Jump to content

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

JoeSchmuckatelli
 Share

Recommended Posts

DDE

DDE

Posted
Posted
32 minutes ago, AckSed said:

A while back I posted about new alloys of magnesium, including one using 0.15% calcium to make "stainless magnesium". Well, Lenovo has made a shell for a new laptop out of it.

Batteries + magnesium hull + heat

Oh, great... (yes, I've just had a Huawei powerbank bloat on me, I'm hypercautious about batteries now)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
DDE

DDE

Posted
Posted
21 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Design by Apple? 

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252819161?sortBy=best

Imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery! 

Meh, I'm just thankful the hard plastic shell cracked and made it obvious. I remember how my Lenovo Y70 surprised me and I didn't notice it until I was really far down the danger zone.

Also, screw MSI for making the battery unremovable without a disassembly. Really worried about my current race horse...

Link to comment
Share on other sites
AckSed

AckSed

Posted
Posted (edited)

I don't know if you've heard of ARPA-E. They are an American skunk-works group, set up by the Department of Energy in 2007, developing high-risk, high-reward energy technologies.

Their youtube channel has recordings of their pitch meetings. This one is about industrial processes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwtucNt6eLc

tl;dw drilling for hydrogen, making synthetic coke (most of the carbon is high-quality structured stuff like graphene, graphite, nanotubes. A focus on making rubbish disordered carbon would be less energy-intensive and replace 60-70% of the carbon used in industrial processes today), plasma synthesis and direct reduction to fix nitrogen, sulphur and other things, and reduce the sometimes Byzantine processes to one or two steps.

There is so much more in their channel, though. If I ever want some near-future optimism, I will be checking further: https://www.youtube.com/@ARPAEGOV/videos

Edited by AckSed
Link to comment
Share on other sites
JoeSchmuckatelli

JoeSchmuckatelli

Posted
  • Author
Posted
13 hours ago, DDE said:

start spewing bile

I almost gave myself an eye roll cramp when I saw the headlines. 

I have not read this - but is it from the group of BRILLIANT Harvard 'researchers' getting money to look into the unprovable?  Dragging the sea floor for UFO wreckage, etc? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
kerbiloid

kerbiloid

Posted
Posted (edited)
5 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I have not read this - but is it from the group of BRILLIANT Harvard 'researchers' getting money to look into the unprovable?  Dragging the sea floor for UFO wreckage, etc? 

Not worse than the "ancient" ruins in the MidEast, Greece, America, or Asia, made of bricks, concrete, and cast iron beams, standing for millenia, but suffering from rains, like Machu Pikchu or Ankgor Vat, lol.

Or the "ancient" Babylon and Ninevia, "hidden in the hills" next to Mosul, and never seen by the locals until the Europeans were doing there something with no photographers to make a photo.

Or the "ancient" Egyptian pyramids and colosses, buried under sand right across the road from the big city residentials, happily staying unburied, with stamps of the builders' names on the wet concrete, they are made from, in German, French, etc. With same steel and cast iron rebars.

Or the "ancient" Parthenon, built out of bricks, and with columns, shaped by the tied iron bars, having "ancient" naked statues of pagan gods, right next to the Muslim mosque, on the photos of mid-XIX.
In Athenes, absent on the known Italian map of XVI, where the Pompeii and Herculanum are still normal existing towns.

Or Aachen, the "Carl The Great"'s imperial capital, lacking any traces of the palaces and temples, described in the chronicles, but having a 30-m-diameter Cathedral, while even much smaller cupola at the same places had appeared two centuries later.

Or the "viking epoch", with its Skuldelev-like drakkars, whose cargo capacity barely allows the crew even to bring a week supplies, let alone some prize on the way back, but with Odin, bringing the divine runes looking exactly the like Rhaetic one (kind of Latin).
So, who were those "vikings", what was their actual aim, who knows... But they look very similar to their counterparts in Asia.
The only clear thing is that "95%" of the Scandinavians weren't "vikings", but peasants, present in the sagas only as "and Hrabanbjorn the Mighty took a rest at the peasant's home aside the road".

