As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/

A Billion Degrees of [Science]

12829313334101

Posts

  • DedwrekkaDedwrekka Metal Hell adjacentRegistered User regular
    edited February 2017
    https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/02/the-soccer-ball-that-finally-made-it-into-space/

    kimbrough-800x533.jpg


    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
  • JedocJedoc In the scuppers with the staggers and jagsRegistered User regular
    "This crab clones its allies by ripping them in half. It wields sea anemones like boxing gloves; if it loses one, it makes another by bisecting the remaining one."

    GDdCWMm.jpg
  • JoeUserJoeUser Forum Santa Registered User regular
  • JedocJedoc In the scuppers with the staggers and jagsRegistered User regular
    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.

    GDdCWMm.jpg
  • JedocJedoc In the scuppers with the staggers and jagsRegistered User regular
    Happy Valentine's Day, science thread!

    GDdCWMm.jpg
  • TheStigTheStig Registered User regular
    Why you gotta link to a Twitter post linking a news story that's linking a YouTube video? Common man.

    https://youtu.be/iCQFMr4Wwb0

    bnet: TheStig#1787 Steam: TheStig
  • Duke 2.0Duke 2.0 Time Trash Cat Registered User regular
    I'm wondering if it's possible to do a similar thing with a trumpet without making the keys impossible to use

    VRXwDW7.png
  • TofystedethTofystedeth Registered User regular
    Jedoc wrote: »
    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.

    steam_sig.png
  • DedwrekkaDedwrekka Metal Hell adjacentRegistered User regular
    Jedoc wrote: »
    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.

    Was it one of these?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zOkFAIXTnk

  • TheStigTheStig Registered User regular
    Finally we can properly present our plan to attack the deathstar

    bnet: TheStig#1787 Steam: TheStig
  • furlionfurlion Riskbreaker Lea MondeRegistered User regular
    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.

    sig.gif Gamertag: KL Retribution
    PSN:Furlion
  • PinfeldorfPinfeldorf Yeah ZestRegistered User regular
    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.

  • PhotosaurusPhotosaurus Bay Area, CARegistered User regular
    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:

    sjm-orospill-021031.jpg?w=620

    For more perspective, note the gentlemen in the yellow jackets and hard hats.

    californiastorms-1.jpg?w=620&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C9999px

    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'."
  • MayabirdMayabird Pecking at the keyboardRegistered User regular
    We have a whole thread in D&D about the Oroville dam. Maybe cross-post over there too?

  • BrainleechBrainleech 機知に富んだコメントはここにあります Registered User regular
    Well it shows how our infrastructure is in bad need of a look at and repair
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpzvaqypav8

  • DevoutlyApatheticDevoutlyApathetic Registered User regular
    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.

    Nod. Get treat. PSN: Quippish
  • PhotosaurusPhotosaurus Bay Area, CARegistered User regular
    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'."
  • MayabirdMayabird Pecking at the keyboardRegistered User regular
    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.)

  • PhotosaurusPhotosaurus Bay Area, CARegistered User regular
    Done, thanks for the heads up!

    "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'."
  • DedwrekkaDedwrekka Metal Hell adjacentRegistered User regular
    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.

    http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/16/travel/zealandia-new-continent-discovered/index.html

  • ShadowenShadowen Snores in the morning LoserdomRegistered User regular
    They find a 90% sunken continent and don't call it Atlantis?

    ...yes I know it's in the Indian/South Pacific oceans shut up

  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    Wait so are we going to start calling every tectonic plate a continent now?

  • sarukunsarukun RIESLING OCEANRegistered User regular
    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.

  • ButlerButler 89 episodes or bust Registered User regular
    sarukun wrote: »
    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.

  • BugBoyBugBoy boy.EXE has stopped functioning. only bugs remainRegistered User regular
    No man is an island, but every man can be a continent if he tries hard enough.

  • JedocJedoc In the scuppers with the staggers and jagsRegistered User regular
    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.

    GDdCWMm.jpg
  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    Jedoc wrote: »
    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.

  • furlionfurlion Riskbreaker Lea MondeRegistered User regular
    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.

    sig.gif Gamertag: KL Retribution
    PSN:Furlion
  • MayabirdMayabird Pecking at the keyboardRegistered User regular
    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.

    hawaiian.chain.gif

    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.)

  • JedocJedoc In the scuppers with the staggers and jagsRegistered User regular
    Jedoc wrote: »
    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:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uBcq1x7P34

    GDdCWMm.jpg
  • MachwingMachwing It looks like a harmless old computer, doesn't it? Left in this cave to rot ... or to flower!Registered User regular
    Hey science thread! Wanna see a neat visualization of prime gaps I made while messing with Python's image library?

    6bbBV5X.png
    (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.

    l3icwZV.png
  • ZibblsnrtZibblsnrt Registered User regular
    Kinda loving that in just over twenty years we've gone from people wondering if exoplanets even exist to having 4-5,000 identified.

  • Gennenalyse RuebenGennenalyse Rueben The Prettiest Boy is Ridiculously Pretty Registered User regular
    Shadowen wrote: »
    They find a 90% sunken continent and don't call it Atlantis?

    ...yes I know it's in the Indian/South Pacific oceans shut up

    Yeah, that area is a lot closer to being Mu territory.

  • TankHammerTankHammer Atlanta Ghostbuster Atlanta, GARegistered User regular
    TRAPPIST-1, which orbits an "ultracool dwarf" had better be the source of some of the most plasma-hot DJs in a few hundred years.

  • WeedLordVegetaWeedLordVegeta Registered User regular
    Night Trappist

  • ZibblsnrtZibblsnrt Registered User regular
    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.

  • OghulkOghulk Tinychat Janitor TinychatRegistered User regular
    Trappist Muzik

  • OghulkOghulk Tinychat Janitor TinychatRegistered User regular
    Trappist Queen

This discussion has been closed.