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It's still a current project:

http://www.ard.jaxa.jp/researc...
http://www8.cao.go.jp/space/pl...

They are exhibited it recently: http://global.jaxa.jp/area/ssp...

They took a major step forwards with the technology only weeks ago: http://phys.org/news/2015-03-j...

Not perfect, but not too bad

Hydrogen is a volatile gas that is EXTREMELY difficult to store and transport, making it very impractical.

That may not always be true with things like "micro-porous polymer" beads/fibers - see: New hydrogen storage material could be added directly to fuel tanks:

When the hydrides are trapped inside the polymers, the hydrogen can be rapidly desorbed (released) at low pressures and ambient temperatures. According to Cella Energy, the micro-porous polymers can store as much hydrogen for a given weight as high-pressure tanks.

The micro-beads, which also encapsulate hydrides, are especially interesting for vehicular applications. The micro-beads resemble a fine powder and could potentially be poured and pumped like a fluid into vehicles’ fuel tanks.

The company explains that the encapsulated hydrogen could be safely used in either an internal combustion engine or fuel cell. Once the hydrogen is desorbed from a bead, the empty bead is stored in a separate lightweight plastic tank in the vehicle. When the vehicle needs to be refueled, the waste beads are removed from the vehicle and taken elsewhere to be rehydrided and recycled. Unlike hydrogen stored in high-pressure cylinders, new micro-beads could be refueled into vehicles just like vehicles today are refueled with gasoline.

If one looks at the average power generation an EV is more efficient than diesel. Where I live none of my power is generated from diesel and a fair amount comes from renewable sources (wind, geothermal, solar, etc). The percentage of renewable power is growing quickly in my area as well and most new power plants coming online are natural gas since it's cheaper than coal. The percentage of power in the US generated from coal is dropping rapidly.

http://phys.org/news/2013-09-d...

The energy losses in electricity transmission are fairly low (estimated around 7%). The chargers are also fairly efficient (over 90%) and charging Li-Ion batteries is also quite efficient. Similarly, the inverters are also quite efficient (over 90% is typical) and the electric motor are also quite efficient (typically 80% or higher). There is minimal loss in the transmission compared to an ICE vehicle as well since there are only two gears (single speed, just a 9.73:1 gear reduction). At least in my Tesla, losses due to resistance are quite low due to the very short runs between the battery, inverter and motors and very heavy duty power buses. On top of that, a lot of energy is recovered from braking, unlike diesel vehicles.

There are other advantages as well. An EV is extremely smooth and quiet, unlike a diesel. It cost me a fraction the amount it cost per-mile compared to a diesel vehicle as well. My EV gets cleaner as time goes on whereas most vehicles emit more pollution as they age.

Another thing to consider is that many EV owners have also installed solar to help offset their energy use, further reducing CO2 emissions.

For urban delivery trucks electricity makes even more sense.

https://www.fleetio.com/blog/n...
http://www.greencarcongress.co...

This is exactly what happened in Japan at the Riken Institute. A lead researcher made claimed to make a fantastic breakthrough, but it was unreproducible. Clearly the pressure to be a winner overwhelmed good scientific practice.

The FDA had to crack down on Big Pharma, because they were not reporting negative results from clinical tests. If you can pick and choose so that only positive outcomes are used, then it's as bad as not doing any tests at all. The motive was greed, and the public be damned.

The phrase "Publish or Perish" sums up the pressure that results in this behavior. It's exactly the same as predatory capitalism; if you can make money, then nothing else matters, even killing people.

As a follow up to this, here is an article:

http://phys.org/news166975298....

I seriously don't get what justifies this-- I don't understand what Blackphone offers beyond what a well-patched Android phone-- especially one built from existing ROM project sources--does not already have. Okay, blackphone has encryption (but that's standard on Android), a "security center" which I don't see as being much different from the privacy settings in CyanogenMod (is it?), some pre-installed wifi apps you can get elsewhere... whisper systems-like encrypted chat and redphone-like functionality... anything else?

