Large Hardon Collider

[Salodin]

Don't think it works like that. I read it as a laser beam that creates lightning to arc. Its not like they created a telsa coil from command and conquer.

[Byrthnoth]

Lasers are typically used in very clean environments to avoid diffraction, yeah? How is this going to work considering humidity, dust, etc. A weapon that needs a huge amount of power but can only be used short range unless conditions are perfect is not very useful at all.

One step closer to destructo beams though. I approve.

[noblemountain]

Thought this was interesting...

http://news.yahoo.com/milky-way-gala...124521154.html

[Mizango]

Thought this was interesting...

http://news.yahoo.com/milky-way-gala...124521154.html

Long as the SMBH at the center is still a top priority then im good. 11 million mph star systems at the core? Yes plx

[Mazmaz]

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1...-a-single-gram

Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram

[Quicklet]

I'll just leave these here (physics related... sorta, if your physics includes ninjas and 9/11).

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nati...icle-1.1267461
http://bwog.com/2013/02/18/frosci-gone-wil/

[myreality]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-w...f=arts&ir=arts

Engineering College Lets Students Shop With Biometric Scans Instead Of Credit Cards


APID CITY, S.D. — Futurists have long proclaimed the coming of a cashless society, where dollar bills and plastic cards are replaced by fingerprint and retina scanners smart enough to distinguish a living, breathing account holder from an identity thief.

What they probably didn't see coming was that one such technology would make its debut not in Silicon Valley or MIT but at a small state college in remote western South Dakota, 25 miles from Mount Rushmore.

Two shops on the School of Mines and Technology campus are performing one of the world's first experiments in Biocryptology – a mix of biometrics (using physical traits for identification) and cryptology (the study of encoding private information). Students at the Rapid City school can buy a bag of potato chips with a machine that non-intrusively detects their hemoglobin to make sure the transaction is legitimate.

Researchers figure their technology would provide a critical safeguard against a morbid scenario sometimes found in spy movies in which a thief removes someone else's finger to fool the scanner.

On a recent Friday, mechanical engineering major Bernard Keeler handed a Red Bull to a cashier in the Miner's Shack campus shop, typed his birthdate into a pay pad and swiped his finger. Within seconds, the machine had identified his print and checked that blood was pulsing beneath it, allowing him to make the buy. Afterward, Keeler proudly showed off the receipt he was sent via email on his smartphone.

Fingerprint technology isn't new, nor is the general concept of using biometrics as a way to pay for goods. But it's the extra layer of protection – that deeper check to ensure the finger has a pulse – that researchers say sets this technology apart from already-existing digital fingerprint scans, which are used mostly for criminal background checks.

Al Maas, president of Nexus USA – a subsidiary of Spanish-based Hanscan Indentity Management, which patented the technology – acknowledged South Dakota might seem an unlikely locale to test it, but to him, it was a perfect fit.

"I said, if it flies here in the conservative Midwest, it's going to go anywhere," Maas said.

Maas grew up near Madison, S.D., and wanted his home state to be the technology's guinea pig. He convinced Hanscan owner Klaas Zwart that the 2,400-student Mines campus should be used as the starter location.

The students all major in mechanical engineering or hard sciences, which means they're naturally technologically inclined, said Joseph Wright, the school's associate vice president for research-economic development.

"South Dakota is a place where people take risks. We're very entrepreneurial," Wright said.

After Maas and Zwart introduced the idea to students this winter, about 50 stepped forward to take part in the pilot.

"I really wanted to be part of what's new and see if I could help improve what they already have," said Phillip Clemen, 19, a mechanical engineering student.

Robert Siciliano, a security expert with McAfee, Inc., minimized potential privacy concerns.

"We are hell bent on privacy issues here in the U.S. We get all up in arms when someone talks about scanning us or recording our information, but then we'll throw up everything about us on Facebook and give up all of our personal information for 10 percent off at a shoe store for instant credit," he said.

Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, said fingerprint technology on its own raises security issues, but he called "liveness detection" a step in the right direction.

"Any security measure can be defeated; it's a question of making it harder," he said.

The key to keeping biometric identification from becoming Big Brother-like is to make it voluntary and ensure that the information scanned is used exactly as promised, Stanley said.

Brian Wiles, a Miles mechanical engineering major, said it's exciting to be beta testing technology that could soon be worldwide.

"There was some hesitation, but the fact that it's the first in the world – that's the whole point of this school," said Wiles, 22. "We're innovators."

___

Follow Amber Hunt on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/reporteramber

[Xantavia]

We have a biometric time clock at work and its a pain in the ass. Trying to clock in right after climbing a flight of stairs is a 50/50 shot of working for some people. Others must be dead because trying to get them enrolled in the system is a real chore. And then whenever they try to clock in or out takes multiple attempts before it works.

[Mizango]

We have a biometric time clock at work and its a pain in the ass. Trying to clock in right after climbing a flight of stairs is a 50/50 shot of working for some people. Others must be dead because trying to get them enrolled in the system is a real chore. And then whenever they try to clock in or out takes multiple attempts before it works.

Ya, that was my first thoughts as well lol, "are those people even alive?". Seems like a pain in the ass for anyone doing anything strenuous.

