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KambahOne

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A giant robot based on a character from a classic anime series has undergone testing in the Japanese city of Yokohama.

The massive humanoid resembles a robot from "Mobile Suit Gundam," a popular TV series from the late 1970s, and can be seen walking, kneeling and gesticulating in a video of the test posted on Twitter on Monday.

The robot, which has been in the works since 2014, stands nearly 60 feet high and weighs 24 tons, with more than 200 pieces made from a mixture of steel and carbon fibre-reinforced plastic, according to the company that created it.

I want one!
 

Chris Harding

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My father worked for the Australian Museum for most of his life. Great Museum. I told the Mrs that I'm going to drag her there when it re-opens with the new Tutankhamun exhibit.

I find Paleontology to be really interesting. Especially when it comes to human ancestors and the side species like the Denisovan and the Hobbits. It's something that would be great to study.
Not much material on the Denisovans - most of it from a few fragments and DNA tracing. Did they exist alongside Neanderthals; or were they a sub group? Interesting.

What I find fascinating is the number of dinosaurs that were feathered; including some of the big therapods, and maybe all of them. Just imagine a T Rex covered with feathers like an emu.
 

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Not much material on the Denisovans - most of it from a few fragments and DNA tracing. Did they exist alongside Neanderthals; or were they a sub group? Interesting.

What I find fascinating is the number of dinosaurs that were feathered; including some of the big therapods, and maybe all of them. Just imagine a T Rex covered with feathers like an emu.
An interesting thing I heard the other day was that the original idea of T-Rex stand tall with its tail on the ground is now believed to be false. They now believe that the T-Rex walked around more like a bird with its tail high in the air always leaning forward.

Another cool one was about a giant dinosaur that used its tail as a whip and when it whipped its tail it broke the sound barrier and sent out a shock wave. A Palaeontologist, who is also an ex-CIA interrogator and chief technology officer for Disney, theorised this after noticing the fractures in their tail bones. Then he proved it by creating an accurate model of the dinosaur and broke the sound barrier with its tail.

It's really interesting stuff.
 

Chris Harding

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An interesting thing I heard the other day was that the original idea of T-Rex stand tall with its tail on the ground is now believed to be false. They now believe that the T-Rex walked around more like a bird with its tail high in the air always leaning forward.

Another cool one was about a giant dinosaur that used its tail as a whip and when it whipped its tail it broke the sound barrier and sent out a shock wave. A Palaeontologist, who is also an ex-CIA interrogator and chief technology officer for Disney, theorised this after noticing the fractures in their tail bones. Then he proved it by creating an accurate model of the dinosaur and broke the sound barrier with its tail.

It's really interesting stuff.
It's been known for some time that all dinosaurs had stiffening rods which kept their tails off the ground. Therapods (beast footed) all walked like birds.
Birds are dinosaurs. They evolved from Velociraptor like theropods; in fact, the classic 'raptors from Jurassic Park, looked like turkeys, as they were totally feathered with wing feathers on their arms (couldn't fly though - lacked a wishbone). The real Velociraptor Antirrhopus was only a metre long. A beastie called Utahraptor ostrommaysi was the size of the animals in the movie, and also fully feathered. The movie franchise knew they were feathered but decided to go with the old concept of leathery skinned lizards, in case the audiences didn't find chickens scary enough.
All theropods had hollow bones and laid eggs. They had air sacks in their bones, same as birds. Air sacks makes breathing easier for stamina - you would never outrun these creatures.

Diplodocus Carnegii had a very long tail, but the jury is still out on whether it could crack like a whip. The broken sections could also be a result from mating, which would have been rough, or from battles with other animals. The Diplodicoids covered a range of animals, including the largest known land animal, Argentinosaurus huinculensis which weighed maybe 100 tonnes.
 

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The brain cells of a young man who died almost 2000 years ago in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius have been found intact by a team of researchers in Italy.

The discovery was made when the experts studied remains first uncovered in the 1960s in Herculaneum, a city buried by ash during the volcanic eruption in AD 79.

The victim, who was found lying face-down on a wooden bed in a building thought to have been devoted to the worship of the Emperor Augustus, was around 25 years old at the time of his death, according to the researchers.

