Slashdot Mirror
EU Scientists Working On Laser To Rip a Hole In Spacetime
astroengine writes "Those pesky physicists are at it again; they want to build a laser so powerful that it will literally rip spacetime apart. Why? To prove the existence of virtual particles in the quantum vacuum, potentially unravel extra dimensions and possibly find the root of dark matter. The $1.6 billion Extreme Light Infrastructure Ultra-High Field Facility (known as ELI) will be built somewhere in Europe by the end of the decade and physicists are hoping the ten high-powered lasers — delivering 200 petawatts of power at a target for less than a trillionth of a second — will turn up some surprises about the very fabric of the Universe."
Commencing Primary Ignition....
Standby...
Standby...
So there I was, scribbling down some notes off the PC screen by hand, when I reached for the keyboard and Ctrl-S'd.
Alright folks, listen up: This is not an appropriate time for a shark joke. This is very clearly an opportunity for an Alan Parsens or Preperation H reference.
Anybody caught making a Frickin' Sharks joke will be permanently labeled a virgin.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
If spacetime is ripped apart, where and when will any observations of any phenomena they are studying occur?
In the event of an alien invasion, can we point it upwards?
The combined power of 10 separate lasers would be focused down to a very small volume, creating conditions more extreme than in the center of our sun.
So they'll essentiallly be turning the Earth into the Death Star
And we feel good about letting Europeans man the switch?
Will they be wearing dark suits with funky helmets?
They need to call it "light" because politicians are stupid enough to ban if they call it "radiation" - although a powerful enough laser won't be visible light, but UV radiation...
Nerdy news for your nerdy needs? http://www.soylentnews.org Soylent News is people!
... we get invaded by the Strogg?
--
BMO
Another terrible headline, but the article is partly to blame. This isn't about ripping a hole in space time, it's just about putting energy in the vacuum so a bunch of virtual particles become real particles.
P.S. THE DEVICE WILL GO ONLINE IN 2012 AND END THE WORLD!!! AREN'T I CLEVER? PULL MY FINGER!!
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
Damn! I hate it when that happens.
Have gnu, will travel.
Hey, beats a shark joke. Let's mine 70s TV for a change.
Gently reply
... until the universe segfaults.
don't actually exist. virtual particles are just mathematical simplicities. They are only a *model* of how physics works. Even in the name- they are "virtual" because they are just mathematical abstractions. nothing more.
power of this fully operational battle station! Fire at will commander.
I've never understood what Will did that everyone always wants to fire at him.
As a Canadian, I wish our government would partner with the US to fund super awesome science mega-projects like this. Seriously guys, would it be so hard to scrap one aircraft carrier in exchange for something useful?
That actually happened several times. Ever heard of Louis Slotin or Harry Daghlian?
Did I miss something, but why is Europe getting all the cool new science toys? :-(
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I'm not a physicist and this might be a stupid question, but how do we generate 100,000 times the Earth's power generation to work the darn thing even for the smallest moment? Is there something I'm missing?
I write professional videogame reviews! http://www.digitallydownloaded.net/
here you go.
The mini black hole at CERN designed to swallow everything didn't work - on to plan B!
Pardon the commercial intrusion, but are we discussing a $1.6B innovation by the same "Europe" currently facing an existential crisis that is threatening to destroy the very economic fabric of the world? Either I am confused, or the media are confused... because they are portraying the current fiscal situation as one step removed from "widespread cannibalism", and here we are talking about physics.
someone accidentally caused a nuclear fission without taking proper precautions at a lab
That happened, at least twice. See the WIkipedia entries for Harry Daghlian, Jr and Louis Slotin.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
several did, and paid with their lives.
google "demon core"
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I'd have thought so. But the home page of the actual facility says "A European facility opening new avenues to reveal the secrets of matter on ultra-short timescales" so I'm guessing the Discovery article isn't very accurate.
The answer is not what is given. The answer is:
1. Pork 2. Some researchers get media attention 3. Some researchers might get to play with the laser.
The whole idea is so lame. Please, give the money to a real condensed matter physicist, or a chemist or a materials scientist please.
