Numlock News: July 31, 2025 • Turbulence, Wasps, Hermès

Jul 31, 2025

Hermès

About 14 billion euros (US$16.2 billion) in shares of the French luxury company Hermès were inherited by Nicolas Puech, a member of the family that controls the company. However, it has been an enduring and highly consequential mystery as to whether or not Puech actually owns them anymore. This came to a head back in 2014, when a years-long attempt to buy up Hermès shares by rival LVMH maxed out at 23 percent of the company, only to be repelled by the family to circle the wagons. While the family is large — 100 members — the amount inherited by Puech would be the largest holding of any individual in the company. That being said, at least some of the stock was sold, and the shareholder wound up in extensive litigation with a wealth manager. The situation is far from unprecedented; incidentally, “Heir of Hermes gets involved in complicated situation involving wealth that causes a lot of headaches for other Europeans” is an event that occurred no fewer than three times in Ancient mythology.

Angelina Rascouet, Tara Patel, and Hugo Miller, Bloomberg

Wasps

Workers at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina — which has altogether generated 165 million gallons of liquid nuclear waste manufacturing plutonium pits for weapons during the Cold War — found a wasp nest near tanks. Issue is, these tanks have radiation levels 10 times what’s permitted by federal regulations. That volume of waste has already been reduced to 34 million gallons across 43 underground tanks. The nest was subsequently sprayed, removed and disposed of as nuclear waste itself — though somewhat disconcertingly, no wasps were found. Despite what I had been told by years of comic books, it turns out that what the result of a radioactive insect escaping containment, in fact, is only “paperwork.”

The Associated Press

Giant Viruses

In the two decades since their initial discovery, scientists have been interested in giant viruses, which are viruses so large in size that they can actually be larger than the bacteria that ordinarily dwarf them. One newly discovered giant virus is PelV-1, which infects the marine phytoplankton Pelagodinium in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. What makes PelV-1 neat is the two massive tails on its already large 200-nanometer-size capsid, one of which is 30 nanometers wide and extends up to 2.3 micrometers, the largest virus appendage found to date.

Nazeefa Ahmed, Science

NISAR

NASA and India’s space agency have launched a satellite together this week called NISAR. It will operate on a near-polar-circling orbit, 464 miles high, in a three-year mission to map the Earth. NISAR specifically seeks to survey Earth’s terrain multiple times, which will collect data in remarkable detail. Science operations are slated to begin by the end of October. Goals include measuring glaciers and polar ice sheets, groundwater supplies and possible motion of land surfaces that might presage landslides and earthquakes.

Marcia Dunn, The Associated Press

Turbulence

Over the next few decades, atmospheric scientists expect that shifts in conditions will make air travel bumpier, expecting a doubling or tripling of severe turbulence around the world. Severe turbulence is defined as more than 1.5g-force on the body moving vertically, and there are about 5,000 incidents of severe or worse turbulence per year out of 35 million flights. That said, turbulence was responsible for 40 percent of severe injuries to passengers in 2023. Over the past 40 years, there has been a 55 percent increase in severe turbulence over the North Atlantic. While there’s more of it, turbulence is also getting better to predict. Today’s forecasters are able to predict about 75 percent of clear-air turbulence, an improvement from the 60 percent about two decades ago. Airlines are reacting to the move by cutting the length of in-flight service to rein in the risk of injuries.

Simon King, BBC News

Sounds

The latest data from Nielsen found that adults in the United States averaged three hours and 50 minutes of daily listening through the second quarter of the year, including both ad-supported (about 64 percent of total listening) and ad-free (the rest) platforms. Of that ad-supported region, there is a dominant format: still radio! Radio accounted for 64 percent of listening time, podcasts for 19 percent, streaming audio for 14 percent and satellite radio for three percent. Essentially, if you’re still listening to ads these days, it’s probably on a radio.

Erik Gruenwedel, Media Play News

Glacier

A new study published in Nature Geoscience looked into a peculiar 2014 event on the ice sheet near Harder Glacier in northern Greenland. While most liquid water tends to flow downward, in this instance, water burst upwards through the ice sheet and fountained up and out. Essentially, a lake under the glacier began to drain rapidly, flowing about a kilometer downstream. However, it hit an impediment that forced 90 million cubic meters of water upwards through crevasses over the course of just 10 days. Then, it is thought to have drained back under the ice sheet.

Stephanie Pappas, Scientific American

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