One of the world's foremost meteorologists has called the theory that helped Al Gore share the Nobel Peace Prize "ridiculous" and the product of "people who don't understand how the atmosphere works." Dr William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the Earth.
"The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures," Dr Gray said. He said his beliefs had made him an outsider in popular science. "It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong," he said. "But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke out. I don't care about grants."
Makes you wonder how consciousness is affected by these realities. It means that for every action you take, to some extent you chose your own reality. Considering that everyone with free will does this, it may imply that everyone is criss crossing the multi-verse. That all those close to you that you've known for years may not be from the original reality you met them in. That all you know today may not be relevant in the future because everything will have shifted to be linear to the reality you find yourself in. Maybe there were weapons of mass destruction, for instance... But in this reality they no longer exist because we all chose the reality where they do not. It may not have been a pack of lies, it's just truth thats wrong. I think the Bush Administration has the hang of this multi-verse.
skullaria wrote: Parallel universes really do exist, according to a mathematical discovery by Oxford scientists described by one expert as "one of the most important developments in the history of science".
The parallel universe theory, first proposed in 1950 by the US physicist Hugh Everett, helps explain mysteries of quantum mechanics that have baffled scientists for decades, it is claimed.
In Everett's "many worlds" universe, every time a new physical possibility is explored, the universe splits. Given a number of possible alternative outcomes, each one is played out - in its own universe.
A motorist who has a near miss, for instance, might feel relieved at his lucky escape. But in a parallel universe, another version of the same driver will have been killed. Yet another universe will see the motorist recover after treatment in hospital. The number of alternative scenarios is endless.
It is a bizarre idea which has been dismissed as fanciful by many experts. But the new research from Oxford shows that it offers a mathematical answer to quantum conundrums that cannot be dismissed lightly - and suggests that Dr Everett, who was a Phd student at Princeton University when he came up with the theory, was on the right track."
'It might be life, Jim...', physicists discover inorganic dust with lifelike qualities
Topic: Science
12:59 pm EDT, Aug 15, 2007
Could extraterrestrial life be made of corkscrew-shaped particles of interstellar dust? Intriguing new evidence of life-like structures that form from inorganic substances in space are revealed today in the New Journal of Physics. The findings hint at the possibility that life beyond earth may not necessarily use carbon-based molecules as its building blocks. They also point to a possible new explanation for the origin of life on earth.
Interesting... I wonder what would happen if you snort it.
Meanwhile, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology physicist Amos Ori "has developed a theoretical model of a time machine," according to a press release. The theory calls for a "time loop to form as a donut-shaped vacuum, inside which time would curve back on itself, so that a person traveling around the loop might be able to go further back in time with each lap."
It doesn't work...
Otherwise someone would have probably have come back and told them that it does.
The event begins 54 minutes past midnight PDT (0754 UT) on August 28th when the Moon enters Earth's shadow. At first, there's little change. The outskirts of Earth's shadow are as pale as the Moon itself; an onlooker might not even realize anything is happening. But as the Moon penetrates deeper, a startling metamorphosis occurs. Around 2:52 am PDT (0952 UT), the color of the Moon changes from moondust-gray to sunset-red. This is totality, and it lasts for 90 minutes.
Night owls on the west coast and early risers on the east coast might catch this red moon...
Damn Interesting » Reanimated Rodents and The Meaning of Life
Topic: Science
2:45 pm EDT, Jul 17, 2007
One afternoon in the early 1950s, a young biochemist left his suburban lab bench at Britain’s Mill Hill National Institute of Medical Research and boarded a tube train to Leicester Square. His destination was on nearby Lisle Street, in an area which today makes up part of London's glittering West End theatre district. But in the post-war years the sector was better known as a hectic hub for two of humanity's oldest professions. Only one of these was of interest to the young scientist. The girls hawking their wares seemed to sense his single-mindedness and kept their distance as the greenhorn scientist turned his attention to his true quarry: the vast abundance of second-hand military hardware that could be found in the shops lining Lisle Street.
