Radiolab (http://www.radiolab.org) This is the site and the name of the weekly NPR program. It's so entertaining I didn't think of it immediately as science education.
On MathOverflow, an online math forum, mathematicians around the world began to debate and discuss Mochizuki’s claim. The question which quickly bubbled to the top of the forum, encouraged by the community’s “upvotes,” was simple: “Can someone briefly explain the philosophy behind his work and comment on why it might be expected to shed light on questions like the ABC conjecture?” asked Andy Putman, assistant professor at Rice University. Or, in plainer words: I don’t get it. Does anyone?
The problem, as many mathematicians were discovering when they flocked to Mochizuki’s website, was that the proof was impossible to read. The first paper, entitled “Inter-universal Teichmuller Theory I: Construction of Hodge Theaters,” starts out by stating that the goal is “to establish an arithmetic version of Teichmuller theory for number fields equipped with an elliptic curve…by applying the theory of semi-graphs of anabelioids, Frobenioids, the etale theta function, and log-shells.”
This is not just gibberish to the average layman. It was gibberish to the math community as well.
The paradox of the proof (http://projectwordsworth.com/the-paradox-of-the-proof/): about a mathematical proof that no mathematician is able to understand, save for the person who wrote it.QuoteOn MathOverflow, an online math forum, mathematicians around the world began to debate and discuss Mochizuki’s claim. The question which quickly bubbled to the top of the forum, encouraged by the community’s “upvotes,” was simple: “Can someone briefly explain the philosophy behind his work and comment on why it might be expected to shed light on questions like the ABC conjecture?” asked Andy Putman, assistant professor at Rice University. Or, in plainer words: I don’t get it. Does anyone?
The problem, as many mathematicians were discovering when they flocked to Mochizuki’s website, was that the proof was impossible to read. The first paper, entitled “Inter-universal Teichmuller Theory I: Construction of Hodge Theaters,” starts out by stating that the goal is “to establish an arithmetic version of Teichmuller theory for number fields equipped with an elliptic curve…by applying the theory of semi-graphs of anabelioids, Frobenioids, the etale theta function, and log-shells.”
This is not just gibberish to the average layman. It was gibberish to the math community as well.
I think we've hit the "science is indistinguishable from sci-fi" equivalence.Well, we are talking about String Theory after all...
I think we've hit the "science is indistinguishable from sci-fi" equivalence.Well, we are talking about String Theory after all...
Knot so!I think we've hit the "science is indistinguishable from sci-fi" equivalence.Well, we are talking about String Theory after all...
The two are indistringuishable?
I've probably told this story here before, but I think it's mostly the 3+ year forum vets who will remember it. Here goes.I think we've hit the "science is indistinguishable from sci-fi" equivalence.Well, we are talking about String Theory after all...
The two are indistringuishable?
...working at LLNL during the Manhattan Project.
The point is that math is so freaking specialized that, unless you're one of the two or three people in the world working directly on a particular problem, you're going to have a rough time understanding any of it!
If I understand that correctly, I think it would generalise to both men and women if they had lower expectations of their performance compared to others. Maybe you could find the same effect with racial stereotyping, both negative and positive.Is it low expectations of their performance by the test takers that this study illuminates? I gathered that the women were supposed to be put off because their high performance in Maths would somehow reflect badly on them. If true, this reflects very poorly on their social environment.
When mathematical ignorance is the social norm, then yes, the social environment is to blame.Shit. It hadn't even occured to me that people might consider having a certain skill a bad thing. That's kind of depressing.
When mathematical ignorance is the social norm, then yes, the social environment is to blame.Shit. It hadn't even occured to me that people might consider having a certain skill a bad thing. That's kind of depressing.
So, when the authors are saying that the women are afraid of confirming a negative stereotype, it's not the stereotype of a woman, but the stereotype of a nerd. Goddamn it, I thought we had at least some progress in moving past that stigma by now.
It's FAR more than just being seen as a nerd. The fear is that being good in math will make them literally unattractive to boys and doomed to a life of spinsterhood, and has been reinforced by a very large array of societal pressures that includes boys, other girls, media, teachers and even parents. It's one of the most insidious and intractable memes to ever hit modern society, and even when some people agree with the idea that girls are just as good or better at math as boys, they'll still council not showing off as better. Even on college campuses, hearing a woman say "Oh, I'm just not good at math" is no less common than hearing "oh, I had my period last week".But that doesn't even make any sense! What's so special about math? Is it hard? Is there a stigma against girls being smart, or academically competent?
