discuss Science & Technology news & discussion

[CraigD]

Post and discuss interesting articles & videos about science and technology.

You don't need to be an expert - just interested in the wonders of modern science, technology, and the history of these fields.

Please keep it rational, and post articles from reputable sources.
Try not to editorialise headlines and keep the copy to just a paragraph with a link to the original source. When quoting excerpts from articles, I think the best method is to italicise the copy, and include a link to the source.

Have some fun with your comments and discussions... just keep the sources legitimate.

Other threads:
The Break Room has a number of other popular threads, so there is no need to post material here that is better suited to these other threads:

- Covid19-Coronavirus updates and news
- Conspiracy Thread Free For All
- The *religious* discussion thread

Please enjoy!

 

[CraigD]

Meet the zeptosecond, the shortest unit of time ever measured

Scientists have measured the shortest unit of time ever: the time it takes a light particle to cross a hydrogen molecule. That time, for the record, is 247 zeptoseconds. A zeptosecond is a trillionth of a billionth of a second, or a decimal point followed by 20 zeroes and a 1.
(source)

 

[Cal2]

This inexpensive kit can make your gas car electric​

“Retrofitting uses what we already have,” he says. “I wanted to take it further by replacing as little of my car as possible. A big sell for retrofitting should be to save money, as you aren’t buying a whole new car. Like me, I think a lot of people want to drive electric for both environmental reasons but also skyrocketing fuel prices. They simply can’t afford it.”
He estimates that the kit could cost around AU$5,000 (around $3,100), or a tenth as much as a gas-to-electric conversion costs now.

The design would give the car around 62 miles of electric range before it switches back to the internal combustion engine. But for a typical commute, that’s far enough that someone could rely solely on electricity most of the time."

---

I could see taking a hard look at such a system for a mostly city used gas vehicle.

 

[J Sokol]

The classic prescription bottle just got a compostable redesign​

Prescription pill bottles—you know the ones, made out of see-through orange plastic with a white plastic locking cap—are ubiquitous. But they’re also ubiquitous in landfills, because they’re notoriously hard to recycle. Now, a team of designers has created a free alternative that can go into your compost bin when your prescription runs out.

Those orange medication bottles you’re familiar with are generally made out of plastic—polypropylene or #5 plastic, specifically. While technically recyclable, it’s actually very rare that it gets recycled. The sorters that recycling centers use to pick up recyclable objects, such as water bottles, often miss prescription bottles due to their small size. And #5 plastics aren’t accepted by all curbside recycling programs. Take Madison County, New York, which simply saysupfront that the prescription pill bottles you get at the pharmacy “are trash.” With 4.55 billion retail prescriptions filled in the U.S. in 2020, that’s a lot of pill bottles ending up in landfills.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90623241/the-classic-prescription-bottle-just-got-a-compostable-redesign

 

[NameInbox]

Turkey is the worst country when it comes to Earthquakes, building codes, and earthquake detection. Turkey has a lot to learn from Japan; Japan has the world’s best earthquake warning system; ingenious.

https://progearthplanetsci.springeropen.com/counter/pdf/10.1186/s40645-018-0221-6.pdf?pdf=button sticky

Yep, and now Turkey will have a Black Sea(North part) full of poison(for now from dead fish, polution from sewerage...hope not radiation soon) after Kakhovka hydroelectric station destroyed by russia.

Environmentalists are sounding the alarm. In a few days, dirty flows from the Kakhovka HPP could reach the shores of Romania and Bulgaria​

https://fakty.com.ua/en/svit/202306...hut-distatysya-beregiv-rumuniyi-ta-bolgariyi/

 

[CraigD]

Trains (1804)were invented before Bicycles(1817).

Bicycles were invented as a volcano eruption killed horses.

Drais built his machine in response to a very serious problem — a dearth of real horses. In 1815, Mount Tambora, in Indonesia, erupted and the ash cloud dispersed around the world a lowered global temperatures. Crops failed and animals, including horses, died of starvation, according to Smithsonian magazine.

