[url]http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/06/20/old-tortoise/29049319/[/url]

o [url=advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/5/e1400253]Accelerated modern human–induced species losses: Entering the sixth mass extinction[/url] | Science Advances

Interesting "rate of extinction" unit there, E/MSY, "extinctions per mega-species-year", e.g. average number of species which go extinct per 10000 species per century, averaged over a sufficiently large species sample and timeframe.

o Here is The Guardian's take on the study: [url=www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/19/humans-creating-sixth-great-extinction-of-animal-species-say-scientists]Humans creating sixth great extinction of animal species, say scientists[/url] | Environment | The Guardian
[quote]However, Prof Henrique Miguel Pereira, the chair of the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network, said that the new paper did not add anything revolutionarily new.

“They argue that recent extinction rates are up to 100 times higher than in the past. I think it improves our documentation of the process but it does not yet confirm a sixth mass extinction. I tend to think we have a major biodiversity crisis, but it would take either a fast acceleration of current extinction rates or a couple of centuries at current extinction rates, for the current process to become a sixth mass extinction.”[/quote]
Ah yes, the old "we need to be 100% sure that we are totally screwed before raising the alarm" argument. (Cf. climate change, overpopulation, industrial pollution, Ponzi-financial economics, &c.)

o ...and - not that there is anything funny about the issue, but rather by way of a thorough review of the popular-media coverage of the story - here is The Onion's: [url=www.theonion.com/graphic/timeline-mass-extinction-50749]Timeline Of Mass Extinction[/url]

[URL="http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/style/2015/06/19/brown-university-unveils-virtual-reality-room/QoTOOp66NpPZeGMF0bapjO/story.html?p1=Article_Facet_Related_Article"]Brown University unveils 3D virtual-reality room[/URL]

[URL="http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2015/06/29/physicists-claim-universe-rings-like-crystal-glass/"]Physicists Claim Universe 'Rings' Like Crystal Glass[/URL]

[URL="http://www.ibtimes.com/googles-support-plant-biologists-build-first-online-database-all-worlds-plant-species-1964872#.VXsoouVmmPc.facebook"]With Google’s Support, Plant Biologists Build First Online Database Of All The World’s Plant Species[/URL]

[URL="http://www.cnet.com/news/born-in-1980-a-mathematical-surprise-awaits-you-in-2025/"]Born in 1980? A mathematical surprise awaits you in 2025[/URL]

[URL="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/538821/computers-are-getting-a-dose-of-common-sense/"]Computers Are Getting a Dose of Common Sense[/URL]

[URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/magazine/can-the-bacteria-in-your-gut-explain-your-mood.html?_r=2"]Can the Bacteria in Your Gut Explain Your Mood?[/URL]

[URL="http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-gene-editing-technology-has-scientists-excited-1434985998"]Why Gene-Editing Technology Has Scientists Excited[/URL]

[URL="http://www.wired.com/2015/06/amateur-maps-curiosity-rover-rival-nasas/"]These Amateur Maps of the Curiosity Rover Rival NASA’s[/URL]

[URL="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/molecules-reach-coldest-temperature-ever/"]Molecules Reach Coldest Temperature Ever[/URL]

[URL="https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150604-quantum-bayesianism-qbism/"]A Private View of Quantum Reality[/URL]

[URL="http://io9.com/what-would-happen-if-all-our-satellites-were-suddenly-d-1709006681"]What Would Happen If All Our Satellites Were Suddenly Destroyed?[/URL]

[URL="http://www.news-medical.net/news/20150611/Discovery-may-help-scientists-attack-the-root-of-deadliest-brain-tumors.aspx"]Discovery may help scientists attack the root of deadliest brain tumors[/URL]

[URL="http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-06/04/growing-rat-limbs-in-the-lab"]Rat limb grown from cells in the lab, and primate limbs are next[/URL]

[URL="http://www.theawl.com/2015/06/the-realest-language"]The Realest Language[/URL]

My new desktop background is courtesy of the New Horizons spacecraft:

[QUOTE=ewmayer;405901]My new desktop background is courtesy of the New Horizons spacecraft:[/QUOTE]

big thumbs up, but I think you haven't seen the full rez version:

[QUOTE=chappy;405932]big thumbs up, but I think you haven't seen the full rez version:[/QUOTE]
Tum tum tum tum tumtum tum tumtum :).

[URL="http://www.gizmag.com/quantum-perovskite-light-emitting-crystal/38505/"]Quantum dots and perovskite combined to create new hyper-efficient light-emitting crystal[/URL]

[QUOTE]Two optoelectronic materials getting a lot of press these days are perovskite and quantum dots. Both have been individually utilized by researchers to boost sunlight conversion to electrical current in solar cells, and to increase the efficacy of electrically-generated light. Now engineers at the University of Toronto (U of T) have combined both of these materials to create an ultra-efficient, super-luminescent hybrid crystal that they say will enable new records in power-to-light conversion efficiencies.[/QUOTE]

[url]http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/07/us-wins-its-first-international-mathematical-olympiad-in-21-years/[/url]

Recycled plastic roads
 

"[URL="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/07/22/3682552/plastic-roads-netherlands/"]Netherlands Company Introduces Plastic Roads [/URL]That Are More Durable, Climate Friendly Than Asphalt"

[QUOTE]The Netherlands is already home to the world’s [URL="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/05/11/3657220/solaroad-producing-energy/"]first solar road[/URL] (or bike lane, technically). Now, the country could soon be the first to use recycled plastic as pavement.


The idea for plastic roads comes from VolkerWessels, a Netherlands-based construction firm. According to the company, [URL="http://en.volkerwessels.com/en/projects/detail/plasticroad"]plastic roads[/URL] would be a “virtually maintenance free product” that’s “unaffected by corrosion and the weather.” The roads could handle temperatures as low as -40°F and as high as 176°F. The company says that this hardiness will make the roads’ lifespans three times as long as typical asphalt roads.


According to the company, [URL="http://en.volkerwessels.com/dynamics/modules/SFIL0200/view.php?fil_Id=353074"]any type of recycled plastic[/URL] can be used. The main goal, the company says, is to keep plastic out of the oceans.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=kladner;406360]"[URL="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/07/22/3682552/plastic-roads-netherlands/"]Netherlands Company Introduces Plastic Roads [/URL]That Are More Durable, Climate Friendly Than Asphalt"[/QUOTE]

Tongue-In-Cheek....

Hasn't Lego already done this....albeit in a smaller scale.....seems like a good business partner.

They have a "pebbled" slip resistant surface, are experts in interconnecting and already have large plants ready to roll....

o [url=www.nature.com/news/a-cellular-puzzle-the-weird-and-wonderful-architecture-of-rna-1.18014]A cellular puzzle: The weird and wonderful architecture of RNA[/url] : Nature News & Comment

Fascinating Stuff. Not sure about the crop-yield angle (though I expect much of the research funding is tied to it), though -- the last time we had a 'green revolution' it simply led to a global population boom, leaving the planet likely worse off than it would have been. And in the developed world we have way more food than we need, and waste nearly half of what we harvest and produce. So food is like money -- the problem is not that there's too little to go around, it's that its massively inequitably distributed. If saying that makes me sound like a bloody socialist and anti-free-marketeer, so be it.

o [url=http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/magazine/the-singular-mind-of-terry-tao.html]The Singular Mind of Terry Tao[/url] | NYTimes

I have a commentary on this prepared, but am interested to hear what the other math (& physics) types around think of the piece before posting my subjective take.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;406828]
o [url=http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/magazine/the-singular-mind-of-terry-tao.html]The Singular Mind of Terry Tao[/url] | NYTimes

I have a commentary on this prepared, but am interested to hear what the other math (& physics) types around think of the piece before posting my subjective take.[/QUOTE]
Of course I think he's brilliant and I appreciate his online blogging.

About Navier-Stokes, I've seen several murmurs that things are pregnant with potential progress.
Much of course involves causality and quantum-ish stuff.

