Slashdot Mirror

This article includes several references on giving Mars an artificial magnetosphere with machine(s) that are within existing human capability to build. With a functional BFR class rocket, we would have the capability to actually deploy such a system.

Once such a machine were turned on the atmospheric pressure and temperature on Mars would rise sufficiently within a handful of years to remove the need to wear a space suit. Liquid water could (and would) exist in lakes, rivers, and rain. The people who deploy such a machine may be able to personally experience the result and take a stroll on Mars wearing nothing but a jacket and an oxygen mask. Doing without oxygen for a few minutes is no big deal for a human, thus greatly simplifying human habitation. If exposed to the vacuum of the current Martian atmosphere you could watch the water boil out of your eyes for the remaining 15 seconds of your consciousness. (goofy Total Recall eyes popping out scene)

Transforming the composition of the Martian atmosphere to something humans can breathe directly will take a bit longer, but we won't have to spend much money or effort on that, we've got some great organisms that can do the hard work for us.

https://www.sciencealert.com/s...

You lose, fucktard.

So every time anyone loses an hour or gains an hour of sleep and it causes serious health problems, it would be an easily proveable hypothesis, and a theory acceptable to near certainty.

In fact, it is an easily provable hypothesis, and it is thoroughly proven. We do the same experiment every year, and every year, we see the same statistically significant increase in deaths.

Does this statistically significant increase include those who get the same amount of sleep? Are their no effects related to the time of year?

You're assuming that it is generally possible to get the same amount of sleep when your alarm clock wakes you up an hour earlier than usual. It is just barely possible, if you plan very carefully, to start slipping your schedule earlier starting a few days before, to minimize the impact, but most people don't even try, because it is too much of a pain in the backside. So the net effect is that nearly everyone gets an hour less sleep.

And no, this has nothing to do with the time of year. The statistically significant increase is relative to the week before and the week after. There is literally a huge single-day spike in traffic accidents on the Monday after the time change, compared with every other day of the year.

Do our bodies simply know that the standard time is the one true time, that is dangerous to alter lest we die?

Our bodies do have a preference for something vaguely resembling sleeping during the dark hours and being awake during the light hours, but they tolerate a lot. What they don't particularly like is suddenly being forced to get up an hour earlier. It is roughly equivalent to the entire country being jet-lagged on the same day.

Worse, there's a network effect that compounds the problem. Most of the time, car accidents involve more than one vehicle. If one driver is tired, he or she might make a mistake, but when that other person is also tired, he or she is less likely to react to that mistake in a way that prevents the accident.

Here's a little thing that might need explained. According to your apparent sources, the heart attack rate drops when moving back to standard time from Daylight savings time. What causes this? 24 percent increase in spring, and a 21 percent drop in the fall. https://www.sciencealert.com/d...

People often get more sleep on one end, and less sleep on the other end. I would think the difference would be obvious.

I don't necessarily dispute the DST as a killer numbers. But here's the issue. We get to see many accusations. https://fee.org/articles/dayli... REad it. Here the poor fellow is whining about being groggy because of the change in teh fall. Oddly, that's when WebMD says that people have less health problems - when moving back.

On one end, pretty much everybody gets less sleep. On the other end, it varies from person to person. In theory, you should get more sleep, but in practice, ever since they changed the date when the DST change occurs, my body clock starts shifting at or around the earlier date, and I actually start getting less sleep for the week prior to the time change, and only then get a full night's sleep. It is really quite bizarre. But this learned behavior likely explains why the momentary drop in the week after the shift to standard time is less than the momentary spike in the week after the shift to DST.

I never notice the DST shift, but as a frewuent traveler, going between the east and west coast can be a real issue. In fact, if the DST killer is real, flying back anf forth across several time zones should kill people easily. I feel like crap when I'm jet lagged, and quite the same with

So every time anyone loses an hour or gains an hour of sleep and it causes serious health problems, it would be an easily proveable hypothesis, and a theory acceptable to near certainty.

In fact, it is an easily provable hypothesis, and it is thoroughly proven. We do the same experiment every year, and every year, we see the same statistically significant increase in deaths.

