Interesting Stuff Thread

kiffer

Pherekydes wrote: »

That's a beaut!

Make sure all you good Irish (read catholic) girls stay off that pommel horse!

Isn't it amusing how McQuaid and other grandees of the time seem to have done far too much agonising over the pleasure girls would get from pommel horses and tampax?

I'm willing ti bet someone used the phrase Pommel Whores at that time... that durty auld bishop.

Sarky

I'm afraid "Wife-swappin' sodomites" is about the closest that crowd have ever come to a witty catchphrase.

wp_rathead

Worth a watch

robindch

Physicists Peter Higgs and Francois Englert win a trip to Sweden:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24436781

FouxDaFaFa

robindch wrote: »

Physicists Peter Higgs and Francois Englert win a trip to Sweden:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24436781

I've been a bit off with the Nobel ever since the door of the Nobel Museum literally hit me on the way out.

Hard.

seamus

pauldla wrote: »

This is very cool. 3D printing in space.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24329296

Awesome. I remember there was a discussion on AH not too long ago when a company were talking about (very long-term) plans to launch automated mining ships which would utilise thousands of tiny craft to carry out the mining.

Someone made the point that the cost of launching thousands of tiny craft would be inordinately expensive.

I countered with 3D printers; you don't need to launch the tiny ships, just build them in space in a tiny-ship-manufacturing facility which can build, repair and recycle them. "No way, it doesn't matter, machines can't build themselves and where do they get the raw materials".

Well, in your face anonymous poster with a barely-rememberable argument from last year.

Seriously though, I don't think the importance of 3D printing to technological development can really be overhyped. It allows us to overcome so many limitations it's not funny.

Gbear

seamus wrote: »

Awesome. I remember there was a discussion on AH not too long ago when a company were talking about (very long-term) plans to launch automated mining ships which would utilise thousands of tiny craft to carry out the mining.

Someone made the point that the cost of launching thousands of tiny craft would be inordinately expensive.

I countered with 3D printers; you don't need to launch the tiny ships, just build them in space in a tiny-ship-manufacturing facility which can build, repair and recycle them. "No way, it doesn't matter, machines can't build themselves and where do they get the raw materials".

Well, in your face anonymous poster with a barely-rememberable argument from last year.

Seriously though, I don't think the importance of 3D printing to technological development can really be overhyped. It allows us to overcome so many limitations it's not funny.

It's serious sci-fi ****.

Right now it's about just making stuff out of whatever materials you have but I'd imagine that the lessons learned with 3d printing technology will be handy when it comes to building "replicators" like those in star trek.

It'll completely revolutionise manufacturing and make large scale space exploration far more feasible.

Sarky

A friend of mine was in a Logitech office recently as part of a testing group for a mouse. They'd actually run out of mice when it got to his turn, so they printed one out for him in a few minutes. He got so much nerd glee out of that.

kylith

Gbear wrote: »

It's serious sci-fi ****.

Right now it's about just making stuff out of whatever materials you have but I'd imagine that the lessons learned with 3d printing technology will be handy when it comes to building "replicators" like those in star trek.

It'll completely revolutionise manufacturing and make large scale space exploration far more feasible.

I think that the first-gen food replicators will be essentially 3D printers using protein as the printing medium with various flavours injected into the appropriate parts of the dish. It probably will be a hell of a lot handier than having to transport food up, and it can be flavoured however you like.

I think artificial gravity is more important though. I think they should get that sorted before this trip to Mars they're talking about, there's not much use sending a bunch of people to explore another planet if they won't be able to walk around once they're down there.

Sarky

Protein is tricky stuff to replicate. I wouldn't bet on my grandchildren seeing a food replicator like that. Not that I intend to have offspring of any sort, but you take my point.

kylith

Sarky wrote: »

Protein is tricky stuff to replicate. I wouldn't bet on my grandchildren seeing a food replicator like that. Not that I intend to have offspring of any sort, but you take my point.

I'm not talking about replicating it, just a big bag of it hooked up to a 3D printer. And maybe not exactly protein, but some mix of protein, vitamins, minerals and fibre to make sure everyone gets spot-on nutrition. So instead of dehydrating broccoli, sweetcorn, and meat, etc. and then shipping it to space, dinners would be made of protein mush appropriately shaped, coloured, and flavoured. There's probably bog all you could do about the texture of the stuff though.

seamus

Yeah, manipulating stuff at the molecular level is hard. I would say we may be able to break most stuff down into their constituent compounds and break some of those compounds down to their base elements, but it's definitely a while away. Any food produced would likely be a non-descript gelatinous goo containing a mixture of the various compounds someone needs to survive. Salt is easy to make though, so you can sprinkle salt on it

On artificial gravity, I remember as a teenager having a really vivid half-sleeping dream one night as I was thinking about atoms and molecules. In it I visualised a way of creating artificial gravity using hydrogen atoms. It was crystal clear, simple and I fully understood how it worked. The "shock" of making such an incredible discovery brought me completely awake, and I promptly forgot the details of my magnificent invention. It's like that episode of the Simpsons where Homer dreams he has invented something incredible but nobody will tell him what it is

coffee_cake

Gbear wrote: »

It's serious sci-fi ****.

Right now it's about just making stuff out of whatever materials you have but I'd imagine that the lessons learned with 3d printing technology will be handy when it comes to building "replicators" like those in star trek.

It'll completely revolutionise manufacturing and make large scale space exploration far more feasible.

Oh my god the replicators are going to kill us all!

No wait that's stargate...

PopePalpatine

Am I a bad person for wondering when the first 3D-printed sex toys will emerge? :pac:

Bannasidhe

PopePalpatine wrote: »

Am I a bad person for wondering when the first 3D-printed sex toys will emerge? :pac:

Some friends of mine seem to consider 3D printers as 'sex toys' judging by their gushing FB comments....

Sarky

PopePalpatine wrote: »

Am I a bad person for wondering when the first 3D-printed sex toys will emerge? :pac:

I would be utterly amazed if it hasn't already happened. The first or second question asked of any major discovery/invention is usually "Can we make porn with it?"

FouxDaFaFa

PopePalpatine wrote: »

Am I a bad person for wondering when the first 3D-printed sex toys will emerge? :pac:

It's already a thing.

Don't ask me how I know these things...

(You can even get a mould done of...appendages, so it's realistic).

Would provide a link but I'm at work and that would be an interesting search for a customer to see over my shoulder.

PopePalpatine

Sarky wrote: »

I would be utterly amazed if it hasn't already happened. The first or second question asked of any major discovery/invention is usually "Can we make porn with it?"

Goddamned Rule 34. :pac:

Cabaal

Sarky wrote: »

I would be utterly amazed if it hasn't already happened. The first or second question asked of any major discovery/invention is usually "Can we make porn with it?"

The second being, can we make weapons?....hence the 3D printed gun

Bannasidhe

Cabaal wrote: »

The second being, can we make weapons?....hence the 3D printed gun

Religious iconography next so.

Brian Shanahan

kylith wrote: »

I think artificial gravity is more important though. I think they should get that sorted before this trip to Mars they're talking about, there's not much use sending a bunch of people to explore another planet if they won't be able to walk around once they're down there.

Most important IMO is space elevators. For truly long term survival we need to get a significant % of us off this ball, and space elevators will probably be a huge step in getting there.

Brian Shanahan

seamus wrote: »

On artificial gravity, I remember as a teenager having a really vivid half-sleeping dream one night as I was thinking about atoms and molecules. In it I visualised a way of creating artificial gravity using hydrogen atoms. It was crystal clear, simple and I fully understood how it worked. The "shock" of making such an incredible discovery brought me completely awake, and I promptly forgot the details of my magnificent invention. It's like that episode of the Simpsons where Homer dreams he has invented something incredible but nobody will tell him what it is

Or that time that Detritus got locked in the Ankh-Morepork Pork Futures warehouse, and because of all the cold had the intelligence to solve the equation Deep Thought was built for, only for Cuddy to rescue him about five seconds too early.

robindch

robindch wrote: »

Physicists Peter Higgs and Francois Englert win a trip to Sweden [...]

Here's Dara O'Briain, with a delicious eloquence, on Peter Higgs:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/08/higgs-boson-nobel-prize-peter-cern

Dara O'Briain wrote:

It seems an unusual word to use about a subject as dry as theoretical physics, but there is definitely romance to Peter Higgs (and François Englert) winning a Nobel prize.

