Aliens Invading Russia in the Middle of Winter [Military]

Posted on by

Oh, will those pesky aliens never stop? First they show off in the Norwegian skies, and now they're hovering over Russia, too? Did they not consult history books before coming here? Russia, winters, and invasions just don't mix, ET.

This second spiral was spotted in the Russian skies over a day after the one in Norway and it actually does look a bit more like a rocket spinning around and less like a mysterious phenomena:

Ah well, the rocket-like appearance of this spiral and the explanations for the Norway one aside: I still want to believe and even suggest Florida as the next invasion attempt. It's sunny here and we won't fight back much. [Discover]







Darwin Gets Swine Flu: The YouTube Edition | The Loom

Posted on by

This fall I gave a number of talks about the flu, and how evolutionary biologists are helping to make sense of this vexing virus. The University of British Columbia, where I spoke in November, has posted the lecture I gave there on YouTube. For ease of viewing, I’ve embedded all six segments of the talk below.

A few caveats. A couple labels got lost in the conversion of my Keynote to Powerpoint during the preparation of the video. And the numbers I gave for the 2009 H1N1 flu are now a bit out of date. As of this week, the Centers for Disease Control estimate that about 50 million people in the U.S. have come down with the new flu strain since it first hit the country in April. 2009 H1N1 is responsible for just about all the flu so far this year. For the past few weeks it has been subsiding, but it may come back for another whack at us in a few weeks. Meanwhile, there hasn’t been any seasonal flu yet. Of the people who contracted 2009 H1N1 in the United States, about 10,000 have died. (As I mention in the talk, 36,000 people a year die of the seasonal flu in the U.S.)

And now, without further ado, I give you the flu!

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6:


Will White House Speak Soon About NASA?

Posted on by

Lawmakers try to prevent Obama from cutting NASA, Orlando Sentinel

"Congress and the White House have signaled that they envision sharply different futures for NASA and its manned space mission. At an aerospace luncheon, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said President Barack Obama wants the agency to embrace "more international cooperation" after the space-shuttle era ends in 2010 and hinted that its Constellation moon-rocket program could see major changes. "We are going to be fighting and fussing over the coming year," Bolden told an audience of aerospace executives and lobbyists Wednesday. "Some of you are not going to like me, because we are not going to do the same kind of things we've always done." But hours earlier, congressional appropriators reached a different conclusion, approving legislative language declaring that any change to Constellation, which aims to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 but is running well behind schedule, must first get the approval of Congress."

Keith's note: Charlie Bolden cancelled a speech that he was supposed to deliver in San Diego today at the last minuute to stay in Washington. All NASA field center directors meet early next week with Bolden. Something is up.

According to a Twitter post by Erika Wagner who attended an appearance by Norm Augustine at MIT last night "Augustine: "I'm told that some of the decision documents are on [Obama's] desk right now"

Google Confirms They’re Testing a "Mobile Lab" Device [Google]

Posted on by

A post on the Official Google Blog confirms the company is currently "dogfooding" a "mobile lab" device. Beyond that, we're still in the dark, but it all falls in line with what we heard before. Updated:

Google isn't saying much, but the way the post ends with "We hope to share more after our dogfood diet" suggests that there's something coming. It's much more coy than their usual outright denials (by the way, Google, what about those?).

TechCrunch is reporting that the mystical Google Phone is indeed the HTC Passion we saw leaked a few weeks ago (pictured above). Our sources are calling it the Passion, too. Update: Now the Wall Street Journal is calling it the Nexus One.

Update: TmoNews is also saying that the device will be sold directly by Google, but supported by T-Mobile at launch. No word on if T-Mobile will be the exclusive carrier.