If I'm reading the reviews right, these are all pre-bundled together for the lazy and perhaps the very very trusting... but is that really worth a $50m investment? Isn't this available for free?

If you don't like closed-source stuff getting rid of gapps is good but.. . are the phone's binary blobs for sensors, camera, radio, gpu, etc open sourced and audited too? Are the accelerometer privs removed from normal apps? Is this phone resistant to exploitation via stolen OTA keys?

How is this $50m better than Jacob Appelbaum's $100 modified Modified Moto e?

It's not necessarily less precipitation overall that will cause the megadroughts but higher temperatures that will cause the soil to dry our more than during past droughts.

Not necessarily true. Droughts also occur because precipitation cycles move location due to geological or other natural causes, not necessarily because of a change in air/ground temperature or drop in average frequency or quantity, the rainfall location(s) just move(s).

The present-day Kalahari Desert in Africa used to be a mega-lake named Lake Makgadikgadi.

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

Other prehistoric lakes here.

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

Significant changes in climate patterns have happened over relatively short periods of time in the past, and massive changes have occurred with some regularity over longer time periods. None of these occurrences were influenced in any significant & meaningful way by mankind. The scale and amounts of energy expended over the time periods that any of those changes took are far beyond the capability of humans for the foreseeable future

To even theoretically cause a measurable and statistically-meaningful change would require a Borg-like singularity and concentration of effort & purpose of the entire human race at current and foreseeable near-future technology levels/abilities our species is capable of.

The amount of inertia in a planetary size system (and that's if we exclude Solar variability induced changes and gravitational forces from other bodies, etc) in motion over such long geologic periods with such massive forces already steering it are many orders of magnitude too large for mankind to be able to cause any truly meaningful long term changes in any direction over a time-frame of only 200-300 years.

And as long as I'm already posting in a thread about AGW and will naturally be down-modded by group SlashThink for having the 'wrong' views, for those who love to trumpet "settled science! consensus! denier!", remember that "Big Bang Theory" and how those who thought the universe was eternal were crackpot nutjobs because it was "settled science"? Seems that bit of "settled science!" may be in serious doubt.

http://phys.org/news/2015-02-b...

Beware anyone who tries to shut down discussion or silence opposing viewpoints, whether it be by arresting journalists and smashing printing presses or through propaganda campaigns of malicious ridicule and personal destruction.

Strat

Muon shadowgraphs of the Moon, a signature of the Moon's cosmic ray shadow on the upper atmosphere, are a common way of testing neutrino detectors buried under a km or more of rock. (Muons from the atmosphere tend to be the major source of confusion for such detectors; that's why they frequently do best looking down, as muons can't go through 12,000 km of rock.)

Oh, and archeologists have used muons to look through the Great Pyramid.

I've heard it said that our our universe is definitely not the inside of a black hole but I have never heard the reasoning for that claim beyond the "maths says it's a singularity". As with a black hole, light cannot escape our visible universe and the inflationary period embedded in the BBT could be interpreted as the initial collapse into a black hole, ie: I like to speculate that it's black holes all the way down (and up, sideways, etc).

Damn, that is what I am also wondering about. Would be really nice to see a good explanation for that.
I mean there must be some relation between the singularity that a black hole is and the singularity at the big bang. In one case the mass collapses and in the other one it inflates and forms a universe. But what is the difference, or isn't there any, and it is just looking at it from outside and from inside?
Below the article here is a link to an article about a theory related to that.. The theory is that the universe is at the surface of a 4-dimensional black hole, which would explain these things. Though I still don't know why it isn't just a 3-dimensional black hole.

Inflation Cosmology is starting to be questioned as well. There are other hypothesis from people in the field that don't require magic dark energy, matter or expanding space. http://phys.org/news190027752.... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.6878

Just wondering if, as far as we know, only gas giants have rings?

No

And to be pedantic, the ice giants have them too.

