Tweet
Evidence God has a sense of humor
Greetings!
This is neat for a number or reasons. First, it tells us we’re missing something in our theories. Protons are composed of three quarks, but we may have their arrangement wrong for example. Next, we’ve made stable enough muon hydrogen to study. The muon is like the electron, but the next level in the standard model along with Strange and Charm quarks.
First contact with a colony of Emperor Penguins. Penguins are evidence that God (or FSM) has a sense of humor.
And we can play with quark/gluon plasma. This is what the universe was composed of for a short, but critical, moment during the Big Bang that has a lot to do with how the universe finally looked.
Why do Republicans fear science so much? Let’s ask the Discovery Institute!
More evidence God has a sense of humor
Pet a Platypus! Platypus are also evidence that God has a sense of humor.
Have you ever wondered about platypus venom?
Score another one for video games. Looks like the AR goggles that have been the up and coming thing can be used to help people with optical conditions that glasses can’t fix.
Still grumpy about Dirty Jobs being cancelled. So here’s another store about Poo and the critters that work with it. Seems that dung beetles navigate by the milky way!
Japan will be mining for rare earths to break China’s monopoly. Seabed mining of metals, what could possibly go wrong?
Evidence that God occasionally drinks too much
Discovery Channel’s Giant Squid Special was last night, I had to record it because it’s after my bedtime. If you missed it, I’m sure they’ll rerun it. Squid are evidence that God (or FSM) occasionally drinks too much.
Everything we know about the squid in the photo.
Potential major breakthrough. Hydrogen is cool stuff, it’s common and when burned it produces water NOT CO2. But by the time you’ve got it into a burnable form, you’ve spend a lot of money and carbon. This is a catalytic process. However, it’s not yet scalable to a gas station.
On the subject of alternate energy, this is new to me. Using salinity differences to generate power!
The prime minister of Japan on 3/11 has written a book on it. This is likely to be a good read, probably not quite as self serving as a US politician would write. On the subject of Fukushima, 240K Bq/SqM recorded 80 km from the plant. Not good. 55% of 11-15 year old Fukushima girls have thyroid abnormalilities. 430K Bq/SqM at least recorded in a Fukushima river. Meter was pegged.
Unsure if this is good news or not. We may live to regret creating these variants. Or we may be ready for the variants when they appear in nature. It seems to me that the research was killed due to largely irrational fears about terrorists duplicating it. If the terrorists had a bio warfare dept, we’d already be seeing hemorrhagic fevers in NYC. If they COULD rob a Biosafety level 4 site, they’d have already done so.
Whales may be altruistic. At least this group seems to be. Adopting a deformed dolphin!
Cheaters DO prosper. Once again, NOT about Republicans but about slime molds.
Star Trek was right. Again.
Boxturtle (This is delicious)
83 Comments
Morning All!
Boxturtle (The cafeteria here has gone healthy, no donuts. There’s gonna be a war)
Good mornign BoxTurtle. A genuine treasure trove of sciencey goodness this morning. That squid is kind of scary. 12 -20 feet long?
Both the quark/gluon plasma and the tractor beam are bonus cool.
Good morning, BoxTurtle and O&S and lurkers.
Those pictures are hilarious!
Now up to read
Good morning BT. Those pictures make me happy.
Hope you have a good week.
Good morning firedogs and BT. Thanks for the post and host.
It was great. Beautiful high definition footage of the squid. They are spectacular creatures.
Oh, for got to answer the burning question of the day. No. I have never wondered about Platypus venom.
Don’t miss the Platypus video.
Good morning.
I read somewhere that it appeared to be about 10 inches long, not counting those tentacles.
There are very few truly large squid known. Anything with a body more than about 18 inches is exceptional.
Boxturtle (Who knows what lurks at 5000ft, though)
Morning, Boss Lady!
Boxturtle (I made Jane happy. Maybe I’ll get frontpaged!!)
Sorry. Thought I read 3-4 meters.
(Penguin/Platypus trump a snooki?)
Really? Next you’ll tell me you’ve never wondered about scorpion flies eating your sweat.
Boxturtle (What happened to scientific curiosity? people are more interested in what Snooki isn’t wearing)
(Whales mAy be altruistic)
Two Snooki comments in a row = Over Easy fail :(
(this might be three in a row. Maybe the Universe will implode)
Counting the tentacles, yes. It’s a neat critter, looks like it actively fishes for prey.
