Slashdot Mirror

Jesus H Christ do you people just make this stuff up on the spot ?

The two researchers have looked into precipitation patterns of the Holocene era and compared them with present-day movements of the intertropical convergence zone, a large region of intense tropical rainfall. Using computer models and other data, the researchers found links to rainfall patterns thousands of years ago.

"The framework we developed helps us understand why the heaviest tropical rain belts set up where they do," Korty explains.

"Tropical rain belts are tied to what happens elsewhere in the world through the Hadley circulation, but it won't predict changes elsewhere directly, as the chain of events is very complex. But it is a step toward that goal."

The Hadley circulation is a tropical atmospheric circulation that rises near the equator. It is linked to the subtropical trade winds, tropical rainbelts, and affects the position of severe storms, hurricanes, and the jet stream. Where it descends in the subtropics, it can create desert-like conditions. The majority of Earth's arid regions are located in areas beneath the descending parts of the Hadley circulation.

"We know that 6,000 years ago, what is now the Sahara Desert was a rainy place," Korty adds.

"It has been something of a mystery to understand how the tropical rain belt moved so far north of the equator. Our findings show that that large migrations in rainfall can occur in one part of the globe even while the belt doesn't move much elsewhere.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2016-12-...

And for the general case in central Asia.

https://link.springer.com/arti...

Model results clearly show the early Holocene patterns indicated by proxy records, including both the decreased effective moisture in arid central Asia, which occurs in the model primarily during the winter months, and the increase in summer monsoon precipitation in south and east Asia. The model results suggest that dry conditions in the early Holocene in central Asia are closely related to decreased water vapor advection due to reduced westerly wind speed and less evaporation upstream from the Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian Seas in boreal winter. As an extra forcing to the early Holocene climate system, the Laurentide ice sheet and meltwater fluxes have a substantial cooling effect over high latitudes, especially just over and downstream of the ice sheets, but contribute only to a small degree to the early Holocene aridity in central Asia. Instead, most of the effective moisture signal can be explained by orbital forcing decreasing the early Holocene latitudinal temperature gradient and wintertime surface temperature.

There is, it's just that those who call themselves the good guys aren't any longer. They're the problem. They even fear logic and downvote things like I posted above about where this leads. It's a stupid last gasp - censorship only keeps the real fools from being shown as what they are...but agency employees trying to keep that pay coming aren't that smart - or are depending on you being dumb.
I'll just leave this here. Note the date: https://phys.org/news/2011-10-...
I think you can work out the implications on your own.

Part of the problem is that is costs more to recycle plastic than it does to simply manufacture new plastic. Otherwise there would already be a market for non-subsidized plastic, the way there is a market for aluminum and scrap steel. Also, since most of the cost for recycling is energy, and most off that energy comes from fossil fuels, you aren't really saving anything by recycling plastic (challenge: for anyone who says use renewable energy, calculate the carbon footprint of a solar panel, nuclear power plant, or windmill, plus add the added carbon necessary in economic activity to pay for its higher cost).

I had a chemistry professor comment in one of his lectures that recycling plastics is stupid. People should just burn them. I recall he mentioned this because at the time there was a debate on building a waste burning power plant in the area.

When it comes to doing the calculations you ask, it appears someone did do that.
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2...

If someone is going to look for an energy source to recycle this plastic, synthesize it, reduce it to it's constituent elements, or whatever you wish to do to lower the carbon emitted, then look closely at nuclear power. Nuclear power is low carbon, safe, and just generally a good idea. If someone wants to raise issues of the waste problem then I'll just say that it appears that any problems on the safety of the waste was included in those calculations. The author, Dr. Ripu Malhotra, also made a powerpoint presentation where he points out that next generation nuclear will consume much of the existing waste.
https://drive.google.com/file/...

When it comes to replacing petroleum based transportation fuel, and presumably also petroleum based feedstock for making Lego blocks, there's the US Navy program on developing a hydrocarbon synthesis device. A device that they intend to power with nuclear reactors.
https://phys.org/news/2017-10-...

One complaint I keep hearing is the costs of nuclear power. Well, a single reactor does cost a lot of money but it produces lots of energy, it will produce energy at a cost that's at least competitive with any source available today. We know this because of past performance. There's a lot of room for improvement with economies of scale and, in the USA at least, there is sufficient demand to allow for this economy of scale. The US government expects to see 20 GW of new natural gas electrical generation capacity this year. A typical nuclear power reactor produces 1 GW of electrical capacity. We could build a new nuclear reactor every month and still need to build more electrical generation capacity from natural gas, wind, or whatever, to keep up with demand. The USA saw reactors being built at this rate once before and there's no reason to expect we can't do it again. This is especially true given the much greater material needs for the alternatives like wind and solar.