I'll feed ya, Anonymous Coward! :-) Why is it lame? Potentially (and admittedly it will eat giga-watts of electricity) it could confirm some very fundamental elements of theoretical physics. That, to me, is worth every giga-penny. Advancement of fundamental knowledge is money well-spent. Do you have something against science on the frontiers? Just askin'.
The resonance cascade!!!!! OH NOES Gordon Freeman save us!
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
It is quite a scary sounding procedure. If our atmosphere catches fire and every life form from the smallest bacteria to the largest mammal is instantly incinerated then at least we will know who to blame.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The CCTV thing is purely a British phenomenon, not European. Britain isn't really part of Europe. It acts like it when it suits it, and it acts separate when that suits it. They weren't even invited to the recent talks about the crisis with the Euro, Greece, etc. Britain's really a lot more like the USA than continental Europe.
Oh screw it! You're asking them to read the frikkin' manual or the equivalent thereof! Who does that?!? JUST DO IT! And if traveling at warp speed causes disruptions in the space-time continuum, we'll just reduce speeds and perhaps eliminate warp-speed travel, as long as the Klingons and Romulans do as well.
Yep, we're playing with fire. And as we all know, humans were better off without fire.
I'm guessing...plaid and flannel.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
$1.6 billion is a bargain to have space and time ripped up. The money won't be missed anyway.
Why is it lame?
Because the shark question has not been considered. I would fucking pay extra taxes to see space-time ripping laser sharks.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Yeah, this project sounds as if NASA announced a mission to Alpha Centauri, while we haven't even made it to Mars.
First achieve controlled nuclear fusion, THEN use that cheap, clean power for crazy experiments.
"Hellish beings from another Universe will come charging through the gap "
And they'll all be named John.
Let's rip up space and see what's underneath. What could go wrong?
Advice: on VPS providers
Or read From a Buick 8? Or The Langoliers?
I really don't want to rip a hole in space-time.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
They weren't even invited to the recent talks about the crisis with the Euro, Greece, etc.
Could that be because, you know, they don't use the Euro?
Destroying reality just to prove a point.
Professor Farnsworth: We tore the universe a new space-hole, alright. But it's clenching shut fast!
Yes, but they took it as a major snub. After all, the crisis threatens the existence of the entire European Union, and Britain is (population-wise and economy-wise) one of the larger members of the EU. So it makes sense they'd want to at least be present during any big meetings, even if they haven't yet changed to the shared currency.
Perhaps the most appropriate department title I have seen.
May or may not be Pork, but there will be Cake.
Yep, vacuum is nothing.
Henrik Casimir called, he wants a word with you.
Henrik Casimir called, he wants a word with you.
(And, before anybody replies, yes, I know, he's calling from the Great Beyond.)
Lets see a petawatt is 1 x 10^15.. Our star (sol) has a surface power of +/- 4 x 10^25 and it hasn't rent space time asunder yet that I know of, but hell I could be wrong. 200 PW is only a little more then the power of the sun that hits the earth. The sun runs at its power level continuously and they think they can do that in a couple of fempto seconds? I think not.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
How many femto seconds to get a perfect tan?
I'm not the original AC, but I'll give you a two part argument for it's being lame.
1. The energy density for this device, while pretty spectacular, is still way, way below the range where current competing theories predict exotic results. This has been a problem for projected particle accelerator of the future designs as well, since at least before the Superconducting Supercollider design that was to be built in Texas was canceled by the US Congress. One of the reasons we have gone ahead with new accelerators even though we (as a species) are still tremendously short of achieving the energy levels needs for more direct tests is a few 'work arounds' have been theorized. These are phenomena that are in the range the machine at CERN or others can reach, but that theoretically may be indirectly influenced by Super-symmetry or other theories we can't test more directly. Without some relatively indirect test like this, the Uber-laser still won't be nearly powerful enough to accomplish anything. So, either there's some sort of indirect prediction from one of the String theory variants, or Super-symmetry, or some more exotic theory, and that indirect prediction is down in the energy range that this thing achieves, or they are basically just gambling on something completely unexpected showing up. Since the article doesn't really explain what that indirect, inferential prediction might be, It's seems more likely than not there isn't a specific one. (Of course, it's possible the interviewer didn't get everything into the article.).
