Science - a symposium. (Feat. SMBP)

[Nique]

I've been watching Cosmos alongside a few other specials on astrophysics and admittedly sometimes I'm not so much watching it as I am passed out in front of it with a melted bowel of ice cream in my lap, but it's all still pretty amazing.

I have some concerns regarding the age of the universe. If time moves more slowly and, practically, stands still within the event horizon of black holes, does that mean that parts of the universe are actually younger than others? We currently think the universe is about 13,000,000,000 years old but time is not as linear as we tend to think since it is affected by gravity.

Also! Did you know that if a star goes supernova in a certain way it can create a gigantic death-ray that would wipe out anything in it's path with a beam of gamma radiation? I thought that was pretty wild.

Anyway, yeah, space. It's big. Really really big, and there's a lot of weird stuff out there!

[A Zarkin' Frood]

I was watching German astrodude Harald Lesch on TV some years ago and recently youtube'd his stuff because I always thought shit be fascinating. He's not one of the dudes who get boring mathy unless it's absolutely necessary. Which is kinda essential for me because my shitty education only covered Kindergarten level maths.

He also one time blamed communists for stealing his chalk.

EDIT: I made two icons because I can shit them out in five seconds with the help of google and an image editor that is not photoshop, but one didn't get saved and now the program doesn't work and I'm too lazy to make it again. Luckily, it was the serious one that got lost.

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/4839/satans.png

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I think we should have a sticky for science topic. Like I pretty regularly read interesting science news which I think people would enjoy but not really long enough for a thread but doesnt' work in the links thread.

The best communist science stealing story was this visitng professor from Moscow I was talking to. He had worked in Soviet Russia on gold/TiO2/ethanol systems. He had massive chunks of gold just sitting on his desk, nobody touched it but he had to lock up his ethanol at night

[Amake]

There should be a theoretical speed of time in a gravity-less vacuum. I say theoretical because there's nowhere in the universe completely without gravity. But it would be interesting to measure the age of the universe from a reference point where there's been the least possible time dilation since the universe began. I bet the universe would be like ten times older there than it is on Earth.

Yes, that last sentence is a chronologically sound statement.

And speaking of death rays, how about that galaxy where the central black hole is consuming large amounts of stars to shoot a plasma jet out several hundred thousand light years at a right angle to the galaxy? I don't remember the details, but man, it's a plasma gun powered by detonating suns.

[Azisien]

On the OP title, I would be interested in a science-y sticky akin to our political sticky.

On the OP content, as you say the age of the universe is only our best estimate. The measurement is riding heavily on the assumption that the various models they use are accurate. I guess you could generalize that to like, everything in science, but they are really really riding on it.

[Fenris]

Thread stuck.

Let this be the place for science related topics that would otherwise not warrant their own thread or something like that.

[shiney]

Updated thread title.

In re: post icon, these balls aren't gonna suck themselves

[Kyanbu The Legend]

I've been watching Cosmos alongside a few other specials on astrophysics and admittedly sometimes I'm not so much watching it as I am passed out in front of it with a melted bowel of ice cream in my lap, but it's all still pretty amazing.

I have some concerns regarding the age of the universe. If time moves more slowly and, practically, stands still within the event horizon of black holes, does that mean that parts of the universe are actually younger than others? We currently think the universe is about 13,000,000,000 years old but time is not as linear as we tend to think since it is affected by gravity.

Also! Did you know that if a star goes supernova in a certain way it can create a gigantic death-ray that would wipe out anything in it's path with a beam of gamma radiation? I thought that was pretty wild.

Anyway, yeah, space. It's big. Really really big, and there's a lot of weird stuff out there!


No I did not know that, sounds like it would hurt like a bitch if such a thing hit earth.

[Arhra]

Don't worry, your death (and the death of everything else on the planet) would be practically instantaneous.

[Nique]

Heard that Higgs Boson might not be a thing after all, which, is that huge tunnel useful for anything else?

[Nique]

In re: post icon, these balls aren't gonna suck themselves

Through the power of science, they just might!

[Azisien]

Heard that Higgs Boson might not be a thing after all, which, is that huge tunnel useful for anything else?

Yeah it explores high level particle physics like nothing else and will do so for years. At least that's what the scientists will tell you.

Was it worth it? The LHC was pretty expensive, it might be a bit of a stretch. It did help the forefront of a lot of construction and engineering fields though.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

There should be a theoretical speed of time in a gravity-less vacuum. I say theoretical because there's nowhere in the universe completely without gravity. But it would be interesting to measure the age of the universe from a reference point where there's been the least possible time dilation since the universe began. I bet the universe would be like ten times older there than it is on Earth.

Yes, that last sentence is a chronologically sound statement.

And speaking of death rays, how about that galaxy where the central black hole is consuming large amounts of stars to shoot a plasma jet out several hundred thousand light years at a right angle to the galaxy? I don't remember the details, but man, it's a plasma gun powered by detonating suns.

Fact: The more we learn about space, the more we crap our selves at the varies ways that we can be instantanously wiped out with little effort on the universe's part.

Seriously the universe continues to be bat shit terrorifing.

[shiney]

And yet, billions of years in, here we still are. At least if the universe decides that it's Had Enough Of That Uppity Earth, we most likely won't have a clue about it until we're all dead.

[Nique]

Earth's magnetic shield, among other things, has protected us from major devastation. Also space is big and we're tiny! The odds of something really dangerous hitting us, as we are, are pretty low.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Keep it down...

The Universe might hear you. >_>;

[Azisien]

I believe I read this somewhere. Jupiter's magnetosphere also protects the inner solar system from a lot of grief, because it is so massive that it attracts or deflects most of it. And it is pretty massive. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetosphere_of_Jupiter) (It's larger gravity well would do the same, usually)

[Kyanbu The Legend]

And now I love Jupiter. Best planet in the system. Cause it helps protect us from cosmic annialation.

Jupiter's a pretty cool gal.

[Osterbaum]

Hasn't Jupiter supposedly also protected us from asteroids and meteorites?

[Aerozord]

Fact: The more we learn about space, the more we crap our selves at the varies ways that we can be instantanously wiped out with little effort on the universe's part.

Seriously the universe continues to be bat shit terrorifing.
its why we need to spread out past the earth. Dont want all your eggs in one basket.
Hasn't Jupiter supposedly also protected us from asteroids and meteorites?

I heard that if jupiter didn't intercept shoemaker-levy that it might have hit earth. Not sure if thats a hypothetical could have, or if there is math there, but still

[Kyanbu The Legend]

its why we need to spread out past the earth. Dont want all your eggs in one basket.


I heard that if jupiter didn't intercept shoemaker-levy that it might have hit earth. Not sure if thats a hypothetical could have, or if there is math there, but still

And also because Earth is starting to become over populated. The developement of space colonies and terraforming planets inn the next century is a must at the rate our population is growing.

[McTahr]

And now I love Jupiter. Best planet in the system. Cause it helps protect us from cosmic annialation.

Jupiter's a pretty cool gal.

This is why fatties need love too.

The sad thing about actually being a scientist is that the day-to-day level of grunt work and tedium never really seems to translate into the glamorized ideal of the scientist that the media likes to play up. Like my research would be an automatic snoozefest, it's that bad.

[Osterbaum]

And also because Earth is starting to become over populated.
Yes, well this is a problem that could also be solved by more efficient use of resources, effective recycling, accepting a lower standard of living (in terms of material anyways) and population control. Just spreading out elswhere seems kind of a cop-out.

e: Like my research would be an automatic snoozefest, it's that bad.
What's it about?

[Gregness]

Okay, I was planning on making a thread about his eventually, but I suppose since we have a sticky for this sort of thing now this'd be a better place for it.

So, essentially, a psychology research paper got published last week discussing new ways to measure personality differences between genders. (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0029265#top) Apparantly, it is generally accepted that personality-wise, the two genders are more similar than different and this paper challenges that conclusion on the basis of methodology.


Univariate Versus Multivariate Effect Sizes.

Since personality is a multidimensional construct, the question of how to quantify the overall magnitude of sex differences in personality is far from trivial. A common way of dealing with multiple effect sizes is to simply average them. For Big Five traits, the average absolute effect size across studies is = .16 to .19, corresponding to an overlap of about 87% between the male and female distributions [11], [16]. When narrower traits are measured, average effect sizes increase somewhat. For example, Costa and colleagues [49] analyzed sex differences in FFM facets; their average effect sizes were = .24 (US adults) and = .19 (adults from other countries). As reported above, Booth and Irwing [54] found = .26 for observed scores on the 15 primary factors of the 16PF. Finally, the average effect size in Weisberg and colleagues [53] was = .21 for the Big Five and = .26 for the ten FFM aspects (uncorrected raw scores).

The problem with this approach is that it fails to provide an accurate estimate of overall sex differences; in fact, average effect sizes grossly underestimate the true extent to which the sexes differ. When two groups differ on more than one variable, many comparatively small differences may add up to a large overall effect; in addition, the pattern of correlations between variables can substantially affect the end result. As a simple illustrative example, consider two fictional towns, Lowtown and Hightown. The distance between the two towns can be measured on three (orthogonal) dimensions: longitude, latitude, and altitude. Hightown is 3,000 feet higher than Lowtown, and they are located 3 miles apart in the north-south direction and 3 miles apart in the east-west direction. What is the overall distance between Hightown and Lowtown? The average of the three measures is 2.2 miles, but it is easy to see that this is the wrong answer. The actual distance is the Euclidean distance, i.e., 4.3 miles – almost twice the “average” value.

The same reasoning applies to between-group differences in multidimensional constructs such as personality. When groups differ along many variables at once, the overall between-group difference is not accurately represented by the average of univariate effect sizes; in order to properly aggregate differences across variables while keeping correlation patterns into account, it is necessary to compute a multivariate effect size. The Mahalanobis distance D is the natural metric for such comparisons. Mahalanobis' D is the multivariate generalization of Cohen's d, and has the same substantive meaning. Specifically, D represents the standardized difference between two groups along the discriminant axis; for example, D = 1.00 means that the two group centroids are one standard deviation apart on the discriminant axis. A crucial (and convenient) property of D is that it can be translated to an overlap coefficient in exactly the same way as d: for example, two multivariate normal distributions overlap by 50% when D = .85, just as two univariate normal distributions overlap by 50% when d = .85 [60], [61]. The only difference between d and D is that the latter is an unsigned quantity. The formula for D is

http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchObject.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0029265.e009&representation=PNG

where d is the vector of univariate standardized differences (Cohen's d) and S is the correlation matrix. Confidence intervals on D can be computed analytically [61], [62] or bootstrapped. For more information about D and its applications in sex differences research, see [2], [63], [64].


I've had some linear algebra and some statistics classes so on the surface this seems reasonable. Basically (if I'm reading this right) in order to find the 'true' distance between male and female's personality test scores you treat them as coordinates on an axis rather than numbers in a vacuum.

The authors then re-analyze an (apparantly) well known gender study using this new method:


The results were striking: the effect size for global sex differences in personality was D = 2.71, an extremely large effect by any psychological standard, corresponding to a 10% overlap between the male and female distributions (assuming normality). Even removing the variable with the largest univariate effect size (Sensitivity), the multivariate effect was D = 1.71 (24% overlap assuming normality). These effect sizes firmly place personality in the same category of other psychological constructs showing large, robust sex differences, such as aggression and vocational interests. Global sex differences in aggression, computed on observed scores across measurement methods, range from about D = .89 to D = 1.01 [2]; vocational interests show strong sex differentiation along the “people-things” dimension, with observed effect sizes consistently around d = 1.2 [11].



So, seeing as gender issues are kind of a thing on this board I thought you guys might find it interesting. Anecdotally, I don't think I agree that there's this gigantic difference in personalities between sexes but this is data aggregated from over ten thousand people and I guess that counts for more than my own experience.

Or I'm just in that 10% of people who overlap, whatevs.

My Concerns/Thoughts

Psychology isn't my field, so I don't know that I'm really prepared to effectively analyze the article to see if it's valid or whatever, but my general math and science background says the analysis method is reasonable.

Also, The hosting site is the Public Library of Science, which I haven't heard of 'till now. Apparantly it's an open-access online journal that takes submissions from any scientific subject. A quick internet search seems to show it's pretty legit. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Library_of_Science) I'm totally willing to chalk my ignorance of this to the fact that my own readings are in a completely different field.

So anyways, as I said psychology is out of my depth so I'm interested in what you guys think of this.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

This is why fatties need love too.

The sad thing about actually being a scientist is that the day-to-day level of grunt work and tedium never really seems to translate into the glamorized ideal of the scientist that the media likes to play up. Like my research would be an automatic snoozefest, it's that bad.

I smoke cigarettes and yell at people all day. That's pretty glamorous.

as for the psychology article, I've done a little neuropysch (mostly as it relates to evolution) but hardly an expert. The thinking behind the paper seens solid enough though it still reliesupon basic models of personality (being measurable on various axes and tests to do so) which are possibly not valid.
And really it raises more questions- such as the reason for the difference- though I would bet like prettymuch all these things on gender differentiated rearing- whether its culturally/historically/economically specific.

[McTahr]

What's it about?

Clean coal research. Specifically the storage of greenhouse gases in various geological formations through various means.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Just stick them in some tupperware at the back of the fridge.

Or build two coal plants one of them upside down. This one does reactions in reverse and thus turns your gas back into coal.

[Azisien]

We have a lot of nuclear weapons too. Can we somehow use those to blow up the bad gases?

[Arhra]

its why we need to spread out past the earth. Dont want all your eggs in one basket.

When the false vacuum collapses, its possible that all matter in the universe will instantaneously cease to exist.

[Aerozord]

The sad thing about actually being a scientist is that the day-to-day level of grunt work and tedium never really seems to translate into the glamorized ideal of the scientist that the media likes to play up. Like my research would be an automatic snoozefest, it's that bad.

But what about geologists? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNyQuUe1g3s)

[Professor Smarmiarty]

When the false vacuum collapses, its possible that all matter in the universe will instantaneously cease to exist.

The only way that would happen is if someone created a bubble of lower energy space. And what kind of crazy man would do something like that.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Wellllll... I have been working on this thing called the Super Entropy Acceleration Drive...

[Osterbaum]

Clean coal research. Specifically the storage of greenhouse gases in various geological formations through various means.
That doesn´t seem so boring. I mean I´m sure the everyday work is kinda monotone, but like the ultimate goal of the research seems interesting.

[Sithdarth]

The thing is that it's very rare for any research scientist to ever actually achieve their stated goal. They spend their entire careers doing incremental research laying the ground work for engineers to actually achieve the stated goal some point in the future. Like when I did my thesis proposal I was all like "I'm going to save the world from the end of Moore's Law, solve it's energy problems, and/or just find some really awesome new materials properties that could be used to build novel electronic devices."

In reality, I'm going to spend my career laying down materials characterization ground work that some electrical engineer in the future might use to do some of those things I mentioned. Basically the stated goal of research tends to be grandiose and exists more to attract grant money than to be an actual research goal. That is not to say research can't be fun. I get to travel to synchrotron light sources and stay up for several days at a time playing with multimillion dollar pieces of equipment. So far it seems like I'll be taking a trip to Berkley around twice a year. There is also talk about a possible trip to Australia and I think it was Taiwan to use light sources there. So at least for my research I get compensated for not getting to achieve the big stated goals by loads of travel to awesome places.

[Osterbaum]

I for one will solve all the worlds problems that are related to the environmental physiology of animals.

[Amake]

So anyways, as I said psychology is out of my depth so I'm interested in what you guys think of this. I think we're still pretty far from being able to say to someone "You are this way as a person because you have a penis" or anything along those lines. It seems the purpose of the study is to measure the degree to which a given sex as a whole tends towards living up to its associated stereotypes which as far as I can see doesn't help actual members of either sex in any way.

Determining exactly to which degree your generalizations apply doesn't really justify making generalizations about people. Although I'm sure it's going to be a big help to someone who want to say things like "63% of all women are very likely to have sex with more than two partners in a year; statistically speaking women are whores, and you are a whore because you are a woman".

[Aerozord]

The thing is that it's very rare for any research scientist to ever actually achieve their stated goal. They spend their entire careers doing incremental research laying the ground work for engineers to actually achieve the stated goal some point in the future. Like when I did my thesis proposal I was all like "I'm going to save the world from the end of Moore's Law, solve it's energy problems, and/or just find some really awesome new materials properties that could be used to build novel electronic devices."

Reminds me of that episode of Futurama when the scientists did achieve their goal and solved all the mysterious of the universe. Then learned that as scientists having nothing new to study was akin to a horrific living death.

Though yes, most people dont realize scientists do not directly solve anything. Do not get me wrong, they are vital to the process, but scientists just work on the hows and why's. Engineers do the actual problem solving.

