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bdhoro87

Science

Revitalized LHC Manages to Collide Protons

By Stuart Fox Posted on 11.24.2009 13 Comments
After 14 years of work and $5.5 billion, the LHC has survived faulty magnets, avian sabotage, and the threat of malevolent time travelers to finally collided its first particles.

11.25.2009 at 10:23am - Comment by bdhoro87

Its pretty clear to me that all these people that are scared have no knowledge of physics whatsoever. I mean all three clearly have no understanding of entropy. These are the same types of people who say "The Mayans said the worlds gonna end in 2012" when they've never read any Mayan literature, know nothing of their culture or their calendar, but somehow they Know.
Science

President Obama Hopes to Jumpstart Science and Technology Education With New Initiative

By Posted on 11.23.2009 15 Comments
Elmo and Big Bird may represent old school learning compared to video games, but both Sesame Street and video game programmers have joined forces as part of a new White House initiative aimed at promoting science, engineering and math both in and out of the classroom.

11.24.2009 at 09:21am - Comment by bdhoro87

Whats the point of pumping money into a failed education system? We need a complete overhaul on education more than anything else in this country. Our public schools waste so much money trying to comply with regulations, no child left behind and an inability to deal with trouble makers or punish poor students- or send them to trade schools where they belong. Since our government won't support it, lets just hope more and more people can afford to send their kids to private schools where they all belong. Also does Obama not realize that we're in a recession? During times like these when you propose spending $260 mil, you have to show specifically how that money will be used and recovered. Otherwise your just gonna see money pumped into schools so they can pay their principals and superintendents without forcing any responsibility upon them -- just like the wallstreet bailout.
Technology

Intel Wants Brain Implants in Its Customers' Heads by 2020

By Posted on 11.20.2009 31 Comments
If the idea of turning consumers into true cyborgs sounds creepy, don't tell Intel researchers. Intel's Pittsburgh lab aims to develop brain implants that can control all sorts of gadgets directly via brain waves by 2020.

11.21.2009 at 12:21pm - Comment by bdhoro87

I don't get how they can do a fMRI on somebody while they're thinking, and say these are the brainwaves responsible for that thought. Well if they do it like that it would have to be very individualized no? There's a lot of differences between people's brains and the way they think, and what about lefties? Anyway I'm not too worried about the security issues, because the big companies are already tracking us, and I haven't felt any privacy issues yet. Honesty google already has so much information about me its scary. I mean, they know what I look at every day, they know what I read, the places I go to (if i ask for directions) the games I play, the subjects I'm interested in, the list goes on.
Technology

CERN Successfully Brings Large Hadron Collider Back Online

By Paul Adams Posted on 11.23.2009 19 Comments
Much beset by magnet quenches, birds, bread, black holes, evil time travelers, and fools, the Large Hadron Collider successfully came online and orbited a proton beam today! Photographs of the triumphant moment are within.

11.21.2009 at 12:12pm - Comment by bdhoro87

LOL I really need someone to show me a translation of Mayan hieroglyphs that includes "end of the universe" or "atom smasher" or anything of the sort. Its like you have a million fanatics saying the worlds going to end because of some ancient prophecy, but none of them have ever read any Mayan text or translation, and don't know anything about the Mayan culture or calendar.
Technology

New Space Telescope Could Search for Both Exoplanets and Dark Energy

By Jeremy Hsu Posted on 11.20.2009 11 Comments
Dark energy may not have much in common with aliens, unless there's a flotilla of freaky monoliths out there with really weird physical properties. But astrophysicists hope to build a two-in-one space telescope that can search for signs of dark energy along with exoplanets.

11.21.2009 at 12:04pm - Comment by bdhoro87

EarthScientist, dude, lay off the acid, nothing you've said even hints at making sense. Ofcourse there is a need to search for alien life, we need telescopes, colliders, and anything we can come up with in order to do what mankind has done for millenia, look up to the skies at the vast limits of our knowledge, and to move those limits ever further away. Hey how did this thing get named after Euclid anyway? Doesn't most of this research do away with classical geometry?
Technology

Mourning the Death of the Meta Media Experience

By Tom Conlon Posted on 11.20.2009 9 Comments
I tend to think of my cable bill kind of like my health insurance premium. Every month, I begrudgingly pony up the funds necessary to continue this so-called “service” wondering the what the heck it is I’m actually paying for--especially since most of what I regularly watch can be found online in some form--all the while deathly afraid of the consequences should I ever stop wiring in my money. Every month, I consider amputating cable from my bottom line once and for all. But what’s holding me back is that I think I might actually miss it.

