Archive for the 'science' Category

They found R2-D2…

In Star Trek.

R2D2 in Star Trek

The question is, just how did he get there? Star Wars is “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”, while Star Tek is in the future. R2D2 survived an amazingly long time, but then, he is a robot and has no real lifespan as long as he is kept maintained…

And no, this is not photoshopped, as some people will guess. The fact has been confirmed by Gizmondo, a pretty reliable source…

[Gizmondo article]

Lasers and robots and satellites and dumb ideas

A team called LaserMotive recently won a challenge to send a robot up a cable (attached to a helicopter).

NASA’s Space Elevator challenge seems to be sending a robot up a cable reaching into the sky, powered by a laser beam pointed at it from the bottom. LasterMotive has created a robot that will climb at 3.9m/s, beating the the challenge at double the speed needed, winning a $900,000 prize. However, this was just a cable attached to a helicopter. NASA still need a cable that can go up into space, which is the other half of the challenge.

But, in reality, is this really a good idea? Trying to make an elevator that will go into space?

The journey will take days, if not a week, even at faster speeds. And making a cable that long is a pretty dumb idea. Also, is there really any reason to go into space? There is very little there for us, unless we can set up stations on the moon to get resources. But atm, we cannot get any further than the moon. The only viable reasons to send any thing into space is communications satellites.

The billions that are spent on space travel and exploration would be way better spent on ending poverty, and building infrastructure in poorer countries. Then when the world problems are solved, would be a good time to go into space, when all countries can contribute to space exploration without taking resources away from areas that it is needed in.

Seriously people, space travel is getting us nowhere. So far, all we have to show for it are a load of pretty pictures, and a few ideas about where other planets are.

[LaserMotive article via Engadget]

LHC + bread = heat?

The Large Hadron Collider has broken. AGAIN.

This time, a piece of bread, dropped by a bird onto some of the outside parts has overheated the system.

Are they trying to have it not work? Maybe thats their plan – it does work, but their tying to make it look like it keeps going wrong so they can escape to other dimensions before it makes a black hole.

But is it really that hard to put a screen over it?

Commented on BoingBoing:

Remus Shepherd | #36

I’m trying to figure out something here. One of these two things must be true:

A. There are portions of this multi-billion dollar device — which can be disabled by a crust of bread — that are exposed to the open air.

B. There are birds living in the underground tunnels of the LHC…and the scientists are feeding them.

Both of these options sound unbelievable. Both of them lead to wonder what the hell were they thinking. Yet I can’t think of any third possible explanation for how this happened.

And in the first place, why have they built a million dollar piece of machinery to throw atoms at each other, possibly destroying the world. It’s a stupid idea.

[Via BoingBoing]

Gummi bear…

…plus molten potassium chlorate.

BOOM.

An alternate title for this post would of been “Don’t move – or the Gummi Bear gets it!”

[via boing boing]


Borntyping

Welcome to my blog. I am Samuel, a.k.a Ziaix. I am a:
cynical teenager I'm overly cynical about a lot of things, especially government.
imaginative reader I read a huge amount, mainly sci-fi, fantasy and superhero comics.
computer geek I love computers, and am pretty good, (but not fantastic) at many diffrent computery things.

This blog is meant to be a tech/science/gaming blog, a bit like Shaken_Earth's, with the kind of articles you get at The Teen Geek, but that went out the window after a few posts. It still has a bit of that, I just spend a lot of time off topic. And maybe rambling about random stuff, a bit like Emor does ;)

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