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[Akima]

This week has proved just why rocket-science is a byword for something difficult. Unlike many things, rocket-science is rocket-science.

[Pilchard123]

[Metope]

Also yes, I'd say people who go to space are heroes. The amount of research they've done that has ended up doing great things for humankind is vast, and everyone who goes there goes for a purpose. Getting to space is an enormous feat. Even for people who think space tourism is a new silly thing for rich kids, the fact that someone are actually creating a space program so people who aren't working with it can travel to space too is a great step in the right direction, we have to remember that regular flights was a luxury saved for the richest once too. It's called progress, and someone just died making progress for everyone. So yeah, that comment is disrespectful and ignorant at best.

[J]

if this doesn't make somebody smile, i don't want to be their friend:

[J]

SUCCESS!

Harpoons didn't fire, but its there



"The solar system is mankind's. This mission is the first step to take it. It's ours." Jim Green, NASA

[hedgie]

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30050349

C'mon, Philae, yours is the drill that will pierce the comet!

[Pilchard123]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V1oD1h6hvk

[mustang6172]

Strong winds are coming from your Uranus. 

http://news.yahoo.com/extreme-storms-uranus-puzzle-astronomers-125045482.html

[LTK]

This is cool: Pavlovian conditioning using smells can affect people's smoking habits.

[LeeC]

Comet landing: Organic molecules detected
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30097648

[LTK]

The science of why we don't believe in science, a great article that provides a summary and explanation of a lot of relevant research into people's beliefs and convictions, and the reasons why they are so hard to change.

One result that's especially surprising - and worrying - to me is the effect that education has on the strength of one's beliefs. Being a Republican or a Democrat is a strong predictor of whether one accepts the science on climate change, but college-educated Republicans and Democrats are more likely to deny or accept the science, respectively, than their non-college-educated counterparts. Having a higher education just makes you stronger in your own beliefs.

Apparently I've been wrong, not Everybody Loves Science. Maybe I should rename the thread Everybody Loves Confirmation Bias.

[mustang6172]

Being a Republican or a Democrat is a strong predictor of whether one accepts the science on climate change,

That doesn't sound like much of a predictor.

The disciples even went so far as to remove brassieres and rip zippers out of their trousers—the metal, they believed, would pose a danger on the spacecraft.

Strange.  Why not switch to button fly?

[LTK]

Being a Republican or a Democrat is a strong predictor of whether one accepts the science on climate change,

That doesn't sound like much of a predictor.

What do you mean by that?

[mustang6172]

What if political party doesn't predict a stance on climate change; rather, a stance on climate change predicts someone's political party?

[explicit]

I know plenty of my friends are conservative and agree with climate change. Though, they technically are registered as independant...

[mustang6172]

The internet hath provided us with another article on why people don't believe in climate change.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-why-people-dont-believe-225156991.html

I was very amused at the line "I hunt a lot, and last winter I froze my butt off."  The United States, the one country not sold on climate change, had a colder than normal year, whereas everywhere else on the planet saw above average temperatures.  You're doing a heck of a job there, Irony.

[explicit]

IT SNOWED, THEREFORE GLOBAL WARMING IS FAKE. I roll my eyes so hard that I also roll my head, it's a whole thing.

[GarandMarine]

I find it's all phrasing. Lots of people are sold on climate change, less people are sold on global warming, fewer still are sold that it's something we need to panic about.

[Masterpiece]

The correct word to use is "global climate destabilization"

[explicit]

Wording of the question causes people have differing opinions, too. Just like asking "Do you approve of the job Barack Obama is doing?" versus "Do you approve of the job Barack Hussien Obama is doing?

A lot of people believe in climate change (that it's getting worse), but that we have an insignificant factor in causing in. Which I always found odd because we knew that were causing the destruction of the Ozone with cfc's and we know CO2, CO and the like can trap heat and that we give off a significant amount - much more than the earth would produce naturally, while somehow not believing we're causing it.

If people do think there's a problem, it usually goes to overpopulation, which in the "taxing our resources" department isn't that big of deal considering the developed world is at replacement level reproduction and the places that are makin' lots o' babies use about 5% of the resources as the average American. AGGHH I have a lot more I want to put down than just those 2 short snippets, but it'll get boring real fast...



New post! Ahem. I like that phrase a lot Master, I usually go with global weirding, but it sounds silly and most people probably don't get it anyway. I think I'll use your phrase.

[Masterpiece]

Please don't call me Master, if you're gonna shorten my name, use "MP", but I don't feel very comfortable being called Master.

[J]

you could go by Missy

[explicit]

Please don't call me Master, if you're gonna shorten my name, use "MP", but I don't feel very comfortable being called Master.

So if I call you Master Piece instead of MasterPiece would I still be very very wrong? I don't know why I think I'm funny sometimes... that jokes was lame... I'm sorry.

[Masterpiece]

If you want to go and spare me that trouble, I would be very glad indeed.

[ev4n]

Being a Republican or a Democrat is a strong predictor of whether one accepts the science on climate change,

That doesn't sound like much of a predictor.

What do you mean by that?

If I ever voted Democrat or Republican they'd throw me in jail.

It's too bad they tried to do some science but limited themselves to one narrow political culture.

[explicit]

Both parties just use "science" to push for any agenda they already believed in anyway. Science is about finding truths, something that neither political party really cares about.

[LeeC]

Welcome to the Anthropocene (unofficially)

[GarandMarine]

Mars confirmed for water.

[LTK]

A 2012 study showed that higher social class individuals show more unethical behaviour (lying, stealing, cheating) than lower class individuals. Now a follow-up study has been published that indicates it's not unethical behaviour itself that differs, but selfish unethical behaviour: the high and low class were cheating equally, but the low class cheated more to benefit someone else while the high class cheated to benefit themselves.

Getting people to lie in a lab setting is really tricky, though. You always have to have a way to check whether someone lies or tells the truth, and if someone knows you can check, they're less likely to lie. You can't tell people "oh you know, if you want to lie that's okay" cause that tells them the experiment is about lying, which is gonna affect their answers. They seem to have it worked out in these experiments, usually it's a case of reporting what a computer said to the experimenter.

Ars Technica article

[downtowneddie]

I'm watching live, on NASA TV, the docking of a Russian Progress cargo ship to the International Space Station and it amazes me how engineers have figured out orbital mechanics so precisely that a rocket can be launched from the ground, catch up with a moving target (going 17,500 mph, mind you!) some 250 miles up, do a little orbital ballet, and then dock.

[LTK]

It's only rocket science. You can do that yourself on your very own computer!

[mustang6172]

I'm watching live, on NASA TV, the docking of a Russian Progress cargo ship to the International Space Station and it amazes me how engineers have figured out orbital mechanics so precisely that a rocket can be launched from the ground, catch up with a moving target (going 17,500 mph, mind you!) some 250 miles up, do a little orbital ballet, and then dock.

What's more amazing is that they figured this out 50 years ago.

[Carl-E]

With slide rules...

[Pilchard123]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I

[LeeC]

2 luminous spots on the dwarf planet Ceres


http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/02/26/389245969/nasa-sees-bright-spots-on-dwarf-planet-in-our-solar-system

[Carl-E]

Hurry up and land, already - he's getting tired of holding those two flashlights. 

[Akima]

I'm watching live, on NASA TV, the docking of a Russian Progress cargo ship

Progress (well, the whole Soyuz family really) is the DC-3 of space.

[mustang6172]

Plans for a nuclear reactor that runs on nuclear waste.

http://news.yahoo.com/nuclear-waste-could-offer-carbon-free-energy-scientists-133004675.html

[pwhodges]

Capturing the dual nature of light (wave/particle) in a single photo.

[Active Madness]

Using Slime Molds to model Roman road networks.

Apparently, slime molds like oatmeal and can be used to model road networks when you use clusters of oats as a food source.

[Masterpiece]

[Pilchard123]

Sauce?

[Masterpiece]

Something I only found in IRaffIRuse, couldn't find a source.

edit: Nevermind, looks like this one here:
Enchroma.com

[LTK]

There's at least five things wrong with the claims made there, but then again, a video converted to a series of GIFs is pretty low on the scale of trustworthy sources. There's a NYTimes.com article article about those things as well, but it's from 2013. I also recall watching a video where a colorblind person tried those glasses with a critical eye, and he said that they won't cure colorblindness (obviously) but instead they amplify the vividness of colors that you perceive weakly, so the difference between normal vision and colorblind vision is mitigated somewhat. But if you truly have no receptors for specific colors, there's nothing that any kind of glasses can do for you. Sadly, I haven't been able to find the video in question, but I'll keep an eye out.

Edit for Masterpiece's edit: turns out the glasses in the article are also from Enchroma, so that puts it into perspective.

[LeeC]

NASA accidentalys a warp field? 

http://sputniknews.com/us/20150425/1021360503.html#ixzz3YWZ8s9dE

[mustang6172]

That all sounds rather sensationalized.  Remember about 3 1/2 years ago when CERN thought they broke the light barrier and it turned out to be an instrument failure?

[cesium133]

Didn't anyone ever tell you you should always make sure your optics are clean fiber couplers are tightened. 

[ankhtahr]

Yeah, I read about the emDrive about a year ago already. Don't exactly know why everybody is yelling about it currently. Anyway, yeah, I'd be very careful with that. Might easily be something like the Rossi Energy Catalyzer.

[LeeC]

[mustang6172]

I find it somewhat disturbing when someone says "this bad weather proves global warming."  It's too much like "this snowy weather disproves global warming."

I'm somewhat curious if filling dry lake beds with sea water pumped in via aqueducts would slow desertification in the south west, but that's kind of an expensive science project.