Author Topic: Cool Techie Geeky Stuff...  (Read 7849 times)

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Chiprocks1

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Re: Cool Techie Geeky Stuff...
« Reply #15 on: November 16, 2011, 07:59:24 am »
Stuff like this is what I like to see. Wait. I said like twice in one sentence. Somethings off.
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Michael Scott To Meredith: "You've slept with so many men, your starting to look like one. BOOM! Roasted! Go here.

Mac

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Re: Cool Techie Geeky Stuff...
« Reply #16 on: November 16, 2011, 12:01:19 pm »
O phucking-mazing

Earth HD| Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS

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Mac

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Re: Cool Techie Geeky Stuff...
« Reply #17 on: December 01, 2011, 06:17:46 am »
Ride the U2 @ 70K feet


Quote
You can see why the U-2 is considered the most difficult plane in the world to fly. Each pilot has a  co-pilot, who chases the plane on the runway in a sports car. Most of the cars are either Pontiac GTOs or Chevrolet Camaro the Air Force buys American.  The chase cars talk the pilot down as he lands on bicycle-style landing gear.
 
In that spacesuit, the pilot in the plane simply cannot get a good view of the runway.
 
Upon takeoff, the wings on this plane, which extend 103 feet from tip to tip, literally flap.
 
To stabilize the  wings on the runway, two pogo sticks on wheels prop up the ends of the wings.
 
As the plane flies away, the pogo sticks drop off.
 
The plane climbs at an initial climb rate of nearly 15,000 feet a minute.

We kept going up to 13 miles above Earth's surface.
 
You get an incredible sensation up there. As you look out the windows,
it feels like you're floating, it feels like you're not moving, but you're actually going 500 mph..
 
The U-2 was built to go higher than any other aircraft In fact today, more than 50 years since it went into production, the U-2 flies higher than any aircraft in the world with the exception of the space shuttle.
 
It is flying more missions and longer missions than ever before,         
nearly 70 missions a month over Iraq and Afghanistan, an operation that is unequaled in history.
 
The pilots fly for 11 hours at a time, sometimes more than 11 hours up there alone.                           .
 
By flying so high, the U-2 has the capability of doing reconnaissance over a country without actually violating its airspace.
 
It can look off to the side, peering 300 miles or more inside a country without actually flying over it.
 
It can "see" in the dark and through clouds.
 
It can also "hear," intercepting conversations 14 miles below.
 
The U-2, an incredible piece of history and also a current piece of high technology, is at the center of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.                                  .
 
Enjoy the ride!

http://www.wimp.com/breathtakingfootage/
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Chiprocks1

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Re: Cool Techie Geeky Stuff...
« Reply #18 on: December 01, 2011, 08:45:19 am »
They got "The Right Stuff".
Chip's Rockin' Art
Michael Scott To Meredith: "You've slept with so many men, your starting to look like one. BOOM! Roasted! Go here.

Mac

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Re: Cool Techie Geeky Stuff...
« Reply #19 on: December 06, 2011, 09:33:38 am »
Another Earth?

This is all very exciting news...
Quote

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.
— NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft has confirmed the discovery of its first alien world in its host star's habitable zone — that just-right range of distances that could allow liquid water to exist — and found more than 1,000 new exoplanet candidates, researchers announced Monday.

The new finds bring the Kepler space telescope's total haul to 2,326 potential planets in its first 16 months of operation. These discoveries, if confirmed, would quadruple the current tally of worlds known to exist beyond our solar system, which recently topped 700.

The potentially habitable alien world, a first for Kepler, orbits a star very much like our own sun. The discovery brings scientists one step closer to finding a planet like our own — one that could conceivably harbor life, scientists said.
 
"We're getting closer and closer to discovering the so-called 'Goldilocks planet,'" Pete Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., said during a news conference on Monday.

Hunting down alien planets
The $600 million Kepler observatory launched in March 2009 to hunt for Earth-size alien planets in the habitable zone of their parent stars, where liquid water, and perhaps even life, might be able to exist.

Kepler detects alien planets using what's called the "transit method." It searches for tiny, telltale dips in a star's brightness caused when a planet transits — or crosses in front of — the star from Earth's perspective, blocking a fraction of the star's light.