With our current possibilities going near speed of light is just as impossible as going faster than it, so why not assume the more practical way, seeing as both are equally impossible right now.
The way I see it, where there is actual matter, it 'displaces', for lack of a better word, the empty space that was previously there. This means that, while the empty space expands, it may push objects further apart, but it doesn't stretch them out, so distances on earth would stay the same. Of course I am no physicist, but this is how I think it works. I imagine it like balls floating in a pool of water. If you pour the water in a bigger pool it consume a wider area, but the balls stay the same size.
It sounds like Google's Babel fish-esque instant translation solution is making progress -- Android VP Hugo Barra told The UK Times that Google's got hardware prototypes (in the form of mobile phones) already working. Moreover, in a recent test he took part in, the system was "near-perfect" with certain language combinations (English to Portuguese is specifically cited).
The biggest barrier, beyond the translation itself, is speech recognition. In so many words, background noise interferes with the translation software, thus affecting results. But Barra said it works "close to 100 percent" when used in "controlled environments." Sounds perfect for diplomats, not so much for real-world conversations. Of course, Google's non-real-time, text-based translation software built into Chrome leaves quite a bit to be desired, making us all the more wary of putting our faith into Google's verbal solution. As the functionality is still "several years away," though, there's still plenty of time to convert us.
http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/26/google-universal-translator-prototypes/
Actually, I was referring to the general societal stigma against mathematical understanding. If a person's illiterate, they try and hide the fact. But when someone's innumerate? They brag about it. "I never did understand any of that math stuff" is a common attitude, and parents saying "Oh, don't worry about it, I was bad at math too" just makes it socially hereditary in the worst possible way.
And, of course, it's supposed to be worse for women, the poor dears - so difficult to wrap your head around such ideas when you're a barefoot, pregnant slave to your hormones...
Gears may seem like a purely human invention. And yet the basic interlocking mechanism found inside grandfather clocks and car steering systems has now turned up in the remarkably powerful legs of young planthopper insects.
The discovery, published in Friday's edition of the journal Science, provides the first known example of working gears that evolved in a living being.
"It's a wonderful example of the clever solutions that nature comes up with," said Robert Full, a biomechanist at UC Berkeley who was not involved in the study. "It was brilliant."
While examining flightless planthopper insects in the genus Issus, University of Cambridge neurobiologist Malcolm Burrows discovered that the young insects' legs had gear teeth that locked into place while jumping.
"We weren't deliberately looking for it. Why would we?" said Burrows, who conducted the research with University of Bristol engineer Gregory Sutton. "There's been no description of gear wheels functioning in animals before. "
Issus planthoppers make fleas and other jumping insects look like junior varsity pole-vaulters. The adult bugs can leap with an acceleration of roughly 500 Gs in a matter of milliseconds. An average human can withstand about 5 Gs of acceleration before passing out.
To figure out what made these insects so springy, the researchers ventured outdoors to gather a few bugs, with a little help from the sharp eyes of Burrows' young grandson. Some of the planthoppers were adults, and some were nymphs.
The pair used a high-speed camera to photograph the planthoppers while they jumped. That's when they spotted the gear teeth on the insides of the insects' equivalent of thighs. Each gear strip was about 350 to 400 micrometers long — about half as thick as a credit card — with about 10 to 12 teeth in each.
The discovery was shocking. Burrows had been studying jumping insects for a long time, and he'd never seen anything like it.
Other insects, like grasshoppers, use their legs to push their bodies straight up. But the planthoppers' legs move more like a breaststroke, splaying out to the sides while propelling the body upward.
That method of locomotion can be tricky. If one leg fires first, the planthopper will end up spinning, like a one-armed breast-stroke swimmer.
But sending a signal from the brain to coordinate both legs takes time and extra neural bandwidth. So the planthopper's body has an ingenious solution that keeps the legs in step without a thought. When one leg starts to jump, the gear teeth on that leg engage with the gear teeth on the other so they both push off at the same time.