Everything keeps lining up. Judging by how fast this news is coming, I wouldn't be surprised if this thing pops up in the wild soon. [Official Google Blog via TechCrunch, TmoNews, thanks Travis]







Best Buy Finally Offers Legitimate Sale Prices [Dealzmodo]

Posted on by

Our friend Gary over at HD Guru just dissected next week's Best Buy ad, and guess what? 17 out of the 28 deals up for grabs tomorrow are, in his words, "outstanding." Whodathunk? Here's some of the good stuff:



• Samsung LN40B530 40? 1080p 60 Hz LCD $699.99
• Sony KDL-52S5100 52? 1080p 60 Hz LCD $1039.99
• Sony KDL-32L5000 32? 720p 60 Hz LCD$399.99
• Panasonic TC-P50X1 50? 720p 600 Hz Plasma $779.99
• Samsung LN32B640 1080p 32? 60 Hz LCD $709.99

Head on over for the full list of deals and price comparisons. Looks like anytime next week (starting tomorrow) would be a good time to buy an HDTV. [HD Guru]







A (Very Gentle) Riddle to Complete Your Saturday

Posted on by

UPDATE:  SOLVED!

Last week it took about 4 hours to solve the riddle, so this week it’s much simpler.  Really.  It’s very simple.  I’ll be surprised if it’s unsolved for longer than 15 minutes.  Really.

Are you ready?  GO!

http://euvolution.com/futurist-transhuman-news-blog/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/7a714_racingflags.jpg

Although thought of as a single object, it is not.

This was well-known in antiquity, and was once thought to effect terrestrial events.

Can be seen from almost every inhabited region on Earth.

It’s been described as being three different colors.

http://euvolution.com/futurist-transhuman-news-blog/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/7a714_color_spectrum.jpg

Has been mentioned in literature since the 7th century BC, and is well represented in popular fiction.

Has been seen as a sign of both good and evil fortune.

This is sometimes visible to the naked eye in the daylight.

Sometimes it shows up twice in one night.

What is it?  I’m hanging out in the comment section (as usual), so give it a guess!

Dark LCD Display

Posted on by

Dear friends ,

I am having a SANWA Digital Multimeter Model CD800 , in good working condition.(measurements)

But the display become dark. It`s difficult for me to see the reading.

After I dismantle the meter , I found that the LCD display reflector sheet have change color

Car MPG Questions

Posted on by

I asked this question a few days ago, but probably didn't post it correctly (runaway "mouse" or something). I've been experimenting for some time (started, actually, in 1972) with methods by which to boost fuel economy with my cars. Most recently (although my first experiment in '72 had to do with t

Another Russian rocket spiral lights up the sky | Bad Astronomy

Posted on by

Hey, does this look vaguely familiar?

russian_booster_again

That is not a different view of the Norway spiral light; it was taken in Russia over a day later. It looks like the Russians are testing more rockets, and creating more lights in the sky.

Despite the lunacy involved with the last time we saw spirals in the sky, this picture is clearly of another Russian missile test. To recap: a weird spiral light thingy in the skies over Norway last week was caused by the sub-based rocket launch of a Bulava missile, a new system being tested by the Russians. The spiral(s) were due to the rocket spinning and venting some sort of gas, though the details are still being determined. It may have been done on purpose as part of a gyroscopic-stabilization move, or it may have been spinning out of control. The former would explain why the spiral is so beautifully symmetric.

This one wasn’t quite so well-formed, but is clearly the same thing. There’s video, too:


This new one was seen just a little over a day later inside Russia, and was from a Topol missile, the land-based version of the Bulava. According to space historian, NBC News consultant, and space folklore specialist James Oberg:

It was launched from the ‘Kapustin Yar’ missile range on the lower Volga, an old test range that goes back to the late 1940s. The missile impacted in
the Sary Shagan military reservation in eastern Kazakhstan. [...] Since the flight path was completely internal, no navigation warnings were issued.

russian_booster_again2TASS claims it hit the target, and you can see in the video there appears to be a spiral there too; that supports the idea the spiral was on purpose and may be part of the stabilization. Interesting. Note that in this second picture, you can see the spiral expanding from the inside out, again, like last time, exactly what you expect from material being spewed out from a rapidly rotating booster.

Another important thing to people like me, though, is that the cause of this is clearly a rocket — it fits what we know about how these things work, there are good explanations of it, and we even have a mea culpa from Russia. But if you read the comments from the Norway lights post I made, or really anywhere this was discussed on the web, you’ll find hordes of people making claims that are pretty silly at best.