Pier Paolo Petrone, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Naples Federico II who led the research, told CNN that the project started when he saw "some glassy material shining from within the skull" while he was working near the skeleton in 2018.

In a paper published earlier this year in the New England Journal of Medicine, Petrone and his colleagues revealed that this shiny appearance was caused by the vitrification of the victim's brain due to intense heat followed by rapid cooling.

Vitrification is the process of turning a substance into glass-like solid.

A bit macabre but science related non the less.
 

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A total of 24 "superhabitable" planets may have conditions more suitable for life than Earth and better stars than the sun, according to researchers.

The study, led by Washington State University, identified planets that were older, slightly larger, warmer and wetter than Earth.

They added that life could thrive more easily on planets which orbit changing stars with longer lifespans than the sun at a slower speed.

The 24 planets identified are all more than 100 light years away, meaning it is difficult to see them up close.

However, researchers have said that these findings could help inform future telescope observations.

One of the lead researchers, Professor Dirk Schulze-Makuch, said: "With the next space telescopes coming up, we will get more information, so it is important to select some targets.

"We have to focus on certain planets that have the most promising conditions for complex life."


If there are 24 superhabitable planets within 200 light years of us that would equate to millions of habitable planets in our own galaxy. Granted being light years away means we'll never get to stand on them for a while, but the fact they are out there and we can see them that close to us means these planets must permeate our and other galaxies? Can't wait to read what they find out about these planets.
 

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A total of 24 "superhabitable" planets may have conditions more suitable for life than Earth and better stars than the sun, according to researchers.

The study, led by Washington State University, identified planets that were older, slightly larger, warmer and wetter than Earth.

They added that life could thrive more easily on planets which orbit changing stars with longer lifespans than the sun at a slower speed.

The 24 planets identified are all more than 100 light years away, meaning it is difficult to see them up close.

However, researchers have said that these findings could help inform future telescope observations.

One of the lead researchers, Professor Dirk Schulze-Makuch, said: "With the next space telescopes coming up, we will get more information, so it is important to select some targets.

"We have to focus on certain planets that have the most promising conditions for complex life."


If there are 24 superhabitable planets within 200 light years of us that would equate to millions of habitable planets in our own galaxy. Granted being light years away means we'll never get to stand on them for a while, but the fact they are out there and we can see them that close to us means these planets must permeate our and other galaxies? Can't wait to read what they find out about these planets.
There's one slight flaw with this. The livability is based on a few variables. There are many other variables which we're not sure of yet including how life first started on earth and if it's actually possible for it to start anywhere else.

There's several interesting analysis on life on Earth that shows that any number of changes could have resulted in us never existing which has lead to the rare Earth hypothesis. But personally I think it's more likely that life started elsewhere considering that we have over 300 billion stars in our galaxy alone and the Universe has had around 14 billion years to develop different forms of life. This is before even thinking about the possibility of a multiverse. Based on those odds you would think that any probability is possible.
 

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1602212538192.png


It may look like a grey space rock, but the asteroid known as Bennu is turning out to be far from boring.
Later this month, a NASA spacecraft will land on this lumpy rock and suck up some dirt from its surface to bring back to Earth.

The OSIRIS-REx probe has been circling the small asteroid between Earth and Mars for almost two years preparing for this moment.

When the spacecraft first sidled up to Bennu in 2018 it found the fast-spinning diamond-shaped rock was a lot rockier than expected and there was evidence of water molecules in clay on its surface.

Now, six new papers in the journals Science and Science Advances provide even more detail about what the asteroid looks like — it has more boulders in the northern hemisphere — and what the space dirt may contain.
 

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This is only forum I thought was appropriate.. The first video shows the comparison in size between fictional space vehicles..it also shows as a reference guide nonfictional space vehicles..



The second video shows sci-fi flying vehicles.. I love the last one!


Its just fantastic!

ps..if you wanna check out more to scale to stuff..look at this!

 
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The DoggFather

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A total of 24 "superhabitable" planets may have conditions more suitable for life than Earth and better stars than the sun, according to researchers.

The study, led by Washington State University, identified planets that were older, slightly larger, warmer and wetter than Earth.

They added that life could thrive more easily on planets which orbit changing stars with longer lifespans than the sun at a slower speed.