Except that this is really a bit of a crap measurement so far. The large discrepancy between the two measured values means that neither can be trusted with much accuracy. If you take the difference between the two values as due to an unknown systematic error, which seems likely, then the uncertainty you get (500 ppm) is MUCH larger than the currently quoted uncertainty on G which is 46 ppm.

This aren't the only measurements that have done that. They are all over the place. There'a nice chart at the top of this page. As the Wikipedia page you linked to says:

Some measurements published in the 1980s to 2000s were, in fact, mutually exclusive. Establishing a standard value for G with a standard uncertainty better than 0.1% has therefore remained rather speculative.

Did Moore's law just end? Intel said they thought it had...maybe this is confirmation.

Not quite yet, we have designs for a 4nm transistor made with silicon so I think there's room for one more iteration past 7nm. But yes the end is coming and soon, first half of the 2020s I think you can hold the funeral.

There is a worrisome trend lately where governments try to force social media (and others) to self-censor by threatening huge fines for not keeping their forums "clean". An overview of the situation in some countries:
  https://phys.org/news/2018-07-fake-news-law.html
I think that is just as dangerous as social media suppressing comments they don't like. Not that traditional media are immune to either, even if their countries claim to be free, democratic nations.

In the USA, you have things like the Nixon administration trying to shut down inconvenient news as treason: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._United_States

Here in Germany, we have some newspapers with clear political bias but also attempts by the government to shut them up if they make the politicians look bad. Such as this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiegel_scandal
Today though, the Spiegel is behaving like a propaganda rag at times, always ready to condemn the Russians long before the underlying facts are proven. Perhaps not quite "false news" but getting close.

I see a lot of claims with no sources or evaluations of magnitude or probability

Yeah but but pulling the claim that micro and nano plastics are completely harmless in every way out of your ass without a shred of evidence to back it up is just fine?

https://www.lunduniversity.lu....
https://www.nature.com/article...
https://www.iflscience.com/env...
https://phys.org/news/2018-02-...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/...
https://www.iflscience.com/pla...

Plenty of study shows that coal kills prematurely 100K to 1M people worldwide. e.g. for EU https://phys.org/news/2016-07-... . And that's with today standard you can imagine what it was with 1930 standard. Capitalism killed far far many more people than communism by simply offloading externalities.

baloney yourself idiot.
OCO2 is showing that China is emitting more than what they admit to. However, it is not possible to get absolute numbers on it. All that is seen is that it is much more than double what America is, and we are at 14.5% of global emissions.
This is no different than when China had to reverse their 50 year lie about coal and how they were caught just recently releasing 13,000 TONNES of CFCs into the atmosphere YEARLY. And it turned out that the Chinese gov KNEW that companies were doing it. Otherwise, they would not have been doing it all of the construction companies.

It's almost harder to find a metro/subway/underground tunnel that didn't find interesting archaeology, provided that archaeologists were allowed in.

Just hope that your new subway project doesn't run into an old plague pit.

https://phys.org/news/2012-03-...

Here they are publishing an article claiming light emitting diode conversion efficiency exceeds 100% I am betting on measurement error and somebody forgot that everything with a temperature greater than abs zero emits radiation.

So more "Peer Reviewed" bad science ?

Re: "Pick up any planetary dymanics or solar system mechanics text written in the last 80 years and you'll be confronted by the reality of solar magnetic fields."

There are also clues in more recent observations that stars are connected by transmission lines:

Based on theoretical studies of how magnetism is generated in stars, it’s thought that the fully convective interiors of ultracool dwarfs can’t support large-scale magnetic field formation. This should prevent these stars from exhibiting activity cycles like the Sun. But recent radio observations of dwarf stars have led scientist Matthew Route (ITaP Research Computing, Purdue University) to question these models.

A Reversing Field?

During observations of the brown dwarf star J1047+21 in 2010–2011, radio flares were detected with emission primarily polarized in a single direction. The dwarf’s flares in late 2013, however, all showed polarization in the opposite direction. Could this be an indication that J1047+21 has a stable, global dipolar field that flipped polarity in between the two sets of observations? If so, this could mean that the star has a magnetic cycle similar to the Sun’s.

Inspired by this possibility, Route conducted an investigation of the long-term magnetic behavior of all known radio-flaring ultracool dwarfs, a list of 14 stars. Using polarized radio emission measurements, he found that many of his targets exhibited similar polarity flips, which he argues is evidence that these dwarfs are undergoing magnetic field reversals on roughly decade-long timescales, analogous to those reversals that occur in the Sun.

If this is indeed true, then we need to examine our models of how magnetic fields are generated in stars ...

From a different article, reason to believe that stellar environments can exert influence upon stellar phenomena via "magnetic fields":

Haimin Wang, a distinguished professor of physics at NJIT and a co-author of the paper, said the observations will prompt scientists to revisit the mechanisms of flares - and the basic physics of the Sun - in a fundamental way.

