official science and technology thread

Puerco · Post by **Puerco** » Fri Nov 20, 2015 2:54 am

Don't know why that makes news. Mine surprises me every single day.

Merkin · Post by **Merkin** » Mon Dec 07, 2015 1:01 pm

Jefe · Post by **Jefe** » Fri Dec 11, 2015 4:45 pm

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/fr ... e-of-earth" target="_blank

From a Million Miles Away, NASA Camera Shows Moon Crossing Face of Earth

Full size image: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/file ... nstill.png" target="_blank

These images were taken between 3:50 p.m. and 8:45 p.m. EDT on July 16, showing the moon moving over the Pacific Ocean near North America. The North Pole is in the upper left corner of the image, reflecting the orbital tilt of Earth from the vantage point of the spacecraft.

“It is surprising how much brighter Earth is than the moon," said Adam Szabo, DSCOVR project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "Our planet is a truly brilliant object in dark space compared to the lunar surface.”

Daryl Zero · Post by **Daryl Zero** » Fri Dec 11, 2015 5:06 pm

The moon is such a drama queen.

Merkin · Post by **Merkin** » Tue Dec 15, 2015 3:45 pm

I can see my house.

ghostwhitehorse · Post by **ghostwhitehorse** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 6:58 pm

Re: Falcon 9

NAILED IT MOTHER FUCKERS!!!!!!

azgreg · Post by **azgreg** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 7:03 pm

ghostwhitehorse wrote:Re: Falcon 9

NAILED IT MOTHER FUCKERS!!!!!!

ghostwhitehorse · Post by **ghostwhitehorse** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 7:10 pm

azgreg wrote:
ghostwhitehorse wrote:Re: Falcon 9

NAILED IT MOTHER FUCKERS!!!!!!

Getting an old school sci fi rocket vibe from that. . .Bradbury, Heinlein, Norton etc. . . *chills*

ASUHATER! · Post by **ASUHATER!** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 7:39 pm

Wow if they can repeat that result consistently and make a bunch of those rockets then that will cut a huge cost out of spaceflight

84Cat · Post by **84Cat** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 10:20 pm

ASUHATER! wrote:Wow if they can repeat that result consistently and make a bunch of those rockets then that will cut a huge cost out of spaceflight

$16 million to build the rocket, only $200,000 for fuel.

ASUHATER! · Post by **ASUHATER!** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 10:26 pm

In the world of spaceflight that is below dirt cheap.

ghostwhitehorse · Post by **ghostwhitehorse** » Tue Dec 22, 2015 5:19 pm

ASUHATER! wrote:In the world of spaceflight that is below dirt cheap.

RichardCranium · Post by **RichardCranium** » Tue Dec 22, 2015 9:11 pm

84Cat wrote:
ASUHATER! wrote:Wow if they can repeat that result consistently and make a bunch of those rockets then that will cut a huge cost out of spaceflight
$16 million to build the rocket, only $200,000 for fuel.

Plus a shit-load for clean, lube, adjust, test, test, test.

Still a LOT cheaper than a new build.

Downside, of course, is that you have to lift the fuel required for landing so you lose that much of income producing payload.

RichardCranium · Post by **RichardCranium** » Tue Dec 22, 2015 9:12 pm

ghostwhitehorse wrote:
ASUHATER! wrote:In the world of spaceflight that is below dirt cheap.

Hah! I just reread that about 6 months ago.

