This soccer ball was signed by the members of the Clear Lake High School boys and girls soccer team, where astronaut Ellison Onizuka's daughter played. The ball was with Ellison in the Space Shuttle Challenger when it exploded, it was recovered in the wreckage and after 30 years it finally made it into space.
Dedwrekka on
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
So here's a globe that lets you overlay data like surface wind speed and direction or ocean currents across the entire planet using gorgeous animated visualizations. You know, if you're into that sort of thing.
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
So here's a globe that lets you overlay data like surface wind speed and direction or ocean currents across the entire planet using gorgeous animated visualizations. You know, if you're into that sort of thing.
I flew into Dallas Love Field airport a year or so ago and they had an actual globe version of this in the little art gallery and it was so cool.
So here's a globe that lets you overlay data like surface wind speed and direction or ocean currents across the entire planet using gorgeous animated visualizations. You know, if you're into that sort of thing.
I flew into Dallas Love Field airport a year or so ago and they had an actual globe version of this in the little art gallery and it was so cool.
I am having a vasectomy performed tomorrow and while browsing the history and current social trends I happened upon RISUG. This is a new type of male birth control that involves injecting a gel into the vas deferens. The gel allows sperm to travel through the tubes, but somehow kills or inactivates them as they travel by, leaving the man effectively sterile. Or at least that is what they claim, however the lack of knowledge about how exactly this gel kills sperm is troubling. Has anyone seen anything about this? It seems to good to be true, not that it would sway me away from my vasectomy if it were. I want the permanent fix please and thank you.
Reading about it, the gel basically emits electrical impulses that paralyze the flagellum of the sperm cells, rendering them not quite inert, but incapable of penetrating an ovum.
That's baller as fuck. Science is so goddamn cool.
Hopefully this is right place for this and not yet been mentioned. For those now in the know, California has gone from a 5-year drought in most of the state to rainfall measurements topping 150% of average in many areas. This has led to the following:
For more perspective, note the gentlemen in the yellow jackets and hard hats.
Obviously that image is bad news for the roughly 200,000 people who live in the flood zone below that dam. But I found the reason why such a problem is occurring to be kind of interesting.
This damage is caused by cavitation, which is also how pistol and mantis shrimp hunt their prey. Basically, as millions of gallons of water rush over the concrete spillway, tiny cavitation bubbles are formed on the surface of the concrete due to the rapid changes in pressure cause by such amounts of water moving at such speed. As the bubbles collapse, they release energy that over time damages the structure, eventually resulting in the collapse seen above.
Interestingly, arreration gates can be installed to avoid this exact scenario, as was done in the 80s following similar problems at the Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona and subsequently Hoover and Blue Mesa dams, however this particular dam in Oroville never received the upgrades. They're now looking at repair costs in the billions while the preemptive fix of installing arreration gates would have cost only a few million.
"If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards'."
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
We have a whole thread in D&D about the Oroville dam. Maybe cross-post over there too?
Yes, this is another way in which our grandparents paid the costs to hand our parents a better America that our parents bitched about upkeep and let it go to ruin for us to fix.
Huh, so they do! Much more detailed than mine, so I won't gunk up the thread with repetitive info. Interesting to see they're expecting 10 inches between Sunday night and Monday night.
"If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards'."
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
The parts about cavitation haven't been mentioned so it absolutely won't be repetitive and it won't be gunking up the thread. It would be a useful addition, since it would point out how to prevent such damage in other dams (since I'm sure there are plenty of others that didn't have those gates installed.)
"If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards'."
Zealandia!
Scientists are saying that there may actually be 8 continents, not 7! Zealandia is actually more than 90% underwater, with only the southern islands off Australia like New Zealand and New Caledonia peaking above the water line on the continent.
Who's saying it?
Scientists!
Oh, and also the Geological Society of America, I guess.
Wait so are we going to start calling every tectonic plate a continent now?
