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General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Richard230 on February 12, 2016, 07:40:11 AM
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I just heard on my local news that gravity waves had been detected by researchers. Einstein is right again. :)
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Not only were gravity waves detected but they detected waves from two black holes colliding, which is also a first!
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So my DS now has double the range?
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So my DS now has double the range?
Yes, but only when two super massive black holes collide in our local galaxy though...
(don't laugh, its *going* to happen, as we are on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy, but it won't happen for another few billion years)
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So my DS now has double the range?
Yes, but only when two super massive black holes collide in our local galaxy though...
(don't laugh, its *going* to happen, as we are on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy, but it won't happen for another few billion years)
the models of it happening are pretty cool... they pass through each other and interact, but most objects dont physically touch other objects.
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Gravity wave surfing!!!
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Gravity wave surfing!!!
Now I have a mental image of Stephen Hawking riding a surf board on the edge of a black hole...
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While we are disscussing science stuff.
My I introduce you to Moments of Wonder, just one program in a long tradition of British science documentaries... ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvpbW7JRu0Q (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvpbW7JRu0Q)
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I just heard that the gravity waves were the result of two black holes colliding 1.2 billion light years away. It is a mystery to me how they determined that location and distance, considering that black holes are pretty tough to see and I doubt you can tell the direction and distance from their gravity wave detection system. ???
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Dunno, but black holes tend to be fairly bright objects in the radio portions of the spectrum, so its possible they might have traced it using that.
I've a friend who's into Exo-planet hunting (one of the co-discoverers of KIC 8462852) he might know more, I might ask him next time I see him.
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I wouldn't worry about black holes colliding in a few billion years. I've just read that the universe might itself tear apart before then, due to an ever increasing rate of expansion. Ride while the sun shines!
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I think the expansion death of the universe is slated for long after a mere few billion years, I'd have to check, but I think the available free energy in the universe (so called "heat death") will even have mostly happened by then. Its all just hypothesis though.
More interestingly is that recent runs at CERN's LHC means the standard model theory may have finally been busted (physicists have been trying to invalidate their Standard Model for decades) which means everything is up for grabs again. Given we currently have no good theory for why gravity works, this is a good time to be a Physics undergrad! ;)
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I love science, but I often wonder why they spend so much money on things like the Large Hadron Collider when money could be better spent on saving the planet, curing diseases etc. No one really seems to care about that and I don't consider myself that much of a greenie.
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I love science, but I often wonder why they spend so much money on things like the Large Hadron Collider when money could be better spent on saving the planet, curing diseases etc. No one really seems to care about that and I don't consider myself that much of a greenie.
Well, the U.S. tried building the Super Collider (in Texas?) and that was canceled so that the money could be used to save the planet (or was it something else?). And how did that work out again? I kind of like the LHC. Big science is fun. :)
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Don't get me wrong, I love the LHC! It's a marvel of engineering. To answer my own question, I think it gives humanity a chance to make the kind of breakthroughs that will save the planet, one way or another. Or destroy it... [emoji6]
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I love science, but I often wonder why they spend so much money on things like the Large Hadron Collider when money could be better spent on saving the planet, curing diseases etc. No one really seems to care about that and I don't consider myself that much of a greenie.
This is a common complaint (usually about space exploration) and is a logical fallacy, money does not solve problems, people do. The money just pays for the people to do the research.
Physicists can't cure cancer, Physicists don't design wind turbines, so its a false economy as all you'd have is unemployed Physicists, and a weakened scientific base.
Now go sit in the corner and think about what you have done... ;)
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I've no problem with the Physicists being kept in gainful employment and keeping our scientific base strong. I just think that their efforts could be focused on more worthwhile endeavors. Didn't they discover that photosynthesis relies on quantum physics in order to achieve an efficiency of 98%? They could continue with that work and make much more efficient solar panels. That's the stuff we need, really. Continue all this blue sky stuff when people aren't dying from poverty left right and centre. Or when humanity is living on planet earth in a sustainable way.
At the moment, I fear the best thing for the planet would be another extinction event! I don't know what humanity has done for mother earth other than pollute it and reduce its diversity of flora and fauna.
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Did someone mention "photosynthesis"?
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I've no problem with the Physicists being kept in gainful employment and keeping our scientific base strong. I just think that their efforts could be focused on more worthwhile endeavors.
Sure, let it be the laymen who decide what are the "worthwhile endeavors" for scientists. After all, that's precisely how penicillin was discovered, or radiotherapy invented (who says Physicists don't cure cancer???).
