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News Briefs 22-10-2009

By red pill junkieon

If Life gives you lemons, make Margaritas 😛

  • Nasa’s Ares I-X rocket —unveiled *Applause* [Video]
  • “To boldly score, where no-one has scored before!” : New book reveals US and Russian astronauts tested sex in space.
  • In Constantinople, scholars discussed the sex of angels; today, they calculate the number of Universes in the Multiverse.
  • Hyperdrive propulsion could be tested at the LHC. Higgs bosons, mini black holes… Oh, dear humongous magic ring: is there anything you can’t do? 🙂
  • “And the Nobel prize for Defense against the Dark Arts goes to…” : 5 Forms of black magic that Science is making possible ($#%* warning).
  • More alien big cats sighted in the British Isles, much to the skeptics’ chagrin.
  • Loren Coleman discloses Roger Patterson’s deathbed confession —but not the one you might have expected.
  • How would we humans react to that mythical First Contact: with a “Whoa!” or a “WHAAAA!”?
  • The Wall Street Journal trashes “The Fourth Kind” in this movie review.
  • The story about the police officer who saw three Nordic aliens inspecting a crop circle has finally hit the mainstream press. Those blokes at the Telegraph should read TDG more often.
  • “Trick or BIGOTreat!” : ‘Illegal Alien’ costume stokes anti-Latino fervor.
  • “Don’t tase me bro’!!” Taser Intl. has a bit of advise for police officers —avoid shooting at the chest. No worries, since in America there’s an ever-increasing *ahem* target area.
  • Super-penalize me: Would being obese in America become prohibitely costly in the future?
  • Is there a vaccine in the horizon for the epidemic of fear we are suffering? Why skipping shots is bad for everyone.
  • 15 minutes of sensory deprivation can stir hallucinations —so I guess that next thing the DEA will start banning closets and mini saunas 😛
  • Darwinism: It ain’t only about the monkey stuff, ya know 😉
  • Chimps are happy to help each other, but ONLY if you ask them nicely —otherwise they’ll go all Jack Nicholson on your sorry ass.
  • The woman of Tomorrow: Shorter, plumper, & more fertile? —not if Ralph has something to say about it, dammit!!
  • DIY body parts will be the hobby of our grandchildren.
  • Rare Crusader-era murals (12th century, not Bush-era) found in Syria.
  • Ancient cult of the Viking kings —if by “cult” you mean drinking & cavorting, that is.
  • Hair allegedly belonging to missing aviator Amelia Earhart exposed as fake. It should be exhibited alongside Elvis & Jacko’s capillary remains, though.
  • Remnants of Federico García Lorca —a Spanish poet assassinated by the one Fascist regime no one cared to overthrow— may soon be found.

A round of Margaritas to my amigos Kat & Rick.

Quote of the Day:

“As I have not worried to be born, I do not worry to die.”

Federico García Lorca

red pill junkie
Agnostic gnostic, walking conundrum & metaphysical oxymoron (with emphasis in the 'moron' part), the mysterious RPJ leaves a double life: By day he serves as Grand Master of the International Sacred Order of Lucha Libre, but at night he pursues his life-long study of everything considered mysterious and/or 'paranormal' --a term he personally detests... When he's not exploring the web looking for his daily fix of Forteana, he can be found blogging, doodling, fooling around and offering his services as news administrator and writer at The Daily Grail. He also regularly participates in other websites and podcasts like Radio Misterioso and Where Did the Road Go? He impatiently awaits for the return of the mothership in Mexico City. absurdbydesign.com
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7 Comments

  1. WSJ Review
    [quote=red pill junkie]The Wall Street Journal trashes “The Fourth Kind” in this movie review.
    [/quote]

    I wouldn’t say that it’s really either ‘trashing’ or a ‘review’. Just seems to be pointing out that the publicity for the film may be misleading people.

    Had to laugh at this:

    “One thing about “The Fourth Kind” that seems based on reality: the alarmed state of the patients in the trailer match real-life reactions of people who believe they have been abducted by aliens, according to Christopher C. French, who teaches in the psychology department at Goldsmiths College in London and routinely lectures on the subject of supposed alien abductions.”

    Really, they had to talk to an expert to figure out that people who report alien abductions may have been in an ‘alarmed state’?!

  2. Hypervelocity Drive
    (not ‘hyperdrive’)

    From TFA: “The basis for Felber’s “hypervelocity propulsion” drive is that the repulsive effect allows a relativistic particle to deliver a specific impulse that is greater than its specific momentum, thereby achieving speeds greater than the driving particle’s speed.”

    The first part is trivial if you grasp that mass increases with velocity.

    The VASIMR drive being tested by Ad Astra as a maximum exhaust velocity of 300000 m/s (0.001 c). That’s hardly relativistic. But there’s no reason it can’t accelerate well beyond that speed, just as there’s no reason the space shuttle can’t go 18,000 MPH despite the maximum exhaust velocity of the main engines being 9800 MPH; reaction mass and momentum are not dictated by velocity.

    And that makes the second part trivial to the point of painful awareness: isn’t this “independent physicist” aware the forward speed is not limited by exhaust velocity? It’s a rocket that pushes against nothing, not a car that pushes against pavement.

    It took a while for me to even determine that he meant this force should be detectable off-axis, with a sensor/target alongside the beam. Novel, but no matter what the mechanism, less than efficient.

    As to workability, see the comments in TR following TFA to see whether people who understand that maths think that the author of this little tidbit can tell his cowboy hat from his chamber pot. (Hint: no.) In practical terms, we’ve been spinning particles around at .99+ c for decades and nobody’s detected loose stuff flying away from the beam, or even strain on the beam guide where it shouldn’t be. Turns our referencing Hilbert didn’t help. Not even a genius mathematical physics theorist is right about everything.