Boxturtle (Wonder if it’s venomous)
Hrrumph. It passed the spellchecker.
Boxturtle (I’ve corrected it, but I blame Obama)
You got good there. No. I have never wondered about scorpion flies eating my sweat.
Not only that, my children had to tell what that other thing was. (don’t want to type that name again for fear Kris’s head will explode)
I thought you said “Whales may be autistic.” LOL
Good morning all.
Thunderstorm with freezing rain in January.(I would ice skate to school but it looks as though it cancelled.)
Originally, that’s what the spellchecker said. I thought it was an interesting substitution, so I did a search and found this.
For whatever reason, I didn’t include it in the linkfest.
Boxturtle (Sometimes, one story leads to another. Sometimes not)
School cancelled? The children must be heartbroken!
Just raining here now, but I was out with friends last night and when we came out of the restaurant our car was coated with ice. Now the snow is melting and high of 50s is predicted by Wednesday.
Al Gore is most definitely fat.
I think that’s how individuals with autism must feel.
Hate to leave good company but we are headed out to Legislative Day at our beautiful Texas State Capitol.
Every 2 years (Texas has a part time Legi that meets only every other year) all special interest groups are invited to roam the halls of the Capitol buuilding and schmooze the electeds. We will ride with the Confederation of Clubs and Independents. COCI is a dirty biker group that helps maintain a full time lobbyist who splits time between Austin and DC and travels to all 49 other states to talk to other dirty biker groups about lobbying their state electeds.
Always cool to see the reaction when 500 motorcycles pull up in front of the Capitol.
Have a great day all.
Last Monday, the temp was below 0 and the wind chill pushed things into the -20 or so range. Today, it is 40 degrees, expected to hit 50 and stay that way for most of the week.
Boxturtle (Al Gore is fat enough that the increased gravity knocks satellites off course)
Just watched Ron Jaworski f-bomb the live Sportscenter. Bwahahaha.
Oi. You’re at the top of the front page BT.
tying in with the theme… if you’re in the north country, walk like a penguin. Black ice! Ack!!
Good Morning, BT
I’ve sure been sleeping in a lot. I feel like a bear in a semi-hybernation phase.
Good Morning BoxTurtle, Jane, and Firedogs,
goodness, I didn’t even know platypus had venom.
love the dung beetle story … a long time ago,in a lifetime far, far away, I was touring Etosha, at peak mammal time – yet could NOT take my eyes off a colony of beetles as they went about their ‘work’
Chameleon Stars – a pulsar that is able to dramatically change the way in which it shines.
we were watching classic Hitchcock last night and we could have been watching Squidapalooza ?!?! damn
WaHoo! The secret appears to be finding photos that Jane likes.
Boxturtle (Either that, or Monday morning is a slow period)
Or maybe you write informative, entertaining, and thought-provoking posts.
Could be that.
Something about this time of year. I go to bed at a very reasonable hour, yet I still want to lie about in bed for an hour or so after I wake up.
Sometimes it’s because I don’t wanna come out from under the nice warm covers. Other times it’s because I know what’s waiting for me at the office.
Boxturtle (The difference between a hibernating bear and a functional employee is coffee)
Dear Science Columnist,
Not to sound too stupid, but, isn’t gravity a fixed force? Would increased weight affect gravity?
Signed,
The girl who wasn’t paying attention in science class.
That sounds reasonable. I’m wondering if I’m making up for the loss of sleep during the summer, when it’s too hot to go to bed early.
Whichever, I’m enjoying it. :)
I’m convinced it’s that smiling turtle photo up top.
It’s Sooooooooo cute.
Ah, the power of Snooki!
Boxturtle (Geez, how many nerds must there be at FDL for a Science post to be entertaining!)
Oh, heck, BT, you just might be bringing out my inner nerd. Yesterday at Sunday Talking Heads I posted a link to a science news article.
Blue-Eye Humans Have A Single Common Ancestor.
off to ride with the scooter trash – have a good day y’all !
Are you taking your camera? Would love to see the faces when the crew pulls up.
Gravity is related to mass via this formula Fg = G (m1*m2)/(d^2). G is a very small constant. So if either mass increases, Gravity increases. But the increase is so small (thanks to G), that we don’t notice. Every time earth catches a meteor, gravity goes up a little. Every time we launch a satellite, gravity goes down a little.
Every piece of cheesecake increases Al’s mass.
Boxturtle (But we can consider Earth a closed system for the purposes of gravity)
“Protons are composed of three quarks.”