Or Guillaume Le B(wordfilter)tard aka William The Conqueror, who was kinda the "legal king" of England, but the first thing he did after returning his legal kingdom, was the devastation of its North, with total massacre and cannibalism.

Or the "Great Plague" of XIV, looking like anything but real plague (i.e. pestis), and spreading exactly like specially trained people were passing from town to town, and  infecting/poisoning the wells with something first attacking the throat and the near-by lymphatic vessels, rather than legs bitten by fleas.
A strange thing, the 160 thousand of dismembered corpses of the "plague victims" buried on the Venice islet in trenches, when the whole Venice could not have comparable population.

Btw, the "ancient" Venice. Several bare rocky flat islets, 2 to 5 km2 in  total, and a mighty wooden fleet? Seriously? Before the "East Roman Empire" had captured it and founded a naval base?

Btw, what "fleet" and what "knights" before the XIV industrial revolution allowed to create the first steel saws and build a mechanical sawmill, allowing to produce thing and straight wooden planks to build anything but a Skuldelev-like boat, and make steel wire rather than thick and fragile raw iron sticks?

Any "trireme", "bireme", "quinquireme", or "Phoenician ship" ever found except on the schematic medal stamps?
(Btw, probably the "Phoenicans" had cut the last trees in the endless Lebanese taiga to build a ship, which takes up to several hundreds of the trees).

Crusades of the XIII, before any fleet and knights could exist, and while the Venice with Enrico Dandolo could be just a grim monastery/castle of some onknown but definitely bad purpose and a population of several hundred? (Btw, there is no fresh water source but rain in Venice.)

And "Cathars", "gnostics" and others of that exact time. Were they what is officially described, when the "crusaders" could be only of the same technological epoch as "vikings", with rude tools from raw iron, and could have only wooden boats rather than ships.

Botticelli's painting of pre-1480 and post-1480, lol.
Any traces of crucifixion on the paintings, Sistine Chapel, popes' tombs (including the Vatican Cathedrals), between the Pagan gods and Old Testament before the late XV?

So, the sea dragging looks as realistic as any other study in the ancient history.

Edited by kerbiloid
Link to comment
Share on other sites
DDE

DDE

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

bringing the divine runes looking exactly the like Rhaetic one (kind of Latin)

I don't think it's even that controversial they were loaned from somewhere in the Appenines and adapted for use in rock carving.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
kerbiloid

kerbiloid

Posted
Posted (edited)
4 hours ago, DDE said:

I don't think it's even that controversial they were loaned from somewhere in the Appenines and adapted for use in rock carving.

The Rhaets were populating modern Swiss (the Rhaeto-Roman language is from them) and to the Benelux.

But this doesn't matter. What matters, is that the Roman world was affecting the German peoples so much, that actually had constructed their pre-Christian religion and epic. The sagas unlikely could be written by the farmer Snorri.
This raises a question: were the so-called "vikings" just local robbers on boats, or were they another military order of the medieval Rome, like various "knight orders" of the very same technological culture. And what was their real objective.
If compare the famous Jomsborg, Zaporozhskaya Sech (and various "cossaks", "mongols", "cherkas" in medieval sense, not as modern ethnicities), and descriptions of Valhalla, these man-only organizations look very similar, and all of them match the times and places of mass massacres.

It looks like the real medieval was so unpleasant and inappropriate, that the cartoonish knights and vikings are a placeholder for it.

Let alone the "lazy" Dagoberts 1,2,3,4 and other long-numbered king, looking like placeholders themselves.

Edited by kerbiloid
Link to comment
Share on other sites
magnemoe

magnemoe

Posted
Posted
8 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Not worse than the "ancient" ruins in the MidEast, Greece, America, or Asia, made of bricks, concrete, and cast iron beams, standing for millenia, but suffering from rains, like Machu Pikchu or Ankgor Vat, lol.

Or the "ancient" Babylon and Ninevia, "hidden in the hills" next to Mosul, and never seen by the locals until the Europeans were doing there something with no photographers to make a photo.

Or the "ancient" Egyptian pyramids and colosses, buried under sand right across the road from the big city residentials, happily staying unburied, with stamps of the builders' names on the wet concrete, they are made from, in German, French, etc. With same steel and cast iron rebars.

So, the sea dragging looks as realistic as any other study in the ancient history.

Pyramids was never lost :) Granted smaller ones might be buried. 
Else people build stuff so its an decent chance for finding ruins, best place to look is already old cities. Downside with them is that its an city on top of it. 
So you might find an city location who was dropped and have lots of cool stuff. 

Dredging the sea you will find shipwrecks, its so many thousands of them, you will not find any ufo even if some has crashed, as the oceans are large and you have no idea where to look. 
Well you can look for shipwrecks and be lucky :) But I rater play the lottery here. 
Like the ones claiming to find Amelia Earhart plane from an scan showing an plane, how many thousands planes went down in that area during WW 2? 
Yes odds are much better say 1/300 to be generous.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites
kerbiloid

kerbiloid

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Pyramids was never lost :) Granted smaller ones might be buried. 

The colosses "were", the "Sphynx" "was", the temples "were".

4 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Dredging the sea you will find shipwrecks, its so many thousands of them

And it would be interesting to find at least one real ancient ship, like the "triremes", or "phoenician" ships, as the beginning of the really existed galleys looks strangely misty.

Of course, a sunk Mothership Zeta or Atlantis would be even better.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
magnemoe

magnemoe

Posted
Posted (edited)
21 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

The colosses "were", the "Sphynx" "was", the temples "were".

And it would be interesting to find at least one real ancient ship, like the "triremes", or "phoenician" ships, as the beginning of the really existed galleys looks strangely misty.

Of course, a sunk Mothership Zeta or Atlantis would be even better.

Then you want to search the black sea, as I understand wood at the sea bottom don't decay much because an lack of oxygen but I think this can happen in the Mediterranean  to but then much deeper. 
https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2014/assyria-to-iberia/blog/posts/phoenician-sailing
An trireme would be cool, they made an modern version of one, I saw it randomly in London 30 years ago drinking an beer and watching the Themes, it was an very surreal site. 
But it was lots of guesswork here. Most think the -reme is number of rowers on a  segment as more than 3 ores would be idiotic and even 3 is hard, it works but if one rower drop an oar you have an problem as on the replica this messed up the rowing for the rest so not very damage resistant and the Greece triremes was light build, all points into speed and agility. 
I assume the Romans was stronger build as they was not coastal defense crafts.  

As for the vikings the dragon ships was the warships, think triremes, intercept and attack other warships, for raiding they used cargo ships. On an early viking raid you are very unlikely to run into anything at sea who is dangerous.
That if you are an viking raiding party :) 

Edited by magnemoe
Link to comment
Share on other sites
JoeSchmuckatelli

JoeSchmuckatelli

Posted
  • Author
Posted
10 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Romans was stronger build

The story of the Roman navy is interesting - they copied Carthaginian designs (their primary competitor) and improved on them. 

Kinda like SX - copy, innovate, fail, improve - - repeat.  The Early Romans were really good at copying and learning from other people while improving on their designs which ultimately led to them being the most dynamic civilization in the Mediterranean. 

OfC - after a few hundred years they became complacent and decadent getting replaced in turn - but that is the human story 

Edit - there is a whole lot of 'bad things happen when you base your economy on slavery' (as the South learned) - but that is something nation after nation struggled with until relatively recently 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
kerbiloid

kerbiloid

Posted
Posted (edited)
On 6/14/2024 at 7:35 PM, magnemoe said:

An trireme would be cool, they made an modern version of one, I saw it randomly in London 30 years ago drinking an beer and watching the Themes, it was an very surreal site. 

Olympias.
With a steel cable, keeping it from falling apart, as "they didn't find a natural rope".

The poor things are trying to not hook each other.

Spoiler

 

Happily, there was no storm, with pits and hills in water, which they would be blindly scratching.

~100 oarsmen, 300 triremes in Athenes. I.e. kinda 30 000 professional oarsmen in a city of natural agriculture epoch...

On 6/14/2024 at 7:35 PM, magnemoe said:

Most think the -reme is number of rowers on a  segment as more than 3 ores would be idiotic and even 3 is hard, it works but if one rower drop an oar you have an problem as on the replica this messed up the rowing for the rest so not very damage resistant and the Greece triremes was light build, all points into speed and agility. 

The only available info about the 3remes:

Spoiler

ships-as-galleys-or-trireme-on-ancient-g

No descriptions, no artifacts. Just 2..3 scratches against a schematic human head on some coin/medal.

True Ancient Kerbal history.

On 6/14/2024 at 7:35 PM, magnemoe said:

As for the vikings the dragon ships was the warships, think triremes, intercept and attack other warships, for raiding they used cargo ships.

You need ~40 people:

  • to withstand a horse ram (six in a dense raw make the horse stop with their mass, as it's proven by the reconstructors);
  • make a 3-level wall of shield (kneeled, standing, holding above);
  • rotate the fighters in a compact formation, having a half at the perimeter, and a half resting inside (diameter = 6 men, area = pi * 62 / 4 = 28 men2, perimeter  = 6 * pi = 19 men)

As we can see, the Skuldelev-6 boat for crew of 41 (13 benches x (2 oarsmen + 1 backup in between), 1 on the nose, 1 at the tail) exactly matches the ~40.
It's a full-featured team, able to be a moving stronghold, withstanding the attacks.

The cargo boats from the same Skuldelev are 5..8..10 men, or a halved crew of Skul-6, would be smashed immediately, once they had reached the coast alone.

So, after a sudden storm, as the boats had place only for a week supplies, they didn't have a time to search each other, and any cargo ship would be made to return home as an alternative to an unalnernative death.

Of course, when a whole coastline region was permanently captured, so the storm would just make the cargo ship land at another part of allied territory, the cargo ships would be a thing. But then no need in the drakkars was, just more cargo ships with viking infantry.

And as there was no standard, straight, thin wooden planks before the blast furnaces, due to the absence of thin, flexible steel sheets for a long two-handed saw with bent teeth

Spoiler

prolong-band-saw-blade-life-cutting-stru

which allowed to make first water-powered sawmills and mass-produce the planks, that epoch boats were made of rough, thick, wavy, and heavy hand-made "planks"

Spoiler

2560px-Skuldelev_Viking_ship_at_Vikinges

which were too heavy even to have decks (and an air bubble inside), so according to the Skul-6 description, the cargo capacity minus the armored oarsmen leaves just 10..20 kg of cargo (like a carry-on on a low-coster airline), so just a bag of drink water.

As the sea voyage could not be a youngsters' initiation, there should be a reason for a pack of forty adult men to risk without visible profit.
It looks like the massacre was the aim on its own. But then it looks like the entire viking(ry/ship/dom) was somebody's else mass murder tool, rather than a romantic oversea robbery.
And, say, Jomsborg (especially compared to the Valhalla as a hypothetic description of such order) maybe was a part of this system, belonging to somebody else.

Odin is described by "Snorri Sturluson" as a brave and smart man, making various mostly cruel things before becoming a god.
His divine initiation included the runes adoption from the unnamed divine entity after the treehanging.
The runes are definitely Roman, the settled agriculture was adopted by the Germans from the Romans (same Rhaets?), so we can see that unlikely the classic Odin et. al. could be native German gods, more likely that they were invented for them by the Romans.
And we unlikely can know what were the native gods of the illiterate German peasants, rather than the of the German aristocracy, as the runes (and thus the writing) belongs to the Odin believers, i.e. to the (Romanized) German aristocracy.
It all looks like a Roman project of the North Europe colonization by hands of local pagan savages, with the "vikings" as a men-only murderer order, and the well-written sagas, written by the experienced Roman poets, rather than by the farmer Snorri between farming, trading, and re-marrying, and his drunken co-villagers.

