Large Hadron Collider nearly ready at The Big Picture. 27 photos.
Category Archives: Tech
A Mighty Wind
Oregon approves what will temporarily be the largest land-based wind farm in the world. 909 MW peak power.
The Return of the Natural Philosophers
Whilst scurrying through the intertubes, I ran across a post entitled Should We Ban Physics? at Overcoming Bias.
At the recent Global Catastrophic Risks conference, someone proposed a policy prescription which, I argued, amounted to a ban on all physics experiments involving the production of novel physical situations – as opposed to measuring existing phenomena. You can weigh a rock, but you can’t purify radium, and you can’t even expose the rock to X-rays unless you can show that exactly similar X-rays hit rocks all the time. So the Large Hadron Collider, which produces collisions as energetic as cosmic rays, but not exactly the same as cosmic rays, would be off the menu.
I think the context of worrying about the end of the world is misplaced. What science could you do if you were limited to strictly observing natural phenomenon, and couldn’t fashion experiments that involved “novel physical situations?” Astronomy and biology, if you were doing them last century, or even earlier — can you even make a lens under such a guideline?
It’s unfortunate the details were no forthcoming; there were some physicists at this conference and this is an interpretation of the proposal. But it sounds like a policy suggestion made by someone who doesn’t have experience in doing science.
From a summary of some of the discussions, though, it seems like there was a whole lot of this genre of conjecture with a hefty dose of science fiction along with the science.
They envision desktop nanofactories into which people feed simple raw inputs and get out nearly any product they desire. The proliferation of such nanofactories would end scarcity forever. “We can’t expect to have only positive outcomes without mitigating negative outcomes,” cautioned Treder.
What kind of negative outcomes? Nanofactories could produce not only hugely beneficial products such as water filters, solar cells, and houses, but also weapons of any sort. Such nanofabricated weapons would be vastly more powerful than today’s. Since these weapons are so powerful, there is a strong incentive for a first strike. In addition, an age of nanotech abundance would eliminate the majority of jobs, possibly leading to massive social disruptions. Social disruption creates the opportunity for a charismatic personality to take hold. “Nanotechnology could lead to some form of world dictatorship,” said Treder. “There is a global catastrophic risk that we could all be enslaved.”
I think this is akin to the stance that nanotechnology is morally unacceptable. The steps between where we are and where would have to be for this to be true is huge (and a similar stance is taken with AI); the scenario is proposed seemingly without any regard for how difficult it is to predict the future of technology .
Cool Things, Small Packages
DelFly Micro Air Vehicle Weighs Just Three Grams
The ‘dragonfly’ has a tiny camera (about 0.5 grams) on board that transmits its signals to a ground station. With software developed by TU Delft itself, objects can then be recognised independently. The camera transmits TV quality images, and therefore allows the DelFly II to be operated from the computer. It can be manoeuvred using a joystick as if the operator was actually in the cockpit of the aircraft. The aim is to be able to do this with the DelFly Micro too.
Here’s the DelFly II
And the Micro, which can be hard to follow
Cross-Training
If You Have a Problem, Ask Everyone
A clearinghouse, of sorts, for unsolved problems, open to anyone who wants to try and solve them.
The idea that solutions can come from anywhere, and from people with seemingly unrelated work, is another key. Dr. Lakhani said his study of InnoCentive found that “the further the problem was from the solver’s expertise, the more likely they were to solve it,” often by applying specialized knowledge or instruments developed for another purpose.
For example, he said, the brain might be thought of as a biological system, but “certain brain problems may not be solvable by taking a biological approach. You may want to cast it as an electrical engineering approach. An electrical engineer will come in and say, ‘Oh, here’s the answer for you.’ They have not thought of themselves as being neuroscientists but now they can approach the problem from the point of view of electrical engineering.”
I’ve seen this, in my own limited experience, and even within different branches of physics. There are different mindsets and approaches to problems; getting experience in different fields often pays dividends.
Offering prizes for scientific achievements is hardly new. “It has been around for centuries,” said Karim R. Lakhani, a professor at Harvard Business School who has studied InnoCentive. One early example was the work of John Harrison, the 18th-century clockmaker who, in response to a prize offered by the British Parliament, solved the problem of determining longitude at sea by inventing a clock that would keep good time even in heavy weather.
Good and bad example — Harrison solved the problem, but the government kept changing the rules on him and it took a decree from the king to get the balance of the prize paid out.
Where Does a 728-Ton Gorilla Sit?
By gorilla, of course, I mean inverted pendulum. The answer is: anywhere it wants in the middle of a tall building.
It’s a tuned mass damper for stabilizing the Taipei 101 skyscraper, and the link includes a video taken during the May earthquake.
Cool Clock
Analogy web clock.
via The Long Now
Decisions, Decisions
No one knows why anyone does anything.
Why did I choose these socks today?
Trinity +1: the Decision to Use the Bomb, 17 July-6 August, 1945
The truth of the matter was that it was a very complex issue, an easily misunderstood tapestry of circumstance and consequence. The major issue of course was that the Japanese would not surrender, and that there would be “fanatical resistance” once the invasion of the Japanese islands had begun. The battle of Okinawa had just been fought—it was a horrible confrontation taking 12,5000 American lives and more than 1000,000 Japanese , demonstrating that even in impossible circumstances that the Japanese simply would not surrender (unconditionally). This is just one instance—there are many others, not the least of which was t he recent firebombing of Tokyo, taking 150,000 lives. Air strikes in general seemed to not make a difference in the will of Japan to fight—as was demonstrated again and again in the British and American bombing of Germany—as was further demonstrated in General Curtis LeMay’s and General Hap Arnold’s 60-city attack in the May-August span. The thought was that if there was an invasion that it could well cost the U.S. 1000,000+ casualties and would be completely devastating to Japan.
Something odd (in a US-centric way) going on with the numbers — 12,5000 and 1000,000 correlate to 12,500 and 100,000, respectively, when I compare to other accounts of the battle of Okinawa.
via Physics Buzz
Where's My Stunt Double?
NASA’s Deep Impact Films Earth as an Alien World
“Our video shows some specific features that are important for observations of Earth-like planets orbiting other stars,” said Drake Deming of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Deming is deputy principal investigator for EPOXI, and leads the EPOCh observations. “A ‘sun glint’ can be seen in the movie, caused by light reflected from Earth’s oceans, and similar glints to be observed from extrasolar planets could indicate alien oceans. Also, we used infrared light instead of the normal red light to make the color composite images, and that makes the land masses much more visible.” That happens because plants reflect more strongly in the near-infrared, Deming explained. Hence the video illustrates the potential for detecting vegetated land masses on extrasolar planets by looking for variations in the intensity of their near-infrared light as the planet rotates.
Take Your Ritalin!
Fast boats need to be light, but subs, of course, need negative buoyancy.
The ballast systems in most submarines can displace only about 20 percent of the cabin’s volume, but the Hyper-Sub’s ballast chambers double the volume of the cabin. The boat uses a high-pressure pumping system to rapidly fill these chambers with water or air, quickly changing its weight and buoyancy and allowing it to submerge or surface in less than a minute. “This creates more than 12 tons of lift [or sink],” Marion says.