Tag: science fiction (page 2 of 2)

Fuel from thin air? Graphene breakthrough may lead to green car revolution

December 10, 2014 / / 0 Comments




Excerpt from rt.com

Scientists believe they can use the same material found in pencil lead to revolutionize the green car industry. They discovered that graphene may serve as a fuel cell membrane and even allow the harvesting of hydrogen from air.

The reason the researchers at the University of Manchester got so excited is that the fuel cells generate electricity from hydrogen. Graphene is known for its barrier qualities, and does not allow any other gases, including hydrogen itself, or liquids to pass through it, which is crucial for the fuel cell technology. 

An even more exciting development is the possibility of ‘sieving’ hydrogen from the air in future and using it to react with oxygen in a fuel cell, which could then produce electricity and water without leaving a carbon footprint. 

“Essentially you pump your fuel from the atmosphere and get electricity out of this fuel, in principle. Before this paper, this wouldn’t even be speculation; it would be science fiction. At least our paper provides a guidance and proof that this kind of device is possible and doesn’t contradict to any known laws of nature,” Professor Andre Geim of Manchester University, who leads the study, said as cited by the Independent. 

“We are very excited about this result because it opens a whole new area of promising applications for graphene in clean energy harvesting and hydrogen-based technologies,” said Marcelo Lozada-Hidalgo, co-researcher on the study. 

The research has been published in the latest issue of Nature.

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Top 10 Ridiculously Common Science Myths

November 30, 2014 / / 0 Comments






listverse.com
There is nothing better than a bit of mythbusting (which accounts for the popularity of the television program of the same name), so here we are again, presenting you with a new list of terribly common misconceptions and myths – this time about science.

10
Evolutionary Improvements
Evolution Std.Jpg
The Myth: Evolution causes something to go from “lower” to “higher”
While it is a fact that natural selection weeds out unhealthy genes from the gene pool, there are many cases where an imperfect organism has survived. Some examples of this are fungi, sharks, crayfish, and mosses – these have all remained essentially the same over a great period of time. These organisms are all sufficiently adapted to their environment to survive without improvement.
Other taxa have changed a lot, but not necessarily for the better. Some creatures have had their environments changed and their adaptations may not be as well suited to their new situation. Fitness is linked to their environment, not to progress.

9
Humans Pop In Space
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The Myth: When exposed to the vacuum of space, the human body pops
This myth is the result of science fiction movies which use it to add excitement or drama to the plot. In fact, a human can survive for 15 – 30 seconds in outer space as long as they breathe out before the exposure (this prevents the lungs from bursting and sending air into the bloodstream). After 15 or so seconds, the lack of oxygen causes unconsciousness which eventually leads to death by asphyxiation.
8
Brightest Star
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The Myth: Polaris is the brightest star in the northern hemisphere night sky
Sirius is actually brighter with a magnitude of ?1.47 compared to Polaris’ 1.97 (the lower the number the brighter the star). The importance of Polaris is that its position in the sky marks North – and for that reason it is also called the “North Star”. Polaris is the brightest star in the constellation Ursa Minor and, interestingly, is only the current North Star as pole stars change over time because stars exhibit a slow continuous drift with respect to the Earth’s axis.
7
Five Second Rule
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The Myth: Food that drops on the floor is safe to eat if you pick it up within five seconds
This is utter bunkum which should be obvious to most readers. If there are germs on the floor and the food lands on them, they will immediately stick to the food. Having said that, eating germs and dirt is not always a bad thing as it helps us to develop a robust immune system. I prefer to have a “how-tasty-is-it” rule: if it is something really tasty, it can sit there for ten minutes for all I care – I will still eat it.
6
Dark side of the Moon
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The Myth: There is a dark side of the moon
Actually – every part of the moon is illuminated at sometime by the sun. This misconception has come about because there is a side of the moon which is never visible to the earth. This is due to tidal locking; this is due to the fact that Earth’s gravitational pull on the moon is so immense that it can only show one face to us. Wikipedia puts it rather smartly thus: “Tidal locking occurs when the gravitational gradient makes one side of an astronomical body always face another; for example, one side of the Earth’s Moon always faces the Earth. A tidally locked body takes just as long to rotate around its own axis as it does to revolve around its partner. This synchronous rotation causes one hemisphere constantly to face the partner body.”


5
Brain Cells
Brain Cell.Jpg
The Myth: Brain cells can’t regenerate – if you kill a brain cell, it is never replaced
The reason for this myth being so common is that it was believed and taught by the science community for a very long time. But in 1998, scientists at the Sweden and the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California discovered that brain cells in mature humans can regenerate. It had previously been long believed that complex brains would be severely disrupted by new cell growth, but the study found that the memory and learning center of the brain can create new cells – giving hope for an eventual cure for illnesses like Alzheimer’s.
4
Pennies from Heaven
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The Myth: A penny dropped from a very high building can kill a pedestrian below
This myth is so common it has even become a bit of a cliche in movies. The idea is that if you drop a penny from the top of a tall building (such as the Empire State Building) – it will pick up enough speed to kill a person if it lands on them on the ground. But the fact is, the aerodynamics of a penny are not sufficient to make it dangerous. What would happen in reality is that the person who gets hit would feel a sting – but they would certainly survive the impact.
3
Friction Heat
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The Myth: Meteors are heated by friction when entering the atmosphere
When a meteoroid enters the atmosphere of the earth (becoming a meteor), it is actually the speed compressing the air in front of the object that causes it to heat up. It is the pressure on the air that generates a heat intense enough to make the rock so hot that is glows brilliantly for our viewing pleasure (if we are lucky enough to be looking in the sky at the right time). We should also dispel the myth about meteors being hot when they hit the earth – becoming meteorites. Meteorites are almost always cold when they hit – and in fact they are often found covered in frost. This is because they are so cold from their journey through space that the entry heat is not sufficient to do more than burn off the outer layers.
2
Lightning
Lightning.Jpg
The Myth: Lightning never strikes the same place twice
Next time you see lightning strike and you consider running to the spot to protect yourself from the next bolt, remember this item! Lightning does strike the same place twice – in fact it is very common. Lightning obviously favors certain areas such as high trees or buildings. In a large field, the tallest object is likely to be struck multiple times until the lightning moves sufficiently far away to find a new target. The Empire State Building gets struck around 25 times a year.
1
Gravity in Space
Astronaut Banjo.Jpg
The Myth: There is no gravity in space
In fact, there is gravity in space – a lot of it. The reason that astronauts appear to be weightless because they are orbiting the earth. They are falling towards the earth but moving sufficiently sideways to miss it. So they are basically always falling but never landing. Gravity exists in virtually all areas of space. When a shuttle reaches orbit height (around 250 miles above the earth), gravity is reduced by only 10%.
Inspired by an excellent LiveScience Article. This article is licensed under the GFDL because it contains quotations from Wikipedia.

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Is wormhole travel possible?

November 26, 2014 / / 0 Comments




Excerpt from
foxnews.com


Wormholes are theoretical tunnels through the fabric of space-time that could potentially allow rapid travel between widely separated points — from one galaxy to another, for example, as depicted in Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar," which opened in theaters around the world earlier this month.

While wormholes are possible according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, such exotic voyages will likely remain in the realm of science fiction, said renowned astrophysicist Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who served as an adviser and executive producer on "Interstellar." 

"The jury is not in, so we just don't know," Thorne, one of the world's leading authorities on relativity, black holes and wormholes, told Space.com. "But there are very strong indications that wormholes that a human could travel through are forbidden by the laws of physics. That's sad, that's unfortunate, but that's the direction in which things are pointing."

The major barrier has to do with a wormhole's instability, he said.
"Wormholes — if you don't have something threading through them to hold them open — the walls will basically collapse so fast that nothing can go through them," Thorne said.

Holding wormholes open would require the insertion of something that anti-gravitates — namely, negative energy. Negative energy has been created in the lab via quantum effects, Thorne said: One region of space borrows energy from another region that didn't have any to begin with, creating a deficit.

"So it does happen in physics," he said. "But we have very strong, but not firm, indications that you can never get enough negative energy that repels and keeps the wormhole's walls open; you can never get enough to do that."

Furthermore, traversable wormholes — if they can exist at all — almost certainly cannot occur naturally, Thorne added. That is, they must be created by an advanced civilization.

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You’re flying with NASA and you don’t even know it

November 26, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Excerpt from cnn.comBy Thom Patterson You know those little "winglets" that point up from the tips of airliner wings? Those were developed by NASA. And, you know those little grooves in runways that channel away standing water?NASA again.America's spac...

