I thought the same thing, and I really hope it was in the script because it is quite possibly one of the most descriptive and yet disturbing mental images I have ever conjured up. I also liked the part about a "beautiful androgyne called SWITCH, aiming a large gun at Neo." hmmm, wonder what THAT is eluding to?
If I was Neo, I would have said, "What the hell is this?!" as well.
Scientists in PML's Quantum Measurement Division have produced the first superluminal light pulses made by using a technique called four-wave mixing, creating two separate pulses whose peaks propagate faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.
Apparently, it doesn't violate causality, and information does not travel faster than light, but doing the math, it looks like they got the peak to go at an apparent velocity of 10 c.
I think I understand what they're saying, but when i first started reading it, what I thought of was the "light speed baseball" thought experiments.
Relativity starts from the principle that the speed of light is observed to be the same for everyone. Suppose you're in a rocket ship going the speed of light and you turn on the headlights? Are the photons from the headlights travling at 2c? The answer is no, You'll see the light beam traveling away from you at the speed of light, and outside observers will see the beam traveling out in front of you at the speed of light. They'll agree you must be traveling slower than the speed of light.
Suppose you're inside of a spaceship traveling at the speed of light. Standing at the back of the ship, you wind up and throw a fastball towards the front of the ship. To an outside observer, what's the speed of the ball?
Right, I took a class on special relativity. Some of those thought experiments are crazy. Like that one with length contraction where you have a bar of length x passing through the windows of a room of width x. If the bar is going a significant fraction of c, from its perspective, the width of the room is <x, and so the bar can't fit between the two windows. From the room's perspective, the bar's length is <x, so it can fit between the windows.
This is compelling. Those are the annual and monthly rates of earthquakes magnitude 3.0 and up in the stated region of the US. There is no obvious natural cause for such a strong shift/cluster of quakes, but there do seem to be links to a methane production area in the region.
The abstract of a presentation of similar (but cleaner) data.
The modest increase that began in 2001 is due to increased seismicity in the coal bed methane field of the Raton Basin along the Colorado-New Mexico border west of Trinidad, CO. The acceleration in activity that began in 2009 appears to involve a combination of source regions of oil and gas production, including the Guy, Arkansas region, and in central and southern Oklahoma. Horton, et al. (2012) provided strong evidence linking the Guy, AK activity to deep waste water injection wells.
You should dust it off...or better yet, get the audio book version. I read the print versions if I have time (it takes quite a while to get through that one.) I got the audio book for this re-reading because I noticed that I remembered more of a book that I was able to listen to. I enjoyed listening to it just as much as visually reading it; and I felt like I retained more of the knowledge. I followed it pretty well until he got into the Quantum Mechanics portion, then string theory...and I got lost. Really lost. I guess I just can't imagine particles smaller than electrons (which, to be honest is hard to imagine to begin with.)
While I did like the doomsday stuff, between the meteors crashing into earth or the super volcano under Yellowstone, my very favorite part of the book was the beginning. I loved the history of HOW these disciplines came into existence. I loved the pioneers of thought and the crazy things that people did to try to understand the world (especially the French; they were insane.)
Yes it does; It's an unabridged version. That was really quite funny. We tried to drill from a ship and got nowhere, they tried from land and spent forever on it...but didn't even get 1/3 of the way through.I sat and thought for hours about other possible ways to dig through to the mantle, from a seabed base to going through existing lava tubes like an angioplasty. Then I went on a whole tangent of what would happen if we did, and followed that ad nauseum to silly sci-fi plots.
What amazed me was the fact that much of what we consider scientific fact is rather new in thought. We know more about the Sun than we do about our own tectonic movements. "Stuff" really is cool, and Bryson put it in a language that was exciting and interesting....like a good tour guide does.
I've read dozens of stories about people thinking that regular astronomical objects (including the moon) are UFOs. There are, in particular, lots of cases of people thinking that Venus is a plane or similar.
I've read dozens of stories about people thinking that regular astronomical objects (including the moon) are UFOs. There are, in particular, lots of cases of people thinking that Venus is a plane or similar.
The FO initially mistook the planet Venus for an aircraft but the captain advised again that the target was at the 12 o’clock position and 1000 feet below. The captain of ACA878 and the oncoming aircraft crew flashed their landing lights. The FO continued to scan visually for the aircraft. When the FO saw the oncoming aircraft, the FO interpreted its position as being above and descending towards them. The FO reacted to the perceived imminent collision by pushing forward on the control column.
Mysterious company backed by James Cameron and Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt promises to "create a new industry" that will overlay space exploration and natural resources.
Probably won't go anywhere, but it's a step in the right direction.
Urg. There is no real way off planet exploration of resources would add to the global GDP. There is no resource that is worth the costs to bring back to earth. The only serious advantage is if you are using the resources off planet as well, so you don't have to lift more into space. And that doesn't really inflated the GDP, only remove or reduce the costs of further space exploration and construction.
