Ten Quadrillion Power Watts

Scientists used an unconventional method of creating nuclear fusion to yield a record-breaking burst of energy of more than 10 quadrillion watts, by firing intense beams of light from the world's largest lasers at a tiny pellet of hydrogen.

Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California said they had focused 192 giant lasers at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) onto a pea-size pellet, resulting in the release of 1.3 megajoules of energy in 100 trillionths of a second — roughly 10% of the energy of the sunlight that hits Earth every moment, and about 70% of the energy that the pellet had absorbed from the lasers. 

The scientists hope one day to reach the break-even or "ignition" point of the pellet, where it gives off 100% or more energy than it absorbs.  The energy yield is significantly larger than the scientists expected and much greater than the previous record of 170 kilojoules they set in February.

The researchers hope the result will expand their ability to research nuclear fusion weapons, the NIF's core mission, and that it could lead to new ways to harness energy from nuclear fusion — the process that powers the sun and other stars. Some scientists hope that nuclear fusion could one day be a relatively safe and sustainable method for generating energy on Earth.

"This result is a historic step forward for inertial confinement fusion research, opening a fundamentally new regime for exploration and the advancement of our critical national security missions," Kim Budil, the director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said in a statement.   READ MORE

Octopus Jar

 

Indestructible Ancient Material

The full moon sets behind Stonehenge on April 27, 2021 in Amesbury, England. Photo by Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images.

A long lost piece of England’s Stonehenge monument is helping experts understand the mysterious prehistoric structure. 

Analysis of a core sample taken from one of the site’s massive slabs suggests that the stone’s geochemical composition may have made it uniquely well-equipped to stand the test of time.

Made from 99.7 percent quartz crystals, the stones are practically indestructible, according to a new study published in the journal Plos One.

“Now we’ve got a good idea why this stuff’s still standing there,” study co-author David Nash, a professor of physical geography at the University of Brighton, told Business Insider. “The stone is incredibly durable—it’s really resistant to erosion and weathering.”


The study was made possible thanks to a former diamond cutter, Robert Phillips, who died last year. 

He did repair work at Stonehenge in 1958, drilling into Stone 58 to help re-erect a fallen trilithon of three stones.  READ MORE

Toy Car Track

 

Redneck Ramblings

 I am a Vietnam Veteran and I am amazed at the lack of leadership of the present administration as far as withdrawing from Afghanistan is concerned.  

Our current President withdrew US military troops and closed the military air base BEFORE he removed the US Embassy Personnel and other Americans living in Afghanistan which is ON THE SURFACE...  a really stupid decision.

A former high ranking official in the Obama administration said that our current President has not been on the RIGHT SIDE of foreign policy for the last 4 decades...  that's 40 years.

The USA did not just FAIL in Afghanistan but the USA Military was defeated and humiliated at the hands of the TALIBAN, a terrorist organization.

The Parliment of Great Britain announced that it would not longer support any future military operations by the USA as long as our current president remains president.

CAN YOU IMAGINE THE IMPACT of a statement like that???

CHINA AND RUSSIA are no doubt laughing at us...

AND...  what do our Democrats say???

NOTHING...

NOTHING at all...

This redneck cannot believe what just happened...

Strutting Your Stuff

 

The Einstein Ring

The Hubble Space Telescope captured a stunning ‘Einstein Ring’ 3.4 billion light-years from Earth.

This cosmic display, formally known as gravitational lensing, occurs when the gravitational field from a massive object in space warps space and deflects light from a distant object behind it.

It then results in a bull’s-eye pattern, or ‘Einstein Ring.’ It was predicted by the famed physicist, Albert Einstein, in 1915.

The image shows six luminous spots of light clustered at the center, four of which are forming a circle around a central pair.

The formation, however, only consists of two galaxies and a single distant quasar that is magnified as it passes through the gravitational field of the galaxies.

The Hubble Space Telescope captured a stunning ‘Einstein Ring’ 3.4 billion light-years from Earth

The quasar, known as 2M1310-1714, sits farther away from Earth than the pair of galaxies.

