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Nachimir

The ASTOUNDING thread of science!

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I suppose this is the right place for this?

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I was thoroughly entertained.

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Ah yes, I saw that. I love both those men. Neil DeGrasse Tyson has been my science hero for sooo long.

Speaking of science! Cern posted a short while ago:

On the final day of the Hadron Collider Physics symposium, HCP2011, the ATLAS and CMS experiments presented their first combined analysis on the search for the Higgs boson. A cornerstone of the Standard Model of particle physics, which describes fundamental particles and their interactions, the Higgs boson is among the top priorities for the research programme at the Large Hadron Collider. The study of ATLAS and CMS includes data collected up to the end of July, and rules out the existence of a Higgs boson with mass between 141 and 476 GeV at the 95% confidence level. If the Higgs boson exists, it must have a mass between 114 and 141 GeV. The LHC experiments will be able to demonstrate its existence, or show that it does not exist, during the course of 2012.

Exciting!

In other science news, some of you may be aware that last saturday, they launched the new Mars Rover Curiosity. What's special about this one is that it's at least 5 times bigger than the previous ones they've sent, that it carries way more instruments than any rover before it AND that it's going to perform the first ever precision landing on Mars. They made an animation showing how that'd work and:

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How BADASS is that?

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Watching the Colbert/Tyson interview now. In the introduction, the head of the school hosting the interview off-handedly referred to Romeo & Juliet as "American literature".

Interesting.

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Watching the Colbert/Tyson interview now. In the introduction, the head of the school hosting the interview off-handedly referred to Romeo & Juliet as "American literature".

Interesting.

Yeah, I noticed that. I think it was just an ad-lib that came out wrong. People says all kinds of crap. I was more concerned that his introduction was a pile of meandering and pointless waffle. Here's all he needed to say: "Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming to the stage Stephen Colbert and Neil Tyson."

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I really like Stephen when he's not being paid to be a pompous ass. Can't stand watching The Report. Will watch the whole thing later.

Also, I can see those retrorockets on the Curiosity failing terribly and the whole thing being a wash. Do we know by now? I'm not good with interstellar travel times.

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This was actually one of the first times I saw Colbert not being 'in character'. It's easy to assume he really is the way he is on the show!

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So it turns out that some guys, one of whom might be Alan Kay (probably the inventor of half the things you are looking at right now), are reinventing the whole of* personal computing in less than 20 000 lines of source code. And they are doing that by applying science!

That is truly astounding and that's why I posted it here. Because it's science, and it's astounding!

* not the whole of

I doubt that what they manage to do in 20 000 lines of code is close to all of the functionality that we are using our computers for (obviously it doesn't include all of the video games! :)), but I still find this pretty remarkable. A TCP/IP driver in 160 lines of (probably quite readable) code? That's batshit crazy.

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Has there been any news about Rossi's E-CAT? I remember something from November (someone in the US bought one I think), but there still doesn't seem to be conclusive evidence about whether it works or not.

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More dribbles of information out of NASA about the pursuit of faster-than-light travel!  The images they released are probably more sexy clickbait then anything, but damn do they work as sexy clickbait.

 

The more exciting thing is that they are actually looking for evidence that a warp bubble can exist in space at all, and have built a device they believe will let them observe one.  Who knows when or if we'll see actual ships, but the observable proof of warp travel might not just happen in our lifetimes, it might happen soon!

 

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Awesomeeeeeee.

 

If his work is successful, he says that we would be able to create an engine that will get us to Alpha Centauri "in two weeks as measured by clocks here on Earth." The time will be the same in the spaceship and on Earth, he claims, and there will not be "tidal forces inside the bubble, no undue issues, and the proper acceleration is zero. When you turn the field on, everybody doesn't go slamming against the bulkhead, which would be a very short and sad trip."

If I believe hard enough they'll make it happen!

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I really want it to be true and the idea that this is attainable is really exciting.

 

The flashy visualisations and Chicago pile comparisons for an experiment that hasn't even taken place yet make me less than optimistic though.

 

I do really intensely want it to be true though.

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At first it made me really excited!

Then I remembered I will still never be part of a space exploration team so I got sad again and ate a potato chip. ...I love chips.

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After reading a little about the Alcubierre drive that's supposed to be the engine for this silly NASA concept, I'm real skeptical. First off, all NASA has done is indicate that scientists are analyzing results from a device built to measure "warped space", and based on the 2013 results, they're essentially null. So, and this is very cynical, I know, but we are so, so for off from this happening not only in our lifetime, but our children's lifetime, or even our grandchildren's lifetime. The energy required to properly warp space is just too absurd. Right now, I'd be happy if we could just settle on a mission to Mars before we start imagining Starfleet. 