While the credit for the discovery of the particle that bears his name goes to a team of at least 3,000 operating the most ambitious and technically advanced machine in history, that entire endeavour came from one of the enduring images of physics – the lone genius, armed with only their imagination and some arcane maths, managing to unlock the structure of the universe with only a pen and paper. From Newton under his apple tree to Einstein on a tea break from his job as a patent clerk, the contrast between the low-tech tools and the abstract, astonishing results are what fire the public imagination. The Higgs boson is almost more compelling because it is so difficut to understand.

Peter Higgs didn't invent the machine. He certainly didn't invent the particle. He didn't invent the field the particle pops out from. But he did discover the Higgs "mechanism", the mathematical rules that underpin both of those, and he joined the dots from one to the other better than the teams around him. And he did it just by thinking about it. Shouldn't we all be able to do that? We can't, of course, and even the greatest machines ever built took 49 years to confirm it. This is why these discoveries have such romance. They are a human triumph. Of course, the context is always more incremental than the myth. Higgs and Englert were building on the previous theories; another team made the same discovery a month later; and then all their work needed to be put into context by others.

I had the privilege of doing a public interview with Higgs at last year's Cheltenham Science Festival, in which he was humble, charming and scrupulous in making sure that his work be seen in the context both of the others who made the discovery at the same time, and those whose work he was building upon. Nonetheless, when asked by a member of the audience about a Eureka moment, he did start his answer with "well, I remember going home on Friday 17 July 1964 … " And ending with " … and by Monday I had it."

Before the interview I showed him a T-shirt I bought at the gift shop in Cern, with a masssively long and complicated equation printed on it. I asked him to explain it to me, term by term, and he patiently went through the equation, until we got to the last line. Twinkling, he said proudly: "And that's my bit."

robindch

Last month marked the fortieth anniversary of the death of JRR Tolkein. The BBC commemorated the event by taking a look at the religious aspects of LOTR and his other works.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03bqchj

I only got about five minutes into this before I fell asleep, but I can't help but wonder what Tolkein would have made of the contributors and what they said.

kylith

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

Most important IMO is space elevators. For truly long term survival we need to get a significant % of us off this ball, and space elevators will probably be a huge step in getting there.

While I agree that space elevators will be hugely important I still think that gravity is the first thing we need to sort out otherwise we're just sending a bunch of people off to atrophy in space. The elevators will be essential to us starting to mine resources off-world.

AFAIK, and I'm not a scientist, gravity is about as simple as making a ship of the right proportions rotate at the correct speed. It can't be too difficult, can it?

Sulla Felix

kylith wrote: »

While I agree that space elevators will be hugely important I still think that gravity is the first thing we need to sort out otherwise we're just sending a bunch of people off to atrophy in space. The elevators will be essential to us starting to mine resources off-world.

AFAIK, and I'm not a scientist, gravity is about as simple as making a ship of the right proportions rotate at the correct speed. It can't be too difficult, can it?

Pretty much. There are some side effects, like the coriolis effect, that make it impractical at more than 2rpm, so really it's an engineering problem as the craft would have to be mahoosive to generate the required speeds while only achieving 2rpm.
The concept was proven all the way back in the 60s, or at least they generated a detectable fraction of a G by firing their lateral thrusters.

seamus

The romanticist/sci-fi geek in me still thinks that once we have a greater grasp of what causes gravity, we will discover a way to generate "fake" gravity fields in the same way that we can create "fake" magnetic fields using an electrified coil.
Could totally be pie-in-the-sky though, considering how much mass it takes to create a 9.8g gravitational field, the energy required to create same would be somewhat...uhm...large. But maybe there's a shortcut...

sbsquarepants

Sulla Felix wrote: »

Pretty much. There are some side effects, like the coriolis effect, that make it impractical at more than 2rpm, so really it's an engineering problem as the craft would have to be mahoosive to generate the required speeds while only achieving 2rpm.
The concept was proven all the way back in the 60s, or at least they generated a detectable fraction of a G by firing their lateral thrusters.

I'm lost here. What has rotation got to do with gravity?

PopePalpatine

It's the centripetal effect, which produces a force that is directed at the centre of rotation - much like gravity.

Sarky

You swing a bucket full of water over your head, the water stays in the bucket. Same principle for people in space.