Bionic Bar Diagram

 

Pics of the COSMOS

 

Whoopi Goldberg Startled

 

‘The View’ Host Whoopi Goldberg Was Startled By Claims of Taylor Swift Doing More for Economy Than Biden.....   READ MORE...

Prosecutor Asks Judge to Reinstate Gag Order

 

Picking a Fight with USA

 

Walmart Shopper

 

Stay Away

 

The Gaza Strip

 

You're Safe Now

 

Just Fishing

 

Magnetic Fusion Plasma Machines

Florian Neukart, an Assistant Professor at the Leiden Institute, has proposed the Magnetic Fusion Plasma Drive (MFPD) as a novel space propulsion method. This concept combines fusion propulsion, ionic propulsion, and more, promising high energy density and fuel efficiency.




Florian Neukart introduces the Magnetic Fusion Plasma Drive, a revolutionary propulsion method combining fusion and ionic techniques. Offering immense energy density and numerous advantages, it could redefine space exploration, although challenges in sustaining fusion reactions in space remain.

Missions to the Moon, missions to Mars, robotic explorers to the outer Solar System, a mission to the nearest star, and maybe even a spacecraft to catch up to interstellar objects passing through our system. If you think this sounds like a description of the coming age of space exploration, then you’d be correct! 

At this moment, there are multiple plans and proposals for missions that will send astronauts and/or probes to all of these destinations to conduct some of the most lucrative scientific research ever performed. Naturally, these mission profiles raise all kinds of challenges, not the least of which is propulsion.


Simply put, humanity is reaching the limits of what conventional (chemical) propulsion can do. To send missions to Mars and other deep space destinations, advanced propulsion technologies are required that offer high acceleration (delta-v), specific impulse (Isp), and fuel efficiency. 

In a recent paper, Leiden Professor Florian Neukart proposes how future missions could rely on a novel propulsion concept known as the Magnetic Fusion Plasma Drive (MFPD). This device combines aspects of different propulsion methods to create a system that offers high energy density and fuel efficiency significantly greater than conventional methods.   READ MORE...

Somewhat Political

 

World's Largest Underwater Telescope in China

Scientists in China are building the world's largest "ghost particle" detector 11,500 feet (3,500 meters) beneath the surface of the ocean.

The Tropical Deep-sea Neutrino Telescope (TRIDENT) — called Hai ling or "Ocean Bell" in Chinese — will be anchored to the seabed of the Western Pacific Ocean. Upon completion in 2030, it will scan for rare flashes of light made by elusive particles as they briefly become tangible in the ocean depths.

Every second, about 100 billion ghost particles, called neutrinos, pass through each square centimeter of your body. And yet, true to their spooky nickname, neutrinos' nonexistent electrical charge and almost-zero mass mean they barely interact with other types of matter.

But by slowing neutrinos down, physicists can trace some of the particles' origins billions of light-years away to ancient, cataclysmic stellar explosions and galactic collisions.

That's where the ocean bell comes in.

"Using Earth as a shield, TRIDENT will detect neutrinos penetrating from the opposite side of the planet," Xu Donglian, the project's chief scientist, told journalists at a news conference Oct. 10. "As TRIDENT is near the equator, it can receive neutrinos coming from all directions with the rotation of the Earth, enabling all-sky observation without any blind spots."

Neutrinos are everywhere — they are second only to photons as the most abundant subatomic particles in the universe and are produced in the nuclear fire of stars, in enormous supernova explosions, in cosmic rays and radioactive decay, and in particle accelerators and nuclear reactors on Earth..

Despite their ubiquity, their minimal interactions with other matter make neutrinos incredibly difficult to detect. They were first discovered zipping out of a nuclear reactor in 1956, and many neutrino-detection experiments have spotted the steady bombardment of the particles sent to us from the sun; but this cascade masks rarer neutrinos produced when cosmic rays, whose sources remain mysterious, strike Earth's atmosphere.  READ MORE...

USA not America

Many of you have read my posts and wonder why I use the term USA instead of America, especially since almost everyone else does not do this.

I have a simple explanation to offer and it goes something like this.