Using the gear method, the insects' legs can synchronize within 30 microseconds. If the insect had to think about synchronizing its legs, Burrows said, it would take one or two milliseconds to send a message from its brain to its muscles.
In other words, the gear method is tens of times faster than a single bug thought.
Oddly, only the nymphs have these gears, Burrows and Sutton discovered. The adults lose the gears when they're fully grown; apparently, they can generate enough friction between their strong, solid legs.
But if this is such a handy engineering tool, why not keep using it into adulthood? Perhaps it's because of wear and tear, Burrows said.
If you break a tooth on a gear in your car or your bike, you have to get it fixed. Nymphs don't have repair shops, but because they shed their bodies into progressively larger exoskeletons as they grow, they're constantly getting upgrades anyway. Once they're adults, stuck in their permanent bodies, they don't have that luxury.
While humans have been doing pretty well with their man-made gears, the insect's design could still provide insight for engineers, Burrows said. For example, these gear teeth are asymmetrical rather than uniform. Because they need to work only in one direction on the insect, perhaps the odd shape maximizes the bang for their potential energy buck.
There are other "ornamental cogs" in nature, the authors wrote in Science, such as those on the shell of the cog wheel turtle Heosemys spinosa. Crocodile hearts also have a toothed cog valve that may help them stay under water for longer periods by redirecting blood flow to their most vital organs.
In any case, the research shows it's rarely wise to underestimate evolution, the scientists said.
"Any statement that you make like that, that something is uniquely human is just waiting to be disproven," Full said.
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the NON-existence of God.
The argument goes like this:
`I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
`But,' says Man, `Gears on a grasshopper are a dead giveaway, aren't they? They could not have evolved by chance. They prove you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.
`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, "Well, That about Wraps It Up for God."
Mind BLOWN.That is awesome, they not only figured out why they have these gears but also why they lose them as adults. Apparently animals have to deal with wear and tear as well!
Physicists have discovered a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality.
Watch out, jellyfish. JEROS, the jellyfish-destroying robot, is coming for you. Or possibly making more of you.
Developed by a team of engineers in Korea, JEROS is a robot designed for destroying jellyfish swarms, like the one that recently clogged the cooling pipes at a nuclear power plant in Sweden, temporarily shutting down the plant.
JEROS stands for Jellyfish Elimination Robotic Swarm, and it uses a camera and GPS system to spot jellyfish swarms underwater and maneuver autonomously toward them. A net underneath the robot gathers the gelatinous creatures, and a special propeller attached to the robot pulverizes the netted jellies into a wispy jellyfish soup. (See the video above).
It was developed by professor Myung Hyun, at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. According to a release from the institution, JEROS is estimated to be three times more economical than physically gathering the jellyfish in nets and hauling them out of the water.
But unfortunately, said Robert Condon, a research scientist with the Dauphin Island Sea Lab who studies jellyfish, JEROS the jellyfish-destruction robot may actually create more jellyfish.
"Grinding up jellyfish is a quick fix if it is outside a nuclear power plant, but it doesn't stop the jellyfish from reproducing," he said. "What it probably does is enable more jellyfish to be in a single area.
While the grinder may kill the jellyfish, it is likely not a fine enough grind to destroy the jellyfish's eggs and sperm, said Condon.
"Effectively you are mixing up all the egg and sperm in one spot and increasing the chance of them finding each other," he said. "If it is designed to stop a bloom in a particular area, it won't do that."
YouTube video shows JEROS, the Jellyfish Elimination Robotic Swarm, shredding jellyfish on a test run.
I don't think anyone has yet, Paul.
My daughter's a Taylor Swift fan, so we found this one enlightening.
...
They do a bunch of others - find your favorite!
aimed at replacing thumb drives that it said are difficult to insert into computers.
I seem to remember that my children discovered how to put things in holes the right way round as young toddlers - we even bought them things to learn with!Now let's train those children to put things in holes the right way around when they can't see the thing they're putting in the hole, or the hole itself. Either that, or throw out the computers with USB ports only on the back. :psyduck:
(http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Europa-luna-640x465.jpg)
n a rather intriguing twist, it appears that NASA is now mandated by law to fly a robotic mission to Jupiter’s watery moon Europa. Europa is an incredibly exciting science target, as it’s believed to have a 100-kilometer-thick (62 miles) outer layer of water, with water ice on top (it’s very cold out there) and a liquid water ocean beneath that. It’s believed that there’s more water on Europa than the entirety of Earth, despite being just a quarter the width of Earth. As we continue to learn more about the tenacious lifeforms found in deep, cold waters here on Earth, excitement grows over the possibility of Europa’s oceans harboring extraterrestrial life.
