Today I Learned:
1) Idaho is a geologically active state, and has some of the best geothermal power in the States, with an estimated 800 MW of untapped geothermal potential*. Idaho also has the oldest geothermal power system in the country, and its state capitol building is the only US state capitol building powered geothermal.
*which isn’t really *that* much, in the grand scheme of things, but hey, maybe it’s enough for Idaho
2) The “auto” keyword in C++ — it replaces any type declaration and automatically infers the correct type at compile-time.
3) Why the Earth’s core is hot! I knew that radioactive decay was involved (which was what threw off Lord Kelvin’s famous and abysmally wrong calculation of the age of the Earth). Quite a bit of the heat is still residual from the formation of the Earth. When the planet formed, it formed from tons of little chunks of matter falling into its gravity well… the potential energy of all that stuff was largely converted into heat via the usual means, and a lot of that has been locked away under the crust, where it can’t escape very quickly, to the present day.
Bonus) How to say “electrophoresis” in Spanish. It’s “electroforesis”.
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