Does this statistically significant increase include those who get the same amount of sleep? Are their no effects related to the time of year?

Do our bodies simply know that the standard time is the one true time, that is dangerous to alter lest we die?

Here's a little thing that might need explained. According to your apparent sources, the heart attack rate drops when moving back to standard time from Daylight savings time. What causes this? 24 percent increase in spring, and a 21 percent drop in the fall. https://www.sciencealert.com/d...

Seems like the body knows exactly what time it demands, eh?

So you have to not only say that going forward kills people, and going backwards saves them. What happens if we keep moving the clock backwards? Will we eliminate heart attacks? What are the effects between the equater and the higher latitudes? If disruption in sleep, night, and day cycles is the cause, people in places like Alaska should be dropping over.

I don't necessarily dispute the DST as a killer numbers. But here's the issue. We get to see many accusations. https://fee.org/articles/dayli... REad it. Here the poor fellow is whining about being groggy because of the change in teh fall. Oddly, that's when WebMD says that people have less health problems - when moving back.

And interestingly, the same site claims that there are less assaults during the DST months because less people are outside after dark. I wonder how many of those were killed during those standard time assaults?

But that's all beside the point, because when I see not necessarily supported "data" I get pretty suspicious.

Regardless, does this mean that we need to classify loss of 40 minutes of sleep (from the last link) as a health hazard? Should tthis be made law? If we cannot change between DST and EST without causeing many deaths, should we likewise not cover people for risk-taking behavior like going to different time zones?

I never notice the DST shift, but as a frewuent traveler, going between the east and west coast can be a real issue. In fact, if the DST killer is real, flying back anf forth across several time zones should kill people easily. I feel like crap when I'm jet lagged, and quite the same with the time of day shifts. It's much the same thing, only much exaggerated.

As well, when I've gone to Alaska, the effect is even heightened - a 4 hour time differential, plus drastically extended daylight in the summer, and a lot of darkeness during the winter.

My ending point? It the data is real, they do have to eliminate a whole lot of other things, then explain how thousands of people voluntarily go through much more drastic changes of exactly the same phenomenon and returning happy. And I've been on cruises to Alaska with some people who were obviously fulfillingt a bucket list.

I really wonder how many of the maladies of old age are actually deficiency disorders.

Interestingly enough, there's recent research that indicates some aging related ailments could be caused by too much accumulated iron.

Image from the article.
The white parts are the found ones, the gray are speculated.
Bottom right for the configuration they were found in.

There is a lot of extrapolation going on.
I think I'll wait until a second specimen have been found until I speculate too much.

The problem with renewable energy is not so much the price to do so but the cost of not running non renewable energy.

... you need enough standby generation to cover those low days and they are going to get paid if they run or not.

THIS. I'd upvote you to 6 but I don't have any points, never mind cascading points.

All these guys with renewables forget they're not 100% dependable and unless you want to be in the dark you need a backup source ready to go within seconds, not construction years. And 10x overproduction is great, but at night none of the solar banks are busy. I want an average load-out with peaks, but I've got variable input that ranges from 0-200%. NOT the same thing.

It's kind of interesting what tesla is doing in Australia

THAT. Besides pushing trains or water uphill or spinning wheels or compressing air, that's the only innovation I've heard in a long time. And they're doing it with millisecond quantity, not just supporting a hospital or single neighborhood. (30,000 homes for an hour.)

Informative AND pretty pictures: One, Two, Three, Four, Five.

Bahahahaha! Just this morning:

https://www.sciencealert.com/h...

Doctors barely understand medicine, genius!

This is the same Russian company that's been plugging its "Our robot keeps trying to escape its lab!"

If the very obviously fake "accident" isn't enough, just listen to how they described Autopilot:

“After the clash the robot was pushed aside and fell. The car continued to move and stopped fifty meters away from the accident. The passenger who was in the car while driving explains that he decided to try a self-driving mode (Full Self-Driving Capability) and chose an idle area for this test.”

