Cool Science & Technology News

[Cheimoon]

I thought this thread existed already, but I can't find it anywhere. The idea is simply to post cool stuff coming out in science and technology - similar to the threads we have about astronomy/space and about archaeology/history.

What triggered is: I read today about a successor to the Concorde being pretty far in development: the Boom Overture. There are apparently a few such planes in development, but this one is pretty far along; they unveiled their prototype today. The Wikipedia page gives a lot of into, and here's the plan itself (yes, it does look a lot like the Concorde!):

The prototype isn't quite like that one just yet though. It's a scaled-down model that can only seat a pilot and will start testing next year. (link with more info) Here's a picture:

Yeah, not quite as impressive. But at least it's progress. The full plane is meant to be flying by 2029 and should do New York-London in 3h15 with up to 44 passengers.

Also: one of the downsides of the Concorde was the noise it made at top speed, which is a major focus of current work. So the company name Boom is pretty well chosen in that regard.

 

[nimic]

It's cool and all, but it seems a little bit out of step with the current zeitgeist. Is the world really in need of planes that take 44 passengers that can get across the world a bit faster? Personally I'm hoping the airline industry needs to scale back after Covid19.

 

[Cheimoon]

It's cool and all, but it seems a little bit out of step with the current zeitgeist. Is the world really in need of planes that take 44 passengers that can get across the world a bit faster? Personally I'm hoping the airline industry needs to scale back after Covid19.

Yeah, it's out of step with environmental concerns and I don't see a market for it either. Well, the rich, I suppose, but that's pretty limited for an airline. But I just thought its cool technology, that's all I intended the thread for really.

 

[VeevaVee]

Looks cool as feck. Definitely unnecessary. Maybe research in to these kind of planes can help the regular old chuggers become more environmentally friendly?

 

[Cheimoon]

I thought I'd also mention the Chemistry Nobel Prize here. All the Nobels have been announced this week, of course, but generally, they are all about discoveries or advances made decades ago. But the Chemistry one went to Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier for their work on CRISPR-Cas9 just about 10 years ago. That's very rare and really speaks to the enormous importance and impact of CRISPR-Cas9.

(For those who haven't heard of it: it's a protein that can be programmed to cut DNA as required, allowing genetic engineering to take a quantum leap forward; link.)

 

[Buster15]

To me, the really cool thing was that Concorde, which was designed and developed in the early 1960's without the use of any form of advanced computing, was such a spectacular success.
Remember that before and after Concorde, the only people who had flown at Mach 2 were military pilots strapped into ejection seats breathing oxygen. And then, they would only be able to reach that speed for a very short period of time, with their jet engines in reheat.

Whereas, passengers on Concorde were free to move around, fed on the finest food while the aircraft flew at Mach 2+ for over 3 hours with the engines not in reheat.

Nothing has come even remotely close to equalling its performance and achievements.

 

[Cheimoon]

Various places are trying out adding electric charging strips to roads. If you drive there with an electric vehicle, it'll charge its battery. I have no idea about the exact technology (but apparently there is no danger to pedestrians) or how much it really charges the battery - but in theory, it's a pretty cool alternative to having to stop at a charging station! Some links:

Current work in Tel Aviv: https://cleantechnica.com/2020/10/2...harge-electric-buses-invisibly-from-the-road/
Sweden was doing experiments in 2018: https://www.theguardian.com/environ...ed-road-for-charging-vehicles-opens-in-sweden
And this is from earlier this year in Dubai: https://gulfnews.com/uae/transport/dubais-electric-buses-now-pick-up-charge-from-the-road-1.69669621
The Tel Aviv additionally refers to an experiment in Washington state, which in turn refers to work in Norway. This is really moving right now.

 

[11101]

That looks like somebody found the design drawings to the TSR2.

I truly hope they succeed, aerospace in general has stagnated so much in recent decades, but i cant see any supersonic airliners being viable until somebody figures out the sonic boom issue.

 

[Cheimoon]

I was reading just now that Toyota claims to have developed solid state batteries for enough to start developing cars. It remains to be seen how true that is, and even if they do build a fully functioning prototype in 2021 (as they're claiming), we won't see one on the market until 2023/2024 - but the promise is great. I was reading this article. Here are some of the advantages of current lithium-ion batteries that they describe:

Solid state batteries can have several times the energy density, they no longer us aqueous electrolyte solutions and they reduce the risk of fire in an accident. Instead of the liquid or polymer gel electrodes, a solid state battery (as its name suggests) uses solid electrodes and a solid electrolyte.

