Are warp bubbles a real thing now?
Djscman
1949
Now we need to work on our shrink ray technology to fit inside the micron-sized warp bubbles.
jpinard
1950
This is wonderful. Didn’t even know this was going on here. Will have to check out the trees next time I’m in the Ludington area.
Houngan
1951
I’m all for reforestation but I’m pretty sure the math doesn’t work out. While sequoias are massive trees, it takes them centuries to get there, and their annual shedding of material is gobbled up by bacteria and fungi, producing CO2. Seems a far better solution would be something like bamboo, extremely fast growing, and then cut it down and use carbon sequestration techniques to put that carbon back into the soil rather than the air.
jpinard
1952
Good idea. As for the sequoia option, I would be all for gene editing some fast growing bamboo genes into it.
Houngan
1953
Now we’re talking! Gimme some super cheap hardwood that grows like bamboo, we can grow it, process it, and build with it, effectively trapping at least a bunch of the carbon it sucked out of the air to grow.
jpinard
1954
God what a dream that would be.
schurem
1957
Germanium and Gallium have been used in cutting edge radar system for some time now. Cool to see this technology is coming to our desks as well :)
Timex
1959
While sitting here full of roasted chicken that I posted about in the cooking thread, I was thinking about a cool book I read a while back.
David Bring wrote an awesome series called “Uplift”, and the first book is kind of like the Hobbit is to LOTR. If sets up the universe and gives you an idea of how things work. It was called 'Sundiver".
The name is the book is also the name of a ship that humans build, that is designed to travel into the sun’s photosphere.
In order to deal with the thermodynamic issues of such a trip, the ship employs a novel cooling system. It has a huge laser mounted on it, which can fire into the sun. Since the heat of the laser is actually hotter than the surface of the sun, it can actually transfer every l thermal energy to the sun, and functions as something of a heat pump.
Now, in practice, this seems like it would have had issues that prevent it from working, mainly revolving around waste heat from refrigeration systems and stuff.
However, I started looking around, and apparently a few years ago some scientists discovered a way to use specialized layers of semiconductors to create a laser which is powered by heat directly, and could potentially provide some novel cooling.
Hotblack Desiato has entered the chat
I am really surprised at how sensitive this technique is.
I gotta believe someone has already nicknamed it flubber.
jpinard
1964
This is great, but I’m a bit concerned with using pure clones, as cloned animals like sheep don’t last as long as those who reproduce through traditional fertilization.
MikeJ
1965
The doesn’t seem to be clear consensus on that. E.g. [FDA page](Myths about Cloning | FDA
A study on Dolly (the famous sheep clone) showed that her telomeres were the shorter length of her (older) donor, even though Dolly was much younger. Studies of other clones have shown that telomeres in clones are shorter in some tissues in the body, and are age-appropriate in other tissues. Still other studies of clones show that telomeres are age-appropriate in all of the tissues. Despite the length of telomeres reported in different studies, most clones appear to be aging normally. In fact, the first cattle clones ever produced are alive, healthy, and are 10 years old as of January 2008.
Houngan
1966
Telomere shortening shouldn’t really be an issue unless it’s a stacking effect, if you can crank out pigs and harvest parts at presumably 2 years or whatever, then a bit shorter telomere is the least of your worries, considering what you’re fixing. If Gen 3 is shorter than Gen 2 and Gen 4 shorter still, then yeah eventually it would be a thing.