And the same to the East, in the steppe from Dnepr to Altay, with Zaporozhskaya Sech as one of its degraded remains.
All such orders look similar.

Interesting fact the wet and warm British forests are rich of mushrooms.
And what's about the Russian and English names for the mushrooms?

Spoiler

275px-(Gemeine_Steinpilz)_Boletus_edulis
Белый гриб, боровик
Boletus edulis

265px-Leccinum_scabrum_LC0108.jpg
Подберёзовик
Boletus (scaber)

265px-Leccinum_versipelle_3.jpg
Подосиновик
Boletus, Leccinum

200px-Lactarius_resimus_13072366.jpg
Груздь
Lactarius resimus

275px-Chanterelle_Cantharellus_cibarius.
Лисичка
Cantharellus cibarius

120px-Armillaria_mellea_031005w.jpg
Опёнок
Honey agaric

120px-Amanita_muscaria_(round_cap).jpg
Мухомор
Amanita

120px-Russula_Aurea.JPG
Сыроежка
Russula

275px-2005-09_Amanita_phalloides_crop.jp
Бледная поганка
Amanita phalloides

275px-Smardz-Morchella-Ejdzej-2006.jpg
Сморчок
Morchella

275px-Gyromitra_esculenta.jpg
Строчок
Gyromitra

275px-Inonotus_obliquus.jpg
Чага
Inonotus Obliquus

and a hundred of others.

Except the amanitas, all of these are edible or conditionally edible.
(The red amanita is conditionally edible, the Amanita phalloides is absolutely deadly, the Morchella and Gyromitra are seasonally edible, seasonally deadly).

So, the Slavs are forest endemics, and expectably they have personal names for a hundred of mushroom species, edible and not.
The mushroom gathering is a native, famous, commendable occupation for the Slavs, regardless of wealth, like hunting or fishing.
The English language doesn't have any personal names for the local British mushrooms, and afair, the only edible mushroom for the British is farmed Chamignon (based on its name, not native).
This raises a question, how could it happen that the British forest dwellers ignore such significant source of food as local mushrooms.
Are they indeed British endemics, or populated the islands not too long ago, already having enough developed farming to ignore the mushroom gathering.
And afair, other Germans are like the English, too, the wild mushroom ignorers.
As the Germans ancested their settled farming from the Romans, maybe it's because the Romans had no idea of the suspicious North European mushrooms, and there was not so much pre-German survivors to inform the German invaders about the local nature.

Had looked for the Celtic languages in wiki.
It looks like the character combinations looking like words are non-Latin names for the mushrooms (but idk, maybe it's just "a small brownish mushroom we don't know", so not sure).
So, presumably the Celts were aware of the British mushrooms enough well, and only the German/Roman invasion made them nameless.

And what is the word "German"? It's not German, no German tribe was calling themselves Germans.
At the same time "Germanus" in Latin is something like "descendant" or "brotherly".
Isn't it a Latin nickname for the possessed part of the "German" tribal aristocracy, doing then dirty work for them?

What is "Franc"? It's a Latin for "free", "feral". But why would some Germans call themselves with Latin word? And this part of them was in complicated relations with Rome. Isn't it a Latin nickname for the out-of-control "Germanus'es", "Feral Ghouls Germans"

And together with the "vikings", "Devastation of North", and "crusades", it raises a question: when in fact all that butchery was happening, and what part of it is historical, while another is a pure fantasy.


Otto The Great, the first Holy Roman Emperor and his predecessor Henry the Fowler.
Their wiki biographies are like novels, almost when had a breakfast, when visited bathroom.
What do we know about their origin? "Looks like a Duke of Saxony, but maybe not, who cares now?"
Such predictable lack of details before and such overinfo then looks like a pure belletristics.