[quote] [quote] [qoute] well, nuclear power is one option, but there are ... less dangerous ones. Take a mix of solar, wind, water power (not just dammed rivers and such, also tidal). [/quote] That does not work yet, take Germany as counterexample. With its green energy policy it in 2013 managed in to increase its CO2 emissions while most of europe decreased its emissions, only Denmark, Estonia, Portugal have bigger increase. http://phys.org/news/2014-05-g... [/quote] Of course that is ignoring that in 2013 Germany still emitted less CO2 than any year up to 2008 (for several decades) - when all NPPs still were running at full power. [/quote] Which is again misleading as emissions decreased everywhere in developed world. That drop could be explained by better insulation and other improvements in efficiency.
If you compare germany with rest of europe then between 2007 and 2012 germany dropped just by 3% while EU average is 12% drop and even USA dropped more. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/t... Germany does two steps forward, one step back. It could do much better if it had sensible energy policy.

well, nuclear power is one option, but there are ... less dangerous ones. Take a mix of solar, wind, water power (not just dammed rivers and such, also tidal).

That does not work yet, take Germany as counterexample. With its green energy policy it in 2013 managed in to increase its CO2 emissions while most of europe decreased its emissions, only Denmark, Estonia, Portugal have bigger increase. http://phys.org/news/2014-05-g...

Of course that is ignoring that in 2013 Germany still emitted less CO2 than any year up to 2008 (for several decades) - when all NPPs still were running at full power.

I suspect that since the vested interests are choosing the political attack route, they probably do know it is credible, they just don't care.

The problem is who are the vested interests? The AGW scientists attack anything skeptical of AGW, and prevent everything being published. What science do you consider credible when it cannot be published in the journals?

Much of the money comes form "Dark sources", like DonorsTrust, and DonorsCapital, meaning they won't tell us, Kind of like legal money laundering. Koch Industries and ExxonMobil money has in large part gone away. It might not be unlikely that they have gone to the untraceable route.

Whic is all very convenient, doing this in secret. How many scientific reports have you see that have no names, because the scientists are too big of pussies to put their name on it?

http://www.scientificamerican....

Regardless, some reseach has shown that from 2003 to 2010:

DonersTrust / DonorsCapital 14%

Sciafe Affiliated Foundations 7%

Lyle and Harry Bradley Foundation 5 %

Koch Affiliated Foundations 5 %

Howard Charitible Foundation 4% John William Pope Foundation 4%

John William Pope Foundation 4%

Searle Freedom Trust 4%

John Templeton Foundation 4%

Dunn's Foundation for the Advancement of Right Thinking 2%

SMith Richardson Foundation 2%

Vanguard CharitableEndowment Program 2%

THe Kovener Foundation 2%

Annenberg Foundation 2%

Lilly Endowmwnt Inc 2%

Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation 2%

Exxon Mobiil Foundation 1%

Brady Education Foundation 1%

The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation 1%

Coors Affiliated Foundation 1%

Lakeside Foundation 1%

Herrick Foundation 1%

A number of others at less than 1 percent

The source of this information

http://phys.org/news/2013-12-k...

Unfortunately, there will be less and less information as these defenders of freedom move to untraceable donorship, which is almost always a sure sign of standing by your principles.

What science do you consider credible when it cannot be published in the journals?

Perhaps it might be better explained what I do not consider credible

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

or this: http://retractionwatch.com/201...

This one was pretty egregious on many levels.

Anyhow, before you put Retrsction watch on your hitlist of liberal organizations, they also hae published retractions of pro AGW papers.

Part of self policing and transparency, rather different than what has become "secret contributors" of the Deniers movement.

To be fair, that's not a universally accepted answer.

well, nuclear power is one option, but there are ... less dangerous ones. Take a mix of solar, wind, water power (not just dammed rivers and such, also tidal).

That does not work yet, take Germany as counterexample. With its green energy policy it in 2013 managed in to increase its CO2 emissions while most of europe decreased its emissions, only Denmark, Estonia, Portugal have bigger increase. http://phys.org/news/2014-05-g... Also electricity become 60% more expensive, GDP fallen and industries are migrating from Germany and will become worse as it will add more renewables. Why do you think it will work elsewhere?

http://phys.org/news/2013-09-s...

This article seems relevant: On the difficulties of reforming torturers.

from http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/renewables/bluray-discs-find-useful-application-in-increasing-solar-cell-efficiency :

This raised the panels’ power conversion efficiency by nearly 12 percent.

and http://phys.org/news/2014-11-blu-ray-disc-solar-cell.html

12% efficiency improvement is the figure they seemed intent on hiding behind a pay-wall.
Which presumably means your 20% efficient cell would be 22.4% now; if it didn't already have a random textured finish to achieve the 20% which is already a high end domestic figure.
But you might get upto12% more cash from your grid feed in tariff.

Engineers in Taiwan have supposedly solved the cell wearout problem. See http://phys.org/news/2012-12-t...

here

The zigzag green lines are different lengths for 10 than they are for 12 and the extra things connected to them are obviously still there.

Sure it's a tough list but it's no worse than what people keep trying to come up with

http://phys.org/news157292373....

Here we have physicists creating a new class of particle with an in principle undetectable fifth long range force as well

About 300 experiments have tried to determine the value of the Newtonian gravitational constant, G, so far, but large discrepancies in the results have made it impossible to know its value precisely. The weakness of the gravitational interaction and the impossibility of shielding the effects of gravity make it very difficult to measure G while keeping systematic effects under control. Most previous experiments performed were based on the torsion pendulum or torsion balance scheme as in the experiment by Cavendish in 1798, and in all cases macroscopic masses were used. Here we report the precise determination of G using laser-cooled atoms and quantum interferometry. We obtain the value G = 6.67191(99) x 10^-11 m^3 kg^-1 s^-2 with a relative uncertainty of 150 parts per million (the combined standard uncertainty is given in parentheses). Our value differs by 1.5 combined standard deviations from the current recommended value of the Committee on Data for Science and Technology. A conceptually different experiment such as ours helps to identify the systematic errors that have proved elusive in previous experiments, thus improving the confidence in the value of G. There is no definitive relationship between G and the other fundamental constants, and there is no theoretical prediction for its value, against which to test experimental results. Improving the precision with which we know G has not only a pure metrological interest, but is also important because of the key role that G has in theories of gravitation, cosmology, particle physics and astrophysics and in geophysical models.

... no majorana fermions ...

Maybe not.

The linked article got it wrong, which is why the summary is wrong. As usual, the linked article is garbage and you have to dig into links you find there to get something close to reality.

Reasonably well written summary here: http://phys.org/news/2014-10-f...
Research here: http://www.nature.com/nature/j...

The authors propose a singularity is not created when a black hole collapse occurs. Instead, the suggest that the material falling into the gravity well forms a "Planck star". The mass does not disappear into a singularity, but remains as a form of matter compressed to the Planck scale. The Planck pressure (my term) stops the gravitational collapse, so no infinite mathematical feature is involved.

A Plank star has very similar characteristics to a conventional black hole. It has a Schwarzschild radius, so matter and energy are swallowed up in the same way. The difference is what happens inside the Schwarzschild radius and the long term fate of the star.

Two effects come into play: time dilation and Hawking radiation. Because of the immense gravity, time dilation makes events inside the Schwarzschild radius appear to take billions of years to the outside observer, although the happen rapidly in the frame of reference of the Planck star. As in-falling matter hits the Planck matter core, it bounces back. It does not simply collect at the core.

Additionally, Hawking radiation occurs. This means that energy can be released outside the Schwarzschild radius, which allows the star to loose mass. In this theory, about a third of the mass can escape via this mechanism. However, this process also takes a long period because of time dilation. (There is more complexity to this, but since I'm not certain how it works I'll not try and describe it.)

Eventually the radius of the expanding Plank star matter and the Schwarzschild radius intersect, and from the point of view of the external observer the formerly "black" hole explodes. This is different then the long term evolution of a classical black hole, which looses most of it's mass via Hawking radiation. The final evaporation of a classical black hole is not a big explosion since the final mass is relatively small, and no matter how big the black hole was, the final bang is the same size. For a Planck star, the size of the explosion depends on the mass inside the Schwarzschild radius.

This theory has some very nice properties. First, there is no infinitely dense matter. Classical black hole models have been trying to grapple with this issue for a long time. Also, since the final explosion can be massive, it could be the source of very high energy cosmic rays. Some have already suggested that gamma ray bursts may be the visible result. The theory predicts that the explosion can take about 14 billion years to occur to an external observer, so that fits in with the current age of the universe. Note that there are testable features relating to cosmic rays and other radiation coming from Plank stars, so observational verification is possible.

An important part of the theory is that it resolves the black hole information paradox. According to this article at Phys.org

Rovelli and Vidotto wonder why this couldn't be the case with black holes as well—instead of a singularity at its center, there could be a Planck structure—a star—which would allow for general relativity to come back into play. If this were the case, then a black hole could slowly over time lose mass due to Hawking Radiation—as the black hole contracted, the Planck star inside would grow bigger as information was absorbed. Eventually, the star would meet the event horizon and the black hole would dematerialize in an instant as all the information it had ever sucked in was cast out into the universe.

This is potentially a big deal. If true it solves some troubling theoretical problems and man tie black holes and cosmic rays together. It would also present a huge challenge to string theory, because it gives credence to loop quantum gravity.

Podcasts: pick up a used ipod and subscribe to the astronomy related podcasts.

Kindle: get a used kindle that has the bubble-type keyboard, and let it read books and papers to you. The keyboard lets you start/stop the reader without looking, for in the car use. Download Calibre application and convert online/document resources and copy them to the kindle. You are not stuck with just Amazon eBooks, but many of them are good.

When online use an RSS reader and connecty to the publications feeds: e.g. http://iopscience.iop.org/ http://arxiv.org/ http://www.physicsforums.com/ http://prl.aps.org/ http://phys.org/ http://physics.stackexchange.c... http://prd.aps.org/ and many blogs!

First, I'm not sure if you made that yourself, or what, but that's just a circle of X radius around Yellowstone - that might be useful if the Earth had no atmosphere, I guess?

Prevailing winds and jet stream guarantee a more distributed pattern downwind, significantly different than a simple circle.

BTW, the original article is missing pretty much anything of substance, and is written atrociously: "...In the Midwest, a few centimeters of ash is projected to be plummeted while coastal cities will have a few millimeter of ash buildup..."
"...to be plummeted..."?

AN ACTUAL MAP FROM ASH 3d:
http://cdn.phys.org/newman/gfx...

And an actual article that explains that whole "sciencey" stuff:
http://phys.org/news/2014-08-y...
Their slightly more substantive version of the above paragraph:
"...In the simulated modern-day eruption scenario, cities within 500 kilometers (311 miles) of Yellowstone like Billings, Montana, and Casper, Wyoming, would be covered by centimeters (inches) to more than a meter (more than three feet) of ash. Upper Midwestern cities, like Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Des Moines, Iowa, would receive centimeters (inches), and those on the East and Gulf coasts, like New York and Washington, D.C. would receive millimeters or less (fractions of an inch). California cities would receive millimeters to centimeters (less than an inch to less than two inches) of ash while Pacific Northwest cities like Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, would receive up to a few centimeters (more than an inch)...."

First, I'm not sure if you made that yourself, or what, but that's just a circle of X radius around Yellowstone - that might be useful if the Earth had no atmosphere, I guess?

Prevailing winds and jet stream guarantee a more distributed pattern downwind, significantly different than a simple circle.