2. The article also states that the energy achieved by this device will be equal to a temperature greater than the center of the sun. That sounds impressive, but we've seen some much more energetic events in astrophysics. Lots of Nova/Supernova variants, neutron star related events, and quasars involve energy densities way beyond both the center of our sun and this laser device. We should at least possibly have seen some evidence for the same kind of effects as this widget is supposed to possibly produce by studying existing astronomical events. While that's not absolutely always a good guideline, I know, in the absence of an indirect prediction based on existing theory, I'd be willing to gamble somewhat if the device aimed to mimic the energy densities of some astrophysical event and could point to theories from there as evidence for this 'hole ripping' or 'cosmic hernia' effect. It's not uncommon for sub-atomic physics to take cues from Astrophysics and Cosmology, and vice-versa, but that too doesn't seem to be happening in this case.
Who is John Cabal?
Grr, accidentally posted that while logged out.
I guess the Death Star patent has expired, then?
As another poster said, this is about virtual pair production, which we see all the time. But there's an interesting side effect of pair production which I figured I'd toss out there: it makes vacuum an imperfect insulator. If you apply enough voltage across a chunk of vacuum, current -will- start to flow. In other words, vacuum has a breakdown voltage as a result of virtual pair production.
This breakdown point is at roughly the voltage required to separate virtual particle pairs that come into existence. Suppose a pair of the two lightest species, an electron and a positron, pops into existence for a moment. Before they can mutually annihilate, a huge external electric field pulls them apart and pays the energy debt to create them. The resulting electron flow to the positive terminal and the positron flow to the negative terminal are an electrical current, reducing the potential difference of the field.
This same effect of separating virtual particles via a huge electric field is what the experiment is proposing to measure. Normal matter breaks down long before the required field strength is met, so the only way to create an electric field that strong is via photons, which in a laser pulse all constructively combine to give small regions of space huge electric and magnetic fields.
Just FYI.
Alter Aeon Multiclass MUD - http://www.alteraeon.com
Oh good. Perhaps these experiments will put to rest arguments that zero point energy is the Next Big Thing(tm).
Proponents of it (at least the ones I've met) won't shut up about it.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I think maybe they should do this on a different planet...you know, for safety and all that. Didn't they learn anything from Star Trek? You don't just go build an Omega particle right next to a bunch of important stuff. You don't rip time and space apart on your home planet either! Seriously, "let's see what happens when we rip a hole in space and time" is NOT a valid safety policy.
That's ok, they're staying out of Philadelphia this time.
Universe to Earth: That will leave a mark.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Hi I'm from the future (that's how I have such a low UID).
Just letting you guys know that ripping a hole in space-time is a really bad idea.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
If you count the part where you have to rip a hole in spacetime?
-5.
It opens up and scientific grant money comes out! Like a big pinata!
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
The universe tunneling to a lower energy state would destroy all existing structure in the universe instantly. They wouldn't be annoyed at all, they would simply cease to exist like everything else we know.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
They are trying to electrically polarize vacuum. And physical vacuum can be seen as a dielectric.
Distortion and ripping open of space-time are ultimately a gravity thing and gravity is sensationally weak unless you are near some stellar object.
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
Not one comment regarding the "Oscillation Overthruster"? That was basically a laser that blasted it's way into the 8th dimension, taking our hero Buckaroo Bonzai along for the ride :)
Except on Earth, instead of Phobos.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Don't worry. What will they pay for it with?
Euros?
Har! It's to larf, really!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
and admittedly it will eat giga-watts of electricity)
Well, yes, it's 200 petawatts, but the amount of energy is less than that of an incandescent lightbulb running for an hour. 200 quadrillion watts * 1 trillionth of a second * (1hr/3600s) * (1 kWh/1000 Wh) = .05556 kWh (in other words, the amount of energy used by about 56 watts over the course of an hour).
