The Cool Science Stuff Thread

[Cleopatra]

Lucky. Is that the one with the photo of Pete Best, the Fifth Charged Particle Beam?

-nods-

I really enjoyed "My My My Radio" from that band. Had some deep longing...

 

[DeepGreenEyes]

How Nazi Scientists Tried to Create an Army of Talking Dogs.

 

[islandman]

How Nazi Scientists Tried to Create an Army of Talking Dogs.

Flash-forward 70ish years and we have:

http://images.wikia.com/familyguy/images/1/12/Brian_Griffin.png

 

[phrodeau]

How Nazi Scientists Tried to Create an Army of Talking Dogs.

http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/up/featurette-the-dog-pack

 

[Byron In Exile]

Flash-forward 70ish years and we have:

Flash-forward 51 years more:

http://images.juniorslayouts.com/picture/1/a/astro_the_dog_the_jetsons-4473.jpg

 

[Rolando2]

Caught on film!!

and mor proof!

 

[HB1965]

Mini-Black holes

 

[stephen55]

Mini-Black holes

"By contrast, the event horizon for a mini black hole is smaller even than the diameter of an atom. This means that a mini black hole can zip through an entire planet and still have very little chance of veering close enough to an atom for it to pass the event horizon."

Damn!!

They obviously haven't found the "single sock eating black holes" that regularly go through my clothes dryer.

 

[DeepGreenEyes]

Flash-forward 70ish years and we have:

Brian, Spawn of Mengele.

http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/up/featurette-the-dog-pack

Damn.

Those are some Nazi-worthy canines.

Flash-forward 51 years more:

http://images.juniorslayouts.com/picture/1/a/astro_the_dog_the_jetsons-4473.jpg

I would love to see Astro joyfully knock over Der Fuhrer after a long day at the bunker. "Renocide?! Ruh Roh."

 

[HB1965]

"By contrast, the event horizon for a mini black hole is smaller even than the diameter of an atom. This means that a mini black hole can zip through an entire planet and still have very little chance of veering close enough to an atom for it to pass the event horizon."

Damn!!

They obviously haven't found the "single sock eating black holes" that regularly go through my clothes dryer.

haha! Yup

 

[rosco rathbone]

Next 40 Years of Exoplanets

Livestreaming from MIT now

http://amps-web.amps.ms.mit.edu/public/EAPS/2011/exoPlanets-may27/

 

[islandman]

They obviously haven't found the "single sock eating black holes" that regularly go through my clothes dryer.

Very nice.

 

[stephen55]

Exoplanets are a great example of not only science in action but until recently, science in inaction.

Planets outside of our solar system have been speculated upon for centuries. Back in the late 1500's, Giordano Bruno stated that all the stars in the night sky were suns, just like our own and that they were surrounded by planets.

There were some reports of exoplanets, theorized by orbital anomalies in some star systems as early as 1855. The first confirmed report of an exoplanet was made in 1988. Since then, there have been about 550 confirmed exoplanets discovered. NASA's Kepler mission has found over a thousand possible exoplanets and will likely find several thousand more.

What I find interesting is that the possibility of exoplanets was never really in doubt, at least since the publication of Newton's Principia (1687) but that was not the same thing as genuine evidence of exoplanets. Science only deals with what is observable and verifiable.

So, while the possible existence of exoplanets may have been based on sound principles, until verifiable data came along, science quite properly had nothing to say about their actual existence.

The same principles apply to the possibility of extra-solar intelligent life. Given the vastness of the universe, the (now) genuine existence of extra-solar planets and how quickly life arose on Earth after it's formation, I see no reasonable objection to the existence of other civilizations out there. But until genuine data is at hand, that possibility will remain just that; a possibility.

 

[phrodeau]

Extraterrestrial civilizations would probably be a big so-what in the end.

Let's say we found solid evidence of an active civilization only ten light-years away. We fire off a message with the hopes that 1) they can understand it, 2) they are interested in us, and 3) they reply. After twenty years in transmission, if we get a reply, will we understand it and still be interested in them? And how many decades would it take to have a decent conversation?

It would be akin to learning a foreign language, only to find that none of the speakers of that language you meet have anything interesting to say.

 

[stephen55]

I think real data about an extra-terrestrial civilization would hardly be a so what.

While communication and understanding would be very problematic, that would not be anywhere as profound as actually knowing that we are not alone in the universe.

What a shake up that would be!!