“There was nobody there, no men, no cars. I switched this Tesla into a self-driving mode and it started to move. And wow! A robot on the track! I thought the flivver would come round, but it bumped straightly into the it! I am so sorry, the robot looks cute. And my sincere apologies to the engineers”, said George Caldera, a Tesla passenger.

Does it need to be mentioned that Autopilot doesn't even remotely work this way? You can't "activate it as a passenger", it's not activated from the screen, the first time it's activated you have to go through confirmation steps, you can't activate it without being in the drivers' seat with your hands on the wheel, you can't activate it from a stop, and it has to be in an area where there's clear road markings.

It's even more foolish since researchers have already been able to build a machine that behaves like very simple creatures. There isn't any reason so think that we can't make something more complex, it's just a matter of being able to map out the wiring and build hardware to mimic the sensory data that the artificial brain needs. However, there's a long way to go. I recall another researcher that was trying to make a robot to fold clothes, but that problem turned out to be much harder than he thought since just getting the robot to be able to recognize individual articles of clothing is challenging.

Directed energy is probably the best option.

And now more feasible than ever. Drones typically accept control signals at 2.4 GHz, which means the directed energy weapon in question would be a maser. The best way to shoot down an aircraft with directed energy is to hit a receiving antenna, frying the on board electronics. Conveniently enough, work out of Imperial College London, published in March 2018, documents the creation of the highest energy maser ever created, more than 100 million times more energy than previous masers, which output in the nanowatts. And it operates at room temperature, instead of the supercooled version previous masers required. A kilowatt array of those should wreck havoc with any drone flying.

It would be nice if this worked. There is a wave powered capture system that I believe worked but it probably doesn't scale nicely...

The next thing to try will likely be engineering microbes to eat our waste which they are working toward...

https://www.sciencealert.com/n...

Denialists would often ask, "what if these imperfect estimates are too high?" and scientifically-minded people would counter with "what if these imperfect estimates are too low?" In the last few years it's been obvious that they were mostly too low (as in conservative) across the board. Oddly enough the constant unfounded accusations of bias toward climate science has created a real bias toward conservative estimates, as scientists all fear overestimating and becoming the deniosphere's celebrated Chicken Little.

If all of the public research was public, then we'd all be able to see how much of it is a sham.

This is of course a great reason to mandate that all publicly funded research be made completely free to access. For-Pay journals could well survive just by curating the most interesting an accurate of them, and it's likely the quality of journals would go up as a result.

Building back up the credibility of science in general is a huge need at present, because the lack of it is allowing things like anti-vac sentiment and other crazy ideas to spread like wildfire.

It was literally the last warning from Steven Hawkings. History is full of examples of what happens when one civilization meets another civilization that is vastly ahead in technology. It has always ended badly for the ones with inferior technology.

https://www.sciencealert.com/s...

. . . Suggested reading:
https://www.nchrd.org/2018/07/...
https://www.nchrd.org/2018/07/...
https://www.scmp.com/video/chi...
https://www.rfa.org/english/ne...
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018...
https://www.hrichina.org/en/pr...
https://qz.com/1129837/human-r...
https://chinachange.org/2017/1...
https://www.sciencealert.com/c...
https://news.slashdot.org/stor...

Physicists said the Em Drive was "Impossible" then NASA tested it and it worked.

https://www.cnet.com/news/theo...

https://www.space.com/40682-em...

You are using old data. Here: https://www.sciencealert.com/i...

You can read thrust in any direction you want, perhaps in two opposite directions at the same time. And the amount of energy it takes to get that omnidirectional "thrust" is pretty impressive. Personally, I think it is heating effects, and perhaps the magnetic field of the earth interfering. And that's as good a guess as QI. The EM drive will now live on as youtube videos for the perpetual motion crowd, and the people who believe that you can heat your entire house with a tea candle and a clay pot.

"Princeton Pro-Life is a student-run organization"

That should be enough of a warning to everyone.

"...the thousands pre-born people aborted every day, some of whom would have been here at Princeton with us now, had they been allowed to live."

Oh, fuck off. Without abortions, their numbers would be almost exactly the same. And "pre-born"? I guess those students must be pre-smart! :-p

There seems to be some confusion over them. Since they're impacted by G and since you need them to measure G, they're an important part of the story.

https://www.newscientist.com/a...
https://www.sciencealert.com/p...