As I'm reading this there are are 226 comments on this article. NOT ONE addresses the issues presented, examines the math, argues on the merits. It's all about whim and whimsy, and talking points. Kids, I am dissapoint.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Christ... I'd love to see some discussion on how they are going to store that much energy. To my mind it seems more like science fiction then the actual hole-in-spacetime part of the experiment.
And it would propagate across the universe at the speed of light so they would get little warning of it except when the wave hits them then [carrier lost]......
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
nuf sed
Go do your homework, GMO is THE weapon against hunger and if it wasn't for GMO many countries would still be starving.
it's czech republic and i live there, you insensitive clod!
First the shear amount of dumb laser jokes is astounding. It seems very few people bothered to read any of the other posts or bothered to consider that maybe someone else on Shashdot had ever seen Austin Powers. Or Star Trek. Or your favorite SF series here. Real herd behavior in action.
Next, the number of people whining about 200 PETAWATTS!!!!!! was really sad. Are the posters hear actually that ignorant about the concept of instantaneous power values and pulsed power systems? I am surprised by this level of technical ignorance.
Also, does anyone seriously think that a project of this size would be approved without an air tight argument that the experiment will operate in a domain where there are likely to be measurable results? Is it even vaguely possible that physicists picked "200 petawatts of power at a target for less than a trillionth of a second " by guessing? They have a well reasoned case to do the experiment, and part of this is a way to measure the results. But many of the post deride the practicality of the experiment, and even make specific statements that it won't work and that key measurement components are nonexistent. All based around a badly written publicity piece and their extensive personal knowledge of ultra high powered lasers and the mathematics of virtual particle production in the ground state of the space-time vacuum.
The worst and most puzzling part is the shear amount of hostility shown towards science. Assuming that it pork spending, saying it useless, that it can't show anything interesting, that the resources would be better spent somewhere else. All without a shred of logic or reference to any external source. This is the kind of anti-intellectual crap I expect from Fox News, not Slashdot readers. All I see here is a few true nerds surrounded by a bunch of fakes who either express their ignorance directly or try and hide it by making a ridiculous hostile comments.
Why is Snark Required?
Hopefully this Laser will open a rift where this 'cosmonaut' moron disappears into.
He also deserves the preposition at the end of the sentence.
You're wrong: Britain actually slavishly and pedantically implements every European directive to its fullest and most exact extent. The population resents this: the French tends to ignore EU directives as they please, the Germans love it, the Italians and Irish are too chaotic to implement them. It's only the British who fully implement them and then resent it.
British civil servants love the EU because it allows them to implement all sorts of rules in a jobsworthy manner then blame it on the EU when anyone complains.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Not only that, Britain's banks are heavily exposed to Irish debt, so what happens in the eurozone hugely affects Britain.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
i wouldnt want to meet those conditions before we know that we actually know what we are doing.
They know what they are doing and the headline and summary are sensionalist bullshit with the intention to cause strong reactions like yours.
If you can't handle the way headlines are written then please stop reading them or at least stop comment on them.
Maybe I'm getting old, but wouldn't we be better off spending $1.6B educating, feeding, and homing people? I feel the same way about manned space flight. I'm not saying it has nothing more to offer us, but as a benefit to mankind, the cost/benefit ratio doesn't look good.
surrounded by a bunch of fakes who either express their ignorance directly or try and hide it by making a ridiculous hostile comments
Brilliant ending to that ridiculously hostile post.
Life is great! (as told by Lady Susan)
He's right though. I go through phases of not reading the comments on science-related articles here for that very reason - the general level of commentary is awful. Sure, not everyone has the knowledge and/or experience required to comment meaningfully, but it would be nice if they would refrain from doing so.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
We're not banging rocks together over here. We know how to make a quantum space hole.
"200 Petawatts" is nothing compared to the gigawatts required to power a time traveling Delorean!
