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hankwang writes:

"For the past couple of days, China's capital has been suffering under severe smog, leaving the sun and skyscrapers barely visible. The highest concentration of small airborne particles (PM2.5) was 0.50 mg per cubic meter, a factor 20 above the Word Health Organization's safe limit. Scientists went as far as comparing this to a nuclear winter. The worst seems to be over for now: today, the monitors are reading 0.180 mg/m3, only a factor 7 above the WHO limit.

The Chinese smog seems to behave differently from the smog in Europe and the US. Existing scientific models developed in the West do not work well. To improve the models and understanding, plans are underway to build a 600 cubic-meter (that's 21,000 cubic ft or 160,000 US gallon) transparent dome as a smog chamber."

[NOTE TO EDITOR: I can't get slashcode to display the mu symbol, so I converted to milligrams] [Ed's Note: Thankyou - but what is it in firkins?]