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2005 Scientific Highlights
Nomad37 writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has a great wrap-up of the great moments in 2005 for science. The story covers everything from evolution to space exploration, the role of genetics in brain disorder to nuclear fusion. The story provides a neat overview for those of us who haven't been checking Slashdot regularly enough!"
The story provides a neat overview for those of us who haven't been checking Slashdot regularly enough!
The dupes make it so we don't have to check regularly, silly.
Trolling is a art,
The authors of the article are really going to have egg on their face when the aliens land next week.
Sometimes, it's easy to forget that science is alive, well, and thriving when reading all the ID and creationist nonsense that is circulating throught the media today - it's a nice reminder that while ID is getting some press, REAL science is getting money, time, top-notch researchers, and revealing ever more about how our amazing Universe works. Happy New Year!!!
...from the article: "Not even the US President, George Bush, could ignore the historic hurricane season in the north Atlantic this year." - heh, heh, heh....
[Ducks and applies SPF50 flame-block]
I feel the unmasking of the fake results posted by Woo Suk Hwang could be a blessing for science, and one of the years highlights. It could be portrayed as why science works, although the community requires a basis of trust, eventually frauds will be revealed, hopefully creating more trust in the system.
What science requires are better media relations to portray this way of viewing the discipline.
It's the exact same fucking link, except this time it points to the top of the page. It's no more 'printer friendly' than the other one.
2005 Scientific Highlights That's whole lot of highlights!
Artificial intelligence is the study of how to make real computers act like the ones in the movies.
"...who haven't been checking Slashdot regularly enough!"
What, you mean BSD isn't dead?
I thought the real breakthrough was when they cracked Mickey's genetic code and found out that while man shares 96% DNA with chimps, he also shares 90% DNA with mice, his other cousin. Woman refuses to share DNA.
This article is from the Sydney Morning Herald, reporting the American Association for the Advancement of Science's "Top 10". Yesterday the Evolution Named Scientific Achievement of 2005 story was the BBC reporting the same fucking list. By cleverly putting "evolution" in the title then Zonk got the standard 800 posts you always get when you wave that red flag.
A federal court ruling quashing the teaching of the religiously-motivated pseudo-science of intelligent design in Pennsylvania schools (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10545387/). Its great to have fought off this challenge to science and education in America (yet again), but sad that we are still having these challenges after all science has accomplished since Western mankind threw off the yoke theocracy first put on science in the Middle Ages.
Yeah, I thought he was trolling too. Then I looked at some of his (the GP) previous posts. Not so much.
To the GP, I am not disrespecting your faith, however
Most simplisticly, the reason your ferromagnet remains attached to the fridge instead of falling is because the potential electromotive force generated by the dipoles in the magnet and the fridge is greater than the potential gravitional force between the magnet and the earth. Note the word potential in both clauses. Until the magnet actually moves, no work has been done and thus no energy has been expended. It does not "cost" anything for the magnet to remain attached. If the magnet were weak enough that potential gravity could overrule it, then there would be a cost (for as long as the magnet continued to change inertially), to both the earth's inertia/angular momentum and the related magnetic domains.
I know it must seem magical, but its really just a simple case of the magnet being in the lowest possible rest-state (energy-wise) for that configuration.
You'll notice that it's not called the "Theory of Thermodynamics".
I guess this is the best metaphor that has ever been used in a science article.
>>Neutron stars are the *city-sized*, collapsed cores of massive stars.
Sorta, depending on you how you look at friction. Any time the layperson's concept of "friction" is involved, it usually just means gravity (after all, in a zero-g environment, will two objects directly touching each other stay that way if a force is applied perpendicularly to one of them?)
In this case though, that's not really the type of "friction" in play. Like gravity, electromagnetism follows the inverse square law. And, in your example of a magnet suspended vertically from a horizontal surface, the field effect will rapidly fall off as the magnet's distance from the ferrite increases. In fact, because there is no potential force, other than that created by the magnet, which would balance gravitational potential, any increase in distance between the magnet and the ferrite will cause a drop in magnetomotive effect ("potential electromotive force") as well as true current-potential electromotive force. Thus the only "energy hill" is momentary and equal to that of the magnetomotive effect itself. Like balancing two identically weighted people on a a teeter-totter, as soon as you apply the slighest momentary force to one side, they are on an unstoppable (w/out addl force elsewhere) downward journey.
Not so with a horizontal ferromagnet on a vertical surface. Assuming right angles to the center of gravity, the magnet's distance from the ferrite never increases when gravitional potential becomes true force. The inverse square law has no effect. Now, the gravitional potential must continously meet or beat the non-varying (or very slightly varying) electromotive potential. Because some of the gravitional potential is now actual force (i.e. work is being done), it cannot continously stay "over the hill" as would be required, although if the magnet is weak enough and the two are toe-to-toe, gravity may very well continually "win" but with only enough force to induce minor inertial change and the rest being "consumed" by balancing the non-varying magnetomotive (i.e. the magnet slowly slides down the fridge). Obviously, such a precarious balancing act requires very little change on either side's potential to start a runaway resulting in the magnet either stopping or falling off into inverse-square-law world. This is the facination people have with so-called "permanent magnets"; that it is so easily possible to directly observe and manipulate the equilibrium point between two potentials.
The main cause of magnetism seeming so mysterious to many is that our instinctual inertial and gravitional perception is not what it seems at first glance. We think, instinctively, that we "feel" gravity, but what we're really feeling is a combination of fluid orientation and inertial potential. In other words, rather than perceiving the actual force performing work, we're perceiving potential energy offset by 1g perpendicular to our orientation. When someone "feels" the pull of a magnet, what they're really feeling is the potential for their hand to experience inertial change. If they allow their hand to move, they will mostly cease to notice the real force (they would notice the acceleration, but it's minor in the case of household magnets). Because one must always balance potential in order to prevent it from asserting the lowest possible energy state (i.e. expending itself), people mistakingly perceive this as work-energy when in reality they could balance it equally well with some external non-moving brace which prevented joint movement.
I guess it comes down to this: Effort as "not-work" means there is no real force involved, as you can't actually use it to do a damn thing.
If a refridgerator magnet needs a power source, what is the power source for the Post-It(tm) note hanging beside it?
Gluons, duh.