Apparently, much like planets until that fiasco with Pluto, there is no single list of criteria for ascertaining what is and excluding what is not a continent.
Wait so are we going to start calling every tectonic plate a continent now?
Apparently, much like planets until that fiasco with Pluto, there is no single list of criteria for ascertaining what is and excluding what is not a continent.
I just know there's a tax loophole in that somewhere.
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BugBoyboy.EXE has stopped functioning.only bugs remainRegistered Userregular
No man is an island, but every man can be a continent if he tries hard enough.
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
Wait so are we going to start calling every tectonic plate a continent now?
You're just mad because you think New Zealand is trying to put on airs. It's okay, Australia. We still think you're a very neat country/continent/island.
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Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
Wait so are we going to start calling every tectonic plate a continent now?
You're just mad because you think New Zealand is trying to put on airs. It's okay, Australia. We still think you're a very neat country/continent/island.
Surely continents are things that are above water, yes? Otherwise Hawaii just became the Pacific continent, and the Philippines just became a continent instead of a country too.
That is why India is referred to as a sub continent I believe. This is going to be another one of those things involving creating a defining metric for something that previously we just sort of hand waved I think.
Gamertag: KL Retribution
PSN:Furlion
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Large connected landmass. The Hawaiian islands and the former sunken islands of the chain are just a line of spikes sticking out of the continental plate.
What I think is cool is that sudden bend in the chain there. Does that mean the Pacific plate abruptly changed the direction of its motion and then continued on like nothing happened? How would that even happen? What would be the results of that? Could it happen again?
(I recognize Chris was probably joking but it was an excuse to talk about the Hawaiian-Emperor Bend.)
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
Wait so are we going to start calling every tectonic plate a continent now?
You're just mad because you think New Zealand is trying to put on airs. It's okay, Australia. We still think you're a very neat country/continent/island.
Surely continents are things that are above water, yes? Otherwise Hawaii just became the Pacific continent, and the Philippines just became a continent instead of a country too.
Yeah, I'm just messing with you. Zealandia is a continental plate in the geological sense, not the geographical one. Which is the most accurate and least useful definition of a continent, unless you're a geologist.
All the news articles referring to Zealandia as "the eighth continent" are ignoring the fact that any definition that makes it a continent must include so many crust fragments and microcontinents that it's more like the 25th continent. (Roughly. You will be shocked to learn that there is more debate than consensus on this topic.)
Here's a video explaining why nobody but nerds will ever care about Zealandia again after the current pop-sci news cycle:
MachwingIt looks like a harmless old computer, doesn't it?Left in this cave to rot ... or to flower!Registered Userregular
Hey science thread! Wanna see a neat visualization of prime gaps I made while messing with Python's image library?
(Click for big, though imgur still butchers it a bit )
What the heck is being visualized here??? Well, I followed 2 rules in generating this image:
- Starting at 0, count up and move forward 1 pixel for each integer. I started moving east.
- When a prime number is encountered, turn left.
The end result is a pretty neat graph of relationships between prime gaps. I really dig the sort of geography that forms; you've got these vast islands of values where prime gaps are relatively "balanced" and the path crosses itself densely, interspersed with relatively brief ranges of values where a bias pushes the path to another island. I don't know if there's anything mathematically significant in the results (turning 90 degrees on a prime is pretty arbitrary), but dang if it isn't neat to conjecture about. Are there regions where the path would never cross? Does the shape display self-similarity at larger scales? MATH IS SO COOL YOU GUYS.
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
The description of the system's kind of amazing; I wouldn't have believed it if I'd seen it in a piece of SF. Orbits so close that they'd affect each others' tides and appear as visible discs in each others' skies? Yeah, ri-oh, wait, really? Huh.
