Large Hardon Collider

[Pirian]

Oh god lmfao. "And if the governments are covering it up, then they are doing a better job than they can do at anything else."

Yeah I "lol"d at that little commentary

[Kryssan]

NRC... tries?


Yucca Mountain - Continued

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will decide in the next few weeks whether the Department of Energy (DoE) can withdraw its application to construct a national spent fuel and high-level waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

In February 2009, the Obama administration announced that funding for the Yucca Mountain project had been reduced to all but zero and that a new plan for the disposal of the country's used nuclear fuel and high-level waste would be developed. The project came to an official halt on 3 March 2010 when the DoE filed a motion with the NRC to withdraw the application to build and operate Yucca Mountain.

Since the DoE submitted its motion to withdraw the Yucca Mountain licence application, several lawsuits have been filed questioning the legality of DoE's proposed withdrawal. Earlier this month, sixteen electricity utilities, together with US nuclear industry organisation the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), filed a lawsuit against the DoE seeking a suspension of payments into the country's nuclear waste fund. The suit followed a similar one filed days before by the National Association of Utility Regulators (NARUC). Washington State has also filed a lawsuit against the DoE to prevent it abandoning plans for the Yucca Mountain repository.

The NRC's Construction Authorization Board issued a decision on 6 April suspending its consideration of intervention petitions and the DoE's motion to withdraw. The board said it was prudent and efficient to wait until the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has ruled on the lawsuits before it challenging the DoE's withdrawal.

However, the NRC has now said that "given the unique circumstances of this case, we review and vacate the board's decision as an exercise of our inherent supervisory authority over jurisdictions." The commission said, "If judicial review is pursued after our final decision, the application of our expertise in the interpretation of the Atomic Energy Act, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and our own regulations will, at a minimum, inform the court in its consideration of the issues raised by DoE's motion to withdraw."

The NRC added, "We respectfully do not agree with the board in freezing our consideration of DoE's motion to withdraw promotes respect for the courts or efficiency." It noted, "It is not clear when or if the DC Circuit will provide the guidance the board expects on those issues." It continued, "Thus, rather than await a judicial decision, the timing and result of which is uncertain, and absent a contrary instruction from the court, we think the prudent course of action is to resolve the matters pending before our agency as expeditiously and responsibly as possible."

The NRC has requested that Construction Authorization Board issues a decision on the DoE's motion to withdraw the Yucca Mountain application no later than 1 June 2010.

Well, I'd say its interesting, but I'd probably be lying. Guess we'll see if anything happens by June. I shall not be waiting with bated breath, however.

[Kaylia]

Man...fuck. I think I failled my first physics exam in my very last class.

Most solid state homeworks during the semester were taking around 20 hours and had 4-5 questions. The final had 10 fucking questions similar to what is asked in the homeworks, and no data was actually given to us (we could bring any ressource we wanted, so we had to find everything, including the constant, in the book). Obviously, the book I needed was gone at the library, and the few I brought didn't cover half of what was asked.

None of it was incredibly hard, but considering this classes covered a ton of content (conductivity, supraconductor, magnetic properties, lot of stuff with crystal and material properties, the whole set of fermi stuff) and that I didn't have the proper ressource to answer the question...it was a mess.


What a shitty way to end this major.


[edit]

And what kind of sadist ask question in Gauss, mm³, eV, and every other units you don't want to see in a exam. All of them had to be converted into something else, and considering how little time we had, it's like impossible to not fuck up. Yeah...let's waste 5 minutes finding the electron density from the molar mass and weight....fuck this shit.

[Woozie]

I have a take home exam that was given to me two weeks ago because that's how long it takes to do it. It's due tomorrow. I plan to start it some time tonight.

So yeah, I'll be failing an exam soon as well.

[Eliseos]

Procrastinating writing a lab report, and I was so sick yesterday I couldn't even start my Prolog assignment. First 0 of the semester brings my homework average from a 92 to an 82 lol.

We are all awesome.

[Kaylia]

I have a take home exam that was given to me two weeks ago because that's how long it takes to do it. It's due tomorrow. I plan to start it some time tonight.

So yeah, I'll be failing an exam soon as well.

I thought starting the night before was the norm for a student!

I guess I was lucky over the last few years, because none of my teachers cared when we broke the deadline...and I abused their generosity for sure. I was often 1 week late on my home exam/assignement

[Woozie]

I have a letter from the Office of Accessibility saying that if I ask for an extension on any assignment in any class, my professors are required to give it. But I hate having to use that. In most cases I'd rather take an F. I'm going to just go ahead and stay up all night trying to do this rather than ask for an extension.