Daryl Zero · Post by **Daryl Zero** » Tue Dec 29, 2015 2:10 pm

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sea ... a68880fc60

This Genius Bucket Sucks Trash And Oil Right Out Of The Sea

Two Australian surfers have quit their jobs and come up with a brilliant solution to combat the millions of tons of trash in our oceans.
Andrew Turton and Pete Ceglinski's Seabin invention is an ocean-cleaning device so simple and effective, we're wondering why it took so long.
The water filtration system is much like what you'd find in a fish tank, but it has the potential to clean up an entire ocean:

Puerco · Post by **Puerco** » Fri Jan 01, 2016 2:47 am

Daryl Zero wrote:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sea ... a68880fc60

This Genius Bucket Sucks Trash And Oil Right Out Of The Sea

Two Australian surfers have quit their jobs and come up with a brilliant solution to combat the millions of tons of trash in our oceans.
Andrew Turton and Pete Ceglinski's Seabin invention is an ocean-cleaning device so simple and effective, we're wondering why it took so long.
The water filtration system is much like what you'd find in a fish tank, but it has the potential to clean up an entire ocean:

Interesting. I wonder how cost effective it would be.

Chicat · Post by **Chicat** » Sun Jan 10, 2016 1:17 pm

ghostwhitehorse · Post by **ghostwhitehorse** » Mon Jan 11, 2016 2:06 pm

Jefe · Post by **Jefe** » Tue Jan 12, 2016 2:05 pm

RichardCranium · Post by **RichardCranium** » Tue Jan 12, 2016 9:47 pm

ghostwhitehorse wrote:

This will indeed be cool if indeed LIGO has produced. Last I heard they were having difficulties, and their first go was a false alarm.

This seems to be a new 'rumor' though, so I'm off to check it out.

EDIT: Krauss is taking on much heat for his tweet."'who are these sources you claim?", "stealing the LIGO team's glory with premature 'announcement'", etc, etc.

EDIT2: Of course you must all realize where he works, right? Yep, A$$U. He says he's 60% confident that the rumor is true that the LIGO team is putting the finishing touches on their paper. Only 60% confidence and he has to light the internet on fire?

EDIT3: I see no reason to go all weak at the knees yet. Krauss is a cluey guy and probably does have very good sources within the project. But I am NOT in favor of this 'leaking' important findings before the team is ready to publish. LIGO got burned the last time they announced because they were using outdated data on the amount of dust in the cosmos. They are purposely being overly cautious this time and Krauss should be respecting that. Fkn A$$U screwed up Richard Dawkins and they are screwing up Lawrence Krauss. His books are, however, outstanding.

RichardCranium · Post by **RichardCranium** » Tue Jan 12, 2016 10:07 pm

Jefe wrote:

By the way... that is obviously NOT how to get HUMANS to Mars.

catgrad97 · Post by **catgrad97** » Wed Jan 13, 2016 8:50 am

Daryl Zero wrote:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sea ... a68880fc60

This Genius Bucket Sucks Trash And Oil Right Out Of The Sea

Two Australian surfers have quit their jobs and come up with a brilliant solution to combat the millions of tons of trash in our oceans.
Andrew Turton and Pete Ceglinski's Seabin invention is an ocean-cleaning device so simple and effective, we're wondering why it took so long.
The water filtration system is much like what you'd find in a fish tank, but it has the potential to clean up an entire ocean:

I'm still excited as hell about this. I was convinced that whirlpool of tsunami trash in the middle of the Pacific was going to be our eternal environmental legacy on this planet.

Hope that device can eventually suck out cars and telephone poles.

ghostwhitehorse · Post by **ghostwhitehorse** » Wed Jan 20, 2016 9:51 am

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/spe ... ar-system/" target="_blank

Astronomers at the California Institute of Technology announced Wednesday that they have found new evidence of a giant icy planet lurking in the darkness of our solar system far beyond the orbit of Pluto. They are calling it "Planet Nine."

Their paper, published in the Astronomical Journal, describes the planet as about five to 10 times as massive as the Earth. But the authors, astronomers Michael Brown and Konstantin Batygin, have not observed the planet directly.

Instead, they have inferred its existence from the motion of recently discovered dwarf planets and other small objects in the outer solar system. Those smaller bodies have orbits that appear to be influenced by the gravity of a hidden planet – a "massive perturber." The astronomers suggest it might have been flung into deep space long ago by the gravitational force of Jupiter or Saturn.