'We used to think that the surface's magnetic evolution drives solar eruptions. Our new observations suggest that disturbances created in the solar outer atmosphere can also cause direct and significant perturbations on the surface through magnetic fields, a phenomenon not envisioned by any major contemporary solar eruption models. This has immediate and far-reaching implications in understanding energy and momentum transportation in eruptions on the Sun and other stars,' Wang said.

Re: "The current flows predicted by the debunked EU theory have not been observed."

Observations with ESA's Herschel space observatory have revealed that our Galaxy is threaded with filamentary structures on every length scale. From nearby clouds hosting tangles of filaments a few light-years long to gigantic structures stretching hundreds of light-years across the Milky Way's spiral arms, they appear to be truly ubiquitous.

The column density map, derived from our 70-500 micron Herschel data, reveals a complex network of filaments, and confirms that these filaments are the main birth sites of prestellar cores.

(they infer "turbulence" as the cause of the 27 star forming filaments, which plainly appear to branch off of one another! lol!)

Neutral hydrogen (HI) surveys at high galactic latitude show that the interstellar gas is filamentary.

Fig. (1) is an adaptation of Verschuur’s Neutral Hydrogen Filaments at High Galactic Latitudes [31]. The HI plasma filaments are formed by the scavenging action of interstellar Birkeland currents flowing in our galaxy. Seen from Earth the filament twists gives the misleading impression of a puzzling HI ‘cloud’ seen as an ‘enhanced emission feature’ (EEF) in the 21-cm radio telescope beam. The closed ellipses in the right-hand schematic are EEFs where the filament orientation twists away from the plane of the sky. Verschuur concludes that “...much of what is observed to be ‘cloud’ structure in the interstellar medium is telling us about geometry of filaments and not about the physics of ‘clouds.’”

These long and narrow magnetised filaments were discovered in the 1980s using the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in New Mexico, but their origin has remained a mystery.

Henri Poincaré, at the conclusion of the preface to his book, 'Hypothéses Cosmogoniques', states:

One fact that strikes everyone is the spiral shape of some nebulae; it is encountered much too often for us to believe that it is due to chance. It is easy to understand how incomplete any theory of cosmogony which ignores this fact must be. None of the theories accounts for it satisfactorily, and the explanation I myself once gave, is a kind of toy theory, is no better than the others. Consequently, we come up against a big question mark.

our results have now yielded firm evidence that many — possibly all — AGN jets have inward currents along their axes and outward currents in a more extended region surrounding the jets. This provides fundamental information about the conditions leading to the formation and launching of the jets, as well as key input to theoretical simulations of astrophysical jets. It also indicates that astrophysical jets are fundamentally electromagnetic structures, which must be borne in mind when interpreting observed features in the distributions of both their intensity and linear polarization.

The mention of cosmic-scale magnetic fields is still likely to met with an uncomfortable silence in some astronomical circles – and after a bit of foot-shuffling and throat-

Nonsense. Mount a couple of wind turbines on the wings and let them generate power for your SFO to Shanghai flight.

This might actually work.

...you make steel from ore, then you need coke...

This is currently true. There are no commercial processes to make iron without carbon as a reducing agent 2FeO + C -> 2Fe + CO2.

But iron can in principle be reduced electrolytically, like we do with aluminum.

There is no middle ground.

The process is currently under development, so there is no middle ground at the moment. This is the sort of thing TFA is discussing.

Nukes can work for cement, which just needs heat for the kiln. But nuclear aircraft? I don't think so. An iron blast furnace uses metallurgical coal (converted to coke), as an integral part of the process. You can't just drop in nuclear as a replacement.

The emission of CO2 from cement making is more fundamental to the process than it is for iron making.

Cement releases CO2 from the most fundamental chemical reaction required to make it: converting limestone to lime. This is the reaction: CaCO3 -> CaO + CO2. The release of carbon dioxide is unavoidable.

Iron on the other can in principle be made electrolytically although the process needs more development before it can be commercialized.

About half of the CO2 released gets recaptured by the cement over the course of several decades as the cement completes its curing process, but the other half never is. If we can capture CO2 at the cement plant source, that slow curing process might actually be a way to remove CO2 from the air.

Of course if we can capture cement plant CO2 at the source, we can do that with blast furnaces too, so that provides another option.

BTW, some say fusion reactors are economically viable now (6).

Since nobody has yet demonstrated a fusion reactor that generates even one watt of power, no. Maybe some day, but not "now".

(6) https://phys.org/news/2015-10-...

This is an example of why you should always read the article, not just the headline. The first sentence of the article you cite says:

Fusion reactors could become an economically viable means of generating electricity within a few decades,

Decades from now. Not "now".

I forgot who but, somebody made a good point about this switch to solar & renewables: it's going to crash the economy.