The 24 planets identified are all more than 100 light years away, meaning it is difficult to see them up close.

However, researchers have said that these findings could help inform future telescope observations.

One of the lead researchers, Professor Dirk Schulze-Makuch, said: "With the next space telescopes coming up, we will get more information, so it is important to select some targets.

"We have to focus on certain planets that have the most promising conditions for complex life."


If there are 24 superhabitable planets within 200 light years of us that would equate to millions of habitable planets in our own galaxy. Granted being light years away means we'll never get to stand on them for a while, but the fact they are out there and we can see them that close to us means these planets must permeate our and other galaxies? Can't wait to read what they find out about these planets.
Which planet is furthest away from Murika?
 

Hacky McAxe

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Scientists have measured the shortest length of time yet. The zeptosecond.

For comparison, there are 1,000 zeptoseconds in an attosecond. The amount of attoseconds in a second is more than the amount of seconds there are in the total age of the Universe. Over 13.8 billion years. Or for the young earthers, over 6,000 years.

 

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Scientists have measured the shortest length of time yet. The zeptosecond.

For comparison, there are 1,000 zeptoseconds in an attosecond. The amount of attoseconds in a second is more than the amount of seconds there are in the total age of the Universe. Over 13.8 billion years. Or for the young earthers, over 6,000 years.

I want that timer lol

I'd label it the sex timer and sell to men to become a billionaire.

"Hey baby, I can last 1 billion zeptoseconds!"
 

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There really is water on the Moon — and it might be much more widespread than previously suspected.

The findings of two separate studies, published today in the journal Nature Astronomy, are a major boost for plans to send humans back to the Moon.

In the first study, a team of scientists led by Casey Honniball of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, discovered the signature of liquid water that's either trapped in glass or between grains of sand on the Moon's surface.

Scientists have long suspected that large amounts of frozen water lurk in deep, polar craters that never see the Sun.

But Dr Honniball and colleagues detected liquid water molecules in a pockmarked, sunlit region near the Moon's south pole.

"Prior to this it was believed water could not survive on the sunlit Moon," she said.

"Our detection shows that water may be more widespread on the surface of the Moon than previously thought and not constrained to only the poles."


Pretty big news as the Moon now becomes our launching pad for exploring the rest of the solar system. The water can be drunk obviously, but also separated into rocket fuel and with the Moon's gravity far less than Earth, launching from there will required less fuel. It's exciting to think we may see a a colony on the Moon in our lifetime?
 

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An asteroid three times the size of a football field is speeding up as it heads towards Earth, new evidence has revealed.

Researchers at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy have found the Apophis asteroid — named after the Egyptian god of chaos — has accelerated due to something known as the Yarkovsky effect.

Scientists claim the phenomenon increases the possibility Apophis will make impact with Earth in 2068; an event previously thought "impossible".

The asteroid is being pushed around by sunlight. Yarkovsky acceleration comes into play when thermal radiation is no longer uniform, meaning some parts of the space-rock heat up faster than others.

"The new observations we obtained with the Subaru telescope earlier this year were good enough to reveal the Yarkovsky acceleration of Apophis," astronomer Dave Tholen said in a press release.

"They show that the asteroid is drifting away from a purely gravitational orbit by about 170 metres per year, which is enough to keep the 2068 impact scenario in play."
 

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An asteroid three times the size of a football field is speeding up as it heads towards Earth, new evidence has revealed.

Researchers at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy have found the Apophis asteroid — named after the Egyptian god of chaos — has accelerated due to something known as the Yarkovsky effect.

Scientists claim the phenomenon increases the possibility Apophis will make impact with Earth in 2068; an event previously thought "impossible".

The asteroid is being pushed around by sunlight. Yarkovsky acceleration comes into play when thermal radiation is no longer uniform, meaning some parts of the space-rock heat up faster than others.

"The new observations we obtained with the Subaru telescope earlier this year were good enough to reveal the Yarkovsky acceleration of Apophis," astronomer Dave Tholen said in a press release.

"They show that the asteroid is drifting away from a purely gravitational orbit by about 170 metres per year, which is enough to keep the 2068 impact scenario in play."
I'm sure they will have lasers that will demolish the asteroid by 2068 :p
 
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