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This soccer ball was signed by the members of the Clear Lake High School boys and girls soccer team, where astronaut Ellison Onizuka's daughter played. The ball was with Ellison in the Space Shuttle Challenger when it exploded, it was recovered in the wreckage and after 30 years it finally made it into space.
https://youtu.be/iCQFMr4Wwb0
I flew into Dallas Love Field airport a year or so ago and they had an actual globe version of this in the little art gallery and it was so cool.
Was it one of these?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zOkFAIXTnk
PSN:Furlion
That's baller as fuck. Science is so goddamn cool.
For more perspective, note the gentlemen in the yellow jackets and hard hats.
Obviously that image is bad news for the roughly 200,000 people who live in the flood zone below that dam. But I found the reason why such a problem is occurring to be kind of interesting.
This damage is caused by cavitation, which is also how pistol and mantis shrimp hunt their prey. Basically, as millions of gallons of water rush over the concrete spillway, tiny cavitation bubbles are formed on the surface of the concrete due to the rapid changes in pressure cause by such amounts of water moving at such speed. As the bubbles collapse, they release energy that over time damages the structure, eventually resulting in the collapse seen above.
Interestingly, arreration gates can be installed to avoid this exact scenario, as was done in the 80s following similar problems at the Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona and subsequently Hoover and Blue Mesa dams, however this particular dam in Oroville never received the upgrades. They're now looking at repair costs in the billions while the preemptive fix of installing arreration gates would have cost only a few million.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpzvaqypav8
Scientists are saying that there may actually be 8 continents, not 7! Zealandia is actually more than 90% underwater, with only the southern islands off Australia like New Zealand and New Caledonia peaking above the water line on the continent.
Who's saying it?
Scientists!
Oh, and also the Geological Society of America, I guess.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/16/travel/zealandia-new-continent-discovered/index.html
...yes I know it's in the Indian/South Pacific oceans shut up
Apparently, much like planets until that fiasco with Pluto, there is no single list of criteria for ascertaining what is and excluding what is not a continent.
I just know there's a tax loophole in that somewhere.
You're just mad because you think New Zealand is trying to put on airs. It's okay, Australia. We still think you're a very neat country/continent/island.
Surely continents are things that are above water, yes? Otherwise Hawaii just became the Pacific continent, and the Philippines just became a continent instead of a country too.
PSN:Furlion
What I think is cool is that sudden bend in the chain there. Does that mean the Pacific plate abruptly changed the direction of its motion and then continued on like nothing happened? How would that even happen? What would be the results of that? Could it happen again?
(I recognize Chris was probably joking but it was an excuse to talk about the Hawaiian-Emperor Bend.)
Yeah, I'm just messing with you. Zealandia is a continental plate in the geological sense, not the geographical one. Which is the most accurate and least useful definition of a continent, unless you're a geologist.
All the news articles referring to Zealandia as "the eighth continent" are ignoring the fact that any definition that makes it a continent must include so many crust fragments and microcontinents that it's more like the 25th continent. (Roughly. You will be shocked to learn that there is more debate than consensus on this topic.)
Here's a video explaining why nobody but nerds will ever care about Zealandia again after the current pop-sci news cycle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uBcq1x7P34
(Click for big, though imgur still butchers it a bit )
What the heck is being visualized here??? Well, I followed 2 rules in generating this image:
- Starting at 0, count up and move forward 1 pixel for each integer. I started moving east.
- When a prime number is encountered, turn left.
The end result is a pretty neat graph of relationships between prime gaps. I really dig the sort of geography that forms; you've got these vast islands of values where prime gaps are relatively "balanced" and the path crosses itself densely, interspersed with relatively brief ranges of values where a bias pushes the path to another island. I don't know if there's anything mathematically significant in the results (turning 90 degrees on a prime is pretty arbitrary), but dang if it isn't neat to conjecture about. Are there regions where the path would never cross? Does the shape display self-similarity at larger scales? MATH IS SO COOL YOU GUYS.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/02/nearby-system-has-7-earth-sized-planets-several-in-the-habitable-zone/
Yeah, that area is a lot closer to being Mu territory.