This is a repository for all cool scientific discussion and fascination. Scientific facts, theories, and overall cool scientific stuff that you'd like to share with others. Stuff that makes you smile and wonder at the amazing shit going on around us, that most people don't notice.
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Originally Posted by Rain Man:
Ohhhhhhhh. I was assuming that the observer was at a telescope 22 light years away. I misread it.
Ahh yes I am used to the mirrors in my telescope so I assumed the mirrors were in the telescope not reflecting an image back at us. My bad. Dave math fail. [Reply]
Perhaps not a Moon landing, but these are some of the kids who might very well be part of the next landing somewhere. If you've never seen what these high school kids can do, it might be worth a look-see... Obviously I'm a homer for this team, but the truth is they're all awesome. And it's so cool that in this day and age these kids are afforded the opportunity to do these things on the scale they're doing them. And if you've never looked into the larger "FIRST" (For the Inspiration of Science and Technology) program, it too is worth a look. If your a science nerd. I higher a lot of engineers, and when my son got into this, for the first time in a long time I had hope that, in time, we'd be able to honestly compete on the world stage. LOL, a call to Cisco, Microsoft or Dell might actually get answers state-side for a change!
The good news is, in a few short weeks, many of the same kids you see in this video will spend countless hours in that same "shop" designing and building a different robot for a different game. They get six weeks to go from knowing what "the game" is to designing and building the robot. After those six weeks are done, they have to "bag" the robot until the night before their first competition.
I never had anything this cool when I was in high school... I was pretty-much stuck with football, baseball and wrestling. The chess, debate, foreign language and clubs didn't pique my interests.
Officially, there's an innocuous reason for the giant arm: a stereo vision system, in tandem with GPS, lets the robot precisely deliver one-pound payloads with the kind of reach that us fleshy anthropods wouldn't have. We're not quite so comforted after realizing that the robot can find its target without human input, however. DARPA sees the V-Bat as a stepping stone towards more autonomous vehicles, and it likely has noble intentions at heart. [Reply]
Here's a great TED video about Captcha, Recaptcha, and DuoLingo, and the massive-scale online collaboration to translate books and the internet. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ht4qiDRZE8
SomeRandomGirl... That was a really good video. Thanks. I didn't think I would listen to the whole thing, but it turned out to be really cool.
Here's another TED I enjoyed recently. In a bloody brit accent and logically superior metric standards, but still...
Specifically at 6:35, he explains how the US Apollo program contributed to the US economy. For every $1 spent on the Apollo program, it contributed to $14 dollars being introduced into the US economy.
"Nothing is more fatal to the progress of the human mind than to
presume that our views of science are ultimate. That our triumphs are
complete. That there are no mysteries in Nature and that there are no
new worlds to conquer." ~ Sir Humphry Davy [Reply]
This is a juvenile form of the Cereal leaf beetle (Oulema melanopus) after being parasitized by Tetrastichus julis, a parasitoid wasp which lays its eggs inside the larva of the beetle. They eggs hatch within the larvae and begin to feed while it is still alive, before they burst out and kill it. These parasites are often used as a biological control, as the Cereal leaf beetle is considered a pest and regularly feeds on crops.
