - they are working on the creation of an electric car "Monarch". The novelty will have artificial intelligence and will be able to charge in minutes. Sounds cool? It seems yes, but according to sources, graphene-magnesium batteries will be used in the electric vehicle.

Yes, they have a larger power reserve (up to 800 kilometers),and up to 100% they can be charged in a few minutes, only there are simply no real working prototypes of such a battery. Graphene-magnesium batteries exist at the level of drawings, but no more - so far no one has managed to assemble a working module. It seems that engineers from Spain and specialists from the University of Cordoba a few years ago developed a new generation graphene battery, but they just didn’t show it to anyone: production had to start in 2017, and things are still there.

So it’s not at all clear whether the Russian electric car will be as they say, or is it another project to show it on beautiful slides (by the way, there aren’t any yet).

How accurate is the Chernobyl series from the point of view of science?

After watching the TV series Chernobyl, many wonderedthe question of how accurate it is from the point of view of science. It turned out that some facts still cause distrust, in addition to chronological inaccuracies. For example, there were no powerful dosimeters at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant - simply because no one imagined that such a thing could happen.

There are other points: take the same firefighter, who picked up a piece of graphite from the reactor for a few seconds, and after a while he was taken away in an ambulance because of the leather peeling off his hand. In reality, application radiation burns appear 1-3 days after the injury. Also in one of the scenes of the series it is shown how the green forest suddenly became rusty-red. In reality, this was not entirely true. More precisely, it took several days, and not several hours from the moment of the accident.

Despite some inaccuracies, the show is allIt turned out equally interesting - you can see it in one breath. Discuss Chernobyl and other news of the past week can be in the comments or in our Telegram-chat.