[Use Of Weapons]

Hah, saw that on BBC Four Documentary about infinity recently, and thought, 'that is a beautiful proof.'

[Gwynn ap Nudd]

Wish I still had my copy, but a very good argument along those lines (and many other interesting ideas infinity related) was given in "Infinity and the Mind" by Rudy Rucker.

[Use Of Weapons]

http://www.bbc.co.uk...rammes/b00f7zsk

[Mrs Savagely Wishy Washy]

gotta love them pirates.

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[Dutch]

Just encountered this link.

Building an NCC-1701 Enterprise like vessel somewhere during the coming 20 years?

Interesting.

[Mrs Savagely Wishy Washy]

this is going to take you to a whole lotta science

This post has been edited by Miss Savage: 20 May 2012 - 11:41 AM

[Adjutant Stormy~]

 Dutch, on 13 May 2012 - 03:15 PM, said:

Just encountered this link.

Building an NCC-1701 Enterprise like vessel somewhere during the coming 20 years?

Interesting.

Putting big nuclear powered things in orbit requires some tricky dodging around the Space Weapons Treaty.

[Obdigore]

 Adjutant Stormy, on 21 May 2012 - 06:44 AM, said:

 Dutch, on 13 May 2012 - 03:15 PM, said:

Just encountered this link.

Building an NCC-1701 Enterprise like vessel somewhere during the coming 20 years?

Interesting.

Putting big nuclear powered things in orbit requires some tricky dodging around the Space Weapons Treaty.

Well no, unless you plan to power your ships with a warhead? Nuclear Reactors =/= Nuclear Warheads.

[Lucifer's Heaven]

Specifically if you power it with the correct Thorium reactor, as oppose to a Uranium or Plutionium one.
The problem if it were a U or Pu reactor on it, is the same one many countries have with places like Iraq having them. It is not a nuclear warhead, but because they will have their hands on the same materials and will be doing research into the same material it is very difficult to tell/stop them also making nuclear warheads.
You cannot make a thorium warhead, and if they only have thorium reactors, then they have no excuse to have weapons grade U or Pu in orbit, so it makes it much easier to keep an eye on.
Given the potential of thorium reactors, it's very likely they would be the perfect power source (within our current tech) for something like this anyway

[Obdigore]

 Lucifer, on 21 May 2012 - 07:55 AM, said:

Specifically if you power it with the correct Thorium reactor, as oppose to a Uranium or Plutionium one.
The problem if it were a U or Pu reactor on it, is the same one many countries have with places like Iraq having them. It is not a nuclear warhead, but because they will have their hands on the same materials and will be doing research into the same material it is very difficult to tell/stop them also making nuclear warheads.
You cannot make a thorium warhead, and if they only have thorium reactors, then they have no excuse to have weapons grade U or Pu in orbit, so it makes it much easier to keep an eye on.
Given the potential of thorium reactors, it's very likely they would be the perfect power source (within our current tech) for something like this anyway

No one does have a problem with places like Iraq having nuclear reactors. In fact Russia has built them a couple and the UN has helped them build a couple more, the problem is that the facilities used to enrich Uranium or Plutonium can also be used to enrich it further to weapons grade. If you keep the enrichment on the ground, there shouldn't be any problems, but I agree that Thorium would work just as well, although it is speculated that Cold Fusion is achievable far easier in a zero-g environment, but what do I know.

[Lucifer's Heaven]

 Obdigore, on 21 May 2012 - 10:12 AM, said:

 Lucifer, on 21 May 2012 - 07:55 AM, said:

Specifically if you power it with the correct Thorium reactor, as oppose to a Uranium or Plutionium one.
The problem if it were a U or Pu reactor on it, is the same one many countries have with places like Iraq having them. It is not a nuclear warhead, but because they will have their hands on the same materials and will be doing research into the same material it is very difficult to tell/stop them also making nuclear warheads.
You cannot make a thorium warhead, and if they only have thorium reactors, then they have no excuse to have weapons grade U or Pu in orbit, so it makes it much easier to keep an eye on.
Given the potential of thorium reactors, it's very likely they would be the perfect power source (within our current tech) for something like this anyway

No one does have a problem with places like Iraq having nuclear reactors. In fact Russia has built them a couple and the UN has helped them build a couple more, the problem is that the facilities used to enrich Uranium or Plutonium can also be used to enrich it further to weapons grade. If you keep the enrichment on the ground, there shouldn't be any problems, but I agree that Thorium would work just as well, although it is speculated that Cold Fusion is achievable far easier in a zero-g environment, but what do I know.