Up until the ’70s, the prevailing theory was that all life on Earth was dependent on energy from the Sun (i.e. everything ultimately revolves around photosynthesizing plants). Then, in 1977, an exploratory dive in the Galapagos Rift discovered giant tube worms, clams, and other crustaceans that survived without any access to the Sun. As it turned out, they were feeding on bacteria that got their energy from hydrogen and hydrogen sulfide emanating from underwater volcanic vents. There was a whole food chain down there that didn’t rely on the Sun at all. Cue much excited theorizing about the possibility of finding life in Europa’s massive oceans.Quote(http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/europa-earth-moon-size-comparison.jpg)
Europa (bottom left), Moon (top left), Earth (right) – size comparison
By the time the Voyager probes had flown through the Jovian system in 1979, scientists were fairly sure that Europa had an icy crust, and possibly a liquid ocean beneath. Further investigation by Galileo and New Horizons have provided yet more data (and some lovely images, such as the one at the top of the story (http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Europa-luna.jpg), captured by Galileo). Now, we’re almost certain that there’s liquid water on Europa — and so the next stage is sending some kind of robotic probe or rover out there, to do some real, up-close-and-personal science.
And this is the weird bit: It seems, thanks to Houston Congressman John Culberson, who appears to be a bit of a science nerd, that NASA is now mandated by law to develop a mission to Europa. Culberson is basically forcing this mission upon NASA: In 2013 and 2014, despite NASA not requesting any money for a Europa mission, Culberson gave it $43 million and $80 million respectively. In the 2014 budget bill (http://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20140113/CPRT-113-HPRT-RU00-h3547-hamdt2samdt_xml.pdf), finalized in December, there’s not a single mention of Mars or the Moon, but Europa’s right there on page 159. Culberson is expected to become the next chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee, too — and if that happens, NASA may find itself very flush indeed. This is rather refreshing, after years of budget cuts/stagnation!Quote(http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/800px-Europa_poster.svg_.png)
Europa poster diagram, showing its (theorized) structure
In an interview with the Houston Chronicle (http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2013/12/love-planetary-science-dying-to-explore-europas-oceans-meet-the-man-who-can-make-it-happen/), Culberson had these rather uplifting words to say about Europa in specific and space exploration in general:QuoteIf I’m successful in becoming chairman of the subcommittee that’s going to be right when the Europa mission will need its maximum funding. It needs to be a flagship mission. The biggest and best we’ve ever flown … I got on this incredible committee where I will be in exactly the right place at the right time to be able to help turn NASA around, to not only preserve America’s leadership role in space, but I also hope to be a key part in discovering life on another world for the first time. We’re only going to have one chance at this in our lifetimes. We’ve got one shot. I want to make sure you and I are here to see those first tube worms and lobsters on Europa.
As for an actual timeline for those first tube worms, if they exist, it’s still very, very early days. It seems, after two years of having money forced upon it, NASA finally caved and actually asked for $15 million in 2015 to help plan the Europa mission. All we really have to go on right now are the words of NASA’s CFO, Elizabeth Robinson, who said the launch could come as soon as the mid-2020s — probably after we launch the next Mars rover in 2020 (http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/160905-nasas-next-mars-rover-will-hunt-for-fossils-and-other-signs-of-life-with-a-microscope).
We are living in interesting times! Who knows, maybe it won’t be the next generation of space telescopes that discovers the first instance of extraterrestrial life — maybe it’ll be a NASA rover, right here in our own Solar System.
http://www.fox.com/watch/183733315515
You owe it to yourself to watch the new Cosmos.
Another extremely cool science follow up! http://www.nbcnews.com/science/there-life-ceres-dwarf-planet-spews-water-vapor-space-2D11970722
In what appeared to be an editing error, a Fox affiliate in Oklahoma managed to remove the only mention of evolution from Sunday night’s Cosmos science documentary by cutting only 15 seconds from the broadcast.
