Research Under the Water

Imagine working aboard a research station on the ocean floor, watching sea creatures swim past, then venturing out to explore the ocean’s surface. Or being able to examine the impact of climate change on coral reefs from the windows of your undersea research station.

Such facilities have so far been limited, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and developers of a proposed new “first of its kind” research laboratory hope to expand the opportunities and help humans learn more about the ocean.

Proteus Ocean Group – co-founded by Fabien Cousteau, grandson of the late ocean exploration pioneer Jacques Cousteau – is developing an “underwater space station of the ocean.” The group plans to build the station nearly 60 feet deep off the coast of Curaçao in the Caribbean by 2026.

NOAA and the ocean group announced this month they will partner to identify research opportunities as plans to build the station move forward, sharing information and scientific expertise.

The research facility would give scientists and the public a rare window on life under the ocean, the partners said. Much like the International Space Station and earlier versions of marine laboratories, aquanauts will live aboard the station as they conduct research and exploration beneath the sea.  READ MORE...

Funny Animals

 

Michael Jordan

 

Aztec Sun Stone

One of the most famous and important surviving artifacts from the Aztec Empire reveals how they expected the apocalypse to go down – but also the rather sneaky way they figured out to avoid it.

If there’s only one thing you know about classical Mesoamerican apocalypse myths, it’s probably this: that the world ended in 2012, and the Mayas predicted it.

Of course, as archaeologists (and, you know, calendar owners throughout the last decade) were quick to point out, that was never true – the Maya didn’t even really have an end-of-the-world myth. A few thousand miles North, however, and there was another civilization that definitely did worry about the impending apocalypse: the Aztecs.

So worried were they, in fact, that they regularly offered up human lives in the hopes of staving off The End for another year. At least, that’s what Susan Milbrath, a Latin American art and archaeology curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History, reads in the gigantic relic known as the Sun Stone: a 24-ton, circular, basalt calendar stone which, she believes, we’ve been misunderstanding for centuries.

While experts have long thought that the central image in the Stone shows Tonatiuh, the Aztec sun deity, Milbrath’s 2017 paper on its eclipse imagery suggests the depiction may be more nuanced. Rather than simply portraying the face of the heart-devouring god, she interpreted the image as showing their death during an eclipse – an event that the civilization believed would lead to a global and earth-shaking apocalypse.  READ MORE...

Sensitive Stuff

Some of these could be 'sensitive' into today's politically correct world.

American Manufacturing & Labor

Back in the mid 1960's when I was a lad of 18/19 years old, American manufacturing was considered to be the best in the world...  no one could compare to our skill...   however, we were wrong!!

At the end of WWII, the US sent a man name Dr. Deming to Japan to help them rebuild their economy.  He taught them how to build quality into the manufacturing process... and 20-30 years later, the Japanese products in the areas automobiles, electronics, and computers WERE BETTER THAN OUR PRODUCTS.

To make matter worse, American Management looked down their noses on the American workers and for the last 50 years or more, there has been a silent battle between the two sides.  These battles usually revolved around wages and benefits and management treating the workforce as if they were a dime a dozen and could easily be replaced.

Not only did the quality of our products decrease but many colleges and universities were teaching students to design products that would need to be replace every 8-10 years or earlier in some cases.  By doing this, the companies were guaranteed REPEAT BUSINESS...  as the expense of the consumer.

TODAY, using American workers because of their high wages and benefits causes many companies to manufacture overseas...  There is a push to bring manufacturing jobs back to the USA but that would increase the costs because of labor...  plus, the product would not be made with the highest of quality standards in mind.

We are at a crossroads and if we don't get smart, manufacturing is going to leave the USA for good.  This will only benefit Europe, Africa, and the Far East.
 

School Buses

   
THIS IS A SCHOOL BUS IN JAPAN










THIS IS A SCHOOL BUS IN INDIA


. . . And, which country do I get connected to when I have a technical problem with my computer

Push Against US Dollar

Countries around the world have embarked on an irreversible agenda to divorce from the US dollar, according to veteran investment guru Matthew Piepenburg.

In a new interview at the Deutsche Goldmesse conference with the Soar Financially YouTube channel, Piepenburg, partner at emerging markets-focused Matterhorn Asset Management, says that economic powerhouses are now clearly attempting to “break ranks” with dollar supremacy.

He says that the raising of interest rates by the U.S. Federal Reserve is pushing nations like China and Russia to adopt settlement systems that don’t rely on USD.

