Adding madness to the method
Archive of articles classified as "Sci/Tech"
Back homeEntropy is at once both truely awe-inspiring to contemplate and downright depressing. The idea that everything will eventually burn out and leave an endless empty nothingness for ever more is pretty depressing, but the thought that all this energy came from somewhere to begin with is a faint glimmer of hope.
Asimov’s short story “The Last Question“ is well worth taking 5 minutes to stop and read.
California energy regulators adopted an ambitious target yesterday, making it a goal that all new homes built after 2020 produce as much energy as they consume.
A British-led team of scientists has won European Union approval to seek to make nuclear fusion, the physicist’s dream, a reality. Nuclear fusion has the potential to solve the world’s energy crisis with carbon-neutral technology by harnessing the process that drives the Sun. So far, decades of research have generated little more than hype.
[About bloody time, nuclear energy is the way to go, and nuclear fusion is the cleanest way to do it! - ed]
Just found this blog entry on digg, linking to a series of 360 degree shots of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland. Some truly spectacular shots. I’d love to be there when that baby fires up.
Although the idea of teleporting individuals from one place to another in order to sidestep the headache of rush hour traffic has been around for quite some time, a team of Australian physicists are busy making it work (on a smaller scale, of course).
Astronomers are inviting members of the public to help them make major new discoveries by taking part in a census of one million galaxies. Visitors to galaxyzoo.org will get to see stunning images of galaxies, most of which have never been viewed by human eyes before.
I’ve been doing it myself and it’s great fun. Some of the photos are pretty bland or indistinct, but others are truly stunning.
This Taser XREP can deliver a wireless electric shock from over 100 feet away, and from the looks of it, you don’t want to be on its receiving end. Its Neuro-Muscular Incapacitation (NMI) is the same disabling effect delivered by wired Taser weapons. The unit is a small device with 4 prongs that passes through clothing and shocks the victim for 20 seconds while the shooter moves in to apprehend them. A neat idea or a disaster waiting to happen?
I’ve just been shown a video similar to the pictures of various planets and stars in scale that were doing the rounds a while back. It’s always great to be put in your place every now and then.
The F117A “Stealth” fighter has been retired after 25 years of service. I wonder if we’ll be seeing any on eBay any time soon.
Live Science has a nice little post explaining the “Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth“. It tries to merge science fiction with science fact and does so rather humerously. Worth a read. 