11.21.2009 at 11:51am - Comment by bdhoro87

Great article Tom, but: You say that you don't like paying for thousands of channels you don't use, and then go on to say that you do like having those channels because without them, you would have no ability to flip through channels and find something interesting on. Thats why the so called "a la cart" television will never work. The truth is people don't know what they like until they see it, people want a selection of shows they've never heard of. Also, it used to be that everybody would together watch whatever crap is on. Now there is competition for people's time and only the best shows actually get watched as they premier on television. It also means that if you did end up watching the same show last night as the guy next to you, you probably have a lot in common, similar tastes etc. Personally I still think the best experience is watching with friends - then you all watch the same thing and it doesn't matter if you catch it live or not. What's so great about a unified television watching experience anyway? So we could all kill brain cells and waste time the same way, killing individualism and creativity, mass brainwashing the public? I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Leave this group watching experience for the movies (which also need to get with the technology program. Why can't I download a movie directly from the studio once its out on DVD? I have to go through intermediaries like Netflix or wait for HBO to play it?) Apple is clearly the leading company to take down the traditional TV industry with the Apple TV and all - there are so many simple improvements to TV's that are coming as soon as someone figures out how to change the industry. Here's a few ideas to throw around: Why doesn't my TV have a built in hard drive for recording whatever I want? Built in internet connection too, I don't want to have to have a show running through my computer's graphics card. Apple TV is trying to take care of both of these ideas, albeit slowly. I like SN12345's idea about a kind of Pandora for TV, but I must also point out that whats missing right now is the shows live streaming online at the same time that they're on TV. I still don't understand why most shows to get put On Demand until almost a week after they premier, and often don't end up on Hulu or other sites until after that. Anyway what I'm really surprised about is no mention of commercials in this article, which to me is the biggest problem facing both the television industry and its consumers. We all forgot about the days when we had commercials for a reason: to shift the burden of cost away from the public, to big companies who want the public audience. We had commercials because we didn't pay for anything! Once you hooked up your TV and antennae the only cost was electricity! Now we've got all these monthly charges, and on top of that we have to deal with constantly increasing ratios of commercial to content. Thats why the only channels I'm satisfied with paying for are so called "premium channels" like HBO and Showtime. That's also why I have absolutely no moral issues with skipping Hulu and other commercial sites and downloading the higher quality, interruption free Torrents. Damn I feel like I just wrote a whole article. I did a paper on this topic for school and I think about it a lot lol.
Science

Mesmerizing, Isn't It?

By John Mahoney Posted on 11.18.2009 12 Comments
This is what goes on behind the scenes whenever you open your mouth to speak.

11.20.2009 at 10:08am - Comment by bdhoro87

Old news. You can get better videos anywhere - and the real interesting ones show the action of the vocal folds vibrating, which you need a strobe light to record. @John Mahoney thanks for some of the least interesting articles on PopSci to date. The rest of you writers - take note! lol
Technology

What Would Happen if I Ate a Teaspoonful of White Dwarf Star?

By Posted on 11.12.2009 22 Comments
“Everything about it would be bad,” says Mark Hammergren, an astronomer at Adler Planetarium in Chicago, beginning with your attempt to scoop it up. Despite the fact that white dwarfs are fairly common throughout the universe, the nearest is 8.6 light-years away. Let’s assume, though, that you’ve spent 8.6 years in your light-speed car and that the radiation and heat emanating from the star didn’t kill you on your approach. White dwarfs are extremely dense stars, and their surface gravity is about 100,000 times as strong as Earth’s.

11.14.2009 at 11:31am - Comment by bdhoro87

Don't hate. Just because this article doesn't necessarily have even the slightest hint of reality involved, its still a valuable thought experiment, a nice exercise in imagination (which we do seem to be lacking). Hey its not gonna win any awards, but if it gets people thinking about things they don't normally thing about, in ways they don't normally think, that is a reward enough.
Science

Fowl Line

By Posted on 11.12.2009 5 Comments
A trio of turkeys peacefully gobbles cornmeal on a cattle ranch in northern Mexico. But a fence may cut off the chuckwagon.

11.14.2009 at 11:20am - Comment by bdhoro87

Seriously, what are we China? Trying to build a wall around the country because we're so superior we need to keep everyone else out. What this country is supposed to be about is the free exchange of ideas. The fence is a symbol of that era being over - now this country has become so closed minded and ethnocentric we're repeating the mistakes of ancient China. I expect the Mongolians to come tear down the fence as soon as its finished anyway. Who are we keeping out anyway? Was some study done showing that Mexicans don't know how to dig? The fact is Mexicans work harder trying to get in than we ever will trying to keep them out. And that work ethic is a good reason to let them in in the first place.
Technology

A Three-Way View Of the Center Of the Galaxy

By Clay Dillow Posted on 11.11.2009 7 Comments
Celebrating the four centuries of astronomical advancement since Galileo took his first telescopic view of the heavens, NASA today unveiled this unique view of the heart of our galaxy as captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. The 6-foot-by-3-foot prints were unveiled at more than 150 planetariums, museums, libraries, and centers of learning across the land, and man, is it ever a view.

11.11.2009 at 02:11pm - Comment by bdhoro87

Lol yeah and that little compass... which way is north? If I follow that line straight will I hit the north pole?