Scienceandsf
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Discussions of Topics Related to Science and Science Fiction.
Scienceandsf
4d ago
I assume by now everyone out there has heard about the Solar Eclipse that is going to occur on April the eighth. That day the Moon will cross in front of the Sun completely blocking out the Sun’s light in the middle of the day. The celestial event will draw a line of totality across the North American continent traversing Mexico before passing through 13 states of the US with the show finally ending in the maritime provinces of Canada.
The path of totality, yellow band, for the Eclipse of April 8th, 2024. Weather permitting it’s going to be quite a show. (Credit: Space.com)
I’ve had my eclipse ..read more
Scienceandsf
1w ago
The novel ‘Dune’, by author Frank Herbert is, like Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ and Martin’s ‘A Game of Thrones’ best known for the author’s ability to convincingly create a world unlike anything the book’s readers have ever experienced. The world of ‘Dune’ takes place about 9,000 years from now when humanity has spread to a number of different star systems. Interstellar travel is only possible however, thanks to a mystical drug known as ‘spice’, which can only be found on the desert world called Arrakis.
Poster for the Movie Dune, Part 2 (Credit: GadgetMates)
How the ‘spice’ works is never f ..read more
Scienceandsf
3w ago
The bad news came shortly after New Year’s with the announcement by climate scientists that the year 2023 was on average the warmest year ever recorded for our planet, surpassing the previous record holder 2016 by nearly a tenth of a degree Celsius. While a 0.1ºC increase may not sound like a great deal that happening for the entire planet over an entire year represents an enormous amount of extra heat in the atmosphere.
2023 was not only the hottest year ever recorded it broke the previous record by an astounding amount. Also, notice how the ten hottest years ever have all been in the last te ..read more
Scienceandsf
1M ago
There’s plenty to talk about this month in Space. For both manned and unmanned spaceflight there’s good news and bad news so let’s start with manned spaceflight first.
Manned spaceflight began with the flight of Yuri Gagarin in 1961. His single orbit of the Earth made him the ‘First Man in Space’. (Credit: ThoughtCo)
The good news of course is the successful launch on January 18th of the Axiom-3 (Ax-3) private mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Although the mission is a private one the crew are not millionaire tourists, they are astronauts representing four different nations. Mi ..read more
Scienceandsf
1M ago
We all are aware of how the economic conditions in this country have changed over the last 30-40 years. Where once assembly line manufacturing was the main driver of the GDP here in the US now it’s high-tech engineering, microchips and software, industries that require far fewer employees but those with greater education. These changes in the economy have brought with them demographic changes as millions of high school graduates lost well paying jobs with benefits while people with a college degree were in ever greater demand, and therefore saw at least a modest increase in their income and we ..read more
Scienceandsf
1M ago
Every individual from nearly every species of animal must from time to time interact with other members of its own species. The most important reason for such contacts is surely procreation but there are countless others such as safety in numbers, hunting in packs or even just agreeing upon separate territories so as to minimize the number of interactions. In all of these contacts there must be some form of communication in order to facilitate the outcome of the meeting.
The annual Red Crab migration on Christmas Island. Even usually solitary animals like these still have to interact with thei ..read more
Scienceandsf
1M ago
Most people I suppose have never heard of Arno A. Penzias, but everyone has heard of the Big Bang Theory, the idea that about 14 billion years ago, give or take a couple hundred million, the entire Universe underwent an unimaginable explosion and the expansion caused by that explosion continues today. Well it was Doctor Penzias, along with his colleague Robert W. Wilson who provided the first actual evidence that the Big Bang really happened.
Robert W. Wilson, left, and Arno Penzias, Bell Lab employees who won the 1978 Nobel Prize in physics, are shown standing in front of their microwave ante ..read more
Scienceandsf
2M ago
We all know that the cosmic zoo has many weird and wild inhabitants. In addition to the familiar stars, planets, moons, asteroids and comets there are quasars, black holes, neutron stars and brown dwarfs to name just a few. One of the least understood types of objects are known as Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) which were first discovered in 2007. FRBs are exactly what their name implies, extremely powerful radio emissions that only last for a few thousandths of a second.
Galaxies are just one kind of animal in the Cosmic zoo, but still there are many different types of them! Add in the black holes ..read more
Scienceandsf
2M ago
One subject that appears quite often in Science Fiction novels and stories is the difficulty of trying to establish communication with an alien intelligent lifeform. In H. G. Wells’ ‘The First Men in the Moon’ Doctor Cavour tries to communicate with the Selenites by starting with geometric shapes, all intelligent creatures would recognize them after all. The same technique was used in the novel ‘Planet of the Apes’ (Of course in the movie they skipped that whole problem by having the apes speak perfect English!).
In the novel ‘The First Men in the Moon’ by H. G. Wells the Moon People, Selenite ..read more
Scienceandsf
2M ago
Every decade or so physicists here in the US submit their wish lists of the experiments they would like to see funded by the Federal Government through the Department of Energy via that department’s High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP). Gone are the days when all Galileo had to do to advance science was to drop a couple of balls from the leaning tower of Pisa or all Ben Franklin had to do was go fly a kite. Today Big Science takes Big Money and much of that comes from the approximately one billion dollars that Washington spends on High Energy Physics (HEP).
One of the most famous experim ..read more