Brown is guy who "killed" Pluto btw.

wyo-cat · Post by **wyo-cat** » Wed Jan 20, 2016 10:02 am

If he killed Pluto, then why is it still there?

azgreg · Post by **azgreg** » Wed Jan 20, 2016 10:44 am

wyo-cat wrote:If he killed Pluto, then why is it still there?

Cloned.

RichardCranium · Post by **RichardCranium** » Wed Jan 20, 2016 11:14 am

This dude knocked it out of the park.

Inside the mind of teenage maths genius Alex Gunning

OSUCat · Post by **OSUCat** » Fri Jan 29, 2016 10:14 am

Chicat · Post by **Chicat** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 2:45 pm

This article on crumbling dams is downright horrifying...

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/ ... al_twitter" target="_blank

On January 11th, the New York Times reported that Mosul Dam, the largest such structure in Iraq, urgently requires maintenance to prevent its collapse, a disaster that could drown as many as five hundred thousand people downstream and leave a million homeless. Four days earlier, the energy minister of Zambia declared that Kariba Dam, which straddles the border between his country and Zimbabwe, holding back the world’s largest reservoir, was in “dire” condition.

Mosul Dam’s predicament is partly a result of the ongoing war; many maintenance workers have not returned there since August of 2014, when ISIS fighters briefly took control. (Iraqi and Kurdish forces soon regained it.) But the main issue is that, like many such dams, the project shouldn’t exist in the first place. Opened in 1986, it was built on unstable gypsum bedrock, requiring grout to be constantly injected into the foundation to prevent the dam’s collapse. That work has ceased. In 2006, long before ISIS began making headlines, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers called Mosul Dam “the most dangerous dam in the world.”

Kariba’s collapse, like Mosul’s, would constitute an epochal event in the history of energy development—the dam industry’s Chernobyl. The ensuing torrent would be four times bigger than the Zambezi’s biggest recorded flood, in 1958, and would release enough water to knock over another major dam three hundred miles downstream, in Mozambique. At least three million people live in the flood’s path; most would die or lose their crops or possessions. About forty per cent of the electricity-generating capacity of twelve southern African nations would be eliminated.

Daryl Zero · Post by **Daryl Zero** » Thu Feb 11, 2016 10:44 pm

Discoveries and Inventions:

http://www.cnet.com/news/shape-shifting ... ts-weight/

A new polymer boasts traits that seem pulled straight from the pages of a comic book.

The material, developed by University of Rochester scientists, can be triggered to change shape when it comes in contact with body heat, and in the process it lifts 1,000 times its own mass. The super-polymer could one day be used to used to stitch you up after surgery and possibly take form-fitting spandex to a whole new level.

In the video below, chemical engineering professor Mitch Anthamatten demonstrates how the material can be stretched into a new shape, which it can then hold until it comes in contact with body heat and returns to its original form. "Our shape-memory polymer is like a rubber band that can lock itself into a new shape when stretched," Anthamatten said in a release. "But a simple touch causes it to recoil back to its original shape."

Puerco · Post by **Puerco** » Fri Feb 12, 2016 2:56 am

I'm not sure I fully understand all the implications of this, but it's a very big discovery.

Just over 100 years after he published his general theory of relativity, scientists have found what Albert Einstein predicted as part of the theory: gravitational waves.

"We have detected gravitational waves. We did it," said David Reitze, executive director of LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, which was created to do just what Reitze announced.

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/11/us/gr ... index.html

KaibabKat · Post by **KaibabKat** » Fri Feb 12, 2016 9:54 am

It means that a guys beer belly shakes even when he is not walking.

Chicat · Post by **Chicat** » Mon Feb 29, 2016 12:49 pm

A Google autonomous vehicle caused an accident for the first time.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/29/11134 ... ash-report" target="_blank

RichardCranium · Post by **RichardCranium** » Mon Feb 29, 2016 9:07 pm

STEM cells are being used to regrow damaged knee cartilage in world-first Melbourne trials it is hoped will make many joint replacements and other surgery unnecessary.

