The WOW Science Thread

[Norseman]

Just happen to be on the beach those days, will try to hold the drink consumption down and watch for it!!

If you're at the beach at 4 AM Hua Hin time (stipulated maximum) then please let me know the score.

[migrant]

Just happen to be on the beach those days, will try to hold the drink consumption down and watch for it!!

If you're at the beach at 4 AM Hua Hin time (stipulated maximum) then please let me know the score.

That's 2:00 pm California time so will be there, but daylight so may be difficult!!

[sandman67]

One for Norseman.... another Viking burial site found up in Scotland

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/ ... d-scotland

The account of Ibn Fadlan the article discusses was the inspration for the Antonio Banderas character and first part of the book and film THE 13TH WARRIOR (book = Eaters of the Dead).

You can find a copy of it va Wiki at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Fadlan

[sandman67]

Texas......Beers, Steers and Idiots......WTF is it wth Texas? If its not Don The Dentist, ex head of the Texas State Board of Education screeching "Someone has to stand up to these experts!" in a meeting where a delegaton of scientists clearly stated that creationism was religion not science, its the GeeDubya V2 cockbrained governer Cowboy Rick prattling twaddle.

Well, Cowboy Rick and his crony staff of Know Nothings just got a ten gallon hatfull o slapdown from the scientifc community....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... sfeed=true

Maybe Cowboy Rick can pray away those durned experts and their durned facts...or maybe he should just change his name to Canute.

[sandman67]

more ammo for the climate change bunfight on a different thread

After falling for the Clmategate twaddle, and then ignoring independant investigatons showing t was a scandal totally manufactured by the media and vested interests, then spending shed loads of dosh looking for faults with accepted UK and US climate change data that shows change is happening, a Koch Brothers funded climate skeptic unit gets...the same results as the other two and has to admit they were right.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15373071

'TIS BUT A SCRATCH!

[PeteC]

This is pretty close to us. Anyone hear any big thuds yesterday afternoon? Pete

http://news.yahoo.com/scientist-satelli ... 47792.html

[PeteC]

This is a very interesting article and something I never anticipated. "Up to 20 million tons of debris from Japan’s tsunami moving toward Hawaii..." Besides Hawaii it seems it will make all the way to the mainland as well. Pete


http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/20-mi ... 40503.html

[sandman67]

The UK's Royal Society has made its archive database of work publicly available for free

There are even papers there from Newton, Darwin et al

http://royalsociety.org/news/Royal-Soci ... to-access/

[pharvey]

World's most powerful laser to tear apart the vacuum of space

Capture.JPG (34.56 KiB) Viewed 526 times

A laser powerful enough to tear apart the fabric of space could be built in Britain as part major new scientific project that aims to answer some of the most fundamental questions about our universe.

Due to follow in the footsteps of the Large Hadron Collider, the latest "big science" experiment being proposed by physicists will see the world's most powerful laser being constructed.

Capable of producing a beam of light so intense that it would be equivalent to the power received by the Earth from the sun focused onto a speck smaller than a tip of a pin, scientists claim it could allow them boil the very fabric of space – the vacuum.

Contrary to popular belief, a vacuum is not devoid of material but in fact fizzles with tiny mysterious particles that pop in and out of existence, but at speeds so fast that no one has been able to prove they exist.

The Extreme Light Infrastructure Ultra-High Field Facility would produce a laser so intense that scientists say it would allow them to reveal these particles for the first time by pulling this vacuum "fabric" apart.

They also believe it could even allow them to prove whether extra-dimensions exist.

Full story: - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/scie ... space.html

Apologies SM, ''Torygraph'' again.....

[sandman67]

very Dr Evil....but will it be mounted on the head of a shark?????

No need to apologise...I read the Torygraph myself. Its a good paper.

[hhfarang]

I guess this should really be in the "Oh Crap!" science thread:

Close encounter of an asteroid kind

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/upshot/clos ... 21465.html

[sandman67]

The end of Russia's Mars Mission sem-simulation came yesterday, and this time it was a success after the last one ended rather badly

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/ ... uts-emerge

Id stll have significant concerns about the lack of gravity for over a year and its effects on the body. Hope Im still kicking about in the mid 2030s tho..... I want to see man reach Mars.

Read an interesting factlet the other day about the brave souls of the Apollo missions - of around 36 men who flew and survived the missions over 30 later developed eye cataracts from radiation exposure. I also never realised how many men died so we could take that one small step.

My list of "jobs that deserve hero status" is a very slim one, but astronaut/cosmonaut is up at the top of the list.

[pharvey]

Quantum Levitation - quite something!!

[sandman67]

Im a big admirer of Thomas Jefferson - a great thinker, writer and man of learning from the Enlightenment period as well as one of the founding fathers of the US and the bloke that not ony set up the first University in the US but also established with Mason one of its most fundemental bulding blocks - the wall of separation between church and state aka The Jeffersonian Wall. His big face carved on Mt Rushmore is well deserved. Hes a fascinating bloke, and there are some excellent biographies of him on www.ebook30.com for free naughty download if you are interested.

Anyway - here is a post about him from a web log I regularly read that is written by a pro-evolutionist bloke in the US. I wanted to share it as it shows what a smart bloke he was for his time:

http://sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com ... eationism/

Jefferson was what was termed a natural philosopher....a scientist before the term was invented. Look how, had he been writng just a short time later, he would have seen his second solution was the right one.....

Truly a great man

[STEVE G]

A pretty impressive time lapse film from the International Space Station: