The SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY News Thread

[Dextro]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

Madoka and Homura.

Nuff said.

Nah, Madoka already has a full galaxy to her name. Kyouko and Sayaka so we can leave Homura's name for a star or something equally grand.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Dextro

Nah, Madoka already has a full galaxy to her name. Kyouko and Sayaka so we can leave Homura's name for a star or something equally grand.

Those morons at NASA refused to rename it, and let it remained NGC 6334.

I proposed the names to be shortened to Kyo and Saya.

[Dextro]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

Those morons at NASA refused to rename it, and let it remained NGC 6334.

I proposed the names to be shortened to Kyo and Saya.

NASA I am disapoint

[LoweGear]

i09: Life has been discovered beneath the Antarctic ice

Originally Posted by i09

There is life in Lake Whillans. For millions of years, this small body of liquid water has lurked hundreds of meters below Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf, sealed off from the outside world and the scientists who would explore its subglacial depths. Now, in a monumental first, a team of researchers led by Montana State University glaciologist John Priscu has bored a tunnel to Whillans and encountered life, making Priscu and his colleagues the first people in history to discover living organisms in the alien lakes at the bottom of the world.

I say "alien" because Lake Whillans — like the hundreds of other subglacial lakes and waterways entombed beneath Antarctica's assorted ice shelves — is thought to harbor conditions similar to those of Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus. Hundreds of meters below the surface of Earth's southernmost continent, pressures soar to vitality-crushing levels. Nutrient availability is minimal. Sunlight is nonexistent. Antarctica's bygone repositories of liquid water have been isolated from the rest of the world for so long, under conditions so extreme, that evidence of life in any of the continent's subsurface reservoirs would bode well for our chances of discovering life on other worlds — to say nothing of the enormous boon such a discovery would be to biological research here on Earth.

Now, it appears we have that evidence.

"Lake Whillans definitely harbors life," said Priscu in a phone interview with Nature News's Quirin Schiermeier. "It appears that there lies a large wetland ecosystem under Antarctica's ice sheet, with an active microbiology."

Pictured above is the tunnel that Priscu and his colleagues had to drill in order to break through to the lake's surface last month, on the 28th of January. "What they found," writes Schiermeier, "was a body of water just 2 metres or so deep - much shallower than the 10–25 metres seismic surveys had suggested, although Priscu notes that the lake may well have deeper spots."

Schiermeier continues:

The team put a camera down the borehole to make sure that the borehole was wide enough for sampling instruments to be deployed and returned safely. It was, and over the next few days, the scientists collected some 30 litres of liquid lake water and eight sediment cores from the lake's bottom, each 60 centimetres long.

What precious stuff they had retrieved soon became clear under the on-site microscope. Both water and sediment contained an array of microbes that did not need sunlight to survive. The scientists counted about 1,000 bacteria per millilitre of lake water - roughly one-tenth the abundance of microbes in the oceans. In Petri dishes, the bacteria show a "really good growth rate", says Priscu.

Photographs like the one featured below, captured by cameras at the bottom of Lake Whillans, can't tell us much of anything about the genetic makeup of these microbes. That being said, the hypothesis that these organisms will represent some heretofore undescribed extremophiles, uniquely suited to their punishing local environment, is not an unreasonable one; and it's a hypothesis which, if confirmed, could make for some very intriguing lines of genetic investigation.

To that end, Priscu says he and his team will have to rely on DNA sequencing and other tests, preliminary rounds of which will take at least a month to perform. Followup studies will surely extend out for years to come.

"What we are all dying to find out now is, of course, ‘who's there' and ‘what's their life style'," he says.

Aren't we all.

And then we discover that said life can mimic other forms of life, take over them, and can only be killed via generous applications of fire- *static*

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

Those morons at NASA refused to rename it, and let it remained NGC 6334.

Blasphemy! you've got the wrong nebula, it's NGC 6357!

[RRW]

YouTube

http://youtu.be/1W90i4nZZAQ

Sorry; dynamic content not loaded. Reload?

MOSCOW — A meteor streaked across the sky above Russia’s Ural Mountains on Friday morning, causing sharp explosions and reportedly injuring around 100 people, including many hurt by broken glass.

Fragments of the meteor fell in a thinly populated area of the Chelyabinsk region, the Emergency Ministry said in a statement.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...e64_story.html

[Vexx]

Actually ... we need a whole pile of these little shards. Perhaps the governments might figure out there's something more important to spend money on? Maybe? Almost as good as an alien invasion.

[RRW]

more video

http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/15/39...osion-reported

meanwhile on other news

Asteroid 2012 DA14 won't hit us... but what if it did?

[Cosmic Eagle]

Little Tunguska......

[Ithekro]

Here we go:

http://now.msn.com/vladimir-zhirinov...n-weapons-test

Put down the Stoli, dude: Russian pol says meteor was US weapon test

That didn't take long. Russian nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky has floated the first major meteor conspiracy theory, declaring that the fiery blast streaking across Russia's skies was NOT a piece of space debris. "It's not meteors falling, it's the test of a new weapon by the Americans," he said. We're not totally convinced by this interesting alternative theory, but we are awed by scenes of shattering windows presumably caused by the speeding object's sonic boom. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is taking a more philosophical view of the disaster. Speaking at an economic forum in Siberia, he said it shows that "not only the economy is vulnerable, but the whole planet."

[SaintessHeart]

Cmon you fat Russian bears! Build a giant magrail to draw in a meteor and shoot at US!

[Xellos-_^]

Can a Tesla Model S make it from Washington, D.C., to Boston without riding on a flatbed truck?