Doctors have halted damage caused by degenerative conditions, and even reversed it, in one of the first studies to use stem cells to rebuild cartilage in humans.

World-first Australian stem cell marvel that regrows damaged cartilage could make joint surgery unnecessary

AFTER six knee operations, Ollie Thursfield had to give up his beloved surfing. He could barely walk down the street.

One knee had deteriorated since he was 13 years old, thanks to a congenital deformity called osteochondritis dissecans.

Now, at 26, no cartilage remained and he was facing the prospect of having to have a knee replacement.

So desperate was this laid-back Anglesea health worker that he even contemplated handing over $7000 for an unproven stem cell treatment, with no scientific backing, at a cosmetic medicine clinic.

Instead, Melbourne Stem Cell Centre offered him the chance to join the world’s first controlled research trials in humans to assess the impact of stem cells in the management of osteoarthritis.

Six months later, MRI images showed cartilage regrowth, reversing some of the damage that hobbled him.

He is hoping for even greater improvements, and a return to the surf.

RichardCranium · Post by **RichardCranium** » Mon Feb 29, 2016 9:12 pm

Professor Ian Frazer won the Australian of the Year award for the creation of the Gardasil vaccine, which gives immunity from about 75 percent of human papillomavirus (HPV) strains and now he's working on another vaccine to treat those who are already infected.

Gardasil Creator Is Testing A DNA Vaccine To Wipe Out Cervical Cancer-Causing HPV Virus

The vaccine's take-up is about 70-75 percent in Australia among young people but even in the U.S. where uptake is lower, Frazer told The Huffington Post Australia rates of the virus had declined.

"Abnormal pap smears for women under 30 are almost gone," Frazer said.

"It's not a highly infectious disease so if you can get half of the population vaccinated, there'll be a significant decline."

But Frazer didn't stop.

Gardasil was unable to help people already infected by HPV.

...In terms of how the DNA vaccine would work, Frazer said it came down the the fact that HPV wasn't passed from the body like any other virus.

"It’s quite simple really, most viruses kill the cells they infect, which is a nasty danger signal for the body so it turns on its defences pretty quickly to kill it and then kill the cells making more of the virus. This process saves us from flu and a whole range of different infections.

"Human papillomavirus doesn't kill the cells it infects -- rather it make them grow more. There's no danger signal to body -- all the body sees is tissue repairing itself."

The DNA vaccine takes a viral protein and alerts the body to the fact that it's dangerous. Once the vaccination is injected, the body now sees this particular protein as dangerous, and sets to work destroying the cells with this protein -- which is where the virus is.

ASUHATER! · Post by **ASUHATER!** » Tue Mar 01, 2016 11:20 pm

Scott Kelly is officially back on earth after a year in the space station. Should be considered one of our space heroes now after the tireless efforts he put into research and documenting his experiences in space. Will give us extremely valuable research for the very quickly coming up attempts at the moon and Mars over the next 5-20 years.

ghostwhitehorse · Post by **ghostwhitehorse** » Mon Mar 14, 2016 2:43 pm

Chicat · Post by **Chicat** » Sat Mar 19, 2016 11:54 am

Puerco · Post by **Puerco** » Tue Mar 22, 2016 4:19 am

The brilliant flash of an exploding star’s shockwave—what astronomers call the “shock breakout”—has been captured for the first time in the optical wavelength or visible light by NASA's planet-hunter, the Kepler space telescope.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/Keple ... oding-star

PieceOfMeat · Post by **PieceOfMeat** » Tue Mar 22, 2016 6:03 pm

For a second I thought it was actual video, until it occurred to me just how far away that star must be, and how we could never get such a close-up of it. Then I clicked the link and clicked through to the youtube video and read that yes, it's an animation based upon observations. Still, for that brief second I thought it might be the coolest thing I've ever seen too.

