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What are we reading? October 29, 2020

Each week, BIV staff will share with you some of the interesting stories we have found from around the web. Mark Falkenberg, deputy managing editor: Two new studies suggest the moon is a lot more watery than scientists thought.
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Each week, BIV staff will share with you some of the interesting stories we have found from around the web.

Mark Falkenberg, deputy managing editor:

Two new studies suggest the moon is a lot more watery than scientists thought. Until recently, the hunt for water on the moon focused on shadowy craters at the poles, but research suggests that sunnier areas might harbour large amounts of ice within “micro cold traps.” – Scientific American

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/water-found-in-sunlight-and-shadow-on-the-moon/

Intriguing post-mortem on the BC Liberals’ election performance. It notes that the right wing’s share of the vote in the province was consistent until about 2009, before it began to evaporate, shrinking almost 20 points in the past decade. – The Tyee

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2020/10/25/BC-Liberal-Tent-Collapse/

Donald Trump and his surrogates are goosing the delusion dial to try to save his junkheap-bound presidency. Among them, Don Jr., who went on Fox to say that the number of people dying from COVID-19 is down to "almost nothing." As of this week, COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. top 1,000 per day. – Daily Kos

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/30/1990995/-Even-as-COVID-19-hits-new-records-of-awful-Trump-insists-that-everything-is-perfectly-fine

Timothy Renshaw, managing editor:

Trains, ocean carriers and other major goods and people-moving sectors are increasingly looking to hydrogen as the low- to no-carbon transportation fuel of the future. – Energy Live News

https://www.energylivenews.com/2020/10/27/frankfurt-breaks-ground-on-fuel-station-for-worlds-largest-fleet-of-hydrogen-trains/

Working from home might be reducing a lot of daily commutes, but it could also be increasing a lot of urban pollution. – BBC

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54634166

The silver bullet to the current global economic downturn could be a mere 230 million kilometres from Earth floating around in the main asteroid belt orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. Can we get Elon Musk on the 16 Psyche file? – Forbes

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2020/10/26/hubble-views-massive-asteroid-called-psyche-that-could-worth-more-than-our-global-economy/#3a3c24a5515a

Nelson Bennett, reporter:

Last year, Exxon Mobil placed eighth in the Fortune Global 500 top 10 list of biggest companies, and Zoom didn’t even make the top 50 list. But according to Forbes, Zoom is now worth more than the American oil giant. For those of us who have stopped driving to work and regularly jump on Zoom for meetings and webinars, maybe it’s not that surprising. – Forbes

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/10/29/zoom-is-now-worth-more-than-exxonmobil-and-founder-eric-yuans-net-worth-has-nearly-doubled-in-three-months/#772bf30e1002

Joe Biden has pledged to kill the Keystone XL pipeline once and for all, if elected president next week. It’s quite possible he will forget he even made the pledge. But even if he remembers, some Canadian political observers think they may be able to get him to change his mind. – Axios

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/28/can-canada-sell-biden-on-keystone-20-433108