Basically, they work off state changes. Caesium atoms that generated pulses of radiation as they changed energy level, the wobble of aluminium atoms, the motion in a quantum gas of strontium.

They do not, and never have, work(ed) from radioactive decay.

Ok, that's true for subatomic particles, i'll give you that. But does that scale upwards, is the ultimate question?

It does - quantum mechanical weirdness has been demonstrated with quite massive (in a physics sense) molecules: https://www.sciencealert.com/p...

If this is how the building blocks of reality behave, then the obvious concern is that macroscopic objects have the same bizarre behaviors - which prompted Einstein to wonder if the moon is there when nobody is looking.

I wonder where the rest of it is coming from.

From -

https://www.sciencealert.com/n...

The hours and hours of audio encompasses every single communication between the astronauts, mission control and back-room support staff during the entire mission.

Mars Want to Launch a Giant Magnetic Shield to make Mars Habitable The Paper

One of the linked articles claims that another team set the 'real' record at 20 qbits...

2) Both sides of the contract - the service provided and information given - have terms and limits attached.
3) GDPR is about establishing standard rules for the limits. I want to know what you shall do with the data and who else shall access it via you.

What I remember about you can not be subject to contract between us. Neither a custom contract our lawyers agreed upon, nor the government-mandated one.

If you are Ok with government forcing Google to forget you, be prepared for the judge siding with your ex' demanding, you forget the good times you've once shared. It is already technologically possible.

XXongo says

...This is an example of why you should always read the article, not just the headline....

You're right. I'm wrong. Often am. Probably just con-fusion on my part. There are fusion reactors out there now, who aim to fuse hydrogen into helium, and release incredible amounts of clean energy to the grid. But none sell electricity yet. So far, it's just research.

Right. In fact, not only do none of the fusion reactors sell electricity, none of them even make electricity. Since they haven't gotten fusion to work yet to the point where it produces more power out than you put power in, nobody's bothered to install generators to turn the power that they're not producing into electricity.

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-uk-has-just-switch-on-its-tokamak-nuclear-fusion-reactor

If you read that article more carefully, the headline says that they've "switched the reactor on" but the text says that they "achieved 'first plasma'." That's "turning it on," I agree... but it's not fusion.

They haven't actually put deuterium (much less tritium) in yet, in fact, they haven't yet (as of the article) yet achieved fusion threshold temperature (the article you cite says at they "hope to achieve the fusion threshold of 100 million degrees Celsius" by next year; an article from this year says that they expect to hit 15 million degrees this year: https://www.power-technology.c...

...This is an example of why you should always read the article, not just the headline....

You're right. I'm wrong. Often am. Probably just con-fusion on my part. There are fusion reactors out there now, who aim to fuse hydrogen into helium, and release incredible amounts of clean energy to the grid. But none sell electricity yet. So far, it's just research.

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-uk-has-just-switch-on-its-tokamak-nuclear-fusion-reactor

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

I'm sorry to say you are in error. As just one example shows: " In 1997, using this fuel, JET set the current world record for fusion output at 16 MW from an input of 24 MW of heating and a total input of 700-800 MW of electrical power"

Perhaps you meant that no-one has demonstrated a fusion reactor that generates a positive Q value (i.e. generates more power than is used to run it). If so, then your thought was correct, you merely misspoke.

However, the technology, specifically the magnet materials, has come a long way in the last 20 years. There are now at least a couple of very promising projects under construction and testing. If I were a betting man I would probably be willing to place money* on there being viable fusion power within the next 20 years, and, if that's the case, it will snowball from there.

*I've heavily moderated this thread, hence the anon post. Has nothing to do with the bet ... honest!

Whibla.

There will be some warming, but not enough to cause any alarm.

Unless we reach a tipping point. in which case it doesn't matter what we do, we will all be fucked. After that the best we can do (as a species) is try ride out the storms, the droughts, and hope that some of us make it through the next phase, which is worse btw, another ice age. We may survive as a species (I think) but our civilization will be back in the dark ages.