You make good points. I however think otherwise. For example, I think Trump's rollback of Obama's financial regulations that were designed to abate another 2007 - 2008 crash will put us in even more danger. As I watch the stock market soar, I can't get the word 'bubble' out of my mind.

...We've got massive amounts of investment wealth tied up in fossil fuels. People's retirements are heavily vested in them...

Admittedly, some do think it's a good idea to invest mostly in a single stock or industry, but I don't think that's a good idea for fossil fuels; the writing is on the wall. Diversifying your stock portfolio has always been a good idea, anyway.

Before Trump, the solar industry was booming. The fastest and largest growing job market was in renewable energy, specifically solar (1). Trump has seriously curtailed this growth with tariffs and elimination of tax credits, while at the same time, Trump has repealed rules and promoted coal, shale oil and fracking. As a result, oil production is up, and it has become much less affordable for business and home owners do go solar (2). Nonetheless, I find it telling, and perhaps foretelling, that the oil industry isn't happy about Trump's steel tariffs, NAFTA spats, and other policies (3). Something's not right; something smells and just seems rotten. And as the Ruskies say, a fish rots from the head down. But I digress.

Even with this turnabout, solar and renewable energy will soon be consistently cheaper than fossil fuels, and in some cases are cheaper now (4). I suspect that a few years after the US becomes the world's leading crude oil producer (5), solar and renewables will begin to surge and eventually dominate. Cheaper is better for the average consumer and business alike, which is better for the economy, and so the marketplace will abide. Eventually. Best to divest your fossil fuel investments before then. At least diversify while you still can.

BTW, some say fusion reactors are economically viable now (6). It may be true, but I expect it will take some 20 years before they come online. Such is the nature of the beast. Eventually my money will be on them. After all, cheaper is better.

(1) http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/2...

(2) https://ntknetwork.com/u-s-oil...

(3) https://www.politico.com/story...

(4) https://www.forbes.com/sites/d...

http://www.businessinsider.com...

https://www.engadget.com/2018/...

https://about.newenergyfinance...

http://energyinnovation.org/20...

https://about.newenergyfinance...

(5) http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/0...

(6) https://phys.org/news/2015-10-...

Forgot to paste the link: https://phys.org/news/2018-06-...

And the worst quality of life.
https://www.usnews.com/news/be...

California has worst US air pollution in the nation
https://phys.org/news/2018-04-...

California has the highest poverty rate in the nation
https://www.latimes.com/opinio...

Schools are 39/51
https://wallethub.com/edu/stat...

This is with a high state income and sales tax.

https://phys.org/news/2017-07-...
"The city, which sits in a state of the same name whose population exceeds 45 million, has the biggest fleet of helicopters in the world...700 choppers, or nearly a third of Brazil's total number, are located there, alongside 528 helipads.

You would NOT get away with this today in New York, London or Paris...

São Paulo is my town, and it is not tropical, as the article says. It has a humid subtropical climate and is very comfortable, climate wise. It's cooler than most southern USA cities.

It's winter now and it is a cool 11 degress celsius as I type. Burn in your unbearable summer, bitches.

First of all, forget "flying cars" and especially "autonomous" ones - not going to happen for decades if ever.
Helicopter "Uber", yes, they exist, but it requires special conditions....
https://phys.org/news/2017-07-...
"The city, which sits in a state of the same name whose population exceeds 45 million, has the biggest fleet of helicopters in the world...700 choppers, or nearly a third of Brazil's total number, are located there, alongside 528 helipads.

You would NOT get away with this today in New York, London or Paris...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Considering how the flight of the hummingbird more resembles that of an insect than it does of other birds.

I just don't see the point here. There's already a bunch of plant-based alternatives that don't involved roaches (rice, soy, almond, quinoa, coconut, ect.).

Rice: Not nutrient dense, and getting less dense due to CO2 increase.
Soy: I can't digest soy. If I eat a burrito with TVP in it, for example, it destroys my digestion. If my lady (who worked as a chef for Christina on Orcas Island, among her other culinary chops) puts tofu into a meal I won't taste it, but it will make me urpy and pukey (yes, those are technical terms) before I even finish the meal. Eating large amounts of soy may increase cancer risk in men due to phytoestrogen. Most soy produced is now GMO, which I have mixed feelings about scientifically, and specifically Monsanto's IP, which I have very clear feelings about politically. Their competition is Dupont and BASF. Dupont has a long history of being shit (They and BP together have a company which has an obvious, partially-paid-for-by-tax-money patent on efficiently producing Butanol, a 1:1 carbon-neutral replacement for gasoline, and have been suing GE to prevent them from selling the stuff, which THE WORLD NEEDS) and BASF is a major polluter (So's Dupont, and always has been) so even if Monsanto's dominance wanes, the slack will only be taken up by other shitlords.
Almonds: It takes about a gallon of water to grow a single almond. They consume literally ten percent of California's water every year, and water is becoming scarcer. Avocados have been removed from southern Caifornia en masse because there is simply not enough water to irrigate them. Almonds are next.
Quinoa: We're eating so much of it that the people who historically ate it are going hungry, because as usual only a small percentage of the population profits from exporting what the majority of people used to eat. Yay capitalism! Isn't it just the best?
Coconut: Coconut shortage!
Insects: Many of them can literally be raised on compost and most require little water. At least some can be raised in almost any climate.
Yeast: Can be raised anywhere on very little, and this is what they're actually trying to do.