I used to be a physicist; one of the reasons I got out was that I could no longer believe in quarks when the experiments to confirm them were interpreted in increasingly indirect ways. But the experiment you link to is interesting: the proton in a muonic hydrogen atom seems to be smaller than the proton in a normal hydrogen atom, whereas one would think a proton is a proton, period. Thus indeed we may be “missing something in our theories” as you say. I always suspected so.
Clearly, my ancestor was a tremendous slut! And so were his/her children.
Boxturtle (Blue eyed, according to my wife the only thing attractive about me)
Oh, ha! Oldnslow had some great line about a whole lotta pro-creating between then and now. F*ing A.
And rich too.
I don’t interpret the results that way. I think we had an off value for the radius from the start and this just pointed it out to us. Before, we really had only one data point.
What do you suppose we’d see if we replaced the electron with a Tau?
Boxturtle (A different radius or confirmation of the new value?)
A real shakeup on the Scrabble board :)
Family arriving in a couple of hours but wanted to wish you all a good week.
Safe travels and safe home, pupses all.
Ohmmmm
I don’t play scrabble since my sister put the word QUIZZICAL on a triple word score.
Boxturtle (it’s been 30 years. I’m still bitter)
Hello OmAli, so nice to see you!
I’m off to a haircut and errands, will peek in again later. Have a great day, everyone.
“What do you suppose we’d see if we replaced the electron with a Tau?”
Good question, I guess. I’m out of touch with what one can do with a Tau: Is such an experiment even possible?
As to my suspicions, I should have provided this link.
We all have a single common ancestor if you go back far enough.
De-lurking for a moment to tell you how much I _love_ Science Monday posts. Thank you BT!
I recommend your link to everyone. It’s excellent reading and I might suggest that it is absolutely FDL diary worthy.
In theory, you could put a Tau in place of an electron. My math is not strong enough to determine if orbital has sufficient distance from the nucleus to avoid collision.
Personal bet: I think you’d get yet another number for proton radius because I think the higher mass particles distort the shape of the proton by moving quarks.
Boxturtle (Build a “proton” out of charm quarks and repeat the experiment!)
Ooh. A de lurker! Welcome. I really enjoy the science posts too.
Hey Om! How are the kitties doing? Is Arry still into the flagondry?
Bwahahahaha. PTSD from Scrabble? I hope your sister is older than you are, at least. Nothing smarts like a younger sibling outscoring on a board game. I have children. I know.
Greetings, Lurker!
Glad you’re enjoying the Science. Now, if we could only get America’s students to enjoy it as well…
Boxturtle (Angry Birds was a hit…maybe Angry Quarks would reach ‘em)
Two years younger.
And it’s worse than you think. In our family scrabble rules, the blank is worth the point count of the letter it replaces. So I got hit with TWO Z’s.
Boxturtle (But I’m mostly better now. *twitch*)
Thanks for your reco of my 2006 essay. That’s pretty old for FDL though unless I updated it. I’ll think about it.
Whilst watching the platypus video (thanks for that, BT) I noticed a crawl from the TV station entitled QLD Wild Weather, and then NSW Wild weather with flood warnings and one evacuation notice. Following the links around brought me to this summary of current warnings from Australia’s weather office. Looks pretty extreme to me, anybody know if this is any kind of normal flooding in Oz?
Addendum: our local traffic-and-weather station has introduced a new Extreme Weather feature.
Another interesting chart is one from Cynthia’s fine post about the LIPA privatization
steamrollerdebate.Maybe Al Gore is just big-boned.
See, that’s the nice thing about science. It may be disproven, but it never gets old.
Newton is still right. Galileo is still right. Aristotle is still right.
And seven years later, your diary still makes sense.
Boxturtle (And if you remove the date, nobody will notice)
Morning, firepups! What a great post, Box Turtle, with faboo pix. And yes, your slmiling turtle is very cute.Front-paged again!
so many cool links to follow…but since I’m trying to limit computer addiction, especially in the morning, I’m going to come back to them later.
I am having lots of trouble getting up, too, especially on a cold morning when, yes, the warm covers are soooo much more comfy than the chilly air. Also alarm fails, because my ears are still blocked up. If I’m asleep on the better one, I don’t hear the dang things. Going to look for wake up devices for deaf people, I guess.
Om Ali Sooo glad to see you! We’ve missed you! And yes, we need reports on those adorable kittens.
