RealGM

Me for one! From cosmology to quantum I love it all. I'm currently outlining a hypothesis that can predict, tie-in and explain how our universe will end and more excitingly what causes big bangs as well as what existed before them.

No trolling please - Only real science/space brains please!

I dedicate these to the Mars lander.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akek6cFRZfY[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ5sWfhkpE0[/youtube]

I like science enough to read about it at work on cracked.com

I'm very happy the Mars rover is running smoothly, if it crashed and burned there would be even more idiots clamoring about its uselessness and how expensive it was. It was less than americans spend on lip balm in a year.

mybloodisorange wrote:Me for one! From cosmology to quantum I love it all. I'm currently outlining a hypothesis that can predict, tie-in and explain how our universe will end and more excitingly what causes big bangs as well as what existed before them.

No trolling please - Only real science/space brains please!

Color me very, very intrigued. I've always wanted a science thread or something on this board.

I did a Science fair Project like 14 years ago and I got an "A-"

Size does matter.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4iD-9GSW-0&feature=related[/youtube]

mybloodisorange wrote:Size does matter.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4iD-9GSW-0&feature=related[/youtube]

Thats what she said.

mybloodisorange wrote:Size does matter.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4iD-9GSW-0&feature=related[/youtube]

story of my life

As a wee lad I won my middle school science fair twice in a row

But seriously I am interested in biology and physics. Krauss and deGrasse-Tyson are also great to listen to.

Yes Neil deGrasse Tyson is the man. Not only is he a great scientist and communicator but he has valuable insights in many different areas-a very keen mind.

For example this clip shows him expressing an observation about our government that most people dont stop to think about. And he made the observation when he was 12 years old; definetly my kind of guy.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-gKXlaEExY[/youtube]

Ok we did big. Now its time to go quantum.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZGINaRUEkU[/youtube]

http://www.cislunarnext.org/

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF5COztiRjI[/youtube]

A very interesting and well thought out approach to incrementally building a space "railroad" transport system. In a nutshell water is the currency of space travel. It provides food and fuel and is abundant in our solar system. Start small by mining water in the permanently shadowed craters of the moon. Why because it is too expensive to launch fuel from earth into space. Overcoming gravity on the Earth is a much bigger problem than overcoming gravity on the moon. Convert the water to fuel and travel to other water bearing planets/moons (Mars, Europa, Ganymede, etc). Establish bases where possible and continue to explore/colonize to the outer edges of the solar system. It is history repeating itself, European ships to the Americas, railroads across America, etc.

Fundamentally the problem with sending humans to Mars is getting them back to Earth. Without a reasonable fleet of different ships and fuel depots generated from resources in space it seems unlikely we will get off this rock in the future. It's nice idea, a vision NASA could embrace, affordable because it is done incrementally over many years, eventually much of it could be privatized (just like the railroads), and it doesn't break the budget in an all out effort to get man to Mars in 10 years.

I had a chance to listen to the author, Paul Spudis, a few months ago. He a made some very convincing arguments.

I think there may be a solution to decreasing the cost of getting payloads into space. For about a decade or so scientists have been working on an idea called a space elevator. Basically imagine a massive pole or super strong cable long enough to get all the way up past our atmosphere with some type of system to take payloads up like a track that moves or something they have a lot of interesting ideas. I wish they would build one so we could take all our nuclear waste we have stored under certain mountains and take it up and just send it off towards the sun. Nothing we could ever create could harm the sun its the ultimate incinerator! Hell if they get the cost down enough get rid of all toxic waste while we are at it. I havent read on space elevators in a few years im gonna check it out to see if there has been any progress.

On Earth, with its relatively strong gravity, current technology is not capable of manufacturing tether materials that are sufficiently strong and light to build a space elevator. However, recent concepts for a space elevator are notable for their plans to use carbon nanotube or boron nitride nanotube based materials as the tensile element in the tether design. The measured strength of these molecules is high compared to their densities and they hold promise as materials to make an Earth-based space elevator possible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator

Ok so it looks like they are still intent on building it they are just working on the material strength and all the details like avoiding space junk and dealing with the moons gravity and orbit.

In 2011, Google was revealed to be working on plans for a space elevator at its secretive Google X Lab location.

Wow first google earth, next google space!

Big fan of science. Physics and astronomy in particular.

What will be interesting to watch is the development and growth of the private space industry. Humanity will eventually find a better way to travel into space and thru space, the technology will be developed.

I just hope its in my lifetime,

Well welcome everyone glad to see we have some space brains here!

Am I the only one who thinks its a bit wierd that a search engine company is building a space elevator? I figured it would be a company like SpaceX or something.

this is pretty epic! a bit of nucleogenisis etc.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D05ej8u-gU[/youtube]

mybloodisorange wrote:Well welcome everyone glad to see we have some space brains here!

Am I the only one who thinks its a bit wierd that a search engine company is building a space elevator? I figured it would be a company like SpaceX or something.

I think it's fantastic. Wish Apple would do the same.

mybloodisorange wrote:Well welcome everyone glad to see we have some space brains here!

Am I the only one who thinks its a bit wierd that a search engine company is building a space elevator? I figured it would be a company like SpaceX or something.

They're getting their hands in everything. Project glass will be fun when it's released too.