It's all part of the singularity Bruce! I thought you were on board with all that.

Study: female-named hurricanes deadlier because not taken as seriously.
Story

New ultrastiff, ultralight material developed (@ MIT)
http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/new-u...developed-0619

could change the world if it is monetarily practical.

Experiments with oil drops appear to support the De Broglie/Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics:

http://www.wired.com/2014/06/the-new-quantum-reality/


Transferred from Drunk Thread.

From above link:

Particles at the quantum scale seem to do things that human-scale objects do not do. They can tunnel through barriers, spontaneously arise or annihilate, and occupy discrete energy levels. This new body of research reveals that oil droplets, when guided by pilot waves, also exhibit these quantum-like features.


Discuss...................[I'm skeptical]

I don't think there's any debate that they do these things. The debate is over whether objects on a quantum scale do them for the same reasons.

Oil droplets are super massive in size macroscopic systems. They have absolutely nothing to do with QM at the level suggested even if mechanism is similar. It may simply be a classical analogue of a way things work at particle level but i doubt it. Plus what can it teach us as an analogue? At some point the analogue will fail and the story ends. Force them to do more complicated setup oil drop experiments and they will start seeing problems.

QM will not be saved by classical mechanics lol!

What will save QM will demolish everything and then rebuild it the right way and then all will be happy including the dead that will finally be at peace because their doubts finally made sense but they didnt have the time distance from the first revolution, moreover their brilliance, to attempt the impossible second step that backtracks everything, in order to put things together. And we have it!

Classical analogue is what they are suggesting, and it would teach us is that the De Broglie-Bohm interpretation is correct, that electrons go through only 1 slit while their guiding wave goes through both and we just can't make enough measurements to predict which slit it will go through, that there are hidden variables, and that the universe is deterministic, non-local, and non-causal.

Or the world is not product of determinism but determinism is statistical product of the world. That would be even more amusing.

A basic question I never quite got the answer to was whether quantum computation is possible/unaltered by these "classical" interpretations. They (apparently) are not contradicted by any experiment yet done, but does this extend to Shors algorithm.....quantum mechanics means factoring is in P? If they don't i think the conversation can be ignored and the status quo QM crowd (which includes me i guess) can just roll up our sleeves and build a quantum computer. If hidden variable theories allow for MORE power from computers that exploit quantum effects, ie NP is in P, I would take that as very strong evidence that hidden variables are wrong.

Have you seen this dissertation from 2010? The author examines quantum computing from a pilot wave theory point of view, which he says to his knowledge had not been done in detail previously. He says that the result would be the same as in conventional quantum mechanics or MWT. He doesn't examine Schor's algorithm specifically, but he goes into detail about the simpler Deutch algorithm.

The Mother Ship is being constructed,

http://www.hngn.com/articles/41143/2...ip-by-2018.htm

From above link:

NASA's new rocket design to be used in 2018 will be bigger and more luxurious than ever before.

The new rocket, which will go by the name Space Launch System (SLS), will stand 384 feet tall and use liquid hydrogen and oxygen as fuel - making it 20 percent faster than before, according to The Verge.

SLS, scheduled to be ready for flight by November 2018, will be the biggest rocket ever made, CS Monitor says. With SLS' higher performance , NASA plans to have the rocket go on its first unmanned test launch in 2018 and have humans take it to orbit around an asteroid, landing on Mars by 2030, The Verge reports.

It also should have the capabilities to send astronauts deeper into space than ever before according to CS Monitor.

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NASA website link to SLS for added info: http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/

From your linked article - "And just as measuring the trajectories of particles seems to “collapse” their simultaneous realities, disturbing the pilot wave in the bouncing-droplet experiment destroys the interference pattern."

Ok, but what about just measuring the bouncing oil drop? Couldn't you do that with out disturbing the sloshing oil beneath and thus still see which slit the bouncy ball goes through and still retain an interference pattern? Why the need to dip your measurement thingy into the oil? Just measure the balls.

From The Power of Mental Pictures

The actual study is from 2013, and seems to focus on politics, but the cognitive science of it seems very interesting. Reminds me of Douglas Hofstadter and some of his work on analogical thinking. Seemed worth a link

Mysterious Planet X May Really Lurk Undiscovered in Our Solar System

New planets in Our Solar System?

From above link:

Planet X" might actually exist — and so might "Planet Y."

At least two planets larger than Earth likely lurk in the dark depths of space far beyond Pluto, just waiting to be discovered, a new analysis of the orbits of "extreme trans-Neptunian objects" (ETNOs) suggests.

Researchers studied 13 ETNOs — frigid bodies such as the dwarf planet Sedna that cruise around the sun at great distances in elliptical paths.

Theory predicts a certain set of details for ETNO orbits, study team members said. For example, they should have a semi-major axis, or average distance from the sun, of about 150 astronomical units (AU). (1 AU is the distance from Earth to the sun — roughly 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.) These orbits should also have an inclination, relative to the plane of the solar system, of almost 0 degrees, among other characteristics.