Besides China and Russia, which are both part of the BRICS coalition, the family office guru says that 41 other countries are now following suit, perhaps concerned with the way the US has treated Russia during its conflict with Ukraine.

“So when that dollar gets higher, because Powell is raising the rates, that becomes more onerous and painful for the rest of the world and they begin to break ranks. Asia in general, China and Russia in particular are very big rank-breaking nations. And, of course, they’re bringing 41 other countries alongside to have trade settlements outside the US dollar.

And so there’s no doubt that the weaponization of the dollar, even the petrodollar comes into this because there’s threats to the petrodollar market and the demand of the petrodollar and the strong dollar. So a strong dollar was a real gut punch for years it became even more of a gut punch when we weaponized that dollar when we took Russia off of the STR and the SWIFT and of course froze its FX reserves. Other countries raise their eyebrows in alarm and looked differently in our thinking of ways to go around and break with the dollar.”   READ MORE...

US Crime

 

Harry Belafonte

 

Quantum AI Braids Non-Abelian Anyons

Researchers were able to observe the curious effects of braiding non-Abelian anyons for the first time. Credit: Google Quantum AI

Google Quantum AI has observed non-Abelian anyons for the first time, a breakthrough that could revolutionize quantum computing by making it more robust to noise and leading to topological quantum computation.

Our intuition tells us that it should be impossible to see whether two identical objects have been swapped back and forth, and for all particles observed to date, that has been the case. Until now.


Non-Abelian anyons — the only particles that have been predicted to break this rule — have been sought for their fascinating features and their potential to revolutionize quantum computing by making the operations more robust to noise. Microsoft and others have chosen this approach for their quantum computing effort. But after decades of efforts by researchers in the field, observing non-Abelian anyons and their strange behavior has proven challenging, to say the least.

In a paper published in the journal Nature on May 11, researchers at Google Quantum AI announced that they had used one of their superconducting quantum processors to observe the peculiar behavior of non-Abelian anyons for the first time ever. They also demonstrated how this phenomenon could be used to perform quantum computations. 

Earlier this week the quantum computing company Quantinuum released another study on the topic, complementing Google’s initial discovery. These new results open a new path toward topological quantum computation, in which operations are achieved by winding non-Abelian anyons around each other like strings in a braid.

Google Quantum AI team member and first author of the manuscript, Trond I. Andersen says, “Observing the bizarre behavior of non-Abelian anyons for the first time really highlights the type of exciting phenomena we can now access with quantum computers.”  READ MORE...

Its Just MJ

 

The Endless Game of Life

What bothers me more than anything else in life, aside from Liberal Stupidity, is that I had no say so in my birth.  I had no choice in my skin color, in my personality, in my mental or physical abilities, my location, or the year that I was going to be born into.

While my choices were my own and may have been influence by others and events like the Vietnam War, I am convinced that my life is predetermined and that who I am today and will be in the future had already been decided before my birth.  Of course, there are many people smarter than me who disagree with me...  but, this is what I believe.

Because of my birth, I was automatically put into a situation where I was given so many years to live.  After which, I die but who really knows what happens then with my spirit.  Does it enter another body?  Does it live forever as a spirit?  Does it float aimlessly in the universe?  Can it travel between dimensions or back and forth in time?  Can it travel to other galaxies?

No one really knows those answers but to me they are valid questions.  In the meantime, I am here on earth, in the USA, in the state of Tennessee, living in a community that is full of other retirees, spending the last 20 years of my life, differently than I spent the first 74 years of life.

What exactly does that mean?

First of all, I am retired...  not working for myself or for an employer.  Receiving social security and living off my savings for the rest.  I retired in 2015, So, I am in my 8th year of retirement.

Second of all, my health is not the best although I feel relatively healthy, mainly because I eat healthy and exercise.  But, I am fighting cancer, have had a massive heart attack, and had 5 lower back disks fused a year ago which has dramatically altered my lifestyle.  Others may not be as fortunate as me.

Third of all, my days are all pretty much the same.  I wake up anywhere from 7am to 9am, drink coffee while watching the news, work on my blogs and novels, walk, cook meals for a couple of days, watch no more than 1-2 hours of a series or 1 movie, then I am off to bed.

This routine might change if there is a doctor's appointment, or my wife and I need to do some shopping.  It could also be disrupted by neighbors in the community who want to visit, or if we decide to go out to eat.

