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New Scientific Discoveries, Part Deux


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"A massive chamber holding enough magma to fill the Grand Canyon more than 11 times over is hiding beneath the steaming volcanic system of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.


 


We knew of a smaller magma chamber closer to surface, holding some 10,000 cubic kilometres of magma and feeding heat upwards. The newly discovered reservoir sits under it and has a volume of 46,000 cubic kilometres. Together, the two form the largest known magma reservoir in the world.


 


"We can't say definitively that this is the biggest magma reservoir in the world, but we currently don't know of any other that has been imaged that is as large as the two we see beneath Yellowstone," says Fan-Chi Lin of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City."


 


Source: http://tinyurl.com/o6ftdrs


Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.

 

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"A massive chamber holding enough magma to fill the Grand Canyon more than 11 times over is hiding beneath the steaming volcanic system of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.

So, you guys better stand still and stop shaking those tectonic plates... ;)

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“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.” - Albert Einstein
 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfmEjI7Eo3E

 

I would have thought the name lent itself to a good backronym.

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“Political philosophers have often pointed out that in wartime, the citizen, the male citizen at least, loses one of his most basic rights, his right to life; and this has been true ever since the French Revolution and the invention of conscription, now an almost universally accepted principle. But these same philosophers have rarely noted that the citizen in question simultaneously loses another right, one just as basic and perhaps even more vital for his conception of himself as a civilized human being: the right not to kill.”
 
-Jonathan Littell <<Les Bienveillantes>>
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"The chancellor, the late chancellor, was only partly correct. He was obsolete. But so is the State, the entity he worshipped. Any state, entity, or ideology becomes obsolete when it stockpiles the wrong weapons: when it captures territories, but not minds; when it enslaves millions, but convinces nobody. When it is naked, yet puts on armor and calls it faith, while in the Eyes of God it has no faith at all. Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man...that state is obsolete."

-Rod Serling

 

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Moore's Law in action:

 

l5suwdZ.jpg

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“Political philosophers have often pointed out that in wartime, the citizen, the male citizen at least, loses one of his most basic rights, his right to life; and this has been true ever since the French Revolution and the invention of conscription, now an almost universally accepted principle. But these same philosophers have rarely noted that the citizen in question simultaneously loses another right, one just as basic and perhaps even more vital for his conception of himself as a civilized human being: the right not to kill.”
 
-Jonathan Littell <<Les Bienveillantes>>
Quote

"The chancellor, the late chancellor, was only partly correct. He was obsolete. But so is the State, the entity he worshipped. Any state, entity, or ideology becomes obsolete when it stockpiles the wrong weapons: when it captures territories, but not minds; when it enslaves millions, but convinces nobody. When it is naked, yet puts on armor and calls it faith, while in the Eyes of God it has no faith at all. Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man...that state is obsolete."

-Rod Serling

 

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Bill Nyes Spacecraft Has Launched Successfully

 

 

 

The Planetary Society, headed by its CEO Bill Nye “The Science Guy,” has announced the successful launch and deployment of their LightSail solar sail in Earth’s orbit. In a statement, the guy in the bow tie who I used to stare at puzzlingly on Saturday morning television said:

 


While we celebrate this step, LightSail’s biggest tests are still ahead. Over the next days, we will be monitoring our CubeSat as we prepare for the big show: the day LightSail deploys its super shiny Mylar sails for flight on sunlight. Stay tuned; the best is about to happen.

 

The LightSail is exactly what it sounds like, a large (32 square meters) sail made of aluminized mylar that extends in all directions away from its spacecraft for the purpose of using particles ejected by the sun to propel it through space.

 

A solar sail is by far the lightest propulsive device we can send into space, and while it is not capable of immediate thrust it is capable of sustained and powerless propulsion. Since the vacuum of space provides no resistance to this propulsion, a solar sail can gradually accelerate to speeds that conventional chemical rockets cannot achieve.

 

The successful May 20th deployment of the LightSail spacecraft by that wacky guy trying to show my 12 year-old self how to play with garbage is just the first step:

 


The 2015 test flight will not carry the spacecraft high enough to escape Earth’s atmospheric drag, and will thus not demonstrate controlled solar sailing. Once in orbit, the spacecraft will go through a checkout and testing period of about four weeks before deploying its solar sails. After the sails unfurl, LightSail will study the behavior of the sails for a few days before it is pulled back into Earth’s atmosphere. Key images and data on the spacecraft’s performance will be sent to ground stations at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Georgia Tech.

 

This data will help Dancing With The Stars contestant Bill Nye launch a LightSail in 2016 that will be able to test controlled orbital flight with a solar sail.

 

You can be a part of The Science Guy’s 2016 solar sail spacecraft launch by submitting a selfie that will be included on the craft because why the hell not, it’s the future now and this is a sentence that makes sense.

 

If the next solar sail unfurls in the shape of a bow tie I will lose my friggin’ mind.

 

Edited by Raithe
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"Cuius testiculos habeas, habeas cardia et cerebellum."

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Reminds me of the old US and Soviet high altitude nuclear tests. I seem to remember reading somewhere that the first trial took people by surprise with how powerful the EMP effect was and further testing was banned by treaty in 1967.

“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.” - Albert Einstein
 

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It would depend on the specifics of the weapon (which understandably are most likely top-secret), but a Faraday cage can in principle protect electronics from EMPs. Since it's not nuke-scale EMP, and is supposed to be precise enough to target data centers, protection is logistically feasible and may become a standard for critical locations. I'm not sure how it would affect other possible future technologies such as photonic computers, either. According to some scientists, current silicon-based computers are expected to reach their physical limits in terms of power at some point after 2020.

- When he is best, he is a little worse than a man, and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast.

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