[URL="https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150721-famous-fluid-equations-are-incomplete/"]Famous Fluid Equations Are Incomplete[/URL]
A 115-year effort to bridge the particle and fluid descriptions of nature has led mathematicians to an unexpected answer.
[QUOTE]Korteweg modeled the dynamics of fluids in which there is not only dissipation of energy (which is characterized by the Navier-Stokes equations), but also dispersion, or the smearing of energy into its component frequencies, as in a rainbow. Dissipation results from a fluid’s viscosity, or internal friction. But dispersion is caused by its capillarity — the surface tension effect that makes some liquids rise in straws. In most fluids, capillarity is negligible compared to viscosity. But it isn’t always. And mathematically, it never is. It was this capillarity, Slemrod argued in a 2012 paper, that appeared as the extra term in Karlin and Gorban’s solution to their Boltzmann-like equation. Although the finding has not yet been generalized to the full Boltzmann equation, it indicates that the particle description of a gas, when translated into a fluid description, converges not to the Navier-Stokes equations, but to the more general, far less famous Korteweg equations.[/QUOTE]
On other fronts here is a little passive robot that can do things under the influence of external magnetic fields:
[URL="http://www.dogonews.com/2015/7/28/tiny-origami-robot-runs-climbs-lifts-loads-and-even-self-destructs-once-job-is-done"]Tiny Origami Robot Runs, Climbs, Lifts Loads, And Even "Self-Destructs" Once Job Is Done[/URL]

[url]http://youtu.be/f0CluQiwLRg[/url]
[YOUTUBE]f0CluQiwLRg[/YOUTUBE]

[quote]It is common to fill page after page with an attempt, the seasons turning, only to arrive precisely where you began, empty-handed — or to realize that a subtle flaw of logic doomed the whole enterprise from its outset. The steady state of mathematical research is to be completely stuck. It is a process that Charles Fefferman of Princeton, himself a onetime math prodigy turned Fields medalist, likens to ‘‘playing chess with the devil.’’ The rules of the devil’s game are special, though: The devil is vastly superior at chess, but, Fefferman explained, you may take back as many moves as you like, and the devil may not. You play a first game, and, of course, ‘‘he crushes you.’’ So you take back moves and try something different, and he crushes you again, ‘‘in much the same way.’’ If you are sufficiently wily, you will eventually discover a move that forces the devil to shift strategy; you still lose, but — aha! — you have your first clue.[/quote]

I really, really enjoy this analogy. Quite marvelous.

When Archimedes came up with his formulae for things such as the volume of a sphere, his proofs verified that they were correct but did not show how he had arrived at the formulae in the first place. This remained a puzzle until about 100 years ago, when a reused piece of parchment was found which he had originally used for a letter to a friend. In it, he explained his reliance on physical intuition, imagining (for example) a balance with a cone hanging from one side and a sphere from the other, and what the distances would need to be for them to balance.

In the above popular article about Terry Tao, the journalist expresses surprise that ideas in engineering lead to advances in pure mathematics, but the case of Archimedes shows that this is nothing new. As Christopher Zeeman put it,
[QUOTE]Good scholars tend to compartmentalise knowledge, while researchers try to synthesise it.[/QUOTE]

Allegations of spying at the Max Planck Institute in Germany and the Technical University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands:
Press release TUE (in English): [URL]http://www.tue.nl/en/university/news-and-press/news/28-07-2015-former-employee-mentioned-in-spying-matter/[/URL]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;406828] o [URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/magazine/the-singular-mind-of-terry-tao.html"]The Singular Mind of Terry Tao[/URL] | NYTimes

I have a commentary on this prepared, but am interested to hear what the other math (& physics) types around think of the piece before posting my subjective take.[/QUOTE]

He discussed a thought experiment of a machine made out of eddies in water that could make a smaller copy of itself, which could repeat ad infinitum. My though as a chemist was that it would hit a limit since you can't have an eddy smaller than one water molecule. Which should prevent the singularities in the Navier-Stokes equations from doing anything interesting (such as breaking the law of conservation of energy).

only_human's link seems to agree with this.

Chris

[QUOTE=Dubslow;406875]I really, really enjoy this analogy. Quite marvelous.[/QUOTE]

Yes, Fefferman's "chess with the devil" analogy of the process of gaining mathematical insight and proving was my favorite part of the piece.

[QUOTE=chris2be8;406904]He discussed a thought experiment of a machine made out of eddies in water that could make a smaller copy of itself, which could repeat ad infinitum. My though as a chemist was that it would hit a limit since you can't have an eddy smaller than one water molecule. Which should prevent the singularities in the Navier-Stokes equations from doing anything interesting (such as breaking the law of conservation of energy).

only_human's link seems to agree with this.

Chris[/QUOTE]

That is thinking along the same general lines as I had in mind, albeit from a microscopic rather than a macroscopic perspective. But indeed, conservation of energy is the key.

My objection is fluid-physical - here is my comment precisely as I sent to the friend who forwarded me the link over the weekend:

===================

No disrespect to Tao's mathematical abilities, but this NYT hagiography illustrates why turning basic science into a big-money contest is a horrid idea.

The specific version of N-S all the pure-math geeks are obsessing about is the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navier–Stokes_existence_and_smoothness]one posed in Millennium-prize form[/url] by the Clay Institute. That is restricted to incompressible (0-Mach-number, or perhaps less paradoxically, negligible-Mach-number, since strictly speaking M = 0 means "no motion") flow, thus consists of the vector momentum equation supplemented by mass conservation, which in incompressible form simply amounts to divergence-free-ness of the velocity field. Most crucially, assuming incompressibility means throwing out the energy conservation equation, which is needed to close the system when M != 0 or there are thermal phenomena (e.g. temperature gradients) and one is actually properly modeling energy conversion (between the internal and kinetic forms) and dissipation via heat transfer, which prevents actual energy-singularities from forming in the real world.

Thus, to talk about the possibility of "infinite energy density" when one has tossed the first law of thermodynamics overboard is, in relation to actual physics and real-world fluid phenomena, sheer nonsense.

The real irony is that in excluding compressible-flow phenomena, the problem posers and prize-seekers have excluded the whole host of fluid-dynamic phenomena which do in fact show behavior that is "as nearly singular as nature allows". Chiefly I mean shock waves, for which the singularity is not in the form of oo energy density but in the form of a jump discontinuity in velocity, pressure and temperature. [Riemann studied a 1-d version of this via the now-named-thusly shock tube or Riemann problem.] Perhaps the math-issue here is that the true 'jump' singularity is for the inviscid compressible N-S, a.k.a. Euler equations, but even in the real world, in the presence of viscosity and with the continuum assumption breaking down at microscopic scales, actual measurements of shock wave structure show a thickness of only a few molecular mean free paths.

While part of the Times article is quite pretty, they are definitely on thin ice in my book regarding objectivity and responsible journalism.

This is a better explanation of the particular thinking that Terry Tao is considering WRT Navier-Stokes:

Finite time blowup for an averaged three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equation
Terence Tao
(Submitted on 3 Feb 2014 (v1), last revised 1 Apr 2015 (this version, v3))
[url]http://arxiv.org/abs/1402.0290v3[/url]
(I haven't looked at the paper)

and

[URL="https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140224-a-fluid-new-path-in-grand-math-challenge/"]A Fluid New Path in Grand Math Challenge[/URL]
[QUOTE]"It’s a very fanciful idea, and I don’t expect this program to come to fruition any time in the next five years,” Tao said. Nevertheless, he said, it may be possible to harness fluid effects such as miniature vortex sheets to create water barriers that could serve as pipes.

The new proposal, however intriguing, is just speculation, cautioned Peter Constantin of Princeton University. “This is mathematics,” he said. “What’s proved is proved.”

Tao’s ideas certainly aren’t standard, Friedlander said. “But results about global regularity, whether positive or negative, will almost certainly require something that is nonstandard.” Tao’s ideas are quite likely to lead to some interesting mathematics, she said, whether or not they answer the Navier-Stokes question.

Meanwhile, Tao’s new program for tackling Navier-Stokes has changed his thinking about the problem. Previously, he had viewed both sides of the problem — proving global regularity or establishing that solutions can blow up — as equally remote goals (though in the end, only one can be true). Now he believes that it should be possible to concoct special scenarios in which a solution to the Navier-Stokes equations blows up. (This wouldn’t mean that the real ocean could blow up — instead, it would suggest that in these rare cases, the Navier-Stokes equations don’t fully capture the ocean’s physics.) “My mindset has certainly changed,” he said.

A central insight of computer science is that, whenever a physical phenomenon is complex enough, it should be possible to use it to build a universal computer — one capable of doing anything computers can do, including building self-replicating machines.

“Can you make fancy patterns of water that actually have some computation power?” Tao asked. “I’m betting that fluids are complex enough to do this.”[/QUOTE]

[url=discovermagazine.com/2015/june/23-making-a-mark]Who Were the World's First Artists?[/url] | DiscoverMagazine.com

[url=www.nature.com/news/neanderthals-had-outsize-effect-on-human-biology-1.18086?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews]Neanderthals had outsize effect on human biology[/url] : Nature News & Comment (Time to break out the [i]Quest For Fire[/i] DVD...)

[URL="http://www.geek.com/science/cellulose-paper-could-be-strong-enough-to-replace-metal-1629807/"]Cellulose paper could be strong enough to replace metal[/URL]
[QUOTE]They began their study by developing sheets of paper made of cellulose — a renewable, plant-based resource. They made these papers with varying sizes of cellulose fibers, ranging in 30 micrometers to 10 nanometers — all sizes too small to see with the naked eye. They found that the paper made of 10-nanometer thick fibers was 40 times tougher and 130 times stronger than standard notebook paper, which contains cellulose fibers a thousand times larger.

