It “rains” liquid methane on Saturn’s moon of Titan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Titan

Maybe a simpler adaptation of the fire extinguisher analogy: a fire extinguisher that shoots a second of water before carbon dioxide. Operators were playing with deep fat friers thinking it was fine because they had CO2 fire extinguishers.

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This is good intro to all the known particles

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model

Crispr can do multiple things. If you want to shutoff a mutant gene, crispr cuts DNA that introduces mutations that eventually turn the gene off. Yes, you can also cut DNA and paste in a gene sequence with Crispr to fix faulty genes that you can’t just shutoff. There are also twists like Crispr base editors that can fix a single mutation without the need to cut DNA that causes a double strand break.

Contrast that to AAV. AAV doesn’t really integrate into a genome (well isn’t supposed to in theory) - they work by creating what’s known as an episome (i.e a circular piece of dna that persists in cells and gets translated into the desired protein). AAVs can only shutoff a mutant gene if they carry a payload like siRNA/microRNA or something. AAVs never really fix the mutant gene, the episome just expresses the protein that’s not working. I suppose over the long run AAVs might not really ‘cure’ a genetic disease, because the episome will likely dilute out over time with cell divisions. You can only really administer an AAV once too because of immunogenicity issues.

Also, you could use AAVs to deliver genes that encode for Crispr, so it isn’t like they’re mutually exclusive. There are pros and cons of using either of these approaches for a gene therapy. It depends on your strategy, target population, and overall risk.

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The RMBK was basically all about cheap and simple from a construction point of view, and about dual purpose - it can produce plutonium.

The whole design is dangerous and relies technical solutions to problems that shouldn’t even exist.

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Atoms repel each other quite strongly using what is described as "Van der Waals" forces (electrostatic in nature). The length of bonds between atoms are relatively inflexible and keep bonded atoms close enough to prevent other atoms from slipping between.

For example, proteins often fold around and trap water molecules within their structure. Many of these water molecules remain trapped until the protein decays.

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When the control rods are fully down the graphite tips are safely under the fuel rods. Then when you want to increase reactivity you raise the rods getting the boron out the way and putting the graphite in at the same time which is cheaper than separate rods. On the day the control rods were fully retracted something that was never really intended to be done. So when the control rods were dropped for a crucial moment the graphite tips were accelerating the reaction before the boron could get in the way.

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Perhaps a more instructive version of your metaphor might be a fire extinguisher which emits a flame retardant for the first second which explodes when it contacts a certain chemical. Would it be better if it didn’t do that? Sure. But the flame retardant which doesn’t explode is expensive and changing the design of the fire extinguisher is even more expensive. Besides, the fire extinguisher would still work fine, you just have to not use it on that one particular type of chemical fire.

As others have covered in a lot more detail, the operators of reactor four had to take a number of extraordinary measures to put the reactor into a state where the graphite tipped control rods could cause a catastrophic failure. Worse, they didn’t even know there was a catastrophic failure state they needed to look out for. To go back to the fire extinguisher metaphor, no one ever warned them about the chemical.

That’s supposed to be the big revelation at the end of the show. Legasov knew about the potential for an RBMK reactor to explode, but the people running Chernobyl that night didn’t. Even though the operators where running the reactor in reckless and dangerous manner, they only thought they were risking a shutdown. They didn’t know they were courting utter disaster because they had never been told that was a possibility.

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Some researchers speculate that it rains diamonds on Jupiter and Saturn

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-24477667

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The biggest issue with Chernobyl, which was also showcase in the show, wasn’t that the reactors had a potentially dangerous design, it’s that the Soviet Government hid the flaw from the reactor operators. So to their understanding an RMBK reactor couldn’t possibly blow up. Because the boron control rods would kill any reaction. And they either weren’t aware of the carbon tips, or at least the risks they posed.

So yes, the operators intentionally cooked the Chernobyl reactor to a point where it was a bomb, but they felt safe doing it because they had complete confidence that AZ-5 would kill the reaction. Not act as a detonator.

For coronaviruses the genome is translated into a big polyprotein which is cleaved in a dozen of proteins by a protease it includes. That dozen of proteins somehow self assemble into a replication complex which also makes the (lipid) ER membrane bubble. Into such a bubble the viral polymerase of the replication complex replicates the genome many times and also makes many subgenomic mRNA coding for the structural proteins. Eventually the bubble bursts and frees the many copies of the genome and the many subgenomic mRNA, those are translated and flood the environment with viral structural proteins. Together with the copied genomes all this mess self assemble into new virions. Both the bubbling and the natural cellular transport of membrane anchored proteins help the new virions to egress the cell.

Hope this helps your understanding of the standard strategy for virus replication.

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