“Some Assembly Required” is great.
No one is claiming that this is the work of an extraterrestrial civilization, but it is certainly worth further study. Working out the strength of the signal, the researchers say that if it came from an isotropic beacon, it would be of a power possible only for a Kardashev Type II civilization. If it were a narrow beam signal focused on our Solar System, it would be of a power available to a Kardashev Type I civilization. The possibility of noise of one form or another cannot be ruled out, and researchers in Paris led by Jean Schneider are considering the possible microlensing of a background source by HD164595. But the signal is provocative enough that the RATAN-600 researchers are calling for permanent monitoring of this target.
Scientists have reconstructed the genome of Justinian’s plague, which hit the world 1500 years ago. They confirmed that the disease was in fact what we today call plague (the bacteria Yersinia pestis.) It’s the same bacteria - but not the same strain - that caused the Black Death in the Middle Ages.
This is a big deal for disease historians. People have long assumed modern plague, the Black Death, and Justinian’s Plague were all the same bacteria, but it wasn’t until 2011 that it was proved for the Black Death.
It’s also a big deal for regular historians, since confirming Justinian’s Plague was in fact something as serious as Black Death supports the contention that disease was a substantive factor behind the decline of the Roman Empire.
Scientists were able to get samples of the bacterial DNA from skeletons in a cemetery in Germany.
Anyone remember the crazy EmDrive? The seemingly magical engine that people said violated the laws of thermodynamics, but which kept being successfully tested by multiple groups?
It seems the paper on the testing, or together by the eagle works group at NASA has passed peer review.
Here is a good piece from the MIT technology review about a possible explanation of how it works.
Because that’s what makes this weird. All empirical evidence suggests that it DOES in fact work, but no one, including the creator, understands exactly why. This guy offers an explanation that says inertia changes are quantized at small accelerations.
Holy crap - aliens and a way to get there in consecutive posts!
I expect the EM Drive patent will be bought up and buried by ExxonMobil any day now.
From the article, the inventor claims it’s easy to understand:
Also he plans to make a prototype with 1 ton of thrust:
I can’t figure out whether this guy is a crank or I am living in the background chapter of a space opera.
So this guy’s name is Zephram Cochrane, right?
I’m hoping for the space opera scenario because it’s freaking awesome.
I posted about the MIT article back in April.
I’m still of the opinion that it’s probably nothing. It’s too much like moving a car by shooting ping pong balls at the windshield with a leaf blower from the back seat.
It would be cool if it’s a thing, though.
While it was kind of assumed he was a crank, all experimental evidence by multiple different groups suggests that he is not.
Yeah, but as far as I’ve seen, he has never actually explained it. No one knows where exactly the inertia change is coming from. That’s what made folks not believe him, because he never really explained a mechanism by which it functioned… merely that it DID function.
It’s really interesting, but it also demonstrates that we kind of fundamentally don’t grasp some core aspect of how the universe works. The notion of quantitized inertia is interesting though.
I’m being 100% serious, the working theory is that it’s pushing off the quantum foam. Virtual particle/anti-particle pairs that spontaneously appear and annihilate constantly. Somehow this device is able to push off them in a controlled manner in the short time they exist in our universe.
So, basically zero-point energy, right?
That’s not the one I’ve heard at all, unless that’s a rephrasing of the Unruh effect explanation from the MIT article.
From wikipedia:
The free field needs to be decomposed into positive and negative frequency components before defining the creation and annihilation operators. This can only be done in spacetimes with a timelike Killing vector field.
I think it’s the same thing, or related? Honestly this article is written way above my Watched A Lot Of Science Channel tier.
Here’s the article on Quantum Foam with is more at my 12th grade reading level
I suppose so. Like my April post said, I get lost pretty early in the ‘quantized inertia’ explanation. :P
Ars on same:
This technically didn’t happen in space, but…
Hey that’s another reason to invest in EM Drive, when it fails nothing blows up!
Well, if we don’t know how it works, then maybe when it fails it rips a hole in space time and swallows the planet. Or nothing.