The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora was the most powerful volcanic eruption in human history... Around 100 cubic kilometres of rock was blasted into the air... China, Europe, and North America had well-documented below normal temperatures, which devastated their harvests. (source)

OK, this actually blew me away - you would assume that a bicycle would be a much simpler concept to conceive of than a steam-train!

The picture of the otto-bicycle in the article looks like an early version of the Segway. I found this link with more info on this two track format commonly called a 'Dicycle'.
https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/15339/lot/415/

 

[Hakan Yildiz]

The Microbots Are on Their Way
Tiny sensors with tinier legs, stamped out of silicon wafers, could one day soon help fix your cellphone battery or study your brain....
He imagines a wealth of uses for these microbots, which are about the size of a cell. They could crawl into cellphone batteries and clean and rejuvenate them. They might be a boon to neural scientists, burrowing into the brain to measure nerve signals. Millions of them in a petri dish could be used to test ideas in networking and communications....

For details see New York Times article

 

[Digital Nomad]

This is a LIVE YouTube stream about the mission to the moon. Launch is in about 2 and a half hours from now.​

NASA is set to launch the Orion spacecraft to a distant retrograde lunar orbit atop the Space Launch System (SLS) for its maiden launch known as Artemis 1. Launching from Launch Complex 39B, at the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, the Artemis I mission will certify both Orion and the SLS Block 1 rocket for crewed spaceflight; its next mission–aptly named Artemis II–will be crewed, and bring a yet-announced crew to lunar orbit (but will not land on the lunar surface) #artemis1​

 

[koolishman]

Synthetic human embryos created in groundbreaking advance​

Scientists have created synthetic human embryos using stem cells, in a groundbreaking advance that sidesteps the need for eggs or sperm.

Scientists say these model embryos, which resemble those in the earliest stages of human development, could provide a crucial window on the impact of genetic disorders and the biological causes of recurrent miscarriage.

However, the work also raises serious ethical and legal issues as the lab-grown entities fall outside current legislation in the UK and most other countries.

The structures do not have a beating heart or the beginnings of a brain, but include cells that would typically go on to form the placenta, yolk sac and the embryo itself.

 

[koolishman]

Key building block of life found on ocean world orbiting Saturn​

A key chemical building block of life has been found on Saturn’s moon Enceladus.

Phosphorus was detected in salty ice grains that were released into space by plumes that erupt between the cracks of the moon’s ice shell.

An ocean exists beneath the thick, icy surface of Enceladus, and plumes of material regularly release from geysers at the moon’s south pole.

That material becomes incorporated into Saturn’s outermost E ring.

 

[CraigD]

Meet the zeptosecond, the shortest unit of time ever measured

Scientists have measured the shortest unit of time ever: the time it takes a light particle to cross a hydrogen molecule.

That time, for the record, is 247 zeptoseconds. A zeptosecond is a trillionth of a billionth of a second, or a decimal point followed by 20 zeroes and a 1.

The actual shortest possible time interval that can technically be measured is planck-time (see planck-units):

The Planck time is the time it takes for a photon to travel a distance equal to the Planck length: = 1.62 × 10-35 m. and is the shortest possible time interval that can be measured. With its associated Planck length, the Planck time defines the scale at which current physical theories fail.
(Source)

Here is a great video that shows the order of magnitudes from the universe down to the planck-length, which I believe is a number of orders of magnitude smaller than the distance covered by a photon in a zeptosecond as described in the original article above.

 

[koolishman]

Trains (1804)were invented before Bicycles(1817).

Bicycles were invented as a volcano eruption killed horses.

Drais built his machine in response to a very serious problem — a dearth of real horses. In 1815, Mount Tambora, in Indonesia, erupted and the ash cloud dispersed around the world a lowered global temperatures. Crops failed and animals, including horses, died of starvation, according to Smithsonian magazine.

