The Road Goes Ever Onward

 

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“He [Bilbo] used often to say there was only one Road; 

that it was like a great river: 

its springs were at every doorstep, 

and every path was its tributary. 

 

'It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, 

going out of your door,' he used to say.

 

 'You step into the Road, 

and if you don’t keep your feet, 

there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.'”

 

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

 

 

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In Water...the Echo of the Music of the Ainur

 

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“It is said by the Eldar 

that in water there lives yet 

the echo of the Music of the Ainur 

more than in any substance that is in this Earth; 

and many of the Children of Ilúvatar 

hearken still unsated to the voices of the Sea, 

and yet know not for what they listen.”

 

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

The Door is Wide, and Open to Many

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 There is a price, 

for those who would seek entry 

to the great cathedral of god, 

far out upon the ocean - 

where the door is wide and open to many - 

but only the few enter.

~ Kelvin D. Meeks

2DPA-1 - a two-dimensional polymer - light as plastic - stronger than steel

 Revolutionary material stronger than steel yet as light as plastic developed by MIT scientists

https://www.studyfinds.org/material-stronger-than-steel-light-as-plastic-mit/

• "a two-dimensional polymer that self-assembles into sheets, unlike all other polymers, which form one-dimensional, spaghetti-like chains."
• " as light as plastic — but stronger than steel"
• "six times more difficult to break than bulletproof glass" 
• "...a new polymerization process that allows them to generate a two-dimensional sheet called a polyaramide."
• "For the monomer building blocks, they use a compound called melamine, which contains a ring of carbon and nitrogen atoms. Under the right conditions, the monomers can grow in two dimensions, forming discs...these discs stack on top of each other, held together by hydrogen bonds between the layers, which make the structure very stable and strong."
• "Because the material self-assembles in solution...it can be made in large quantities by simply increasing the quantity of the starting materials."
• "...the new material’s elastic modulus – a measure of how much force it takes to deform a material – is between four and six times greater than that of bulletproof glass. They also claim that its yield strength – how much force it takes to break the material – is twice that of steel, even though the material has only about one-sixth the density of steel."