Starship Asterisk*

geckzilla wrote:This is getting pretty ridiculous. Even though we know a lot about how life began on Earth, the details are pretty sketchy. This guy is taking one small problem and asserting that because oxidized molybdenum was probably not present on Earth but it probably was on Mars ...ergo life came from Mars. That's a pretty BIG leap in logic there, don't you think? Wouldn't it be much more likely that a rock which was knocked off Mars then traveled to Earth and brought this oxidized molybdenum to our planet, where it could have then been utilized? I think the article could be more appropriately titled "Earth Life May Have Had Help From Mars"

Meanwhile, at Wikipedia...

You’re almost unfathomably lucky to exist, in almost every conceivable way. Don’t take it the wrong way. You, me, and even the most calming manatee are nothing but impurities in an otherwise beautifully simple universe.
...
The history of physics, in fact, is a marvel of using simple symmetry principles to construct complicated laws of the universe. Einstein quite famously was able to construct his entire theory of special relativity—the idea that ultimately gave us E=mc2 and explained the heat of the sun—from nothing more than the simple idea that there was no measurable distinction to be made between observers at rest and observers in uniform motion.

The long-overlooked 20th-century mathematician Emmy Noether proved the centrality of symmetry as a physical principle. And what is symmetry—at least as scientists understand it? The mathematician Hermann Weyl gave perhaps the most succinct definition:

“A thing is symmetrical if there is something you can do to it so that after you have finished doing it, it looks the same as before.”

Which sounds innocuous enough until you realize that if the entire universe were made symmetric, then all of the good features (e.g., you) are decidedly asymmetric lumps that ruin the otherwise perfect beauty of the cosmos.

The seemingly simple idea that the laws of the universe are the same everywhere in space and time turns out to yield justification for long-observed properties of the universe, like Newton’s first law of motion (“An object in motion stays in motion,” etc.) and first law of thermodynamics (the conservation of energy).

As the Nobel laureate Phil Anderson put it:
“It is only slightly overstating the case to say that physics is the study of symmetry.”

Radar Technologies International, the natural resources exploration firm that discovered the aquifers, said that they contained “a minimum reserve of 250 billion cubic meters of water,” and that rainfall in Kenya and Uganda refilled them with about 3.4 billion cubic meters annually.

Unesco described the find as a scientific triumph and one that it hoped to replicate elsewhere. “We will continue to support Africa to unlock the full potential of its invisible water wealth,” Ms. Kalonji said.

MargaritaMc wrote:

According to The Telegraph,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... chine.html

And the date really ISN'T April first...

Beyond wrote:
Nuclear fusion milestone passed at U.S. lab.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility wrote:
<<The National Ignition Facility, or NIF, is a large, laser-based inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research device located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, USA. NIF uses powerful lasers to heat and compress a small amount of hydrogen fuel to the point where nuclear fusion reactions take place. NIF is the largest and most energetic ICF device built to date and the largest laser in the world. NIF was completed five years behind schedule and was almost four times more expensive than originally budgeted. The first large-scale laser target experiments were performed in June 2009 and the first "integrated ignition experiments" (which tested the laser's power) were declared completed in October 2010. NIF was used as the set for the starship Enterprise's warp core in the movie Star Trek Into Darkness.

On July 5, 2012, the NIF system delivered more than 500 trillion watts (terawatts or TW) of peak power and 1.85 megajoules (MJ) of ultraviolet laser light to its target. "The 500 TW shot is an extraordinary accomplishment by the NIF Team, creating unprecedented conditions in the laboratory that hitherto only existed deep in stellar interiors," said Dr. Richard Petrasso. "Already the most incredibly tightly controlled and most energetic laser in the world, it is remarkable that NIF has achieved the 500 TW milestone," said Dr. Raymond Jeanloz, professor of astronomy and earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkeley. "This breakthrough will give us incredible new opportunities in studying materials at extreme conditions."

As of October 7, 2013, this facility is the first to achieve a net gain from a fusion reaction.>>

neufer wrote:

[img3="NIF's fuel "target", filled with either D-T gas or D-T ice.
The capsule is held in the hohlraum using thin plastic webbing:"]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... apsule.jpg[/img3]

[b][color=#0000FF]Lasers strike the hohlraum's walls, which in turn radiate X-rays which strip material from the outer shell of the fuel pellet. If the compression of the fuel is high enough and uniform enough, nuclear fusion can result[/color][/b]

---

Beyond wrote:
Nuclear fusion milestone passed at U.S. lab.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility wrote:
<<The National Ignition Facility, or NIF, is a large, laser-based inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research device located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, USA. NIF uses powerful lasers to heat and compress a small amount of hydrogen fuel to the point where nuclear fusion reactions take place. NIF is the largest and most energetic ICF device built to date and the largest laser in the world. NIF was completed five years behind schedule and was almost four times more expensive than originally budgeted. The first large-scale laser target experiments were performed in June 2009 and the first "integrated ignition experiments" (which tested the laser's power) were declared completed in October 2010. NIF was used as the set for the starship Enterprise's warp core in the movie Star Trek Into Darkness.

