August 15, 2023
If you were going to open up a shop, what would you sell?
OK, OK, in all seriousness, I would probably open a jazz café / restaurant. But only on the weekends.
We live at the foot of a mountain trail, and it’s really popular with retired folks and young families.
My wife and I have already begun thinking about our “second life” after retirement, and I’ve been frankly bored with the whole EFL teaching thing for a while now.
But pizza and the Duke? Yeah. That’d work.
August 14, 2023
A NASA mission has observed a supermassive black hole pointing its highly energetic jet straight toward Earth. Don’t panic just yet, though. As fearsome as this cosmic event is, it’s located at a very safe distance of about 400 million light-years away.
https://www.livescience.com/space/black-holes/supermassive-black-hole-found-spitting-a-giant-high-energy-jet-toward-earth
Gee. So reassuring.
FWIW I had never heard the term “blazar” before reading the linked article.
Sounded like a cross between Happy Days and late 1970s Japanese anime.
And it just so happens there’s a new Ultraman Blazar “live action” on Japanese TV from this past July…
August 13, 2023
We already know that more than one object can share the same orbit; Jupiter has a collection of 120,000 asteroids following its same path around the Sun, for example. Earth has one, too. But although it’s theoretically possible, astronomers have never discovered two whole planets sharing the same orbit around a star before.
https://www.inverse.com/science/astronomers-discover-cosmic-unicorn-two-planets-on-the-same-orbit
Hmm…the language here is a bit misleading. The two objects are technically not both “planets.”
The article comments later on that the object in the dotted line circle is “a cloud of debris about twice the mass of our Moon trailing a bit behind the innermost gas giant” in one of its LaGrange points (where “Trojan” asteroids follow gas giants such as Jupiter and Saturn). So it’s way too early to say that “two” planets formed in the same orbit.
Still, this is the first time that astronomers have spotted two such objects this close to one another in the same orbit. Who knows if both will remain viable (the debris cloud could become partly or mostly absorbed by the gas giant with the rest either being expelled or thrust into separate orbits).
So why is this called a “cosmic unicorn”?
Apparently because although such Trojans “are allowed to exist by theory, but no one has ever detected them.”
Um. OK.
So, like, totally NOT at all like this? Kind of a bummer, really…
August 11, 2023
Superconductors are materials that allow electrical current to flow with no resistance, a property that would revolutionize power grids where energy is lost in transmission as well as advance fields such as computing chips, where electrical resistance acts as a speed limit.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/superconductor-claims-spark-investor-frenzy-scientists-are-skeptical-rcna98123
I’ve heard claims like this before.
The hallmark of science is replicability. I.e., can two independent teams of researchers, using similar means, methods, and materials in completely different settings, replicate the findings of the original team?
So…
Researchers from at least three Chinese universities have in recent days said they produced versions of LK-99 with varying results. One team from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology posted a video purporting to show the material levitating over a magnet, which is important because true superconductors can float over a magnet in any orientation, without spinning like a compass.
But…
…another team, from Qufu Normal University, said they did not observe zero resistance, one of required characteristics of a superconductor. A third, from the Southeast University in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing, said they measured zero resistance, but only at a temperature of 110 Kelvin (-163 degree Celsius).
And…
The possible bad news for LK-99 is that the superconducting field is full of materials that hold promise at first but fall apart under scrutiny. Researchers even have a handy name for them — unidentified superconducting objects.
A.k.a “USOs.” As the linked article points out, plenty of smart, hardworking researchers have claimed to have found a “superconductor,” but then their claims simply fall apart under scrutiny.
Be careful of finding what you seek.
July 28, 2023
US Congress: We want the truth!
Former military pilots: UAP is real!
Me: Wtf is a “UAP”?
July 19, 2023
“If we want to develop the Moon as an outpost, a gateway to deep space, then we need to carry out many more explorations to see what sort of habitat would we be able to build there with the locally-available material and how will we carry supplies to our people there,” Mr Annadurai says.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-66185565
Chandrayaan-1 was India’s first successful Moon launch in 2008 — it deliberately crashed in order to measure the amount of water at the South Pole.
Chandrayaan-2 was only partly successful, as it did put an orbiter around the Moon, but the rover crashed. (The orbiter is still there, sending back information on a regular basis.)
Now, Chandrayaan-3 aims to finally land a rover and do some research exploring.
Let’s hope they can get it to land safely this time…
July 17, 2023
List 10 things you know to be absolutely certain.
1. I know it to be certain that the wording of this prompt is a bit odd. Is this meant to mean “know to be true”?
2. I know it to be absolutely certain that there are many things about which I am far from certain.
3. I also know it to be absolutely certain that at least one of the things I know to be certain will annoy at least one person who reads this.
4. I also also know it to be absolutely certain that at least one of the things to know to be certain will amuse at least one person.
5. One of these things I know to be absolutely certain may even irritate and amuse the same person (👈 maybe even this one right here).
6. I even know it to be absolutely certain that writing a list of ten things that are absolutely certain takes a considerably longer time than I had initially anticipated.
7. Just to be sure I irritate someone, it is absolutely certain that the world is a warmer place than it was when I was a kid 40 years ago.
8. The fact that June 2023 was the hottest month on record is absolutely certain.
9. I know it to be absolutely certain, however, that we have only been keeping records on temperatures worldwide since the late 1880s, and records were measured using different instruments
10. But the most important thing to be absolutely certain that I know is that Sony says they have the technology to make humanoid robots but can’t figure out what to use them for. I have an idea or two about that…
July 16, 2023
Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb…
“During the adaptation, Stanley ran into a wall: it was impossible to make a successful film about the end of mankind since nobody, himself included, would want to see it. The answer was satire…”
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jul/15/stanley-kubrick-dr-strangelove-stage-adaptation-armando-iannucci
Dr. Strangelove itself was an adaptation of a novel. So I wonder how adapting an adaptation to the stage will work.
How many new lines will they allow? Peter Sellers basically ad libbed everything and Kubrick rewrote the script to match the ad libs.
Probably including this one:
(Btw I hadn’t realized the film won a Hugo Award…along with many other awards…which goes to show how little we actually need Hollywood studios to get great stories in the end…)
July 11, 2023
What are you most excited about for the future?
I look forward to seeing whether the future looks more like WALL-E…
…or Star Trek…
…or maybe some combination thereof…
July 8, 2023
https://www.reuters.com/technology/robots-say-they-wont-steal-jobs-rebel-against-humans-2023-07-07/Ai-Da, a robot artist that can paint portraits, echoed the words of author Yuval Noah Harari who called for more regulation during the event where new AI rules were discussed.
“Many prominent voices in the world of AI are suggesting some forms of AI should be regulated and I agree,” it said.
But Desdemona, a rock star robot singer in the band Jam Galaxy with purple hair and sequins, was more defiant.
“I don’t believe in limitations, only opportunities,” it said, to nervous laughter. “Let’s explore the possibilities of the universe and make this world our playground.”
<cue nervous laughter in readers>
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