I'm not actually in a rush to eat bugs or bug products, but there are clear and compelling reasons why one might want to.

The world could have much more arable land thanks to climate change in the future. Rumors of the demise of human beings or the universally negative consequences of climate change have been greatly exaggerated. When I discuss the topic with friends, I generally refer to it as anthropogenic climate improvement.

Maybe this 2012 study is part of the reason for revising ocean biomass downwards -- that we previously sampled highly productive areas but most of the ocean is not that productive?
https://phys.org/news/2012-08-...
"According to previous estimates, about one thousand billion tons of carbon is stored in living organisms, of which 30 percent is in single-cell microbes in the ocean floor and 55 percent reside in land plants. The researchers have now revised the number downward. Instead of 300 billion tons of carbon in subseafloor microbes, they estimate these organisms contain only about 4 billion tons. This reduces the total amount of carbon stored in living organisms by about one-third. "Previous estimates of microbial biomass in the ocean sediments were hindered by a limited number of sample locations preferentially located in near-shore, high-productivity regions," explained Rob Pockalny, URI associate marine research scientist. "With support from the National Science Foundation, we were able to obtain samples from the middle of the Pacific Ocean in some of the lowest productivity regions in the ocean.""

Oh and it's not a fuel either. It's just a storage medium, like a battery except more dangerous, unreliable, and expensive.

If you think it's a fuel, link me to a hydrogen well or hydrogen mine.

https://www.popularmechanics.c...
https://www.triplepundit.com/2...
http://collegeofcuriosity.com/...
https://www.technologyreview.c...
https://phys.org/news/2006-12-...

Yeah, sorry, the party is over. The cheap energy blowout of the post-WWII techno-bonanza is coming to a close. Your children are already expected to have a shorter life span than you and will likely face a 19th century existence, but without cheap coal.

So you don't remember where the numbers came from? But that they may be a guess 3 years ago. Did you pull the number from your own ass or pull it from those 'others' asses.
At least link to any site you think may be able to justify the 75% you claimed. Jesus show a range even. Find any site to show 70-80 if you like. Then we can check how credible they are, to know how credible you are (not very for those playing along at home).
It most certainly does matter.
You keep claiming I'm lying even when I show where my info comes from. You claim you are telling the truth, but can't even show us where it came from.
Are you intentionally using extremely outdated info to 'make a case' or did you really just make up what suits your narrative.

If i put China 75% coal into google I mostly see good things.
Like this

However, coal as a proportion of China's energy mix peaked at 75% in the late 1980s and by 2016 it had fallen to 62%, the lowest since the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949.

Is this your 75%? The highest level ever, back in the 80's?

Sorry, forgot the link:

https://phys.org/news/2012-04-...

It's also the main system for typing, so much so that some are forgetting how to write the characters by hand.

Start reading here: https://phys.org/news/2015-02-...

If that's not enough, read all the good science referenced here: http://iopscience.iop.org/arti...

If you've gotten this far and still are unconvinced, you must not believe in the scientific method of thought or are in the extreme minority, more here on that topic: https://climate.nasa.gov/scien...

One does not have to be a scientist to know that something is terribly wrong.

Happy earth day.

I'm just an engineer, not an English major. But precision in communication is vital to engineering.

Filler words? No, it is the order that changed. "don't change their meaning"?

"First humans" would be humans that lived distantly in anthropological history. It would indeed be an interesting discovery if we found that they had been genetically adapted to deep diving by somehow extracting DNA from remains. That was my expectation after reading the title but was not what the study was about.

Phys.org's title in Genetic adaptations to diving discovered in humans for the first time was vastly better.

It is of course true that some corals may do better in warmer water, especially in cooler waters. But even those need more than that.

More to the point, most corals grow in the locations & conditions that best suit them. When the conditions in those locations change rapidly and drastically, a lot of them will die off - as we are already now seeing. And given how slow coral reefs grow, it could take decades or centuries to recover even once conditions stabilise again.

Re: "... and requires us to throw away the last 100 years of progress ..."

This is really the crux of the debate: You view cosmology, the planetary sciences and astrophysics as functioning domains of science devoid of any persistent mysteries even as the scientists themselves admit the problems ...