What makes these smaller cellulose fibers so much stronger and tougher than most materials lie within its hydrogen bonds. Cellulose chains are linked by hydrogen bonds, and when the cellulose is broken, the bonds can reform all by themselves, giving the material a “self-healing” quality. In addition, the smaller cellulose fibers means there are more hydrogen bonds per square area, compared to larger fibers, which leads to a stronger, tougher material that can reform more quickly.[/QUOTE]

[URL="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v524/n7563/full/524008b.html"]Only left-handed particles decay[/URL] (paywalled)
Nature 524, 8 (06 August 2015) doi:10.1038/524008b
Published online 05 August 2015

[URL="http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_27-7-2015-10-41-30"]New study shows universe is left-handed[/URL] Imperial College London by Laura Gallagher (27 July 2015)
[QUOTE]The lambda b baryon decays into different particles – a proton, a muon and a neutrino. Within the lambda b are even smaller elements, called quarks. The researchers were interested to see how one particular quark, called the beauty, or b quark, decayed into another type of quark, called an up quark.

The measurements taken by the team, published today in Nature Physics, demonstrated that the decay only takes place when the beauty quark has a ‘left-handed’ spin.

“Our results show that the decay does indeed behave in a left-handed way. The ‘handedness’ of the universe is, in combination with differences between matter and antimatter, fundamental for how our universe evolved,” says Professor Ulrik Egede, from the Department of Physics at Imperial College London. “Because the weak force is the only one of the fundamental forces to distinguish between right and left, we can also say that the Universe has a left-handed bias.”

“Although this left-handedness is predicted by the widely accepted Standard Model of physics, it has also been refuted by some physicists in recent years,” adds Professor Egede,. “We now need to explore other decays to understand why past measurements gave inconsistent results with a purely left-handed decay.”

The team is working within the Large Hadron Collider Beauty experiment (LHCb) which is funded in the UK mainly by the Science and Technology Facilities Council. Its purpose is to investigate the nature and behaviour of beauty quarks and use these observations to try to shed light on some of the universe’s biggest mysteries, including the nature of dark matter.

Scientists had previously suggested that if right-handed quarks were participating in the decay as well, this might indicate that other forces are at work in the universe, besides the four – gravity, electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclear – described in the Standard Model. Investigation of these other forces could yield important clues about dark matter.

This study is important because it shows that any new fundamental force with a right-handed component is not involved in the decay – a setback for physicists searching for these new forces.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=only_human;407370][URL="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v524/n7563/full/524008b.html"]Only left-handed particles decay[/URL][/QUOTE]

A sinister scientific plot, no doubt.

So what would happen if we found a way to force them to be right-handed? Would it simply become harder and harder to keep things with right-handed spin until BOOM it switches to left-handedness and decays?

Or maybe the energy required to keep things right-handed accomplishes the decay necessary to keep things from getting bad weird. That would make more sense than an eternal particle. Kind of like vampires staying young by killing regular people.

[URL="https://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/small-modular-efficient-fusion-plant-0810"]A small, modular, efficient fusion plant[/URL]
"New design could finally help to bring the long-sought power source closer to reality."
David L. Chandler | MIT News Office
August 10, 2015
[QUOTE]Using these new commercially available superconductors, rare-earth barium copper oxide (REBCO) superconducting tapes, to produce high-magnetic field coils “just ripples through the whole design,” says Dennis Whyte, a professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering and director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center. “It changes the whole thing.”[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]While most characteristics of a system tend to vary in proportion to changes in dimensions, the effect of changes in the magnetic field on fusion reactions is much more extreme: The achievable fusion power increases according to the fourth power of the increase in the magnetic field. Thus, doubling the field would produce a 16-fold increase in the fusion power. “Any increase in the magnetic field gives you a huge win,” Sorbom says.

Tenfold boost in power

While the new superconductors do not produce quite a doubling of the field strength, they are strong enough to increase fusion power by about a factor of 10 compared to standard superconducting technology, Sorbom says. This dramatic improvement leads to a cascade of potential improvements in reactor design.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]Another key advance in the new design is a method for removing the the fusion power core from the donut-shaped reactor without having to dismantle the entire device. That makes it especially well-suited for research aimed at further improving the system by using different materials or designs to fine-tune the performance.

In addition, as with ITER, the new superconducting magnets would enable the reactor to operate in a sustained way, producing a steady power output, unlike today’s experimental reactors that can only operate for a few seconds at a time without overheating of copper coils.

Liquid protection

Another key advantage is that most of the solid blanket materials used to surround the fusion chamber in such reactors are replaced by a liquid material that can easily be circulated and replaced, eliminating the need for costly replacement procedures as the materials degrade over time.

“It’s an extremely harsh environment for [solid] materials,” Whyte says, so replacing those materials with a liquid could be a major advantage.

Right now, as designed, the reactor should be capable of producing about three times as much electricity as is needed to keep it running, but the design could probably be improved to increase that proportion to about five or six times, Sorbom says. So far, no fusion reactor has produced as much energy as it consumes, so this kind of net energy production would be a major breakthrough in fusion technology, the team says.[/QUOTE]

[URL="http://nautil.us/issue/26/color/the-girl-who-smelled-pink"]The Girl Who Smelled Pink[/URL]

[URL="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150709102846.htm"]Human color vision gives people ability to see nanoscale differences[/URL]

[URL="http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2015/07/bumblebees-being-crushed-climate-change"]Bumble bees being crushed by climate change[/URL]

[URL="http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2015/07/06/year-old-catches-math-error-the-museum-science/awhREamdn1KRg7nz2gGyPO/story.html?p1=feature_pri_hp"]15-year-old catches math error at the Museum of Science[/URL]

[URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/11/books/preview-of-harper-lees-go-set-a-watchman-reveals-a-different-tale.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1"]In First Chapter of Harper Lee’s ‘Go Set a Watchman,’ Sprouts With Deep Roots[/URL]

[URL="http://www.cnet.com/au/news/sun-looks-like-a-psychedelic-marble-in-new-nasa-image/"]Sun looks like a psychedelic marble in new NASA image[/URL]

[URL="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/539251/the-exoskeletons-are-coming/"]The exoskeletons are coming[/URL]

[URL="http://mashable.com/2015/07/12/pluto-new-horizons-mission-nasa/"]Hello, Pluto[/URL]

[URL="http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/documentary-takes-viewers-inside-the-world-of-internet-addiction/education"]Documentary takes viewers inside the world of Internet addiction[/URL]

[URL="http://www.thetimesgazette.com/how-mosquitoes-track-their-human-targets-study-explains/5427/"]How mosquitos track their targets[/URL]

[URL="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/could-a-saliva-test-help-spot-alzheimers/"]Could a saliva test help spot Alzheimer's?[/URL]

[URL="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/539356/personal-robots-artificial-friends-with-limited-benefits/"]Personal Robots: Artificial Friends with Limited Benefits[/URL]

[URL="http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-business/adhutchinson/2015-07-23/report-finds-majority-journalists-wouldnt-be-able-function"]Report Finds Majority of Journalists Wouldn’t Be Able to Function Without Social Media[/URL]

[URL="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150723115703.htm"]Bigger, older cousin to Earth discovered[/URL]

[URL="http://www.technologyreview.com/view/539656/deep-neural-nets-can-now-recognize-your-face-in-thermal-images/"]Deep Neural Nets Can Now Recognize Your Face in Thermal Images[/URL]

[URL="http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/study-poverty-harms-brain-development-in-children/education"]Study: Poverty harms brain development in children[/URL]

[URL="http://www.nature.com/news/successful-ebola-vaccine-provides-100-protection-in-trial-1.18107"]Successful Ebola vaccine provides 100% protection in trial[/URL]

[URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/06/technology/personaltech/right-to-be-forgotten-online-is-poised-to-spread.html?smid=pl-share"]‘Right to Be Forgotten’ Online Could Spread[/URL]

[URL="http://www.wired.com/2015/08/hiroshima-survivors-leaving-legacy-science/"]How Hiroshima Survivors Are Leaving a Legacy For Science[/URL]

Space elevator
 

[url]http://phys.org/news/2015-08-company-canada-patent-space-elevator.html[/url]

They said they wanted to use helium to keep it up.

Personally, I think it would be better to keep studying the idea of vacuum-based buoyancy, not sure what the normal term for that is. I keep hearing about newer stronger materials and building patterns that make the internal structures of things unbelievably strong. I think combining those two areas of research would be better than buying a ton of helium to keep something up. Especially since helium is a nonrenewable resource at the moment.

[QUOTE=jasong;408147][url]http://phys.org/news/2015-08-company-canada-patent-space-elevator.html[/url]

They said they wanted to use helium to keep it up.

Personally, I think it would be better to keep studying the idea of vacuum-based buoyancy, not sure what the normal term for that is. I keep hearing about newer stronger materials and building patterns that make the internal structures of things unbelievably strong. I think combining those two areas of research would be better than buying a ton of helium to keep something up. Especially since helium is a nonrenewable resource at the moment.[/QUOTE]

It looks to be waiting for an iceberg...

[QUOTE=jasong;408147][url]http://phys.org/news/2015-08-company-canada-patent-space-elevator.html[/url]

They said they wanted to use helium to keep it up.

Personally, I think it would be better to keep studying the idea of vacuum-based buoyancy, not sure what the normal term for that is.[/QUOTE]

I believe 'physics-ignorant nonsense' is the technical expression.

