discuss Science & Technology news & discussion

[CraigD]

Post and discuss interesting articles & videos about science and technology.

You don't need to be an expert - just interested in the wonders of modern science, technology, and the history of these fields.

Please keep it rational, and post articles from reputable sources.
Try not to editorialise headlines and keep the copy to just a paragraph with a link to the original source. When quoting excerpts from articles, I think the best method is to italicise the copy, and include a link to the source.

Have some fun with your comments and discussions... just keep the sources legitimate.

Other threads:
The Break Room has a number of other popular threads, so there is no need to post material here that is better suited to these other threads:

- Covid19-Coronavirus updates and news
- Conspiracy Thread Free For All
- The *religious* discussion thread

Please enjoy!

 

[CraigD]

SpaceX Hopes to Launch And Land Starship No. 9 This Week

SpaceX is preparing to rocket the latest prototype of its Starship spaceship thousands of feet into the air, then land it gently back on the ground.

If the company can pull off this tricky manoeuvre – cutting the rocket's engines back on as it plummets toward Earth, just in time to turn it upright, slow its fall, and steadily set down on a landing pad – it will be the first time a Starship vehicle has ventured so high and returned in one piece.

SpaceX appears to be targeting a Monday launch. The Federal Aviation Administration issued an airspace closure notice for a rocket launch from Boca Chica for that day from 8 am to 6 pm CST. The FAA issued similar notices for Tuesday and Wednesday – back-up dates in case weather or glitches cause SpaceX to delay the test flight.

Both airspace closure and local road closures are required for launch. The Cameron County judge has issued Boca Chica road-closure notices for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday from 8 am to 5 pm CST.

https://www.sciencealert.com/spacex-hopes-to-launch-and-land-starship-no-9-on-monday

 

[CraigD]

10 pieces of pandemic-inspired ‘clean tech’ that shaped CES 2021

The new virus-inspired tech to help you stay healthy at the world's biggest tech show.

Sanitizer tech was made for Las Vegas. Each January armies of tech denizens cruise from booth to booth. They touch everything, They shake hands. They stroke robots. No wonder that in 2021 pandemic-inspired sanitizing technology is dominating the first-ever virtual CES.

Just as Berlin’s IFA 2020 embraced social distancing, so CES 2021 reflected a vast and varied global industry’s effort to collectively pivot to socially useful innovations.

From Bluetooth masks, air purifiers and a ‘BioButton’ to touchless taps and disinfection lamps for desktops, hopefully we’ll look back and laugh at this year’s decidedly serious and sanitary tech. For now, rejoice in a tech industry that finally seems to be able to read the room.

https://www.techradar.com/au/news/10-ways-pandemic-inspired-clean-tech-dominated-ces-2021

 

[CraigD]

Jumping From Space! - Red Bull Space Dive - BBC

"I'm going home now"
The 4-minutes of the space to earth jump.

How long would it take you to fall through Earth?

As a follow-up to my previous post, I thought it might be interesting to consider how long it might take to fall through the Earth.

Well, here's the answer:

Suppose you dug a tunnel through the center of Earth, jumped in, and let gravity pull you through. How long would it take you to reach the other side of the planet?

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/03/how-long-would-it-take-you-fall-through-earth

 

[CraigD]

A curious observer’s guide to quantum mechanics, pt. 2: The particle melting pot

In which lasers do things that make absolutely no sense but give us great clocks.

Welcome back for our second guided walk into the quantum mechanical woods! Last week, we saw how particles move like waves and hit like particles and how a single particle takes multiple paths. While surprising, this is a well-explored area of quantum mechanics—it is on the paved nature path around the visitor’s center.

This week I’d like to get off the paved trail and go a bit deeper into the woods in order to talk about how particles meld and combine while in motion. This is a topic that is usually reserved for physics majors; it's rarely discussed in popular articles. But the payoff is understanding how precision lidar works and getting to see one of the great inventions making it out of the lab, the optical comb. So let's go get our (quantum) hiking boots a little dirty—it'll be worth it.

https://arstechnica.com/science/202...ntum-mechanics-pt-2-the-particle-melting-pot/

 

[CraigD]

Scientists Investigate Spiritualist Mediums: Why Some People Report “Hearing the Dead”
Spiritualist mediums might be more prone to immersive mental activities and unusual auditory experiences early in life, according to new research.

This might explain why some people and not others eventually adopt spiritualist beliefs and engage in the practice of “hearing the dead,” the study led by Durham University found.

Mediums who “hear” spirits are said to be experiencing clairaudient communications, rather than clairvoyant (“seeing”) or clairsentient (“feeling” or “sensing”) communications.

The researchers conducted a survey of 65 clairaudient spiritualist mediums from the Spiritualists’ National Union and 143 members of the general population in the largest scientific study into the experiences of clairaudient mediums.

They found that these spiritualists have a proclivity for absorption — a trait linked to immersion in mental or imaginative activities or experience of altered states of consciousness.

https://scitechdaily.com/scientists...iums-why-some-people-report-hearing-the-dead/

 

[koolishman]

Quantum internet signals beamed between drones a kilometre apart

Entangled photons have been sent between two drones hovering a kilometre apart, demonstrating technology that could form the building blocks of a quantum internet.

When a pair of photons are quantum entangled, you can instantly deduce the state of one by measuring the other, regardless of the distance separating them. This phenomenon, which Albert Einstein dismissively called “spooky action at a distance”, is the basis of quantum encryption – using entangled particles to ensure communications are secret.

