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how the us intelligence community forecasts tech development into 2030

The size of this river system might give a hint at the flow rate and in turn on the "methane/ethan"-cycle's strength...

Samarium hexaboride seems to be a topological insulator as a bulk material. It conducts electricity only at its surface, i.e., in a 2D layer (like graphene). This might allow all kinds of exotic (quantum) effects...

interesting stuff ... I like this quote "When a man tells you about the time he planned to put a vegetable garden on Mars, you worry about his mental state. But if that same man has since launched multiple rockets that are actually capable of reaching Mars-sending them into orbit, Bond-style, from a tiny island in the Pacific-you need to find another diagnosis. That's the thing about extreme entrepreneurialism: There's a fine line between madness and genius, and you need a little bit of both to really change the world. All entrepreneurs have an aptitude for risk, but more important than that is their capacity for self-delusion. Indeed, psychological investigations have found that entrepreneurs aren't more risk-tolerant than non-entrepreneurs. They just have an extraordinary ability to believe in their own visions, so much so that they think what they're embarking on isn't really that risky. They're wrong, of course, but without the ability to be so wrong-to willfully ignore all those naysayers and all that evidence to the contrary-no one would possess the necessary audacity to start something radically new."

"The metamaterial aperature is only 40 centimeters long and it doesn't move. It's a circuit-board-like structure consisting of two copper plates separated by a piece of plastic. One of the plates is etched with repeating boxy structures, units about 2 millimeters long that permit different lengths of microwaves to pass through. Scanning the scene at various microwave frequencies allows the computer to capture all the information necessary to reproduce a scene."

where is Luzi's comment when one needs it ???

Curiosity suffered from BSoD...

Old post from Luis brought back from graveyard..... At least two good ideas to put there: 1) tipping points prediction 2) planetary phases for trajectory transfer and probably many more if we think about it a bit more

lots still to discover on Mars

nothing new but nicely written

Solid state tunnel junction can cool "payload" to sub-Kelvin temperatures. This would be much more convenient than for example helium3-helium4 mixing. Proposed use for cooling sensors on spacecraft - could extend lifetime of satellites like ESA's about to switched off Herschel almost indefinitely.

"Robohub is an online platform that brings together leading communicators in robotics research, start-ups, business, and education from around the world." What is nice about robohub is that they generally give a look behind the scenes of interesting robotic studies.

This is currently a very trendy subject in navigation, indeed. In your case, how exactly do you resolve the ambiguity? why only one 2D marker? what would be the conclusion exactly?

"leading communicators", love it!

The type is much weaker than normal supernovas and seems to have a new mechanism underlying it.

nice story, especially on the idea of using the lenin statue and lamp post shadows to determine the trajectory of the asteroid

I know at least of a few people who share this point of view :)

I think it is worth noting that Dyson's is not saying that climate change is an illusion - it is evident that a lot of CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere and hence something will change. His point is that we just don't know what will change and by how much and that (much) more experimental data is necessary to make predictive models.

On missing experimental work: just read in the news that condensation in cirrus clouds has been studied recently and that the models where incorrect as to what the significance of organic substances and soot is in cirrus cloud formation. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2013/05/08/science.1234145

The loss rate of Mars' original atmosphere apparently has been quantified through isotope ratio measurements. Should be useful for climate engineering studies (Isabelle & Markus ?)