There is no need to impose hardship on anyone when the solutions are more desirable on their own

For whom? Do you honestly think mega corporations like the petroleum / oil industry are just going to roll over and play dead because something better came along? I know it's just conspiracy theory talk, but how many people have "disappeared" when they showed up with a car that could run on water?
One of the major problems we have is population control, people keep fucking and breeding, I don't see the solution other to impose some hardships, like China did with their one child policy. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

I bet you are one of those people who doesn't bother to recycle because "They will do it afterwards, why must I bother!". Sadly you are wrong, they don't, it goes into a landfill and gets buried. Even places that do recycling and fetch your nicely separated recyclables don't bother trying to recycle it if you haven't cleaned it properly first. They simply chuck it into the landfill.

Conventional plastics degrade/release the chemicals very very slowly, causing very little actual chemical harm to the environment.

Um, No.

Also, your definition of biodegradable

"Biodegradable" means that the chemicals in the product are released into the environment quickly.

seems a little too conveniently crafted for supporting your thesis.

I think this one is a bit more accurate

Okay, I know that you like to watch sattelite falling into the ocean from very close, but maybe you should start mooring your observering barge a little bit further away from Point Nemo.

I'm sure it's going to solve your speakers problem.

Just saying.

Recent image of Bill Gates. Undeniable... looks older than his years. Something eating him out from inside?

It actually just happened to Alpha Centauri, thus no expected life there. https://www.sciencealert.com/p...

Just a tip for you.. Whenever someone says your are lazy give them this link
https://www.sciencealert.com/s...

Night owls who struggle to get enough sleep are often diagnosed at sleep clinics with delayed sleep phase disorder (DSPD), and researchers estimate that around 10 percent of the global population is affected by this condition.

'Lazy ass' my ass... get a grip...
https://www.sciencealert.com/s...

Waking up at 6 in the morning will make me into a zombie for the full day... Waking up at 7, or preferably 8, will make me a lot more productive and have a lot more energy. Have had a 2 year period where i was had to get up at 6 and during those years i was a complete zombie and had to spend most of the weekend in bed... I have more energy if i sleep 4 hours and get up at 8 instead of sleeping 8 hours and get up at 6.

It is easier in the summer when i require less sleep, because of more sunlight, but my head still gets screwed up if having to wake up too early.

Assuming arguendo that the rumors are true there's pretty convincing science that it has a rejuvenating effect on the mind in studies on mice. Nothing concrete on humans yet, but as he's rich as Croesus and can afford to pay healthy teenagers for their blood, why the fuck wouldn't he be doing it? I sure as fuck know that I would if I had that sort of spare cash lying around. Worst case scenario all that he gets is a placebo effect while a couple of healthy young people get some spending cash they wouldn't otherwise have.

https://www.sciencealert.com/m...

They did this with roundworms already, and put it on a Lego robot.

Still... taking no chances with the contamination present.

Curiosity is in range of some of the discovered liquid water.

It’s allowed nowhere near it.

Failing to find any Hebrew scholars who could help validate their findings, the researchers eventually resorted to using Google Translate,

(Source)

This "research" is a joke.

Why? Because the Hebrew scholars didn't want to participate?

Google Translate botches modern languages. The fact that running their results through Google Translate gave them meaningful output suggests they have real data.

Failing to find any Hebrew scholars who could help validate their findings, the researchers eventually resorted to using Google Translate,

(Source)

This "research" is a joke.

Let's assume all Hebrew scholars died out. They still left us with grammars and dictionaries. Any scientist (and contrary to what STEM people believe, there is Language Science) would not be stopped by that. I mean, they figured out Egyptian Hieroglyphs (with help from the Rosetta Stone), they figured out Linear B (a diphone system not actually suited for Greek used in Minoan accounting on thousands of loam slates preserved by an accidental fire) without such help.

What kind of joke researcher has to strike up a cooperation with "Google Translate" to get at results?

Failing to find any Hebrew scholars who could help validate their findings, the researchers eventually resorted to using Google Translate,

(Source)

This "research" is a joke.