Longhorned · Post by **Longhorned** » Tue Mar 22, 2016 8:01 pm

How would you feel if your neighbors figured out a way to watch everything you flushed down the toilet?

Puerco · Post by **Puerco** » Tue Mar 29, 2016 5:16 am

PieceOfMeat wrote:For a second I thought it was actual video, until it occurred to me just how far away that star must be, and how we could never get such a close-up of it. Then I clicked the link and clicked through to the youtube video and read that yes, it's an animation based upon observations. Still, for that brief second I thought it might be the coolest thing I've ever seen too.

Aw, damn. You ruined it for me. Didn't realize they got only a single image of the event. I haven't seen that exact they captured image posted anywhere.

KaibabKat · Post by **KaibabKat** » Fri Apr 01, 2016 9:07 pm

World's tiniest dinosaur remarkably well preserved

The world's smallest dinosaur has been recovered from the waste rock pile outside an old mine adit in northwestern Arizona. The distant cousin of the famous Tyrannosaurus-Rex ("T-Rex") would have weighed less than a pound when alive, according to discoverer, Gil Davidson, author of the scientific paper published today in the International Bulletin of Economic Taphonomy (IBET).

Davidson noted the specimen, which paleontologists have dubbed "T-Minus", is completely preserved, apparently through an unknown chemical process in the rocks.

Exploration is underway for other specimens at the site, which is next to an elementary school playground.

[This is our post for April 1 and we stand by it.]

http://arizonageology.blogspot.com/2016 ... -well.html

azgreg · Post by **azgreg** » Sat Apr 02, 2016 4:01 pm

Astronomers Spot White Dwarf Star With 99.9 Percent Pure Oxygen Atmosphere

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/14629 ... sphere.htm" target="_blank

Astronomers have discovered a white dwarf star that has 99.9 percent pure oxygen atmosphere.

The presence of an ancient sun that is able to live for so long, causing its outermost layer to consist of only pure oxygen, was just a theory before the white dwarf star was discovered.

Small stars that have less than 10 times the mass of the sun become white dwarfs when they shed their outer layers, as the end of their lifespan nears. Ideally, due to high gravity, lighter elements of the star rise to the surface, while the heaviest elements descend to its dense core.

But in the case of this white dwarf star, also known as SDSS J124043.01+671034.68, the outer atmosphere is composed of more than 99.9 percent of pure oxygen. The expected surface helium and hydrogen are absent. It only has few traces of magnesium, neon, and silicon.

Astronomers cannot provide an exact answer to how it all happened but they speculated that the missing elements were stripped off the star's surface over time.

azgreg · Post by **azgreg** » Sun Apr 03, 2016 5:31 pm

ghostwhitehorse · Post by **ghostwhitehorse** » Tue Apr 05, 2016 10:22 am

azgreg · Post by **azgreg** » Tue Apr 05, 2016 10:25 am

I don't see Matt Damon anywhere in that picture.

Chicat · Post by **Chicat** » Tue Apr 05, 2016 10:52 am

Looks like Kingman.

84Cat · Post by **84Cat** » Tue Apr 05, 2016 11:27 am

Project to drill into 'dinosaur crater' gets under way

A joint UK-US-led expedition has got under way to drill into the Chicxulub Crater off the coast of Mexico.

This is the deep scar made in the Earth's surface 66 million years ago by the asteroid that scientists believe hastened the end of the dinosaurs.

Today, the key parts of the crater are buried beneath 600m of ocean sediment.

But if researchers can access its rocks, they should learn more about the scale of the impact, and the environmental catastrophe that ensued.

They are particularly interested in a feature called the "peak ring".

This was created at the centre of the impact hole where the Earth rebounded after being hit by the city-sized object.

More: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35950946" target="_blank

84Cat · Post by **84Cat** » Mon May 23, 2016 3:54 pm

ghostwhitehorse · Post by **ghostwhitehorse** » Sat Jul 02, 2016 4:28 pm

Coming this July 4th. . .http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6554" target="_blank

J.O.I.

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