But I think thats why, on paper scientists seem to work on cooler stuff. Engineers work on cutting edge new technologies, but scientists are always a step ahead working on theoretical studies for technology that will be 20 years off if we are lucky.

Engineers are just now getting their hands on nanotech but scientists have been messing with it for 10 years and working on the theories behind it for even longer

[phil_]

Ok, Gregness, let me try this again. The metaphor doesn't describe what they're getting at, so forget it.

Normal personality research separates personalities into several personality traits. Normal comparative studies between men and women average men's and women's traits along all these traits into a single number each, then compare them. This produces results that ignore differences between men and women on specific personality traits.

Except that's all untrue. Your source is a bunch of assholes that misrepresent the research of others to get in the newspaper. I tried to write up an explanation of all this stuff last night, but this is all you have to know. They are frauds, they are trying to make a profit off of modern American distrust of science, THE END.

Continue to discuss real science.

[Osterbaum]

distrust of science
Ugh, I vince every time I hear the argument of "but then science is just like a religion to you, you just blindly believe in it!".

[Aerozord]

any true scientist should remember, always the chance you are right, and always the chance you are wrong. You should never discount something simply because it goes against the currently accepted theory.

To be fair scientists are still human, and once you believe certain things to be true its hard to remove that belief, and its equally as bad to simply latch onto whatever the latest theory is. Its hard to be subjective. Especially when we are rather limited in our ability to observe reality and process information. Leaving us with clues and approximations more often then cold hard absolutes

[Sithdarth]

Given that there are significant measurable structural difference between male and female brains I would not at all be surprised to find out that they think differently from each other in some way. Source. (http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems/nervous-system/men-women-different-brains1.htm)

[Aerozord]

ok here is a science question thats not all heated.

Now I dont think science has an answer for this, but if so I'd really like to know. Why are different elements different?

As an example the difference between silicon and aluminum is a single proton and neutron, yet have several different properties. Why exactly does simply adding or subtracting these sub-atomic particles have such great affect on the atoms?

[McTahr]

It partially has to do with valence electrons and energy levels. If you go down a column in the periodic table, you find elements that have fairly similar properties, ultimately the number of protons changes the number of electrons needed to balance out, which in turn dictates how the atom will react with other atoms (along with a myriad of other properties).

How those atoms bind with other atoms and with themselves will to some extent determine physical properties. Just look at the differences between graphite and diamonds. It's all carbon, just arranged differently.

E- Once you hit 'f' orbitals it gets all crazy though, and there's the occasional exception.

EE- Essentially, the baseline explanation is that atoms 'like' to have a full outer shell, whether they give up or take on extra electrons to do this, and which group they belong to in the periodic table determines how many they have to give or take to reach that ideal. Noble gases ain't give no fucks because they already have a full shell, of course.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

ok here is a science question thats not all heated.

Now I dont think science has an answer for this, but if so I'd really like to know. Why are different elements different?

As an example the difference between silicon and aluminum is a single proton and neutron, yet have several different properties. Why exactly does simply adding or subtracting these sub-atomic particles have such great affect on the atoms?

Suprisingly, its for pretty much the reason they tell you in high school chemistry. It's all about the number of electrons. On the most basic level atoms want to fill their outer shell of electrons because this is the most energetic stable configuration for various reasons. And thus atoms will react differently depending on how man electrons they are tryig to acquire and thus with the same outershell configuration (oing down a periodic group) will react in roughly the same ways.
Beyond this generalisation you have to get into specifics of each atom and generally molecule and its reactions but this simple rule will serve you pretty well.

[Gregness]

I think we're still pretty far from being able to say to someone "You are this way as a person because you have a penis" or anything along those lines. It seems the purpose of the study is to measure the degree to which a given sex as a whole tends towards living up to its associated stereotypes which as far as I can see doesn't help actual members of either sex in any way.

Determining exactly to which degree your generalizations apply doesn't really justify making generalizations about people. Although I'm sure it's going to be a big help to someone who want to say things like "63% of all women are very likely to have sex with more than two partners in a year; statistically speaking women are whores, and you are a whore because you are a woman".

As far as I gathered from the article, they were making no statements about where the differences come from, or whether they're good or bad; simply that they exist and are larger than previously thought.

Ok, Gregness, let me try this again. The metaphor doesn't describe what they're getting at, so forget it.

Normal personality research separates personalities into several personality traits. Normal comparative studies between men and women average men's and women's traits along all these traits into a single number each, then compare them. This produces results that ignore differences between men and women on specific personality traits.

Except that's all untrue. Your source is a bunch of assholes that misrepresent the research of others to get in the newspaper. I tried to write up an explanation of all this stuff last night, but this is all you have to know. They are frauds, they are trying to make a profit off of modern American distrust of science, THE END.

Continue to discuss real science.

So, like, I dunno man. The article has a section for comments and the author of the original study that these guys are referring to made a rebuttal which these guys responded to and both parties were throwing around references like it's no tomorrow (a good thing for a scientific publication) but frankly it would take weeks to read all hundred plus references posted between the main article and comments section and then even longer to properly digest the contents all so that I can have a truly educated and informed opinion about what they're trying to say.

Or, I can say "huh, at first glance the math sounds reasonable" and come to the internet forum I hang out at and see if anyone else has more context with regards to subject matter.

ITT: come for the science discussion, stay for the freakouts.

EDIT: also, the bit about the time needed to read all those references? That's making the gigantic assumption that those references wouldn't also have their own references I'd need to read ad nauseum and at that point I might as well just get a psychology degree.

[phil_]

Well, with the power of sobriety, I can put it like this. Ain't nothin' but a meta-analysis of personality differences between genders. The only noteworthy thing about it is the bit at the beginning shaming other papers for bad math while representing that bad math as the state of the field as a whole, added solely to get people to read their boring, same ol' song-and-dance findings. That is dishonest, and thus bull.at that point I might as well just get a psychology degree.Not worth it. Never worth it.

[Sithdarth]

Well, with the power of sobriety, I can put it like this. Ain't nothin' but a meta-analysis of personality differences between genders. The only noteworthy thing about it is the bit at the beginning shaming other papers for bad math while representing that bad math as the state of the field as a whole, added solely to get people to read their boring, same ol' song-and-dance findings. That is dishonest, and thus bull.

That's like the first chapter in "How to write a scientific paper 101". If we removed all papers that did that you'd have maybe 3 left. You can't really get mad at people for playing up the importance of their work because that is kind of how things are done. Otherwise you don't get referenced, or even published, and then people stop giving you money.

edit:
ok here is a science question thats not all heated.

Now I dont think science has an answer for this, but if so I'd really like to know. Why are different elements different?

As an example the difference between silicon and aluminum is a single proton and neutron, yet have several different properties. Why exactly does simply adding or subtracting these sub-atomic particles have such great affect on the atoms?

If you're really interested (as well as anyone else) as soon as I get some free time I could put something together to explain this from a basic QM perspective all the way to a general description of condensed matter physics.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Well, not to derail or anything but seeing as this is the science sticky now..but grab your cajones, jabronis, droppin some science like a pair of pants!

World's Smallest Memory Bit Stores Data Using Just 12 Atoms. (http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-01/worlds-smallest-memory-bit-stores-data-using-just-12-atoms)

So..I think Moore's law just got tapped on the sac pretty hard recently. What with that 4 x 1 atom wire (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=nanowires-silicon) and IBM just now.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Reading nature today and current estimate is that there are 5 to 10 times as many planets in the milky way as stars. About 2/3 of planets have an earth like planet. Which means there are fuckloads of lifeable planets probably.

[Osterbaum]

And that's not even taking into account the possibility of life in conditions different to ours.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Isn't that a thing we already kinda knew anyway? Pretty sure mathematicians worked that out decades ago.

Tell me how we can get to the closest of them and I'll be interested.

[Marc v4.0]

I like to hold out hope that no other culture exists as terrible as human culture.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Isn't that a thing we already kinda knew anyway? Pretty sure mathematicians worked that out decades ago.

Tell me how we can get to the closest of them and I'll be interested.

Pffft mathematicians.
This study was based on analysis of loads of papers of observed planets so is based on actual observation. It is just a surprising fact because previously we hadn't found a lot of planets and suddenely in the last 10 years we've found a shitload and they've shown that planets are pretty much the rule, not an exception.

The life different from our own aly brgument has never really convinced me. Mostly because a carbon based lifeform has such a ridiculous amount of advantages over any other element as it the base for life. Chemically it just makes so much sense to use carbon pretty much regardless of conditions. There is plenty of reasons we're made from carbon despite it being pretty sparse, especially compared to the other favourite silica which is fucking everywhere on earth.
If life was made not from carbon it would have to be pretty wacky backy.