I take it you are new to Slashdot. I tried in the past to point out when micro-hole experiments were claimed to potentially end the world that a black hole can't eat much if the initial mass is low. I got a zero mod for those comments. No one here cares about the physics, most on this site learned physics watching Star Trek. There's zero risk but hey there's always the "what if" scenarios. We're talking a brief pin hole in the Universe that would go unnoticed if they didn't have millions of dollars worth of instruments pointed at it. You might as well say since lightning produces anti matter the world will end during the next thunderstorm. Earth shattering events go unnoticed every single day and that's the real truth.
They go "PW PW PW!"
The concentrated puerility of multitude of slashdotters enabled you to produce a virtual article. Maybe you should actually be grateful :)
Noone is ripping anything. It's just a sensationalist article. Energy concentrations far bigger than this happen in the Universe.
What? My userid is NOT the number of women lusting after me? So it is the number of times I will have sex sometime in the future at least right? Right?? RIGHT?!?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Ahem....
Just stay away from the 8th dimension or it will be Orson Wells, all over again.
Better now?
"What's the point of going abroad, if you're just another tourist..."
While I was looking up puerile, I noticed that you used shear instead of sheer (twice) and hear instead of here. The fine is 1.37 Internets. Also, I finally found puerile in yo momma.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
First the shear amount of dumb laser jokes is astounding.
Someone replaced the sugar for your coffee with salt this morning, right? I hate it when that happens.
maybe someone else on Shashdot had ever seen Austin Powers. Or Star Trek.
Really? You don't say. I thought I was the only one who knew about Star Trek. I'll need to find a new thing... Maybe I'll go watch that Star Wars thing I read about. That death star thing should prove to be quite the hilarious joke.
I am surprised by this level of technical ignorance
Are you new here?
badly written publicity piece
By all means, write a better article. I BEG of you, write a better article. I couldn't agree more with you that lousy science articles need to go. But how many scientists are willing to write an article that a layman can understand? There's no time, writing articles doesn't bring back any funding, the public doesn't care, and your peers care even less since they read the paper. Thus you get pseudo-science articles. Hi Reality, nice to meet you. FYI, most people here won't even read the article, and it's been that way for a long time.
shear amount of hostility shown towards science
Have you been sleeping for the past 20 years or so? Science needs to be deliver immediate results to be cool these days. The only people who care about the nature of the universe these days are theologists and to a lesser extent theoretical physicists. Sad, but true.
This is the kind of anti-intellectual crap I expect from Fox News, not Slashdot readers
Slashdot was never the meeting grounds of the intellectuals its readers so gladly say it is. It's always been what it is : a news aggregator with geeks and their terrible terrible jokes. Sure, you've got a few people that are (studying) in this field, and they'll post a meaningful comment every now and then, but most of it is bored geeks with laser jokes. Anything you might think it was in the past is overly optimistic nostalgia.
true nerds surrounded by a bunch of fakes
OMG! Fake nerds. Quick, someone grab the Monty Python tapes. We'll weed 'm out by seeing who falls asleep after we watch quest for the holy grail umpteen times!
Leave now before you post yourself into a heart attack. That's the best advice I'm going to give you. Go read the paper, do something interesting, and spend the time you'd spend here arguing doing something that you feel is productive. You'll probably end up feeling much better that way.
Puerile is currently in the top 20% of lookups on Merriam-Webster.com.
- so 1/5th of all Merriam-Webster.com lookups came from this single comment.
Congrats.
You can't handle the truth.
This Universe is getting old and tired. This site is getting old and tired. Let's do this. Let's tear the Universe a new one.
By the way, can the same tearing be achieve with a nuke I wonder?
You can't handle the truth.
If you're not a member, you're not invited to the talks even if your affected. In or out UK - make up your minds.
I personally think this commenct was very funny. Too bad nobody's modded it up!
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
This could be used as an efficient implementation of the quantum bogosort
ELY (n.)
The first, tiniest inkling you get that something, somewhere, has gone terribly wrong.
From "The Meaning of Liff" by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd.
Does it run Jiffy Pop?
As much as I like Discovery, that was horribly written article. Hernias and Austin Power jokes? C'mon!