Specifically, he was looking for war surplus radar equipment. His intention was to cannibalize a suitable radio frequency transmitter for the purpose of reanimating dead, frozen hamsters.
The purposeful young biochemist was working in an exciting field so new that it didn’t yet have an official name, although eventually the term "cryobiology"– literally meaning "frosty life"– gained currency. One of his colleagues at Mill Hill was Dr Audrey Smith, the leading light in a series of hamster freezing and reanimation experiments. These dramatic and oft-quoted experiments have since achieved legendary status among cryobiologists, including researchers of the credible variety and researchers of the we'll-freeze-your-head-and-bring-it- back-to-life-attached-to-the-body-of-a-spaniel-when-future-technology-allows variety. Yet they have never been repeated.
The basic procedure worked like this:
1. Obtain desired number of Golden Hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus).
2. Place in ice bath at temperature -5°C.
3. Leave hapless rodents to cool until hearts have stopped beating, respiration has ceased, animals are frozen rigid and are-– by any conventional definition of life– no longer alive.
4. After 60-90 minutes, remove hamsters from ice bath.
5. If required, cut sections of one or more control animals to determine degree of freezing. Please note– animals thus examined should not be used in subsequent reanimation attempts.
6. Warm the hearts of the frozen hamsters until they start up again, followed by gentle re-warming of the rest of the animal(s) until miraculous recovery occurs.
7. Determine number of survivors.
Serves 5.
I want to put that list on random people's refrigerators.
New Scientist Technology Blog: A programmable robot from 60 AD
Topic: Science
12:32 pm EDT, Jul 6, 2007
Who built the first programmable robot? It's almost impossible to tell, and most people would put good money on Leonardo da Vinci. But now Noel Sharkey, a computer scientist at the University of Sheffield, UK, has traced the technology way back to ancient Alexandria.
In about 60 AD, a Greek engineer called Hero constructed a three-wheeled cart that could carry a group of automata to the front of a stage where they would perform for an audience. Power came from a falling weight that pulled on string wrapped round the cart's drive axle, and Sharkey reckons this string-based control mechanism is exactly equivalent to a modern programming language. He describes it in this week's issue of New Scientist magazine.
They should have kept developing this.. we'd probably have mecha all over the place by now.
Abstract : From time to time the popular literature has described cases where human subjects were reported to have responded without vision to stimulus objects. This effect--found only in women to date--has been called 'dermo-optical perception,' 'cheek vision,' and 'finger sight.' Whether these responses are to visible light or to some other band of the energy spectrum, and whether they are tactually mediated is not yet clear. The number of such cases is rare and the unusual sensory abilities described suggest that these phenomena merit scientific attention. Early in 1965, it was learned that an American female was reported to have abilities such as those mentioned above. After a number of demonstrations by this subject (A), studies were performed to determine whether A's non-visual discriminations of the visual properties of stimulus objects differed from chance and from the performance level of control subjects. Results of these studies indicated that the subject performed reliably above chance and above the level of the controls as a group in discriminating colors of plastic discs; light projected through two colors of Wratten filters; and in discriminating the suit and number of playing cards. Results also showed that the control subjects tended in some cases to perform reliably above chance, but to a lesser degree than A. Questions as to the nature of this ability were discussed. (Author)
Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us.
The earth is, in fact, way overdue for an ice age... So perhaps we should actually increase greenhouse gas emmisions, killing the ozone layer, and thus trapping heat during the long, long solar winter that approaches.
Fuck all that. Start digging and build underground.
I've been saying New Orleans should start doing exactly this. It's the fastest way toward having the worlds first undersea city.
Back when we wrote about Cramer earlier this year, he was struggling to come up with a measly $20,000 to fund a high-risk experiment that would demonstrate, as he puts it, "signaling, or communication, in reverse time." Cramer could be wrong, but he ain't no crackpot; he's a physics professor at University of Washington who seems sincere in proving (or disproving) this testable idea with a simple experiment. Turns out, a lot of people really sympathized with the guy, and ponied up their own money. And why not? After all, it's going for university research (and this article even tells you how to donate).
If this will work, wouldn't he have messaged himself by now???