The much-anticipated reboot of Carl Sagan’s legendary Cosmos premiered on Sunday with an overview of the history of the Universe, from the Big Bang to the advent of humans.
It wasn’t until the last 10 minutes of the show that host Neil deGrasse Tyson hinted at human evolution.
“We are newcomers to the Cosmos,” he explained. “Our own story only begins on the last night of the cosmic year.”
“Three and a half million years ago, our ancestors — your and mine left these traces,” Tyson said, pointing to footprints. “We stood up and parted ways from them. Once we were standing on two feet, our eyes were no longer fixated on the ground. Now, we were free to look up and wonder.”
But for viewers of KOKH-TV in Oklahoma City, that 15 second paragraph was replaced by an awkwardly-inserted commercial for the evening news. The edit was caught on video and uploaded to YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8K-LrJkEDc) by Adam Bates.
At least one of the segments advertised in the news promo — a story about a 12-year-old bow hunter (http://www.okcfox.com/story/24927647/12-year-old-luther-boy-hosts-hunting-show) — did air on that evening’s newscast.
Watch the edited and original versions of Cosmos below, broadcast March 9, 2013.
unfortunately, it seems not everyone shares your enthusiasmHeh. Now I kinda wish I had watched that.Quote from: Oklahoma Fox station removes evolution from ‘Cosmos’ by cutting only 15 seconds (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/12/oklahoma-fox-station-removes-evolution-from-cosmos-by-cutting-only-15-seconds/)In what appeared to be an editing error, a Fox affiliate in Oklahoma managed to remove the only mention of evolution from Sunday night’s Cosmos science documentary by cutting only 15 seconds from the broadcast.
The much-anticipated reboot of Carl Sagan’s legendary Cosmos premiered on Sunday with an overview of the history of the Universe, from the Big Bang to the advent of humans.
It wasn’t until the last 10 minutes of the show that host Neil deGrasse Tyson hinted at human evolution.
“We are newcomers to the Cosmos,” he explained. “Our own story only begins on the last night of the cosmic year.”
“Three and a half million years ago, our ancestors — your and mine left these traces,” Tyson said, pointing to footprints. “We stood up and parted ways from them. Once we were standing on two feet, our eyes were no longer fixated on the ground. Now, we were free to look up and wonder.”
But for viewers of KOKH-TV in Oklahoma City, that 15 second paragraph was replaced by an awkwardly-inserted commercial for the evening news. The edit was caught on video and uploaded to YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8K-LrJkEDc) by Adam Bates.
At least one of the segments advertised in the news promo — a story about a 12-year-old bow hunter (http://www.okcfox.com/story/24927647/12-year-old-luther-boy-hosts-hunting-show) — did air on that evening’s newscast.
Watch the edited and original versions of Cosmos below, broadcast March 9, 2013.
I seem to remember that my children discovered how to put things in holes the right way round as young toddlers - we even bought them things to learn with!
Hm. It sounds more like "we have been certain for years, here is another guy confirming this". At least I remember learning the bit about scientists overestimating the mass of Neptune years ago when I learned of Planet X.
Another post-Kuiper Belt dwarf planet makes everyone sound like, "Ok, let's have another look at this."From The Economist, with a little more detail (http://www.economist.com/node/21599753/print).
A satellite that has been in space for 35 years is passing Earth in August (http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/05/nasa-hands-space-enthusiasts-the-keys-to-a-1970s-era-spacecraft/), and it's still working. The news is that NASA has given another company permission to try and reboot it so it can be put to use further. NASA themselves won't do it because all the equipment that they used to communicate with back then has been decomissioned and it's too expensive to bring it back. It's pretty awesome that they're letting someone else give it a shot!
Astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly will take part in an unprecedented study of identical twins to better understand the effects of prolonged weightlessness by comparing the twin in space with the twin on the ground.
When Scott Kelly embarks on a one-year space station stint next spring, his twin brother and retired astronaut Mark Kelly will be joining in from Earth, undergoing medical testing before, during and after his brother's American-record-setting flight.
Mark Kelly draws the line, though, at mimicking his brother's extreme exercise in orbit or eating "crappy space station food."
