Near death experiences explained, sort of - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23672150
Neat use of recycled plastic bottles, water, and sunlight, to create âlampsâ during the day time:
Anybody been watching the Perseids? Light pollution here isnât great but Iâve been at the beach with people from NYC so they are shocked at the number of visible stars and seeing some of their first shooting stars
Just came across this channel, so much cool tech and science news
Living Food, freaky
I caught a spectacular Perseids a few years ago. Sadly, nowadays, I live smack in the middle of Michiganâs capital city. Iâd have to travel about a half hour in any direction before getting to some decent seeing conditions.
3-D printing making liver tissue.
Thereâs a Radiolab segment about a guy that loses all emotion after having a brain tumor removed. And he becomes basically unable to make any decisions.
I canât find it but I also heard once that there are a few rare cases of people who canât feel pain. But they end up with arthritis at a young age from bending their joints backwards and near blind from scratched up corneas.
More stuff about warp drives.
Not science-related, per se, but it looks like the closest thing we have to a living superhero is going to be on jury duty:
http://www.ilyke.net/uploads/2013/09/16/sub/36765-ilyke.net-large-36765-TTJAec9.jpg
Lawl, if that was me Id probably be sitting next to the defendant after a quip like that. Well played though using precise metric to dodge a bullet.
Iâve always wanted to know what the point of transition between quantum mechanics and classical physics is. It seems to be just a few molecules. This is a good article that explains that change over, donât be fooled by the title.
link wonât load article for UK =/
[details=Spoiler]How cold is it in space? That question is sure to prompt the geeks among us to pipe up with â2.7Kâ. For 2.7 Kelvin, or 2.7 degrees above absolute zero, is the temperature produced by the uniform background radiation or âafterglowâ from the Big Bang.
But hang on. Evidently you donât hit temperatures that low the moment you step outside the Earthâs atmosphere. Heat is streaming from the Sun to warm the Earth, and it will also warm other objects exposed to its rays. Take the Moon, which has virtually no atmosphere to complicate things. On the sunlit side the Moon is hotter than the Sahara â it can top 120C (248F). But on the dark side it can drop to around minus 170C (â338F).
So just how cold can it go in our own cosmic neighbourhood? This isnât an idle question. If youâre thinking of sending spacecraft up there, let alone people, you need to know the answer. You also need to know the answer if you want to carry out low-temperature physics experiments in space precisely because you think it is that cold.
Of course, you can do low-temperature physics experiments on Earth if you want to ,say, study particle behaviour at the atomic level â liquid-helium coolant sends temperatures below 4K (â269C/â452F) in the lab, and some experiments have come to within just a few billionths of a kelvin of absolute zero. But some planned studies also demand zero gravity. You can get that on Earth for a short time in freefall air flights, but for longer than a few seconds you need to go into space.
One such experiment, called MAQRO, hopes to test fundamental features of quantum theory and perhaps search for subtle effects in a quantum picture of gravity â something that physicists can so far see only in the haziest terms. So the scientists behind MAQRO have now worked out whether it will in fact be possible to get cold enough, on a spacecraft carrying the equipment, for the tests to work.
MAQRO was proposed last year by Rainer Kaltenbaek and Markus Aspelmeyer of the University of Vienna, and their collaborators. The experiment aims to study one of the most profound puzzles in quantum theory: how or why do the rules that govern fundamental particles like electrons and atoms, give way to the âclassicalâ physics of the everyday world? Why do quantum particles sometimes behave like waves whereas footballs donât?
No one fully understands this so-called quantum-to-classical transition. But one of the favourite explanations invokes an idea called decoherence, which means that in effect the quantum behaviour of a system gets jumbled and ultimately erased because of the disruptive effects of the environment. These effects become stronger the more particles the system contains, because then there are more options for the environment to interfere. For objects large enough to see, containing countless trillions of atoms, decoherence happens in an instant, washing out quantum effects in favour of classical behaviour.
In this picture, it should be possible to preserve âquantum-nessâ in any system, no matter how big, if you could isolate it perfectly from its environment. In principle, even footballs would then show wave-particle duality and could exist in two states, or two places, at once. But some theories, as yet still speculative and untested, insist that something else will prevent this weird behaviour in large, massive objects, perhaps because of effects that would disclose something about a still elusive quantum theory of gravity.