A reviewer in the New York Times said recently that he failed to make it, setting off a war of words with Tesla founder Elon Musk, who said the Times review was a "fake."
On Thursday, I took the same drive -- and I made it to Boston, though not without some anxiety that I would run out of juice.
The key issue is not the car itself, but the location of charging stations, since the Tesla (TSLA) battery pack is good for only 270 miles.
The most scary part of the trip: the 200 miles between charging stations in Newark, Del., and Milford, Conn. That's not a lot of cushion, especially after I missed an exit adding a few miles to that leg.
Tesla has a load of instructions to maximize battery power, and I think I followed them pretty well.



http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/15/auto...l-s/index.html

anyone following the Tesla/NYT feud?


as much as i support tesla. If your product depends on common sense to operate, it probably won't be very successful.

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by Xellos-_^

anyone following the Tesla/NYT feud?


as much as i support tesla. If your product depends on common sense to operate, it probably won't be very successful.

Yup, tbh I think Broder is the one on thin ice here, when half of your counter to hard data boils down to "but, but the guy I talked to on the phone said...", it's not looking good for you.

As you mentioned, CNN managed the same trip in one day instead of two, took a 30 mile detour to avoid traffic, hit traffic anyway, and still had plenty of range left to spare at the end. Seems like the CNN driver managed to grasp the concept that if you don't put in enough fuel (whether gas or electricity) in your vehicle, you're probably not gonna get there, something Broder apparently has yet to figure out.

Something that most people who complain about the Model S seems to forget that the Model S is a niche product aimed at a very specific market. It's a high end luxury sport sedan using cutting edge tech for rich people who will more than likely have another car or 2 for the few times they would actually drive long distance instead of just flying. It's not designed for nor aimed at the avg. consumer as an all-purpose car.

Not unless you're rich enough to use a BMW M5 or Nissan GTR as one.

[Xellos-_^]

Originally Posted by kyp275

Yup, tbh I think Broder is the one on thin ice here, when half of your counter to hard data boils down to "but, but the guy I talked to on the phone said...", it's not looking good for you.

As you mentioned, CNN managed the same trip in one day instead of two, took a 30 mile detour to avoid traffic, hit traffic anyway, and still had plenty of range left to spare at the end. Seems like the CNN driver managed to grasp the concept that if you don't put in enough fuel (whether gas or electricity) in your vehicle, you're probably not gonna get there, something Broder apparently has yet to figure out.

Something that most people who complain about the Model S seems to forget that the Model S is a niche product aimed at a very specific market. It's a high end luxury sport sedan using cutting edge tech for rich people who will more than likely have another car or 2 for the few times they would actually drive long distance instead of just flying. It's not designed for nor aimed at the avg. consumer as an all-purpose car.

Not unless you're rich enough to use a BMW M5 or Nissan GTR as one.

i think Broder is lying but in the end it doesn't really do Tesla much good with the general public. As the perception becomes you actually need to read and follow the instruction to operate a Tesla vehicle. And American pride themselves on not reading the instruction sheets much less following them.

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by Xellos-_^

i think Broder is lying but in the end it doesn't really do Tesla much good with the general public. As the perception becomes you actually need to read and follow the instruction to operate a Tesla vehicle. And American pride themselves on not reading the instruction sheets much less following them.

I don't think it's that big of an issue atm for Tesla, as none of their product is really aimed for the general public yet. Truth of the matter is that EV has still got a way to go, in cost, energy storage and supporting infrastructure before any large scale adaptation is really realistic.

And yea, that includes making it practical enough for dumb users

[Xellos-_^]

Originally Posted by kyp275

And yea, that includes making it practical enough for dumb users

that is the final challenge for EV before it can take off, Practical enough for dumb users.

[kyp275]

This feels oddly appropriate with all the asteroid and meteors today

http://i.imgur.com/tc0VMmD.png

[ogon_bat]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

Here we go:

http://now.msn.com/vladimir-zhirinov...n-weapons-test

Put down the Stoli, dude: Russian pol says meteor was US weapon test

Lets suppose for a moment this WAS a (not so secret anymore) weapon test, am I the only one disappointed? When I saw all the videos of the meteor I EXPECTED to see a huge explosion (with mushroom included) when it hit the ground. So said weapon was very efficient in breaking glass windows, are we expected to believe enemy ground forces carry big glass windows at some moment of time so that this weapon would achieve its full effect? Would it have ANY advantage over modern warfare weapons? Also, why it is always the USA the "evil mastermind", ATM it is the EU who is taking one by one parts of the old USSR and integrating them into the union. Even the Japanese have yet to sign a end of the war that started in 1945 and have a feud over kamtchatka and the kuril islands. Heck, even China might at some point decide they want a piece of the russian territory (the water shortage problem is real and those ice glaciers might solve the problem).

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by ogon_bat

am I the only one disappointed? When I saw all the videos of the meteor I EXPECTED to see a huge explosion (with mushroom included) when it hit the ground..

Err yes? the meteor fragmented with most of the pieces burned up in the atmosphere, it IS only table sized.

Not sure why you'd be disappointed that it didn't impact the ground, which would've still caused significant damage and loss of live should it come down in a populated area, which it certainly looked like it could've.

[Fahd]

Originally Posted by kyp275

Err yes? the meteor fragmented with most of the pieces burned up in the atmosphere, it IS only table sized.

The day meteor's have re-entry shields is the day we should get suspicious . I wonder if home-insurance would cover all the broken windows, or if it would come under a "random unpredictable event" get-out clause...