Advanced Concepts Team

so it took us 70% of the time Earth is in the habitable zone to develop, would this be normal or could it be much faster? In other words, would all forms of life that started on a planet that originated at a 'similar' point in time like us, be equally far developed?

That is actually quite tricky to estimate rly. If for no other reason than the fact that all of the mass extinctions we had over the Earth's history basically reset the evolutionary clock. Assuming 2 Earths identical in every way but one did not have the dinosaur wipe-out impact, that would've given non-impact Earth 60million years to evolve a potential dinosaur intelligent super race.

The opposite might be true - or might not be ;-). Since usually the rate of evolution increases after major extinction events the chance is higher to produce 'intelligent' organisms if these events happen quite frequently. Usually the time of rapid evolution is only a few million years - so Earth is going quite slow. Certainly extinction events don't reset the evolutionary clock - if they would never have happened Earth gene pool would probably be quite primitive. By the way: dinosaurs were a quite diverse group and large dinosaurs might well have had cognitive abilities that come close to whales or primates - the difference to us might be that we have hands to manipulate our environment and vocal cords to communicate in very diverse ways. Modern dinosaur (descendents), i.e. birds, contain some very intelligent species - especially with respect to their body size and weight.

With its exceeding small perihelion (passing the 28th of nov), there is an off chance that it will be visible by the naked eye in the nights sky around the 10th of november http://www.universetoday.com/102976/will-comet-ison-dazzle-our-skies-an-expert-weighs-in/

nice indeed! " Triggered by commonly available ambient mechanical energy such as human footfalls, a NG with size smaller than a human palm can generate maximum short-circuit current of 2 mA, delivering instantaneous power output of 1.2 W to external load. The power output corresponds to an area power density of 313 W/m2 and a volume power density of 54 268 W/m3 at an open-circuit voltage of 1200 V. An energy conversion efficiency of 14.9% has been achieved. The power was capable of instantaneously lighting up as many as 600 multicolor commercial LED bulbs. The record high power output for the NG is attributed to optimized structure, proper materials selection and nanoscale surface modification. This work demonstrated the practicability of using NG to harvest large-scale mechanical energy, such as footsteps, rolling wheels, wind power, and ocean waves."

You should be able to put it also in your shoes such that you may be able to power some gadgets. Thinking about it, I have seen many kids already running around with brightly lit sneakers!

Maybe of interest for those into innovative disruption etc? ;)

I could not detect the "disruptive innovation" in the paper

check the video

Surprising to who?

To MIT I guess ;-)

Did any of you already try this type of auction? Was it inthe classification of Matthias ?

A fake paper was accepted in 60% of tried open access journals, just because the author paid the fee :)

Love the comment that some papers which originally rejected it, in the end did accept it anyway after some correspondence

First paper I know of that seems to confirm what we see with our daughters since they are born ... Would this also be observable with astronauts? We should have some data from the ISS it seems to me...

They were able to compare the ticking rates of two optical clocks separated by 2000 km, with the objective of computing sea level based on the effect gravity has on the clock ticking rate. They did the experiment using glass optical fibers, but I wonder if we could one day do the same from orbit, to measure the gravitational field around Earth.

isn't this is effectively what pacome has been doing with his time for the last few years? e.g. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1308.6766v1.pdf also mentioning the ACES experiment

Just getting a particle up to near the speed of light isn't good enough for today's physics. To properly unravel the fundamentals of the universe, particles have to be smashed together with enormous force. And two Stanford researchers have just devised a laser-based method that imparts ten times the power of traditional methods at a fraction of the cost.

Cool explanation on the status of "can we give birth in space?" - Of relevance to space colonization concepts

Indeed a cool one - I enjoyed.

a point called plasma/fuel break-even is reached where the energy released is higher than the power absorbed by the pellet. Of course, to produce 192 high power lasers does also have an efficiency. Thats why 'machine break-even' or even 'grid break-even' is more important and still quite a long way off. It does show that laser fusion is catching up quickly, although with serious bumps along the road.

Plastic needs a timescale of millenia to dissolve in the ocean and in the meantime it is accumulated in the water due to systematic dumping of garbage in the ocean since decades. Deploying buoyant devices at the location of the gyres (permanent circular currents in the ocean) is proposed for collecting the thin particles. The ambitious concept was developped by a Delft student, presented at a TEDx (see link), made a feasibility study through crowdfunding and now announces a public contest for developing mechanical parts of the harvesting system.

Instead of round silk threads this spider produces flat ribbons 40-80 nm in thickness. Still the material is as strong as Kevlar and much more elastic.

Editor of Wired describes his experience