 

[J Sokol]

Amazon’s Ring is the largest civilian surveillance network the US has ever seen

In a 2020 letter to management, Max Eliaser, an Amazon software engineer, said Ring is “simply not compatible with a free society”. We should take his claim seriously.

Ring video doorbells, Amazon’s signature home security product, pose a serious threat to a free and democratic society. Not only is Ring’s surveillance network spreading rapidly, it is extending the reach of law enforcement into private property and expanding the surveillance of everyday life. What’s more, once Ring users agree to release video content to law enforcement, there is no way to revoke access and few limitations on how that content can be used, stored, and with whom it can be shared.

Ring is effectively building the largest corporate-owned, civilian-
installed surveillance network that the US has ever seen.

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ring-largest-civilian-surveillance-network-us

 

[Cannuck]

Found this today... we've been discussing many of these breakthroughs

SPINLAUNCH

Also, the video following discusses Hempcrete

 

[koolishman]

Love stem cells. If i lose finger, a limb, arm even a leg; i should he able to grow a new 1 using stem cells.

In humans, this seems far off at present, from what I read.

But yes, it will progress.

 

[koolishman]

Cool video about fractals in nature.

 

[koolishman]

The ability to move single atoms — the smallest particles of any element in the universe — is crucial to IBM's research in the field of atomic memory. But even nanophysicists need to have a little fun. In that spirit, IBM researchers used a scanning tunneling microscope to move thousands of carbon monoxide molecules (two atoms stacked on top of each other), all in pursuit of making a movie so small it can be seen only when you magnify it 100 million times. A movie made with atoms


A Boy And His Atom: The world's Smallest Movie.

 

[Mister Funsky]

The one thing(s) that has always fascinated me is what we know to be there but cant explain...dark matter and dark energy. It will likely be more mind boggling than many expect, once we understand.

A billion tiny pendulums could detect the universe's missing mass

"Dark matter makes up about 27% of the universe; ordinary matter, such as the stuff that builds stars and planets, accounts for just 5% of the cosmos. (A mysterious entity called dark energy accounts for the other 68%.)"

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201014160510.htm

 

[koolishman]

Pedestrian safety was a key concern for inventors back in 1920s and 30s.


This archive footage from 1939 shows two Sheffield based engineers demonstrating a new scooping invention for the front of your car that potentially staves off injury to pedestrians if you were to hit them...

But Germans were the first to try it, most likely.

Pedestrian Safety Device Demonstrated - Berlin 1927

 

[Sutruk]

Could Planet 9 be a primordial black hole?

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-planet-primordial-black-hole.html

"For several years, astronomers and cosmologists have theorized about the existence of an additional planet with a mass 10 times greater than that of Earth, situated in the outermost regions of the solar system. This hypothetical planet, dubbed Planet 9, could be the source of gravitational effects that would explain the unusual patterns in the orbits of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) highlighted by existing cosmological data. TNOs are celestial bodies that orbit the sun and are located beyond Neptune"

"Building on studies conducted over the past few years, Jakub Scholtz and James Unwin, two researchers at Durham University and the University of Illinois at Chicago, have recently carried out an investigation exploring the possibility that Planet 9 is a primordial black hole."

Is Planet Nine a black hole or a planet? Harvard scientists suggest a way to find out.

https://astronomy.com/news/2020/07/...-harvard-scientists-suggest-a-way-to-find-out

"Since 2016, some scientists have suspected that a massive, unseen world may be lurking in the outer solar system — a world called Planet Nine. The evidence comes from the strange orbits of some smaller objects past Neptune that all seem to be influenced by a bulky, hidden planet far beyond Pluto. But then, just last year, scientists thought of another explanation, and it’s straight out of sci-fi. The researchers proposed that the so-called Planet Nine isn’t a planet at all. Instead, they suggest that the solar system could be home to one of the universe’s earliest black holes: a primordial black hole."