I have no doubt this will continue with this new sighting, as well. After all, why make one interdimensional holographic portal from the future when you can make two?

It just goes to show you that this sort of non-rational thinking will be with us forever. It’s rather ironic to think that the reality of a complicated and advanced rocket system sparks retro-fantasies of UFOs. It makes me wonder if the captain of the first starship will carry a lucky rabbit’s foot along.

In reality, I know we can never stamp out such irrationality. All we can do is hope to minimize it. I can be satisfied with that.



Picture credit: ww.e1.ru. My thanks to my friend James Oberg for notifying me about this.


Have Some Math With Your Breakfast [Breakfast]

Posted on by

Here's a little breakfast trick that'll blow your foggy post-Friday-night mind. If you cut a bagel just right, you can spread your cream cheese across the smooth curves of a Mobius strip.

Hit the link for full instructions. Just be careful with that knife, please. Some of those cuts look like they could get complicated, especially on a Saturday morning. [Mathematically Correct Breakfast via Serious Eats: New York via Didn't You Hear]







Diesel Storage Tank Design

Posted on by

What are the standard sizes & location of saddle support available for 10 cubic meter capacity diesel storage tank? What are the standard dimension (lenght, OD & thickness) of shell & head for horizontal diesel tank with a flat head? We don't have any reference standard in our company a

Preserving A Moth [Science Tattoo] | The Loom

Posted on by

Ext-inkedHannah Rosa writes: “I am a Science teacher in Central London. My tattoo is part of the Ext-inked project and my endangered species is the narrow bordered bee hawk moth. I decided to sign up for the project as I have worked closely with endangered species in the field as part of my degree studies and understand the importance of closely monitoring and preventing the extinction of these species. I wanted to become a life long ambassador so that I can educate others about the impacts of climate change and other human activites which are threatening hundreds of species in the UK alone.”

(For more pictures from the Ext-inked project, visit Flickr.)

Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.


Google Demonstrates Quantum Algorithm Promising Superfast Search [Quantum Computing]

Posted on by

Quantum computing has long dangled the possibility of superfast, super-efficient processing, and now search giant Google has jumped on board that future.

New Scientist reports that Google has spent the past three years developing a quantum algorithm that can automatically recognize and sort objects from still images or video.

The promise of quantum computing rests with the bizarre physics that occurs at the subatomic level. Different research teams have worked on creating quantum processors that store information as qubits (quantum bits), which can represent both the 1 and 0 of binary computer language at the same time. That dual possibility state allows for much more efficient processing and information storage.

To take an example cited by Google, a classical computer might need 500,000 peeks on average to find a ball hidden somewhere within a million drawers. But a quantum computer could find the ball by just looking into 1,000 drawers — a nice little stunt known as Grover's algorithm.

Google has been using a quantum computing device created by D-Wave, a Canadian firm. But a lack of information about how D-Wave's chip works has led to outside skepticism regarding whether it does indeed count as a quantum computer.

"Unfortunately, it is not easy to demonstrate that a multi-qubit system such as the D-Wave chip indeed exhibits the desired quantum behavior and experimental physicists from various institutions are still in the process of characterizing the chip," wrote Hartmut Neven, head of Google's image recognition team, on the Google research blog.

Whatever D-Wave built has apparently worked for Google. Neven described a new algorithm based on the work of MIT that can sort images of cars from among 20,000 photos faster than anything running in a Google data center today — although the team first trained the algorithm by hand-labeling cars in a test photo batch.

Google's image recognition team has previously made its algorithms work for better online image searches and automatic photo organization. Perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised that the Google folk have also delved into quantum computing, or at least something much faster than existing classical computing.

[via New Scientist]

Popular Science is your wormhole to the future. Reporting on what's new and what's next in science and technology, we deliver the future now.







Setback for Geothermal Energy

Posted on by

It appears that geothermal energy development has hit another snag, similar to the problems encountered in Switzerland. It appears to be a case of a whole lot of tax dollars (and venture capital) chasing a pipe dream without suf