Sorry, by problem, I meant it's something they keep a much closer eye on, not try and stop.
And yeah, the enrichment facilities are a bigger deal.
I knew there was a difference between weapons grade and what was used in most reactors. You can use the type used for some reactors to make crude nukes though (having looked it up now, I honestly had not realised how big the % differences were).
But really, it's not so much the real possibility as it is public perception, and people are stupid

So yeah, Th's inability to be used as a nuke would just allow them to flat say it's not an issue.

[stone monkey]

I'm pretty sure this isn't saying anything new but it's still a decent read if you're of the mind to read an actual science paper and are prepared to do a bit of mental work.

http://www.ncbi.nlm....?tool=pmcentrez

And this is a great line:

Quote

Thinking about sex has been one of the main occupations of evolutionary biologists for almost half a century.

I think that makes pretty much all of us evolutionary biologists

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 24 May 2012 - 06:55 PM

[worry]

http://www.theatlant...nomenon/257504/

Both male and female subjects in a recent experiment perceived near-naked men in sexualized ads as human beings, but could only see attractive women as objects.

Interesting stuff. On a side note, it seems a lot of these types of experiments are done with pictures/words/colors/etc flashing on a computer screen, and I'm sure most people here have actually taken informal versions of these tests online. I dunno how iffy they are, but they're apparently held in wide enough regard to be taken seriously in journals and what have you.

[Lucifer's Heaven]

Because, well, the possibility that this is true needs to be spread around

Correlation between oral sex and a low incidence of preeclampsia: a role for soluble HLA in seminal fluid?

"Abstract

The involvement of immune mechanisms in the aetiology of preeclampsia is often suggested. Normal pregnancy is thought to be associated with a state of tolerance to the foreign antigens of the fetus, whereas in preeclamptic women this immunological tolerance might be hampered. The present study shows that oral sex and swallowing sperm is correlated with a diminished occurrence of preeclampsia which fits in the existing idea that a paternal factor is involved in the occurrence of preeclampsia. Because pregnancy has many similarities with transplantation, we hypothesize that induction of allogeneic tolerance to the paternal HLA molecules of the fetus may be crucial. Recent data suggest that exposure, and especially oral exposure to soluble HLA (sHLA) or HLA derived peptides can lead to transplantation tolerance. Similarly, sHLA antigens, that are present in the seminal plasma, might cause tolerance in the mother to paternal antigens. In order to test whether this indeed may be the case, we investigated whether sHLA antigens are present in seminal plasma. Using a specific ELISA we detected sHLA class I molecules in seminal plasma. The level varied between individuals and was related to the level in plasma. Further studies showed that these sHLA class I molecules included classical HLA class I alleles, such as sHLA-A2, -B7, -B51, -B35 and sHLA-A9. Preliminary data show lower levels of sHLA in seminal plasma in the preeclampsia group, although not significantly different from the control group. An extension of the present study is necessary to verify this hypothesis."

[Mrs Savagely Wishy Washy]

http://www.sciencema...085/1090.2.full
this is so amazingly fascinatingly interesting. i always find that physicists and astrophysicists are the guys who are working on solving the last greatest mysteries of science, and thus probably mankind.

[Tsundoku]

Science in webcomics!

http://www.accursedd...date=2011-02-10

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[Beezulbubba]

[Adjutant Stormy~]

I like how people were complaining that 720p is not 'super high definition' even though that's youtube's maximum resolution (unless you pay them).

[Lucifer's Heaven]

 Adjutant Stormy, on 07 June 2012 - 03:03 AM, said:

I like how people were complaining that 720p is not 'super high definition' even though that's youtube's maximum resolution (unless you pay them).

Huh, I did not realise you had to pay to put up 1080p videos? I thought you might for RED video, but not 1080p.

Also, thanks for the video, was awesome I have no idea what the yellow view is, but it was especially awesome

[Shiara]

 Lucifer, on 07 June 2012 - 05:15 AM, said:

 Adjutant Stormy, on 07 June 2012 - 03:03 AM, said:

I like how people were complaining that 720p is not 'super high definition' even though that's youtube's maximum resolution (unless you pay them).

Huh, I did not realise you had to pay to put up 1080p videos? I thought you might for RED video, but not 1080p.

Also, thanks for the video, was awesome I have no idea what the yellow view is, but it was especially awesome

Electromagnetic activity, perhaps?