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Space Station’s ’42’ Crew Takes a Page from ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’

September 27, 2014 / / 0 Comments



Image: Expedition 42 poster
The official crew poster for the International Space Station's 42nd expedition parodies "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." NASA astronaut Terry Virts and Russia's Anton Shkaplerov portray the two-headed Zaphod Beeblebrox, Russia's Alexander Samokutyaev is Humma Kavula, NASA's Butch Wilmore is Arthur Dent, Russia's Elena Serova is Ford Prefect and Italy's Samantha Cristoforetti is Trillian. NASA's Robonaut 2 guest-stars as Marvin the Paranoid Android.

Robert Pearlman, CollectSpace.com 

What do astronauts and cosmonauts, a towel and a paranoid android have in common? The answer is 42. 

The International Space Station's Expedition 42 crew members, who are due to assemble aboard the orbiting laboratory in November, have embraced the connection between their numerical designation and "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," the Douglas Adams sci-fi franchise, by adopting its imagery and slogans for their official poster and unofficial patch.
"I was super excited when I was assigned to an [space station] expedition, mostly because I was assigned to an ISS expedition, of course, but part of the excitement was that it was 42," Samantha Cristoforetti, an Italian astronaut representing the European Space Agency, said in a recent press briefing. "I am a big science fiction fan, and one of the things I really love is this 'trilogy in five parts' that some of you might know." 

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is the first of five comedic science fiction books penned by Adams, as well as the title of the book within the novels. The story follows Arthur Dent as he narrowly escapes the destruction of the Earth and, with his friend Ford Prefect, explores the galaxy in search of a decent cup of tea and the meaning of everything. 

"In this book, it is kind of funny, but '42' is the 'answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything,'" Cristoforetti said. "Now, nobody knows what the question is, but 42 is the answer."
Following a trend that began during the now-retired shuttle program, the Expedition 42 crew — Cristoforetti, together with commander Butch Wilmore and flight engineers Terry Virts, Alexander Samokutyayev, Elena Serova and Anton Shkaplerov — selected a movie poster to parody for their official crew poster.

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BBC: Churchill ordered UFO cover-up, National Archives show

September 23, 2014 / / 0 Comments


Winston Churchill

bbc.com/news/uk


The government took the threat of UFOs so seriously in the 1950s that UK intelligence chiefs met to discuss the issue, newly-released files show.
Ministers even went on to commission weekly reports on UFO sightings from a committee of intelligence experts.
The papers also include a wartime account claiming prime minister Winston Churchill ordered a UFO sighting be kept secret to prevent "mass panic".
Drawing of UFO sighting
 Spotters often drew what they saw and sent pictures to the MoD

The files show reports of UFOs peaked in 1996 - when The X Files was popular.
The Joint Intelligence Committee is better known for providing briefings to the government on matters relating to security, defence and foreign affairs.
But the latest batch of UFO files released from the Ministry of Defence to the National Archives shows that, in 1957, the committee received reports detailing an average of one UFO sighting a week.
The files also include an account of a wartime meeting attended by Winston Churchill in which, it is claimed, the prime minister was so concerned about a reported encounter between a UFO and RAF bombers, that he ordered it be kept secret for at least 50 years to prevent "mass panic".
X Files
Nick Pope, who used to investigate UFO sightings for the MoD, said: "The interesting thing is that most of the UFO files from that period have been destroyed.
"But what happened is that a scientist whose grandfather was one of his [Churchill's] bodyguards, said look, Churchill and Eisenhower got together to cover up this phenomenal UFO sighting, that was witnessed by an RAF crew on their way back from a bombing raid.
"The reason apparently was because Churchill believed it would cause mass panic and it would shatter people's religious views."
Reports of sightings of UFOs peaked in 1996 in the UK - when science fiction drama The X Files was popular.
According to the files, there were more than 600 reports in 1996, compared with an average of 240 in the previous five years.