======================

[url=www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/17/mass-grave-prehistoric-warfare-ancient-european-farming-community-neolithic]Mass grave reveals prehistoric warfare in ancient European farming community [/url] | The Guardian
[quote][Anthropologist Lawrence Keeley:] “The only reasonable interpretation of these cases, as here, is that a whole typically-sized Linear Pottery culture hamlet or small village was wiped out by killing the majority of its inhabitants and kidnapping the young women. This represents yet another nail in the coffin of those who have claimed that war was rare or ritualised or less awful in prehistory or, in this instance, the early Neolithic."[/quote]
But, but, [i]Clan of the Cave Bear[/i] said that...
[quote]“This is a classic case where we find the ‘hardware’: the skeletal remains, the artefacts, everything that is durable we can find in the graves. But the ‘software’: what people were thinking, why they were doing things, what their mindset was at this time, of course was not preserved,” [University of Mainz archeologist Christian] Meyer said.[/quote]
Sure it was - specific thoughts and motives aside, the same basic 'programming' remains in us, just now amplifiable with AK-47s, drones and nukes. You want to see 'whodunnit', simply look in the mirror.

A very neat gif of a knob spinning in space. I presume the flipping back and forth is due to slight instability in the spin, but will have to work through this.....

[URL="http://i.imgur.com/t9fmJTO.gifv"]http://i.imgur.com/t9fmJTO.gifv[/URL]


Norm

[QUOTE=Spherical Cow;408310]A very neat gif of a knob spinning in space. I presume the flipping back and forth is due to slight instability in the spin, but will have to work through this.....

[URL="http://i.imgur.com/t9fmJTO.gifv"]http://i.imgur.com/t9fmJTO.gifv[/URL][/QUOTE]

For some bizarre reason I am unable to get the image to animate in FF (I have animation disabled by default via the about:config menu, but changing that setting back from 'none' to 'normal' does not work here), and Safari, even more bizarrely, gives me a 'this image has been removed' error message.

But in any case, from your description it sounds like perfectly normal precession to me - is there a reason you think otherwise?

[b]Edit:[/b] OK, finally managed to view the animation, by downloading the file - 83MB, sheesh. Even then, FF, refused to open the downloaded file, citing some kind of fatal badness, but Safari worked OK. Now that I've seen the dynamics, looks like classic gyroscopic instability - the 'handle' attached to the main body means the principal axis is slightly off-aligned - to me.

=====================

[url=www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33984044]Sweet-smelling secrets of mosquito-repellent grass[/url] | BBC News

I looked around at the various sweetgrass-invoking offerings on AMZN, many of which turn out to only have e.g. 'notes of sweetgrass', and [url=http://www.amazon.com/Natures-Note-Organics-Fragrance-Sweet-grass/dp/B00ZXZ8E5K]this essential oil[/url] looks promising, though I am confused as to why the 'About The Product' list mentions Wisteria oil in the first line. Based on the pictured label, hopefully a typo. Anyhoo, I see one intrepid soul has already undertaken a field test, and promises to post an updated review in a few days. Once I see that I'll decide. $6/oz would actually be a pretty good deal if the stuff is effective in small essential-oil-typical doses.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;408336]For some bizarre reason I am unable to get the image to animate in FF (I have animation disabled by default via the about:config menu, but changing that setting back from 'none' to 'normal' does not work here), and Safari, even more bizarrely, gives me a 'this image has been removed' error message.

But in any case, from your description it sounds like perfectly normal precession to me - is there a reason you think otherwise?
[/QUOTE]

It worked for me in Quick Time. IE gave an error message. Nothing appeared in FF.

JS strikes again
 

Because that website is :poop: and uses JS to be "clever".
Looking at the source shows the URL to the actual GIF: [url]http://i.imgur.com/t9fmJTO.gif[/url]
Which is actually just the same URL with the trailing v removed.

The initial link works perfectly for me. FF 40.0.2, adobe flash disabled, java disabled, javascript disabled.
(technically, all plugins and addons are on "ask to activate", but for this site/gifv/gif no popup comes)

[QUOTE=ewmayer;408336]For some bizarre reason I am unable to get the image to animate in FF (I have animation disabled by default via the about:config menu, but changing that setting back from 'none' to 'normal' does not work here), and Safari, even more bizarrely, gives me a 'this image has been removed' error message.
...
[b]Edit:[/b] OK, finally managed to view the animation, by downloading the file - 83MB, sheesh. Even then, FF, refused to open the downloaded file, citing some kind of fatal badness, but Safari worked OK. Now that I've seen the dynamics, looks like classic gyroscopic instability - the 'handle' attached to the main body means the principal axis is slightly off-aligned - to me.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=retina;408342]Because that website is :poop: and uses JS to be "clever".
Looking at the source shows the URL to the actual GIF: [url]http://i.imgur.com/t9fmJTO.gif[/url]
Which is actually just the same URL with the trailing v removed.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=LaurV;408347]The initial link works perfectly for me. FF 40.0.2, adobe flash disabled, java disabled, javascript disabled.
(technically, all plugins and addons are on "ask to activate", but for this site/gifv/gif no popup comes)[/QUOTE]

The initial link is to a [URL="http://www.webmproject.org/about/faq/"]webm file[/URL]. It is only 1.04 MB The gifv is [URL="http://imgur.com/blog/2014/10/09/introducing-gifv/"]imgur's embracing of that format[/URL]. Opera has no problem with the file. This is the perfect example of where the webm format shines. And the large size of the gif shows where it is not so good.

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;408355]The initial link is to a [URL="http://www.webmproject.org/about/faq/"]webm file[/URL].[/QUOTE]
[STRIKE]Where, in which post? For me the discussion started with Spherical's post, wondering about the knob, and then Ernst replying he can't open it. The link points to a gifv, I clicked it and it opens...[/STRIKE]
I'm idiot, sorry, ignore that. I interpreted wrong your post, you were only clarifying what gifv means, but I was looking for a previous link, before SC's post :redface:
Now I clicked your second link and learned something new..

[QUOTE=ewmayer;408336]

But in any case, from your description it sounds like perfectly normal precession to me - is there a reason you think otherwise?

[b]Edit:[/b] OK, finally managed to view the animation, by downloading the file - 83MB, sheesh. Even then, FF, refused to open the downloaded file, citing some kind of fatal badness, but Safari worked OK. Now that I've seen the dynamics, looks like classic gyroscopic instability - the 'handle' attached to the main body means the principal axis is slightly off-aligned - to me.

[/QUOTE]

Precession I get, but its the pause in the flip-flop that I haven't worked out (and haven't tried, yet). The part of the knob that attaches to the equipment is roughly horizontal, aimed to the image right at first. Once its spinning, the handle does a fast 180 flip so that part is now aimed left, pauses for a while, then a fast flip back, pause, flip, etc. Its the pauses I want to work out. Its flipping rapidly, but slows down and pauses, implying a stable orientation, but then rapidly re-orients, and pauses. If there are two stable orientations, why would it oscillate between the two, rather than settle in to one or the other...Sorry- Guess my brain just isn't visualizing something right; not enough coffee yet, perhaps.

Norm

[QUOTE=Spherical Cow;408403]Precession I get, but its the pause in the flip-flop that I haven't worked out (and haven't tried, yet). The part of the knob that attaches to the equipment is roughly horizontal, aimed to the image right at first. Once its spinning, the handle does a fast 180 flip so that part is now aimed left, pauses for a while, then a fast flip back, pause, flip, etc. Its the pauses I want to work out. Its flipping rapidly, but slows down and pauses, implying a stable orientation, but then rapidly re-orients, and pauses. If there are two stable orientations, why would it oscillate between the two, rather than settle in to one or the other...Sorry- Guess my brain just isn't visualizing something right; not enough coffee yet, perhaps.

Norm[/QUOTE]

Re. 'implying a stable orientation' - No, it's only a metastable one. Picture a frictionless roller coaster on a sinusoidal-elevation track with just a little velocity at the top of each 'hump'. It will slow down nearly to a 'stable' position atop each hump, but not stop - those are the metastable quasi-equilibria. OTOH the bottoms of the humps (the flips) it just blasts right through. (An imperfect analogy, but best I came up with off the top o/f my head.)

[QUOTE=ewmayer;408438]Re. 'implying a stable orientation' - No, it's only a metastable one. Picture a frictionless roller coaster on a sinusoidal-elevation track with just a little velocity at the top of each 'hump'. It will slow down nearly to a 'stable' position atop each hump, but not stop - those are the metastable quasi-equilibria. OTOH the bottoms of the humps (the flips) it just blasts right through. (An imperfect analogy, but best I came up with off the top o/f my head.)[/QUOTE]

As you say, imperfect analogy, but a good one that does actually help the visualize the pauses. Helped way more than the second cup of coffee.

Norm

anew type of glass,original link from twitter ( university of chicago)

[url]http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2015/08/13/molecular-scientists-unexpectedly-produce-new-type-glass[/url]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;408267]I believe 'physics-ignorant nonsense' is the technical expression.[/quote]
Maybe you should use Google before playing the troll.

Here's an interesting one about the quest for room temperature superconductors. For the first time ever they've made a superconductor that can operate at a temperature that's been known to exist on the surface of planet Earth in the past. Antarctica, unfortunately, but still.