Longest stay in space ever
This is the genetic double of the 50-year-old astronaut who has volunteered to spend an entire year aboard the International Space Station beginning next March, along with Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, 54, a former paratrooper.
No American has come close to a year; seven months is NASA's maximum for a single human mission. The Russians, on the other hand, are old hands at long-duration spaceflight, claiming title to a record-setting 14 ½-month mission back in 1994-95.
"No second thoughts — I'm actually getting kind of excited about the whole idea as we get closer," Scott said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
Scott knows what he's getting into: He spent five months on the orbiting lab in 2010-2011. He began counting down the days on Twitter in late March.
Eager to explore new medical territory, Scott offered to have a pressure sensor drilled into his skull to study the impaired vision experienced by some long-term space fliers.
He's also volunteered for spinal taps in orbit. He'll share quarters at one point, after all, with an emergency medical doctor-turned-NASA-astronaut. The space station crew typically numbers six.
"As a test pilot, I like to push the envelope on things and, in this case, I feel like I'm maybe trying to push the envelope on data collection as well," explained Scott, a retired Navy captain.
But NASA scientists insist there's no compelling need for implants and spinal taps. They admire his gung-ho attitude, though, and marvel at their good fortune in having a set of identical twins for comparison.
The Kellys represent a scientific gift, said Craig Kundrot, deputy chief scientist for the human research program at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
10 times more time in space for Scott
"Not only are they the same genetically, but one is an astronaut, one's a retired astronaut. So they've followed very similar career paths. After Scott's mission is done, he'll have 540 days of spaceflight (in four missions). Mark will have 54. So exactly a 10-fold difference," Kundrot said.
"That's just an uncanny opportunity that we're taking advantage of."
NASA has selected 10 proposals for the twin study, involving the immune system, gut bacteria, reaction time, fluid shift in space and its potential connection to visual impairment, DNA and RNA molecular science, hardening of the arteries, among others. The researchers will receive a combined $1.5 million from NASA over three years.
A Stanford University sleep specialist and immunologist, Dr. Emmanuel Mignot, wants to give each brother a standard flu shot before, during and after the one-year mission. Blood draws will highlight any differences between the space twin and ground twin, and help researchers better understand changes to the body's immunity in weightlessness.
"No one really knows what happens to the immune system in space for a long period of time and, sooner or later, people are going to need to confront this issue," Mignot said
That's the whole point of Kelly and Kornienko's one-year mission: to identify physical challenges that need to be overcome before astronauts venture to Mars and beyond.
The pair will launch from Kazahkstan aboard a Russian rocket and return via a Russian capsule. Midway through their mission, they'll have a real change of pace.
English soprano Sarah Brightman — perhaps best known for her starring role on stage in The Phantom of the Opera — intends to fly up as a paying passenger in a private deal with the Russians.
"It would be hard to beat her" for breaking the monotony of space, said Scott, a longtime fan of the singer.
Mark, also a retired Navy captain with two daughters, is married to former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who survived a 2011 assassination attempt —while Scott was on the space station. Mark commanded NASA's next-to-last shuttle flight four months after the shooting, then left NASA. They live in Tucson, Arizona.
and your reminder that Thorium reactors can and WILL change the universe. If we pull our heads out of our asses.I'm ashamed to admit that until I read this article in The Economist, I didn't know that Thorium was named after Thor. It is so obvious when pointed out. Asgard's Fire (http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21600656-thorium-element-named-after-norse-god-thunder-may-soon-contribute) indeed.
Now that is awesome. Hey, does anyone know what happens if you go into warp on the surface of a planet?
....Hold on, I'll ask Randall Munroe.
Have we been wrong about Quantum Mechanics? (http://www.wired.com/2014/06/the-new-quantum-reality/?utm_content=buffer561ff&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer)
Think this'll be the one?
(http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/673xvariable_height/public/14-275_0.jpg?itok=C1Gx-pzn)
If only your name could collect frequent flyer miles. NASA is inviting the public to send their names on a microchip to destinations beyond low-Earth orbit, including Mars.
Your name will begin its journey on a dime-sized microchip when the agency’s Orion spacecraft launches Dec. 4 on its first flight, designated Exploration Flight Test-1. After a 4.5 hour, two-orbit mission around Earth to test Orion’s systems, the spacecraft will travel back through the atmosphere at speeds approaching 20,000 mph and temperatures near 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit, before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.