[vivix]

Procrastinating writing a lab report, and I was so sick yesterday I couldn't even start my Prolog assignment. First 0 of the semester brings my homework average from a 92 to an 82 lol.

We are all awesome.

Prolog says NO!

[Shiroikage]

I believe in you, Woozie.
I went from mid-term progress report -> final honors thesis in virtually one night.
You can do this.

[Eliseos]

Prolog says NO!

It's really a bitchy language lol, our assignment this week is mostly about how it unifies everything. ML was cake compared to this.

[Kaylia]

Did Hawking really talk about aliens life earlier this week?

That's pretty retarded if you ask me. You never talk about aliens, not in front of the media or the populace. Reading people's reaction to his comment made me cringe.

[Woozie]

Yeah, people have been talking about this all day and it's getting on my nerves.

I don't understand why it's such a big deal that he said it anyways. He's not the first person to say it. Sure, he knows a lot about science and math, so anything he says science or math related is a big deal. But he's no more of an expert on aliens than anyone else who's ever said anything about aliens, so why is what he said such a huge deal, when no one cares when anybody else says it?

This reminds me of what Leon Lederman said in the book "The God Particle". Once you become famous for being "smart" at something, everyone suddenly thinks your an expert on everything and they take your opinion about every subject as some sort of scientific fact. Lederman said people started asking his opinion on foreign policy and all other kinds of stuff not remotely related to particle physics. And people would really accept his advice as if it's a big deal in that subject.

Edit: Also

http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20100129.gif

[Kaylia]

Well, I would be more willing to accept a physicist's political advice than I'm willing to accept most politician's political advice, but yeah!



[edit]
Not as good as the media one, but lol.

[Kuya]

What did Hawking say though?

[Woozie]

He said that instead of looking for extraterrestrial life, we should avoid making contact with them at all costs because otherwise they'll probably try to take over our planet for its natural resources. He compared it to how bad things turned out for the Native Americans when America was discovered.

Edit:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle7107207.ece

Spoiler: show

HE aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.

The suggestions come in a new documentary series in which Hawking, one of the world’s leading scientists, will set out his latest thinking on some of the universe’s greatest mysteries.

Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe: not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in interplanetary space.

Hawking’s logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved.
Times Archive

* New light on black holes, 1976

* Exploding black holes, 1977

Related Links

* Oops, that was a bad call, Earth

* Hello... Are we alone in the Universe?

“To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,” he said. “The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.”

The answer, he suggests, is that most of it will be the equivalent of microbes or simple animals — the sort of life that has dominated Earth for most of its history.

One scene in his documentary for the Discovery Channel shows herds of two-legged herbivores browsing on an alien cliff-face where they are picked off by flying, yellow lizard-like predators. Another shows glowing fluorescent aquatic animals forming vast shoals in the oceans thought to underlie the thick ice coating Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter.

Such scenes are speculative, but Hawking uses them to lead on to a serious point: that a few life forms could be intelligent and pose a threat. Hawking believes that contact with such a species could be devastating for humanity.

He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.”

He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

The completion of the documentary marks a triumph for Hawking, now 68, who is paralysed by motor neurone disease and has very limited powers of communication. The project took him and his producers three years, during which he insisted on rewriting large chunks of the script and checking the filming.

John Smithson, executive producer for Discovery, said: “He wanted to make a programme that was entertaining for a general audience as well as scientific and that’s a tough job, given the complexity of the ideas involved.”

Hawking has suggested the possibility of alien life before but his views have been clarified by a series of scientific breakthroughs, such as the discovery, since 1995, of more than 450 planets orbiting distant stars, showing that planets are a common phenomenon.

So far, all the new planets found have been far larger than Earth, but only because the telescopes used to detect them are not sensitive enough to detect Earth-sized bodies at such distances.

Another breakthrough is the discovery that life on Earth has proven able to colonise its most extreme environments. If life can survive and evolve there, scientists reason, then perhaps nowhere is out of bounds.

Hawking’s belief in aliens places him in good scientific company. In his recent Wonders of the Solar System BBC series, Professor Brian Cox backed the idea, too, suggesting Mars, Europa and Titan, a moon of Saturn, as likely places to look.

Similarly, Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, warned in a lecture earlier this year that aliens might prove to be beyond human understanding.