The origin of the galleys is dark, but probably some oarships of medieval.
But at the same time so excited singing of the triremes, which nobody nowhere had a chance to see.
Very expectable, if the real ships could appear not earlier than in mid-XIV (the first known sawmill), after the centuries of the rough deckless drakkar-like boats.

Btw, the trireme.
Up to 50 m long, when the bows can aim at 30 m, the catapults almost so (a 200 m modern 'pulting was a joy), so any combat between them would make both ships burn and sink.
And even more funny are the descriptions of the triremes, bombing a coast fortress with catapults. Across a hundreed meter band of reefs and currents, jumping on waves, with limited amount of stones, from beneath to the city walls on the coastal rock.
While the technological revolution of XIV provides at once steel for the knight plate armor, cast iron for the cannons and cannonballs, steel for the saws thus planks thus multi-deck sailships and galleys with cannons (200 m range for the buckshot, 500..600 m for the cannonballs, enough for sea combat and the coast bombing).

It makes the triremes pure fantasy (or tournament ships), and everything relating to them.


Early XVI.
The (Catholic) Rome is burnt and devastated by the (Catholic) Carl V of Spain.
Palaces, cathedrals, churches, everything had gone.
But - a miracle! - everything except the main cathedrals, just rebuilt by the famous Michelangelo, Raphael, etc.
What a strange thing: such famous artists, they could draw a cathedral with closed eyes with one hand behind back.
But no drawing of what these cathedrals were looking like before the rebuilding.
A strange thing: the spiritual art and cathedral decorations of that epoch are full of "Anticity" gods, Old Testament, and Godmother with Son, but lack Christian symbols.
And at the same time somebody was building gargoyles and sheela-na-gig around.
Isn't that the reason of no drawings of the pre-rebuilt Cathedrals? Were the pre-XVI Christians having same understanding of the "Christian"?
The Gnosticism also has a Godmother (Sofia) and Son (in Semithic - Messiah, in Greek - Christ), and the gnostic Cathars were close to that epoch and looking enough significant for some crusades.
Btw, exactly that time the Bible reading, owning, and reproducing were prohibited on pain of death.


 

On 6/15/2024 at 5:51 AM, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

The story of the Roman navy is interesting - they copied Carthaginian designs

And the Carthago was officially "delenda est", plooughed, and salted.
And a century later the Romans forgot about it, and built a colony on the land they salted to let nothing grow.
But then the Roman colony was devastated, the stones reused by the barbarians.
But then the barbarian colony was devastaed, the stones reused by the Muslims.
But the the Muslim village was not once devastated, and to the known time the only source where we know about the  Carthago is the "Ancient" Roman belletristics and Salammbo novel, lol.

Edited by kerbiloid
Link to comment
Share on other sites
JoeSchmuckatelli

JoeSchmuckatelli

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Evolution May Be Purposeful And It’s Freaking Scientists Out

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andreamorris/2024/06/14/evolution-may-be-purposeful-and-its-freaking-scientists-out/

I'm finding this line of inquiry very interesting.  If you recall the 'Selfish Gene' line of thinking - where everything in biology is determined by DNA (predestined, if you will)... This is *sort of* the opposite. 

The 'standard model' is that DNA is determinative and that the germ ( reproductive cells) is isolated from the rest of the organism, such that over time (millions of generations) variations in the combination of germs from the successful individuals drives the evolution of the species - regardless of events within the individual's experience / lifetime.  It's a very binary theory - successful individuals survive to procreate, failures die, and the successful genome (established before birth) is passed on (in combination with another successful individual) to succeeding generations.   This is the standard view of evolution. 

Iconoclasts are making waves. 

They start with the notion that the germ isn't isolated from entity and that experience within the lifetime of the organism can rewrite portions the germ DNA. This makes sense to me - especially in light of research I read decades ago regarding heritability of stress response: parent generation experiencing great stress can pass on heightened stress response to the next generation. 

Serious consternation is ensuing - as is publication & counterpublication. 

MIT just published some of this for anyone willing to shell out the $75.

Anyway - interesting developments in biology afoot 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...