The science and nature thread v. We tried this before

[rumborak]

I actually found most interesting the sound it made. I would expect an eruption sound to be a prolonged rumble, but I never expected this sharp SMACK! sound.

[King Postwhore]

All these years of seeing the granite cut of the highway here in NH, I finally saw the process and it is amazing how they break down the rock to make a flat wall and you're right about the sound.  It's a large smack when they break the rocks into smaller pieces.

[kári]

I actually found most interesting the sound it made. I would expect an eruption sound to be a prolonged rumble, but I never expected this sharp SMACK! sound.

I think not all eruptions make that sound. This particular one did because it was an actual explosion, because the magma had nowhere to go.

[Zook]

That reminds me of an AMAZING episode of Macgyver, called "Trumbo's World", where Macgyver has to fight an army of killer ants that can kill and eat people very quickly. The episode is basically stock footage of ants mixed with people screaming. I'd highly recommend it.

You know, for science.

I think that's that last episode of MacGyver I ever saw, and the only one I remember.

[jasc15]

https://www.nowykurier.com/toys/gravity/gravity.html

This is so much fun.

[Chino]

https://www.nowykurier.com/toys/gravity/gravity.html

This is so much fun.

That's sick

[jasc15]

https://www.nowykurier.com/toys/gravity/gravity.html

This is so much fun.

That's sick

I'm trying to make a sun-earth-moon system, but my moon keeps flying into the sun, or off into space.

Edit: It would be nice to enter numerical values for speed, rather than just vector lengths.

[Scorpion]

That is sweet.

[jasc15]

Square orbit!

[jasc15]

"Woman of 24 found to have no cerebellum in her brain"

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329861.900-woman-of-24-found-to-have-no-cerebellum-in-her-brain.html#.VBHtxvldUeW

[Chino]

Wow. That's freaking wild.

[TioJorge]

^ That. Pretty amazing stuff. Slightly unnerving and creepy too, looking at that picture.

[BlobVanDam]

^ That. Pretty amazing stuff. Slightly unnerving and creepy too, looking at that picture.

Creepy was my first thought. I didn't even know it was possible for someone to be born and survive without a cerebellum, however rare, let alone go this long without realizing.
The human body is a weird and wonderful and weird thing. Yes, weird was needed twice.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

This teared me up:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2226647/Nickolas-Coke-Boy-born-brain-dies-3-year-miracle-life.html

[TioJorge]

God fuckin' damn it.. 

That's amazing though, I thought the first picture of him was the most recent and when I read that he lived three entire years without a brain, I was stunned. It's heart crushing though.

[Chino]

That's crazy. I have a question though. The article said "Without a brain, Nickolas couldn’t speak, eat or walk and frequently suffered from debilitating seizures.". How does one have seizures if all they have is a brain stem?

[TempusVox]

https://www.nowykurier.com/toys/gravity/gravity.html

This is so much fun.

I got six tiny spheres into an elliptical orbit around an OMG sphere for about 10 minutes before they were finally absorbed. One was on a really huge orbit that went off-screen, and it kept disrupting the others just enough to keep them circling on each of it's returns. Pretty cool.

[gmillerdrake]

https://www.nowykurier.com/toys/gravity/gravity.html

This is so much fun.

I got six tiny spheres into an elliptical orbit around an OMG sphere for about 10 minutes before they were finally absorbed. One was on a really huge orbit that went off-screen, and it kept disrupting the others just enough to keep them circling on each of it's returns. Pretty cool.

That could have been the most fun I've had wasting a half hour ever!! What a blast....I stuck with one OMFG sphere as the main source and had at one time a mix of 11 spheres orbiting but I couldn't keep all 11 going for long...they just interfered with each other.  I liked the tracking feature that traced the orbit...that was pretty cool.

[hefdaddy42]

There are no such things as black holes.

Sweet.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

"That's pre-post-ero-us":

[rumborak]

There are no such things as black holes.

Sweet.

Just read another article about this, and another researcher didn't exactly mince words about the paper. Apparently papers claiming that black holes don't exist have a long history, and they all misunderstand Hawking radiation.

[hefdaddy42]

I dunno WTF that is.

[kári]

There are no such things as black holes.

Sweet.

Just read another article about this, and another researcher didn't exactly mince words about the paper. Apparently papers claiming that black holes don't exist have a long history, and they all misunderstand Hawking radiation.

The paper the article is about says that when doing a particular simulation taking into account both QM and GR, when a massive star comes to its end the remains after the supernova or whatever will never have a radius larger than the Swarzschild radius (which is needed for the star to become a black hole).
So either black holes don't exist, or this particular way of combining QM and GR does not work. I'll go for the latter.