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
I love that you use puerile to show your fancy vocabulary and then fail basic grammar throughout the rest of your post.
"Also, does anyone seriously think that a project of this size would be approved without an air tight argument that the experiment will operate in a domain where there are likely to be measurable results?"
Yes I do. I think they have a reasonable argument that the experiment will operate in a domain where their are likely to be results. That is why it is called and experiment. It might fail to get results but that too is a result.
This got me wondering though. At what point in science does a race become advanced enough that they should move some experiments off planet just for sake of safety? This test is not at the level yet but as the energy levels go up and up one has to wonder when having a base on the moon or in the Astroid belt becomes a good idea. See Castle Bravo as an example of what can happen when physics goes wrong.
Like I said NOT THIS TEST but at some point I wonder if it will be wise to build some of this stuff off planet.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
He's done his homework. Alex Jones told him everything he needs to know.
[/sarcasm]
Seriously, you're going to bitch about people making jokes? Maybe you should step away from the computer and go do something else before you have a fucking heart attack. Unless, for you, being a total asshole is worth dying over.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
Nah, I bet it would at least take the better part of a minute.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
know this is how they bored a hole into the Dark Ones prison.
You must be new here.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
> ...talking a brief pin hole...
No we aren't. There are no holes involved. That's just typical reportorial hype.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
"In today's news, planet Earth is gearing up for their third attempt at the prestigious but controversial Galactic Darwin Award by opening a space-time rift with excess lasers. Their second attempt, the Large Hadron Collider still has some glitches to be worked out. Since their first attempt, what they called the "cold war" ended, Earth has been eagerly seeking new and creative methods of winning the coveted award."
Table-ized A.I.
It would not be the first time that government/scientists have gone ahead with these types of projects/experiments without proper safeguards, all in the name of science/economy. The first one to discover the dark matter, or the first one to claim this technology to produce better weapons for their country, wins...no?
I hate to say it, but we have been so brainwashed by all these scifi movies of the exact same thing, that now we see this and totally do not react, who is to say that by doing this they are not going to send us all into oblivion and rip this planet apart by creating that rift.....yet because we think back to the countless movies we have seen about this hero that comes along and saves the day, we feel better and think...."it will all work out in the end...."
NO,NO,NO! If we all stepped up and as one MASSIVE body of people.....told our governments to stop playing god , and maybe focus more on creating a more stable economy....else we would all revolt.....they would realize maybe....that.....the scifi movies need to be laced with even more subliminal content to be more effective???
So why don't the British people elect some leaders who do what they want for a change? I didn't think they had the whole broken two-party system problem that we Americans have.
Please don't attach it to an van with an oscillation overthruster. We've been there, done that.... Signed John Bigboote
I'm not sure how that's relevant. First, are we talking about central (government-run) banks, or private banks? If the latter, then it's totally irrelevant; what private companies choose to do is irrelevant to government policy (a private company that makes poor decisions with some international business doesn't mean its government can get drawn into international politics over the issue; the private company should just fold and its investors lose their money). If the former, then what the heck are they doing getting entangled in a foreign country's finances?
"They did what?!... Ha ha ha ho ho ho... silly humans!"
The Euro and the EU are inextricably tied to each other. While I guess it's completely possible for them to dump the Euro currency, give up on the monetary union, and go back to just having a customs union, that would be a huge backwards step from what they've been doing all this time and a huge change in the direction of the EU. Imagine the USA deciding to stay a single "union" with a Federal government, but abolishing the Federal Reserve, the US Mint, and every state establishing its own currency. While it's a little different for Europe since they were like that not very long ago, it's still a giant change that affects every member of the union.
I'm so with you on this. I've only been been posting for a while but the cliques on here is unbelievable. If you make mention of thing close to Anti-Apple or Anti-Google (and you had better not mention anything pro-Microsoft), or if you happen to be pro making money off of your ideas you get modded to "bad karma". and your done with being heard since you will forever be scored as 0 and filtered out. I'm now just an Anonymous Coward poster (still at zero but at least nothing more can happen to me) now and really beginning to wonder if this place is for me. I like the news brought up here because it is news that I find fascinating and would love to talk about with giving my own thoughts and ideas and not being eaten by wolves who only want to joke and harrass the people who seriously question or want to learn. Hey /. why don't you have two sections one for the jokes and one for the thinkers and filter it that way so some real discussions can take place about the topic at hand?
