Panel discussion on GeoEngineering - 0 views
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Should We Study Geoengineering?
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Should we organise a workshop PDC like on this? Or a call for ideas?
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Web 2.0 workplaces [PICS] - UADDit - 0 views
Dark Matter or Black Hole Propulsion? - 1 views
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Anyone out there still doing propulsion stuff? Two more papers just waiting to get busted... http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1429v1 http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803
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One reply to Pacome, though the discussion exceeds by far the relevance of the topic already. Baryonic DM is strictly limited by cosomology, if one believes in these models, of course. Anyway, even though most DM is cold, we are constantly bombarded by some DM particles that come together with cosmic radiation, solar wind etc. etc. If DM easily interacted with normal matter, we would have found it long ago. In the paper they consider DM as neutralinos, which are neither baryonic nor strongly or electromagnetically interacting. -
well then I agree, how the fu.. they want to collect them !!!
Rat Neurons Grown On A Computer Chip Fly A Simulated Aircraft - 1 views
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This could become quite relevant in future control systems if the setup can be made simple to keep alive and stable. I was doing some follow-up on a story about people controlling aircraft with their brainwaves (through EEG) when I ran into this really cool story. The idea of growing the neurons in patterns is incidentally very similar to the Physarium slime-mold stuff that Dario and me were curious about a little while ago.
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I think we already had a discussion on this during a wednesday meeting :P -
Oh, I thought that was on the little robot that was controlled by rat neurons and bumped into EVERYTHING. The interesting thing here is that they add a surface patterning (with some kind of nutrient) to control the growth of cells. (Maybe that is not new either, though.)
Resource availability towards a self-sufficient Mars Colony - 0 views
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Regarding our discussion on resource self-sufficiency of a Mars colony. Would it ever be possible (from a resource perspective that is..) A NASA report on availability of resources. A self-sufficiency trade study described in Boston (1996) identifies the mission duration at which the development of local life support resources becomes advantageous. Within 30 days, without recycling, or with the equivalent leakage, it becomes advantageous to derive oxygen from local resources. The time constants for water and food are about 6 months and 3 years, respectively.
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I guess it depends on the number of astronauts that have to be supporte ... 3 years for food looks like a lot
Microsoft's Strange Quest for the Topological Qubit | MIT Technology Review - 2 views
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loads of nice passwords - should we have a closer look at it? anybody volunteering? e.g. Anna and Daniel?
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Just to add to this possible discussion, two important breakthroughs in Quantum Computing using Silicon were published last week (October 12th). Check it here: http://phys.org/news/2014-10-physicists-silicon-quantum.html
Bacteria Living in 'Cloud Cities' May Control Rain and Snow Patterns : DNews - 1 views
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Some bacteria can influence the weather. Up high in the sky where clouds form, water droplets condense and ice crystal grow around tiny particles. Typically these particles are dust, pollen, or even soot from a wildfire. But recently scientists have begun to realize that some of these little particles are alive - they are bacteria evolved to create ice or water droplets around themselves. old but might be worth a discussion
Relativistic rocket: Dream and reality - 3 views
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An exhaustive overview of all possible advanced rocket concepts, eg.. "As an example, consider a photon rocket with its launching mass, say, 1000 ton moving with a constant acceleration a =0.1 g=0.98 m/s2. The flux of photons with E γ=0.5 MeV needed to produce this acceleration is ~1027/s, which corresponds to the efflux power of 1014 W and the rate of annihilation events N'a~5×1026 s−1 [47]. This annihilation rate in ambiplasma l -l ann corresponds to the value of current ~108 A and linear density N ~2×1018 m−1 thus any hope for non-relativistic relative velocity of electrons and positrons in ambiplasma is groundless." And also, even if it would work, then one of the major issues is going to be heat dispersal: "For example, if the temperature of radiator is chosen T=1500 K, the emitting area should be not less than 1000 m2 for Pb=1 GW, not less than 1 km2 for Pb=1 TW, and ~100 km2 for Pb=100 TW, assuming ε=0.5 and δ=0.2. Lower temperature would require even larger radiator area to maintain the outer temperature of the engine section stable for a given thermal power of the reactor."