[archibaldcrane]

Been fingerprint-logging in at my gym for 3 years now. Granted, there's no "blood pumping" sensor...but if your cutting a dude's hand off to get free access to 24-hour Health and Fitness, well...

[Kryssan]

Canada.

Noone lives there. NDT says so. And I believe him.

Video where this comes from, @ around 16:50 into the show ( link )

[Pirian]

Ya, that was my first thoughts as well lol, "are those people even alive?". Seems like a pain in the ass for anyone doing anything strenuous.

They're engineering students. Need I say more?

[Tekki]

Should just rename this the Bill Nye thread.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1...rrestrial-life

Researchers in the United Kingdom have found algae-like fossils in meteorite fragments that landed in Sri Lanka last year. This is the strongest evidence yet of cometary panspermia — that life on Earth began when a meteorite containing simple organisms landed here, billions of years ago — and, perhaps more importantly, that there’s life elsewhere in the universe.

In December 2012, a fireball was seen over the skies of Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka. Over the following few days, fragments of the fireball were collected and sent to Sri Lanka’s Medical Research Institute, where initial microscopic analysis revealed siliceous microalgae known as diatoms. As you can imagine, with this being the first ever evidence that life might’ve arrived on Earth via a meteorite, the scientific community was skeptical of the results — and so some fragments were sent to Cardiff University in Wales for further analysis. The researchers at Cardiff are now reporting that they’re sure that these fragments come from an extraterrestrial meteorite — and that there are definitely “fossilized biological structures” within them. Panspermia, it seems, is a go.

There are a few competing theories for how life began on Earth. Panspermia, where life arrived on the back of a comet or asteroid, is one. Abiogenesis, the theory that life spontaneously erupted from inorganic molecules in Earth’s primordial soup, is another. Directed panspermia, where an alien race intentionally sent an asteroid or spacecraft loaded with living organisms to Earth, is another slightly more exotic theory. As for which theory is correct, we’ll probably never know — but the Polonnaruwa meteorite definitely puts the odds in panspermia’s favor.

Cardiff University’s tests took a two-pronged approach: First to confirm that there were actually algae fossils within, but more importantly to rule out terrestrial contamination. To this end, the researchers found very low levels of nitrogen (which is nearly always present in modern-Earth organisms), and their oxygen isotope analysis “shows [that the samples] are unequivocally meteorites.” The meteorite’s atomic makeup, coupled with the fossils being fused with the rock matrix, is a strong indicator that the organisms aren’t terrestrial in origin.



These findings aren’t a slam dunk, though. According to our in-house biologist John Hewitt, there’s a strong possibility that the fossils aren’t actually biological in nature — they simply look biological. “This is kind of like finding a Q from Scrabble floating in space; it may be worth 10 points, but finding a few Es first would be a bit more convincing,” Hewitt says. There’s also the fact that the research was published in the Journal of Cosmology, a peer-reviewed journal that has come under critical scrutiny numerous times since it was established in 2009. The journal faced a lot of controversy when it published a paper by NASA engineer Richard Hoover claiming to have found fossils “similar to cyanobacteria” in meteorites.

With that said, the work presented in the Cardiff University research paper does seem to be rather professional. X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy are not really the kind of tools that you play around with. It would be rather hard to fake the imagery and results that were generated by Cardiff University — not impossible, but unlikely.

One thing’s for certain, though: For this to actually become science — for Chandra Wickramasinghe’s dream of panspermia to become a reality — this work will need to be replicated by many other groups around the world. It would be very, very exciting indeed if biological fossils have been found on an extraterrestrial meteorite. It would be proof that there’s life on other planets — and essentially a guarantee that the universe is full of life. But, as always, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Now read: Finally confirmed: An asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs

Research paper: arXiv:1303.1845 – “The Polonnaruwa meteorite: oxygen isotope, crystalline and biological composition”

[Kyreth]

A little bit of neat news for the day:

http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/fu...high-1C8835458

First prize was Sara Volz, who cracked the problem of how to increase oil production from biofuel algae. She grew the stuff in a medium with a herbicide that selectively ganked low-producing algae, leaving behind only the ones that produced high amounts of biofuel materials for the next batch. Rinse and repeat.

Third place was also cool in my book- an inexpensive plasma generator that could be built in a high school lab, making research much cheaper.

[Ddz]

Has this been posted elsewhere already?

Scientists more certain that particle is Higgs boson
Confirmed! Newfound Particle Is the Higgs

[Quicklet]

That second title is horrendous (but typical) science journalism. At least they didn't call it the God particle. Oh wait, they do (about one paragraph in).

[Kryssan]

That second title is horrendous (but typical) science journalism. At least they didn't call it the God particle. Oh wait, they do (about one paragraph in).

One of the main ways many journalists know how to make science interesting is to throw religion into it. Indeed, Peter Higgs ( the man who is accredited with being the proponent of the bosun's existence ) is not amused by the nickname - although in this case, it was another scientist who coined the term "God Particle" ( that would have been Lederman ).

[Tyche]

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/ASU-LIVE

Brian Greene, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Bill NYE, and others doing a live discussion. Not sure if they'll reup the entire video.

[Mizango]

If you've NEVER heard Lawrence Krauss talk, yall are in for a treat!

[Hatedregret]

Amazing. Thank you for that.