I swear this is the same exact experiment every nerdy Junior Highschooler thinks we should perform. Including myself.
You're pointing out that comments on an internet news article don't appear informed? From your tone one might assume the highly improbable: that you've only recently discovered or at least bothered to read comments on the internet. People speaking opinion as fact is common. More common in the anonymous world of the internet.
Either that or your entire post is an elaborate ruse to make people believe you're new to the internet. This I find to be more believable.
Patenting food isn't the solution.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
They're trying to make temporary Hawking Radiation, e.g. use lasers to push apart spontaneous particle+antiparticle pairs long enough to detect some of those particles before they recombine and vanish.
So really, "Temporary Hawking Radiation" would be more accurate headline than "Synthetic", but not as catchy.
From the fine article:
It is hoped that the ELI lasers will also be able to pull these particles apart -- not to make them "real" (Ã la Hawking radiation) but to keep them around long enough so we can detect their existence.
Sounds like someone shot 10 high powered lasers -- delivering 200 petawatts of power for less than a trillionth of a second, and ripping open space time -- into your fruit loops.
This strikes me as being "Mythbusters science" -- basically just blow sh!t up and see what happens. Maybe we SHOULDN'T try this at home.
No, no, I'm sure they're within acceptable limits...
Data's painting is making me dizzy...
With that Sig? no, no you will not.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
waaah waahhh wah.
Shut up.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Anonymous coward is just lol! No really, hilarious!
200 Pedo-watts sounds very dangerous for the children.
No one is anti-science so get off your high horse. But really, does it make sense to shit in one's backyard? You science types make all of these experiments up in your heads, go beg for public money to make them happen, and don't truly have idea one about what will happen or how it will affect the Earth. It ain't like we got a backup plan if they really do cause something terrible to happen. Just because they haven't screwed the pooch for all of us yet, doesn't mean they should continue to get a free pass. Why don't you take your advanced degree and go do something beneficial for humanity, like flip burgers or cook fries (we all like fries) and then the limit of your harm equation will be burning your stupid ass on hot oil or maybe burning down Joe's burgers instead of melting the planet or placing a long distance call in the inhibitors. Hey here's an idea, even if giant lasers are cool and all, but fix something instead of waste money.... say spend some effort on finding and developing a nice, clean energy supply that doesn't pollute and can be had cheaply and easily, thereby freeing us from the clutches of the petroleum/coal overlords.
Democrats and Republicans are like AIDS and Cancer, I want neither!
Oh my god...
It's full of...
Stray socks and dryer lint!
Ross Youngblood
See darkshadow88's comment above. 56W is not a huge power if it's fired once per hour. (Obviously higher average power if it's fired more often.)
All? For certain values of "all" that include about 1/10th of the countries. That's like saying that North America is "all" Canadians.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
This is a great commentary on the state of /. today.
Most disturbing is the comments that are modded up that have absolutely no basis in reality.
Word!
"Allow me to pose a hypothesis. Say, hypothetically, I ... slayed a prostitute during an 8-Ball fueled weekend of debauchery. I know, it sounds silly but bear with me. Would this hole in space-time be a good place for such a hypothetical and now very lifeless body?"
... until the universe segfaults.
Finally the "s" can be replaced for a "u"
Didn't the creators of "Gamma World" predict this one? "The 2010 edition introduces a significantly different backstory that attributes the destruction of civilization to the activation of the Large Hadron Collider, which caused multiple realities to exchange features in an event known as "The Big Mistake". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_World) " Close enough.
There was one, I didn't get the reference though.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Someone been watching Yes, Minister recently?
Apparently, nuclear weapons are not powerful enough. They want a bigger bang. This won't end until we build the big-bang bomb.
Of course, they will have to test it.