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The problem is not achieving a high energy density, that we can already do with nuclear fission, the question however is how to confine or harness this power with relatively high efficiency, low waste heat and at not too crazy specific mass. I see magnetic confinement as a possibility, yet still decades away and also an all-or-nothing method as we cannot easily scale this up from a test experiment to a full-scale system. It might be possible to extract power from such a plasma, but definitely well below breakeven so an additional power supply is needed. The fission fragments circumvent these issues by a more brute force approach, thereby wasting a lot of energy for sure but at the end probably providing more ISP and thrust.
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Sure. However, the annihilation based photon rocket concept unifies almost all relevant drawbacks if we speak about solar system scales, making itself obsolete...it is just an academic testcase.
Elon Musk describes AI as 'summoning the devil' - 4 views
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A good idea for a card in one of our ACT magic decks!!! In his words AI is "our biggest existential threat" - lol
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the "even" in your comment is the key word
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Edge.org recently had an interesting piece that ties into all of this recent AI fear mongering: http://edge.org/conversation/the-myth-of-ai
Astronomers resort to crowdfunding to save key telescope - 1 views
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Related to our discussion on crowdfunding from Friday's science coffee. (Another sad example of how Tony Abbott's policy negatively affects the Australian science community... ) A team of astronomers have resorted to raising funds through crowdsourcing to try and save an Australian telescope involved in mapping the Milky Way. The 22-metre diameter Mopra Radio Telescope, based near Coonabarabran in western New South Wales, is slated to be shut down by the end of the year after $110-million was slashed from CSIRO in last year's federal budget.
The Economics of Star Wars: How the Empire collapses - 1 views
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Simulating the economic state of the Galaxy after the resistance has blown up the Death Stars. See the paper here: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1511.09054.pdf
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Love this type of friday afternoon research questions. There is also a now famous scene in the movie Clerks discussing the loss of independent contractors lives as the Death Star was being build.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQdDRrcAOjA
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That analysis is quite crappy and is easily demolished in the video's comments.
The physics of life - 2 views
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Research in active-matter systems is a growing field in biology. It consists in using theoretical statistical physics in living systems such as molecule colonies to deduce macroscopic properties. The aim and hope is to understand how cells divide, take shape and move on these systems. Being a crossing field between physics and biology "The pot of gold is at the interface but you have to push both fields to their limits." one can read
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Maybe we should discuss about this active matter one of these days? "These are the hallmarks of systems that physicists call active matter, which have become a major subject of research in the past few years. Examples abound in the natural world - among them the leaderless but coherent flocking of birds and the flowing, structure-forming cytoskeletons of cells. They are increasingly being made in the laboratory: investigators have synthesized active matter using both biological building blocks such as microtubules, and synthetic components including micrometre-scale, light-sensitive plastic 'swimmers' that form structures when someone turns on a lamp. Production of peer-reviewed papers with 'active matter' in the title or abstract has increased from less than 10 per year a decade ago to almost 70 last year, and several international workshops have been held on the topic in the past year."
Moving the Earth: a planetary survival guide | New Scientist - 1 views
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It is an old one, but it was mentioned in some discussion ... Mainly based on this paper https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0102126
Miguel Nicolelis Says the Brain Is Not Computable, Bashes Kurzweil's Singularity | MIT ... - 9 views
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As I said ten years ago and psychoanalysts 100 years ago. Luis I am so sorry :) Also ... now that the commission funded the project blue brain is a rather big hit Btw Nicolelis is a rather credited neuro-scientist
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@ Dario: absolutely agree, the reductionist approach is the main mistake. My point: if you take the reductionsit approach, then you will face the initial and boundary value problem. If one tries a non-reductionist approach, this problem may be much weaker. But off the record: there exists a non-reductionist theory of the brain, it's called psychology... @ Johannes: also agree, the only way the reductionist approach could eventually be successful is to actually grow the brain. Start with essentially one neuron and grow the whole complexity. But if you want to do this, bring up a kid! A brain without body might be easier? Why do you expect that a brain detached from its complete input/output system actually still works. I'm pretty sure it does not!
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@Luzi: That was exactly my point :-)
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