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DDE

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    Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

    Also, as much as the second Spiderverse movie was good, does anybody else think the multiverse is an over used concept in movies nowadays?

    AFAIK most if not all of the barrage is being generated by the two comic book cinematic universes. I think it's commercial and administrative concerns spilling into worldbuilding (nothing new there, really) amidst a creative crisis befalling both of them; multiverses help broaden opportunities for recycling past plot points and dangling keys before the fans' eyes. The Dr Strange movie provides a particularly poignant case, introducing a whole ensemble cast including one crossover and one fan-favored casting appearing for the first time on-screen... and promptly kills them in a rather gruesome manner.

    Fun Fact Thread! (previously fun fact for the day, not limited to 1 per day anymore.)

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    Phraseologism of the day: administrative rapture. The state of an individual in a position of power (often minor and/or recently installed) who excitedly imposes and/or enforces rules in order to showcase said power and boost their self-importance. Defined by Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1872.

    Quote

    In a word, put some absolutely non-entity in charge of selling some paltry railroad tickets, and that non-entity will immediately consider itself entitled to look down at you like Jupiter when you have to go buy a ticket, just to show you its power. "Come, let me show you who's boss here..." And this can get to the point of administrative rapture.....

    ed.: a quarter of the above was in French rather than in Russian; the character speaking is continuously urged to be laconic throughout the dialogue, to absolutely no avail

    For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    4 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

    The bypass fan moves more air for more thrust. It's essentially a ducted fan powered by a combustion turbine, and is more efficient than only using the hot, fast exhaust stream for thrust (move a large amount of air at a slower speed, or use a smaller amount of hot gas moving very fast). Fast-moving gas is LOUD, so large turbofans (fan air carefully blended with the exhaust stream) are a huge help with noise abatement around airports. 

    So essentially, it's a ducted counterpart of the turboprop. The propfan sits somewhere in between, mixing the rotor design elements of the two.

    Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    22 hours ago, farmerben said:

    I had a very vivid dream.  If you have seen Gene Rodenberry's "Earth: Final Conflict" season one and read Niven's "Mote in God's Eye", then this will seem slightly familiar.  Friendly aliens arrive in our Solar System and make us this offer:  help them to make a copy of their mothership so that they have two fully provisioned ships instead of one depleted ship.  They agree to recognize all of our territorial claims, and buy resources they need by trading high technology products and valuable plants that grow in our atmosphere.  

    Humans accept the deal.  However, mysteries and secrets mount.  The friendly aliens are not alone.  They seem to be running from someone.  It turns out not just one someone but many different species of aliens from many home planets.  The explanation of this strange situation in this scenario is due to life being more common near the center of the galaxy.  The center of the milky way has a property like the African savanna.   Large species survive because they have evolutionary time to adapt to their predators.  Some godlike ancestor species millions of years ago terraformed planets in its neighborhood and created this situation.  Some unexplained evolutionary pressure also guided toward intelligence.  

    Then something went wrong.  One of the worlds began totally wiping out all its rivals and multiplying at an unbelievable rate.  Consequently all the aliens from the center of the galaxy must flee if they hope to survive.  The competition to survive puts hundreds of alien species in a race.  If they can expand outward faster than the hostile species, they are alive.  But it is uncertain how or if they will expand beyond the galaxy.   We are now in this race.  It just so happens that because we used radio, and gave our locations away, the most commerce loving species showed up here first.  

    More aliens are on their way.  One of them is demanding at least as good a terms as we gave the first, even though their technology may be of diminishing returns.

    As far as stories about aliens go, this is a fairly plausible one given past human colonization habits.

    Science News Thread (for articles that don't relate to ongoing discussions)

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    19 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

    Six parts in Russian

    https://rodom-iz-tiflis.livejournal.com/12721.html

    (Warning, some may consider it conspiracy theory.

    Personally I have no idea.)

    TL;DR: the stark shape and global proliferation of star forts has made some people believe that they are an artifact of an ancient civilization (well, not exactly ancient, some think they're from the run-up to the Nuclear War of 1812) and they're designed to focus and control some sort of energy.

    Science News Thread (for articles that don't relate to ongoing discussions)

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    6 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

    Supercapacitor... Cement? 

    https://www.sciencealert.com/electrified-cement-could-turn-the-foundations-of-buildings-into-giant-batteries

    *Right now, these cement capacitors are relatively small, with enough power to light up a few LED lightbulbs. The materials used are cheap and abundant though, and in theory the process should be able to scale up relatively well.

    Next, the team wants to make one of these devices that's about the size of a car battery.

    A house with a foundation made of the supercapacitor cement could store enough energy to power that house for a day, the researchers suggest – and the energy could be produced through renewable sources such as solar or wind."

    Those guys are really barking up at all the wrong trees. Capacitors are ill-suited for slowly releasing energy, and... wireless personal trolleycars?

    Anyway, much easier to add a mechanical accumulator that goes up and down, and is made of the same concrete.

    LK-99 Room Temp Ambient Pressure Superconductor

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    Ginsburg center for high-temperature superconducting and quantum materials, Lebedev physics institute, have come to the press with a vehement rebuttal. They found the synthesis instructions to be erroneous and had to reverse-engineer a synthesis process from the provided chemical formulae. Both resultant materials were insulators and demonstrated no exotic structure or behaviors.

    https://m-gazeta-ru.translate.goog/science/2023/08/08/17384882.shtml?utm_source=yxnews&utm_medium=mobile&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp

    In truth, we might never know. That's exactly the kind of secret sauce that doesn't benefit from scientific transparency.

    What funny/interesting thing happened in your life today?

    in The Lounge

    Posted

    6 hours ago, TheSaint said:

    So, a couple of years before I signed on with them, Los Angeles went through the Rodney King riots. Which sort of had everyone in Huntington Park a little on edge. My boss told me that at one point they went outside and they saw these huge columns of smoke rising just a few blocks away from them there at the company. And everyone was starting to panic, because they were sure that the riots were moving into Huntington Park. A couple of the local guys who worked out in the shop ventured out to see what was going on, and they came back and told everyone not to worry, everything was fine. It was the local junkyards. They were taking advantage of the fact that there were huge fires everywhere, and the fact that most of the LAPD was otherwise engaged. So they took the piles of cars that they had lying around, which they normally would have had to rip the interiors out of by hand before they crushed for scrap, and they just started setting them on fire to burn all of the plastic out of them. Just giant piles of burning cars. SMH.

    They also say ammo dump fires always happen just before an outside inspection...

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