[Osterbaum]

But there are more potential factors of difference to consider than just carbon-based or not-carbon-based.

[Azisien]

Is it correct to assume this is still pretty awesome news for origin of life scientists and more specifically astrobiologists? (that fake form of biologist that all the other biologists make fun of in order to make themselves feel better about the rest of science making fun of them)

[phil_]

(that fake form of biologist that all the other biologists make fun of in order to make themselves feel better about the rest of science making fun of them)I know I should let this go, but DRUNK DRUNK DRUNK. I'll have you know that psychologists are the scientists that the rest of science makes fun of, thank you very much! Biology will never match psychology's dubiousness as a science! Even astrobiology!

[Osterbaum]

Since this is the science thread, we need some source (http://xkcd.com/435/)s in here!

[Professor Smarmiarty]

But there are more potential factors of difference to consider than just carbon-based or not-carbon-based.
What is the alternative scheme for a different carbon-lased (non-primitive) life? The one we have is pretty optimal and I've never seen a good alternative to it, except for minor changes such as replacing DNA with RNA and things which is still the same scheme.
I guess this is a different way of looking at it. Like even with carbon based stuff you can make all kinds of craasicazy shit but chemically which is where I come at it its still the same.

Since this is the science thread, we need some source (http://xkcd.com/435/)s in here!
Pfft maths is based on the connipitions of our lizard brains. Tots not pure.

[Nique]

Play Video Games... for science (really!) (http://fold.it/portal/)


What big problems is this game tackling?

... knowing the structure of a protein is key to understanding how it works and to targeting it with drugs. A small proteins can consist of 100 amino acids, while some human proteins can be huge (1000 amino acids). The number of different ways even a small protein can fold is astronomical because there are so many degrees of freedom. Figuring out which of the many, many possible structures is the best one is regarded as one of the hardest problems in biology today and current methods take a lot of money and time, even for computers. Foldit attempts to predict the structure of a protein by taking advantage of humans' puzzle-solving intuitions and having people play competitively to fold the best proteins.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Well, since this is kinda related (and a bit of an older article. Still a good'n though).

Some Scotch Eggheads been working on metal based cells. (http://dvice.com/archives/2011/09/researchers-dev.php) Made out of tungsten bonded with oxygen and phosphorus and such. Apparently there's lots of room for further tweaking.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Here's something a bit crazy:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jan/23/breast-cancer-screening-not-justified
Apparentely breast cancer screening is a complete waste of time and money. This is pretty much similar to heaps of medicine and treatments, th emore you read about it, the more you find ridiculous financial interests pushig ahead of actual medicine.

[TDK]

The same dude (Peter Gotzsche)in charge of that has apparently debunked the placebo effect as well.
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/gotzsche1/English

[Professor Smarmiarty]

that's pretty trippy. It also fit into the mantra of the more you read about drug testing, the more ridiculous shit you find.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jan/31/mind-reading-program-brain-words
A machine that can read your brain!
This baffles me because I thought we were some way away from this and we didn't know much about how the brain processes language and ideas- gogo jennifer anniston neuron! (this is a neuron that has only been found to fire when presented with pictures of jennifer anniston-except when she is with brad pitt when it won't fire. Will fire with anyone else though).
But then they do thing like this.
Consider me BAMBOOZLED.

[Magus]

Saw this on Discoblog couple of days ago:

Scientists create cockroach-powered fuel cell. (http://cen.acs.org/articles/90/web/2012/01/Fuel-Cell-Taps-Roach-Power.html)

Glad to see scientists are hard at work creating the dystopian future of the Matrix.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jan/31/mind-reading-program-brain-words
A machine that can read your brain!
This baffles me because I thought we were some way away from this and we didn't know much about how the brain processes language and ideas- gogo jennifer anniston neuron! (this is a neuron that has only been found to fire when presented with pictures of jennifer anniston-except when she is with brad pitt when it won't fire. Will fire with anyone else though).
But then they do thing like this.
Consider me BAMBOOZLED.

Dunno if this is really genuine. The way I am reading this, they originally developed it by telling people words and then looking at scans of brain activity in response to those words. Now they just reversed it and look at the brain activity to supposedly determine what word the person is thinking of. But this assumes all people's brains are going to have the same exact activity in the same exact region based on the word they hear. A word could create all kinds of different thought patterns, bring up different memories, light up different regions of the brain dependent entirely on how each person's brain is wired. It seems arbitrary. Plus within their own experiment it wasn't perfect, and was only done on 15 people, not even a proper sample. I wouldn't be bamboozled, just somewhat perplexed.

Basically I'd like to see way more done with it before I get excited about it actually being able to be applied to something in the real world.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Saw this on Discoblog couple of days ago:

Scientists create cockroach-powered fuel cell. (http://cen.acs.org/articles/90/web/2012/01/Fuel-Cell-Taps-Roach-Power.html)

Glad to see scientists are hard at work creating the dystopian future of the Matrix.



Well of course! That hole's not gonna dig itself.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

In the grand tradition of cubane (ie making molecules that are funny shapes just coz)
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2012/February/boron-coordination-ten-planar-species.asp Let's play how many atoms can you attach to another atom in a plane. They got 10 here in a funny spoked wheel. I reckon I can do 12., I'll just take the 10 and punch two mroe in.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Maths is for nerds and physicists! Review article finds half of the neuroscience papers examined made the same major statisical error. Hilarity ensues.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/09/bad-science-research-error

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

graphite foam could extract terawatts of power solely from sea water's thermal energy. (http://dvice.com/archives/2012/02/post-31.php)

Waste: slightly colder water compared to before it was pumped. The greater the difference in temperature between the water at the surface and a few thousand feet below surface the greater the power yield. Even a 40 degree difference is more than enough to boil ammonia in a closed environment to spin a turbine, which generates electricity. The graphite foam being the miracle heat exchange medium is the cost effective material.. the gains from it outweigh the cost by a hefty margins.

Geothermal energy eat your heart out.

[phil_]

graphite foam could extract terawatts of power solely from sea water's thermal energy. (http://dvice.com/archives/2012/02/post-31.php)We still get to build imposing metal penises in the ocean and staff them with desperate angry men while destroying marine environments.

This could find interest. Like, they gotta be exaggerating when they claim it can produce three to five terawatts, given that a nuclear plant can produce about one gigawatt.

[Sithdarth]

I'm not buying the no ecological impact. You see there are these things called currents in the ocean and these currents depend on the temperature differential between the surface and the ocean floor. There is also this thing where deep sea water tends to have more nutrients and causes explosions of life where its forced to the surface. This can happen when water runs into an underwater mountain range and it also happens in the Arctic and Antarctic ocean do to convection.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Yeah, you really can't say it has no ecological effects until you actually build one and study what effects it might be having. Just goin "hey guys we've got this new idea for an energy source and all it does is steal massive amounts of heat from the ocean it'll be totally fine and safe", does not sound like science to me.

[phil_]

stuffstuffBut we get to keep building giant metal ocean penises and make more money current by doing so. It doesn't matter if it kills everything; metal money penises!

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Man, I'm beginning to wonder if you guys even read the article thoroughly and the subsequent linked articles. Wonder if I should've tossed in buzz words like eco terrorism for better replies.

Going to be a bit of an asshole here, but hey it's in the name of science. Let's use the power of rational logical thought and imagery.

The amount of thermal transferrence is so miniscule that to imply that this system would effect the tidal system in any significant way is hilariously laughable.
Of course there'll be an impact on the environment, the gipper here is that it'll be astoundingly less than, say, conventional power sources that fuck the environment up far worse over a much longer period of time like this (http://www.stormchaser.ca/fires/centralia_coal_fire/centralia_coal_fire.html) or this (http://www.ylje.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Oil-Spill-Gulf-of-Mexico-2010-Updates-Up-to-756000-Gallons-of-Oil-Recovered-Daily.jpg) or hell..Fukushima.
again, because it is just hilarious to imply: it won't change the tidal system beyond the fuckery we already implement. Hell, might improve things.
Nowhere in the multiple articles on this does it state that it'll pump up cold water. nutrients and other goodies sit nice and tidy in their cold water. That is counterproductive to the very system in question. In fact, by the astounding powers vested in me of logical deduction I've drawn up a very fuckin amazing picture (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10003158/condescending%20science%20action.jpg) of the system (that should be forwarded to the engineers because it is that goddamn amazing, mirite?). Now, this is just a drawing but the concept is pretty much spot on.
Also, eco terrorism.
Also, also carbon is amazing.