BTW, the original article is missing pretty much anything of substance, and is written atrociously: "...In the Midwest, a few centimeters of ash is projected to be plummeted while coastal cities will have a few millimeter of ash buildup..."
"...to be plummeted..."?

AN ACTUAL MAP FROM ASH 3d:
http://cdn.phys.org/newman/gfx...

And an actual article that explains that whole "sciencey" stuff:
http://phys.org/news/2014-08-y...
Their slightly more substantive version of the above paragraph:
"...In the simulated modern-day eruption scenario, cities within 500 kilometers (311 miles) of Yellowstone like Billings, Montana, and Casper, Wyoming, would be covered by centimeters (inches) to more than a meter (more than three feet) of ash. Upper Midwestern cities, like Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Des Moines, Iowa, would receive centimeters (inches), and those on the East and Gulf coasts, like New York and Washington, D.C. would receive millimeters or less (fractions of an inch). California cities would receive millimeters to centimeters (less than an inch to less than two inches) of ash while Pacific Northwest cities like Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, would receive up to a few centimeters (more than an inch)...."

Rolling the stones as huge cylinders would've been cool but they used water to wet the sand, which reduced friction. There's even some hieroglyphs that show it being done. Was big news back in the spring. See:

• Scientists May Have Figured Out How Ancient Egyptians Moved Huge Pyramid Stones
• The surprisingly simple way Egyptians moved massive pyramid stones without modern technology
• Ancient Egyptians transported pyramid stones over wet sand

More:
http://www.technologyreview.co...

http://www.technologyreview.co...

http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/r...

http://www.elp.com/articles/20...

http://www.renewableenergyworl...

http://phys.org/news/2011-01-p...

http://theenergycollective.com...

Stop posting links to medium.com... the worst Science site I've ever seen short of timecube... wait, actually timecubes at least entertaining.
All of their articles boil down to:
Subject "Could *insert some inane scifi topic* really be??"
10 pages of images scraped from geocities homepages, font type and spacing worthy of a freshman English paper and then...
No, not really, but thanks for reading!

You want real science news? Here you go: http://phys.org/physics-news/

Of-course humans need not apply, the mob votes in politicians that routinely increase cost of buying labour and of-course this is what happens as a response. Governments made humans extremely unproductive, I am explaining this in my comments, of-course getting moderated to nothing, but hey, probably the messenger needs to be shot in the economy where this message is unacceptable because the only acceptable messages are those, that put the blame for the complete failures of centrally governed economies on the free market capitalism.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5534639&cid=47669939

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5519455&cid=47652683

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5534639&cid=47671781

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5509921&cid=47635121

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5509921&cid=47635141

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5509921&cid=47635157

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5509921&cid=47635195

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5509921&cid=47635223

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5509921&cid=47635305

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5509921&cid=47635363

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5509921&cid=47635403

The automation is not a problem, the problem is that there are not enough new businesses that are created. In 2014 in USA more businesses shutdown than were created for the first time probably since the foundation of the Republic. The reasons are of-course politically incorrect and have to do with the destruction of the US dollar by the government and the Federal reserve and the growth of government (all the spending, all the welfare state nonsense, the business regulations, the taxes, and of-course all the wars).

Many of the jobs need to be automated away to allow human resources to be allocated more efficiently. However many of the jobs cannot be automated practically and their automation only becomes a possibility when the cost of labour exceeds the cost of automation in the long run by a wide margin, which is what is actually happening with all the government rules, laws, taxes, welfare, wars.

You want to solve the problem? YOU DO NOT STEAL MORE with nonsense like 'basic income', you allow people to be free from the mob to create new ideas and start new businesses and there will be no shortage of jobs.

Singapore has less than 1% unemployment, there is no minimum wage but the per-capita wages are highest in the world.

Socialist approach doesn't work and for those of you, who are mistaken about it, here is an article that shows what your socialist approach can do even to the minimum wage jobs. This is coming to all low cost restaurants near you.