Here is a nice summary of (some) of the reasons why fundamental science is important:
http://www.fnal.gov/pub/science/inquiring/matter/whysupport/ (http://www.fnal.gov/pub/science/inquiring/matter/whysupport/)
Full disclosure: I'm a physicist myself and I'm really surprised to read these statements in this forum. Electricity was a fundamental science less than 200 year's ago, for Maxwell's sake!
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Great article francesco, thanks for sharing it. As part of sitting in the corner and thinking about what I said, I should have done some googling and found a similar explanation.
I just get frustrated when I see that so much of humanity is struggling and the planet is suffering.
(http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20160312/43d32e57c2c08b8fdf65c4592f27fd66.jpg)
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I've no problem with the Physicists being kept in gainful employment and keeping our scientific base strong. I just think that their efforts could be focused on more worthwhile endeavors. Didn't they discover that photosynthesis relies on quantum physics in order to achieve an efficiency of 98%? They could continue with that work and make much more efficient solar panels.
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/109739/is-plant-photosynthesis-more-efficient-than-solar-panels (http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/109739/is-plant-photosynthesis-more-efficient-than-solar-panels)
I'm not sure where the 98% number comes from, but modern photocells (sunlight -> chemical energy stored in a battery) are vastly more efficient than photo synthesis (sunlight -> chemical energy stored in sugars).
Per the above link, 1 hectacre growing miscanthus (commonly grown in the EU as a fuel crop due to high photosynthesis efficiency) can produce up to 266 GJ per hectacre per year, or approximately 29.9 MWh per acre per year. I'm not sure whether that's chemical energy or electrical energy as an output of a biomass generator; I also do not believe they include energy inputs associated with growing, maintaining, harvesting, and processing the crop.
As we'll see this doesn't matter in the least on a comparison basis.
NREL provides a table (http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2013/08/calculating-solar-energys-land-use-footprint.html) of typical solar photocell generation rates per acre per year. Depending on the type of technology, these rates vary from 182 - 357 MWh per acre per year.
As with the micanthus example, there are lots of things that this neglects: energy costs for installation / maintenance of the solar panels, lifetime averaged production energy costs including damaged panel replacement, etc.
At a first pass, then, photocells produce 6 to 12 times as much annual energy as a fuel crop using photosynthesis.
And you can thank decades of primary research, government grants, and recently commercial viability for the current boom in solar.
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So my DS now has double the range?
Yes, but only when two super massive black holes collide in our local galaxy though...
(don't laugh, its *going* to airwheel s3 (http://shopairwheels.com/collections/all/products/airwheel-s3-scooter-white-blue-520wh) happen, as we are on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy, but it won't happen for another few billion years)
the models of it happening are pretty cool... they pass through each other and interact, but most objects dont physically touch other objects.airwheels q5 unicycle (http://shopairwheels.com/collections/all/products/airwheel-q5-blue-green-white-260wh)
I've seen a few examples of galaxies colliding and they are definitely something special to watch! The pulls of gravity fighting each other until they fall into unison is such a wild concept. Astronomy ftw!
I don't know if anyone has seen but NASA tweeted a picture of a purple nebula in honor of Prince's passing..worth a look!
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The 98% came from a colleague at work, but here's the gist of it:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/12/economist-explains-1
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I love science, but I often wonder why they spend so much money on things like the Large Hadron Collider when money could be better spent on saving the planet, curing diseases etc. No one really seems to care about that and I don't consider myself that much of a greenie.
Well, the U.S. tried building the Super Collider (in Texas?) and that was canceled so that the money could be used to save the planet (or was it something else?). And how did that work out again? I kind of like the LHC. Big science is fun. :)
A lot of the science being funded now in space is probably finding us a new planet to call "home". We have found multiple planets that are within "reach" (decades) to reach that supposedly support life :o
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So my DS now has double the range?airwheels q5 unicycle (http://shopairwheels.com/collections/all/products/airwheel-q5-blue-green-white-260wh)
Yes, but only when two super massive black holes collide in our local galaxy though...
(don't laugh, its *going* to happen, as we are on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy, but it won't happen for another few billion years)
the models of it happening are pretty cool... they pass through each other and interact, but most objects dont physically touch other objects.
I've seen a few examples of galaxies colliding and they are definitely something special to watch! The pulls of gravity fighting each other until they fall into unison is such a wild concept. Astronomy ftw!