On July 5, 2012, the NIF system delivered more than 500 trillion watts (terawatts or TW) of peak power and 1.85 megajoules (MJ) of ultraviolet laser light to its target. "The 500 TW shot is an extraordinary accomplishment by the NIF Team, creating unprecedented conditions in the laboratory that hitherto only existed deep in stellar interiors," said Dr. Richard Petrasso. "Already the most incredibly tightly controlled and most energetic laser in the world, it is remarkable that NIF has achieved the 500 TW milestone," said Dr. Raymond Jeanloz, professor of astronomy and earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkeley. "This breakthrough will give us incredible new opportunities in studying materials at extreme conditions."

As of October 7, 2013, this facility is the first to achieve a net gain from a fusion reaction.>>

Are there words that are universally understood, across all countries and cultures? A team of linguists has proposed one: “huh.”
Huh?

mjimih wrote:The Syllable Everyone Recognizes

By Jennifer Schuessler
Published: November 8, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/09/arts/ ... .html?_r=0

Are there words that are universally understood, across all countries and cultures? A team of linguists has proposed one: “huh.”
Huh?

Nitpicker wrote:Scientifically proven: we are united in our lack of understanding of one another.

mjimih wrote:I'm going to use "'huh?" more from now on when replying to people who are hard to figure or annoying. It's a way to get back on a level playing field.

mjimih wrote:The Syllable Everyone Recognizes

By Jennifer Schuessler
Published: November 8, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/09/arts/ ... .html?_r=0

Are there words that are universally understood, across all countries and cultures? A team of linguists has proposed one: “huh.”
Huh?

Say what?!
here are a few more I could think of. There not as "universal" tho'
hmm, grrr, harumph, eh?, ugh, tsk, shh, Ow! ...

mjimih wrote:Nitpicker

Ha! Could also be; he he he or Santa's Ho ho ho. I think your right, you found the most universal one of all! The researcher might not of had a big sense of humor.

http://www.universetoday.com/106968/could-particle-spooky-action-define-the-nature-of-gravity/#more-106968 wrote:

[b][color=#0000FF]Diagram of a wormhole, or theoretical shortcut path between two locations in the universe. Credit: Wikipedia[/color][/b]

---

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Could Particle ‘Spooky Action’ Define The Nature Of Gravity?
by Elizabeth Howell, Universe Today, December 5, 2013

<<Quantum physics is a fascinating yet complicated subject to understand, and one of the things that freaks out every physics student is the concept of entanglement. That occurs when physicists attempt to measure the state of a particle and that affects the state of another particle instantly. (In reality, the particles are in multiple states — spinning in multiple directions, for example — and can only be said to be in one state or another when they are measured.) “Spooky action at a distance” is how Albert Einstein reportedly referred to it. Here’s the new bit about this: Julian Sonner, a senior postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, led research showing that when two of quarks are created, string theory creates a wormhole linking the quarks.

According to MIT, this could help researchers better understand the link between gravity (which takes place on a large scale) to quantum mechanics (which takes place on a very tiny scale). As MIT puts it, up to now it’s been very hard for physicists to “explain gravity in quantum-mechanical terms”, giving rise to a preoccupation of coming up with a single unifying theory for the universe. No luck yet, but many people believe it exists. “There are some hard questions of quantum gravity we still don’t understand, and we’ve been banging our heads against these problems for a long time,” Sonner stated. “We need to find the right inroads to understanding these questions.”

Quantum entanglement sounds so foreign to our experience because it appears to exceed the speed of light, which violates Einstein’s general relativity. Anyway, this is how the new research proceeded: Sonner examined the work of Juan Maldacena of the Institute for Advanced Study and Leonard Susskind of Stanford University. The physicists were looking at how entangled black holes would behave. “When the black holes were entangled, then pulled apart, the theorists found that what emerged was a wormhole — a tunnel through space-time that is thought to be held together by gravity. The idea seemed to suggest that, in the case of wormholes, gravity emerges from the more fundamental phenomenon of entangled black holes,” MIT stated.

Sonner then set about to create quarks to see if he could watch what happens when two are entangled with each other. Using an electric field, he was able to catch pairs of particles coming out of a vacuum environment with a few “transient” particles in it. Once he caught the particles, he mapped them in terms of space-time (four-dimensional space). Note: gravity is believed to be the fifth dimension because it can bend space-time, as you can see in these images of galaxies below.

Sonner then tried to figure out what would happen in the fifth dimension when quarks were entangled in the fourth dimension, using a string theory concept called holographic duality. “While a hologram is a two-dimensional object, it contains all the information necessary to represent a three-dimensional view. Essentially, holographic duality is a way to derive a more complex dimension from the next lowest dimension,” MIT stated. And it was under holographic duality that Sonner found a wormhole would be created. The implication is that gravity itself may come out of entanglement of these particles, and that the bending we see in the universe would also be due to the entanglement. “It’s the most basic representation yet that we have where entanglement gives rise to some sort of geometry,” Sonner stated. “What happens if some of this entanglement is lost, and what happens to the geometry? There are many roads that can be pursued, and in that sense, this work can turn out to be very helpful.”>>