From an end user’s point of view, a solid state battery will drastically reduce recharging times, making the experience not that much longer than the act of filling an ICE vehicle up with fuel. Toyota says that its new SUV will be fully charged from flat in 10 minutes and that this will grant it a range of 500 km.

What's more Nissan, and Volkswagen are also counting on having cars with solid state batteries available in the coming decade, albeit a few years later than Toyota. On the downside though:

It is worth noting, though, that solid state batteries are known to not perform too well in cold temperatures and their long-term durability was also brought into question in the past. Toyota has not specifically mentioned these two aspects in any of its press releases on the matter, but these have certainly been at least two of the challenges the manufacturer faced in creating solid state batteries designed for longer term use.

So it's cool news - but I won't be counting on driving those in the Canadian winter just yet.

 

[Buster15]

That looks like somebody found the design drawings to the TSR2.

I truly hope they succeed, aerospace in general has stagnated so much in recent decades, but i cant see any supersonic airliners being viable until somebody figures out the sonic boom issue.

The aircraft manufacturers have most certainly not stagnated. They are there to supply what the airlines want. And that is much more fuel efficient planes.
Knowing what I know about TSR2, which was designed in the very early 60's, it would be obsolete.

 

[nimic]

That looks like somebody found the design drawings to the TSR2.

I truly hope they succeed, aerospace in general has stagnated so much in recent decades, but i cant see any supersonic airliners being viable until somebody figures out the sonic boom issue.

Is it even possible to figure out the sonic boom issue? Isn't that just... physics?

 

[sun_tzu]

Is it even possible to figure out the sonic boom issue? Isn't that just... physics?

stop it - dont think so
reduce it - yeah
https://www.machinedesign.com/marke...Star reduces sonic,passes from forward to aft.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-supersonic-technology-designed-to-reduce-sonic-booms
doing so in a commercially practical way for a passenger jet - dunno but i guess thats what people are figuring out

 

[nimic]

Ah, interesting.

 

[Maagge]

I was reading just now that Toyota claims to have developed solid state batteries for enough to start developing cars. It remains to be seen how true that is, and even if they do build a fully functioning prototype in 2021 (as they're claiming), we won't see one on the market until 2023/2024 - but the promise is great. I was reading this article. Here are some of the advantages of current lithium-ion batteries that they describe:


What's more Nissan, and Volkswagen are also counting on having cars with solid state batteries available in the coming decade, albeit a few years later than Toyota. On the downside though:

So it's cool news - but I won't be counting on driving those in the Canadian winter just yet.

It's also important to know what the chemical composition of their batteries is. We need technology that can be scaled to the terawatt scale so it's important to have an abundance of whatever materials they're using. I think a lot of solid state batteries are lithium based so it probably wouldn't be a long term solution as of yet.

 

[Cheimoon]

It's also important to know what the chemical composition of their batteries is. We need technology that can be scaled to the terawatt scale so it's important to have an abundance of whatever materials they're using. I think a lot of solid state batteries are lithium based so it probably wouldn't be a long term solution as of yet.

And there are huge pollution issues with car batteries after their use. But it's great to see development making leaps. Better than just having to look forward to the same batteries getting more efficient.

 

[11101]

The aircraft manufacturers have most certainly not stagnated. They are there to supply what the airlines want. And that is much more fuel efficient planes.
Knowing what I know about TSR2, which was designed in the very early 60's, it would be obsolete.

There have been very few records broken in recent decades. Most development is focused on doing what we can already do in a better way, there is less pushing of boundaries. That's stagnation imo.

 

[GlastonSpur]

There have been very few records broken in recent decades. Most development is focused on doing what we can already do in a better way, there is less pushing of boundaries. That's stagnation imo.

Yep. Continuing reliance on crude fossil-fuelled power and allied technologies is not the way forward. There are various forms of limitless energy available - we just have to find better and/or new ways of tapping into these.

 

[Buster15]

There have been very few records broken in recent decades. Most development is focused on doing what we can already do in a better way, there is less pushing of boundaries. That's stagnation imo.

The record's that have been broken are those in increased efficiency.
The latest gas turbine engines are literally wonders of science.
That is what customers want. Speed is less important.

 

[Cheimoon]

Something non-tech for a change: here is a video of electric eels in the Amazon river hunting in packs:


It's pretty short, but as the full article explains, they go to a shallow bit, entrap a group of fish, and then electrocute them together. Pretty unique among fish, rather terrifying - but also kinda cool!