The finds graduate from "candidates" to full-fledged planets after follow-up observations confirm that they're not false alarms. This process, which is usually done with large, ground-based telescopes, can take about a year.

The Kepler team released data from its first 13 months of operation back in February, announcing that the instrument had detected 1,235 planet candidates, including 54 in the habitable zone and 68 that are roughly Earth-size.

To date, just over two dozen of these potential exoplanets have been confirmed, but Kepler scientists have estimated that at least 80 percent of the instrument's discoveries should end up being the real deal.

More discoveries to come
The newfound 1,094 planet candidates are the fruit of Kepler's labors during its first 16 months of science work, from May 2009 to September 2010. And they won't be the last of the prolific instrument's discoveries.

"This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth's twin," Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in a statement.

Mission scientists still need to analyze data from the last two years and on into the future. Kepler will be making observations for a while yet to come; its nominal mission is set to end in November 2012, but the Kepler team is preparing a proposal to extend the instrument's operations for another year or more.

Kepler's finds should only get more exciting as time goes on, researchers say.

"We're pushing down to smaller planets and longer orbital periods," said Natalie Batalha, Kepler deputy science team lead at Ames.

To flag a potential planet, the instrument generally needs to witness three transits. Planets that make three transits in just a few months must be pretty close to their parent stars; as a result, many of the alien worlds Kepler spotted early on have been blisteringly hot places that aren't great candidates for harboring life as we know it.

Given more time, however, a wealth of more distantly orbiting — and perhaps more Earthlike — exoplanets should open up to Kepler. If intelligent aliens were studying our solar system with their own version of Kepler, after all, it would take them three years to detect our home planet.

"We are getting very close," Batalha said. "We are homing in on the truly Earth-size, habitable planets."
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Chiprocks1

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Re: Cool Techie Geeky Stuff...
« Reply #20 on: December 06, 2011, 09:38:42 am »
Not shocking to me since everyone I know has always said I live in my own world.

Chip's Rockin' Art
Michael Scott To Meredith: "You've slept with so many men, your starting to look like one. BOOM! Roasted! Go here.

Mac

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Re: Cool Techie Geeky Stuff...
« Reply #21 on: December 20, 2011, 09:50:14 am »
This speaks volume...

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Chiprocks1

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Re: Cool Techie Geeky Stuff...
« Reply #22 on: December 20, 2011, 09:51:06 am »
Hahahahahaha!!

Zing!!!!!!

And oh so true!
Chip's Rockin' Art
Michael Scott To Meredith: "You've slept with so many men, your starting to look like one. BOOM! Roasted! Go here.

Chiprocks1

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Re: Cool Techie Geeky Stuff...
« Reply #23 on: December 31, 2011, 07:40:53 am »
2012 Tech Predictions



Chip's Rockin' Art
Michael Scott To Meredith: "You've slept with so many men, your starting to look like one. BOOM! Roasted! Go here.

Mac

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Re: Cool Techie Geeky Stuff...
« Reply #24 on: December 31, 2011, 08:02:32 am »
Interesting.

Getting back into the tech game, I think I'll be good with my iPad 2 for awhile. iPad3 doesn't sound significant enough for me. Besides, I really don't want to start playing that game again of staying up with the Jonses.
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Chiprocks1

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Re: Cool Techie Geeky Stuff...
« Reply #25 on: December 31, 2011, 08:04:32 am »
I really don't want to start playing that game again of staying up with the Jonses.

Amen, Brother. I'm beyond that now. Have been for a long time.
Chip's Rockin' Art
Michael Scott To Meredith: "You've slept with so many men, your starting to look like one. BOOM! Roasted! Go here.

Mac

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Re: Cool Techie Geeky Stuff...
« Reply #26 on: January 03, 2012, 10:14:26 am »
The Quadrantid meteor shower

Quote
If you enjoy the sight of "shooting stars," then make plans to look skyward before dawn on Wednesday, when a strong display of Quadrantid meteors may appear. This first meteor shower of 2012 may end up being one of the best.

more...

