Could the Milky Way's central black hole actually be something else?
Archeologists have discovered a mystery under Lake Huron
Something is happening at Chernobyl
giant comet/minor planet is approaching from the Oort Cloud
NASA has discovered a 6 star system in which the Stars Constantly Eclipse the Others
Anton Petrov - What if those liquid water lakes on Mars are something else entirely?
Slime mold colony emergent intelligence
We've heard a lot of claims about thorium salt reactors over the years, now China is going to give it a try
A skeptical Look at Climate Science
A couple of interesting videos I ran across recently
This first is interesting but probably faces limited use cases, the second can make an interesting grid scale alternative to massive lithium ion battery facilities and things like pumped hydro, but the fourth is quite possibly the most immediately exciting even if I suspect it will only be in high end devices for the first few years seeing as how there's at the moment only one company I'm aware of that has actually announced near term plans to ship anything.
(08-31-2021, 07:21 AM)Bob Schroeck Wrote: [ -> ] (08-31-2021, 06:14 AM)robkelk Wrote: [ -> ]No, this tech isn't ready for the real world yet.
Toyota halts use of self-driving vehicle at Paralympic village after collision with visually impaired athlete
Yeah... I spotted a headline over the weekend about a Tesla self-driving car that hit a police car...
I don't recall who it was, but someone a few years back commented that we'd know self driving cars were truly getting ready for prime time when the discussion wasn't, "Will it work?" but questions about liability and legality such as, "If you are over the legal alcohol limit to operate a car, but it's in self driving mode and you're in a passenger seat, is that being responsible or a drunk driving ticket?" or, "Is it acceptable to send your kids to school in a self driving vehicle set to go to the school and then return home?" Or a more straightforward, "You have the car in self-driving mode and it is involved in a collision. Who bares the liability if your vehicle is found the be all or partially at fault?"
If we're still asking whether it's ready and not those kinds of questions, it's not ready.
Science doesn't get weirder or more interesting than the Ig Nobel Prizes...
This year's Ig Nobel Prize in Economics is "for discovering that the obesity of a country’s politicians may be a good indicator of that country’s corruption". Well, duh - haven't they heard of "fat cats"?
The Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine goes to the team that demonstrated "that sexual orgasms can be as effective as decongestant medicines at improving nasal breathing". The line for the follow-up study forms on the left...
Then there's the paired Physics and Kinetics Prizes - one for "experiments to learn why pedestrians do not constantly collide with other pedestrians" and the other for "experiments to learn why pedestrians do sometimes collide with other pedestrians". Who said you can't have it both ways?
And we can't forget the Transportation Prize, for "experimentally determining that it is safe to transport an airborne rhinoceros upside down"
If you want to know who won the other five Ig Nobels this year,
go read the article.
https://scitechdaily.com/sodom-and-gomor...an-valley/
Evidence that a major Bronze Age city Tall el-Hammam (located near the Dead Sea in Jordan) was destroyed by a Tunguska style airburst in the year 1650 BC. This may be the inspiration for the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.