 

[Cheimoon]

From The Guardian: "Researchers rethink life in a cold climate after Antarctic find: Scientists surprised by marine organisms on boulder on sea floor beneath 900 metres of ice shelf."

The accidental discovery of marine organisms on a boulder on the sea floor beneath 900 metres (3,000ft) of Antarctic ice shelf has led scientists to rethink the limits of life on Earth. Researchers stumbled on the life-bearing rock after sinking a borehole through nearly a kilometre of the Filchner-Ronne ice shelf on the south-eastern Weddell Sea to obtain a sediment core from the seabed. While the boulder scuppered their chances of obtaining the core, footage from a video camera sent down the hole captured the first images of organisms stuck to a rock far beneath an ice shelf. “It’s slightly bonkers,” said Dr Huw Griffiths, a marine biogeographer at the British Antarctic Survey. “Never in a million years would we have thought about looking for this kind of life, because we didn’t think it would be there.”

Sponges and possibly some other creatures, so not just bacteria or so. Quite cool how they have found a way to survive there.

https://www.theguardian.com/science...k-life-in-a-cold-climate-after-antarctic-find

 

[Cheimoon]

I'll have to get some tech stuff in here again, but in the meantime, here's another one from the realm of biology from The Guardian:

Sperm whales in 19th century shared ship attack information: Whalers’ logbooks show rapid drop in strike rate in north Pacific due to changes in cetacean behaviour

The cool bit:

The hunters themselves realised the whales’ efforts to escape. They saw that the animals appeared to communicate the threat within their attacked groups. Abandoning their usual defensive formations, the whales swam upwind to escape the hunters’ ships, themselves wind-powered. ‘This was cultural evolution, much too fast for genetic evolution,’ says Whitehead.

(The sad bit, of course, is that many whales had already died by then, and the development of better boats and harpoons soon made all their evasive efforts pointless...)

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...n-19th-century-shared-ship-attack-information

 

[Don't Kill Bill]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/56643677

New force of nature possibly discovered.

You don't get that every day.

 

[fergieisold]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/56643677

New force of nature possibly discovered.

You don't get that every day.

mind blowing how far science has taken us and still how we just know so little about the nature of reality.

 

[cyberman]

There have been very few records broken in recent decades. Most development is focused on doing what we can already do in a better way, there is less pushing of boundaries. That's stagnation imo.

Old post but isnt this down to patent trolling and the like? Progess had slowed down because theres a brick wall behind every step forward

 

[Cheimoon]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/56643677

New force of nature possibly discovered.

You don't get that every day.

That's pretty cool - especially since they don't even know yet what this fifth force would also do!

I am always amazed how much remains to be discovered on the subatomic level, and how they discover anything in the first place! I think it's often a matter of making things move and crash at incredible speeds, and then interpreting the energy signatures of the events; but it's just so abstract that I can't really wrap my head around that at all. (If I'm even right so far.)

 

[That'sHernandez]

That's pretty cool - especially since they don't even know yet what this fifth force would also do!

I am always amazed how much remains to be discovered on the subatomic level, and how they discover anything in the first place! I think it's often a matter of making things move and crash at incredible speeds, and then interpreting the energy signatures of the events; but it's just so abstract that I can't really wrap my head around that at all. (If I'm even right so far.)

Just below the speed of light! I replicated the Compton experiment earlier this year, which uses wave-particle duality to show photons carry momentum. And that’s about my limit when we get into quantum mechanics. Like you, I struggle with the abstract nature of quantum, though I would argue anyone who claims to understand quantum is either a liar or understands even less than they think.

 

[Don't Kill Bill]

That's pretty cool - especially since they don't even know yet what this fifth force would also do!

I am always amazed how much remains to be discovered on the subatomic level, and how they discover anything in the first place! I think it's often a matter of making things move and crash at incredible speeds, and then interpreting the energy signatures of the events; but it's just so abstract that I can't really wrap my head around that at all. (If I'm even right so far.)

This is what the LHC was supposed to find not just confirm existing theory. So hopefully the theoretical physicists can stop being depressed and get their collective thinking caps on.

 

[Cheimoon]

Just below the speed of light! I replicated the Compton experiment earlier this year, which uses wave-particle duality to show photons carry momentum. And that’s about my limit when we get into quantum mechanics. Like you, I struggle with the abstract nature of quantum, though I would argue anyone who claims to understand quantum is either a liar or understands even less than they think.

I guess you have to be able to disconnect intellectual from your physical, observable reality, or practical imagination, to work with this. I mean, I know I'm bad at anything too abstract, cause I also struggle with complex maths and statistics. (I started maths at university and quickly decided I was a humanities person after all. ) But my partner is a physicist, and she doesn't really have that kind of issue; she just 'accepts' that light is a wave and works with that - while I struggle to get past the point where I just can't imagine what that means in a practical way.

In the meantime, though, I do enjoy reading about all this - including some of the rather out-there theories about the universe being a holographic image on a 2D pane, or string theory. I won't claim to get it or be able to explain any of it, but I find it endlessly fascinating.

 

[Cheimoon]

Also, I just saw that you can get a virtual tour of the Fermilab facility here:

https://360.fnal.gov/vr/muong2/muong-2.html

 

[Cheimoon]

'Designing a high-resolution, LEGO-based microscope for an educational setting'

This is a new article posted in bioRchiv (link). Here is the abstract:

Microscopy is an essential tool in many fields of science. However, due to their costs and fragility, the usage of microscopes is limited in classroom settings and nearly absent at home. In this article we present the construction of a microscope using LEGO® bricks and low-cost, easily available lenses. We demonstrate that the obtained magnification and resolution are sufficient to resolve micrometer-sized objects and propose a series of experiments that explore various biophysical principles. Finally, a study with students in the age range of 9 to 13 shows that the understanding of microscopy increases significantly after working with the LEGO microscope.

And here's the design:

Pretty cool!

 

[Buster15]

I guess you have to be able to disconnect intellectual from your physical, observable reality, or practical imagination, to work with this. I mean, I know I'm bad at anything too abstract, cause I also struggle with complex maths and statistics. (I started maths at university and quickly decided I was a humanities person after all. ) But my partner is a physicist, and she doesn't really have that kind of issue; she just 'accepts' that light is a wave and works with that - while I struggle to get past the point where I just can't imagine what that means in a practical way.

In the meantime, though, I do enjoy reading about all this - including some of the rather out-there theories about the universe being a holographic image on a 2D pane, or string theory. I won't claim to get it or be able to explain any of it, but I find it endlessly fascinating.

Much as I love physics, I am terrible at maths. I am sure that I have a form of maths dyslexia.
But that doesn't stop me being totally fascinated by the subject. And I read lots of books to improve my understanding.
It is Cosmology in particular that I love. Like you, I have struggled with the concept of QM. It is totally bizarre and yet absorbing. I have learnt to ignore the strange names and accept that it is not deterministic, but all about probabilities and interactions and of course mystery.
You just have to get your head around the fact that QM doesn't have to be easy for us to understand. It is what it is, whatever that may be. But ultimately, it is governed by certain laws.

 

[Cheimoon]

Much as I love physics, I am terrible at maths. I am sure that I have a form of maths dyslexia.
But that doesn't stop me being totally fascinated by the subject. And I read lots of books to improve my understanding.
It is Cosmology in particular that I love. Like you, I have struggled with the concept of QM. It is totally bizarre and yet absorbing. I have learnt to ignore the strange names and accept that it is not deterministic, but all about probabilities and interactions and of course mystery.
You just have to get your head around the fact that QM doesn't have to be easy for us to understand. It is what it is, whatever that may be. But ultimately, it is governed by certain laws.

Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. I have to kinda just accept it and marvel at the complexity and mystery of it all. I don't follow it as much as you though: I subscribe to the free daily Nature Briefing newsletter (where I get most stuff I've posted here; sign-up link, for those interested), and my Dutch newspaper has a strong science section - but that's it. Still, there is a lot of good coverage in there.

 

[Vidyoyo]

An international team of researchers has created the largest and most detailed map of the distribution of so-called dark matter in the Universe.

The results are a surprise because they show that it is slightly smoother and more spread out than the current best theories predict. The observation appears to stray from Einstein's theory of general relativity - posing a conundrum for researchers. The results have been published by the Dark Energy Survey Collaboration.

Dr Niall Jeffrey, of École Normale Supérieure, in Paris, who pieced the map together, said that the result posed a "real problem" for physics.

"If this disparity is true then maybe Einstein was wrong," he told BBC News. "You might think that this is a bad thing, that maybe physics is broken. But to a physicist, it is extremely exciting. It means that we can find out something new about the way the Universe really is."