 

[The Durfer]

save the ocean's ecology system:

kenny chesney's charity fund "noshoesreef" is helping make a new reef off of floridas coast. Heres the link to the charity:

https://reefballfoundation.org/donate/

 

[CraigD]

One proof is enough. Despite air friction water moves along parabolas in the movie below. And Moon dust trajectories had to be even more perfect parabolic arcs, how small the particle sizes are.

"Scientists" are scared of the deepstate and can't tell the truth directly.

Russia says in its RT.com advertisements , we were the first in the space (slightly above the Earth). Ok, but if you are at least 60 years behind US in the space race why be proud of it.

I think US and Russia made a deal. US would "beat" Russia in space race, and then can leave gold standard, and a war would start in the middleeast between Israel and arabs, and this would be an excuse for increasing oil price 3-4 fold, and US would switch to petro-dollar standard and could get more debt, and Russia would make more money from higher oil prices, ..for a while at least , like 50-60 years..

....
Images of the Earth can be added later to pictures. I would prefer to see a movie of it.

Proof we landed on the Moon is in the dust | Popular Science (popsci.com)
https://www.popsci.com/blog-network/vintage-space/proof-we-landed-moon-dust/

There is an entire study by real scientists devoted to this effect.

"Because the dust in the images is so fine it was impossible to track any individual grains. Instead, they used the top of the dust cloud as their marker. Tracking the movement of the dust cloud clearly shows characteristic rooster tails and not the simple parabolic arc of a dust cloud we would see produced by a rover driving through, say, dust on Earth. This specific rooster tail shape is contingent on the lunar environment: the initial velocity of dust particles based on the rover’s speed, the gravitational field strength that is one-sixth what we have on Earth, and the complete lack of air resistance because the Moon has no appreciable atmosphere. Turning this visual data in to formulas allowed Hsu and Horányi to plot the movement of dust on a graph, turning the Grand Prix’s rooster tails into a mathematical visualization."

And here is your film footage (hand held super-8, and B+W television camera) of the Earth from Apollo 8 in orbit around the Moon.

This is a thread about science and technology - not about Deepstate conspiracy theories

 

[koolishman]

Bouncing seismic waves reveal distinct layer in Earth's inner core​

By measuring the different speeds at which these waves penetrate and pass through the Earth’s inner core, the researchers believe they’ve documented evidence of a distinct layer inside Earth known as the innermost inner core -- a solid “metallic ball” that sits within the centre of the inner core.

Not long ago it was thought Earth’s structure was comprised of four distinct layers: the crust, the mantle, the outer core and the inner core. The findings, published in Nature Communications, confirm there is a fifth layer.

“The existence of an internal metallic ball within the inner core, the innermost inner core, was hypothesized about 20 years ago. We now provide another line of evidence to prove the hypothesis,” Dr Thanh-Son Phạm, from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences, said.

​

 

[Samer]

Turkey is the worst country when it comes to Earthquakes, building codes, and earthquake detection. Turkey has a lot to learn from Japan; Japan has the world’s best earthquake warning system; ingenious.

https://progearthplanetsci.springer....1186/s40645-018-0221-6.pdf?pdf=button sticky

 

[Cal2]

Team claims to successfully replicate LK-99, raising hopes of a new kind of superconductor​

The world could be a step closer to a new kind of superconductor that physics enthusiasts are likening to the invention of the transistor.

On Tuesday, a team at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, said it had successfully synthesized the LK-99 crystal, as well as verified that the material could levitate slightly on both orientations of a magnetic field. If so, that increases hopes that a superconductor that works at room temperature and ambient pressure could be manufactured, a potential breakthrough that has been described as the “holy grail of physics.”
That would have far-reaching effects ranging from desktop quantum computers to ultraefficient continent-spanning power lines that could address climate change.