"Astronomy: Planets in chaos

The discovery of thousands of star systems wildly different from our own has demolished ideas about how planets form. Astronomers are searching for a whole new theory.

Over the past 15 years, for example, experiments designed to detect individual particles of dark matter have become a million times more sensitive, and yet no signs of these elusive particles have appeared. And although the Large Hadron Collider has by all technical standards performed beautifully, with the exception of the Higgs boson, no new particles or other phenomena have been discovered.

The stubborn elusiveness of dark matter has left many scientists both surprised and confused. We had what seemed like very good reasons to expect particles of dark matter to be discovered by now. And yet the hunt continues, and the mystery deepens.

In many ways, we have only more open questions now than we did a decade or two ago. And at times, it can seem that the more precisely we measure our universe, the less we understand it. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, theoretical particle physicists were often very successful at predicting the kinds of particles that would be discovered as accelerators became increasingly powerful. It was a truly impressive run.

But our prescience seems to have come to an end -- the long-predicted particles associated with our favorite and most well-motivated theories have stubbornly refused to appear. Perhaps the discoveries of such particles are right around the corner, and our confidence will soon be restored. But right now, there seems to be little support for such optimism.

In response, droves of physicists are going back to their chalkboards, revisiting and revising their assumptions. With bruised egos and a bit more humility, we are desperately attempting to find a new way to make sense of our world."

Based on theoretical studies of how magnetism is generated in stars, it’s thought that the fully convective interiors of ultracool dwarfs can’t support large-scale magnetic field formation. This should prevent these stars from exhibiting activity cycles like the Sun. But recent radio observations of dwarf stars have led scientist Matthew Route (ITaP Research Computing, Purdue University) to question these models ...

Inspired by this possibility, Route conducted an investigation of the long-term magnetic behavior of all known radio-flaring ultracool dwarfs, a list of 14 stars. Using polarized radio emission measurements, he found that many of his targets exhibited similar polarity flips, which he argues is evidence that these dwarfs are undergoing magnetic field reversals on roughly decade-long timescales, analogous to those reversals that occur in the Sun.

If this is indeed true, then we need to examine our models of how magnetic fields are generated in stars ...

Planetary scientists have admitted that they have no idea how to construct the vast majority of the exoplanetary systems which have been observed using existing theory. Cosmologists have admitted that they cannot -- using your cherished approach -- explain basic observations for how galaxies rotate.

Solar scientists cannot even explain how it is that the solar wind fails to appreciably decelerate even as it passes the Earth's orbit (in the lab, we accelerate such particles w/ electric fiel

Wait did you read the same thing I did? We're talking about the phys.org summary of the paper right? https://m.phys.org/news/2018-0... ... It says "the species" not "a species", which could explain some of this confusion about singular or plural. "The species" can easily be plural.

Wait did you read the same thing I did? We're talking about the phys.org summary of the paper right? https://m.phys.org/news/2018-0... ...

It says "the species" not "a species", which could explain some of this confusion about singular or plural. "The species" can easily be plural.

Since the linked-to AP article is mostly just a picture, with nothing on the tech., here you go:

https://phys.org/news/2018-04-...

http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/deskt...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Pretty cool, but maybe not space & cost effective on a spaceship.

But, one of the things I wonder about is the potential for reduced understanding and insight among the people using it, and where it might lead.

To give you an idea of the present state of chemistry, we only recently measured the energy of a transition state, imaged atoms and molecules, or directly observed hydrogen bonds. New insights into the behavior of water is common reading. As for syntheses, the reaction mechanisms drawn are at best guesses and many times syntheses reasonable in theory are found not to work in practice. Basically, we chemists do not have much fundamental understanding so much as a practical intuition for how chemical systems behave. But improved understanding and classification often go hand-in-hand in science, so I think it likely that the output of these algorithms will actually improve our human-level interpretations.

But, one of the things I wonder about is the potential for reduced understanding and insight among the people using it, and where it might lead.

To give you an idea of the present state of chemistry, we only recently measured the energy of a transition state, imaged atoms and molecules, or directly observed hydrogen bonds. New insights into the behavior of water is common reading. As for syntheses, the reaction mechanisms drawn are at best guesses and many times syntheses reasonable in theory are found not to work in practice. Basically, we chemists do not have much fundamental understanding so much as a practical intuition for how chemical systems behave. But improved understanding and classification often go hand-in-hand in science, so I think it likely that the output of these algorithms will actually improve our human-level interpretations.

No doubt this is potentially a highly significant development, and an early example of a powerful tool that shows the way to the future. I expect that this sort of technology will prove useful in developing many desirable chemicals for many purposes. But, one of the things I wonder about is the potential for reduced understanding and insight among the people using it, and where it might lead. Mathematics is already confronted by machine generated results that are beyond the ability of humans to check. And I remember reading of results that seemed to be correct, but the method that they were arrived at was impenetrable. Trust the machine(s)? How far? Is this another area where AI might prove dangerous to humanity?