“Start Quote

UFOs have become the third-most popular subject for people to write to the ministry of defence saying please could you release this file”
Dr David Clarke National Archives UFO consultant

The figures for 1996 show 609 reported sightings of unidentified flying objects, 343 letters from the public to the MoD's UFO desk and 22 enquiries and questions from MPs.
But by 2009, the MoD's UFO inquiry desk -Sec(AS)2 - had been closed down.
The 18 files released on Thursday are the latest to come out as part of a three-year project between the MoD and the National Archives.
Dr David Clarke, a UFO consultant to the National Archives, explained why the papers are being made public now.
Dr Clarke told the BBC: "Since the Freedom of Information Act arrived in 2005, this subject - UFOs - have become the third-most popular subject for people to write to the Ministry of Defence saying 'please could you release this file, or papers that you hold on this particular case'.
"What they've decided to do is to be totally open and to say, 'look we're not holding any secrets back about this subject we've got all these files and we're going to make them available to the public'."
One includes details on "aerial phenomena" prepared for a meeting of the Cabinet Office's Joint Intelligence Committee in April 1957.
According to a note included in the Red Book, the weekly intelligence survey, four incidents involving UFOs tracked by RAF radars were "unexplained".
'Spaceman' The documents also include reports of a famous incident dubbed the "Welsh Roswell" in 1974, where members of the public reported seeing lights in the sky and feeling a tremor in the ground.
Other cases included in the files are:

  • A near-miss with an "unidentified object" reported by the captain and first officer of a 737 plane approaching Manchester Airport in 1995.
  • A mountain rescue team called to investigate a "crashed UFO" in the Berwyn Mountains in Wales in 1974.
  • Attempted break-ins at RAF Rudloe Manor in Wiltshire - sometimes referred to as Britain's "Area 51" - the US's secretive desert military base.
  • The Western Isles incident, when a loud explosion was reported in the sky over the Atlantic in the Outer Hebrides.
  • The 14-minutes of "missing" film relating to the Blue Streak missile test launch in 1964, believed by some to show a "spaceman".
  • A gambler from Leeds who held a 100-1 bet on alien life being discovered before the end of the 20th Century, and who approached the government for evidence to support his claim after the bookmakers refused to pay out. The MoD said it was open-minded about extra-terrestrial life but had no evidence of its existence.
The files come from more than 5,000 pages of UFO reports and letters and drawings from members of the public, as well as questions raised by MPs in Parliament.

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NASA Discovers Hidden Portals In Earth’s Magnetic Field

September 15, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Our planet has come a long way in scientific breakthroughs and discoveries. Mainstream science is beginning to discover new concepts of reality that have the potential to change our perception about our planet and the extraterrestrial environment that surrounds it forever. Star gates, wormholes, and portals have been the subject of conspiracy theories and theoretical physics for decades, but that is all coming to an end as we continue to grow in our understanding about the t [...]

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Roswell… the series

February 7, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Roswell… the series We’ve come a long way since the Roswell crash and years later the star charts from Betty and Barney Hill. The UFO experience has transformed through several iterations and manifestations that have produced books and even events of both short and long-term survival. Still, the obsession of ufologists to get to the […]

The post Roswell… the series appeared first on UFOlogy PRSS Blog.

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Aghartha In The Hollow Earth!

May 20, 2011 / / 0 Comments

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The Inner Earth & Realm of Aghartha

Aghartha In The Hollow Earth!

By Dr Joshua David Stone

The biggest cover-up of all time is the fact that there is a civilization of people living in the center of Earth, whose c...

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Project Blue Beam

March 13, 2011 / / 0 Comments

By Serge Monast
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/projectbluebeam25jul05.shtml
Originally Published 1994

[Note: Serge Monast [1945 – December 5, 1996] and another journalist, both of whom were researching Project Blue Beam, died of “heart attacks” within weeks of each other although neither had a history of heart disease. Serge was in Canada. The other Canadian journalist was visiting Ireland. Prior to his death, the Canadian government abducted Serge’s daughter in an attempt to dissuade him from pursuing his research into Project Blue Beam. His daughter was never returned. Pseudo-heart attacks are one of the alleged methods of death induced by Project Blue Beam.]

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Seth Speaks Newsletter – Vol. XXIII

August 4, 2006 / / 0 Comments

Seth Speaks Newsletter

Volume XXIII

Riverbeing 1 by Tracy Marshall

 

In This Abreviated Blog Issue XXIII:

September 11th Foretold by Susan M. Watkins

Seth – “An Integral Conscious Creation Myth” Part 12 of 15 by Paul Helfrich

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Message from Ag-agria – 21 July 06

July 22, 2006 / / 0 Comments



Ag-agria  21-July-06

 

Have you ever wondered who or what you really are, because it must have occurred to you that you are not your body? You have taken different incarnations as either a male or female, and what would be the point of it all unless there was some value or gain in it for you.

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