New Scientific Developments

[Archmonarch]

My basic premise for this thread is to post links to articles you have found detailing recent scientific breakthroughs of which others might otherwise not have heard. Ill start off with four I found:

 

 

Scramble your Conversations

 

Quantum Computer Within Three Years

 

Cold Fusion Seems to be Real

 

Force Fields Might Allow Lunar Base

[Nartwak]

Not exactly on topic, but Technovelgy is an interesting site.

[Reveilled]

It's not very recent, but the process still seems relatively unknown:

Thermal Depolymerisation, preventing food poisoning, and fossil fuels

 

At present, the plant in Carthage produces oil at an uneconomical cost due to the price of turkey waste, but potentially it could solve the problem of fossil fuels in exactly the opposite way environmentalists want: by making them a renewable energy source.

[EnderAndrew]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3511678.stm

 

Possible 10th planet found. Actually Sedna and Quaoar are both canidates for being the 10th planet, though a few astronomers are now saying that perhaps Pluto isn't even really a planet.

[SteveThaiBinh]

I thought the tenth planet was called Rupert.

[Darth Flatus]

Thats not our universe.

[metadigital]

There's a bunch of captured asteroids that are all vying to be a tenth planet after Pluto in the Kuiper Belt (mentioned in the article) and the Oort Cloud.

 

The fact that its orbit is so irregularly eliptical means it is difficult to include it as a planet:

It is currently 90 times the Earth-Sun distance away (149 million km or 93 million miles), but its orbit can take it 10 times further away still.

(Yes, I know that Pluto has an eliptical orbit that, during the last twenty years of the last century, meant that Neptune was the furtherest planet from the Sun.) I guess it would come down to the plane that the planetoid rotates in (as all our Solar System planets orbit in the same plane).

 

Another good (older) Sci-Am article about it

[metadigital]

Not exactly on topic, but Technovelgy is an interesting site.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What a great site. I hadn't seen this before: Adams' GPP

[Nartwak]

Yeah, better living through technology indeed.

[metadigital]

My basic premise for this thread is to post links to articles you have found detailing recent scientific breakthroughs of which others might otherwise not have heard. Ill start off with four I found:

 

Scramble your Conversations

 

Quantum Computer Within Three Years

 

Cold Fusion Seems to be Real

 

Force Fields Might Allow Lunar Base

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Great articles. I particularly liked the cold fusion one (not just because I remember vividly the controversy of the last cold fusion claim ), because I liked this quote:

... For the time being, don't expect fusion to become a readily available energy option. The current cold fusion apparatus still takes much more energy to start up than you get back out, and it may never end up breaking even. In the mean time, the crystal-fusion device might be used as a compact source of neutrons and X-rays, something that could turn out to be useful making small scanning machines. But it really may not be long until we have the first nuclear fusion-powered devices in common use. ...

(my emphasis).

 

I am wearied by the constant dictum that science should be pragmatic, that any "blue sky" research-for the-sake-of-it is contra-indicated; sure the most capital is generated by the practical applications of new technology; but if we don't keep investing in "dream science" -- what is the SF of today -- then we are only lessening our mutual scientific inheritence in ways we cannot even imagine.

 

[Azarkon]

Depends on the kind of "dream science" you're talking about, I'd think.

 

The problem with scientific research in general is that it has to operate in competition with other scientific research. Countless proposals are submitted by researchers every year, and the question that is posed to societal and corporate interests is then, which scientific research should be supported and which not? Obviously, corporate interests will be self-serving, but let's talk government support. You can't support all the research, not even close. So do you support the proposal to find a cure for major diseases, or do you support the proposal to build a trash can that can talk?

 

Obviously, that's me exaggerating, but really it comes down to a matter of responsibility. I for one would like to see all the research that currently goes into making better weapons go into curing diseases and world hunger. Is that a practical view? Sure. But I'd rather feel like we're doing all that we can to end human misery, than taking stabs in the dark in hopes of discovering something useful. Not that the latter is unworthy, but that the former is more psychologically appealing to me as a person.

 

And that's all there is to it, sometimes.

[random evil guy]

My basic premise for this thread is to post links to articles you have found detailing recent scientific breakthroughs of which others might otherwise not have heard. Ill start off with four I found:

 

 

 

 

Cold Fusion Seems to be Real

 

maybe ad hominem, but everytime i see the words "christian" and "science" together i become very sceptical... "

[Nartwak]

olol

[Archmonarch]

My basic premise for this thread is to post links to articles you have found detailing recent scientific breakthroughs of which others might otherwise not have heard. Ill start off with four I found:

 

Cold Fusion Seems to be Real

 

maybe ad hominem, but everytime i see the words "christian" and "science" together i become very sceptical... "

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Actually, the Christian Science Monitor is a reputable scientific journal, despite its name.

[Drakron]

Though a few astronomers are now saying that perhaps Pluto isn't even really a planet.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Because it does not classify as a planet by today standarts, if Pluto was discovered today I unlikely it would be classified as a planet.

[EnderAndrew]

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.n...=mg18524911.600 - 13 Things That Don't Make Sense

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4097258.stm - Time Travel possible?

[metadigital]

The Big Rip

 

Black Holes can't escape the phantom menace

 

Did the Big Bang really happen?

 

End of the beginning

 

Is it time to admit that the idea of a big bang just doesn't stack up? Marcus Chown meets the doubters thinking the unthinkable

 

Last week a small band of researchers met at the first ever Crisis in Cosmology conference, in Mon

[213374U]

Well, that was an interesting read.

[alanschu]

Don't underestimate the capability for military research to have practical applications.

 

 

Also, don't underestimate "conservative" research to have large impacts on the more radical research ideas.

[EnderAndrew]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4646185.stm - 3,300 ft column of steam emerges near the island of Iwo Jima.

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1678707,00.html - Britain using GPS technology as a speed regulator.

[metadigital]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4646185.stm - 3,300 ft column of steam emerges near the island of Iwo Jima.

...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

"It's highly likely that it's caused by an eruption of an underwater volcano," coast guard spokesman Shigeyuki Sato said, adding it [could also be Godzilla trumping;] it had happened before.

[EnderAndrew]

The discovery of Godzilla is a clear scientific breakthrough.