Prof Carlos Frenk, of Durham University, who was one of the scientists that built on the work of Albert Einstein and others to develop the current cosmological theory, said he had mixed emotions on hearing the news.

"I spent my life working on this theory and my heart tells me I don't want to see it collapse. But my brain tells me that the measurements were correct, and we have to look at the possibility of new physics. Then my stomach cringes, because we have no solid grounds to explore because we have no theory of physics to guide us. It makes me very nervous and fearful, because we are entering a completely unknown domain and who knows what we are going to find."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57244708

 

[Jippy]

I was just reading about this but understanding little of it.

This version of the story has a bit of the map in it.

https://www.theguardian.com/science...ate-largest-map-universe-dark-matter-einstein

 

[Buster15]

I was just reading about this but understanding little of it.

This version of the story has a bit of the map in it.

https://www.theguardian.com/science...ate-largest-map-universe-dark-matter-einstein

With all of the incredible things about our Universe and all of the incredible scientific discoveries, we still know so little about the vast majority of what it is actually made of.
Dark Matter and Dark Energy dominate the Universe and are yet to be actually detected or understood. We can only believe that they exist.
We do know a huge amount about the actual matter; the stuff things are made of. But that amounts to about 4% of what there should be. And the rest has to be there for the Universe to be how it is and for the fundamental forces to act as they do.
Such a fascinating subject. I hope that science can understand this before I die.

 

[Cheimoon]

I was just reading about this but understanding little of it.

This version of the story has a bit of the map in it.

https://www.theguardian.com/science...ate-largest-map-universe-dark-matter-einstein

With all of the incredible things about our Universe and all of the incredible scientific discoveries, we still know so little about the vast majority of what it is actually made of.
Dark Matter and Dark Energy dominate the Universe and are yet to be actually detected or understood. We can only believe that they exist.
We do know a huge amount about the actual matter; the stuff things are made of. But that amounts to about 4% of what there should be. And the rest has to be there for the Universe to be how it is and for the fundamental forces to act as they do.
Such a fascinating subject. I hope that science can understand this before I die.

Amazing stuff, isn't it. Like @Jippy, I can't claim to understand the science of it, but it's fascinating to read about, and I also hope they'll figure this out during my lifetime.

 

[Cheimoon]

Speaking of fascinating, I read this today:

Deep-Earth microbes feed on radioactivity
Scientists have long puzzled over how microbes living deep underground feed themselves without sunlight or heat. Now, two studies suggest that these organisms could feed off the radioactive decay of hydrogen and other elements. The findings open up new possibilities for life on other worlds — and could shed some light on our planet’s own history.

Nature sure has crazy ways to sustain itself! The full article is here: https://www.quantamagazine.org/radi...underground-and-inside-other-worlds-20210524/

 

[Dr. Dwayne]

Speaking of fascinating, I read this today:

Nature sure has crazy ways to sustain itself! The full article is here: https://www.quantamagazine.org/radi...underground-and-inside-other-worlds-20210524/

"Life finds a way" is one of the most apt quotes ever.

 

[Invictus]

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

The claim, if confirmed, surpasses the achievement laid out by leaders from the Human Genome Project and Celera Genomics on the White House lawn in 2000, when they announced the sequencing of the first draft human genome. That historic draft, and subsequent human DNA sequences, have all missed about 8% of the genome. The sequencing of the new genome fills in these gaps using new technology. It has different limitations, however, including the type of cell line that the researchers used in order to speed up their effort.

One important and unanswered question: How important are these missing pieces of the human puzzle? The consortium said that it increased the number of DNA bases from 2.92 billion to 3.05 billion, a 4.5% increase. But the count of protein-coding genes increased by just 0.4%, to 19,969. That doesn’t mean, researchers emphasized, that the work couldn’t also lead to other new insights, including those related to how genes are regulated.

The DNA sequence used was not from a person, but from a hydatidiform mole, a growth in a woman’s uterus caused when sperm fertilized an egg that did not have a nucleus. This meant that it contained two copies of the same 23 chromosomes, instead of two differing sets of chromosomes, as normal human cells do. All the researchers spoke of a vision of the future where instead of using a single reference genome, they would assemble hundreds of different, complete genomes that are interlinked and ethnically diverse, and can be used as references.

 

[Stanley Road]

London to New York in 15 minutes would be impressive, I just find this a bit gimmicky. My mate took his mum to new York on concorde, BA employee. Yeah it was all 1st class but the plane still worked with pulleys and levers like a trident.