Wish I were in Austin to see oldsnslow, cbl, and their crew arrive.
Nothing about Oz’s current weather is normal from what I’ve read. They’re in real trouble down there, they’ve had to add new colors to their temperature charts!
Boxturtle (Al Gore is so fat he affects Oz from Tenn!)
They’re called “cats”.
Boxturtle (If you’re particularly difficult to awaken, get a Maine Coon cat)
I am particularly difficult to awaken, but you’re right, of course; one sharp-clawed paw-tap does the job instantly.
But, my schedule has been so uneven, with different times almost every day, for so long, that my cats rarely try to wake me until it’s really, really late. Like 11 am late. So, I can’t look to them to do the task, unfortunately.
or a puppy…
Wait, what ‘s a flagondry? Not an anagram for dragonfly?
But it’s not a science essay; it’s an humanities essay.
By the way, as to you @ 53, I forget but does the overall size of the atom really depend on the mass of the thing orbiting as you seem to imply, so that the Tauic(?) atom would be smaller?
In any case, I’m impressed that you’ve stayed with this thread all morning, BT; for my part I’ve spent most of the time on my classics work, only checking here now and then.
Humanities are VERY popular here, check MyFDL if you don’t think so!
I can’t speak to the overall size of the atom, but if you think of how the quarks in a proton COULD be configured you might postulate that a more massive particle with a stronger magnetic field would distort the arrangement. For example, if the quarks are in a straight line (unlikely) the size of the proton would distort more if the lepton was close to either end of the chain than if it was closer to the middle. And that distortion would be related to the mass of the lepton.
Over Easy is kinda of an all day thread, each chef rides herd on his/her thread until late afternoon. It wasn’t planned that way, but as with much Over Easy it just happened.
Boxturtle (Keep checking in. A frustrated physicist fact checking me is valuable)
‘Zactly. I believe Richard called it that.
Very kewl. I just bought my ticket to a Bradley Manning Support Network/KPFA event featuring Mr. Ellsberg and our own Kevin Gosztola!
We are going to want a full report!!
From the NatGeo article on the osmosis power plant:
This is backward. In osmosis (as opposed to reverse osmosis), the solvent (water) will pass the barrier from the low to the high solute (salt) concentration regions.
The writer is a scientific illiterate; the editor is the same or asleep.
The power plant itself is interesting, and thanks to BoxTurtle for letting us know about it.
Maybe I’ll write a diary about it if I have a spare minute. LOL! Spare minute, as if! I can’t remember the last time I had a few free moments to go to a lecture or event. Oh, wait. I think it was back in 2010…
Not an osmosis expert, so I didn’t catch that. But I did find the concept interesting, especially given that we’re going to need a lot more desalinization plants as fresh water becomes scarcer. I think it would be great if a plant could generate enough electricity to power itself as a byproduct of it’s operation.
Boxturtle (You might drop a letter to Nat Geo about their Oopsie)
Thanks for the reply. I went back to the NatGeo article and saw a commenter had already caught this. It’s not a good error for NatGeo to have let pass.
Unfortunately, though, your idea of getting power from a desalinization plant will never work. Thermodynamics gives us no free lunches!
This power plant is actually the opposite of a desalinization plant, which draws on outside energy to force water the “wrong” way across the membrane, yielding freshwater and concentrated brine.
This is a salinization plant: it will make freshwater brackish, which is why it would have to be evaluated in terms of its own environmental impact. But if you put one at the mouth of a river where that fresh water was about to get mixed in with saltwater anyway, and just capture some of the energy that would otherwise be dissipated, maybe it could work!
Oh, okay. Can’t say I remember that one. lol.
My word, did I have it bass ackwards! Thanks Much, I told you I was no expert on desalinization!
Boxturtle (The education program of FDL succeeds again!)
BT,
Late, very late to the post. Meant to post on you last one that this is a great idea. I have enjoyed the “over easy” discussions and links.
Thanks, Ma’am!
Boxturtle (Ah, our Overly Easy Fans!)
Hey, Om….very nice to see you. Hope we can catch up on some of your news. My schedule is so unpredictable that the only time I am “usually”
is pretty early. Have missed seeing you and hope your husband has done well. Maybe our paths will cross more often….Hope all is well. And the babyyy of course.
kapock, I don’t know much about desalination or osmosis in any direction, but I am *certain* that no incident in which I took part that was reported in the ‘news’ was even vaguely recognizable. Sobering.