You seriously think that surface conditions have an effect on "the global geodynamo" (the Earth's core)? The wandering of the magnetic poles isn't the result of mysterious changes thousands of miles below the surface; in general it's caused by variations in the Earth's wobbling as it spins on its axis. According to this, the relatively recent acceleration of pole movement is the result of a water deficit in India and the Caspian Sea region.

The magnetic poles have reversed many times in Earth's history. According to this, over the last 20 million years a pole reversal happens every 300,000 years or so. It's been 780,000 years since the last one, so maybe we're overdue.

There is research being done on that front as well. For instance, they've discovered that adding a portion of red seaweed to a cow's diet will reduce it's methane production. https://foodtank.com/news/2017...
There's are also the attempts to replace large scale animal raising entirely by using grown meat instead of raising animals for slaughter. https://blogs.scientificameric...

Another common source of methane iirc is leaks from fracking for natural gas. But, if we eliminate our need for natural gas then that source of methane will become a non-issue as well.

Another tech in the works extracts CO2 from the air and compresses it into stone. https://www.sciencealert.com/s...

Sadly, these advances won't halt the release of methane trapped in the polar ice and permafrost as it melts. The only way to counter that is to halt any further melting, which probably isn't possible at this point. But if we push to move away from burning fossil fuels as quickly as we can, we'll be worse off in the long term. Renewable energy sources wouldn't have gotten to the point they are at today as quickly if there wasn't as much of a push to develop and advance them.

Along with a chicken in every pot, there should be one of these on every counter top

Greed indeed.

Normally I'd think that setting a price on some good or service would factor in things like the cost of producing it, reasonable return to the provider, and liability in case things go wrong. But here we see that the price depends on how much the customer stands to gain from using the product. So it's a case of controlling the supply to raise the price. That is greed.

http://www.sciencealert.com/first-fda-gene-therapy-inherited-disease-childhood-blindness

Spark Therapeutics chief executive Jeffrey Marrazzo has talked repeatedly about the challenge of setting a price for a treatment that is designed to be administered once but provide benefits over years or even a lifetime.

He has said he was considering several factors in weighing the price, including the value of a patient being able to work because of improved vision and a reduced need for caregiving.

If someone decided to build a house out of cardboard

...
https://www.sciencealert.com/t...

Yeah, I loved that ... really, most profanity outbursts probably are the result of inadequate language, IMHO.

Fuck off

https://www.sciencealert.com/s...

Yea, horizontal velocity both from the turning of the earth, causing a curve when it DOES leave earth's gravity. and the natural curving flight of an object as it descends upon the sun or a black hole. But I try to look upon the bright side because of the amassing of more knowledge as we go along. Take this site for instance. - Laser powered rockets and solar powered guidance https://www.sciencealert.com/n... Except we would be aiming for the sun.

China cancels 103 coal power plants
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...
https://www.sciencealert.com/t...

Yes, if it was supposed to withstand more than one point of damage. In a battery, the limiting and safety need to be built into the battery and prevent overcharging. Of course you want a smart, working charger as well, but the battery needs protection built in.

No. While Apple might have some fault tolerance built into their phones, it doesn't mean they can design it to withstand all faults. To anticipate every scenario isn't realistic. Also there is no responsibility on Apple's part (or any manufacturer) to insure that their product must exceed operating conditions. From this article, some of these chargers fail basic safety tests and were damaged after one use. Are you saying Apple should have taken into account these faulty chargers in their design? That's like saying Ford must make sure my car must withstand all 3rd party after market parts.

Science is in a no-win situation here. If we solve the problem and reduce emissions and no additional warming or catastrophic consequences occur, people like you will say the science was flawed and will be less likely to heed warnings in the future. If we continue along our present course, catastrophic consequences will almost certainly occur. If the latter happens at least us "greens" will be able to point to those consequences and say, "you should have listened", but you'll probably just tell us it's a natural cycle.

No the science says we are past the point of doing anything to change it.

https://www.sciencealert.com/s...

https://www.sciencealert.com/s...

I love settled science

So what you are arguing for is making people more miserable than they supposedly will be any way.