A quasar is the extremely bright nucleus of an active galaxy and its powerful glow is created by the incredible amounts of energy released by gas falling toward the supermassive black hole at its center.   READ MORE

Classic Newspaper Comics

 

Wandering Black Holes

Supermassive black holes tend to sit, more or less stationary, at the centers of galaxies. But not all of these awesome cosmic objects stay put; some may be knocked askew, wobbling around galaxies like cosmic nomads.

We call such black holes 'wanderers', and they're largely theoretical, because they are difficult (but not impossible) to observe, and therefore quantify. But a new set of simulations has allowed a team of scientists to work out how many wanderers there should be, and whereabouts - which in turn could help us identify them out there in the Universe.

This could have important implications for our understanding of how supermassive black holes - monsters millions to billions of times the mass of our Sun - form and grow, a process that is shrouded in mystery.

Cosmologists think that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) reside at the nuclei of all - or at least most - galaxies in the Universe. These objects' masses are usually roughly proportional to the mass of the central galactic bulge around them, which suggests that the evolution of the black hole and its galaxy are somehow linked.

But the formation pathways of supermassive black holes are unclear. We know that stellar-mass black holes form from the core collapse of massive stars, but that mechanism doesn't work for black holes over about 55 times the mass of the Sun.

Astronomers think that SMBHs grow via the accretion of stars and gas and dust, and mergers with other black holes (very chunky ones at nuclei of other galaxies, when those galaxies collide).

But cosmological timescales are very different from our human timescales, and the process of two galaxies colliding can take a very long time. This makes the potential window for the merger to be disrupted quite large, and the process could be delayed or even prevented entirely, resulting in these black hole 'wanderers'.  READ MORE

Cat Walk

 

Metaphysical Mysteries

In my 20s, I had a friend who was brilliant, charming, Ivy-educated and rich, heir to a family fortune. I’ll call him Gallagher. He could do anything he wanted. He experimented, dabbling in neuroscience, law, philosophy and other fields. 

But he was so critical, so picky, that he never settled on a career. Nothing was good enough for him. He never found love for the same reason. He also disparaged his friends’ choices, so much so that he alienated us. He ended up bitter and alone. At least that’s my guess. I haven’t spoken to Gallagher in decades.

There is such a thing as being too picky, especially when it comes to things like work, love and nourishment (even the pickiest eater has to eat something). That’s the lesson I gleaned from Gallagher. But when it comes to answers to big mysteries, most of us aren’t picky enough. 

We settle on answers for bad reasons, for example, because our parents, priests or professors believe it. We think we need to believe something, but actually we don’t. We can, and should, decide that no answers are good enough. We should be agnostics.

Some people confuse agnosticism (not knowing) with apathy (not caring). Take Francis Collins, a geneticist who directs the National Institutes of Health. He is a devout Christian, who believes that Jesus performed miracles, died for our sins and rose from the dead. In his 2006 bestseller The Language of God, 

Collins calls agnosticism a “cop-out.” When I interviewed him, I told him I am an agnostic and objected to “cop-out.”  READ MORE

Fingers

 

Biden's Blame Game

 

Conundrum

The definition of the word Conundrum is:

something that is puzzling or confusing.

Here are six Conundrums of socialism in the United States of America:

1. America is capitalistic and greedy - yet half of the population is subsidized.

2. Half of the population is subsidized - yet they think they are victims.

3. They think they are victims - yet their representatives run the government.

4. Their representatives run the government - yet the poor keep getting poorer.

5. The poor keep getting poorer - yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about.

6. They have things that people in other countries only dream about - yet they want America to be more like those other countries.



These three, short sentences tell you a lot about the direction of our current government and cultural environment:

1. We are advised to NOT judge ALL Muslims by the actions of a few lunatics, but we are encouraged to judge ALL gun owners by the actions of a few lunatics.



2. Seems we constantly hear about how Social Security is going to run out of money.

But we never hear about welfare or food stamps running out of money!