[phil_]

stuffPenises. Big ones, made of metal. This idea can take off. When I say, "It doesn't matter if it kills everything," I mean people with money will fund this even if it doesn't kill everything, not just that they'll fund it even if it does. Giant, firm, thrusting penises are too much to resist for the man desiring to leave his mark. Yes, I'm going full-Freud; I don't care.

[Sithdarth]

Man, I'm beginning to wonder if you guys even read the article thoroughly and the subsequent linked articles. Wonder if I should've tossed in buzz words like eco terrorism for better replies.

Going to be a bit of an asshole here, but hey it's in the name of science. Let's use the power of rational logical thought and imagery.

Yeah you don't really understand this as well as you think you do. But since we're being a bit of an asshole at the moment let me walk you through this:

The amount of thermal transferrence is so miniscule that to imply that this system would effect the tidal system in any significant way is hilariously laughable.

1) No one said anything about the tidal system. Tides have to do with the moon not thermal differences. Its the thermohaline circulation we risk disrupting. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation)

2) The efficiency of the Rainkine cycle they are using at those temperatures and taking into account other factors is probably 30% at best. So if you're producing electricity at a rate of 3-5 terrawatts you are moving heat at a rate of 9 - 15 terrawatts and that is a lot of heat over a day much less a year.

3) The thermohaline current like most complex systems on Earth is highly nonlinear and chaotic. Which means small perturbations can have drastic and catastrophic effects.

Of course there'll be an impact on the environment, the gipper here is that it'll be astoundingly less than, say, conventional power sources that fuck the environment up far worse over a much longer period of time like this or this or hell..Fukushima.

Well unless it significantly impacts the thermohaline current and causes an ice age in Europe or something. Rushing into new power sources without fully understanding the consequences is exactly what got us into this mess. Doing it again is not likely to get us out of it.

again, because it is just hilarious to imply: it won't change the tidal system beyond the fuckery we already implement. Hell, might improve things.

And again because you decided to repeat this the tidal system has to do with the moon. The thermohaline current has to do with ocean temperature differences.

Nowhere in the multiple articles on this does it state that it'll pump up cold water. nutrients and other goodies sit nice and tidy in their cold water. That is counterproductive to the very system in question. In fact, by the astounding powers vested in me of logical deduction I've drawn up a very fuckin amazing picture of the system (that should be forwarded to the engineers because it is that goddamn amazing, mirite?). Now, this is just a drawing but the concept is pretty much spot on.

Actually that's about the stupidest possible way to implement it. Pumping the surface water down is going to cause it to give some of its heat directly to the surrounding sea water instead of the ammonia reducing efficiency. Not to mention taking scads of energy. The most efficient way to do it is to simply leave the water where it is and pump the much lighter ammonia around the system. However, this means you heat deep sea water which reduces oxygen content as well as possibly disrupts the thermohaline current. Which is further compounded by the reduction in the surface water temperature since the thermohaline current relies not so much on absolute temperatures as much as on temperature differentials. For that matter cooling the surface waters allows more oxygen to dissolve into the water which might be a good thing or it might lead to algae blooms that choke off other forms of life.

Also, the article lies in that in addition to cooling the surface water the deep water must also be heated at the same time due to the second law of thermodynamics. (Which is why I originally assumed they were dumping the cold deep water on the surface because no one mentioned the heating of the deep ocean.) The second law of thermodynamics can be stated as:

No process is possible in which the sole result is the absorption of heat from a reservoir and its complete conversion into work.

In other words some of the surface heat must end up in the deep ocean (that is unless you dump the deep ocean water at the surface after heating it).

So once again this is something that needs to be studied for its ecological impact before we start building hundreds of them to power the world.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Righte, I cocked up on the word choice. Meant currents instead of tides. Derped that one up while typing between lab projects.

I don't think it'll be as drastic as you make it out to be, in any case. The required generator setup has been in testing for well around six months with great results. Ranging from prevention of corrosion to the effectiveness of the graphite foam. The graphite foam is the real clincher for this and its role is kinda played down. Utilizes heat transference far more efficiently with much less wasted heat.

A working model, albeit a smaller one, will be hitting hawaii this spring for longer term test results. So's more or less a waiting game at this point. I'm hoping for the best, honestly. Anything to get rid of, or significantly reduce, the reliance on foreign oil, coal burning, etc. Even if the generator doesn't pan out the graphite foam has already shown it can increase the efficiency of existing heat based power systems by a fair amount.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

http://www.nature.com/news/computer-modelling-brain-in-a-box-1.10066
Here's a report on an interesting idea- basically trying to make computer simulations of the brain from the bottom up.
I've long said the problem with neuroscience is that there is no functional model of how the brain works, it's all just various individual sections that don't work together. soattempts to overcome this are welcome.
I agree with the stated criticisms, however, and really hink a unified model needs to come from the overway- firstly a quite broad model which doesn't include all the details of how exactly neurons fire etc that can then be added detail to once you have a functional large scale model. This is how physics and chemistry have always work and they know have highly detailed yet full ranging models. The problem with neuroscience is that it was created in the last 50 years reall, when we had high level techniques of experiment, high levels of interest in tiny parts of the brain and very sophisticated knowledge of chemistry which allows us to strip to the core how bits of the brain work. There was no long slow development of the science, we could instantly focus in massive detail on any bit of the brain we want and a unified model suffered. The other problem is the brains intense plasticity, complexity and adaptivity which mean a model will be ver difficult to derive but I'm not sure this is the right approach.

[Gregness]

So, apparantly someone went and made an LED with an electrical efficiency of 230%. (http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-03/09/230-percent-efficient-leds) To keep thermodynamics from shitting itself, apparantly it makes up the extra energy by extracting heat from its surroundings. There's even a link to the research paper itself, but I don't have an account with the place its on and I'll be damned if I get one for one paper. (http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v108/i9/e097403)

Any of you more physics aligned chaps have an account there already and want to add their two cents?

[Sithdarth]

Its old news and almost completely useless at this stage and probably for anything really. Its a neat trick but right now it requires small band gaps which means infrared light and it requires exceedingly low bias voltages which means exceedingly low power.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

As a speculative concept its been around since at least the 90s possibly earlier. Its not really soemthing you can scale up though because you are basically using lattice heat to get the extra power and it is never going to be particularly large.
Actually making it is prett nifty though.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Old news but it came out up in the chat and some people haven't heard it.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/05/090501-oldest-dinosaur-proteins.html
We found dinosaur blood mofos. Dinosaur fucking blood.
This article is a bit out of date- since then they have confirmed that they have indeed found blood cell proteins.
No way blood can survive millions of years- this is pretty much proof all dinosaur bones are fake.

[Gregness]

So, there was a TED talk a back in January where Kirk Sorenson does his best to pimp Thorium as a nuclear fuel. (http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/kirk_sorensen_thorium_an_alternative_nuclear_fuel. html)

Now, I've got some basic physics background as an engineer, but not enough that I feel comfortable critiquing this but my instinct is that if it sounds too good to be true it usually is. So, what's the drawback? Is it simply easier to make Uranium undergo fission?

As a tangentially related topic, I know that the TED talks are more pop-science than bleeding edge theoretical stuff but what do you actual, legitimate scientists think of them?

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I have only done the briefest of overviews on Thorium plants (5 minutes at the end of a lecture somewhere) but from what I understand the major problem is the same as the major problem with other new nuclear designs such as the intergral fast reactors and gen 4 and 5. Basically you need a huge outlay of money at the start to design and build the plant and even if you have worked out all the specifications- ie you have built one before- they still cost far more to set up and initially run than current reactors. And its hard to see where that money will come from.
The other problem is that there are plenty of radical designs like the thorium reactor all promoted by someone and its hard to know what to pick.
From the things I've flicked through just now it seems pretty sound aside from the money issue though I'm not a nuclear engineer...

[BitVyper]

though I'm not a nuclear engineer...

Why not?

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Because engineering is for people too stupid to do a proper job.
I could be a nuclear scientist in theory but that is all maths which is lame.

[BitVyper]

Because engineering is for people too stupid to do a proper job.
I could be a nuclear scientist in theory but that is all maths which is lame.

If you immediately know the candle is fire, then the meal was cooked a long time ago.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

What does that even?

[BitVyper]

What does that even?

Because it is so clear, it takes a long time to realise.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/opinion/sunday/a-quantum-theory-of-mitt-romney.html?_r=3
This is all you need to know about quantum mechanics. And Mitt Romney.