Obviously, when we go on vacation this routine is violated.  We have traveled all over but recently we have just been spending a week or two at Myrtle Beach.

Finally this routine is violated with yardwork which typically happens once a week from April to October/November.  Yardwork usually lasts about 2 hours and consists of mowing and trimming.

There is one good issue here that I failed to mention and that is that I am never bored and/or sit around trying to think of something to do.

Racing

 

Problems with Electric Cars

DRIVERS have been issued an urgent warning regarding serious problems with electric cars despite their soaring popularity.

Electric vehicle technology is improving at a rapid pace, with a wider choice of cars and advancements in overall range, battery efficiency and public charging availability.

It's seen sales of electric cars become increasingly popular across the globe.

The latest figures released by the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggest almost one-in-five new cars sold worldwide this year will be either full battery electric or plug-in hybrid models.

In total, 14 million EVs are expected to be sold this year, up from around a million in 2017.

But although electrification of the global vehicle fleet brings less pollution, there is also cause for concern.

EV's are by no means perfect and there are some issues which appear to be putting a real dampener on increasing sales, reports NewScientist.

SUVs have been growing in popularity in recent years, accounting for 42 per cent of all car sales in 2020.

And electric SUVs have also gained ground, representing roughly 35 per cent of electric passenger car sales in 2022.

Christian Brand at the University of Oxford has labelled trend towards larger cars a “mobesity” epidemic.  READ MORE...

Motivation

 

Laser Aircraft Carrier

 

Breakthrough in Fusion Energy

After generations of trying to produce the power of a star on Earth, a successful nuclear fusion ignition happened in the middle of a December night and was over in 20-billionths of a second.

That’s more than 100 billion times shorter than the Wright Brothers’ first, 12-second flight — but a brief, shining moment that could have even bigger implications for humanity.

But while the science teams at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are still buzzing over their Wright-Brothers moment, we only remember that name because their third flight stayed in the sky for 39 minutes.

The nuclear fusion reaction must be repeated, extended and scaled before the comparison sticks. And the race is on to make it work.

“But that’s what makes it so exciting, right?” lead scientist Tammy Ma told CNN. “The potential is so great for clean, abundant, limitless, affordable energy. It will be tough. It won’t be easy. But it’s worth doing.”

Ma’s office is a giant box of lasers the size of three football fields in the corner of a 7,000-acre lab in Livermore. Running across the soaring white ceilings are miles of square tubes holding 192 of the most energetic lasers in the world, all snaking toward a round room at the center.

The very middle of this target chamber becomes the hottest place in the solar system every time they run a fusion experiment, and it is covered with enough gleaming machinery that J.J. Abrams used it to portray the warp core of the USS Enterprise in “Stark Trek Into Darkness.”

With a legacy of delays and cost overruns, the National Ignition Facility was wryly nicknamed the “National Almost Ignition Facility,” or “NAIF,” by critics in Congress. If not for its work studying nuclear weaponry without the need for test explosions, the program might have lost funding years ago.

But now, for the first time since breaking ground in 1997, the National Ignition Facility can finally live up to its name. In December, 192 of the most energetic lasers in the world heated up a tiny pellet of hydrogen atoms with such force, they fused together to create helium and — most importantly — excess energy.

A little more than 2 megajoules of energy going into the target chamber became 3.15 megajoules coming out — a modest gain of around 50%, but enough to make history and allow scientists to call the experiment a true success.

The five attempts since have all failed to repeat it.  READ MORE...

Sky Flash

 

Buc-ee's

 Buc-ee's in Sevierville, TN will be the largest store in the USA at 74,000 square feet but the record will soon be broken with a 75,000 square foot store in TX...

The Buc-ee's in Sevierville will have 120 gasoline pumps and according to the law, each pump tank can only hold 1,100 gallons which means, this store will only be able to have 132,000 gallons underground.

Why is this important to me?

If a new place like Buc-ee's is going to invest that much money in underground storage, then the management of the company is not too worried about gasoline vehicles being replaced by Electric Vehicles.

Between 2023 and 2030 when this 100% EV situation might take place, Buc-ee's might be making so much money, that they will not care about switching to ELECTRIC.

Personally, I don't think 100% EV compliance will take place before 2040... l especially with the enormous cost of switching over and the availability of petroleum crude oil throughout our country.

DON'T SPEND MONEY UNLESS YOU HAVE TO....  or, unless you are a billionaire and need a tax write off.