Daily science stuff

[Reanok]

Sorry about that Asso you can go to http://spaceflightnow.com if you scroll halfway down the page the article about Hubble is there. here's a link to some amazing photos from cassinis flyby of Enceladus http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0808/12cassini

[Asso]

Thanks, Reanok!

[Entilzha]

New Climate Record Shows Century-long Droughts In Eastern North America http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080819092017.htm.
Some Cells Self-destruct For The Greater Common Good http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080821164308.htm.
Mystery Of Young Stars Near Black Holes Solved http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080821210349.htm.

[Entilzha]

Wireless recharging one step closer to reality http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/08/22/wireless.power.ap/index.html. Now that would be the ultimate convenience no more power cords.

[prisocisor]

Has anyone seen this article? It's hilarious! and clever too

http://www.cracked.com/blog/2008/08/07/5-scientific-theories-head-explode/

[Entilzha]

Great stuff thanks. There were some tidbits that I didn't know before but most of the stuff was old news to me and my brain hasn't exploded yet . Mulder said "the truth is out there" but I say "you can't handle the truth" (most people on our planet can't even begin to comprehend the universe).

[Entilzha]

Eyes Evolved For 'X-Ray Vision' http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080828120312.htm.
Scientists Discover Why Flies Are So Hard To Swat http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080828135901.htm. Now you can kill flies more efficiently .
No More Big Stink: Scent Lures Mosquitoes, But Humans Can't Smell It http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080829091329.htm.

[Alelou]

Oh man, give me one of those new mosquito traps today, please!!!

And the trick with house flies is to sneak up slowly. They don't perceive slow motion. THEN whack 'em.

[Entilzha]

New Virtual Telescope Zooms In On Milky Way's Super-massive Black Hole http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080903134313.htm.
Theory Of Sun's Role In Formation Of Solar System Questioned http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080904144835.htm.
A Fine-tooth Comb To Measure The Accelerating Universe http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080904145102.htm.
And 4 days to go until the LHC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LHC is turned ON for the first time. Here's the link for live webcast http://webcast.cern.ch/.

[Entilzha]

I watched a documentary about the LHC called The Big Bang Machine. It was very interesting and also mind boggling bosons, quarks, photons etc., standard model, string theory and so on.

[Elessar]

Goes online in 2 days... I'm excited.

[CX]

I'm a little anxious.

[Elessar]

I'm a little anxious.

It's only gonna be a problem if 1. the Strangelet Hypothesis is true and 2. if the surface tension of strange matter is above the critical value. Neither of which do they know for a fact are true.

In fact, I read an interesting article at Nature awhile back about how the argument is made that these two conditions cannot be true based on the fact that we observe the existence of neutron stars. The argument is that if strangelets existed, and could be created by particle collisions, then they'd have been floating around since the beginning of time, 1. because of the quark-gluon plasma stage of the big bang and 2. because of the collisions of cosmic rays near neutron stars. Part of the Strangelet Hypothesis is that if a strangelet comes into contact with nuclear matter, like neutrons, it'll convert them into more strangelets). The surface tension thing is because if it IS above this critical value, then heavier strangelets are even more stable than lighter strangelets, so it would sort of "spread", one strangelet in a neutron star would spread until the entire neutron star was a quark star. The argument somewhat in dispute is that "by now", 13.7 billion years later, every neutron star would be a quark star, and NONE would still be neutron stars. Fact is, not only have we seen neutron stars, but we haven't seen quark stars. That may not mean they're not out there, but it makes it extremely unlikely that the two conditions which would lead to catastropic strangelet conversion due to collisions of sufficiently high energy at the LHC are true.

The micro-blackhole thing doesn't worry me. They're certain that any microscopic blackholes created would evaporate very quickly. Btw, you may have concerns of your own but do not listen to "gorilla199" on youtube. Guy's a wackjob and an extremist luddite.

Here we go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk8Vr00E ... re=related

Really neat Michio Kaku video giving a very brief and easy to understand video on the LHC. I hadn't even heard that they hoped it would create sparticles. Sweet. I had also never heard about this "signals from the 11th dimension" thing. Is that the sweet beeping of our subspace radio I hear?

Can you imagine switching this thing on and catching the last few innings of alien baseball on Zeta Reticuli?

[Elessar]

Pretty cool interactive thing about the LHC on MSNBC:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26562876/

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

The micro-blackhole thing doesn't worry me. They're certain that any microscopic blackholes created would evaporate very quickly.

Could always ask T'Pol. She was into researching micro-singularities!