[Kim]

That was pretty much the best article.

I tried to rep you, but I can't.

[Tev]

Is it the future now? (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2402615,00.asp?google_editors_picks=true)

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

Nope.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

It's only the future once we have hoverboards, holosuites and lightsabers.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Can someone explain to me what the point of a flying car actually is? I've never really worked it out. It just seems like a it'll be cool invention with only very niche actual uses.

[Kim]

I'm thinking the main idea is less traffic, since you can then stack them vertically instead of cars being limited to a horizontal plane.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

It's a pipe dream sought after because it would be "cool" to just be able to jump in your car and fly about, however in real life it would be both impractical and completely unsafe. Any in-air collision between 2 flying cars would almost certainly result in death or severe injury to both parties, even more so than present day non-flying cars and the costs of running and owning a flying car would be even more astronomical, what with higher insurance and taxation due to the afor-mentioned inevitable death and destruction that could result from accidents, not to mention the costs of learning how to pilot a flying car and the extra need for pilot licenses as well as driving licenses.

Cracked did an article on the impracticalities of flying cars, but those were the main points I think.

I mean, people can barely manage to drive safely on just 1 plane, on simple flat roads on the ground, putting them in the air is going to cause absolute chaos.

[Satan's Onion]

I'm thinking the main idea is less traffic, since you can then stack crash them vertically instead of cars being limited to a horizontal plane.

A slight but vital correction here, in order to emphasize the biggest reason why we should probably never have flying cars. Imagine all those frighteningly shitty drivers out there, only now they have unrestricted use of a whole other spatial dimension in which to wreak automotive mayhem.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I'm just ore like, everywhere you need to go is on the ground and it'll be more efficient and faster to drive there on the ground. Like flying cars would only be needed if we had like cloud cities.

[Kim]

A slight but vital correction here, in order to emphasize the biggest reason why we should probably never have flying cars. Imagine all those frighteningly shitty drivers out there, only now they have unrestricted use of a whole other spatial dimension in which to wreak automotive mayhem.

Oh yeah, I'm not saying it's a good idea. I'm just saying it's the only real reason I can think of.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Yeah the only need for them would be either, a) you need to reach somewhere high up, or b) congestion reaches such a huge level that we need to start stacking traffic on top of itself to make room, and if we've already reached that point then the potential for disaster is even greater.

[Satan's Onion]

Oh yeah, I'm not saying it's a good idea. I'm just saying it's the only real reason I can think of.

Certainly. And as Smarty noted, they're largely pointless without some comprehensive restructuring of all our communities (which would, itself, be quite superfluous short of something truly huge happening). As far as sci-fi future transportation goes, there have to be so many better options out there.

[Osterbaum]

There are so many better options. Like literally anything we've already invented. Like trains or I dunno, airplanes?!

e: we really don't need flying cars, atleast not the kind that's just a helicopter/small plane with car wheels

[Kim]

Let's invent some fucking space trains. Galaxy Express 999 and shit.

[ZARAK]

One decade until real-life Custom Robo. (http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17614392)

[Professor Smarmiarty]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/apr/09/wellcome-trust-academic-spring

Here's something big that churning along in the science world. People starting to hit back at scientific journals demandi they be free and open access.
Basically how its worked so far is you pay journals to publish and universities pay to access journals. So they've been creaming it off both ends. And when they were printing journals manually and had to send out manuscripts for review and things this was fair enough but now with electronic distribution their costs have plummeted and they are racking in the dough by basically having writers who apy them. In addition there is increasing concern that the editors of their journals hold the reins to knowledge, decidign who gets published and when as well as papers taking a fucking long time to go through all their channels which can be a major hurdle in a fast moving field.
So expect to see more and more free journals pop up with the best research in them and more engagement with the public with the actual research rather than jounralist piff oeces

[Nique]

That seems like a pretty good idea. Like, Neil De'meme' Tyson is great, but Nova specials aren't generating enough interest in science to give me rocket boots.

[Kim]

I got a science question. One thing people sometimes bring up when discussing stuff that could impact the Earth in major ways is something about the magnetic poles switching? I dunno, I never pay much attention when this is brought up. My main questions I guess are about how likely this is to happen, how quickly would it happen, and what sort of effects it would have if it did?

[Professor Smarmiarty]

warning- The evil Pharaoh has snakecursed me- answers may not be too accurate.
there's too things in this question- pole switching and pole wandering.
Polewandering where the poles move around but not switching is relatively common but always slow as shit people have suggested that a very fast pole movement could lead to danger but A) it has never moved particularly fast that we can find any records of b) it is not entirely clear why this will be abig problem.
The more common is pole switching which hpapens quite regularly and over periods of about 1,000-10,000 years. The idea here is that during switching the magnetic field of the earth will drop which will decrease protection from high energy particles, solar wind and the like. These have happened lots of the time in the past and there is no correlation between them and extinction and people who have run simulations have also found no real danger- the atmosphere would stop all the things that woudl get us.
Like you'd lose things that work on the earths magnet field like magnets and you might fuck up magnet birds (though recent studies on the so called magnet neurons of many birds have shown they are not used for navigation at all) but its not a particular worry.

More importantly.
Claims Viking lander found life on Mars (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47031923/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/viking-robots-found-life-mars-scientists-say/?fb_ref=.T4g5wqdhg4F.like&fb_source=home_oneline)
I skimmed the paper and the media report isn't for once blown all out of proportion. This is pretty much what the paper is claiming.

[Nique]

Viking life found on Mars! Martian Vikings! It's everything I ever wanted!

Yeah poleshift is like, some tiny amount of degrees every million billion years. I know our magnetic field pretty much helps us not become a dead planet, but I haven't heard we really know how to keep that from happening or if it even will.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Pole shift is pretty slow, pole inversion can occur pretty fast but theres no real indication it'll be any great danger. We haven't had one in ages so we are due but like on the list of things to be shitting yourself about its not even on that list.

Re Viking stuff, it would be rpetty exciting particularly for me as it would fit into the theory of life I subscribe to

[Professor Smarmiarty]

So some evil movie scientists have managed to split an electron:
http://phys.org/news/2012-04-electrons.html

Also some new altered DNA molecules have been produced
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/04/19/synthetic-xna-molecules-can-evolve-and-store-genetic-information-just-like-dna/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NotRocketScience+%28Not+Exact ly+Rocket+Science%29
The article talks a lot about the origin of life things but these aren't particularly revolutionary in this field- we've known for a long time that different base strands were possible and there are suggestions as to why RNA and DNA ended up winning.
What is interesting is the actual production of these- DNA type molecules are massive and basically impossible to synthesise so doing it is very impressive and the use in biological applications- basically you have a whole field of biological ability while cutting out a lot of potential side reactions.

Also
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2012/04/18/the-superabsorbent-nanosponge-that-only-soaks-up-oil-100x-its-own-weight/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+80beats+%2880beats%29

Nanosponge sucks up oil only then yuo can burn it get the energy out and have the sponge back. Madass.

[Sithdarth]

So some evil movie scientists have managed to split an electron:
http://phys.org/news/2012-04-electrons.html

That article is stupidly misleading. They can not actually split an electron any more than they can create a positive one. (AKA a hole in semiconductor lingo.) Yes they probably observed a separation of spin and orbital angular momentum but they know and I know what they saw was a collective of effect of many electrons and probably phonons working cooperatively. It was not a single electron splitting. Typical sensationalist journalism from a journalist who probably shouldn't be writing about Solid State physics.

[Sifright]

That article is stupidly misleading. They can not actually split an electron any more than they can create a positive one. (AKA a hole in semiconductor lingo.) Yes they probably observed a separation of spin and orbital angular momentum but they know and I know what they saw was a collective of effect of many electrons and probably phonons working cooperatively. It was not a single electron splitting. Typical sensationalist journalism from a journalist who probably shouldn't be writing about Solid State physics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron

????

Unless you meant a postively charged electron in which case i've no idea what that even is.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

It is close enough representation of what they did. I did read the actual paper just now and it was an effect smeared across a brillouin zone and is bviously a band structure effect but that is a basic enough representation of it. Pretty much every paper ever written on solid-state chemistry simplifies the band structure of whatever they are working on because full band representations are not only unhelpful but pretty much impossible. And in a general journal paper they going to do this even more. Like of the billions of terrible scientific reporting examples you could chose you chose the most innocous one to pick on, one that actually does report well enough what happened without giving a lesson in solid-state chemistry.
It just seems bizarre this is what you'd get pissed of at

[Sithdarth]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron

????