 

[islandman]

Beneath Jerusalem, an underground city takes shape

JERUSALEM – Underneath the crowded alleys and holy sites of old Jerusalem, hundreds of people are snaking at any given moment through tunnels, vaulted medieval chambers and Roman sewers in a rapidly expanding subterranean city invisible from the streets above.

At street level, the walled Old City is an energetic and fractious enclave with a physical landscape that is predominantly Islamic and a population that is mainly Arab.

Underground Jerusalem is different: Here the noise recedes, the fierce Middle Eastern sun disappears, and light comes from fluorescent bulbs. There is a smell of earth and mildew, and the geography recalls a Jewish city that existed 2,000 years ago.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ml_israel_underground_jerusalem

 

[neci]

Atmosphere Above Japan Heated Rapidly Before M9 Earthquake

that is fascinating.

New Species found.

cool!

JERUSALEM – Underneath the crowded alleys and holy sites of old Jerusalem, hundreds of people are snaking at any given moment through tunnels, vaulted medieval chambers and Roman sewers in a rapidly expanding subterranean city invisible from the streets above.

At street level, the walled Old City is an energetic and fractious enclave with a physical landscape that is predominantly Islamic and a population that is mainly Arab.

Underground Jerusalem is different: Here the noise recedes, the fierce Middle Eastern sun disappears, and light comes from fluorescent bulbs. There is a smell of earth and mildew, and the geography recalls a Jewish city that existed 2,000 years ago.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ml_israel_underground_jerusalem

i wish i had something fancy to say in response to the article, but i'm at a loss for words. i hope they take care in the preservation of everything, so it can be shared with the world.

 

[islandman]

i wish i had something fancy to say in response to the article, but i'm at a loss for words. i hope they take care in the preservation of everything, so it can be shared with the world.

Sadly, it's a fuse to the powder-keg....one of many fuses to the same powder-keg.

 

[neci]

Sadly, it's a fuse to the powder-keg....one of many fuses to the same powder-keg.

here's to wishful thinking.

 

[stephen55]

And now, back to the LHC...

LHC experiments dive into the quark gluon plasma

http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/overlay2_masspeak_Hi-1-300x288.jpg
The highest peak on the graph shows the production of tightly bound upsilons in both proton-proton and heavy-ion collisions. The bumps outlined in dotted blue show the production of the two other upsilon states in proton-proton collisions, while the red line shows the same production in heavy-ion collisions.


I don't have a clue what any of this means but damn!!

...it's cool...

 

[phrodeau]

I think real data about an extra-terrestrial civilization would hardly be a so what.

While communication and understanding would be very problematic, that would not be anywhere as profound as actually knowing that we are not alone in the universe.

What a shake up that would be!!

Hardly. For centuries, people have believed in fairies, gnomes, leprechauns, elves, dryads, naiads, mermaids, vampires, imps, gremlins, banshees, yetis and little green men without getting too shaken up.

 

[Sinny]

Hardly. For centuries, people have believed in fairies, gnomes, leprechauns, elves, dryads, naiads, mermaids, vampires, imps, gremlins, banshees, yetis and little green men without getting too shaken up.

You left out unicorns.

http://laurenoutloud.com/main/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/unicorn-sparkle.gif

 

[JustaSCOUNDREL]

"By contrast, the event horizon for a mini black hole is smaller even than the diameter of an atom. This means that a mini black hole can zip through an entire planet and still have very little chance of veering close enough to an atom for it to pass the event horizon."

Damn!!

They obviously haven't found the "single sock eating black holes" that regularly go through my clothes dryer.

Reminds me of a cartoon I saw several years ago A big machine with bells, whistles, gears and puffing steam. Two naval officers are looking at it. One says to the other. "As laundry officer you need to know this is the machine that rips the buttons off the shirts and shoots them through the socks."

We had one of those machines on every damn ship I ever served in.

Mike

 

[Byron In Exile]

LHC experiments dive into the quark gluon plasma

http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/overlay2_masspeak_Hi-1-300x288.jpg
The highest peak on the graph shows the production of tightly bound upsilons in both proton-proton and heavy-ion collisions. The bumps outlined in dotted blue show the production of the two other upsilon states in proton-proton collisions, while the red line shows the same production in heavy-ion collisions.


I don't have a clue what any of this means but damn!!

...it's cool...

They're making glueball soup with a sprinkling of mesons.

 

[Saint Peter]

Something fishy is going on at 9.4 GeV/c^2.