Socialist approach is anti-humanist, anti-freedom, anti-human rights approach, it is an approach of theft and destruction and violence. Capitalist approach within free market environment is the only approach that relies on voluntary exchange of goods and services that are built by free people, people who do not have their rights violated by the mob.

It has to be an all or nothing free market capitalist approach because once anything remotely socialist does not stop there, it wants more and more socialism, which in turn destroys free market capitalism, destroys free markets (markets free of government intervention, thus markets based on equal rights between people, where 'right' means protection against government abuse) and destruction of free markets does not improve capitalism in any way, it diminishes capitalism and without capitalism (private ownership and operation of property) there is no capital and without capital there is no economy and without economy there is no society.

Capitalism in a free market environment means profit based economy, which is the only economy that both is good economics and it is the only moral way to run a society, the only way that allows society to function without mob based violence destroying individual rights.

I went and examined the paper, and damn right the /. summary is misleading.

First one, the researchers don't use the vague term "social inequality". Second, they are merely reporting on the results of a computer model, and not on some new archeological findings. From the abstract:

We model the coevolution of individual preferences for hierarchy alongside the degree of despotism of leaders, and the dispersal preferences of followers. We show that voluntary leadership without coercion can evolve in small groups, when leaders help to solve coordination problems related to resource production.

They did a computer simulation of the classic Coase argument about transaction costs affecting market structure (and its consequences on asymetry of information which equate to inequalities of human capital), applying it to individuals undergoing the agricultural revolution (food surpluses but with delayed returns and higher need for coordination). Well, yeah, a hierarchy emerges in this situation, because the rapid change in productivity is not uniformly distributed and depends on information that is costly to disseminate. That idea's been around at least since Hayek's works on spontaneous order. It's kinda nice to see it verified in a computer model, but it doesn't teach us anything new.

You might be misunderstanding the difference between short-term forecasts and longterm projections. I know I failed to understand the scientific nuance until recently.

You see, "global average temperatures are going to rise X by 2100" is a projection. It's based on pretty basic thermodynamics (ie. this much carbon increases the greenhouse effect by such-and-such). This science, because it's so basic, is pretty solid.

At the same time "global average temperatures are going to rise by Y by 2025" is a forecast. It's based on computer models that are perpetually being refined to more accurately predict the short-term trend. Most recently, these models were found to be missing el-nino/la-nina cycles which is why they have lagged over the last decade.

This is why people get confused when I tell them the science of global warming is actually extremely basic. It's just thermodynamics, but then they confuse projections with forecasts and wonder why the models haven't accurately predicted the last 10 years. It's the "weather versus climate" debate all over again.

Why do scientists even publish forecasts when they know they are still very much a work in progress? Politics. You see, your local representative couldn't give a damn if your children's children suffer from today's lack of leadership a century from now. So scientists are tasked to find out what the short-term effect will be on the constituency to inform politicians whether or not they might suffer some voter backlash on the issue.

In other words, our children's children are doomed to shell out billions to fix this mess.

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/u...

http://www.rsc.org/chemistrywo...

http://phys.org/news/2013-10-a...

Rgds

Damon

Or we could simply eat less meat since much of the corn and soybeans grown in the midwest are just fed to animals.

Or we could slaughter those animals in mass. That would solve that problem too. Our volume of consumption isn't the problem. Its how its grown.

Or we could simply eat less meat since much of the corn and soybeans grown in the midwest are just fed to animals.

Soylent Green is the answer!
I, for one, welcome our new Cannibal Overlords!

Or we could simply eat less meat since much of the corn and soybeans grown in the midwest are just fed to animals.

The scientific model is quite simply:
1) Develop testable hypothesis (aka theory)
2) Develop experiments/observations to test hypothesis
3) Perform experiment/observations
4) Repeat
Anyone who participates in any of these steps is performing science. It took a while to find practical tests of String theory given it's extreme generality, but several have been suggested and a few have even been performed, ranging from the scale of planetary motion to LHC data.