Unless you meant a postively charged electron in which case i've no idea what that even is.

1) A positron is a positively charged electron, but that's a whole other thing.

2) A hole is essentially the absence of an electron where there should be an electron in a material. Quantum mechanics allows that absence of something to act like a particle. Well to be more specific that absence of something changes the collective wave functions of all the other electrons and phonons it would have interacted with the net result being something that looks and acts like an electron with a positive charge. Well not really an electron because even electrons don't look and act like electrons in a material. They usually look much heavier for starters.

It is close enough representation of what they did. I did read the actual paper just now and it was an effect smeared across a brillouin zone and is bviously a band structure effect but that is a basic enough representation of it. Pretty much every paper ever written on solid-state chemistry simplifies the band structure of whatever they are working on because full band representations are not only unhelpful but pretty much impossible. And in a general journal paper they going to do this even more. Like of the billions of terrible scientific reporting examples you could chose you chose the most innocous one to pick on, one that actually does report well enough what happened without giving a lesson in solid-state chemistry.
It just seems bizarre this is what you'd get pissed of at

I hate to say it but you really don't understand Solid State and High Energy Particle physics very well if you think the creation of a pair of quasi particles is anything like splitting apart a fundamental particle that as far as we know has no internal structure. There is some overlap in the mathematics of how these things are described but quasi particles are always ensembles of things. Sometimes they are even ensembles of non-fundamental particles. Any given phonon for example is an ensemble of lattice distortions. It is trivial to split something made of many things (i.e. having internal structure) compared to splitting something that is as far as we know a single object.

Being able to actually split an electron would be monumentally huge and would rewrite giant swaths of physics. Producing a quasi particle that separates spin and orbital angular momentum is a relatively neat trick made possible by many body interactions. Don't get me wrong it's a pretty big thing in that it means we've gotten that much better at solving the many body problem with interaction and could probably help with spintronics. It just isn't nearly as big a deal as the title and much of the content of the article would lead you to believe. I'm reminded of when someone created quasi particle magnetic monopoles and it got basically the same overblown treatment.

TLDR;
Actually splitting an electron = gigantic changes in basically all of modern physics

Creating quasi particle pairs that separate spin and orbital angular momentum = completely consistent with the known laws of physics just a bit difficult to calculate and do

Which is why the latter is a gigantic deal and the former not so much. Also why creating quasi particles isn't anything like splitting fundamental particles.

Oh and to be honest orbital angular momentum is only a property of a bound electron. It isn't even a fundamental property of an electron. Essentially they just managed to remove an electron from an orbital without taking the orbital angular momentum with it and seeing as how the orbital angular momentum isn't even an intrinsic part of the electron it isn't to terribly surprising that such a thing is possible. Now if they'd have separated charge from spin that would have been a really neat trick. (I don't think its actually possible but it might be.)

I take issue with this specifically because I understand in great detail how very wrong and misleading the wording of that article is. I am for lack of a better term a Solid State physicists in training. Basically all I do all day is attempt to understand the many body problem with interactions. My work is in fact focused almost exclusively on highly correlated systems (i.e. systems with strong interactions) which is what enables things like this to happen. Additionally, I have hopefully demonstrated how simple it is to explain the fundamental difference between what was actually done and what the article is implying was done in a few very short mostly non-technical paragraphs. (I could even make them more basic than that if need be.)

One must remember that just because something is computationally hard doesn't mean it can't be explained clearly and well. For a good example pick up Feynman's lectures on QED to a lay audience. He explains some of the most computationally impossible things in language so intuitively simple just about anyone can grasp it while at the same time sacrificing nothing in accuracy. It takes talent but I don't see why its absurd to expect journalists to have talent and understand there chosen journalistic subject. You wouldn't have a political correspondent review restaurants after all.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

You completely missed my point.
I understand the things you are saying. I know what a fucking quasi particle is, I work in solid state and I know what they did. I have done similar things in my lab. I have worked with the exact materials they use. I know that they didn't split an electron. I know how orbital angular momentum works. I fucking know all the stuff you know despite your gigantic ego.
But that is completley completely irrelevant to my point.
My point is that your overestimate the vast majority of the reading audience and the condition in which they read science articles in a newspaper. Sure they could understand this shit if you explained it to them in long summaries- they don't want that. They want quick and easy summaries. This is a quick and easy summary that is good enough for 99% of the reading public. Your summary nobody would read.
The point of science journalism is NOT to educate the public about the science 100% accuraqtely- its to raise interest in science so they can both educate themselve and to raise money.
Sure it would be great to have 100% accurate articles but nobody would read them.
this article calls upon things the audience knows and it is in a way that is good enough for the general audience.
The articles to rail against are those that are deliberately misleading - like all the ones about cures for cancer or are based on science which has not been fully peer-reviewed like the arsenic bacteria shit.
I've fucking given lectures to the general public about science. That shit you posted- nobody would pay attention to that. Journalism, its a thing

Attack the dudes presenting chiropacty and homeopathy "studies". Attack the dudes posting climate denying "studies". Not the dude who wants to drum up his readership a bit by presenting a difficult concept in a way the general public can understand.

[Sithdarth]

You completely missed my point.
I understand the things you are saying. I know what a fucking quasi particle is, I work in solid state and I know what they did. I have done similar things in my lab. I have worked with the exact materials they use. I know that they didn't split an electron. I know how orbital angular momentum works. I fucking know all the stuff you know despite your gigantic ego.

Those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones you know. (And don't try and deny it you're only angry because I bruised your ego by not immediately bowing to your obviously superior intellect :rolleyes:)

And ok you might know something about solid state physics. You still clearly have very little understanding of High Energy Particle physics. The differences between Solid State and High Energy Particle physics being the very foundation of the point I made. So maybe I'm not the only one capable of missing a point.

But that is completley completely irrelevant to my point.

Then maybe you should have chosen better words than:

It is close enough representation of what they did.

Because what was implied in the title was no were near what was done on any fundamental level. Maybe you didn't mean to make that comparison but that sentence doesn't convey that in anyway and you can't really get all hot under the collar because you communicated your point poorly.

My point is that your overestimate the vast majority of the reading audience and the condition in which they read science articles in a newspaper. Sure they could understand this shit if you explained it to them in long summaries- they don't want that. They want quick and easy summaries. This is a quick and easy summary that is good enough for 99% of the reading public. Your summary nobody would read.

1) They said the exact same things to Feynman and yet he managed to be fairly popular. Besides only people already interested in science read articles on phys.org so your point is nonsensical. If you're writing for a journalistic outlet that is geared toward science news then logic dictates your readers are already interested in science by virtue of even being there.

2) My summaries weren't written to be entertaining otherwise I would have written them differently and even then my talent for that is somewhat limited. So my ability isn't representative of the best that could be done. Beyond on that my summary was of relatively appropriate length being only a few sentences.

The point of science journalism is NOT to educate the public about the science 100% accuraqtely- its to raise interest in science so they can both educate themselve and to raise money.

False dichotomy. One can clearly do both. It is harder but still possible.

Sure it would be great to have 100% accurate articles but nobody would read them.

Unsubstantiated. In fact Feynman is a direct contradiction to this.

this article calls upon things the audience knows and it is in a way that is good enough for the general audience.

Doesn't negate the point that it could and should be better. Especially since it was on Phys Org were it is a good assumption that your audience is a bit more specific than general.

The articles to rail against are those that are deliberately misleading - like all the ones about cures for cancer or are based on science which has not been fully peer-reviewed like the arsenic bacteria shit.

I would and in fact do if I see one and the mood strikes me.

I've fucking given lectures to the general public about science. That shit you posted- nobody would pay attention to that. Journalism, its a thing

Any undergraduate student will tell you that just because someone knows what they are talking about (and even has taught for years) that does not make them a good at communicating. Neither does any of this negate the point that it is in fact possible to do both things at the same time. It is harder to do but is not impossible.

Attack the dudes presenting chiropacty and homeopathy "studies". Attack the dudes posting climate denying "studies". Not the dude who wants to drum up his readership a bit by presenting a difficult concept in a way the general public can understand.

1) This guy clearly didn't understand either the concept of a quasi particle or High Energy particle physics.

2) Again a false dichotomy. One can do both with diminishing one's ability to do either individually. Your argument now seems to be equivalent to saying "You should focus solely on catching murders and let all the pickpockets go because murder is so much worse." Except even more ridiculous because my ability to do both the things we are talking about is a lot less limited than a police departments ability to catch criminals.

