Interesting Stuff Thread

Obliq

That's brilliant! I'm sure Ireland could find a way to sell them for more than €20 though. I want one!

seamus

I actually don't see the bike selling too well, but it does open a new door in materials technology. As the guy points out in his video, the only thing people seem to know how to make out of cardboard, is boxes.
But if you can make something out of cardboard with moving parts and stresses and friction, like a bike, then that opens up a whole world of possible applications for it.

Not least of course, less than savoury applications. Cardboard weapons, anyone? Use a piece of machinery to fold/compress a piece of board enough and I'm sure you could make a pretty potent bullet out of it, undetectable by airport scanners.

It is a retrograde step though, environmentally speaking. Building stuff out of trees is part of the reason we spend so much time exploring carbon fibre and nanotubes.

seamus

seamus wrote: »

Not least of course, less than savoury applications. Cardboard weapons, anyone? Use a piece of machinery to fold/compress a piece of board enough and I'm sure you could make a pretty potent bullet out of it, undetectable by airport scanners.

Don't give them ideas ffs.

Dades

Man, hipsters are going to go crazy for those bikes.

For a month. And then they'll be soooo last year.

shizz

Gbear wrote: »

I must've had my head buried under a rock for the last while because I had no idea that private space travel had developed to the point where they're sending cargo to the ISS.

Holy ****ing ****!


http://www.zmescience.com/space/spacex-dragon-capsule-iss-1010201/

Well there had only been one flight previous to that but a fairly big deal was made about it. Suprised you missed it if you have an interest.

Beruthiel

Dades wrote: »

Man, hipsters are going to go crazy for those bikes.

Until it rains.

joseph brand

Creativity 'closely entwined with mental illness'

Creativity is often part of a mental illness, with writers particularly susceptible, according to a study of more than a million people.

Writers had a higher risk of anxiety and bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, unipolar depression, and substance abuse, the Swedish researchers at the Karolinska Institute found.

They were almost twice as likely as the general population to kill themselves.

Lead researcher Dr Simon Kyaga said the findings suggested disorders should be viewed in a new light and that certain traits might be beneficial or desirable.

For example, the restrictive and intense interests of someone with autism and the manic drive of a person with bipolar disorder might provide the necessary focus and determination for genius and creativity.

Similarly, the disordered thoughts associated with schizophrenia might spark the all-important originality element of a masterpiece.

Artists. A quirky sort of bunch. Isn't it that edge, that they have, that drives and enables them to create?

Weird thing is, whenever I get a chance to smoke some weed*, at home on my own, I cannot stop writing lyrics and coming up with tunes in my head. It's annoying, since I can't write music and I'm tone deaf.

John Lennon, Brian Wilson, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain inhaled.

muppeteer

Alpha Centauri system has a planet! At only 4ly away it's literally pissing distance from earth(ok a little further)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19959531

Astronomers have found the nearest planet outside our Solar System, circling one of the stars of Alpha Centauri just four light-years away.

The planet has at minimum the same mass as Earth, but circles its star far closer than Mercury orbits our Sun.

It is therefore outside the "habitable zone" denoting the possibility of life, as the researchers report in Nature.

However, studies on exoplanets increasingly show that a star with one planet is likely to have several.

CerebralCortex

muppeteer wrote: »

Alpha Centauri system has a planet! At only 4ly away it's literally pissing distance from earth(ok a little further)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19959531

You'd nearly make it in the Almera.

robindch

Endeavour's last journey, time-lapsed:

http://framework.latimes.com/2012/10/15/time-lapse-video-space-shuttle-endeavours-trek-across-l-a/

cool

magicbastarder

has anyone listened to this?
Documentary on One
From Belief to Unbelief

In September 1980, twenty young religious men entered the Marist Fathers seminary in Dublin - since then, seventeen have left and, of these, three are no longer believers.

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/radio-documentary-from-belief-to-unbelief-joe-armstrong-catholic-priesthood.html

Galvasean

Brains? In the preCambrian? That'll be another stick to twack people with when they try to use the Cambrian 'explosion' as proof for Intelligent Design.
http://news.yahoo.com/oldest-arthropod-brain-found-buglike-creature-171118492.html

Hotblack Desiato

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/1018/1224325412730.html

I got married in 1996. I already had a daughter and had parented her alone with no input from her biological father (who is not in this jurisdiction) for 10 years.

By the following January I felt it was time to put in train what I assumed would be the simple matter of having my new husband adopt my daughter. I discovered that we, as a married couple, would have to jointly adopt her.

Social workers interviewed us, separately and together. I was assessed for my suitability to be mother to my own daughter. It was nonsense. It was degrading and insulting to me. The process took no account of the fact I was this child’s mother and had been parenting alone for a decade.

In the end we were given a date for our Adoption Board hearing, where we would find out if we had been successful.The final insult was my daughter being issued with a new birth cert naming me as her “adoptive mother”.

The Mad Hatter

Scientists create petrol from thin air:

A small British company has produced the first "petrol from air" using a revolutionary technology that promises to solve the energy crisis as well as helping to curb global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Air Fuel Synthesis in Stockton-on-Tees has produced five litres of petrol since August when it switched on a small refinery that manufactures gasoline from carbon dioxide and water vapour.

The company hopes that within two years it will build a larger, commercial-scale plant capable of producing a ton of petrol a day. It also plans to produce green aviation fuel to make airline travel more carbon-neutral.

The Independent

Personally, I'm sort of cautiously optimistic about this. I've learned not to get my hopes up too much about any solutions to climate change, given how poorly everything has worked out thus far, and how freely damage has been done, but if the science is sound then this is extremely good news.

fitz0

Hmmm, I'm sceptical. I will remain sceptical until I see some actual evidence that isn't the Independent. Are there any published papers on this? It really sounds like a hoax.

Aenaes

Science works in mysterious ways... it will help us in our struggle!

Hotblack Desiato

I'm not even going to bother to click on the Indy link. Not worth the effort.

Gbear

Last Sunday's "Penn's Sunday School" with Penn Jilette was excellent.
It's a podcast you can subscribe to on iTunes.

It was a big interview with Laurence Krauss about the Higgs and quantum Physics in general.

The Mad Hatter

fitz0 wrote: »

Hmmm, I'm sceptical. I will remain sceptical until I see some actual evidence that isn't the Independent. Are there any published papers on this? It really sounds like a hoax.

Mm, I think that's fair. They could be just trying to drum up publicity to draw investment for "R&D". I guess I'm inclined to give benefit of the doubt, even when it might not be due.

I could swear I heard of something similar about 8-10 years ago so I'm pretty skeptical to say the least.

recedite

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

Scientists create petrol from thin air:



The Independent

This is the key phrase;

the process ....... needs to take electricity from the national grid to work

Its quite easy and much simpler to make hydrogen fuel out of ordinary water. Petrol is the middleman in this scenario; why bother with it?

joseph brand

Air Canada flight helps locate sailor off Australian coast!!

The Air Canada flight crew was using binoculars provided by passengers to look for the yacht as Robertson took the plane down to about 5,000 feet.

"I made a PA announcement to ask the passengers [to watch for the boat] because it's like looking for a needle in a haystack," he said.

"Almost right away, my first officer spotted something," Robertson said, adding that at 5,000 feet is was hard to make out any details.

"So I went from 5,000 down to 3,700 feet ... and they saw what they thought initially were three people on the deck, but it turns out there was only one," he said.

Robertson said the 777 is a big plane to be down at that level doing search and rescue.

"The passengers were awesome," Robertson said, adding he heard no complaints about the detour.

How cool is this?

Obliq

joseph brand wrote: »

Air Canada flight helps locate sailor off Australian coast!!



How cool is this?

That's pretty damn cool

robindch

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

Air Fuel Synthesis in Stockton-on-Tees has produced five litres of petrol since August when it switched on a small refinery that manufactures gasoline from carbon dioxide and water vapour.

The best of luck to them, but five liters in three months isn't going to change the world just yet.

shizz

recedite wrote: »

This is the key phrase;

Its quite easy and much simpler to make hydrogen fuel out of ordinary water. Petrol is the middleman in this scenario; why bother with it?

I presume its because all of the infrastructure and devices that utilise petrol are already widely available.

joseph brand

robindch wrote: »

The best of luck to them, but five liters in three months isn't going to change the world just yet.

Oh, ye of little faith.

sink

recedite wrote: »

Its quite easy and much simpler to make hydrogen fuel out of ordinary water. Petrol is the middleman in this scenario; why bother with it?

Two reasons, first it will run in existing engines and machinery and secondly it will take CO2 out of the atmosphere, although only temporarily.

Whether it succeeds all depends on the amount of energy input needed, it obviously can't be much more than is currently required for drilling, extracting and refining.

magicbastarder

why would you use the national grid?
surely this is an ideal use case for wind or other renewable energy, whose main achilles heel is variability; and the subsequent lack of storage options. 'storing' the electricity in the fuel would be a great way of dealing with that.

The Mad Hatter

magicbastarder wrote: »

why would you use the national grid?
surely this is an ideal use case for wind or other renewable energy, whose main achilles heel is variability; and the subsequent lack of storage options. 'storing' the electricity in the fuel would be a great way of dealing with that.

In fairness, he does say down the article that the goal is to move to using renewables. I'd say* that they used the national grid for now as it was cheaper to run and refine the process.




*Again, assuming that it's not a hoax.

kylith

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

Scientists create petrol from thin air:



The Independent

Personally, I'm sort of cautiously optimistic about this. I've learned not to get my hopes up too much about any solutions to climate change, given how poorly everything has worked out thus far, and how freely damage has been done, but if the science is sound then this is extremely good news.

I really don't see the point of doing this; petrol is one of the things that got us into this mess to start with; what good would making more of it do?

recedite wrote: »

Its quite easy and much simpler to make hydrogen fuel out of ordinary water. Petrol is the middleman in this scenario; why bother with it?

I'm with you. I firmly believe that the sooner we start moving to hydrogen the better.