So the stakes for MAQRO could be big. The experimental apparatus itself wouldnât be too exotic. Kaltenbaek and colleagues propose to use laser beams to place a âbigâ particle (about a tenth of a micrometre across) in two quantum states at once, called a superposition, and then to probe with the lasers how decoherence destroys this superposition (or not). The apparatus would have to be very cold because, as with most quantum effects, heat would disrupt a delicate superposition. And performing the experiment in zero gravity on a spacecraft could show whether gravity does indeed play a role in the quantum-to-classical transition. Putting it all on a spacecraft would be about as close to perfect isolation from the environment as one can imagine.
But now Kaltenbaek and colleagues, in collaboration with researchers at leading European space-technology company Astrium Satellites in Friedrichshafen, Germany, have worked out just how cold the apparatus could really get. They imagine sticking a âbenchâ with all the experimental components on the back of a disk-shaped spacecraft, with the disk, and several further layers of thermal insulation, shielding it from the Sun. So while the main body of the spacecraft would be kept at about 300K (27C/80F), which its operating equipment would require, the bench could be much colder.
But how much? The researchers calculate that, with three thermal shields between the main disk of the spacecraft and the bench, it should be possible to get the temperature of the bench itself down to 27K (â246C/â411F). Much of the warming would come through the struts holding the bench and shields to the main disk.
Thatâs not really cold enough for the MAQRO experiment to work well. But the test particle itself would be held in free space above the bench, and this would be colder. On its own it could reach 8K (â265C/â445F), but with all the other experimental components around it, all radiating heat, it reaches 16K (â257C/â430F). This, they calculate, would be enough to test the decoherence rates predicted for all the major theories which currently propose that intrinsic mass (perhaps via gravity) will enforce decoherence in a large object. In other words, MAQRO should be cold enough to spot if these models are wrong.
Could the experiment discriminate between any theories that arenât ruled out? Thatâs another matter, which remains to be seen. But simply knowing that size matters in quantum mechanics would be a major finding. The bigger question, of course, is whether anyone will consider MAQRO â a cheap experiment as space science goes â worth a shot.[/details]
Quantum decoherence is one of the most perplexing events in nature next to the uncertainty principle. The fact that all these individual subatomic particles jostle around in a unpredictable state and whereabouts unknown, and yet can still form objects capable of being measured by the width of a few molecules is utterly perplexing.
Superposition I can wrap my head around, but accepting that uncertainty is written into the very fabric of our reality is KARAZAY!! I can see why Einstein didnât want to believe it either.
I remember reading that a few weeks ago. Itâs sad how our âjusticeâ system operates.
SCIENCE RULZ!
The full Dawkins interview on the Daily Show.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-september-24-2013/exclusive---richard-dawkins-extended-interview-pt--1
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-september-24-2013/exclusive---richard-dawkins-extended-interview-pt--2
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-september-24-2013/exclusive---richard-dawkins-extended-interview-pt--3
Nothing really new for anyone here, Iâm sure, but I think The Daily Show is a great vehicle for science popularizers. Stewart has a knack for asking the right questions to draw out concise, communicative responses. He plays a great Watson.
Dawkins? LMAO. Thatâs the same guy right who kept talking about the bible claiming the earth was 7,000 therefore the belief in the bible should be disregarded just because of that scientific error? Really now.
Whatâs funny about atheism and there fake ass science is also there fake ass scientists. I mean isnât it common sense that when a text dating back in ancient BC speaks of a number of years, wouldnât that number of years actually be more when counting back to our time? Itâs just basic common sense addition right, kinda sad for a scientist to not even have that common sense of addition, LMAO. And isnât it grade school knowledge that the word âearthâ in ancient times (especially palestine) was what they called the ground and not the planet because well i mean, grade 5 taught us that people of that part of that world and in that part in time didnât call our planet âearthâ. Itâs really sad for a scientist like that to make such accusations with out double checking grade school math and history⌠But yes, atheists eat this fraudâs shit, regardless of him not having any notible works in science other than anti-theism books⌠itâs just like a fundie christian who eats up the popes shit⌠but i know atheism loves to pose the science card around as if it represents them, and then when smacked to show ground 1 science which is an example, we get âi donât know⌠i donât need to show proof⌠youâre wrongâ concluding that there âscienceâ is baseless and nothing more than hogged up google websites.
*raises championship belt.
I have to go out with a bang, right? and this is what the guyâs with the JCVD avatars challenged me to do so. I have no problem demonstrating my second area of legacy.