Now that someone has put in the work to identify the problem, what are the chances that anything is done about it? I would guess only the plant in Germany is altered in any way. That's a bit of a black mark on such an advanced country.
That’s insane, we could cut 30% just by switching to natural gas. That’s about half of the cuts required to limit warming to 2C (I think)
Supply of natural gas is going to be a problem, nearly 8 billion tonnes of coal are used every year. And in Germany (and Europe other than Norway), more natural gas means being increasingly dependent on Russia since they are not willing to develop internal supply.
Now that someone has put in the work to identify the problem, what are the chances that anything is done about it? I would guess only the plant in Germany is altered in any way. That's a bit of a black mark on such an advanced country.
Maybe if Germany didn't decide to phase out its nuclear generation, it wouldn't need coal so much.
Here's a project that I've been following for a long time that I wanted to share, because (a) it's a really great goal, and (b) they're going about developing this the right way, with real-world testing and troubleshooting.
The Ocean Cleanup is a project designed to clean up ocean garbage patches, and they've just arrived at the great pacific garbage patch for their second set of large-scale tests. I follow a lot of ecology forums and news sites, and there's a constant stream of pie-in-the-sky solutions to various problems that are technology-oriented, as opposed to being problem-oriented (in other words, trying to apply a favorite technology or engineering solution to a problem, as opposed to looking at the problem and figuring out an optimal, cost-effective solution).
The current solution they're testing involves net collection system suspended between two very slowly-moving vessels, and is roughly 500m wide, about 1/3 size of the intended eventual modules. Their estimates are that a fleet of about 15 deployments of these can clean 50% of the actual garbage in one patch per year (major diminishing returns there over time), and is supported by a planned network of river-based plastics collection units, which they're currently working on deploying in the 1000 worst-polluting rivers (responsible for 80% of all river-generated plastics).
Anyway, the current 002 system in the Pacific is going to be really interesting to follow over the next couple months as they complete this phase of testing.
Pretty interesting ideas that are being thrown around by NASA attached engineers trying to build an interstellar drive.
It would be nice if everyone involved in the covid threads can listen to the Doogie Howser looking guy in the green shirt, who is smarter than most puny humans, give a simple explanation of what science is.
Just cool stuff.
__________________
"We don't even know who our best player is yet. It could be any one of us at this point." - Peter LaFleur, player/coach, Average Joe's Gymnasium
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Firefly's first attempt at an orbital rocket didn't succeed, but they got pretty far before it spun out of control and had to be detonated. Starts going awry around 3:00 in.
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
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The James Webb Space Telescope will be 100 times as powerful as the Hubble.
Read this article and got really really really excited what lies in store for the James Webb telescope's launch this December (hopefully).
Quote:
“The Webb represents the culmination of decades, if not centuries, of astronomy,” says Sara Seager, a planetary scientist and astrophysicist at MIT. “We’ve been waiting for this a very long time.”
Quote:
“What Webb will do is take that field and go even further,” UT Austin’s Casey explains. “So the tiny specks of light in the background of the Hubble Deep Field will brighten and become more detailed, we’ll be able to see spiral arms, we’ll be able to see structure, and then we’ll get more specks of light even further in the past. We’re seeing farther back in time with Webb.”
Imagine zooming in on the galaxies shown in the Hubble deep field image... Unreal
Quote:
Exoplanet scientists like Stevenson are going to use the Webb to analyze the atmospheres of these worlds: The Webb is capable of determining some of the chemicals in their atmospheres. “We can detect water, CO, CO2, methane,” Stevenson says. While those aren’t definitive signs of life on their own, they could begin to ask fascinating questions: What created that methane and carbon dioxide? Could it have been life?
How can anyone who has any inkling of astronomy in their veins not be excited about this? These days in a world full of nonsense, this telescope and what it could potentially show us is keeping me excited for the future. This has the potential to be one of, if not the greatest, scientific instruments of our lifetimes.
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How can anyone who has any inkling of astronomy in their veins not be excited about this? These days in a world full of nonsense, this telescope and what it could potentially show us is keeping me excited for the future. This has the potential to be one of, if not the greatest, scientific instruments of our lifetimes.
I am wholly convinced the Webb is going to a launch us into a new era of Space science, including finding more discernable signs of life on distant planets.
Also note that when they say we can look back "further in time", what that means is that the light we see coming from stars when we look up into the sky is actually light arriving into our view that was sent out light years ago - including some that are 1000s of light years away. With the Webb, we can see more closely some of these planets that are much further away than the Hubble could, and look at the light they emit closer to the actual star - light that is still travelling to us before we can see it at least from conventional means.
AltaGuy has a magnetic personality and exudes positive energy, which is infectious to those around him. He has an unparalleled ability to communicate with people, whether he is speaking to a room of three or an arena of 30,000.
A giant space rock demolished an ancient Middle Eastern city and everyone in it – possibly inspiring the Biblical story of Sodom.
As the inhabitants of an ancient Middle Eastern city now called Tall el-Hammam went about their daily business one day about 3,600 years ago, they had no idea an unseen icy space rock was speeding toward them at about 38,000 mph (61,000 kph).
Flashing through the atmosphere, the rock exploded in a massive fireball about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) above the ground. The blast was around 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The shocked city dwellers who stared at it were blinded instantly.
Some seconds later, a massive shockwave smashed into the city. Moving at about 740 mph (1,200 kph), it was more powerful than the worst tornado ever recorded.
About a minute later, 14 miles (22 km) to the west of Tall el-Hammam, winds from the blast hit the biblical city of Jericho. Jericho’s walls came tumbling down and the city burned to the ground.
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But these two balls aren’t exactly a unique find—they’re part of a widely distributed mystery left by the Neolithic inhabitants of the British Isles. More than 500 stone balls like them have been discovered to date. For centuries, no one paid them much attention. Farmers or builders would randomly discover them in fields, and then either keep them or donate them without another thought.
Was sent this by my friend who works in this field. Pretty awesome developments in the protein development arena with the recent application of AI to predict protein folding through deep learning and neural networks.
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