[rumborak]

Super cool: Alcohol droplet finds its way through a maze.

https://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/researchers-make-self-moving-alcohol-droplets

Great example of how a simple physical process achieves what on the surface requires intelligence.

[kári]

That's pretty cool indeed!

[jasc15]

It seems like the salt gradient would be too localized; not large enough in the vicinity of the alcohol drop.  Does the salt (or any other substance) begin spreading out quickly, and in enough concentrations to create a "noticeable" gradient at large distances?

[rumborak]

Well, if you put detergent into water, the change in surface tension travels super fast. So, I could see it traveling reasonably fast too.

[jasc15]

Well, if you put detergent into water, the change in surface tension travels super fast. So, I could see it traveling reasonably fast too.

But surface tension is a property of the water that's changing, not the actual transport of a substance, right?  This seems like the latter.

[Chino]

Well, if you put detergent into water, the change in surface tension travels super fast. So, I could see it traveling reasonably fast too.

But surface tension is a property of the water that's changing, not the actual transport of a substance, right?  This seems like the latter.

But I think the surface tension would dictate the rate at which the substance travels. The more the surface tension is disrupted, the easier it is to travel through it.

[rumborak]

Well, if you put detergent into water, the change in surface tension travels super fast. So, I could see it traveling reasonably fast too.

But surface tension is a property of the water that's changing, not the actual transport of a substance, right?  This seems like the latter.

To my understanding, the traveling drop simply simply absorbs salt, and so it gets pulled into the direction of greater salt concentration in the water. The question is simply how fast the salt gradient can travel through water.

[jasc15]

I guess this is related to how a shark can smell a single drop of blood from 2 miles (or something similar).  I always wondered how that was possible, and how long it would take to diffuse through a 2 mile radius sphere of water.

[kári]

Well, if you put detergent into water, the change in surface tension travels super fast. So, I could see it traveling reasonably fast too.

But surface tension is a property of the water that's changing, not the actual transport of a substance, right?  This seems like the latter.

But I think the surface tension would dictate the rate at which the substance travels. The more the surface tension is disrupted, the easier it is to travel through it.

That's not true I think. Rumborak just means that the chance in surface tension caused by detergent travels super fast, so maybe this salt can diffuse fast enough as well.
I don't think the speed at which the diffusion happens matters very much. The concentration will always be lower the further you are from the salt droplet (within a reasonable time range of course, far longer than the alcohol droplets needs to travel to the salt droplet). The video is also definitely sped up.

I guess this is related to how a shark can smell a single drop of blood from 2 miles (or something similar).  I always wondered how that was possible, and how long it would take to diffuse through a 2 mile radius sphere of water.

This used to confuse me as well. I think it just means that sharks can detect extremely low concentrations of blood, it would surprise me if they actually instantaneously knew what direction it was coming from as well. They just smell it and keep swimming around until the smell gets stronger.

[jasc15]

I guess this is related to how a shark can smell a single drop of blood from 2 miles (or something similar).  I always wondered how that was possible, and how long it would take to diffuse through a 2 mile radius sphere of water.

This used to confuse me as well. I think it just means that sharks can detect extremely low concentrations of blood, it would surprise me if they actually instantaneously knew what direction it was coming from as well. They just smell it and keep swimming around until the smell gets stronger.

Well, if they can follow the gradient, then they would know what direction it was coming from. 

In a more general sense, the same goes for any other hyper-sensitive sensing, biological or otherwise: I can understand being sensitive enough to pick up signals that low, but at that point how can the signal be much different and be distinguished from background noise?

[kári]

I guess this is related to how a shark can smell a single drop of blood from 2 miles (or something similar).  I always wondered how that was possible, and how long it would take to diffuse through a 2 mile radius sphere of water.

This used to confuse me as well. I think it just means that sharks can detect extremely low concentrations of blood, it would surprise me if they actually instantaneously knew what direction it was coming from as well. They just smell it and keep swimming around until the smell gets stronger.

Well, if they can follow the gradient, then they would know what direction it was coming from. 

In a more general sense, the same goes for any other hyper-sensitive sensing, biological or otherwise: I can understand being sensitive enough to pick up signals that low, but at that point how can the signal be much different and be distinguished from background noise?

I meant that when they pick up trace amounts of blood, instead of just swimming on like they would, they will swim around the area in random directions until by chance the smell gets stronger (and they can follow the gradient to actually get there).

I don't know about biology, but with electronics there are some "tricks" you can use to look for extremely tiny signals. For example a Lock-in amplifier can detect signals of a given frequency with extremely tiny amplitudes relative to the noise.

[rumborak]

Frankly, I think that statement about sharks is myth. In fact, I have a vague recollection of Mythbusters testing it, and it's nowhere near true.