But the actual orbits of the 13 ETNOs are quite different, with semi-major axes ranging from 150 to 525 AU and average inclinations of about 20 degrees.

"This excess of objects with unexpected orbital parameters makes us believe that some invisible forces are altering the distribution of the orbital elements of the ETNOs, and we consider that the most probable explanation is that other unknown planets exist beyond Neptune and Pluto," lead author Carlos de la Fuente Marcos, of the Complutense University of Madrid, said in a statement.

"The exact number is uncertain, given that the data that we have is limited, but our calculations suggest that there are at least two planets, and probably more, within the confines of our solar system," he added.

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I hope they eventually find these buggers and name them Vladimir and Estragon.

Germany court orders measles sceptic to pay 100,000 euros

Breakthrough propulsion physics.

http://hplusmagazine.com/2015/04/09/...lsion-physics/

So the news is, they haven't found any yet? Or am I missing something?


PairTheBoard

No, that's about it.

I enjoy the suspense.

Smart of NASA to call the project itself "Breakthrough", even if they don't have any results yet. If I was a politician, it would inspire me to give some funding.

Phenomena: A science salon hosted by National Geographic Magazine

Great website with new and interesting articles about science and exploration and new discoveries, etc. Worthwhile viewing---

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/

NASA update on EM drive test results in a vacuum:

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/...stic-em-drive/

Earth Neutrino Map

Some of linked article is below:


Last week, scientists released a map showing what the world would look like if we could see all the billions upon billions of neutrinos that emanate from the surface of the planet each second. It turns out that neutrinos’ uncontainable nature is potentially bad if you’re trying to hide something going on at a nuclear plant, but good if you want to monitor other people’s nuclear activities. Dark spots on the map indicate nuclear reactors and parts of the earth’s crust rich with radioactive uranium and thorium, which emit neutrinos when they decay.

The technology to pick up the tracks of elusive neutrinos has continued to improve since the first official detection in 1959 at the Savannah River nuclear power plant in Georgia. While most detectors have been built with the goal of studying the nature and behavior of neutrinos, scientists are starting to consider using neutrino detectors to probe the earth’s interior and monitor nuclear activities.

See also: “How International Monitors Spot Nukes and Other Rumblings”

The map, published in Nature Scientific Reports, was created using neutrino signals captured in two detectors, one in Italy and one in Japan, says William McDonough, a geophysicist at the University of Maryland and a coauthor on the paper. The rest of the map was constructed using data about the composition and density of the earth’s crust and the location of the world’s reactors.

Dark patches appear around mountain ranges where there’s a lot of naturally occurring radioactive decay, he says. The Himalayas are responsible for a massive dark patch over southern Asia. Some of the dark spots are reactors, especially around France. (Technically, the ones from nuclear power plants are called antineutrinos—the antimatter counterpart to neutrinos—but how the two types of particles differ is still being worked out.)

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Important news for the puffers:

Scientists genetically engineer yeast to make THC and other medical marijuana chemicals

THC producing yeast-medical-marijuana

From above link:

Medical marijuana is causing a stir as patients petition for access to cannabis-derived compounds for medicinal purposes, while governments worldwide seek to control the supply of the still-illegal plant. However, biochemists at the Technical University of Dortmund in Germany may have a solution to this conundrum — THC-producing yeast. These genetically-modified organisms are potentially capable of synthesizing THC, and other medically important marijuana compounds, using an affordable method which can be scaled for bulk production.

The team at the Technical University of Dortmund in Germany published the details on their THC-producing yeast in a recent issue of the scientific journal, Biotechnology Letters. The process used the gene for tetrahydrocannabinolic acid (THCA) synthase, an enzyme responsible for the production of THC, and expressed it in two strains of yeast. Using these strains, the team was able to produce small amounts of THC and cannabidiol, another medically active compound found in marijuana which is used to treat epilepsy and other diseases. With the help of THC Pharm of Frankfurt, biochemist Oliver Kayser hopes to increase production to an industrial level, while also hoping to duplicate the entire chemical pathway of THC production, not just the final stage.


Researchers from Germany’s Technical University of Dortmund are not the only ones interested in using yeast to make marijuana compounds. Scientists from England’s Anandia Laboratories and Canada’s Hyasynth Bio are also hard at work developing their own strains of THC-producing yeast. However, these teams already have some stiff competition from an unexpected source — the marijuana plant itself. Some strains of the marijuana plant are bursting with THC, with up to 30 percent THC per dry weight. Called the “the Ferrari of the plant world” by Anandia Laboratories founder Dr. Jonathan Page, it appears the marijuana plant is hard to beat.


Researchers are not giving up on genetic engineering, though. The production of THC from yeast is desirable as it makes THC affordable and easy to obtain, clearly a win-win situation for both patients and scientists. Patients who need THC could purchase the less expensive form of the chemical derived from yeast instead of opting for chemically synthesized pills, which tend to be expensive for consumers. It also spares patients and scientists from the complicated issue of growing and obtaining medical marijuana plants.

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Science puffs on. And genetic engineering is the nuts. Up next, genetic-engineered babies.

Genetic engineered babies that self produce THC?