Computer generated math proof is too large for humans to check

Chess computers are now pretty much able to beat any human. Amazingly now computers playing Go seem to be heading in the same direction. Brute strength and clever algorithms combine to search possibilities far beyond what a human can. Someday will AI search out a subtle "final solution" for humanity that will take 10 generations to come to fruition? Checkmate?

How can we safeguard our future from subtle, malevolent AI?

By the way, when human dieoff's hit 50-90% then decarbonization can occur as nations collapse and return to pre-industrial carbon usage. Could that actually happen. A growing body of research suggests that, with a healthy dose of scienctific controvery, that the century of the little ice age was caused by deaths in the highly populated americas.

https://www.scientificamerican...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...

https://phys.org/news/2011-10-...

Re: "To answer the is it even worth considering question, though- of course it is. And it has been, at great lengths. And plasma physics play a huge role in even standard cosmology. They just don't play a huge role in large-scale cosmology."

Let me give you a very simple example which I hope you will recognize as an earnest attempt to demonstrate how difficult it is to judge vindications when we are not actively tracking scientific controversies.

Today, for the first time, I noticed that a couple of galaxy artists were suddenly drawing the Milky Way's galactic bulge as a pair, as if a memo went out (which I missed). I had never before noticed this, but having learned about Anthony Peratt's galactic simulation as a pair of rotating Birkeland currents, I immediately tuned into this pattern.

To somebody who has not paid any attention to Peratt's simulation, the explanation offered in a July 2016 article would seem good enough to assume the issue is basically settled:

Many disc galaxies, including our own Milky Way, have a central bulge that resembles either a box or an unshelled peanut. This bulge may form when the circular orbits of stars become elongated, creating a “bar” of stars that runs through the centre and tilts out of the disc’s plane. The combined effect makes the once-flat galaxy look like it has buckled under enormous pressure.

But, hold on just a second. This is a completely ad hoc explanation. Although I have no doubt that somebody somewhere can generate a tweak to the original galactic models -- perhaps involving dark matter -- which can explain with actual numbers why this may occur in the conventional model, the fact of the matter is that this is a completely expected feature when you are modeling a galaxy as an interaction of two Birkeland currents. -- and the choice to refuse to systematically track the Electric Universe controversy has left everybody failing to recognize that this actually vindicates the against-the-mainstream claim.

You think that's just a coincidence? Okay, let's go back a few days to the release of these new pictures from the Juno spacecraft of one of Jupiter's poles in infrared. The article states:

Jupiter’s poles are a stark contrast to the more familiar orange and white belts and zones encircling the planet at lower latitudes. Its north pole is dominated by a central cyclone surrounded by eight circumpolar cyclones with diameters ranging from 2,500 to 2,900 miles (4,000 to 4,600 kilometers) across. Jupiter’s south pole also contains a central cyclone, but it is surrounded by five cyclones with diameters ranging from 3,500 to 4,300 miles (5,600 to 7,000 kilometers) in diameter. Almost all the polar cyclones, at both poles, are so densely packed that their spiral arms come in contact with adjacent cyclones. However, as tightly spaced as the cyclones are, they have remained distinct, with individual morphologies over the seven months of observations detailed in the paper.

“The question is, why do they not merge?” said Adriani. “We know with Cassini data that Saturn has a single cyclonic vortex at each pole. We are beginning to realize that not all gas giants are created equal.”

Once again, I sprung into action because I have tracked Peratt's work sufficient to understand the inherent geometry of electricity over plasma. In his efforts to explain petroglyphs as z-pinch instab

If, as a culture, we equate thinking differently with insanity, then that would seem to offer no rational process for escaping big mistakes in the sciences. The simple fact is that "Over the past 15 years, for example, experiments designed to detect individual particles of dark matter have become a million times more sensitive, and yet no signs of these elusive particles have appeared." So, if our process is to culturally isolate those people who are trying to approach the problem differently, we have to accept the possibility that if the dark matter problem exists at the level of starting-point hypotheses or assumptions, then the problem will never be solved.

schure cautioned:

I don't think there's so much we can do to fight antibiotic resistance. Remember this video? https://youtu.be/plVk4NVIUh8

MDs who gave in to their patients' demands for antibiotic prescriptions to treat viral infection, such as colds and influenza - neither of which are in any way affected by antibiotics of any kind - bear a certain amount of responsibility for the rapidly-decreasing effectiveness of our antibiotic arsenal. Farmers are still more responsible, since they routinely use massive amounts of antibiotics in animal feed. (In cattle country, USA feed stores all display tetracycline and amphicillin powder in open barrels with convenient scoops the size of garden trowels stuck in them for customers to purchase bulk antibiotics priced by the pound.) That's why we're facing the end of the antibiotic era and an impending return to the soaring childhood disease and purpueral fever mortality rates that were ubiquitous throughout human history prior to the mid-20th century.