 

Also, if this is indeed a possibility in our lifetimes, why aren't we always seeing alien space craft zooming around in their warp ships? I'm of the belief that the Fermi paradox is solved by the fact that the distances between societies are too vast for feasible space travel over the lifetime of the civilization. I also think that it would be real unlikely we are the first to develop at such a quick rate, and as such, because we haven't been in contact with aliens all over the place, life must be rare AND it must be very, very hard to travel or communicate efficiently with other civilizations. And I'm the most disappointed about that.

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I think a healthy dollop of skepticism is totally warranted, but sometimes it's just fun to be silly excited about the possibility of something. 

 

As for the Fermi Paradox, I've never quite bought a couple of the core assumptions of it.  In order for it to be even slightly accurate, it assumes that space faring life has been actively exploring our galaxy for millions of years.  What does a species or civilization that lasts for millions of years look like?  Could we possibly begin to understand their motivations?  And even if that were true, there's a second assumption that they would have discovered and visited Earth at some point that humans would have noticed, like the last 20ish thousand years.  It requires finding 2 needles in two different haystacks (both the likelihood of visiting Earth, and then the likelihood of visiting here since modern humans evolved recorded language).  To my thinking, it's always been a rather meaningless rebuttal to the existence of intelligent life because of those problems. 

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I think a healthy dollop of skepticism is totally warranted, but sometimes it's just fun to be silly excited about the possibility of something. 

 

As for the Fermi Paradox, I've never quite bought a couple of the core assumptions of it.  In order for it to be even slightly accurate, it assumes that space faring life has been actively exploring our galaxy for millions of years.  What does a species or civilization that lasts for millions of years look like?  Could we possibly begin to understand their motivations?  And even if that were true, there's a second assumption that they would have discovered and visited Earth at some point that humans would have noticed, like the last 20ish thousand years.  It requires finding 2 needles in two different haystacks (both the likelihood of visiting Earth, and then the likelihood of visiting here since modern humans evolved recorded language).  To my thinking, it's always been a rather meaningless rebuttal to the existence of intelligent life because of those problems. 

 

Our galaxy, and the stars it contains, is BILLIONS of years old. This means that there has been plenty of time for civilizations to rise and fall, and explore and travel. It's not a crazy assumption to make that life could be exploring the galaxy for millions of years, providing that the lifetime of a technological civilization is long enough (again, the cynic in me looks at humanity and thinks: not bloody likely). Also, it's not required for a species to live for millions of years before it could reach the stars. I don't know what a species or civilization that lasts for a huge long time looks like, but given the sheer number of stars that could contain life, the variety should be enough that at least ONE of these species would be detectable by humans. Right? And yeah, alien civilizations could have explored the Earth in the distant past and we would never know. So, I understand your concern.

 

That being said, here's a version of the paradox that I think is more pressing. In the next ten years, we're going to detect a huge number of Earth-like planets in our nearby galactic neighborhood. And we're going to find a handful of planets which have spectroscopic evidence for (Earth-like) life. Maybe they have a reflection spectrum indicative of plant-life. Maybe they have gasses in the atmosphere that can only arise from (Earth-like) life. Either way, you have got to bet that we're going to start sending a huge amount of signals at that planet as we do everything we can to understand its properties. If we went from being a super backwards-ass civilization to being able to detect alien life in the span of a few thousand years...why aren't we seeing signals from every corner of the galaxy trained on us? Why, in the last hundred years of modern astronomy, have we never gotten any messages from space?

 

AND, because this is Idle Thumbs, I'll post this article with a super click-bait-ey headline: Why SETI Will Fail, by one of my grad school professors at UCLA, Ben Zuckerman, which posits that we should at least be finding alien robots out exploring the stars, since sending those (and not living creatures) makes a lot more sense. 

 

EITHER WAY, I think that we make a lot of assumptions about alien life. BUT, given the sheer number of planets / stars in our galaxy, it makes sense to wonder why we're not seeing things like ourselves.

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Oh I will! 

 

Side note: I work in science, so I guess that C&H cartoon doesn't work for me. I spent plenty of time doing boring stuff. 

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I am of the belief that extra terrestrial life exists.  I am also of the belief that we will NEVER encounter it, either because the distance is too great or because at least one of the species will cease to exist (be it us or them) before an encounter can happen. 

 

My problem with the Fermi paradox is the assumption that alien life would want to meet us at all.  Maybe they did come by, took one look at our planet, and said "Nope, fuck that" and left after erasing all evidence they were here.  Then they warned everyone else to stay away from the crazy planet.

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Why, in the last hundred years of modern astronomy, have we never gotten any messages from space?

 

Their culture/philosophy could be so different that communicating with other life would not enter their minds.

Alternatively their technology is entirely incompatible with ours so the kind of signals being sent are undetectable.

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