The Science Thread!

[Wneglia]

Attack of the Crazy Ants


I once had a crazy aunt.

[Stinger]

Had never heard of the "sailing stones" before. Interesting.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-n ... 43681.html

[neoplacebo]

Harumph! That there is obviously some sort of immigration / voter registration scandal. Probably be on Fox news later tonight.

[Stinger]

Harumph! That there is obviously some sort of immigration / voter registration scandal. Probably be on Fox news later tonight.

Those stones are obviously from Mexico.

[Boatrocker]

Welcome to the Age of Denial

". . . Though transparently unscientific, denying evolution has become a litmus test for some conservative politicians, even at the highest levels.

Meanwhile, climate deniers, taking pages from the creationists’ PR playbook, have manufactured doubt about fundamental issues in climate science that were decided scientifically decades ago. And anti-vaccine campaigners brandish a few long-discredited studies to make unproven claims about links between autism and vaccination.

The list goes on. North Carolina has banned state planners from using climate data in their projections of future sea levels. So many Oregon parents have refused vaccination that the state is revising its school entry policies. And all of this is happening in a culture that is less engaged with science and technology as intellectual pursuits than at any point I can remember . . . ."

It does seem counter to evolutionary principle to consider that downright idiots seem to be so genetically hardy and capable of reproduction.

[neoplacebo]

I've wondered about that myself more than once, but on a more immediate level.....like "how did you manage to live this long?" type of encounter.

[Boatrocker]

London skyscraper melts cars, fries eggs

Never trust an architect when an engineer is what you really need. I have to wonder how some of these people get out of college and attain professional credentials, when something this obviously questionable is what they envision. And get financing for.

[Boatrocker]

They're now putting up some sort of temporary scaffold to stop it. Who ever would have guessed that a highly reflective concave surface will concentrate heat from the sun?

Probably not some ADHD architect.

[homerfobe]

Who ever would have guessed that a highly reflective concave surface will concentrate heat from the sun?

The concave surface concentrates the light rays into a smaller area; sorta like a magnifying glass without the magnification.

[homerfobe]

Duh, that was my point.

Thanks. For a moment I thought I was a dumbass,

You still are....

Yup.

Dumbass. You were the one who asked the question.

[bannination]

Is time traveling possible...... this should blow some conservative tea party minds.....

[Wneglia]

This is pretty cool

Project Loon

[rstrong]

Forget Tesla. Consider Luis Alvarez.

With his son Walter, Alvarez was the first to suggest that a giant asteroid impact had led to the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. Before that, he won a Nobel for designing a better Bubble Chamber to study electrically charged particles, invented the aircraft blind landing system and night-vision binoculars, found hidden rooms in the pyramids at Giza, and investigated the JFK assassination.

[rstrong]

...And after the war, he and Edward Teller (Dr. Strangelove) pushed for the next biggest bomb — the H bomb, the Super — that nobody else wanted...

Oh well, nobody's perfect.

Still, imagine an alternate history where the H-bomb was never built.

Fission bombs top out at around 500kt. There was little or no opposition to nukes - outside of Japan of course. They were just the most powerful weapon in the inventory, proven effective.

Then the first H-bomb was popped, and things went badly wrong. Castle Bravo was three times more powerful than expected. The islanders, "temporarily" sent to a nearby island, were evacuated from that too after suffering radiation sickness. A Japanese fishing boat was caught in the fall-out, one dying and the rest suffering severe radiation sickness. All highly publicized.

This turned public opinion away from nukes.

But suppose that didn't happen. Suppose nukes were still acceptable.

Since 1945, America has bombed China, Korea, Guatemala, Indonesia, Cuba, The Congo, Peru, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Guatemala, Grenada, Libya, Lebanon, El Salvador, Panama, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and Yemen. I'm probably forgetting a few. How many would have involved nukes?

No doubt the other superpowers would use them too. And their use would have meant that many currently non-nuclear countries would instead have them in their inventory.

[neoplacebo]

I think "the science thread" will always ultimately be about the concept of "we can do this, and we will." A lot of time and effort was put into the development of the first nuclear bomb. A lot of uncertainty about it was also present. They still did it; hell, they had to. It was their job.

[Ombudsman]

The bigger question is why don't evangelicals believe the Earth is flat like the Bible tells them it is. Damn Cafeteria Christians.

[Mr.B]

"The bigger question is why don't evangelicals believe the Earth is flat like the Bible tells them it is."

That's your interpretation...why do you believe that?

The Bible does not specifically state what the shape of the Earth is. There are references to it having "corners", but it's possible, since the Hebrew word translated as "corners" is also the word for wings (as in, wings of a bird), that it was never meant to be taken literally. Also used is the saying "to the ends of the Earth", but people still use that today, and it's well-known that it's only a figure of speech. There's no reason to assume that the Bible writers didn't use it as figurative.

There is a reference in Isaiah 40 to the Earth being circular, but there's some debate on whether this is a reference to it being a flat disc, or a sphere.

However, people knew no later than the 3rd century B.C. that the Earth was a sphere, and there was even a mathematician by the name of Eratosthenes of Cyrene that estimated the circumference of the Earth and wasn't far off. And, there are writings from as far back as the 8th and 7th centuries B.C. that hint at a belief that the Earth was a sphere. This would have also been known to the Bible writers, thanks to trade.
(contributed)

[Ombudsman]

Yes I'm aware of how you Cafeteria Christians pick and choose which parts you want to take literally. Eratosthenes was a Greek, not a Jew or a Christian. The Greeks were way ahead on a lot of things, including this and the heliocentric model of the universe. But it makes no sense at all to say, "gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four wings of the earth." Even if that were the proper interpretation, it doesn't change the fact that it's clear the writer didn't think they the earth was a sphere. How does a sphere have wings? But the most obvious example that the writers didn't know the earth was spherical comes from passages describing looking down on the entire earth from a great height, which can't be possible on a sphere. For instance when Satan takes Jesus to the top of the mountain to show him all the kingdoms of the earth. Can't do that on a sphere B. Sorry. So what other parts of the Bible are you willing to dismiss?

[neoplacebo]

that it was never meant to be taken literally. Also

Nope, there's no "also." You either believe all of it or none of it.

[Mr.B]

"For instance when Satan takes Jesus to the top of the mountain to show him all the kingdoms of the earth."

To quote you......"How can a grown man believe in something as silly as Satan?"