  3. How about ‘Please’ with a cherry on top?
    [quote=red pill junkie]Is there a vaccine in the horizon for the epidemic of fear we are suffering? Why skipping shots is bad for everyone. [/quote]

    This isn’t the first vaccine to come along that has not been so universally embraced. In fact, the Swine Flu of the 1970s created much the same kind of response.

    Another thing here would be just how bad it looks when the government/media tries to convince someone to do something by basically calling them a coward if they don’t.

    I mean seriously, ‘epidemic of fear’? Isn’t it more like, just maybe, a healthy dose of caution… if not even a measure of well-earned distrust?

    As a parent, I wouldn’t be any more inclined to subject my children to this vaccine just because the CDC called me a ‘chicken’ if I didn’t. Beyond that, if that’s the best PR campaign they can come up with, what does that say about the virtue of the product in question?

    Maybe a double-dog dare is called for?

  4. This Is Your Brain On Multiverse
    Oh goody, another one.

    Calculating the number of universes requires more than what’s used in the article, and less of what’s used wrong.

    First, the estimated number of bits in a brain makes no sense. There’s no way to determine the information density without determining the mechanism(s) and we haven’t done that. Bits may not even be appropriate, if Pribram is correct. His theory which gets misinterpreted as equating brains to holograms stats that the math Gabor devised the describe holorgrams can be used to describe neural processes. This math uses ‘logons’ as the measure of information density. The two are much the same for independent signals. For overlapping, interacting signals, and the resulting interference patterns, bits don;t come close to estimating the amount of information involved.

    Second, #1 doesn’t even matter, because there’s no reason to suppose that the number of bits = the number of “configurations” = the number of possible universes that can be perceived. We have no limit to the number of anything as long as we an abstract quantity. We can imagine an infinite line (called aleph 1), an infinite plane (infinite squared; aleph 2), an infinite space (aleph 3) and we’re way beyond any counting numbers. To say that one is perceived and the other contrived doesn’t cut it; perception requires heuristics which require abstraction, or representation as they prefer to call it when it’s non-conscious processing.

    Third, consider the multiverse as the many-worlds theory. Start out with one if you like, it doesn’t matter. There’s a universe, things can go this way or that way, but they go BOTH ways, in a branching pair of universes. That extends directly from every possible point of ‘choice’. That’s usually taken to mean a choice of free willed action, but that’s too limiting. There are lots of ‘choices’ exercised constantly, each of which could (and so by their theory do) go either way. Consider:

    Number of particles in the(“a”) universe: 10^72 to 10^87; let’s use 10^80 for simplicity. This is taken to mean existing instantaneously, at any single point in time.

    But wait, there’s more. The universe is almost completely empty. However, at every smallest available point, the Planck length, there exists the ‘zero point’ energy creating virtual particle pairs (which we’ll call single particles here). There are 10^35 Planck lengths to a meter. The universe is about 10^11 light years across (actual size, not ‘observable’). At 10^16 meters per light year, that’s 10^27 meters, or 10^62 Planck lengths. And that’s one dimension. Let’s go with three for a volume: 10^186

    Call right now and we’ll send you both the particles and the virtual particles/locations for one low price. 10^266.

    Every particle changes state every 10^43 times per second (Planck duration), even if it’s to an identical state. It’s the changing that matters because at each choice, it does and it doesn’t, and there’s another universe.

    Set the duration of the universe, big bang to heat death, to 10^1000 years. That = 3 x 10^1007 seconds = 3 x 10^1050 Planck Durations.

    Now we have all the particles/virtuals at every point in space and in time throughout the entire duration. There are then 3 x (oh forget the three) 10^1316 instantaneous events, any of which can go at least two ways (into/out of existence for virtuals, same or different for reals), making for 2^10^1316 possibilities. And every possibible pair is a pair of universes, yes? 2^13160?

    Get serious now. At every event (and every event WILL occur) there can be any one of the particles or virtuals that can ‘choose’ and so create a pair of universes. Any. Single. Virtual/Particle. Or the choice can be made by any pair of two out of all virtuals/particles — this pair, the next pair, and so on through all possible pairs. And then every possible set of three. And every set of four. Up through all possible combinations, at every single possible instant.

    The number of possibilities is n(1+2+3…+n-1+n) where n = 2^13160. That’s how many universes there will end up being created from all the events available in this one universe.

    We’re not considering the potentially massive expansion of digging down through quantum events to underlying string theory, something that could really hose things up if, as it appears, it is analog, not binary in nature. All them continuouses give me headaches. So we’ll stop now.

    So there you have it, a whole universe of number, much bigger than any puny number having to do with bits or brains. You think they really thought this far ahead when they thought this theory up? And I’m still not sure whether “they” were physicists or science fictions writers.

    Thank you, I’ll be here all week, and don’t forget to tip your waitress.

    1. Dear Brain Specialist…
      Reading your stuff is just a little like sucking down a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster… ‘the effect of which is rather like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon, wrapped around a large gold brick.’

      Now, don’t mistake this as being a negative review of the experience. In fact, I try and read everything you post… but for the most part, with the word ‘try’ being the main operator.

      I do often feel like I am back in school and facing down my old physics teacher who always seemed to delight in watching his class roll out of their seats, twitching and frothing from the experience. It wasn’t at all unlike some of the better drugs going around at the time.

      So… thanks for the highs and please, don’t ever close your lab 🙂

  5. “To boldly score, where no-one has scored before!” -sex in space
    This takes the Mile High Club to a whole new level. Would this be considered “Super Elite” status? 🙂

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