Shower map
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Mac

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Re: Cool Techie Geeky Stuff...
« Reply #27 on: January 06, 2012, 01:01:57 pm »
Life-like cells are made of metal

Quote
Could living things that evolved from metals be clunking about somewhere in the universe? Perhaps. In a lab in Glasgow, UK, one man is intent on proving that metal-based life is possible.

He has managed to build cell-like bubbles from giant metal-containing molecules and has given them some life-like properties. He now hopes to induce them to evolve into fully inorganic self-replicating entities.

"I am 100 per cent positive that we can get evolution to work outside organic biology," says Lee Cronin (see photo, right) at the University of Glasgow. His building blocks are large "polyoxometalates" made of a range of metal atoms – most recently tungsten – linked to oxygen and phosphorus. By simply mixing them in solution, he can get them to self-assemble into cell-like spheres.

Cronin and his team begin by creating salts from negatively charged ions of the large metal oxides bound to a small positively charged ion such as hydrogen or sodium. A solution of this salt is squirted into another salt solution made of large, positively charged organic ions bound to small negative ones.

When the two salts meet, they swap parts and the large metal oxides end up partnered with the large organic ions. The new salt is insoluble in water: it precipitates as a shell around the injected solution.

Cronin calls the resulting bubbles inorganic chemical cells, or iCHELLs, and says they are far more than mere curiosities. By modifying their metal oxide backbone he can give the bubbles some of the characteristics of the membranes of natural cells. For example, an oxide with a hole as part of its structure becomes a porous membrane, selectively allowing chemicals in and out of the cell according to size, just like the walls of biological cells. This property gives the membrane control over the range of chemical reactions that can happen within – a key feature of specialised cells (Angewandte Chemie, DOI: 10.1002/anie.201105068).

The team has also made bubbles within bubbles (see images), creating compartments that mimic the internal structure of biological cells. Better yet, they have started imbuing the iCHELLs with the equipment for photosynthesis by linking some oxide molecules to light-sensitive dyes. Cronin says early results suggest he can create a membrane that splits water into hydrogen ions, electrons and oxygen when illuminated – the initial step of photosynthesis.

"We've [also] got an indication that we can pump protons across the membrane" to set up a proton gradient, says Cronin – another key stage in harnessing energy from light. If he can assemble all these steps, Cronin could create a self-powered cell with elements of plant-like metabolism.

It's early days; other synthetic biologists are reserving judgement for now. Cronin's bubbles are never going to be truly life-like until they carry something like DNA to drive self-replication and evolution, says Manuel Porcar of the University of Valencia in Spain. That is theoretically possible, he says, "but I cannot imagine what kind of system they would implement". Cronin isn't sure yet either, but last year he showed that he could get polyoxometalates to use each other as templates to self-replicate (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1181735).

In an ambitious seven-month experiment, Cronin is now mass-producing bubbles and injecting them into an array of tubes and flasks filled with different chemicals at different pH levels. He hopes that the mix of environments will allow only the fittest bubbles to survive. "If the pH is too low and [some bubbles] dissolve then those droplets will have died." Others may persist and accumulate. In the long run, the real test will be whether the cells can modify their own chemistry to adapt to different environments. Cronin hints that his latest work may show this, but is unwilling to give details as yet. "I think we have just shown the first droplets that can evolve" is all he will say.

If Cronin is right, then the possible range of extraterrestrial life is blown wide open. "There is every possibility that there are life forms out there which aren't based on carbon," he says. Tadashi Sugawara of the University of Tokyo, Japan, doesn't see why not. "On Mercury, the materials are all different. There might be a creature made of inorganic elements." Cronin may be some way from proving this, says Sugawara, but "he has pointed out a new direction".
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Chiprocks1

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Re: Cool Techie Geeky Stuff...
« Reply #28 on: January 07, 2012, 12:21:02 am »
Life-like cells are made of metal

Finally! Evidence that everyone has Metal DNA inside of them.
Chip's Rockin' Art
Michael Scott To Meredith: "You've slept with so many men, your starting to look like one. BOOM! Roasted! Go here.

Mac

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Re: Cool Techie Geeky Stuff...
« Reply #29 on: January 07, 2012, 06:11:52 am »
I swear, when your in the retirement home, the other seniors will slowly roll away from your head banging  ;)
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