Subject: Big, big, BIG (science) news
Date: Mon Jun 15 22:19:05 2020
User: ix
Message:from wiki:
To a distant observer, clocks near a black hole would appear to tick more slowly than those further away from the black hole. Due to this effect, known as gravitational time dilation, an object falling into a black hole appears to slow as it approaches the event horizon, taking an infinite time to reach it. At the same time, all processes on this object slow down, from the view point of a fixed outside observer, causing any light emitted by the object to appear redder and dimmer, an effect known as gravitational redshift. Eventually, the falling object fades away until it can no longer be seen. Typically this process happens very rapidly with an object disappearing from view within less than a second.
i don't know how i never saw that, which answers a couple of my questions. so if we were observing a star being munched, but it takes forever to happen, when are gravitational waves generated? i can't reconcile the "taking an infinite time to reach it" with "this process happens very rapidly". don't worry too much about it, i just like asking questions. i'm never going to get it, ix's wind.
Date: Mon Jun 15 22:49:17 2020
User: TNmountainman
Message:Ok then.....
And the waves come from the circling/orbiting process, not the gobbling per se. As I understand it, the perturbations (of space/time) as this process is ongoing are what are thrown out into the ether, that eventually reach us and our puny detectors. It's a bit more complicated than that, tho, because that process is ongoing. So it must be that certain specific, unusual 'events' trigger the blips. I guess it has to do with those polarization events noted earlier.
Date: Mon Jun 15 23:35:56 2020
User: ix
Message:cool, thanx!
Date: Tue Jun 16 11:43:27 2020
User: A_Briefs_Wind
Message:To Mr TNMM
Once again I will try to get you to admit something relevant to our fraudulent/exaggerated/inappropriate response to the coronavirus.
We'll try baby steps this time. Using your reference, I will ask if you understand a portion of that reference and hope you will discuss it.
The reference is the ACEP/AAEM letter against the ideas and evidence of Doctor Erickson and Doctor Massihi from Bakersfield California.
This is from the ACEP "Additional Information" addendum to the joint statement.
http://archive.li/7yZ51
Quoted - "Another concerning misuse of data include comparisons to the flu despite different methodology for calculating deaths. Comparing flu deaths and COVID-19 deaths are apples and oranges until the same methodology of calculating flu deaths is applied to COVID-19 deaths."
What does the "apples to oranges" mean?
What "methodology for calculating deaths" is ACEP talking about? (I thing they should have said "methodologies")
Hint... there are two.
Hint... they both have the word "Rate" in them.
Hint... one is relied on DURING flu season to gauge the details of how the variety of flus are progressing (in addition to fatality/mortality/virulence, the 26 CDC clinical labs gather info on # of flu illnesses/cases, hospitalizations, deaths, mutations, and more).
Hint... the CDC gathers this information in small population studies, which it then uses to EXTRAPOLATE the results to the entire USA population... every year since 1974.
Pieces of the answer are covered in the above reading assignment.
It is your job to find them and discuss them, calmly, coherently and competently - like Drs Erickson and Massihi do during their multiple press briefings and interviews.
Date: Tue Jun 16 11:44:20 2020
User: A_Briefs_Wind
Message:ooops... wrong discussion. I HATE getting old.
Date: Tue Jun 16 12:17:55 2020
User: A_Briefs_Wind
Message:Regarding the red shift comment in your first post.
I think the shift we see depends on which side of the falling object you are on.
Say the falling object is a star, plummeting directly on a straight line into the black hole.
If you were between the black hole and the star (falling with, but ahead of, the star) , which way would you expect the light to be shifted?
I think that is the red shift.
If you were following the star to the black hole, I believe the light from the star would be blue-shifted.
If you were stationary (relative to the gobbling that was about to happen) and observing from a distance, I think there would be red shift due to the speed of the star away from you, and blue shift thru the black hole's gravitational pull.
Even if that's true, I don't have a clue as to how to calculate who wins that tug of war on the light and which way the shift would go.
For the sake of the relativity discussion, I will appear to agree that time exists.
It doesn't, the only moment we have is now (the same moment throughout the universe), and we have change. Our memories/projections fool us into thinking that there is a fourth dimension of time.
I think you misunderstand the time-dilation. Measured time would certainly slow on the ship approaching a black hole (and a lot more would be happening), and any passengers would live for an eternity on that ship, if they could live that long.
