Advanced Concepts Team

IceCube detects a neutrino in about every 6 minutes but most are from within the solar system. A small number of very high energy neutrinos have been found though which have energies that cannot be produced by the sun or on Earth.

Another underestimated source of CO2, are turbulent waters. "The stronger the turbulences at the water's surface, the more CO2 is released into the atmosphere. The combination of maps and data revealed that, while the CO2 emissions from lakes and reservoirs are lower than assumed, those from rivers and streams are three times as high as previously believed." Alltogether the emitted CO2 equates to roughly one-fifth of the emissions caused by humans. Yet more stuff to model...

Nasia, I thought about your statement carefully - and I cannot agree with you. Water is not a greenhouse gas. It is instead a liquid. Also, I can't believe you keep feeding the troll! :-P But on a more topical note: I think it is an over-simplification to call water a greenhouse gas - water is one of the most important mechanisms in the way Earth handles heat input from the sun. The latent heat that you mention actually cools Earth: solar energy that would otherwise heat Earth's surface is ABSORBED as latent heat by water which consequently evaporates - the same water condenses into rain drops at high altitudes and releases this stored heat. In effect the water cycle is a mechanism of heat transport from low altitude to high altitude where the chance of infrared radiation escaping into space is much higher due to the much thinner layer of atmosphere above (including the smaller abundance of greenhouse gasses). Also, as I know you are well aware, the cloud cover that results from water condensation in the troposphere dramatically increases albedo which has a cooling effect on climate. Furthermore the heat capacity of wet air ("humid heat") is much larger than that of dry air - so any advective heat transfer due to air currents is more efficient in wet air - transporting heat from warm areas to a natural heat sink e.g. polar regions. Of course there are also climate heating effects of water like the absorption of IR radiation. But I stand by my statement (as defended in the above) that rain cools the atmosphere. Oh and also some nice reading material on the complexities related to climate feedback due to sea surface temperature: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0442(1993)006%3C2049%3ALSEOTR%3E2.0.CO%3B2

I enjoy trolling conversations when there is a gain for both sides at the end :-) . I had to check upon some of the facts in order to explain my self properly. The IPCC report states the greenhouse gases here, and water vapour is included: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-2-1.html Honestly, I read only the abstract of the article you posted, which is a very interesting hypothesis on the mechanism of regulating sea surface temperature, but it is very localized to the tropics (vivid convection, storms) a region of which I have very little expertise, and is difficult to study because it has non-hydrostatic dynamics. The only thing I can comment there is that the authors define constant relative humidity for the bottom layer, supplied by the oceanic surface, which limits the implementation of the concept on other earth regions. Also, we may confuse during the conversation the greenhouse gas with the Radiative Forcing of each greenhouse gas: I see your point of the latent heat trapped in the water vapour, and I agree, but the effect of the water is that it traps even as latent heat an amount of LR that would otherwise escape back to space. That is the greenhouse gas identity and an image to see the absorption bands in the atmosphere and how important the water is, without vain authority-based arguments that miss the explanation in the end: http://www.google.nl/imgres?imgurl=http://www.solarchords.com/uploaded/82/87-33833-450015_44absorbspec.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.solarchords.com/agw-science/4/greenhouse--1-radiation/33784/&h=468&w=458&sz=28&tbnid=x2NtfKh5OPM7lM:&tbnh=98&tbnw=96&zoom=1&usg=__KldteWbV19nVPbbsC4jsOgzCK6E=&docid=cMRZ9f22jbtYPM&sa=X&ei=SwynUq2TMqiS0QXVq4C4Aw&ved=0CDkQ9QEwAw

The Northeast Blackout of 2003 that forced the shut-down of over 100 power plants and affected 55M people - the largest black-out in US history - was precipitated by a single overloaded transmission line, in Ohio, sagging and touching overgrown vegetation.

The most astounding fact about Kepler-78b is that it shouldn't even exist, according to our current knowledge of planetary formation. It is extremely close to its star at only 550,000 miles (900,000 kilometers). As a comparison, Mercury only gets within 28.5 million miles (45.9 million kilometers) of the sun in the nearest point of orbit. With that proximity, it isn't clear how the planet could have formed as the star was much larger when the planet formed. With its current distance, that would mean it formed inside the star, which is impossible as far as we know.

The drone derived craze takes on new life. Still not too bad for electric.

This sort of reminds me of that Festo robot thing. Except this one was more of a baloon type model: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxVf9QY_TFs

An ant raft stays on top of the water surface even when it is hardly pressed by a branch -- showing water repellency and buoyancy. What do Jell-O, toothpaste, and floating fire-ant rafts have in common?

It's a strategy the ants actually actively exploit in the wild: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A042J0IDQK4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r04kAnzgjR4

somebody showed such videos some years ago in one of our talks on swarm cooperation ... probably Tobias? or P. Dario? ... still impressive indeed

Droplets already bounce off water-repellent surfaces, but scientists have engineered materials that speed up the bounce to repel water faster. Even the brief contact time between a surface and a droplet that bounces off it can allow water to freeze or collect on the surface and cause damage.

Invented in 2002!! A disruptive invention to illuminate shanty towns and beyond .... Makes also sense for space habitats ... paper? anyone?

And a nice video ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhHKXxEN9Q0#t=12

Is this correct? The conclusions indicate that contrary to what felt extreme weather events are not increasing?? Where is the trick?

The secret is in the details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation#Funding_Sources

don't get fooled, this is the same strategy employed successfully by the tabac industry: installing doubt - all under the cover of science of course and using its methods; remember all these publications showing the overall beneficial effects of smoking, the "un-clear" link to lung cancer etc ... same here

interesting stats ...still living longer but enjoying it less?

should we add one of these to the shopping list?

Or better yet, one of these monstrosities: http://hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G138503207322

THIS is how the ACT should give its science coffees, and I am not referring to the fat stage or the guy's dress. Next time I'm attending this traditional ACT exercise I expect such a show!

Thats pretty cool indeed! I am for it in the next budget run! :) However, its technically not holographic though as this looks like a projection on Mylar film at 45 degrees from a bottom projector. It looks 3D and holographic as the background is transparent.

Sort of makes you wonder what the internet is really about

Team leader Professor Steven Tingay, Director of the MWA at Curtin University and Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO) said the MWA will be able to detect the space junk by listening in to the radio signals generated by stations including popular youth network Triple J.

"The computational methods currently used in physics are based on the discretization of differential equations. This is because the computer can only perform algebraic operations. The purpose of this paper is to critically review this practice, showing how to obtain a purely algebraic formulation of physical laws starting directly from experimental measurements."

To follow up our discussio at breakfast

For all your statistics needs. The "Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans Report - UNEP" www.unep.org/regionalseas/marinelitter/.../docs/plastic_ocean_report.pdf‎ "Densities of plastic debris (Moore et al. 2001). Using nets to collect debris, the abundance of floating plastic averaged 334,271 pieces/km2" More worrying maybe is (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22610295) "Our oceans eventually serve as a sink for these small plastic particles ("UV degraded surface plastic") and in one estimate, it is thought that 200,000 microplastics per km(2) of the ocean's surface commonly exist."