But the journey for your name doesn’t end there. After returning to Earth, the names will fly on future NASA exploration flights and missions to Mars. With each flight, selected individuals will accrue more miles as members of a global space-faring society.
"NASA is pushing the boundaries of exploration and working hard to send people to Mars in the future,” said Mark Geyer, Orion Program manager. "When we set foot on the Red Planet, we’ll be exploring for all of humanity. Flying these names will enable people to be part of our journey."
The deadline for receiving a personal “boarding pass” on Orion’s test flight closes Friday Oct. 31. The public will have an opportunity to keep submitting names beyond Oct. 31 to be included on future test flights and future NASA missions to Mars.
To submit your name to fly on Orion’s flight test, visit:
http://go.usa.gov/vcpz
Join the conversation on social media using the hashtag #JourneyToMars.
For information about Orion and its first flight, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/orion
-end-
QuoteThink this'll be the one?(click to show/hide)
Also no.QuoteThink this'll be the one?(click to show/hide)
How about this one? (http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/10/lockheed-martin-claims-technological-breakthrough-in-compact-fusion/)
Also no.QuoteThink this'll be the one?(click to show/hide)
How about this one? (http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/10/lockheed-martin-claims-technological-breakthrough-in-compact-fusion/)
Many have claimed to be able to do fusion economically, and they've all been bullshit. I'll believe it when I see it.Also no.QuoteThink this'll be the one?(click to show/hide)
How about this one? (http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/10/lockheed-martin-claims-technological-breakthrough-in-compact-fusion/)
Lockheed Martin mocks your pessimism from their money throne.
well, first they need to research superconductors & pre-sentient algorithms.WIN.
it'd be nice to get that movement bonus & attack multiplier for all units though.
i hope they go for adv. ecological engineering afterwards, rather than organic superlubricants; we really need those super-formers, to help mitigate our low planet rating. buut then again, superlubricants does lead directly to adv. space flight, which leads to super tensile solids, & it'd be pretty cool if they could build the space elevator.
In the 22 October Washington Times opinion piece “The feds’ ‘truthy’ new chill on free speech,” Fox News analyst Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, charged that “when the feds get into the business of monitoring speech . . . it is a nightmare. [Truthy] is part of the Obama administration’s persistent efforts to monitor communication and scrutinize the expressions of opinions it hates and fears.”It seems that nobody told them that 'truthy' actually doesn't have a database ...
Being a Republican or a Democrat is a strong predictor of whether one accepts the science on climate change,
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.
What do you mean by that?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.
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.
What do you mean by that?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.
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.
I'm watching live, on NASA TV, the docking of a Russian Progress cargo shipProgress (well, the whole Soyuz family really) is the DC-3 of space.
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."Boiling down the entire video to "this bad weather proves global warming" is more than a bit disingenuous, methinks.
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.Land plants and animals can't live on seawater. So, my guess is no.
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.Land plants and animals can't live on seawater. So, my guess is no.
Recent theoretical progress indicates that spacetime and gravity emerge
together from the entanglement structure of an underlying microscopic theory.
These ideas are best understood in Anti-de Sitter space, where they rely on the
area law for entanglement entropy. The extension to de Sitter space requires
taking into account the entropy and temperature associated with the cosmological
horizon. Using insights from string theory, black hole physics and quantum
information theory we argue that the positive dark energy leads to a thermal
volume law contribution to the entropy that overtakes the area law precisely at
the cosmological horizon. Due to the competition between area and volume law
entanglement the microscopic de Sitter states do not thermalise at sub-Hubble
scales: they exhibit memory effects in the form of an entropy displacement caused
by matter. The emergent laws of gravity contain an additional ‘dark’ gravitational
force describing the ‘elastic’ response due to the entropy displacement. We
derive an estimate of the strength of this extra force in terms of the baryonic
mass, Newton’s constant and the Hubble acceleration scale a0 = cH0, and provide
evidence for the fact that this additional ‘dark gravity force’ explains the
observed phenomena in galaxies and clusters currently attributed to dark matter.
Kari Alitalo had studied lymphatic vessels for more than two decades. So he knew that this network, which carries immune cells throughout the body and removes waste and toxins, didn’t extend into the brain: This had been accepted wisdom for more than 300 years. “Nobody questioned that it stopped at the brain,” says Alitalo, a scientist at the University of Helsinki in Finland.