But time doesn't slow down for us as observers, and the time-frozen ship/object will simply be gobbled up efficiently and effectively.
Date: Thu Jul 9 14:10:07 2020
User: TNmountainman
Message:This isn't exactly *ancient* archeo-anthropology, but it *is* a topic which has been very controversial and interesting over the years.
Does this give another alternative to the tidbits of Denisovan DNA found in a few S.A. samples? Could Polynesians or Micronesians with Densivovan DNA have come over the Pacific and the DNA gotten to S.A. that way (instead of the prevailing theory of Beringia)? Fascinating questions...
Link: Polynesia-South American contacts hundreds of years ago
Date: Wed Oct 14 14:47:44 2020
User: Klepp
Message:This is a BIG step forward toward ambient (and someday soon non-lab) superconductivity.
Link: 59 degrees Fahrenheit!
Date: Wed Oct 14 15:45:11 2020
User: TNmountainman
Message:On the one hand, it's big news, but another way to look at it is that it's (to some extent) just 'attacking' (exploiting) another point on the phase diagram.
“They may not have quite appreciated that when we did it, we were going to do it at such high pressures.”
Nevertheless, it furthers our understanding of those processes. One would think that by now we'd know most things about materials science. But we don't. There's so many different kinds of minerals/metals, and so many different variables.
I almost posted recently about an improvement in a layered kind of flexible photovoltaic compound, that has the potential to vastly improve the conversion of light to electricity, but there are still so many toxicity issues surrounding it that I didn't bother. For example....
Date: Wed Oct 14 15:58:43 2020
User: TNmountainman
Message:For those unfamiliar with Cooper pairs, discussed in Klepp's post's link, see hyperlink below. It's a very, very hard thing to grasp unless one is *really* sharp on quantum effects in this type of system. (And I'm not.)
It's *kinda* related to the Bose-Einstein condensate...........but let's not go there.
Link: Cooper pairs
Date: Wed Oct 14 17:14:59 2020
User: sgmsgmsgm
Message:I knew those diamond anvils I had laying around in the back of the shed would come in handy one day.
Date: Wed Oct 14 20:25:31 2020
User: hotnurse
Message:Not to go off topic a bit fromTN's link but today marked the last time that the US would pay the Russian space program to carry an astronaut to the Space Station. I don't have a link to add for this.
Date: Wed Oct 14 23:07:43 2020
User: Kaos
Message:I was going to post the same item. Super conductivity at 59f is huge news. The same group had earlier broken the record by achieving superconductivity at 23f so they are on a roll.
Hopefully, this team can figure out how to drop the pressure next
Date: Thu Oct 15 03:30:31 2020
User: Kumquat-of-Conciliation
Message:It would also be great news if we could all achieve greater conciliation with temperature scales, and forget the archaic Fahrenheit scale. This kind of news should really be reported in Kelvin, of course (mostly just for historical reasons), but for now that's apparently a thermocoupling too far.
Date: Mon May 3 14:40:22 2021
User: TNmountainman
Message:This will be bigger news long-term than immediately, but the point is that this capability will open up a whole new chapter of being able to 'trace' our ancient lineages. No telling where it will lead, information-wise. Myself and others assumed/wondered/hoped this would happen, but it's a very difficult process to prove you've done the work correctly. Those dudes and dudettes at the Max Planck Institute are *beyond* world-class (as they *are* in a league by themselves). Nobody can do the things they've been doing for many years now. Mind-blowing, actually.
Link: Nuclear DNA recovered from cave dirt
Date: Thu Sep 23 16:57:41 2021
User: TNmountainman
Message:This is a very big deal for those who're interested in the archeo-anthropology of this hemisphere. Over the last 5 years or so, there has been a gathering of bits of data and semi-anecdotal evidence that this side of the world had had human residents earlier than "the standard model". The stuff from Brazil, and Andes, Mexico, and other spots, but this seems to be awfully strong evidence.
"It's the first unequivocal site and a good data point that places people in the American southwest around the last glacial maximum," Bennett said......."That's the important point because it allows you to look at the older sites, the more controversial sites, with a different light."
If this gathers more evidence and weight, A LOT of books will have to be re-written. I kinda thought this was gonna happen, but didn't know when. Remember my wondering earlier in this thread about the Denisovan DNA in a few folks in S.A.
It'll be a long, long time before we have the whole big picture, but it's just exciting being alive at this time with all the new discoveries being made in this field (and others, too, of course).
Link: more evidence of earlier homo occupation of this hemisphere
Date: Thu Sep 23 19:31:06 2021
User: Klepp
Message:Seafarers along the America's western coastline circa 30k BCE...all the way down the coast (likely) *before* all the way into America's heartland?
Date: Thu Sep 23 20:38:05 2021
User: TNmountainman
Message:Quite possibly, as there have been some indications of a presence all the way down to Tierra del Fuego, altho I don't remember the particulars off the top of my head. And then there's that really crazy stuff from the San Diego area - much doubted and disputed.
Date: Tue May 10 22:28:28 2022
User: Kaos
Message:Huge news.
Tomorrow on PBS Nova at 9pm in the USA they are airing a video about the day a huge asteroid struck the Earth 66 million years ago and killed over 99%! of every living thing on the planet. We get David Attenborough as the narrator. We get the politics of a paleontologist dismissed by the “mainstream” paleontologists because he went to the wrong schools and resorted to “unseemly” ways to make a living. We get a (hugely successful) pulp fiction writer who helped bring the whole story to life. It’s the second biggest scientific story of the century (behind CRISPR)
I can only hope it lives up to my expectations.
Date: Tue May 10 22:34:25 2022
User: Klepp
Message:This is the big azz hole the thing made...
Link: Chicxulub crater
Date: Tue May 10 23:04:12 2022
User: Kaos
Message:Wait, make that 99.9999% of every living thing on the planet. Yet, the remaining 0.0001% of everything that survived was enough to create the incredible tapestry of life that survives until today.
Date: Wed May 11 02:33:57 2022
User: TNmountainman
Message:The discovery of the Tanis site in North Dakota is utterly fascinating, esp. if confirmed to be the *immediate* result of Chicxulub. I'm sure the show will discuss the pros and cons of that. It's *almost* as unbelievable as the finding a few years ago of the girl who had mixed parents: one Neanderthal and one Denisovan. How ridiculous are those odds!!
Date: Wed May 11 14:45:20 2022
User: BuzzClik
Message:>>>TN: "the finding a few years ago of the girl who had mixed parents: one Neanderthal and one Denisovan. How ridiculous are those odds!!"
A couple of star-crossed lovers who actually got their stars uncrossed:
What's in a name?
That which we call a Protea cynaroides
By any other name would smell like feet
Date: Thu May 12 01:11:39 2022
User: Kaos
Message:Woah. David Attenborough needs to retire. It’s hard to imagine a more boring rendition of such a fantastic story. Let Douglas Preston write it and Peter Coyote narrate. DA fails on both fronts. Sigh.
Date: Thu May 12 01:33:58 2022
User: Kaos
Message:Well, I’m sorry I recommended this. Just another case of the movie being way worse (in this case way,way, way worse) than the book. The only good thing is that the gamble Douglas Preston took in writing this story in the New Yorker now seems to have a broader scientific approval.
Date: Thu May 12 02:08:39 2022
User: TNmountainman
Message:I didn't know it was gonna be 2 shows, back-to-back. As the first one was ending, I thought "Gee........only the last 10 minutes was what was 'advertised'. But the second hour had a bit more meat, but not remotely approaching the depth of said article you and I commented on just over 3 years ago in this thread (page 2, mostly Mar. 29-30).
I *guesssss* the scientific community has grown to be more accepting of dePalma's theory in the last 3 years. At least I'm unaware of any strong or significant accepted rebuttals (altho they could easily exist). I think this was Nova just "catching us up to speed" - except that "up to speed" isn't current. (Altho the angle of implosion is relatively new data, and they included that.) I've been slowly being less excited by Nova the last couple of years or so. Maybe less hard science and a more popularized product?
I didn't think Attenborough was all *that* bad. But there was far too much animation and "personalizing" (with multiple critters) the story at the expense of details. Nova, like all too many shows of various ilks, seems like they have a need to 'use' modern graphics tools, just because they can, I guess, whether it enhances things or not. I would really liked to have had an update on how dePalma is currently viewed, but they didn't wanna go near that question.
Nova is still one of the best shows on TV - but it's certainly not the science stalwart it used to be.
BTW............I have no idea on what channel, but there was an earlier show on this, maybe 1.5-2 yrs. ago? Some of the footage even looked the same. Is it possible Attenborough did this earlier, on something like BBC, and they re-packaged and updated it for Nova? I kept wondering the whole time where I had seen some bits of it before.
But the original "New Yorker" article still stands strong, and "good on ya" for posting it back then. And you know.........sadly, we've already learned that not all science-aware folks keep up-to-date on things by reading this board. So likely there were some viewers for whom this was news.
Date: Thu May 12 02:57:45 2022
User: _.!._
Message:Miss the days when "part 1 of 2" was actually written out in TV Guide BEFORE you watched. One actually had the choice to watch a 2-parter.
Date: Thu May 12 13:16:36 2022
User: Klepp
Message:Peter Coyote *is* a fabulous narrator; he was also good in that late eighties movie the name I can't recall in which he portrayed a seafaring, wealthy, disabled madman with a really really attractive girlfriend...I think it was Polanski film...
Date: Thu May 19 21:03:01 2022
User: Klepp
Message:Not necessarily really big news, interesting to some nevertheless...
I recall geeking over the WOW! signal as a kid...
Link: Wow! signal explained after 40 years?
Date: Mon May 30 19:04:33 2022
User: _.!._
Message:Gotta get back later and read this! Would be a HUGE breakthrough if possible.
Date: Mon May 30 23:23:22 2022
User: Kaos
Message:So, read an article several weeks ago that cast an ENORMOUS downer on fusion reactors. Apparently, there’s not enough tritium on the planet to make any of the current technology pay off (the reactors are fueled with a mix of tritium and deuterium). The major source of Tritium is fission reactors and these are being phased out. We’d need deuterium-only reactors to make fusion work
Date: Tue May 31 02:15:08 2022
User: TNmountainman
Message:Here's a pretty decent recounting of the overall situation.
Like many here..................actual, usable fusion power has *always* been about 15-20 years away - even from the late '70s and '80s. Reminds one of the Soviet 5-year plans that kept stretching out into (seeming) infinity. I came close to going into that research - altho I'm not sure 'they' would have ultimately taken me on.
Link: Tritium shortage - is there another way?
Date: Tue May 31 04:19:51 2022
User: _.!._
Message:TNmountainman,Too funny,yet way too sad.
Date: Tue May 31 04:48:50 2022
User: TNmountainman
Message:The link posted by RottinJohn above has many pics which do an adequate job of showing the utter immensity of scale of this thing.
Date: Fri Aug 5 04:13:35 2022
User: TNmountainman
Message:Ok, these two items are VERY big deals, if they turn out to be accurate. Refer back above to some discussion from last year, if you've forgotten the background. Concerning human habitation of/migration to this hemisphere much earlier than "the standard model". Maybe at some point soon they can recover some nuclear DNA from this area. Maybe a long shot, but those techniques have come a *long* way. This article linked below is probably more important than the following I'll post, but they both could be revolutionary.
I happen to know this area; it's near the Jemez caldera and Jemez Pueblo. One of my favorite parts of N.M.
Link: WAY before Clovis??
Date: Fri Aug 5 04:25:40 2022
User: TNmountainman
Message:And then last year, this news was in "Science":
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg7586
(original journal article for those who want to dig deeper)
And below I link a lay version. The evidence for much earlier migration from Asia keeps on slowly accumulating. I'm just betting, with a low confidence level, that the hot shots at Max Planck can get some DNA from this area at some point, even if it's just nuclear. Fascinating.
Link: ancient footprints
Date: Sat Aug 6 02:00:41 2022
User: Klepp
Message:Excavating and assaying old history is pretty cool, especially when it's sort of in our backyard.
Date: Mon Sep 19 17:48:27 2022
User: Klepp
Message:Bucket List: understand this to whatever extent I possibly can...as yet: frustration (mingled with profound awe)...
Link: A Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser
Date: Tue Sep 20 03:52:41 2022
User: TNmountainman
Message:You posted something else about delayed-choice quantum eraser(s) a while back - maybe just the wiki article? Anyway, that's incredibly hard stuff to conceptualize. Cause and effect can be tricky and hard to untangle (pun obviously intended) sometimes. To my knowledge, we haven't yet had a Nobel Prize in Physics winner on this board yet - altho I'm not positive firenze or Helen haven't. (And of course Cubic Sprock could win 2-3 if he wanted. I think ix could, too, but he gets too easily distracted by the far more practical engineering issues; maybe he could share one if he built/invented a better double-slit apparatus.)
But really.........how much harder is it to 'believe' that (the delayed choice) could happen, than just believing that something/everything *did* (apparently) come from "nothing" other than 'mere' quantum fluctuations?
As Einstein quipped.........."Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we CAN imagine." And that's proven true over and over since he threw that out.
I do think that if you truly achieve that item on your bucket list, then you could quite possibly be the first Nobel Prize winner in Physics on this board (to my knowledge).
Date: Tue Sep 20 04:56:50 2022
User: TNmountainman
Message:As to the telomeres.........they've always fascinated me. Not to get too pseudo-religious here.............but IF one wanted to design a being that would live a very long time (relatively speaking, compared to an amoeba, for example), but not forever................wouldn't that be a cool way to do it? There's a certain elegance in how that works.
As to that paper, while it's cool what they discovered about that, the biggest thing to come out of it may be the technique. Indeed, "structure is the holy grail" (in this parlance; there are other holy grails, too). We've (as humans) been forced to learn more about that with this recent (and ongoing) 'plague'. But that's been more about surfaces, and things protruding from them. But not completely. There's spatial 3-D orientation, too. Sooo much of ongoing drug development and disease-cure techniques depend on learning more about how proteins fold, how and where cross-linking happens, etc. This should be a boost to that, altho with AI on the scene, drug development (at least in terms of candidates) has already jumped. But also imagine if/when this could be applied to epigenetics. This technique just screams "apply to epigenetics!" - which I'm sure they and others will.
Date: Tue Sep 20 14:24:13 2022
User: Klepp
Message:I think I've read about recent experiments of the same vein, streeeeeetching the timeline (distance) between the necessary junctions (remote island in the Pacific and some other lab ~2000 miles away) and the outcome bears out the discrepancy far, far longer than the 8ns in the Kim experiments...possibly up near microsecond discrepancy...i.e., synched-up clocks, and such...unreal to think of such things with entangled particles mega-parsec distances removed...
And oh yeah, the more I read about telomeres, the more I think my otherwise sensible, albeit torpid, non-athletic lifestyle will in the end last longer than somebody jamming away on weights, ripping muscle, to renew muscle...
Date: Fri Sep 23 15:00:00 2022
User: Kaos
Message:Well, not sure if this is Big Science news but at least Interesting (maybe we need to do a mash-up of the "interesting sports tid-bits" and "Big, big, BIG science news" threads).
Seems a team at the Univ. of Wisconsin has noodled out how to 3D print high-end stainless steel. Turns out the secret was synchrotron X-ray diffraction. No wonder this didn't happen years ago. IMHO, materials science is one of the underappreciated branches of the sciences. All sorts of research is being done across many materials to find better ways to build the stuff we use every day.
Link: 3D printing concurs Stainless Steel
Date: Fri Sep 23 15:03:23 2022
User: Kaos
Message:This was another story in the materials science world that I first encountered in the Michigan Engineering magazine a few months back but didn't get around to posting. Another Big Ten school made a breakthrough in developing windows that are at least reasonably efficient in generator solar power.
Link: Windows that generate solar power
Date: Tue Sep 27 11:13:58 2022
User: BuzzClik
Message:That was a remarkable bit of science; the cosmic equivalent of spitting through a keyhole from the neighbor's house.
That being said, NASA recently has been doing great science behind the veneer of Hollywood-styled hype. The latest Mars rover landing was a masterpiece and will be doing important, high quality work, but the NASA spokesperson on the day of the landing repeatedly emphasized that the mission would be looking for signs of life. That was part of the previous missions, but the NASA scientists never felt the need to trumpet it.
In Kaos's video, the giddiness during the moments up to impact bordered on silly, and the jumping around by the control-room crew was bizarre. As they say in sports, "Act like you've been here before."
Date: Wed Sep 28 04:49:44 2022
User: Kumquat-of-Conciliation
Message:Oh good gracious. Bored much? Landau is not a scientist, no. She wasn't claiming *she* detected gravity waves. But she has degrees from Princeton and Columbia. And she's been published in Scientific American. And could you please remind us again of your degrees and publication record? I seem to have forgotten.......
And are you questioning the reality of gravity waves? That discovery earned 3 guys the Nobel Prize in Physics -- uh, five years ago. And obviously justified TNmountainman's titling this thread as he did - a full 2.5 years before that award. Just sayin'.
I'm not gonna engage you; just pointing out the absurdity of your post. Which really didn't me to demonstrate that, to be honest. Kinda speaks for itself. But maybe you could have started a comedy thread with your post, Mr. "shy and humble".
Post follow-up