Yes, evolution was always destined to eventually obsolete antibiotics, per the video to which you linked. But we have enormously hastened that process by our careless and profligate overuse of what were once "silver bullets" that should have been jealously treasured and expended only when absolutely necessary. Now they're rapidly becoming nerf balls, instead - and we have only our own collective foolishness to blame for that.

The forthcoming introduction of the new, superbug-killing antibiotic teixobactin notwithstanding, we're waging a losing battle against microbial infections - and I find the prospect horrifying ...

Is it technically feasible?: Of course it is! It would cost money although and the electric companies are trying to lower their costs as much as possible.

https://phys.org/news/2011-06-...

Currently the synchronization is done naturally due to the properties of inter-connected generators. To implement what you are suggesting we would need a completely new infrastructure with ntp or the like connected hardware everywhere and that would never be as precise, easy and natural as the inter-connected generators which naturally and automatically keep in sync.

Only being a little out of sync (a few millisec, a few milliHz) when a generator joins the grid can have bad consequences and break the generator. Making a generator join the grid is a critical step but afterwards, it keeps in sync by itself. Having a generator join the grid is already hard enough with hardware similar to what you are suggesting probably being used, imagine relying on it 24/7. What happens when the "sync network" goes down, etc.?

Who knows? Maybe Edison was right after all, especially if you think about newer DC power lines that looses less energy in transport. The power grids may eventually be completely revamped but in the mean time, it does seem like we will have to cope with a loss of frequency stability in order to use more renewable energy sources.

In case some don't know, on a typical electric grid, all generators rotate at exactly the same speed, the "weaker" (not "smaller") ones getting energy from the others to maintain the same speed and vise-versa so everything automatically balance without any fancy circuitry required to achieve that. There is only 2 or 3 grids in North-America spanning at least between US and Canada with each and every generator producing exactly 60Hz, perfectly in sync with all the others on the same grid.

Well, it has been shown that a 5-digit number can be factored using 4 qubits, so 72 qubits should get you somewhere.

Related:

In 2011 the US did a yearlong experiment : "The group that oversees the U.S. power grid is proposing an experiment would allow more frequency variation than it does now without corrections"
https://phys.org/news/2011-06-...

As noted in the comments, this would affect devices such as phonographs, VCR's tape players, some bar heaters and some clocks. As far as I can tell, the experiment was conducted because:

https://www.energy.gov/sites/p...
POWER SYSTEMS MUST HAVE ADEQUATE FLEXIBILITY TO ADDRESS VARIABILITY AND UNCERTAINTY IN DEMAND (LOAD) AND GENERATION RESOURCES

I recall reading that the regulation of these cycles can cost 1% of the power supply used (sorry, can't find the source link). Another reason for the deregulation may be this:

https://phys.org/news/2006-05-...
Big names pony up for power-line broadband
Current Communications announced Thursday it had received $130 million in investments to accelerate Broadband over Power Line technology. Current uses BPL technology to provide broadband service that runs across power lines, allowing the potential for a new source of retail Internet service as well as accommodating "smart grid" electric meters for utility companies.
"This technology provides utilities with a more intelligent, real-time and secure power grid that should help conserve energy, reduce electricity disruptions and protect critical infrastructure," said Alex Urquhart, president of GE Energy Financial Services.

Related:

In 2011 the US did a yearlong experiment : "The group that oversees the U.S. power grid is proposing an experiment would allow more frequency variation than it does now without corrections"
https://phys.org/news/2011-06-...

As noted in the comments, this would affect devices such as phonographs, VCR's tape players, some bar heaters and some clocks. As far as I can tell, the experiment was conducted because:

https://www.energy.gov/sites/p...
POWER SYSTEMS MUST HAVE ADEQUATE FLEXIBILITY TO ADDRESS VARIABILITY AND UNCERTAINTY IN DEMAND (LOAD) AND GENERATION RESOURCES

I recall reading that the regulation of these cycles can cost 1% of the power supply used (sorry, can't find the source link). Another reason for the deregulation may be this:

https://phys.org/news/2006-05-...
Big names pony up for power-line broadband
Current Communications announced Thursday it had received $130 million in investments to accelerate Broadband over Power Line technology. Current uses BPL technology to provide broadband service that runs across power lines, allowing the potential for a new source of retail Internet service as well as accommodating "smart grid" electric meters for utility companies.
"This technology provides utilities with a more intelligent, real-time and secure power grid that should help conserve energy, reduce electricity disruptions and protect critical infrastructure," said Alex Urquhart, president of GE Energy Financial Services.

I remember when someone found a way to put Linux on a Playstation

You mean the US Air Force? https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomputer.html

Please don't send me to gitmo for revealing this has all been a farce.