North America includes: Canada, the USA, and Mexico

Then there is Central America

Then there is South America

Did you know that some of the people from Central America and South America also refer to themselves as Americans?

Granted some don't but that is not the point.

We are the United States of America part of North America.

I think it is important to be as accurate as we can when referring to citizens of the USA  as citizens from the USA and not citizens from America since I COULD BE talking about either Central or South Americans or both.

Perhaps you are thinking that making this distinction is me just being an asshole...  you might be right...  but, then again you might be wrong.  Who's to say?  I mean, really?

Being an American would you like for people to think you are from Central America, South America, or the United States of America?

IT'S YOUR CHOICE...

Flying

 

EIGHT-Billion-Year-Old Radio Signal Reaches Earth

Astronomers have detected a mysterious blast of radio waves that have taken 8 billion years to reach Earth. The fast radio burst is one of the most distant and energetic ever observed.

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are intense, millisecond-long bursts of radio waves with unknown origins. The first FRB was discovered in 2007, and since then, hundreds of these quick, cosmic flashes have been detected coming from distant points across the universe.


The burst, named FRB 20220610A, lasted less than a millisecond, but in that fraction of a moment, it released the equivalent of our sun’s energetic emissions over the course of 30 years, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science.

Many FRBs release super bright radio waves lasting only a few milliseconds at most before disappearing, which makes fast radio bursts difficult to observe.

Radio telescopes have helped astronomers trace these quick cosmic flashes, including the ASKAP array of radio telescopes, located on Wajarri Yamaji Country in Western Australia. Astronomers used ASKAP to detect the FRB in June 2022 and determine where it originated.

“Using ASKAP’s array of (radio) dishes, we were able to determine precisely where the burst came from,” said study coauthor Dr. Stuart Ryder, astronomer at Macquarie University in Australia, in a statement. 

“Then we used (the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope) in Chile to search for the source galaxy, finding it to be older and (farther) away than any other FRB source found to date and likely within a small group of merging galaxies.”  READ MORE...

Upset Over a New Rule

 

Statue of Man Holding His Penis

A photograph taken at the archaeological site of Karahantepe in Sanliurfa, southeastern Turkey 

on October 9, 2023, shows a newly found 2.3-meter high human statue.  OZAN KOSE/AFP via Getty Images



A 7.5-foot-tall statue of a man clutching his penis with both hands was uncovered in an ancient site.

The statue could be about 11,000 years old, meaning it would be older than the pyramids and Stonehenge.

Some argue that the site is the oldest example of a Neolithic temple, although not everybody agrees.

Archaeologists have uncovered an 11,000-year-old statue of a man clutching his penis — a discovery that could shed new light on a mysterious Neolithic culture.

The statue was found in Karahan Tepe in the Taş Tepeler region of southeast Turkey. The 11,000-year-old site is believed by some to be the oldest Neolithic temple in the world, predating the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge by more than 6,000 years.

The statue represents a skeletal man with both hands placed near his phallus, sitting atop a bench adorned with a leopard, per France24.  READ MORE...

Somewhat Political

 

Quantum Entanglement & Teleportation

Quantum mechanics is full of weird phenomena, but perhaps none as weird as the role measurement plays in the theory. Since a measurement tends to destroy the "quantumness" of a system, it seems to be the mysterious link between the quantum and classical world. 

And in a large system of quantum bits of information, known as "qubits," the effect of measurements can induce dramatically new behavior, even driving the emergence of entirely new phases of quantum information.

This happens when two competing effects come to a head: interactions and measurement. In a quantum system, when the qubits interact with one another, their information becomes shared nonlocally in an "entangled state." 

But if you measure the system, the entanglement is destroyed. The battle between measurement and interactions leads to two distinct phases: one where interactions dominate and entanglement is widespread, and one where measurements dominate, and entanglement is suppressed.

As reported in the journal Nature, researchers at Google Quantum AI and Stanford University have observed the crossover between these two regimes—known as a "measurement-induced phase transition"—in a system of up to 70 qubits. This is by far the largest system in which measurement-induced effects have been explored.  READ MORE...