[Fifthfiend]

Those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones you know. (And don't try and deny it you're only angry because I bruised your ego by not immediately bowing to your obviously superior intellect :rolleyes:)

And ok you might know something about solid state physics. You still clearly have very little understanding of High Energy Particle physics. The differences between Solid State and High Energy Particle physics being the very foundation of the point I made. So maybe I'm not the only one capable of missing a point.



Then maybe you should have chosen better words than:



Because what was implied in the title was no were near what was done on any fundamental level. Maybe you didn't mean to make that comparison but that sentence doesn't convey that in anyway and you can't really get all hot under the collar because you communicated your point poorly.



1) They said the exact same things to Feynman and yet he managed to be fairly popular. Besides only people already interested in science read articles on phys.org so your point is nonsensical. If you're writing for a journalistic outlet that is geared toward science news then logic dictates your readers are already interested in science by virtue of even being there.

2) My summaries weren't written to be entertaining otherwise I would have written them differently and even then my talent for that is somewhat limited. So my ability isn't representative of the best that could be done. Beyond on that my summary was of relatively appropriate length being only a few sentences.



False dichotomy. One can clearly do both. It is harder but still possible.



Unsubstantiated. In fact Feynman is a direct contradiction to this.



Doesn't negate the point that it could and should be better. Especially since it was on Phys Org were it is a good assumption that your audience is a bit more specific than general.



I would and in fact do if I see one and the mood strikes me.



Any undergraduate student will tell you that just because someone knows what they are talking about (and even has taught for years) that does not make them a good at communicating. Neither does any of this negate the point that it is in fact possible to do both things at the same time. It is harder to do but is not impossible.



1) This guy clearly didn't understand either the concept of a quasi particle or High Energy particle physics.

2) Again a false dichotomy. One can do both with diminishing one's ability to do either individually. Your argument now seems to be equivalent to saying "You should focus solely on catching murders and let all the pickpockets go because murder is so much worse." Except even more ridiculous because my ability to do both the things we are talking about is a lot less limited than a police departments ability to catch criminals.

Hey Sith I've been meaning to ask:

Do you have any backups saved from the main Minecraft server? Mostly Infernum. There was a whole thing.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Hey
This is overly informal for greeting someone when you have not been previously involved.
Sith
I think you will find his name is Sithdarth. Dumbing it down for the audience will only lead to misapprenhensions and possibly riots

I've
Acceptable though once again could cause misapprehensions


been
Using the past perfect when the short time frame would suggest the normal past would be better. Your reckless use of tenses has me and your audience in a temporal muddle

meaning
When using this term you should use the full epistemological meaning of menaing, drawing reference to the post structuralists, the communicative rationality of Habermas and with a brief reference to Kant
to
Fine
ask:
Asking implies an unacceptable to and fro when our position as academic masters of our craft implies we should be lecturing at all times.


The rest of your post is pretty good so I shall dress it in brief.

Do you have any backups saved from the main Minecraft server? Mostly Infernum. There was a whole thing.
I commend your use of alienating jargon and confusing shorthand. Soon we shall remove all meaning from conversation in a way that only the wildest of Chomskists would dream of.

[shiney]

They haven't even invented the level of warning you're going to get for that gem, Smarmiarty. I need to go upgrade vBulletin just to apply new features so I can punish you properly. I might have to purchase a new license. This egregious breach of the social contract is going to cost me, and accordingly it will cost you.

[Fifthfiend]

I do feel pretty offended.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

I wasn't particularly offended at all.

[Osterbaum]

I was kind of confused, if that counts for anything.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

http://www.zmescience.com/research/studies/human-species-still-evolving-study-05012012/
This is not an amazing study but its funny because it'll piss lots of dudes off- studying evolution of humans in the 19th century rather than really early huans.

[Nique]

There is a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical phenomenon taking place tonight. The transit of Venus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Venus) takes place twice in an 8-year period every 243 years.

[Shyria Dracnoir]

There is a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical phenomenon taking place tonight. The transit of Venus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Venus) takes place twice in an 8-year period every 243 years.

THE TIME FOR THE GREAT RITUAL DRAWS NEAR

I mean, cool.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Times to summon the demons of the destruction and conqure the world!!!!!

[Professor Smarmiarty]

CERN announced that they done some neutrino speed experiments and they didn't go faster than light:
http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2011/PR19.11E.html

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Figured as much. It was too much to hope that we'd discovered some physics breaking anomaly that was going to force us to change our preconceptions about the universe. Nope, just some faulty equipment.

Sigh, the simplest solution really is always the truth isn't it? Shame the truth is boring.

[Azisien]

Sigh, the simplest solution really is always the truth isn't it? Shame the truth is boring.

Well that's simply not true sir!

In another development reported in Kyoto, the OPERA experiment showed evidence for the appearance of a second tau-neutrino in the CERN muon-neutrino beam, this is an important step towards understanding the science of neutrino oscillations.

http://www.psychologyofgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/sleeping.jpg

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Well it stll could be that the OPERA experiment had faster than light neutrinos and CERN just failed to replicate some manner of their condition. It just means more experiments are needed.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

LASER GUIDED PLASMA WEAPONS BITCHES! (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18630622)

Fuckin' finally!

[Sithdarth]

That's basic nonlinear optics that we've know about and been able to control for what must be close to a decade. They just did a little engineering to make it battle field ready. In fact a much cooler laser has been operating for quite some time. The Pettawatt laser (https://www.llnl.gov/str/MPerry.html) has an energy density greater than the cores of most stars. It is so intense that it literally rips nuclei apart. I hear they've been trying to use plasma mirrors to shrink the optics small enough to get one of those on a table.

[Sithdarth]

In other news we might have found the Higgs Boson. (http://news.discovery.com/space/tevatron-data-detects-higgs-boson-existence-120703.html) Well at the very least we have more than "it makes the math work out nicely" as potential proof.

And the LHC folks are chiming in with a possibly much higher significance level. (http://www.itwire.com/science-news/energy/55524-has-the-higgs-boson-discovery-been-confirmed) Looks like the 4th of July 2012 might be the date we officially find out why things have mass.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Well, it was only a matter of time, but still very exciting. Good to see they haven't gone totally crazy with the announcement either, and are still waiting on actual, final, definate clarification, before they break out the champagne.

[Sithdarth]

So its "Higgs like" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/science/cern-physicists-may-have-discovered-higgs-boson-particle.html?pagewanted=all) but luckily it has some interesting properties that suggest it might not be exactly as predicted. That's really good news in a way. Seems like we might be in for some new physics in the next few years.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

In other news, technology marches on (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/9735780.stm). We now have paper thin monitor displays. Nothing majorly exciting granted, and it's pretty apparant we were getting close to this stuff (I'd be surprised if this is the first time something like this has appeared), but still pretty nifty looking stuff, and probably quite practical.

[Sithdarth]

Took them long enough. Plastic Logic has been promising a commercial plastic display since like 2005. When I took a Special Topics: Flexible Electronics course like 2 years ago we actually talked about Plastic Logic and how they had all but failed as a company. My professor didn't hold out much hope that they'd ever be able to make a display.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Them Harvard folk is makin artificial jellyfish, they is. Tamperin with the laaaaws o' nature by 'eck. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120722135119.htm)

[Professor Smarmiarty]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/29/alien-life-enceladus-saturn-moon Another candidate in solar system for life.

[phil_]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/curiosity-rovers-mars-landing-site-was-once-covered-with-fast-moving-water-nasa-says/2012/09/27/9ce654a0-08d2-11e2-a10c-fa5a255a9258_story.html

Not exactly ground breaking, but evidence of long-lasting flowing streams on Mars is interesting to me, if not a little unsettling for this planet's future.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/sep/21/drugs-industry-scandal-ben-goldacre
Bit old but I was bant and it ace article.
This is why I know fix all ills with a mixture of homeopathy, witchdoctors and chiropracty.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

This is pretty hilarious:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/10/11/physicists-may-have-evide_n_1957777.html
I've heard the argument before and people have long likened quantum foam to the pixellation of the universe but some people have done some mathy shit to try and address it. I not really in any position to comment on the validity of this shit but just throw it out there.
I'm now trying to reenact the plot of the thirteenth floor. Have fun in computer land suckers.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Man if it turns out we're in the matrix I am gona be pissed. Or, it could be totally awesome, depends on what genre we're in.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Teen Drama, Hawk... it's teen drama...

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I'm glad that the Guardian has decided to take on journalists who have no knowledge of their chosen field, so I can finally pursue my dream of writing about the cut and thrust world of competitive dog shows.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/13/secret-life-unveiled-chemistry-lab