“I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can’t conceive,” he said. “Just as a chimpanzee can’t understand quantum theory, it could be there are aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains.”

I didn't actually read this article. I just saw the title and assumed it was about what he said last night. Sorry if it's not lol

[Kuya]

Hmm, since Hawkings has the same opinion that i do, it must mean i'm a physics expert.

edit: in all seriousness though, i agree with his position, even though he's no, ugh, extraterrestrial politics expert.

[Kaylia]

What did Hawking say though?

According to the media, that's what he said
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle7107207.ece


I havent watched his video, and probably won't, but making statement like this is stupid. It's not that I disagree, it's just that people are going to interpret them literally.


[edit]
too sloooow. it wasnt a good idea to read the whole article before pressing send.

[Woozie]

According to the media, that's what he said
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle7107207.ece


I havent watched his video, and probably won't, but making statement like this is stupid. It's not that I disagree, it's just that people are going to interpret them literally.


[edit]
too sloooow. it wasnt a good idea to read the whole article before pressing send.

You're right, but he shouldn't have that problem. He shouldn't have the problem of people hanging on every word he says when talking about his opinion on something. I'm more mad at the public for having this reaction than at Hawking for saying something that he know would trigger such a reaction.

[Kaylia]

Hmm, since Hawkings has the same opinion that i do, it must mean i'm a physics expert.

edit: in all seriousness though, i agree with his position, even though he's no, ugh, extraterrestrial politics expert.

The part about aliens existing somewhere? I don't know many people who disagree with his statement. It wasnt new, and I don't know why they are making headline with this, other than the fact that the word "aliens" get a lot of click.

However, trying to scare people with aliens is retarded. I don't care if it's a possibilities, the scenario is way too hypothetical to make statement like this. First of all, if there is already many "earth-like" planet, why the aliens would pick one with people that would fight back? It's not our hydrogen is better.

Secondly, he doesnt mention (did he?) to the current stance of physics on space travel (faster than light or not), and how likely it is that aliens are actually traveling in space to rape us considering they are most likely dealing with the same restriction.


Also, it's obvious he said this for attention, and that alone annoy me.

You're right, but he shouldn't have that problem. He shouldn't have the problem of people hanging on every word he says when talking about his opinion on something. I'm more mad at the public for having this reaction than at Hawking for saying something that he know would trigger such a reaction.

I just hate when physicist talk about something that will obviously get misinterpreted. If that wasnt his intention, he should have realized it.

[pahnphoenix]

it's glaringly obvious that hawking is right. we're not talking age/size of the universe/reality here, we're talking pretty simple stuff. sure, we could luck out and communicate with "friendly aliens", and sure, the will to violence and pillaging might be purely human (though the size of the universe and probability combine to suggest that no concept/aspect would be purely human), but *obviously* if a ship flew by earth they would probably see us as a resources first and foremost (if they "made contact" with us in an intelligible way at all).

also, excepting the possibility that humanity was created by a sentient, willful God, it's fairly obvious given the number of galaxes + stars in galaxies (that we even know of) that extraterrestrial life exists. intelligent life? again, billions of galaxies with billions of stars... if we're the only intelligent life, the odds are OVERWHELMINGLY large that there's a principled reason (like a God, or a grievous error on our part about the size/nature of the universe/reality) for our uniqueness. absent any good reason to believe in such a reason (and, to be frank, there is no such good reason) and with good reason to believe that our concept of the universe is reasonably accurate (experiments and observation), you're sort of forced to believe in extraterrestrial intelligent life.

in other words, hawking isn't saying something that in the political sphere would be like "capitalism can never work," or in the sphere of gender politics like "women and men are fundamentally different in terms of ability" or "patriarchy is ubiquitous, actively enforced, and inherently oppressive." he's saying something like, "politicians might lie if it's in their interest," or "if 1 gender is systematically paid a significant amount less than the other, it probably implies *something*." he isn't wearing his brilliant physicist hat here, he's wearing his not-fucking-retarded hat.

edit: though the directly previous posts got in while i was writing this one, i do mean to be arguing against kaylia's indictments as well. you don't need to be trying to get attention or be violating some taboo or be intellectually dishonest to make statements like hawkings. exactly because space travel is doubtfully FTL, and because stuff happens via energy, if we *encountered* aliens, chances are they'd be interested in resources. resources we might (or might not) have. if we have them, chances are we could be fucked.