Not in partial G in LEO they haven't.

Yes, actually they HAVE.

Tardigrades in space:
http://www.newscientist.com/ar...

Algae in space:
http://phys.org/news/2014-05-a...

Did you even remember what you wrote? The second "experiment" had to do with wind, not regolith.

Yes. I Do. Quoted below, with emphasis, because you apparently cannot read.

Data on how much energy is reasonably able to be extracted, so that ideally sized generation systems can be designed, and data on rates of wind blown particle erosion on those devices would be of considerable value.

Also, dune migration and wind blown particle accumulation is one of those things, like waves in a large ocean, that is very difficult to model. This is why data from the actual target environment is actually needed, and why I suggested it. The total theoretical energy is indeed calculable by formula using known data, which I nodded to when I asserted that the low atmospheric pressure posed a significant obstacle, but data collected from the other parts I mentioned, specifically in relation to the particle erosion behaviors for fixed mast objects designed to redicrect airflow, would still be of very significant value.

Now kindly stop being an asshole.

They already have lasers, have you been living under a rock, or behind the moon?

And, if you forgot, the original laser sharks were created during the American civil war.

Oh yeah plus Liquid Helium is becoming rare. http://phys.org/news201853523....

The worlds largest single dish telescope is still the Green Bank Telescope (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bank_Telescope), which at 100m is ~6x the size.

World's largest fully-steerable single-dish telescope - the Arecibo Observatory is larger still at a diameter of 300m! (Impressive Arecibo exploration video here. The thing's sodding enormous.)

I went looking for the largest diameter multi-dish radio telescope. It looks like the biggest terrestrial 'telescope' is the Global VLBI system created by combining the European VLBI Network with the US Very Long Baseline Array - it's like some massive team of superheroes combining to save the Earth from some terrible secret of space. Or whatever. Apparently they can also add space-based telescopes when that just isn't enough. Which, quite frankly, is showing off...

My thoughts when seeing one of the beautiful, 10m diameter Keck optical telescopes up close a few years ago? I've had full control of a telescope bigger than that.

Radio Astronomers: Compensating For Something.

If we would be able to break these theoretical speed limits, this would automatically imply we would also be able to travel through time or at the very least send messages into the past.

But in our universe is there really a Time dimension to travel through to the past?

http://phys.org/news/2012-04-p...
http://discovermagazine.com/20...

I've never found it convincing that there is a past to go to, at least from the perspective entities in our universe bound by its laws (from the perspective of "someone outside" running the "simulation/VM of our universe" all bets are off ;) ),

At the rate humanity is going, our species will be gone in 100 years. If we somehow pull ourselves together & survive beyond that, then we'll still have about 600,000,000 more years to prepare for the end of living conditions on earth. Of course, it's possible a meteor or volcano could produce another extinction level event before then. All we need though, is 1 habitable planet IN our galaxy, to escape the coming extinctions. This planet doesn't even need to exist for another 400,000 years or maybe even 600,000,000 years. By then, we can move there and watch the earth comes to its end. If the planet is new, then we just wait about 3,500,000,000 years, when the Andromeda galaxy collides with the Milky Way. That'll be fun. It may also expose us to new civilizations and habitable planets that could be nice to visit 'til the heat death of the universe comes along.

But first, we have to survive to that point in order to worry about whether we can go anywhere else anyway. At the rate humanity's going though...

Toshiba also belongs to this club, but they only recently seem to be making SSDs available to the masses.

Not all that hard. You can cool things to seriously cold temperatures using a nifty system of lasering.

The problem here though will be making it small enough to fit in a watch and make it interference proof.

That likely won't be done for a good couple decades, we aren't there yet.
Either that or new battery tech will come out that will allow the higher amount of lasing required to offset the increase of radiation that it might be exposed to in such a small size.
Or insane layers of graphene or that new one (TGCN) layered in such a way that they could likely stop even low to mid-tier gamma rays getting through. Still a couple decades off though.