So let's give a RA RA for arbitrary goals.(Put that there to try to deal with the trolls)

[url]http://phys.org/news/2015-07-hydrogen-sulfide-superconducting.html[/url]

I know people say you shouldn't let a bully, in this case ewmayer, bait you. But, hey, I'm human...

If anyone decides they're interested in my self-named concept of vacuum-based buoyancy, which I DID NOT come up with because of ignorance, maybe they could help me track down posts about internal structures created to keep "balloons" from imploding from outside pressure. Because implosion is the biggest concern by far when it comes to this area of science.

[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_airship[/url]

Hmmmmm, in this Wikipedia entry, it talks a bit about gradually changing air pressure to effect buoyancy.

[QUOTE=jasong;408648]If anyone decides they're interested in my self-named concept of vacuum-based buoyancy, which I DID NOT come up with because of ignorance, maybe they could help me track down posts about internal structures created to keep "balloons" from imploding from outside pressure. Because implosion is the biggest concern by far when it comes to this area of science.[/QUOTE]This has been studied before by many people. Even with the strongest materials known being used for the scaffolds and the coverings thick enough to contain a vacuum they end up weighing more than a simple piece of foil and some helium.

[size=1][color=white]With the power of ignorance everything is possible.[/color][/size]

[QUOTE=retina;408650]This has been studied before by many people.[/QUOTE] Years ago I remember seeing a discussion on using vacuum flotation to bring large asteroid chunks to the surface of the earth. Rather than looking to make things go up, it would be used to more gently land material. A large diameter metallic sphere would be produced in space. It would be brought to earth, likely using some atmospheric braking. Then most/much of the velocity will be lost by rocket/mass driver/new tech. As it slides downward, the vacuum will give some buoyancy. Slowly air will be allowed to enter the sphere to drop in nicely onto the desired location on earth.
This was in an old [URL="http://www.analogsf.com/index.html"]Analog[/URL] magazine. Since the differential between the outside and the inside of the sphere was always low, (and it never has to deal with more than 1 atm) it could handle the load. I deal with tanks frequently that are over 150 atm inside.

Actually, what some guys want to do now, they want to create carbon fiber structures that are filled with helium first, to balance the pressure, then the helium is released slowly as the structure goes up, ending up closer to the top of the atmosphere, and vacuumed inside. These structures are intended to be kind of "permanent" things, you can not replace (so easy) the lost helium. So, once there, they will stay there (the pumps can work solar and maintain the vacuum level) and "never" return down. Another problem would be to shield them against the sun and UV, and of course the [URL="http://depositphotos.com/15878741/stock-photo-planet-earth-belt-tightening.html"]Earth's whatever belts[/URL] they can find there up.

Re: 150 atm [U]inside[/U] (crosspost), you can make a sphere of (whatever) and fill it with a high pressure fluid (gas), and it will resist, because the material would need to be teared apart for the fluid to go out. The "tearing apart" force is very high. How about you try to put 150 atm [U]outside[/U], and 1 atm/nothing inside? The material in this case will only need to be "bent", where the force is much lower. See the divers who take empty iron or tin canisters when they dive, and the canisters are squashed by the underwater pressure starting from the first meters. The same canisters will get a rounded form if you put some pressure inside, but they will not break.

[QUOTE=LaurV;408654]Actually, what some guys want to do now, they want to create carbon fiber structures that are filled with helium first, to balance the pressure, then the helium is released slowly as the structure goes up, ending up closer to the top of the atmosphere, and vacuumed inside. These structures are intended to be kind of "permanent" things, you can not replace (so easy) the lost helium.[/QUOTE]Why do you need to lose much helium?

Pump it into pressurized containers and drop them (including the pumps) as ballast. Pick up the containers when they reach the surface and re-use. About all that wouldn't be recyclable would be the parachute subsystem.

Well, pumps you can't drop, you will need them to compensate the lose of vacuum. If you say that you don't need strong pumps for that, then well, you don't need strong pumps for anything, as you raise, the pressure is lower and the helium from the balloon would go out by itself :razz: What do you have against me going up there and staying there ? :shock: I won't come down to bother you... [COLOR=White]only maybe pee on you from there above, when you upset me, :p. [/COLOR]

[QUOTE=LaurV;408665]Well, pumps you can't drop, you will need them to compensate the lose of vacuum. If you say that you don't need strong pumps for that, then well, you don't need strong pumps for anything, as you raise, the pressure is lower and the helium from the balloon would go out by itself :razz: What do you have against me going up there and staying there ? :shock: I won't come down to bother you... [COLOR=White]only maybe pee on you from there above, when you upset me, :p. [/COLOR][/QUOTE]By hypothesis, He is a valuable resource. If it is valuable enough it is worth carting up pumps, containers and parachutes so that the He can be re-used, irrespective of whether other pumps are required for other purposes. Re-using where possible kit needed to get the He back to the ground seems to me to make sense.

[URL="http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2015/08/secretive-fusion-company-makes-reactor-breakthrough"]Exclusive: Secretive fusion company claims reactor breakthrough[/URL]
Now holds plasma for 5 milliseconds
[QUOTE]The upgraded C-2U was back in operation by March. At a symposium today in memory of Rostoker, who died in December, Tri Alpha’s chief technology officer Michl Binderbauer announced that by June the new machine was producing FRCs lasting 5 milliseconds with no sign of decay; they remained the same size throughout.

Binderbauer says that next year they will tear up C-2U again and build an almost entirely new machine, bigger and with even more powerful beams, dubbed C-2W. The aim is to achieve longer FRCs and, more crucially, higher temperature. A 10-fold increase in temperature would bring them into the realm of sparking reactions in conventional fusion fuel, a mixture of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, known as D-T. But that is not their goal; instead, they’re working toward the much higher bar of hydrogen-boron fusion, which will require ion temperatures above 3 billion degrees Celsius.

Researchers have several reasons for wanting to go that extra mile. First, tritium doesn’t occur naturally on Earth, so it has to be made by bombarding lithium with neutrons. Physicists plan to do this in the fusion reactors that will one day consume the tritium, but no one has shown that such a process is practical. Because D-T reactions also produce large quantities of high-energy neutrons, the reactors need thick shielding. But the neutrons still degrade the structure of the reactor and make it radioactive. Researchers don’t yet know if it will be possible to find radiation-hard materials capable of surviving the onslaught. Many think these make D-T fusion impractical for a commercial reactor. “I wouldn’t have spent 10 years on [Tri Alpha’s advisory] committee if it was working on a D-T system,” Richter says.

Hydrogen-boron, at first, doesn’t look much more promising. “It takes 30 times as much energy to cook, and you get half as much energy out per particle,” Binderbauer says. But boron is abundant, and the reaction produces no neutrons, just three alpha particles (helium nuclei)—hence the company’s name. Hydrogen-boron fuel “makes conversion to electricity much easier and simpler,” Richter says.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=xilman;408671]By hypothesis, He is a valuable resource. If it is valuable enough it is worth carting up pumps, containers and parachutes so that the He can be re-used, irrespective of whether other pumps are required for other purposes. Re-using where possible kit needed to get the He back to the ground seems to me to make sense.[/QUOTE]
Didn't see this reply, I have talked with few friends, all of them good engineers in different domains (none of them specialist in this problem, however, but we work here with pressure for different industrial machines, like [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMT_placement_equipment"]pick-and-place[/URL], etc, in fact the production lines are heavily dependent of pressurized air, liquid nitrogen, etc) and they all seem to agree with you that the helium should not be wasted :redface: They said that "it would be stupid to release the helium into the atmosphere and lose it in space", and that "all the equipment to compress it in polyethylene bags till they are heavier than the atmosphere would not be heavier than 100 kilos or so. Well...

[URL="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/why-the-world-is-running-out-of-helium-2059357.html"]Why the world is running out of helium[/URL]
[QUOTE]But in 1996, the US passed the Helium Privatisation Act which directed that this reserve should be sold by 2015 at a price that would substantially pay off the federal government's original investment in building up the reserve.

The law stipulated the amount of helium sold off each year should follow a straight line with the same amount being sold each year, irrespective of the global demand for it. This, according to Professor Richardson, who won his Nobel prize for his work on helium-3, was a mistake. "As a result of that Act, helium is far too cheap and is not treated as a precious resource," he said. "It's being squandered."

Professor Richardson co-chaired an inquiry into the impending helium shortage convened by the influential US National Research Council, an arm of the US National Academy of Sciences. This report, which has just been published, recommends that the US Government should revisit and reconsider its policy of selling off the US national helium reserve.

"They couldn't sell it fast enough and the world price for helium gas is ridiculously cheap," Professor Richardson told a summer meeting of Nobel laureates from around the world at Lindau in Germany. "You might at first think it will be peculiarly an American topic because the sources of helium are primarily in the US but I assure you it matters of the rest of the world also," he said.

Professor Richardson believes the price for helium should rise by between 20- and 50-fold to make recycling more worthwhile. Nasa, for instance, makes no attempt to recycle the helium used to clean is rocket fuel tanks, one of the single biggest uses of the gas.

Professor Richardson also believes that party balloons filled with helium are too cheap, and they should really cost about $100 (£75) to reflect the precious nature of the gas they contain.[/QUOTE]

[url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/08/29/after-a-week-of-intense-debate-stephen-hawking-and-his-colleagues-are-still-puzzled-by-black-holes/]After a week of intense debate, Stephen Hawking and his colleagues are still puzzled by black holes[/url] | WaPo

Re. the black hole confab: Speaking of much-neglected 'dusty old' theories, I find the pervasive lack of mention (or perhaps better, misrepresentation) of the second law of thermodynamics in the context of the alleged information paradox exceedingly curious. After all the 2LOT tells us - in stark contrast to the assertions made in the piece like 'Information isn't supposed to disappear' - that information is in fact destroyed (in the sense of being rendered irretrievably nonrecoverable) all the time. The term is 'irreversibility', and in many ways it defines the blurry transition zone from the microscopic world, in which 'all individual transactions are time-reversible' to the macroscopic, in which the resulting collective behavior is not. Boltzmann, anyone?

Equally curious is that Hawking himself in his groundbreaking earlier work in which he achieved the first plausible (albeit piecemeal) unification of quantum field theory with classical (= relativistic but continuum-based) gravitation, came up with a strikingly lovely result regarding blackbody (= diffuse, i.e. entropy-maximized, i.e. all-detailed-information-lost) radiation from black holes and the entropy of same. So the present extreme aversion to the idea of information loss in the process of black hole accretion among the 'thought leaders' in the field -including Hawking himself - strikes me as bizarre. Perhaps it's simply the natural research bias that confirming (in this case by extending to encompass novel phenomena which were unknown when the original theory was being developed) existing theories is inherently 'less sexy' that publishing 'radical paradigm-smashing' new ones.

From another [url=http://phys.org/news/2015-04-black-holes-dont-erase-scientists.html#nRlv]phys.org perspective[/url] on the issue:
[i]
[The idea of black hole information loss] posed a huge problem for the field of physics because it meant that information inside a black hole could be permanently lost when the black hole disappeared — a violation of quantum mechanics, which states that information must be conserved.
[/i]
Uh, QM may say this for individual microscopic events, but again, what about large-scale statistics of collective behavior? Even though QM is now accepted as underpinning all macroscopic physics, I've never heard of any luminary claiming that the second law of thermo is thus a dead letter in the macroscopic realm where, last time I checked, information continues to be merrily and profligately destroyed and entropy thus keeps increasing. Why should matter (i.e. mass/energy) falling into a black hole be an exception? Sure, there may be some wacky stuff happening to spacetime near (and inside) the event horizon, but there is no reason to believe that the infalling stuff suddenly stops being subject to the rules of statistical thermodynamics.

Similarly, here: [url=http://phys.org/news/2014-09-entropy-black-holes.html#nRlv]The entropy of black holes[/url]:
[quote]Yesterday I talked about black hole thermodynamics, specifically how you can write the laws of thermodynamics as laws about black holes. Central to the idea of thermodynamics is the property of entropy, which can be related to the amount of physical information a system has.

For classical black holes, this is a problem, because if you toss an object into such a black hole, the object (and all its physical information) is lost forever. It is as if the information of the object was erased, which would violate the basic principle that information cannot be destroyed. Now you might argue that being trapped is not the same thing as being destroyed, but for information it is. If you cannot recover the information, then it has been destroyed.

So it would seem that black holes "eat" information, [u]even though the laws of thermodynamics say that shouldn't be possible[/u]. This is known as the black hole information paradox.[/quote]
Could someone point out to me which law of thermodynamics says that information cannot be lost? Because for the life of me, I never heard of that one.

Paul, am I overlooking something blatantly obvious in my take here?

Three years ago someone on Physics Stack Exchange asked: [URL="http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/29175/why-is-information-indestructible"]Why is information indestructible?[/URL]

[QUOTE]I really can't understand what Leonard Susskind means when he says that information is indestructible.

Is that information that is lost, through the increase of entropy really recoverable?

He himself said that entropy is hidden information. Then, although the information hidden has measurable effects, I think information lost in an irreversible process cannot be retrieved. However Susskind's claim is quite the opposite. How does one understand the loss of information by an entropy increasing process, and its connection to the statement "information is indestructible".

Black hole physics can be used in answers, but, as he proposes a general law of physics, I would prefer an answer not involving black holes.[/QUOTE]
I didn't bother reading the answers because I don't think it's on the test and these days are too damn hot for deep thinking.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;409218]Could someone point out to me which law of thermodynamics says that information cannot be lost? Because for the life of me, I never heard of that one.

Paul, am I overlooking something blatantly obvious in my take here?[/QUOTE]I am very far from being an expert and I've no idea how to resolve the BH information loss issue, but here is my take.

AIUI (meaning imperfectly) information is "lost" in classical thermodynamics when you cease to pay attention to individual particles but instead decide to work with ensemble averages. The particles themselves continue to preserve information in terms of their momenta, etc, and if you were prepared to re-record their properties all the original information will still be there. A particular "random" state taken from the large number of random states which are a close enough approximation to a distribution in thermal equilibrium is unique --- it differs from all other states taken from any distribution and requires exactly the same amount of information to specify it as any other state whether taken from a distribution near or far from equilibrium.

The problem with GR and QM, again AIUI, is that the former doesn't know how to treat what happens at a singularity. On the face of it, nothing can happen at a singularity because by definition almost everything is either infinite or zero in size. GR allows a black hole to posess abitrary values only for its mass, angular momentum and electric charge. Everything else is either uniquely determined by those quantities or can not be determined at all. Information appears to fall into the latter class.

[url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/08/31/obama-can-rename-mount-mckinley-denali-but-he-cant-stop-its-loss-of-ice/[/url]

[QUOTE=xilman;409255]I am very far from being an expert and I've no idea how to resolve the BH information loss issue, but here is my take.

AIUI (meaning imperfectly) information is "lost" in classical thermodynamics when you cease to pay attention to individual particles but instead decide to work with ensemble averages. The particles themselves continue to preserve information in terms of their momenta, etc, and if you were prepared to re-record their properties all the original information will still be there. A particular "random" state taken from the large number of random states which are a close enough approximation to a distribution in thermal equilibrium is unique --- it differs from all other states taken from any distribution and requires exactly the same amount of information to specify it as any other state whether taken from a distribution near or far from equilibrium.

The problem with GR and QM, again AIUI, is that the former doesn't know how to treat what happens at a singularity. On the face of it, nothing can happen at a singularity because by definition almost everything is either infinite or zero in size. GR allows a black hole to posess abitrary values only for its mass, angular momentum and electric charge. Everything else is either uniquely determined by those quantities or can not be determined at all. Information appears to fall into the latter class.[/QUOTE]

By way of thinking aloud:

1. Such recording imposes a cost - which gets back to the 'no free lunch" aspect of the 2nd law;
2. At some point the unique original data encoded in a thermalizing ensemble inevitably get smoothed below the threshold of distinguishability set by the uncertainty principle. Beyond that there is no meaningful concept of 'uniqueness', ergo the information is irretrievably lost;
3. From my own PhD field, there are known physical phenomena which incur not merely gradual but sudden irretrievable information loss, perhaps the best-known of which is fluid flow through a shock wave. It is mathematically provable that infinitely many different initial states can give rise to the same post-shock state, i.e. there has been irreversible information loss (and hence an entropy jump) on passage through the shock. I need to think some more on reconciling that purely-classical-sounding information loss phenomenon with the above QM-based one.

It just sounds very much to me - and Ross's link supports this - that the 'paradoxists' are invoking some kind of speculative 'new physics' which is contrary bith to the classical 2nd law and the uncertainty principle as the basis for their no-quantum-information-loss claim. But not being an expert in the field, I will continue reading and mulling over the issue. In any event it is interesting stuff to think about, especially when one needs a break from one's own workaday headaches. 'Trade one kind of headache for another!'

[URL="https://what-if.xkcd.com/34/"]Information theory:[/URL]
ewmayer: There is a horse on aisle five
xilman: my house is full of traps

[url]http://www.financialexpress.com/article/lifestyle/science/over-90-per-cent-seabirds-have-consumed-plastic-study/128816/[/url]

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;409332][URL]http://www.financialexpress.com/article/lifestyle/science/over-90-per-cent-seabirds-have-consumed-plastic-study/128816/[/URL][/QUOTE]

[QUOTE]“Finding such widespread estimates of plastic in seabirds is borne out by some of the fieldwork we’ve carried out where I’ve found nearly 200 pieces of plastic in a single seabird,” Hardesty said.[/QUOTE][URL="http://ocean.si.edu/slideshow/laysan-albatrosses%E2%80%99-plastic-problem"]http://ocean.si.edu/slideshow/laysan-albatrosses%E2%80%99-plastic-problem:no::down:[/URL]

[QUOTE=kladner;409341][URL="http://ocean.si.edu/slideshow/laysan-albatrosses%E2%80%99-plastic-problem"]http://ocean.si.edu/slideshow/laysan-albatrosses%E2%80%99-plastic-problem:no::down:[/URL][/QUOTE]

That makes me think of an idea that I suggested to my boys a few weeks back for the next Syfy monster flick. Some scientist could breed giant birds to clean up the plastic in the oceans, but the birds quickly find out that humans taste much better. The could call it "Gullzilla".

[QUOTE=rogue;409349]That makes me think of an idea that I suggested to my boys a few weeks back for the next Syfy monster flick. Some scientist could breed giant birds to clean up the plastic in the oceans, but the birds quickly find out that humans taste much better. The could call it "Gullzilla".[/QUOTE]
This wins the internet for the best Sharknado blended entertainment mashup. And it even has ecology, gastronomy, and possibly even evolutionary sub-themes. I'm betting it could also be used in schools to foster discussion.

[QUOTE=rogue;409349]That makes me think of an idea that I suggested to my boys a few weeks back for the next Syfy monster flick. Some scientist could breed giant birds to clean up the plastic in the oceans, [B]but the birds quickly find out that humans taste much better. The could call it "Gullzilla".[/B][/QUOTE]

We have it coming.

I am waiting for some entrepreneur to start harvesting plastic from the [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_gyre"]ocean gyres [/URL]
for re-refining.

[url]http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-heart-age-higher-than-chronological-age-20150901-story.html[/url]

[QUOTE=kladner;409368]I am waiting for some entrepreneur to start harvesting plastic from the [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_gyre"]ocean gyres [/URL]
for re-refining.[/QUOTE]

You need wait no more (at least for the entrepreneurs and their proposal to do just that):

[url=http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/24/us-usa-california-plastic-idUSKCN0QT0CR20150824]Researchers sample enormous oceanic trash vortex ahead of clean-up proposal[/url] | Reuters

[QUOTE=ewmayer;409378]You need wait no more (at least for the entrepreneurs and their proposal to do just that):

[url=http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/24/us-usa-california-plastic-idUSKCN0QT0CR20150824]Researchers sample enormous oceanic trash vortex ahead of clean-up proposal[/url] | Reuters[/QUOTE]

And there are a couple of names that going into production:
[url]http://www.dezeen.com/2015/07/08/adidas-parley-sports-shoe-alexander-taylor-recycled-ocean-plastic/[/url]

The Dutch project seems more likely to collect significant quantities of "stuff," were it to be implemented on a large enough scale. I wonder how they might handle the extreme range of particle sizes in the refuse.

I guess the Adidas item might be called 'consciousness-raising', but 'attention-getting' is equally descriptive.

[QUOTE=kladner;409389]I guess the Adidas item might be called 'consciousness-raising', but 'attention-getting' is equally descriptive.[/QUOTE]
Attention-getting is a prerequisite to consciousness-raising. Just sayin'...

[URL="http://io9.com/j-r-r-tolkiens-the-story-of-kullervo-will-be-published-1722964621?commerce_insets_disclosure=off&utm_expid=66866090-48.Ej9760cOTJCPS_Bq4mjoww.1&utm_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fio9.com%2Fj-r-r-tolkiens-the-story-of-kullervo-will-be-published-1722964621"]J.R.R. Tolkien's The Story of Kullervo Will Be Published In October[/URL]

[URL="http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/13/health/music-therapy-surgery-patients/"]Surgery patients hear benefits of music therapy loud and clear[/URL]

[URL="http://www.sci-news.com/othersciences/linguistics/science-mystery-words-gullivers-travels-03135.html"]Scientist Deciphers Mystery Words from Gulliver’s Travels[/URL]

[URL="http://singularityhub.com/2015/08/11/beyond-sight-the-gadgets-bringing-our-bodies-into-virtual-reality/"]Beyond Sight: The Gadgets Bringing Our Bodies Into Virtual Reality[/URL]

[URL="http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/sarah-snow/2015-06-05/how-emotional-power-color-can-tap-your-audiences-brains"]How the Emotional Power of Color Can Tap into Your Audiences' Brains[/URL]

[URL="http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/08/autism-history-aspergers-kanner-psychiatry/398903/"]Rewriting Autism History[/URL]

[URL="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/08/11/are-fingerprints-the-new-passwords-security-experts-sure-hope-not/"]Are fingerprints the new passwords? Security experts sure hope not.[/URL]

[URL="http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/study-your-choice-of-sleep-position-may-affect-your-brain/education"] Study: Your choice of sleep position may affect your brain[/URL]

[URL="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2015/jul/22/lego-prosthetic-arm-that-kids-can-hack-themselves"]The Lego prosthetic arm that children can create and hack themselves[/URL]

[URL="http://www.wired.com/2014/12/pubpeer-fights-for-anonymity/"]Scientific Peer Review Is Broken. We’re Fighting to Fix It With Anonymity[/URL]

[URL="http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/08/24/434313813/why-phone-fraud-starts-with-a-silent-call"]Why Phone Fraud Starts With A Silent Call[/URL]

[URL="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150827121928.htm"]To get girls more interested in computer science, make classrooms less 'geeky'[/URL]

[URL="http://phys.org/news/2015-08-diamonds-messages-deep-earth.html"]Cracking open diamonds for messages from the deep earth[/URL]

[URL="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/540841/when-virtual-reality-collides-with-reality-its-surreal/"]When Virtual Reality Collides with Reality, It’s Surreal[/URL]

[URL="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11821334/Cancer-cells-programmed-back-to-normal-by-US-scientists.html"]Cancer cells programmed back to normal by US scientists[/URL]

[URL="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/english-universal-language-science-research/400919/"]The Hidden Bias of Science’s Universal Language[/URL]

[URL="http://thenextweb.com/google/2015/08/11/what-does-googles-new-alphabet-mean-for-you/"]What does Google’s new Alphabet mean for you?[/URL]

[QUOTE=rogue;409410][lotsa links][/QUOTE]

"Rewriting Autism History" is a must-read, IMO. I wonder if the far-too-long-in-coming acceptance of Asperger's more-expansive view of autism as a broad spectrum is what is really behind the 'autism epidemic' scare of the past several decades, which is costing money, time and lives in a much broader sense, by way of its having incited an anti-vaccine hysteria.

And note the evil role (as ever) played by those pseudoscientific psycho-quacks, the Freudians.

New homonid discovery claim announced
 

The claims of a [URL="http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/10/new-species-of-ancient-human-discovered-claim-scientists"]new species[/URL] are questioned by some others in the field, who argue that fossils presented so far could be early homo erectus.

[QUOTE]A huge haul of bones found in a small, dark chamber at the back of a cave in [URL="http://www.theguardian.com/world/southafrica"]South Africa[/URL] may be the remnants of a new species of ancient human relative.



Explorers discovered the bones after squeezing through a fissure high in the rear wall of the [URL="http://www.maropeng.co.za/"]Rising Star cave[/URL], 50km from Johannesburg, before descending down a long, narrow chute to the chamber floor 40 metres beneath the surface.


The entrance chute into the Dinaledi chamber is so tight - a mere eight inches wide - that six lightly built female researchers were brought in to excavate the bones. Footage from their cameras was beamed along 3.5km of optic cable to a command centre above ground as they worked inside the cramped enclosure.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=kladner;410038][quote]The entrance chute into the Dinaledi chamber is so tight - a mere eight inches wide - that six lightly built female researchers were brought in to excavate the bones.[/quote][/QUOTE]
Sounds like a description of a Hollywood movie. :rolleyes:
[SPOILER]And of course there's rule 34.[/SPOILER]

[QUOTE=Batalov;410039]Sounds like a description of a Hollywood movie. :rolleyes:
[SPOILER]And of course there's rule 34.[/SPOILER][/QUOTE]

It is interesting that they could find women, but not men, who could pass the 8" test. I wonder what body part is likely to have the limiting dimension.

[QUOTE=kladner;410040]It is interesting that they could find women, but not men, who could pass the 8" test. I wonder what body part is likely to have the limiting dimension.[/QUOTE]In my experience, it's either the hips or the skull.

[QUOTE=xilman;410045]In my experience, it's either the hips or the skull.[/QUOTE]

I was thinking that males would be too big in the chest or shoulders, though the skull is certainly a contender.

@Above anthro-apologist 'Q: But how do you know it is a new species? A: It looks like one!' squabble:

Could not possibly be homo erectus ... as the article notes, the space was simply too cramped to stand up! (In, um, either direction, if ya get my drift, which rhymes with 'direction.')

With that settled, on to our next topic...forgot to quip at one item in the above "MarkR's latest laundry list of lovely links':

[QUOTE=rogue;409410][URL="http://io9.com/j-r-r-tolkiens-the-story-of-kullervo-will-be-published-1722964621?commerce_insets_disclosure=off&utm_expid=66866090-48.Ej9760cOTJCPS_Bq4mjoww.1&utm_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fio9.com%2Fj-r-r-tolkiens-the-story-of-kullervo-will-be-published-1722964621"]J.R.R. Tolkien's The Story of Kullervo Will Be Published In October[/URL][/QUOTE]

Ooh! Lemme guess, this one will feature annoyingly idealized magical humanoids not having sex? Or perhaps more inane skipping about and tra-la-la-la-ing by Tom frickin-Bombadil and his g/f? I still recall the piece of amusing doggerel some netizen wrote in response to Peter Jackson's very wise decision to excise all mention of Tom B. from his cinematic realization of LOTR:
[i]
Hi, ho, Tom Bombadil, hey, ho Tom Bombadil-lo,
Should've got yourself an agent, cos your onscreen time was nil-lo.[/i]

(Or something to that effect.)

Well it's gotta be more scientific than this discovery:
[URL="http://io9.com/5919849/newly-discovered-chinese-mushroom-turns-out-to-be-an-abandoned-sex-toy-semi-nsfw"]Newly discovered Chinese mushroom turns out to be an abandoned sex toy (semi-NSFW)[/URL]

[url]http://www.radiolab.org/story/shrink/[/url]

[QUOTE=xilman;410045]In my experience, it's either the hips or the skull.[/QUOTE]

That makes me feel incredibly claustrophobic. I have only experienced that in really tight squeezes at the thought 'what if I get stuck'. Clenches all the muscles real tight like…

[QUOTE=flagrantflowers;410120]That makes me feel incredibly claustrophobic. I have only experienced that in really tight squeezes at the thought 'what if I get stuck'. Clenches all the muscles real tight like…[/QUOTE]
Don't watch this then.
[url]http://i.imgur.com/ZxA5cHH.gif[/url]

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;410121]Don't watch this then. ...[/QUOTE]

I'm fine with that, it seems like the tight spot is right at the entrance. It's the idea of being completely enclosed in rock with one way out, backwards, or the hope of a way to turn around. I've never caved, just crawled 1-2 meters in tight limestone.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;410057]Or perhaps more inane skipping about and tra-la-la-la-ing by Tom frickin-Bombadil and his g/f?[/QUOTE]
Tom Bombadil in Tolkien's books is an important part of the gradual change from a story fit for children into more serious work, something which the films do not echo (simply presenting evil pictures from the start). It is his storytelling to the hobbits which begins to effect the change:
[QUOTE=Tolkien]
Suddenly Tom's talk left the woods and went leaping up the young stream, over bubbling waterfalls, over pebbles and worn rocks, and among small flowers in close grass and wet crannies, wandering at last up on to the Downs. They heard of the Great Barrows, and the green mounds, and the stone-rings upon the hills and in the hollows among the hills. Sheep were bleating in flocks. Green walls and white walls rose. There were fortresses on the heights. Kings of little kingdoms fought together, and the young Sun shone like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords. There was victory and defeat; and towers fell, fortresses were burned, and flames went up into the sky. Gold was piled on the biers of dead kings and queens; and mounds covered them, and the stone doors were shut; and the grass grew over all. Sheep walked for a while, biting the grass, but soon the hills were empty again. A shadow came out of dark places far away, and the bones were stirred in the mounds. Barrow-wights walked in the hollow places with a clink of rings on cold fingers, and gold chains in the wind. Stone rings grinned out of the ground like broken teeth in the moonlight.
[/QUOTE]
We encountered some of the names on a hike in North Devon.

Possibly interesting:
[QUOTE]Experimental loophole-free violation of a Bell inequality using entangled electron spins separated by 1.3 km
[/QUOTE]
Provisional version of paper: [URL]http://arxiv.org/abs/1508.05949[/URL]

[QUOTE=Nick;410484]Tom Bombadil in Tolkien's books is an important part of the gradual change from a story fit for children into more serious work, something which the films do not echo (simply presenting evil pictures from the start). It is his storytelling to the hobbits which begins to effect the change:

We encountered some of the names on a hike in North Devon.[/QUOTE]

If one gets deeper into the background, as in The Silmarillion, the question arises as to just what Bombadil is. It seems plain that he is of a similar order of immortals as the wizards. It is at the end of Return of the King that Gandalf says of Bombadil, "He is a moss-gatherer, and I have been a stone doomed to rolling." I won't go all Tolkien-theological on you, but I agree that Tom Bombadil is more than a buffoon with his stream-of-consciousness babble. The last word is not pejorative, in this case, as brooks are also said to babble. Bombadil is some kind of animating (or regulating) spirit of nature, so fractals in his speech should not be surprising.

EDIT: I note with chagrin that the creator of the graphic misspelled the name of the book.

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;410121]Don't watch this then.
[url]http://i.imgur.com/ZxA5cHH.gif[/url][/QUOTE]
I think this is one instance where me repeating the name of the Lord ISN'T swearing.

That was scarier than the vast majority of horror movies I've seen.

My worst nightmares have always involved tight spaces and things chasing me. And horror movies where somebody has to experience that always make me involuntarily vocalize. Not scream, mind you, sounds more like muffled pain imo.

[url]http://phys.org/news/2015-09-greater-precision.html[/url]
They've confirmed the speed of light is consistent ten times more precisely than ever before. And I think they're going for even more precision with the same experiment.

Makes me wonder how close they are to the theoretical limit of precision. Is Planck time and Planck length related when it comes to the speed of light?

[QUOTE=jasong;410624]Is Planck time and Planck length related when it comes to the speed of light?[/QUOTE]

yep:
[QUOTE="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time"]It is the time required for light to travel, in a vacuum, a distance of 1 Planck length.[1] [/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=science_man_88;410626]yep:[/QUOTE]
Ahhh, nice.

I guess that's related to their precision numbers. I'll have to read the article again, see if I can figure out how close they are to the theoretical limit of precision.

The article said they have precision down t o 18 digits, a billionth of a billionth. And they're trying to make things even more precise.

It seems to be that technology breakthroughs are based on finding small exceptions to physics rules and exploiting them. Even if the speed of light is the same under normal conditions, maybe now is the time to start attempting ways to break the rules and make things happen that wouldn't normally happen.

[QUOTE=jasong;410624]Is Planck time and Planck length related when it comes to the speed of light?[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=science_man_88;410626]yep:[/QUOTE]
The meter should be defined by the Planck length, not by light. This would be a better foundation. :two cents:

BTW: Jason, I personal have been stuck in a pipe before. I had previously gone through it and had grown too large.

We got "stuck" in an MRI machine once. The walls were less than an inch away. When they started the test the machine started clacking real loud. (Apparently this is normal.) We freaked out and hit the "bail" button but that button was really just a notice to the operator to let us out, and they took a very long time to do it. We did not complete the test and if we ever need an MRI in the future we will probably have to be heavily sedated first.

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;410725]We got "stuck" in an MRI machine once. The walls were less than an inch away. When they started the test the machine started clacking real loud. (Apparently this is normal.) We freaked out and hit the "bail" button but that button was really just a notice to the operator to let us out, and they took a very long time to do it. We did not complete the test and if we ever need an MRI in the future we will probably have to be heavily sedated first.[/QUOTE]

That is indeed normal, that's the sounds of the machine's metal undergoing the severe stress induced by the extremely strong magnetic fields. Although scary as hell, it is indeed normal.

[QUOTE=Dubslow;410741]That is indeed normal, that's the sounds of the machine's metal undergoing the severe stress induced by the extremely strong magnetic fields. Although scary as hell, it is indeed normal.[/QUOTE]I've found my MRI scans rather pleasant, which it seems, is not normal.

To me they take place while I'm cocooned in a comfortable gently lit secure environment listening to something which sounds like music written by Stockhausen and performed by Kraftwerk.

Very relaxing, not scary as hell.

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;410714]The meter should be defined by the Planck length, not by light. This would be a better foundation. :two cents:[/QUOTE]Presumably you realise that the Planck scale is partly defined by the speed of light, right?

The other physical constants which go into it are G and \hbar. Using them and c one can produce a dimensionless quantity which defines the Planck scale. Planck units are then defined in terms of that scale.

Details left as an exercise for the reader.

We still have to fix the mass constant. In more than one way. First, get rid of the physical artefact. And second get rid of that kilo- prefix: grams, only grams, nothing but grams.

[QUOTE=xilman;410753]I've found my MRI scans rather pleasant, which it seems, is not normal.[/QUOTE]

It must be your personal magnetism!

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;410725]We got "stuck" in an MRI machine once. The walls were less than an inch away. When they started the test the machine started clacking real loud. (Apparently this is normal.) We freaked out and hit the "bail" button but that button was really just a notice to the operator to let us out, and they took a very long time to do it. We did not complete the test and if we ever need an MRI in the future we will probably have to be heavily sedated first.[/QUOTE]
When I took the test years ago, the button was actually a squeezable bag that pushed air through "something" that was very loud.

So if you're freaking out and the button looks like it contains air, continuous squeezing will get faster reactions and possibly rude language.

[url]http://phys.org/news/2015-09-redefine-chemistry.html[/url]

Thought you guys might be interested in this, I'm not educated enough to really understand the differences.

[url]http://www.techtimes.com/articles/86266/20150919/supermoon-lunar-eclipse-to-occur-on-sept-27-what-makes-this-celestial-event-special.htm[/url]

[url]http://www.natureworldreport.com/2015/09/tree-of-life-containing-2-3-million-species-released/[/url]