Posts Tagged Science

“We’ve Been Studying the Elephant’s Tail,” an Animated Comic Explains the Basics of Dark Matter

Posted by mistergroonk in Comics, Science on December 13, 2011

Did you ever think that you needed a layperson’s explanation on what is dark matter? We have. On many occasions. It’s strange but the more we read about it, the more it confounds and fascinates us. No wonder scientists are obsessed over it. PHD Comics broke down the basics of dark matter and drew it up comics style.

Comics save the world again.

BTW, in other universal news, we know CERN‘s announcement on whether we’ve found the Higgs Boson particle is coming later today. Keep an eye on our Twitter feed(look right) or G+ for an immediate reaction. A thought out response should be appearing around these parts later on.
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Magic Cloth Separates Oil from Water. Do they Have One in Gulf Sized?

Posted by mistergroonk in Just Freaking Neat, Science, Technology on June 9, 2010

The cloth, seen above, developed by Assistant Professor Di Gao of the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh easily separates oil from water in the lab. How? Look below:

It’s a simple cotton cloth that’s been coated in a chemical polymer that’s both hydrophilic (it bonds with the hydrogen molecules in water) and oleophobic (oil-repelling). What’s that mean? It can filter oil out of water easily, over and over again. Just look at the video above, where Gulf seawater mixed with oil is filtered out quickly and painlessly.

Now how to apply this to real world parameters. That’s the next question.

via dvice

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Science Fact: Vampires Can’t Exist, Zombies Would Destroy Us All

Posted by mistergroonk in Science, Versus on August 19, 2009

You gotta love it when hard science investigates geek conversations to their logical ends. Months ago @joshmull shared an I09 article wherein physicists prove vampires couldn’t exist. It was an entertaining thought. We kept it in drafts until the day was right to expose the dark conspiracy. Then the day came when BBC News informs Canadian scientists have pondered the realities of the “zombie apocalypse.” That’s when it was certain the noted draft had become a publishable thing.

Physicists Prove That Vampires Could Not Exist
Planet of the VampiresPhysicists Costas Efthimiou and Sohang Gandhi’s paper “Cinema Fiction vs. Physics Reality” offers a full explanation.

Efthimiou and Gandhi conduct a thought experiment: Assume that the first vampire appeared on January 1, 1600. At that time, according to data available at the U.S. Census website, the global population was 536,870,911. Efthimiou and Gandhi calculate that, once the Nosferatu feeding frenzy began, the entire human race would have been wiped out by June 1602 …

If you like this sort of thoughtless, thought experimentation(as we do) you’ll get a kick out of the entire article.

Then, as there always must be these days, there were zombies.

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Zuda Pull List: THE ADVENTURES OF MR SIMIAN

Posted by mistergroonk in Art, Comics, Just Freaking Neat, Versus on July 8, 2009

Zuda Comics hosts a monthly competition. It’s Digital Thunderdome for comics. Ten comics enter. One comic leaves and becomes an ongoing series. This month, we publicly back a Mad Max creator by the name of John Bivens.

This science fiction comedy includes: a clever chimp, a loud-mouthed mouse, and inept lab assistants giving chase. All of this combines to assure that Mr Simian has our vote.

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Former Australian of the Year Wants to Change Color the Sky

Posted by mistergroonk in Admin, The Future on June 3, 2008

Former Australian of the Year and climate change activist Tim Flannery has come up with a novel solution to climate change, which he says could change the colour of the sky.

Professor Flannery, who has written extensively on environmental issues, spoke at a business and sustainability conference in Parliament House today and suggested a plan to pump sulphur into the atmosphere in order to repel the sun’s rays.

He says the process is called “solar dimming”.

Mr Flannery, you did not just suggest we use the plot to HIGHLANDER 2 to solve Global Warming.

Please tell me you didn’t just say that.

(via btemplesmith twitter)

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Black Holes are fuel efficient

Posted by mistergroonk in Technology, The Future on April 25, 2006

blackholecarengines
black is the new ‘green’

(SPACE.com) — A new study finds that supermassive black holes, located at the heart of some galaxies, are the most fuel efficient engines in the universe.

“If you could make a car engine that was as efficient as one of these black holes, you could get about a billion miles out of a gallon of gas,” said study team leader Steve Allen of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford University.

“In anyone’s book, that would be pretty green.”

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“Once gas comes within a distance about a million times larger than the event horizon of the black hole, it becomes gravitationally captured,” Allen explained. “At this point the gas becomes fuel for the black hole engine.”

What’s with all the Black Hole articles lately?

(via diepunyhumans)

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