This was surprising, to say the least: In the 21st century, major findings involving basic human anatomy are rare. “These days, you don’t make discoveries like this,” Alitalo says. “But every once in a while in science, you stumble on something really unexpected. You open a new door, to a whole new world.”
The discovery is much more than a historical footnote. It has major implications for a wide variety of brain diseases, including Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, stroke and traumatic brain injury.
The brain has an amazing capacity for recognizing faces. It can identify a face in a few thousandths of a second, form a first impression of its owner and retain the memory for decades. Central to these abilities is a longstanding puzzle: how the image of a face is encoded by the brain. Two Caltech biologists, Le Chang and Doris Y. Tsao, reported in Thursday’s issue of Cell that they have deciphered the code of how faces are recognized.
Advances in machine learning have been made by training a computerized mimic of a neural network on a given task. Though the networks are successful, they are also a black box because it is hard to reconstruct how they achieve their result.
“This has given neuroscience a sense of pessimism that the brain is similarly a black box,” she said. “Our paper provides a counterexample. We’re recording from neurons at the highest stage of the visual system and can see that there’s no black box. My bet is that that will be true throughout the brain.”
Genes overlap across psychiatric disease
Many genome-wide studies have examined genes associated with a range of neuropsychiatric disorders. However, the degree to which the genetic underpinnings of these diseases differ or overlap is unknown. Gandal et al. performed meta-analyses of transcriptomic studies covering five major psychiatric disorders and compared cases and controls to identify coexpressed gene modules. From this, they found that some psychiatric disorders share global gene expression patterns. This overlap in polygenic traits in neuropsychiatric disorders may allow for better diagnosis and treatment.
Wow Case, I didn't know you were into neurogenetics.
Even knowing that didn't make it any easier to treat them, though. As with this result, I'm not sure what powerful tools you envision coming from this.
Jokes aside: I thought this might lead (at some point in the future) to procedures, tools ... wackamaguffins that make diagnosis easier and more reliable, by giving additional quantifiable & measurable results. I probably added a good dose of cheerful mal-comprehension to my cheerful ignorance.
In what is undoubtedly both the most fascinating and annoying demonstration of everyday fluid physics, my tea always manages to defy gravity and pool onto my desk while I leave the mug to cool. It happened a few times before I figured it out: it leaks out because the tea bag string is acting as a siphon. The string gets wet and sticks to the side of the mug, giving gravity a pull on the tea that lets it dribble out via the path of least resistance. Leaving me with a puddle to clean up. I hate it, but it's so cool!
Noam Chomsky on climate change and the US efforts to accelerate it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdAOgNTxxt0
Chomsky is widely regarded as a way-out-there liberal, but as far as I know he has never made a scientific claim not backed by actual science.
Science is not a liberal conspiracy.
Picture of a black hole:
(https://i.imgur.com/wJ239C6.jpg)
Cataline Sky Survey team informs the species it is no longer appropriate to refer to the moon:
https://twitter.com/WierzchosKacper/status/1232460436634656769?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Welcome, mini-moon!
The point is that math is so freaking specialized that, unless you're one of the two or three people in the world working directly on a particular problem, you're going to have a rough time understanding any of it!There seems to be hidden in this statement an essence that is true, but the statement is not exact. The true essense is that most Mathematicians
can walk into the library, pull out a mathematical journal, flip to the table of contents, and have absolutely no idea what 95% of it is about!"But there is a certain quality, a temperament or even lifestyle, or maybe merely a set of principles regarding how one conducts one's intellectual affairs, which is conducive to working well in Mathematics, that has, mainly, to do with how one approaches the Unknown. It is precisely how one approaches the Unknown which is important, for Mathematics is, foremost, an enterprise dealing with the Unknown, in such a way that moves each part of what was the Unknown that it had touched quickly into the Known. (Affirmators abound, of things of the Known.) Some are not so able to send it to the Known, so they send it as near to the Known as they can, whence lesser avanteurs send it nearer to the Known; eventually, it is sufficiently near the Known that nonavanteous intellects may take it whither they need it. Don't worry much about not understanding something, you can always pause to ponder; some fun courses: