# Conversation and Fun > Just Conversation >  Science and technology updates from rinselberg

## rinselberg

*Private donors stepping forward to fund "edgy" physics experiment involving light*

An assortment of private donors is chipping in to help fund a physics experiment with the objective of transcending conventional ideas about the directionality of time.



The private donors are pinch-hitting for more traditional patrons like NASA and  DoD that were unwilling or unable to "pony up".

Public donates to UW scientist to fund "backward-in-time" research

Physics experiment by UW researchers will attempt to send photon forward in time

_For more background, see Personals: Ambitious physics experiment looking for $20,000 relationship and "Landmark" experiment with light delves into mysteries of quantum physics._

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## rinselberg

One of the world's top fossil hunters [has] unveiled a previously unknown, gigantic, chicken-like dinosaur ... and the discovery could change some ideas about the evolutionary relationships among prehistoric animals.

The remains of the animal, [which is] thought to have weighed 3,100 pounds [when it died] ... were discovered in ... Inner Mongolia, an area rich with fossils ...



The new species, Gigantoraptor erlianensis, is the largest bird-like dinosaur ever discovered, and at a height of 17 feet is comparable in size to the iconic predatory dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex ...

_For more, see the reports from MSNBC and the Discovery Channel._

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## rinselberg

The world's most ambitious particle collider  which scientists hope will reveal the ultimate secrets of mass and energy  might not be fully functional until [sometime in 2008], months after its previously scheduled startup date, according to a recent disclosure from the European Organization for Nuclear Research.


[youtube]WvEK5uZXpZU[/youtube]

_Particle Physics For Dummies: This BBC segment, "The Six Billion Dollar Experiment", runs for 7 minutes and highlights the Large Hadron Collider and how it may (or may not) resolve the 40-year old quest for the elusive Higgs boson, which some scientists have called the "God" particle._


Scientists have been scrambling to redesign a key U.S.-built component  located in a tunnel deep beneath the Swiss and French countryside outside Geneva  that broke "with a loud bang and a cloud of dust" during a high-pressure engineering test [in April ...] But time doesn't stand still, even for the world's undisputed A-team of particle physicists. Here's the lead-in of a new report by James Owen Weatherall at Slate:




> Some call the Higgs boson the Holy Grail of particle physics. As the only undetected element of the field's theoretical masterpiecethe Standard Modelthe Higgs [particle] guarantees a Nobel Prize for the experimenters who find it first. Now the European Union has spent an estimated $8 billion to build the world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, to finally track it down ... but what if someone else has already found it?





_The Standard Model of particle physics: Has the experimental evidence for the Higgs boson already been produced? Graphic: Fermilab._



New and improved: "unparticle" physics

Howard Georgi, a particle physicist at Harvard University, recently published an article on so-called "unparticle" physics, which suggests the existence of unparticle stuff that cannot be accounted for by the Standard Model. Appearing in a recent edition of Physical Review Letters, the article says that unparticle stuff would be very different than anything ever seen before. Georgi thinks that data from the Large Hadron Collider - after it transitions to running science experiments - may support his ideas, which he explains with a battery of sciencey phrases like "continuous scale-invariance" and "distribution for a fractional number of massless particles".

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## rinselberg

"Rounder is better ..." Master optician Achim Leistner checks the machining of one of two "perfect" spheres of crystallized silicon that will be used to develop a new international standard for one kilogram of mass. The objective is to arrive at a standard unit of mass that is equal to an exact, empirically determined number of Silicon-28 atoms. The original kilogram standard, a metal bar cast from an alloy of iridium and platinum, kept in a vault in France since 1889, is deteriorating as it gradually corrodes.

For the complete MSNBC report:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19253544/from/RS.3/

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## rinselberg

*Engineering milestone achieved in development of Liquid Mirror Telescope technology.*



_A 2-inch diameter Liquid Mirror using an ionic liquid coated with a thin layer of silver._


NASA mulls concept of large, moon-based scientific telescope with deep-space capabilities beyond anything currently in the development pipeline.

Liquid Mirror technology viewed as most cost-effective path to ultra-precision optics for new deep-space observatories.

_For the complete MSNBC report:
_http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19337520/

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## cocoisland58

Ok, now the Time Travel thing is waaaay cool.  How fascinating. My step son is in grad school for math.  I can't even talk to him anymore his head is so full of this kind of stuff.

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## ksquared

Personally....I have always wondered about physics. How do these very smart scientists reach their conclusions. How does the process work..for those those of you who have wondered the same, question no more .....

A theoretical physicist coming to work one morning met a bleary eyed experimental physicist. "What happened to you? You look terrible."

The experimental physicist replied, "Oh, I've been up all night, but it was worth it because I now have enough data to show that parameter A is greater than parameter B."

"Oh, that's not so hard.", countered the theoretical physicist. "I could easily prove that A must be greater than B."

"Did I say A greater than B? I'm so sorry, I'm so tired I mixed it up. I meant to say B greater than A."

"Well", replied the theoretical physicist, "that is even easier to prove!"

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## rinselberg

How does your investment portfolio stack up with respect to metallurgy and non-ferrous metals?

Construction of the $12 billion ITER experimental fusion reactor is just around the corner at Cadarache, in the southern region of France.

The plan is for the international R&D facility to be running on all eight cylinders (so to speak) by 2016.

The largest requisition of specialty metals will be for austenitic stainless steel. After that, beryllium, tungsten, niobium, cobalt, titanium and carbon fiber composites are needed in quantity - some 23,000 tons of "high tech stuff". The project can be expected to have an impact on world financial markets as it draws on the inventories and production capacities for high-tech alloys and carbon composites.





Select ("click") the thumbnail to enlarge. At the bottom of the schematic is a figure of a technician to illustrate the imposing scale of the eight-story high reactor facility.


If nuclear fusion is developed into a viable method for large-scale electrical generation - and that's still a very big "if" - it's not expected to start feeding the world's power grids before 2040 at the earliest.


MSNBC Cosmic Log:
How far away is fusion?

Keay Davidson, San Francisco Chronicle:
Construction begins on one of the largest machines ever ...

ITER: International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor
Home Page

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## chip anderson

Reiselburg:  Neuclear Fission already furnishes most of the rest of he _developed_ world's power.  The only reason it doesn't furnish ours is we got wossy after Chernoble and 3 Mile island.

Chip

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## rinselberg

By Dave Mosher
LiveScience Staff writer

Updated: 10:53 a.m. PT June 29, 2007

*[A new NASA satellite has recorded the first detailed images from space of a little-understood effect in the earth's upper atmosphere known as noctilucent or "night-shining" clouds.]*

The clouds are on the move, brightening and creeping out of polar regions, and researchers don't know why.

"It is clear that these clouds are changing, a sign that a part of our atmosphere is changing and we do not understand how, why or what it means," said atmospheric scientist James Russell III of Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia. "These observations suggest a connection with global change in the lower atmosphere and could represent an early warning that our Earth environment is being changed." ...

Source:
http://www.livescience.com/environme...ht_clouds.html

Select ("click") the images below to enlarge.



This image shows one of the first ground sightings of noctilucent clouds in the 2007 season over Budapest, Hungary on June 15, 2007. Credit: Veres Viktor/NASA.


On June 11, 2007 the cameras on the AIM satellite returned some of the first data documenting noctilucent clouds over the Arctic regions of Europe and North America. White and light blue represent noctilucent cloud structures. Black indicates areas where no data is available. Credit: Cloud Imaging and Particle Size Experiment data processing team at the University of Colorado Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.

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## rinselberg

Recent reports from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and UC Berkeley highlight a startling possibility: Surpassing the resolution limit inherent to optical microscopy with a new kind of light microscope.

The focusing ability of even the most sophisticated optical microscopes has always been limited by the wavelength of visible light; i.e. approximately 500 nanometers. This has been partly surmounted by electron microscopes that "see" nanoscale objects like viruses (10 to 300 nanometers in scale) by capturing the reflections of electrons instead of light waves.

Using exotic "superlens" materials that convert traveling light waves to so-called "evanescent" waves, physicists are on the road to developing optical microscopes capable of focusing all the way down to 50 nanometers: An order of magnitude improvement that would extend optical resolution into the realm of viruses and nanoparticles, unlocking new capabilites for medical researchers and nanotech engineers and raising the possibility of CDs and DVDs with 10, 100 or even 1000 times the current data capacity.

For more details, see these recent online reports from Scientific American and UC Berkeley. For more background on evanescent waves, see this online animation from Olympus American Incorporated. For an earlier discussion of this topic on OptiBoard, see Berkeley scientists create "superlens" (2005).

[MOVEL]Are you reading more posts and enjoying it less?[/MOVEL]

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## rinselberg

What's your impression of that most iconic of dinosaurs: Tyrannosaurus rex ..? Was T. rex a fleet-footed, agile and incredibly lethal predator? Or was it more "show than go"; i.e. a slow, lumbering scavenger, well adapted for feeding on large carcasses, but largely incapable of tracking down live prey: along the lines of a prehistoric garbage collection truck?



_Source: United States Dinosaur Postage Stamps._


Debates like this have been simmering among paleontologists for decades.

Have you ever seen T. rex depicted as anything but a solitary animal, aside from a suggestion of brief assignations with one of the opposite sex for the purpose of reproduction? And what about a young T. rex: Just a scaled-down version of Big Daddy?

A surprisingly new characterization of this legendary species is currently taking hold among a number of paleontologists and evolutionary biologists. It's being presented on the Science Channel's "Mammals vs. Dinos" series, comprising two one-hour TV segments. It's being pieced together from a variety of sources, including skeletal dispositions from newly discovered sites; recognition of yearly growth patterns in fossilized bones; recovery and analysis of T. rex proteins; analysis of bite-marks on fossil skeletons; measurements of bite-force using live alligators; and reassessments of the strength and function of certain parts of the T. rex anatomy.

According to the new script, T. rex was actually a prehistoric "family guy".

The animals lived together and hunted as a family, or possibly in small packs like wolves, with specific "jobs" and benefits for both the full grown adults and the juveniles.



_Juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex. Select ("click") the image to enlarge._


Cut to the chase: A small group of Tyrannosaurs, moving slowly and quietly through a forested area, zeros in on a herd of Triceratops: the beef cattle of 70 million years ago. The plant-eating Triceratops are grazing in an open meadow.



_Triceratops. Select ("click") the image to enlarge._


The younger Tyrannosaurs, lean, swift and agile, perform a flanking maneuver, stealthily positioning themselves behind the Triceratops herd. Suddenly they spring into action, charging the herd and chasing it back towards the edge of the forest, where a deadly ambush awaits. The juveniles close in on the slowest, most vulnerable Triceratops - a young one, or an old or injured specimen - and drive it towards a T. rex adult, concealed by the dense foliage of prehistoric conifers. When the unlucky Triceratops is close enough, the full grown Tyrannosaur lunges, gripping it in its monstrous jaws.



_Triceratops' worst nightmare: an adult Tyrannosaurus rex. Select ("click") the image to enlarge._


"Meal accomplished ..." The big T. rex gets first choice. The younger and smaller Tyrannosaurs dine on whatever remains.

Young Tyrannosaurs were covered with bird-like feathers, which helped them conserve body heat and enhanced their agility and speed. The feathers were shed as the animals approached their maximum size. Adolescent Tyrannosaurs packed on weight at an incredible four to five pounds per day: a body-building regime that would put even home run king (or steroids king?) Barry Bonds to shame.



_The feathered head of a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex. Select ("click") the image to enlarge._


An adult-sized T. rex was equipped with the most destructive animal jaws known to science. The bite strength is estimated in multiples of a modern alligator's bite strength. The Jurassic Park movie was factual in that regard: An adult T. rex would have been perfectly capable of chomping a steel automobile body into scrap metal.



_T. rex vs. Ford Explorer: movie scene from Jurassic Park._


Believe it - or not!


Image credits:
http://www.studio-corvo.com/blog/kar...aurus_j_1.html
http://critters.pixel-shack.com/
http://www.ststephens.it/biology/din...dinosaurs.html
http://jurassicpark.wikia.com/wiki/Tyrannosaurus_rex


*The author has also posted about dinosaurs under these OptiBoard post titles:*

"Bird from Hell" unearthed in China
T. rex proteins analysis supports dino-bird link
Skeletons that won't fit in your closet
Jurassic Post
Smarter than the average dinosaur
Sky Monsters
Fossil evidence for macroevolution
Flying dinosaurs now thought to be as big as an F-14 Tomcat!


This has been another rinselberg** T. rex production.

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## rbaker

_The private donors are pinch-hitting for more traditional patrons like NASA and DoD that were unwilling or unable to "pony up"._

Those who control the purse strings of corporate, government and academic research funds try to fund real science as opposed to junk or pop science. A case in point is my virtual lens. I can not raise a single buck of research and development money from any government or corporate source. I cant even get my foot in the door of the venture capitalists. However, on any given evening I can easily raise a hundred dollars at my local saloon. The same is true with my perpetual motion machine and I even have a working model. 

Go figure!

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## DragonLensmanWV

> _The private donors are pinch-hitting for more traditional patrons like NASA and DoD that were unwilling or unable to "pony up"._
> 
> Those who control the purse strings of corporate, government and academic research funds try to fund real science as opposed to junk or pop science. A case in point is my virtual lens. I can not raise a single buck of research and development money from any government or corporate source. I cant even get my foot in the door of the venture capitalists. However, on any given evening I can easily raise a hundred dollars at my local saloon. The same is true with my perpetual motion machine and I even have a working model. 
> 
> Go figure!


If you have a working model, go here to claim your $10,000 prize:
http://www.phact.org/e/freetest.html

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## rinselberg

I appreciate the comments from *DragonLensmanWV* (one post back) and *rbaker* (two posts back). I hope to return with an *update* on the story that I posted at the very start of this thread about University of Washington physicist John Cramer and his "time travel" experiment, which he actually prefers to describe as an investigation of "nonlocal quantum communication". In my (admittedly limited) view, John Cramer is anything but "off the wall" or "out in left field". If it's "off the wall" or "out in left field" that you want, try this one on for size: I stumbled upon it in one of my searches for something else.


> A Harvard-trained medical doctor is banking that his widely derided theory could supplant Big Bang theory, find the recipe for the cosmos' interstellar gases, and fuel cars without pollution.
> 
> Randell Mills, 42, blipped onto science debunkers' radar screens in 1991 when he claimed to unleash energy by "shrinking" the hydrogen atom's electron orbit to form what he calls a "hydrino."
> 
> Although mainstream physicists, including Nobel laureates, rankle at the mention of hydrinos, Mills has gathered $25 million dollars from investors for his startup, BlackLight Power Inc.


That's the beginning of a report on SPACE.com that dates back to May 2000. "Big Bang" theory is a reference to the idea that the universe more or less spontaneously materialized about 13.7 billion years ago from a single, infinitely small point or singularity. It's been well received by the scientists who ponder such questions, although more recently, other ideas are starting to attract more attention.

Fast forward to the website of Randell Mills' startup company, BlackLight Power Inc. ...


> BlackLight Power, Inc. is the inventor of a paradigm-shifting new primary energy source and a new field of hydrogen chemistry with broad commercial applications. Its wholly owned subsidiary, Millsian, Inc., is dedicated to developing computational chemical design technology based on Classical Quantum Mechanics (CQM), a revolutionary approach to solving atomic and molecular structures ...


The BlackLight Power website goes on to assert, under the heading "Grand Unified Theory of Classical Quantum Mechanics" ...


> Classical Quantum Mechanics (CQM) is the theory that physical laws (Maxwell's Equations, Newton's Laws, Special and General Relativity) must hold on all scales. The theory is based on an often overlooked result of Maxwell's Equations, that an extended distribution of charge may, under certain conditions, accelerate without radiating. This "condition of no radiation" is invoked to solve the  physical structure of subatomic particles, atoms, and molecules.
> 
> In exact closed-form equations with physical constants only, solutions to thousands of known experimental values arise that were beyond the reach of previous theory. These include the electron spin, g-factor, multi-electron atoms, excited states, polyatomic molecules, wave-particle duality and the nature of the photon, the masses and families of fundamental particles, and the relationships between fundamental laws of the universe that reveal why the universe is accelerating as it expands. CQM is successful over 85 orders of magnitude, from the level of quarks to the cosmos.
> 
> For the first time, the significant building-block molecules of chemistry have been successfully solved using classical physical laws in exact closed-form equations having fundamental constants only. The major functional groups have been solved from which molecules of infinite length can be solved almost instantly with a computer program. The predictions are accurate within experimental error for hundreds of molecules for which data is available.


Now that's "edgy". Or "over the edge", according to many. Randall Mills, M.D., wants to throw all the mainstream ideas about quantum mechanics overboard. Heisenberg, Bohr, Planck, Pauli, Schrodinger, Einstein ... the whole "Who's Who" of modern physics ... all wrong. Farewell to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, Planck's Constant, Pauli's Exclusion Principle and  Schrodinger's "Cat". The "wave-particle duality" that optical engineers sometimes talk about**: Bunk. And "spooky action at a distance" (one of quantum mechanics' most celebrated notions): More bunk. Dr. Mills has found the answers (or so we're informed) that Einstein was still searching for on the day that he died; i.e. "The Theory Of Everything".

In 2006 the _Wall Street Journal_ ran a story on BlackLight Power, Inc., and reported that the Mills startup had attracted some $50 million in venture capital.

In 2005, the British newspaper _The Guardian_ reported on Mills and the controversies attending his ideas.

Keep an eye out for the BlackLight Power "hydrino" home furnace, which, according to _The Guardian_, was on the drawing board as the first commercial product based on BlackLight technology. It was said to be coming "in as little as four years"; i.e., about 2009. If Dr. Mills is right, you'll be able to heat your home with an energy source that is priced lower than you'd ever believe.

And if not ... it still makes an interesting read.


Who's your prehistoric Daddy? See the latest rinselberg T. rex production ...
http://www.optiboard.com/forums/show...8&postcount=12

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## rinselberg

The genetic code is 3.6 billion years old. It's time for a rewrite.
Professor Tom Knight of MIT


According to most life scientists, life started about 3.6 billion years ago, when a tiny living cell emerged from the environment of Earth. It replicated itself, and its progeny replicated themselves, and so on, with genetic twists and evolutionary turns, down through billions of generations. Today every living organismevery person, plant, animal and microbecan trace its heritage back to that first living cell.

That was "Life 1.0"and scientists in the field of "SynBio" (synthetic biology) want to start all over. Some predict that they're about ten years away from creating a "test tube" organisma single-celled organism, not very different from common bacteriathat will reproduce by an autonomous or independent processa sine qua non for the definiton of life.

Synthetic viruses have already been createdlike the one called "T7.1", based on a naturally occurring virus called "T7". T7.1 was created from T7 by "stripping it down"stripping T7 of its natural but unnecessary complexity in both design and functionand reorganizing T7 to be sleek and efficient with [just] 57 genes encoded in a 40,000-letter genome. Although T7.1's [genetic] code is considerably shorter, compared to its natural cousin, T7.1 behaves like a "real" virus, infecting bacteria, which it uses to reproduce itself. But it cannot reproduce outside of a natural living cell.

As long as researchers depend on the genomes of natural organisms to start building new ones, progress will be hindered to a certain extent. The reason: Naturally evolved DNA is a mess of overlapping segments and "junk" that has no purpose that scientists can fathomand there's no "user manual". When genetic engineers go in and tinker with these confusing natural genomes, they can't be sure of the outcome of their work. "Screw it,_" MIT SynBio scientist Drew Endy_ told _Wired_ magazine. "Let's build new biological systems; systems that are easier to understand because we made them that way."

And then there's _Craig Venter_, the legendary entrepreneur who made his name by decoding the human genome for a tenth of the predicted cost and in a tenth of the predicted time. Venter has put tens of millions of dollars of his own money into Synthetic Genomics, a new company, to custom design living organisms that will convert sunlight into biofuel, with minimal environmental impact and zero net emissions of greenhouse gases. What would an ideal biofuel-generation system look like? "The most sustainable source of energy is sunlight and the most convenient products are pipeline-compatible petrochemicals ... so I would aim for an [artificial plant-like organism] that would secrete pure petrochemicalsoctane, diesel, monomers for plastics, etc.[directly] into [collection] pipes without any need for further [chemical] purification."

Based on detailed analysis, _Harvard professor George Church_ believes that a [man-made] genome of just 151 specific genes laid out along 113,000 letters of DNA will be sufficient to fabricate a single-celled organism that will reproduce by itself.

He reckons he's 80 percent of the way to creating it.


_To read more online, see MSNBC's "Scientists expect to create life in next 10 years" and "What exactly is life?" and Newsweek's "Life 2.0"._

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## rinselberg

John Cramer is the UW (University of Washington) physicist who thinks he may demonstrate - at the quantum or subatomic level - that the consequence of an event can be detected even when the event is still in the future; i.e. a demonstration of retroactive causality or "retrocausality".

To put it another way, Cramer wants to send the light energy of a single photon 50 microseconds into the future, where its state could be either wave-like or particle-like, and execute a wave vs. particle discrimination experiment on it in the present, demonstrating a chain of events that could be said to have unfolded backwards in time.

There's an easy-to-read update on Cramer's progress online at MSNBC under the title "Backward Research Goes Forward".


_"How to change the past" ... select ("click") the image to view a schematic of Cramer's "time reversal" experiment._

UW is providing Cramer with the lab space and time that he needs. And private donors have "pinch-hit" with funding that would usually be expected to come from one or more government agencies. Cramer, whose credentials include research at the Brookhaven National Laboratorys Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and the internationally renowned CERN particle physics lab in Europe, in addition to his tenure at UW, has received more than $35,000 from people who read about his ideas on the Internet. Cash donations have been received from artists, scientists, businessmen and women and space enthusiasts like Walter Kistler, founder of Kistler Aerospace. That's very close to the $40,000 that Cramer estimated for his equipment expenditures, which is "chump change", compared to what's required for many state-of-the-art subatomic experiments. 

More traditional patrons like NASAs now defunct Institute for Advanced Concepts and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency had already turned down Cramers grant proposals, as reported by online sources including _Centauri Dreams_ "Cramer's Time Experiment Funded" and _Seattle Post-Intelligencer_ "Public donates to UW scientist to fund backward-in-time research".

Cramer has said that he doesn't really expect to be able to demonstrate a "backwards in time" event, but he is pressing forward with the experiment, because there is nothing in his understanding of physics at the quantum level that precludes the possibility of such a demonstration.

Whatever the outcome of the experiment, Cramer expects it to be "illuminating".

For a relatively brief and down to earth explanation of Cramer's experiment, unimpeded by any of that "indecipherable math junk", see "What's done is done... or is it?", a _NewScientist_ report from 2006 that you can read online.

The _NewScientist_ report includes some speculation on what are possibly some very far-reaching implications of retrocausality - if Cramer is able to demonstrate it. Such as "why life exists". And on a more practical level, other reports about Cramer's experiment speculate on whether it could open a door to superluminal or faster-than-light engineering, such as operating space vehicles by remote control from Earth, without the limitations that are currently imposed by time-delays as radio signals go back and forth across space. Or instantaneous teleportation of objects across space, "Star Trek" style.

For a more technical, but very brief description of Cramer's experimental apparatus, minus the "time reversal" gizmo, see A Test of Quantum Nonlocal Communication by Cramer et al; also online.

_Now all we have to do is wait for Cramer's results ..._


This updates my previous OptiBoard report; also, a clarification from NASA:


> June 18,2007
> 
> NIAC (NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts) did not turn down John Cramers proposal. His proposal, like dozens of others, was in the midst of a peer review process, and it might have been a funded proposal, but that review process had to be cancelled as NASA has terminated its funding for NIAC. The NIAC funded credible ideas that represent advances in systems and architectures and because of it, a constellation of creative, valuable ideas have emerged to change the way many think about our future possibilities.
> 
> I for one will be watching John Cramers progress with great interest.
> 
> Diana Jennings, PhD
> Associate Director, NIAC (for a little while longer)

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## rinselberg

A new Pentagon study lays out the roadmap for a multibillion-dollar push to the final frontier of energy: a satellite system that collects gigawatts’ worth of solar power and beams it down to Earth.

The military itself could become the “anchor tenant” for such a power source, due to the current high cost of fueling combat operations abroad, the study says.

The 75-page report, released Wednesday, says new economic incentives would have to be put in place to “close the business case” for space-based solar power systems — but it suggests that the technology could be tested in orbit by as early as 2012.

_The report goes on to observe that space-oriented entrepreneurs are quick to connect the Pentagon proposal with the hot-button issues of national energy independence and global warming:_

"While the technical challenges are real, significant investment _now_ can build Space Solar Power into the ultimate energy source: clean, green, renewable, and capable of providing the vast amounts of power that the world will need. Congress, federal agencies and the business community should begin that investment immediately,” Mark Hopkins, senior vice president of the National Space Society, said in a written statement.

_The report also concludes:_

Government incentives for carbon-neutral energy technologies — such as carbon/pollution credits and offsets as well as loan guarantees — should be extended to space power programs as well. The loan guarantees could be modeled on the program currently provided to the nuclear power industry.

_Access the complete MSNBC report, including an interactive slideshow, here ..._



*Climate change*
Michael Crichton's global warming bunkum goes for a bruise cruise ...

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## rinselberg

A new report from the Global Carbon Project in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that global warming signals are coming on sooner and stronger than most previous estimates. The coauthors report greater-than-anticipated carbon (dioxide) emissions, attributable to global economic expansion and an increase in "carbon intensity": i.e. the amount of carbon emitted for every unit (dollar) of global economic output. They also highlight a significant and predictable decline in the capacity of natural carbon sinks - land masses and oceans - particularly the oceans - to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

MSNBC summarizes the findings online under the heading Study: Warming is stronger, happening sooner.

An abstract and the full text of the report (with figures and captions) are available online under Contributions to accelerating atmospheric CO2 growth from economic activity, carbon intensity, and efficiency of natural sinks in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.



*Climate change*
Nuclear power plants: Busting an urban myth ...

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## rinselberg

Ethanol from corn: Lately it's come under fire, even from some of the same environmentalists that have hopped aboard the bio-fuels bandwagon. But there is an upside to it. By keeping ethanol in the news and giving many car drivers a "taste" as they fill up at E85 gas pumps, it may have helped spur commercial interests and loosened R&D pursestrings that will soon lead to something much better.

Brian Williams reports in this brief video segment from MSNBC.

[MOVEL]More news headlines from rinselberg*™* ...[/MOVEL]

*Climate change*
Michael Crichton's global warming bunkum goes for a bruise cruise ...




*Countdown Iran*
High profile OptiBoard poster rinselberg reports on the Pentagon's latest plans ...

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## chip anderson

*John Coleman Says Global Warming Is A Scam*

 

 


27
vote 
Founder of the Weather Channel, Meteorologist John Coleman: Global Warming is the Greatest Scam in History.

"It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create in [sic] allusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the "research" to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus. 
Environmental extremists, notable politicians among them, then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild "scientific" scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda. Now their ridiculous manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmental conscientious citizens. Only one reporter at ABC has been allowed to counter the Global Warming frenzy with one 15 minutes documentary segment. 
I have read dozens of scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct. There is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. I am incensed by the incredible media glamour, the politically correct silliness and rude dismissal of counter arguments by the high priest of Global Warming."
In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious. On the other hand, if this scam is what generates the political and social will to free ourselves of Saudi oil with new technologies, then perhaps the whole scam will have been worth it. - Source: Adapted from Neocon Express

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## DragonLensmanWV

> *John Coleman Says Global Warming Is A Scam*
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> 
> 27
> vote 
> ...


Not exactly the most unbiased of sources.

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## rinselberg

Issued on:  November 9, 2007
DOE Releases Environmental Impact Statement for FutureGen Project

*Washington, DC* - The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced the completion of its Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the FutureGen project, a near-zero emissions gasification power plant that, when operational in 2012, would be the first plant in the world to produce both electricity and commercial-grade hydrogen gas from coal, while capturing and sequestering greenhouse gas emissions.

Complete press release


The FutureGen project is a partnership between DOE and the FutureGen Industrial Alliance, a non-profit consortium of some of the largest coal producers and electricity generators in the world. Revealed by President George W. Bush in 2003, the FutureGen project is a 275 MW prototype power plant based on cutting-edge technology. Once operational, this plant will remove and sequester carbon dioxide while producing electricity and hydrogen gas, making it the cleanest fossil fuel fired power plant in the world.

FutureGen is being designed to capture at least 90 percent of the carbon dioxide byproduct from generating electricity.

The current estimated cost-to-completion is almost $1.8 billion.


_FutureGen: materials and processing flows. Select ("click") image to enlarge._


FutureGen will test the concept of Geologic Sequestration: the injection of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases into underground reservoirs in such a way that they remain permanently stored or sequestered from the atmosphere. In so long as they remain sequestered, these potentially heat-trapping gases are prevented from contributing to global warming.

FutureGen will use a deep saline formation as its underground sequestration reservoir. Saline formations or saltwater aquifers are naturally occurring structures of permeable rock that are saturated with saline water. FutureGen will be constructed to use a saline formation that could be 3000 feet or more below ground.

When FutureGen becomes operational, carbon dioxide from the coal-fired generating plant will be captured and if necessary, transported by pipeline to an injection well. (Whether such a pipeline is needed and how long of a pipeline will be determined after a site is selected and plant blueprints are drawn up.)

At the injection well, carbon dioxide will be pumped all the way down into the deep saline formation. FutureGen will be sited so that it can use a saline formation that is below one or more low permeability (i.e. almost non-permeable) caprock layers to ensure that the injected carbon dioxide cannot escape back upwards to the surface and into the atmosphere.

Deep saline formations are of special interest because it's thought that they will safely contain very large amounts of carbon dioxide, and because they are especially easy to locate worldwide.


_FutureGen: carbon sequestration. Select ("click") image to enlarge._


Compared to a standard natural gas fired plant, FutureGen is expected to produce from as little as 0.14 to as much as 0.31 (fractionally) of carbon dioxide emissions per unit of electricity; to a standard coal fired plant ... from as little as 0.07 to as much as 0.14 per unit.


_FutureGen: by the numbers; see table at bottom of page. Select ("click") image to enlarge._


FutureGen will be constructed at one of four locations in Illinois and Texas that are under current consideration: Mattoon, IL; Tuscola, IL; Jewett, TX; and Odessa, TX.


_FutureGen: artist's conception. Select ("click") image to enlarge._


FutureGen-like power projects are also underway in Australia, Norway and China.

Under the leadership of British Petroleum (BP), the Carson Hydrogen Power project will convert carbon in the form of petroleum coke (a byproduct of refining crude oil) and recycled waste water into hydrogen gas and carbon dioxide. The hydrogen gas will be used to fuel a power station capable of providing the California power grid with 500 MW of electricity. At the same time, about 4 million tons of carbon dioxide per year will be captured, transported and stored in deep underground oil reservoirs where it will enhance existing crude oil recovery.

The Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency are also collaborating on a number of other projects across the U.S. and Canada that are intended to pave the way for the permanent sequestration of massive amounts of carbon dioxide and other man-made greenhouse gas byproducts. Currently about 35 million tons of carbon dioxide are sequestered in the United States. That's expected to increase by as much as 400 times by the year 2100.

_Coal is America's most abundant fossil energy resource._

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## rinselberg

Honda has just unveiled its new FCX Clarity, powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. The sleek, low-slung sedan, which Honda plans to begin leasing to a limited number of Southern California drivers next summer, is fashioned after a concept vehicle that Honda displayed in 2005. The FCX Clarity will be available on a three-year lease for $600 a month, making it the first fuel cell powered car to be offered to the general public.



According to car online, the new Honda specs out at 134 hp and 189 lb-ft of torque at zero RPM, and can hit 60 mph from a standing start in 10 seconds flat. Top speed is 100 mph. (Electronically speed limited..?) MSNBC quotes an "equivalent combined city and highway fuel economy" of 68 mpg. It stores enough hydrogen onboard in the single high pressure fuel tank to go about 270 road miles under most conditions before refueling.

The only byproduct released into Earth's atmosphere from its tailpipe (does it _have_ a tailpipe..?) is water vapor.



Honda already has an extensive FCX Clarity website up and running.

The FCX Clarity boasts many new features, one of which is Honda Bio-Fabric. Made from corn, Bio-Fabric is the basis for the various woven panels that are used in the car's interior, starting with the seat coverings. Compared to the petroleum derived resins that are commonly used today, the new Bio-Fabric figures to reduce greenhouse (carbon dioxide) emissions by 30 percent from cornfield to junkyard - a number that's sure to put a smile on Al Gore's face.

The overarching question: If hydrogen powered cars like the new Honda were to become commonplace on U.S. roads, what net impact could be expected on greenhouse (carbon dioxide) emissions?

That's not so clear. For one thing, it depends on how the hydrogen fuel is produced; for another, on what levels of greenhouse emissions are attributed to manufacturing the new technology cars and to recycling them when they're junked. All that said, however, the figures look promising for some appreciable greenhouse reductions - enough to justify moving forward with the technology and simultaneously monitoring the results.

GM is also playing the fuel cell game, but they're putting some of their chips on another card: Plug-in hybrids like the Volt concept vehicle that's been displayed.



Above: Chevrolet's 2008 Malibu midsize sedan. This is the body that GM will wrap onto its Volt plug-in hybrid platform, which is on schedule for a November 2010 rollout. Instead of generating electricity onboard like the fuel cell powered Honda, a plug-in hybrid draws electrical power from the grid and stores it in a high capacity battery that powers it on the road. GM is mulling a Volt battery rental plan to make the car more affordable.

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## AngryFish

"An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything," by A. Garrett Lisi Ph.D, Surfer

I must have missed the conversation about this. This is remarkable. Is there any information on this theories’ reception so far other than media reports? 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,311952,00.html

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## chip anderson

Can by a whole lot of gas at that extra $300 a month.

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## rinselberg

[movel]*The setting Earth*[/movel]Earth disappears below the lunar horizon. This is the first ever HDTV imagery of Earth as seen from lunar orbit. Select ("click") the still frame and the MSNBC-sourced video segment will play for you (after a brief commercial).

The video was captured by Japan's KAGUYA lunar spacecraft.


For more background:
http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2007/11/20071113_kaguya_e.html




The Department of Energy's technical program to reign in global warming recorded an important milestone. OptiBoard has a full report ...

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## rinselberg

Huge swarm of jellyfish destroy salmon farm in Northern Ireland



> It was unprecedented, absolutely amazing. The sea was red with these jellyfish and there was nothing we could do about it, absolutely nothing ...


Scientists blame it on Global Warming


> The species of jellyfish responsible, Pelagia nocticula - popularly known as the mauve stinger - is noted for its purplish night-time glow and its propensity for terrorizing bathers in the warmer Mediterranean Sea. Until the past decade, the mauve stinger has rarely been spotted so far north in British or Irish waters, and scientists cite this as evidence of global warming ...



The eerie purple glow that threatens humanity

 Pelagia nocticula, the "mauve stinger". Select ("click") image to enlarge.


MSNBC reports on this multi-million dollar blow to Northern Ireland's economy


National Geographic sounds a desperate alarm


> For over 500 million years, the jellyfish has survived in our oceans. Today, global warming and pollution may be contributing to a population explosion, as billions of these sometimes venomous creatures increasingly swarm around our beaches and shorelines. And though they have no bones, blood or brain, some jellyfish are armed with a deadly arsenal unlike any other on the planet. National Geographic Channel's "Explorer" dissects the fascinating physiology of this living fossil, from its 24 clustered eyes down to the tips of its stinging tentacles, and examines how man’s impact on the environment may be creating a growing invasion.



View this chilling three-minute video clip from National Geographic

[youtube]eyCigZ_bsTM[/youtube][movel]Global Warming Countdown[/movel]Michael Crichton's State of Confusion: Climate science gone bad
Global Carbon Project: IPCC predictions already surpassed by reality
Message to climate contrarians: "Stop hiding behind the sun"
Climate change smarts from CNN TV's Glenn Beck
"Fast Facts" on climate change from National Geographic News
Nuclear power plants: Busting an urban myth
Ethanol fuel: Moving beyond corn
FutureGen: Electricity from coal without greenhouse gas emissions
Energy from parking lots
Energy from earth orbiting satellites

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## rinselberg

Carbon dioxide (CO2) isn't the only chemical byproduct of human activity that contributes to global warming.

It may not be long before you stumble onto a new and disconcerting acronym: ANCE.

That would be "Anthropogenic Nitrogen Compound Emissions".

The atmosphere is almost 80 percent elemental nitrogen (N2), but nitrogen compounds (like nitrogen dioxide or NO2) released by agriculture, industry and transport (chiefly road vehicles) are of increasing concern to climate scientists and ecology and environmental researchers.




> The planet has never seen this much nitrogen at any time. Human activity now releases 125 million metric tons of nitrogen from agriculture and fossil fuel use annually, compared to 113 million tons from natural sources, according to a 2007 U.N. sponsored report "Human Alteration of the Nitrogen Cycle".



If you're worried about _carbon taxes_ in your future ... wait until you see your Nitrogen bill.


_Sources:_
Nitrogen Overdose: Element quietly rivaling CO2 as a global climate threatGlobal Nitrogen: Cycling out of Control



*The waterboarding debate*
Tightlipped terror suspects get no slack from OptiBoarders: Check the latest poll numbers and analysis ...

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## rinselberg

The earliest life could have evolved from non-living organic chemicals in the small protected spaces that are confined between layers of the mineral muscovite or mica, according to a new hypothesis that was just presented to the American Society for Cell Biology.




> "Mica is like a massive sandwich with millions of layers of mineral sheets, which would be the bread," Hansma said. "The nooks and crannies between the bread may have jump-started the formation of life's chemicals and protected them. It's like a giant potluck of chemistry."


Helen Hansma: biochemist; University of California at Santa Barbara.

Hansma proposes that the narrow confined spaces between the thin layers of mica could have provided exactly the right conditions - effectively creating cells without membranes - for the rise of the first biomolecules. The separation of the layers would have also provided the isolation needed for Darwinian evolution. "Some think that the first biomolecules were simple proteins, some think they were RNA, or ribonucleic acid. Both proteins and RNA could have formed in between the mica sheets," contends Hansma.

RNA is composed of nitrogenous bases, sugar, and phosphates. Hansma says that RNA and many proteins and lipids in our cells have negative charges like mica. RNA's phosphate groups are spaced one half nanometer apart, just like the negative charges on mica. Interestingly, mica layers are held together by potassium and the concentration of potassium inside the mica is very similar to the concentration of potassium in our cells. Additionally, the seawater that bathed the mica [was] rich in sodium, just like our blood.

The heating and cooling of the [diurnal] cycle would have caused the mica sheets to move up and down, and waves would have provided a mechanical energy source as well, according to the new model. Both forms of movement would have caused the forming and breaking of chemical bonds necessary for the earliest biochemistry.

Thus the mica layers could have provided the support, shelter, and an energy source for the development of precellular life, while leaving artifacts in the structure of living things today. Besides providing a more plausible hypothesis than the prebiotic oceanic "soup" model, Hansma said her new hypothesis also explains more than the so-called "pizza" hypothesis. That model proposes that biomolecules originated on the surfaces of minerals from the Earth's crust. The "pizza" hypothesis cannot explain how the earliest biomolecules obtained the right amount of water to form stable biopolymers.


"I picture all the molecules of early life evolving and rearranging among mica sheets in a communal fashion for eons before budding off with cell membranes and spreading out to populate the world."


Science-A-Go-Go: Between The Sheets
LiveScience: Life May Have Started in Sandwich, Not Soup
NSF News: New "soup and sandwich" hypothesis ...




*Climate change*
Michael Crichton's global warming bunkum goes for a bruise cruise ...

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## rinselberg

The world's heavy oil and oil sands deposits represent a gi-normous potential source of untapped energy. The problem? It has been difficult to recover the useful hydrocarbons from the heavier bitumen and tar-like compounds by any of the known methods, and the recovery processes to date have been attended by costly mechanical and environmental problems.

An international team of scientists has reported that naturally occurring anaerobic microorganisms that "eat" heavy oil and convert it into clean-burning methane are a potential "gamechanger" for the petroleum industry.

It's likely that by 2009, field tests will be underway to see if engineers can sustain, accelerate and control the growth of the microbes and recover usable quantities of methane _in situ_, i.e. outside of the laboratory, in oil bearing geographic formations.

_For more, see Microbes in oil reservoirs: Discovery could revolutionize oil sands production._Alternate webpage.

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## chip anderson

You know what the world is gonna smell like when all the oil is converted to methane?

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## rinselberg

> You know what the world is gonna smell like when all the oil is converted to methane?


The idea is to recover the methane and burn it, yielding energy, carbon dioxide and water. It's not a one-step solution for the world's currently diminishing oil field production or anthropogenic global warming, but it could be a very useful step in a helpful direction.

I suppose, if we were to conjure up nightmare scenarios, there is the "specter" of the microorganisms getting out of control, but these are naturally occurring microorganisms. They are already widespread in the world's oil reservoirs and are currently a disadvantage, because they consume the more useful hydrocarbons in production oil fields before the oil can be recovered. This is a way to turn a naturally occurring problem into an engineered solution.

I don't think there's any risk of environmental damage from the projected field tests.

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## chip anderson

I seem to remember an old regent of England being interviewed about what life was like in her childhood.  Her reply said: "That was when the whole world smelled like horses."   Perhaps we will be going full circle.

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## chip anderson

This morning I saw a greenie questionaire that asked amoung other things.  Which is more dangerous:  Cows or crocodiles (or some other dangerous animal, I don't remember which).  Thier answer was cows and went on to explain how the greenhouse gasses from same were destroying the earth.
Tonight it hit me:  How many buffalo roamed the plains before the white man came.  I know I read of single heards over 15,000,000 after the white man.  Now  the question of the day:  *Why weren't the greenhouse gases from the buffalo killing the earth?  :bbg:*

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## rinselberg

_I don't see that wild buffalo herds in North America, together with all the other methane producing animals, could ever have produced anything more, in terms of greenhouse equivalent. than a small fraction in comparison to the levels of anthropogenic GHGs that we're seeing today._

Let's start with the premise that an American buffalo emits about the same amount of methane (as a fraction of its weight) as a single head of cattle. After a brief "research", I think a fair estimate is that head per head, American buffalo grow to about twice the weight of typical dairy or beef cattle of today, and so, on a head for head basis, a buffalo emits the same quantity of methane as two head of cattle.

The most frequently referenced estimate that I've come across puts the maximum number of buffalo in North America at 75 million head at any one time, before their numbers began to decline with the increased hunting and other factors associated with the growth in the non-native human population here. In terms of methane production, that comes to about the same as 150 million head of cattle.

According to the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, the inventory of all cattle and calves in the United States on July 1, 2003 was 103.9 million head. Plus another 15 million head of cattle in Canada, which was also homeland to the wild buffalo herds.

But what about hog farms? As hog waste decomposes, significant amounts of methane are released. I'm not going to attempt the math, but I think it's fair to say that in North America today, methane emissions from farm cattle and hogs together considerably exceeds the amount that was attributable to buffalo during the "buffalo days".

Do we think that the number of wild hogs in North America, plus any hogs that were domesticated by Indians during the "buffalo days", comes to anywhere near the number (or to be more accurate in terms of GHGs: the total _weight_) of hogs that are being farmed here today? 

I can't imagine that. Just in terms of the number of hogs. Plus the fact that today's hogs are "porkers" (bred for weight) to maximize the farmer's return from the slaughterhouse. Nevertheless ...

Considering the latest report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), methane from all human activities, including livestock, accounted for just 14.3% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) during the year 2004. The single greatest contribution was the use of fossil fuels (diesel and gasoline; aviation fuels; bunker and heating oil; coal; natural gas ...), which amounted to 56.6% of all anthropogenic GHGs during 2004.

The IPCC figures are already adjusted to account for the difference in the greenhouse effect of methane vs. carbon dioxide on a molecule per molecule basis. (A methane molecule is the  greenhouse equivalent of about 20 carbon dioxide molecules.)

What all these numbers are saying (to me) is that during the "buffalo days" there was an important elevation of methane in the atmosphere from the large numbers of buffalo and other methane producing animals. But it wasn't accompanied by the considerably larger anthropogenic GHGs that we're seeing today from the use of fossil fuels and other human activities. So there could have been some global warming and cooling trends in prehistoric times as the amount of methane emissions from plants and animals either went up or down in the wake of evolutionary changes in plant and animal species and species populations, coupled with other climate changing factors.

But in terms of what was just posted (one post back) -- here's the rub: Considering these numbers, I don't see that wild buffalo herds in North America, together with all the other methane producing animals, could ever have produced anything more, in terms of greenhouse equivalent. than a small fraction in comparison to the levels of anthropogenic GHGs that we're seeing today.

The bottom line: It's best not to go _hog wild_ trying to _buffalo_ the increasing scientific consensus on the reality of potentially dangerous anthropogenic global warming.


I hope that speaks to Chip's post.


The excruciatingly reliable sources ...

How many wild buffalo were there?
How many cattle are there?
IPCC Summary for Policymakers: 2007 Synthesis Report on Climate Change.

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## rinselberg

_Does anybody really know what time it is?_ Chicago Transit Authority put that question on a lot of people's minds with their double-platinum recording debut in 1969. _Does anybody really know what time is?_ That's a different question. The _berg_ offers a layman's look at how one group of theoretical physicists is trying to connect the dots in a most intriguing way. If you're _in_, select ("click") the album art to play a cover of the Chicago hit ... mp3 audio format.







> "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything" by A. Garrett Lisi Ph.D, Surfer
> 
> I must have missed the conversation about this. This is remarkable. Is there any information on this theory's reception--other than media reports?


I haven't checked for any recent updates on the "Surfer" theory.

String theories are still on almost everyone's front burner.

I have taken a liking to Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG), another "Theory of Everything" that offers a mathematical framework that (speculatively) could resolve the contradictions or discontinuity between General Relativity (Einstein) and Quantum Physics and help unravel the mystery of gravity and the origins of the universe.

According to LQG, time doesn't flow in a continuous stream as we tend to think, like gasoline from a filling station pump or keg beer from a tap.



Time only comes in packages. And the smallest package that exists--a Planck Time interval--is expressed as approximately 10-43 seconds.

What this means is that if we were able to see the world with "quantum eyes", it wouldn't look like the world we know. It wouldn't resemble a movie on a theater screen, where time seems to flow in a smooth, continuous stream, and where the motion of objects, like a meteor flashing across the night sky, can be traced by a smooth, continuous curve.

With quantum eyes (LQG), we would see the world as a succession of frames, like the stills or frames on an old-fashioned reel of movie film.


_"Back To The Future"..? Reality, according to Loop Quantum Theory, is like a reel of movie film: A succession of still images or frames._

And what a movie! Every second of time would appear as a succession of 1043 frames. Like an animated slideshow that flashes 1043slides in succession, for each second of reality. That's a "1", followed by some 43 zeros. A number far too big to have a name.

If it's ever confirmed (LQG), we could say that the universe has a clock that generates 1043 "ticks" during every second of our "reality". And after each clock tick but before the next one? Nothing. There is no "in between". The Planck Time interval _is_ the smallest interval of time. So time is not continuous, as we tend to perceive it, but discrete; or to put it more colloquially, "digital". Like the numbers on a digital watch.



There's a lot more to Loop Quantum Gravity. And it's all "over my head".

Will scientists ever agree on a "Theory of Everything"... a new, all-encompassing framework for physics that clarifies the unsolved mysteries at the heart of reality? A theory that describes reality all the way from the largest conceivable scale--the scale of the universe--down to the quantum level, where even a single hydrogen atom is as large, by comparison, as the universe is to us?

I expect the next 20 years will bring some resolution. Questions will be answered. And new questions will be raised, as science tries to elevate its game from "The Theory of Everything" to "The Theory of Absolutely Everything" or "The Theory of Everything Including the Kitchen Sink".

Some of the data that will help us decide which theory we like the most--which theory is the most credible--may come from a few hundred feet below ground: From the Large Hadron Collider.

Some of the data may come from as deep as a mile or more below ground, from instruments like WIMP detectors.

And some of the data may come from the sky, from the most distant parts of the universe: From telltale kinds of radio energy intercepted by axion detectors and from orbiting gamma ray telescopes like the GLAST satellite; see Hints of a Breakdown of Relativity Theory?

_There's a nicely illustrated 10-page summary of Loop Quantum Gravity theory (from 2004) in PDF format that anyone can view on line or download for free._

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## rinselberg

The U.S. governmentand major U.S. banksseem to have lost their appetite for coal. After spending five years and approximately $50 million on preliminary studies as well as selecting a proposed site in Mattoon, Illinois, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has scuttled plans to build the so-called FutureGen power plant. The facility would have captured the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) that is emitted when coal is burned for electricity generation. Instead, the DOE hopes to help industry add carbon-capture-and-storage capability to advanced coal plants already in the works.

"This restructured FutureGen approach is an all-around better investment for Americans," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said in a statement announcing the change. The DOE is asking Congress for $407 million to research how to burn coal most efficiently, along with $241 million to demonstrate such carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologiesat least $900 million less than DOE said it would have cost to complete FutureGen.


FutureGen would not only have captured greenhouse gas emissions, it also would have produced _hydrogen_ from coal.

For more about this decision, see the report by David Biello in February's _Scientific American_ online.

As recently as November (2007), I posted on the announcement by DOE of the FutureGen Final Environmental Impact Statement, including a description of the FutureGen power generation and carbon capture technology: see DOE announces completion of major FutureGen milestone.



*Countdown Iran*
Upping the nuclear ante: Iran tests a new centrifuge technology

----------


## rinselberg

A study published in the December Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences found that not only are humans still evolving, but we are doing so at a faster rate than ever before, with genes that affect our diets and brains leading the race. "If humans had always evolved this rapidly, the difference between us and chimps would be 160 times greater than it actually is," says the study's lead author, University of Utah anthropologist Henry Harpending.

The findings have turned some traditional assumptions on their heads. For decades, biologists believed that human evolution had ground to a halt about 10,000 years ago, when the dawn of agriculture and technology gave us unprecedented control over our environments and made us masters of our own destiny. But rather than slow evolution down, those advances, Harpending says, enabled humanity to hit the accelerator. With better technology, our ranks have swelled from millions to billions. This has driven us to colonize more and different regions of the globe. More people mean more mutations, and more environments mean more things to adapt to. Migration into the Northern Hemisphere, for example, has favored adaptation to cold weather and less skin pigmentation for better sunlight absorption.

"History looks more and more like a science-fiction novel in which mutants repeatedly arose and displaced normal humanssometimes quietly, by surviving starvation and disease better, other times as a conquering horde," says study coauthor Gregory Cochran. But what the next generation of mutants will look like is anybody's guess. While Harpending and Cochran estimate that 7 percent of all human genes are undergoing rapid evolution, they concede that scientists haven't a clue what most of those genes door what direction they're moving in. One safe bet, they say, is that people from different regions of the world will be less alike than they are today. While malaria-resistant genes are evolving in Africa, genes that suppress body odor [alarming news to the grooming products industry?] and make for coarser hair have emerged in Asia. Meanwhile, the ability to digest milk into adulthood has evolved in Europe, where dairy farming is common, but has yet to appear throughout China and Africa. "We are evolving away from one another," says Harpending.

_For more, see Newsweek on line; January 28, 2008; The Fish Within Us._


OptiBoard: A Changing of the Guard

Perhaps you didn't notice, but recently the _berg_ adopted a new avatar.

For four years--from January 2004 to January 2008--the smirking visage of a borderline lunatic Iraqi public affairs officer was affixed to my posts. His real name was Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, but you knew him as "Baghdad Bob". I introduced him as A fellow of infinite jest and later enshrined him under the (admittedly cumbersome) post title 24K "Web gold" - AUDIO tributes to a man called "Bob".



In his stead: _Tiktaalik roseae_, which is usually shortened to _Tiktaalik_.



The first fossilized remains of _Tiktaalik_ were discovered in Arctic Canada in 2006. The creature lived about 375 million years ago, when a lineage of lobe-finned fishes was evolving into the first backboned animals to crawl on land. Its discovery was remarkable, because it was no mere accident. The paleontologist who found it knew exactly what he was looking for and exactly where to find it. _Tiktaalik_ has become one of Darwinian evolution's famous "missing links": one that is no longer "missing". Its discovery was a heralded confirmation that modern evolution is more than just an interpretive theory: it's a _predictive_ theory. Evolution not only explains what has already been unearthed, but can also predict what paleontologists may discover next--and where they may discover it.

_Tiktaalik_ is everywhere on the Internet. You can use any of the search engines like Google to retrieve a myriad of reports. There's a clear, concise column about it on the National Science Foundation website which anyone can read by selecting ("click") the image that follows:

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## chip anderson

Reiseburg:  Were you ever a fan of Che Guverra?  Hugo Chavz?

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## rinselberg

Satellite shootdown expected: "Three to make one" for Navy..?

The Navy has three specially modified SM-3 defensive missiles ready on three different warships. If Defense Secretary Gates gives the final go-ahead, the Navy will fire one of the missiles in an attempt to destroy a crippled U.S. spy satellite later today. The launch window opens at 10:30 PM Eastern Standard Time. The first missile will be fired from a ship stationed to the west of Hawaii. It's unclear whether the Navy will be ordered to fire again if the first missile attempt is not judged a complete success.

MSNBC has an updated report with video.




*Countdown Iran*
Upping the nuclear ante: Iran tests a new centrifuge technology

----------


## rinselberg

[movel]Bulls-eye![/movel]*Navy says missile smashed wayward satellite*
Military tracking debris over Atlantic, Pacific; China expresses concern

MSNBC News Services
updated 4:35 a.m. PT, Thurs., Feb. 21, 2008

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon says a U.S. missile smashed a disabled spy satellite that was headed for Earth and the military is tracking the debris as it falls over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. 

Marine Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon press conference Thursday that he couldn't rule out that hazardous material would fall to the earth. 

But he says so far officials have tracked "nothing larger than a football." 

Cartwright says officials also "have a high degree of confidence" — though are not ready to say for sure — that the missile launched from a Navy ship near Hawaii struck the satellite's fuel tank. Officials said the toxic hydrazine fuel in the tank would have caused a hazard had it fallen to earth.

Destroying the satellite’s onboard tank of about 1,000 pounds of hydrazine fuel was the primary goal, and a U.S. official earlier told NBC News that it "looks like the tank was hit."

"It is still going to take some more analysis" to determine what happened to the fuel, but early indications were positive, the official said ...


See complete MSNBC report plus video

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## rinselberg

Hydrogen powered bus service proving problematic for San Jose.

*VTA finds hydrogen buses cost much more to run than diesel vehicles*
By Gary Richards of the San Jose Mercury News

The experiment sounded so grand three years ago: The Valley Transportation Authority and SamTrans would test three buses that run on hydrogen fuel cells, emit no smog-inducing pollutants and help keep the valley's air clean.

Green, yes. But a new report from the VTA says the $18 million state-mandated pilot project costs too much green - and raises troubling questions about whether the program should continue.

The most glaring figure: Zero-emission buses - or ZEBs - cost $51.66 to fuel, maintain and operate per mile compared with just $1.61 for a 40-foot conventional diesel coach. They break down much more frequently, and replacement parts are next to impossible to order, according to the report.

The VTA experiment could be a blow to hydrogen fuel technology, once heralded as the future of green mass transit options. At the least, the report raises significant questions about whether the state should ease off the accelerator rather than push Bay Area transit agencies to expand the hydrogen project.

"When you say that there is a 50-dollar difference [per road mile] between ZEBs and diesel, that's exorbitant," said Dolly Sandoval, the VTA vice chair from Cupertino.

She and other VTA board members are questioning whether the state should loosen its insistence on hydrogen-fuel-cell technology and allow the agency to consider using hybrid buses to meet clean-air requirements, which is being done in New York City, where hundreds of diesel-hybrid buses are in use.

The article adds:


> Although the cost of a new ZEB (hydrogen fuel cell bus) has fallen from about $3.5 million to $2.5 million, a [comparable] diesel-powered bus costs about $400,000. And ZEBs have on average traveled 1,100 miles before needing repairs in the VTA trial, while a typical diesel bus covers about 6,000 miles.


For the complete on line report:
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_8365544


_"No, you may not use smilies."_
--posted by an OptiBoarder who is no longer active

_"I will work a work in your days which ye will not believe, though it be told you."--Habakkuk._
--today's vintage post

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## rinselberg

For the first time ever, scientists have produced light photography of an electron orbiting the nucleus of an atom.

The technique uses a laser that generates extremely fast pulses of light: Light pulses that are just 10-18 seconds in duration.

It's like having an automatic camera with a shutter speed fast enough to take as many time exposure photographs in a single second as there have been seconds of time since the birth of the universe, about 13.7 billion years ago.

The term "attosecond" is used when describing the speed of these laser pulses.

But an attosecond pulse is still a gi-normous 1025 times slower than what many believe to be the shortest possible interval of time, called the Planck interval. (For more about the Planck interval, see my other recent post on Loop Quantum Gravity theory.)

_Electrons caught "on film"; for the complete MSNBC report with video:_
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23336318/

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## rinselberg

One LED if by land, and two LEDs if by sea..?

By Mark Jewell of MSNBC
updated 8:24 a.m. PT, Mon., March. 3, 2008

BOSTON - The Old North Church, a beacon for Paul Revere's famous warning of the movement of British forces, and a symbol of the American Revolution, has gone high-tech with the installation of light-emitting diodes, or LEDs.



The energy-efficient lights illuminate ceiling vaults inside the church, whose steeple was used to display two lanterns as a signal about British troop movements on April 18, 1775 — the night described in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's famous poem, which included the line: "One if by land, and two if by sea."

LEDs haven't yet replaced the slightly less-modern compact fluorescents that the church began using two years ago in its modern versions of the steeple lanterns.

_For the complete MSNBC report:_
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23446534/

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## rinselberg

Moses and the Ten Commandments: Revelation.. or _hallucination_..?

MSNBC staff and news service reports
updated 2:26 p.m. PT, Tues., March. 4, 2008

JERUSALEM - When Moses brought the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai, he may have been high on a hallucinogenic plant, according to a new study by an Israeli psychology professor.

Writing in the British philosophy journal Time and Mind, Benny Shanon of Jerusalems Hebrew University said two plants in the Sinai desert contain the same psychoactive molecules as those found in plants from which the powerful Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca is prepared.

The thunder, lightning and blaring of a trumpet which the Book of Exodus says emanated from Mount Sinai could just have been the imaginings of a people in an altered state of awareness, Shanon hypothesized.

. . .

He said one of the psychoactive plants, harmal, found in the Sinai and elsewhere in the Middle East, has long been regarded by Jews in the region as having magical and curative powers.


_For the complete MSNBC report:_
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23468364/



[pong][/pong]"You may have been up the river, but you've never seen this!"

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## chip anderson

Do you really think that anyone could have come up with such an ideal set of Laws on drugs? 
And the way I read the story the Laws were inscribed in stone by the Finger of God. Wouldn't matter too much what Moses thought in process would it?

Chip

Actually naive enough to believe in God (not intellectual I guess) as well as the story of the Ten Commandments.

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## rinselberg

Physicist Michio Kaku talks about the possibility of quantum teleportation; i.e. the "beam me up, Scotty" routine from TV's original Star-Trek..

MSNBC Video segment

MSNBC Cosmic Log "Mission Not So Impossible"

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## rinselberg

NEW YORK, MARCH 12 – Michael Heller, a Polish cosmologist and Catholic priest who for more than 40 years has developed sharply focused and strikingly original concepts on the origin and cause of the universe, often under intense governmental repression, has won the 2008 Templeton Prize.


Communion Wafers and Noncommutative Geometries: Michael Heller, Polish priest/scientist.

The Templeton Prize, valued at 820,000 pounds sterling, more than $1.6 million, was announced today at a news conference at the Church Center for the United Nations in New York by the John Templeton Foundation, which has awarded the prize since 1973. The Templeton Prize is the world's largest annual monetary award given to an individual.

Heller, 72, Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Cracow, toiled for years beneath the stifling strictures of Soviet era repression. He has become a compelling figure in the realms of physics and cosmology, theology, and philosophy with his cogent and provocative concepts on issues that all of these disciplines pursue, albeit from often vastly different perspectives. With an academic and religious background that enables him to comfortably and credibly move within each of these domains, Heller’s extensive writings have evoked new and important consideration of some of humankind’s most profound concepts.

Heller’s examination of fundamental questions such as "Does the universe need to have a cause?" engages a wide range of sources who might otherwise find little in common. By drawing together mathematicians, philosophers, cosmologists and theologians who pursue these topics, he also allows each to share insights that may edify the other without any violence to their respective methodologies.

In a statement prepared for the news conference, Heller described his position as follows:

_Various processes in the universe can be displayed as a succession of states in such a way that the preceding state is a cause of the succeeding one... (and) there is always a dynamical law prescribing how one state should generate another state. But dynamical laws are expressed in the form of mathematical equations, and if we ask about the cause of the universe we should ask about a cause of mathematical laws. By doing so we are back in the Great Blueprint of God’s thinking the universe, the question on ultimate causality…: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” When asking this question, we are not asking about a cause like all other causes. We are asking about the root of all possible causes._

Despite the active anti-intellectualism of the Communist regime that controlled Poland for the majority of his life, Heller established himself as an international figure among cosmologists and physicists through his prolific writings – he has more than 30 books and nearly 400 papers to his credit – on such topics as the unification of general relativity and quantum mechanics, multiverse theories and their limitations, geometric methods in relativistic physics such as noncommutative geometry, and the philosophy and history of science.

Simultaneously, as a Catholic priest, Heller surmounted the anti-religious dictates of Polish authorities, opening new vistas for the faithful by positioning the traditional Christian way of viewing the universe within a broader cosmological context and by initiating what can be justly termed the "theology of science."





> Heller’s current work focuses on noncommutative geometry and groupoid theory in mathematics which attempts to remove the problem of an initial cosmological singularity at the origin of the universe. "If on the fundamental level of physics there is no space and no time, as many physicists think," says Heller, "noncommutative geometry could be a suitable tool to deal with such a situation."


The Global Spiral; Metanexus Institute.





> Karol Musiol, rector of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, wrote in nominating Heller that he "has brought to science a sense of transcendent mystery, and to religion a view of the universe through the broadly open eyes of science."
> 
> In his statement, Heller criticized adherents of intelligent design — which holds that aspects of the universe and living beings are best explained by a higher power — as committing a "grave theological error."


MSNBC; from the Associated Press.

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## rinselberg

> Yeah, right.. in the 1970s they were predicting global *cooling*.


You've seen it before. What people who are in denial about the probability of continued global warming like to say. In other words, you can't trust scientists.

The fairy tale isn't what scientists were predicting in the 1970s.

The fairy tale is that scientists in the 1970s were predicting global cooling.

RealClimate has more . . .



Don't risk staying after school and writing this 100 times.. click on the "chalkboard" to learn more about bunk-peddling fiction writer Michael Crichton and his global climate Kool-Aid.

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## chip anderson

AL Gore is no a climate Scientist!

You might take note that the earth has cooled in the last year more than the one degree it wamed the year before.  This was the coolest year on record!  The ice cap is thickening again.
Global cooling is coming, new Ice Age an all that!  The Sky is Falling, the Sky is Falling.

Chip

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## rinselberg

Well Chip, you're right about Al Gore: He's not a scientist. Just for the record, the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 was awarded jointly to Al Gore _and_ the International Panel on Climate Change--a scientific panel staffed by climate scientists.

My gripe isn't with Michael Crichton, per se, but with the occasional OptiBoard poster (it's happened at least once) who holds Crichton up as a scientific authority, simply because he uses a literary technique of indexing his fictional works with footnotes to the scientific literature. That's not scientific _method_, which requires peer-review by other scientists, among other criteria.

As far as 2007 having been a colder year overall than 2006.. I wouldn't dispute it.

Meteorology is the science of near-term weather prediction.

Climatology is the science of long-term weather prediction.

One (or even one more) colder than expected year doesn't detract from the credibility of the science behind global warming predictions.

Climatologists are looking into what's coming over the next hundred years.

I wasn't trying to reignite the climate debate on OptiBoard in all of its previous vigor. I did think that RealClimate posting that I referenced on the global cooling fairy tale was worth sharing. And I wanted to post this picture that I made of the "chalkboard" with the handwriting on it.. the idea just came to me late last night.




Click the "chalkboard" for more..

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## rinselberg

The press likes to call it the search for the "God" particle.

The biggest experiment in particle physics, the Large Hadron Collider, starts this summer in Switzerland. The goal is to find signs of an elusive particle called the Higgs boson—also known as the "God" particle because it might ultimately lead to a grand theory of the universe. What impact will the experiments have on our ideas of the cosmos and our place in it? To find out, NEWSWEEK's Ana Elena Azpurua spoke about science and religion with theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg at the University of Texas in Austin.

Weinberg's comments deflate the idea that this latest scientific quest will change the direction or focus of any of the current scientific and theologic discussions among believers and atheists.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/128877



Select ("click") any of the icons to explore another aspect of RinselWorld*™*

... ... ... ...

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## rinselberg

_This background audio track is offered as a fully optional "post enhancement". The post is complete, even without it. Your download time will depend on your Internet access and browser software configuration. If you have broadband or DSL you may see a download time of about two or three minutes at most. If you have dial-up you may do better to omit this option. (I wonder how long it would take on dial-up to download a 5.4 MB audio file..) Selecting the download does not impact other OptiBoard users._


The world's biggest scientific experiment--the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)--is counting down to the start of its science program, which is expected to begin, at the very latest, shortly before the end of this year, and probably sooner. Everything up until this point has just been _engineering_: Design and construction of the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator, taking the form of a massive below-ground tunnel containing the accelerator ring. It's located in the countryside spanning the international border between France and Switzerland. And thanks (I presume) to the European Union, LHC staff and visitors will not need to present passports, make customs declarations or exchange currencies to walk or drive from the Swiss side of the facility to the French side, or vice-versa.

Not everyone is pleased, however.

Retired nuclear safety specialist Walter Wagner and science writer Luis Sancho have filed a lawsuit in Hawaii's U.S. District Court to delay the start of scientific experiments until another safety review is completed.



_Why it's called the world's "biggest" scientific experiment: A construction engineer is dwarfed by the ATLAS detector, only one part of the gi-normous Large Hadron Collider._


Wagner and Sancho aren't worried in particular about what might happen to anyone who is at or near the facility. And they're not concerned about routine accidents such as electrocution or radiation exposure, which would only pose a risk to the staff and visitors at the facility.

Their lawsuit raises the possibility--or speculation, if you will--that the particle reactions inside the LHC will get out of control and bring Doomsday to the entire planet.

They're worried (or so they say) about microscopic black holes coalescing to form a massive black hole that would devour the planet. Quarks self-assembling into "strange matter", starting a chain reaction that would convert the Earth into something similar to a neutron star. Or magnetic monopoles that would have the same effect.

A psychology professor named Paul Dixon, who is on record for warning that particle experiments at the Illinois-based Fermilab's Tevatron Accelerator could someday convert the Earth into a white hot supernova--a kind of global warming scenario to the max(!)--has filed a supporting affidavit in the Wagner-Sancho lawsuit.

Many prominent physicists are voicing their belief that knowledge already gleaned from observations of stars and cosmic rays and from previous particle accelerator experiments and other physics experiments provide the confidence to conclude that the Doomsday scenarios cited in the lawsuit are--to the absolute limit that science can determine--completely impossible.

_To read more, including comments from bloggers at large:_
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archi...27/823924.aspx

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## rinselberg

How does a hare overtake a tortoise in a foot race when the tortoise has the advantage of a head start? A head start of a mile? A foot? An inch? As arbitrarily small a head start as you care to imagine? That's Zeno's paradox. And if it's not still familiar to you from your childhood days, here is a brief refresher.



Cosmologist Peter Lynds made news not so long ago when he offered a modern solution to Zeno's famous paradox.


> It is postulated [that] there is not a precise static instant in time underlying a dynamical physical process at which the relative position of a body in relative motion or a specific physical magnitude would theoretically be precisely determined. It is concluded [that] it is exactly because of this that _time_ [as we experience it] and the continuity of [all physical processes] are possible, with there being a necessary tradeoff of all precisely determined physical values at a time, for their continuity through time. This explanation is also shown to be the correct solution to the motion and infinity paradoxes [excluding the Stadium paradox] originally conceived by the ancient Greek mathematician Zeno of Elea. Quantum Cosmology, Imaginary Time and Chronons are also discussed, with the latter two appearing to be superseded on a theoretical basis.


Lynds treatise, which is actually brief, is available on line under the title of Time and Classical and Quantum Mechanics: Indeterminacy vs. Discontinuity.

Recently I posted something that contains within it (so I believe) another approach to unravelling the impossible conclusion of Zeno's paradox, which if taken at face value, leads to the startling observation that the hare never overtakes the tortoise! Does anybody really know what time is?

Peter Lynd's has also theorized that "nature" resolves conflicts involving singularities like the Big Bang (and its theoretical counterpart, the Big Crunch; also Black Holes) and the Second Law of Thermodynamics by reversing the flow of time, leaving us with a _cyclic_ universe: A universe in which time is finite, but a universe without beginning or end. Read more here.



Originally posted courtesy of Laramy-K Optical : Come for the discussions.. stay for the products and lab services!

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## rinselberg

Oh, did I mention that it's not just 900 pounds of squid--it's a 900 pound squid. And they're not going to eat it, they're going to put it on display at an aquarium.

It's eyes are the size of dinner plates--the largest eyes on the planet.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/134482

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## hcjilson

A friend of mine sent this link to me today and the first person I thought of was Rinselberg. What better place to post it! This is unbelievable!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=FqfunyCeU5g

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## rinselberg

> http://youtube.com/watch?v=FqfunyCeU5g


*Time to wake up and smell the coffee..*



"Granny's gone but the coffee's on.."

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## rinselberg

VATICAN CITY (AP)  Believing that the universe may contain alien life does not contradict a faith in God, the Vatican's chief astronomer said in an interview published Tuesday.

The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, was quoted as saying the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones . . .

In the interview by the Vatican newspaper _L'Osservatore Romano_, Funes said that such a notion "doesn't contradict our faith" because aliens would still be God's creatures. Ruling out the existence of aliens would be like "putting limits" on God's creative freedom, he said . . .

Funes said science, especially astronomy, does not contradict religion, touching on a theme of Pope Benedict XVI, who has made exploring the relationship between faith and reason a key aspect of his papacy.

The Vatican Observatory, which has an observational branch at the University of Arizona, cooperates with other world-class observatories and contributes to research involving cosmological models, spectral classification of star types, the distribution of metal-rich stars, binary stars and exchanges of matter, the composition of dark clouds from which new stars are born, particles surrounding young stars and last but not least, the history of astronomy and issues involving the relationship between science and theology.

_For the complete AP report:_
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j...CvwawD90KV2VG0

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## rinselberg

Northrop To Develop "Mind-Reading" Binoculars for Defense Department

The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has tapped Northrop Grumman to develop binoculars that will tap the subconscious mind.

The Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System program ... combines advanced optics with electro-encephalogram electrodes that can, DARPA believes, be used to alert the wearer to a threat _before_ the conscious mind has processed the information.


_DARPA says a soldier's brain can be monitored in real time, with an EEG picking up "neural signatures" that indicate target detection._

While they were considering a number of technologies for neural detections, it appears DARPA has settled on EEG. "HORNET will utilize a custom helmet equipped with electro-encephalogram electrodes placed on the scalp to record the user's continuous electrical brain activity," says Northrop. "The operator's neural responses to the presence or absence of potential threats will train the system's algorithms, which will continue to be refined over time so that the warfighter is always presented with items of relevance to [the] mission."


For more:
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/0...op-to-dev.html

And:
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscell.../05/binoculars

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## rinselberg

An artist's representation shows how a cost effective solar concentrator could help make existing solar panels more efficient. The dye-based luminescent solar concentrator functions without the use of tracking or cooling systems, greatly reducing the overall cost compared to other concentrator technology. Dye molecules coated on glass absorb sunlight, and re-emit it at a different wavelengths. The light is trapped and transported within the glass until it is captured by solar cells at the edge. Some light passes through the concentrator, and is absorbed by lower voltage solar cells underneath. Graphic not to scale. Credit: Nicolle Rager Fuller, NSF.

For more:
http://www.livescience.com/technolog...r-windows.html

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## rinselberg

Why take a rocket into space when you could just use the elevator--the "Space Elevator"..?

MSNBC's Cosmic Log reports on the Space Elevator Conference taking place this weekend in Seattle, at the Microsoft campus. Includes video.

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archi...8/1206845.aspx

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## Steve Machol

I saw that covered on one of the Science channels. Very cool idea.

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## DragonLensmanWV

> I saw that covered on one of the Science channels. Very cool idea.


Yeah, Larry Niven has been expousing the virtues of these for more than 20 years.

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## rinselberg

Miniature eye-shaped digital camera yields enhanced sharpness across the entire field of view. Device mimics geometry of human eye. Said to be a step towards the development of a "bionic eye".

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26058749/

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## rinselberg

Another milestone in the development of "metamaterials" with a _negative_ index of optical refraction..

http://www.scientificcomputing.com/I...ep-Closer.aspx

The report is accompanied by an illustration of how negative refraction works.

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## rinselberg

A Pacific fish uses mirrors as well as lenses to help it see in the murky ocean depths, scientists have revealed.

The brownsnout spookfish has been known for 120 years, but no live specimen had ever been captured.

Last year, one was caught off Tonga, by scientists from Tuebingen University, Germany.

Tests confirmed the fish is the first vertebrate known to have developed mirrors to focus light into its eyes, the team reports in Current Biology.

"In nearly 500 million years of vertebrate evolution, and many thousands of vertebrate species living and dead, this is the only one known to have solved the fundamental optical problem faced by all eyes - how to make an image - using a mirror," said Professor Julian Partridge, of Bristol University, who conducted the tests.

_For the complete BBC report with photographs:_
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7815540.stm


You've just experienced the perfect balance of information and entertainment.. the Great American Post**

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## rinselberg

The war on malaria-carrying mosquitoes turns to mosquito-zapping laser guns..

Brief summary:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...SS&attr=797093

Longer article:
http://www.comcast.net/articles/fina...0870885500701/


People who read this post also read..Eyeborg: Filmmaker to install mini-camera in prosthetic eyePublic Relations Department: Back to the drawing board!

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## rinselberg

Paleontologists have been piecing together a skeleton of an ancient marine predator dubbed "Predator X". Estimated to approach 50 feet in length and 45 tons, the monster makes "T. rex" look like a harmless pup, in comparison. Predator X is quite possibly the largest predator that ever lived.



For more:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,509484,00.html

_Predator X_ premieres on Sunday, March 29, 2009 at 8:00 PM ET/PT on The History Channel.
http://www.cinemablend.com/televisio...nth-16210.html

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## ksquared

ScienceDaily (Apr. 3, 2009)  The sunspot cycle is behaving a little like the stock market. Just when you think it has hit bottom, it goes even lower.

The year 2008 was a bear. There were no sunspots observed on 266 of the year's 366 days (73 percent). To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go all the way back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days. Prompted by these numbers, some observers suggested that the solar cycle had hit bottom in 2008.

Maybe not. Sunspot counts for 2009 have dropped even lower. As of March 31st, there were no sunspots on 78 of the year's 90 days (87 percent).

It adds up to one inescapable conclusion: "We're experiencing a very deep solar minimum," says solar physicist Dean Pesnell of NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. In a way, the calm is exciting, says Pesnell. "For the first time in history, we're getting to observe a deep solar minimum." 

Modern technology cannot, however, predict what comes next. Competing models by dozens of solar physicists disagree, sometimes sharply, on when this solar minimum will end and how big the next solar maximum will be. The great uncertainty stems from one simple fact: *No one fully understands the underlying physics of the sunspot cycle*.

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## rinselberg

[youtube]-WEdX_RIRw8[/youtube]

The BBC reports..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8330424.stm

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## rinselberg

RQ-170 "Sentinel".
Photo credit: http://gizmodo.com/5419363/usaf-conf...-stealth-plane


U.S. acknowledges "The Beast of Kandahar".

The U.S. Air Force has acknowledged that it is developing and testing a new, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) — a drone with a sleek, stealth design that will be deployed for military reconnaissance and surveillance missions.

Aeronautics fans have nicknamed the aircraft "The Beast of Kandahar," as it was apparently spotted over the skies of Afghanistan. Industry observers speculate it is sophisticated enough to gather aerial intelligence over *Iran* without detection, perhaps keeping track of the Islamic Republic's emerging nuclear program.


For more:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2009/...est=latestnews

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