What's interesting is the first group "worked for" their money, but the second didn't.

3. Why are we cutting benefits for our veterans, no pay raises for our military and cutting our army to a level lower than before WWI,

but we are not stopping the payments or benefits to illegal aliens.

"If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools." � Plato

Sucking Expertise

 

AFGHANISTAN: No Lessons Learned

In August 1998, two weeks after a little-known terror outfit called al-Qaida announced itself to the world with bomb attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the US president, Bill Clinton, retaliated with missile strikes against a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. 

Central Khartoum was rocked in the middle of the night by the impact of a dozen Tomahawk missiles, which destroyed the plant, killing a night watchman and wounding 11 others. 

The US claimed that the factory – which was the largest provider of medicines in a country under sanctions – was secretly producing nerve agents on behalf of al-Qaida, but it didn’t take long for American officials to admit that the “evidence … was not as solid as first portrayed”.

The attack, in other words, was simply an act of retaliation against a random target, without any connection to the crime purportedly being avenged. 

I was a university student in Khartoum at the time. I can remember the confusion the day after the explosions, then visiting the shattered site of the factory with other students. 

What was suddenly clear to us then, standing in front of the ruins in a sleepy city that had supposedly become the centre of Islamic terrorism overnight, was the real logic of the “war on terror”: our lives were fodder for the production of bold headlines in American newspapers, saluting the strength, swift action and resolve of western leaders. 

We, on the sharp end of it all, would never be the protagonists. Those were the policy and opinion makers far, far away, for whom our experience was merely the resolution of an argument about themselves. The operation was chillingly, but appropriately, called Infinite Reach.  READ MORE

I. D. I. O. T.

COVID and the Fully Vaccinated

As the number of recorded coronavirus infections in the UK rises again, we spoke to three people about their experiences of catching Covid despite having been fully vaccinated, and how it affected their daily lives.

Clare Jenkins, 44, from Cambourne, Cambridgeshire, contracted Covid this month after her 13-year-old daughter became infected at a party.

“The four of us in the house isolated when she tested positive and were all clear when her isolation period finished, but then four days later my husband started to get symptoms, and tested positive two days later, while I was still negative. A further two days later I also tested positive.”

Jenkins, who has an underlying health condition that puts her at higher risk, has been fully vaccinated since April, and her husband had also had both jabs when he fell ill with the virus.

“It did definitely come as a surprise when we got ill. My husband has been much more poorly with Covid than I was. We were really worried about him for a while – he had the full checklist of symptoms really badly for 10 days.

“We have had to cancel our only holiday planned for this year – two weeks in Cornwall – which we were really looking forward to after a very intense last 12 months. I am also supposed to be running the London marathon and it has massively derailed my training plans.  READ MORE

Lucky

Writing White Rabbit

‘I wrote it on a $50 piano with eight or 10 keys missing, but I could hear in my head the notes that weren’t there’

Grace Slick, singer and songwriter
All fairytales that are read to little girls feature a Prince Charming who comes and saves them. But Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland did not. Alice was on her own, and she was in a very strange place, but she kept on going and she followed her curiosity – that’s the White Rabbit. A lot of women could have taken a message from that story about how you can push your own agenda.

The 1960s resembled Wonderland for me. Like Alice, I met all kinds of strange characters, but I was comfortable with it. I wrote White Rabbit on a red upright piano that cost me about $50. It had eight or 10 keys missing, but that was OK because I could hear in my head the notes that weren’t there. I used that piano to write several different songs. When I started making money I bought a better one.

In the 60s, the drugs were not ones like heroin and alcohol that you take to blot out a terrible life, but psychedelics: marijuana, LSD and shroomies. Psychedelic drugs showed you that there are alternative realities. You open up to things that are unusual and different, and, in realising that there are alternative ways of looking at things, you become more accepting of things around you.

The line in the song “feed your head” is both about reading and psychedelics. I was talking about feeding your head by paying attention: read some books, pay attention.  READ MORE