The achievement marks an important step towards a quantum internet, says Siddarth Joshi at the University of Bristol, UK. He agrees that drones could become the final chain in links from one part of the world to another, such as from your local relay station to your home or vehicle. “You’re driving around in your car and you want to maintain secure quantum communications, so you have these drones flying around behind you,” he says.

Myungshik Kim at Imperial College London believes that engineering such complex optics into moving drones, especially given that small rotational differences can make it extremely difficult to maintain quantum connections, represents a strong technical advance.

 

[CraigD]

NASA’s Curiosity Rover celebrates 3,000 days on Mars

NASA’s Curiosity Rover that touched down on August 6, 2012, just celebrated its 3,000th day on Mars. Those are Martian days which are known as sols and last 24 hours and 40 minutes.

https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/home/
https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw-images
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_(rover)

 

[CraigD]

What did NASA's Lunar Orbiter discover?

NASA's LROC has been imaging the surface of the Moon since 2009. What has it discovered?

Want to explore the 3D model of the Moon with Quickmap?
https://quickmap.lroc.asu.edu/

Want to explore some of the LRO images yourself?
http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/images

 

[CraigD]

Virgin Orbit rocket successfully launched from beneath the wing of a Boeing 747, marking the latest entrant to the commercial space race

Virgin Orbit launched its first rocket to reach Earth orbit on Sunday.

The rocket launched from a modified Boeing 747 and carried 10 small satellites for NASA.

"A new gateway to space has just sprung open!"

https://twitter.com/x/status/1350962555393609731

 

[CraigD]

Zebra stripes, leopard spots and other patterns on the skin of frozen metal alloys that defy conventional metallurgy

While it is fascinating that living creatures develop distinct patterns on their skin, what may be even more mysterious is their striking similarity to the skin of frozen liquid metals.

Pattern formation is a classic example of one of nature's wonders that scientists have pondered for centuries. Around 1952, the famous mathematician Alan Turing (father of modern computers) came up with a conceptual model to explain the pattern formation process of a two-substance system. Such patterns are also called Turing patterns thereafter.

https://phys.org/news/2021-01-zebra-stripes-leopard-patterns-skin.html

 

[CraigD]

Egypt unveils 3,000-year old coffins in latest discovery at Saqqara necropolis south of Cairo

Egypt has unveiled an archaeological discovery at the Saqqara necropolis, south of Cairo, which could "rewrite the history" of the New Kingdom period.

The find includes 54 wooden coffins that can be traced back 3,000 years to the New Kingdom period, which spans about 1539 to 1075 BC.

Key points:

• The find includes 54 wooden coffins that can be traced back 3,000 years
• The funerary temple of Queen Neit was also discovered near the pyramid of her husband, King Teti of Egypt's 6th dynasty
• The archaeologist who headed the mission says the finds will rewrite the history of the New Kingdom period

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01...ar-old-coffins-at-saqqara-necropolis/13066060

-----------------------------

50 ancient coffins uncovered at Egypt's Saqqara necropolis

The wooden sarcophagi, which date back to the New Kingdom period – between the 16th and the 11th century BC – were found in 52 burial shafts at depths of 10 to 12 metres (40 feet).

Hawass said the funerary temple of Queen Naert, the wife of King Teti, as well as three warehouses made of bricks were also found on the site.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...w-treasure-trove-at-egypts-saqqara-necropolis

 

[CraigD]

Physicists Observe Fleeting 'Polaron' Quasiparticles For The First Time

Polarons are important nanoscale phenomena: a transient configuration between electrons and atoms (known as quasiparticles) that exist for only trillionths of a second.

These configurations have unique characteristics that can help us understand some of the mysterious behaviours of the materials they form within – and scientists have just observed them for the first time
.
https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-observe-and-directly-measure-polarons-for-the-first-time

 

[CraigD]

Upgrade rage: why you may have to buy a new device whether you want to or not
Technology is not what it used to be. Twenty years ago, we could buy a laptop and everything would work pretty much the same for over a decade...

https://theconversation.com/upgrade...-new-device-whether-you-want-to-or-not-153105

 

[CraigD]

What Is Google Dorking And How To Use It

Google has become synonymous with searching the web. Many of us use it on a daily basis but most regular users have no idea just how powerful its capabilities are. And you really, really should.

Google dorking is basically just using advanced search syntax to reveal hidden information on public websites. It let’s you utilise Google to its full potential. It also works on other search engines like Google, Bing and Duck Duck Go.

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2021/01/what-is-google-dorking-and-how-to-use-it/

 

[CraigD]

A ‘Super-Puff’ Planet Like No Other – As Big as Jupiter but 10 Times Lighter

The core mass of the giant exoplanet WASP-107b is much lower than what was thought necessary to build up the immense gas envelope surrounding giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn, astronomers at Université de Montréal have found.

This intriguing discovery by Ph.D. student Caroline Piaulet of UdeM’s Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx) suggests that gas-giant planets form a lot more easily than previously believed.

https://scitechdaily.com/a-super-puff-planet-like-no-other-as-big-as-jupiter-but-10-times-lighter/

 

[Samer]

i was last on page 46.

What’d i miss?

 

[koolishman]

i was last on page 46.

What’d i miss?

8 pages

 

[Samer]

8 pages

Ages in NP time.

i cant even read that much in Politics

 

[CraigD]

Ages in NP time.

i cant even read that much in Politics

Two weeks of interesting and largely politically-free developments

 

[Samer]

Two weeks of interesting and largely politically-free developments

The humanity!