Weird Science Thread

[Daehawk]

Probably cause you to go insane if there long enough.

Rereading that Sea Monkey post. If they are so hardy then why could I never grow any of the little shits when I was a kid??

[The Meal]

I've been I a few anachoic chambers (though absolutely nothing like that insanely overdesigned amazing piece of engineering referenced) and they are intense. Doubtful you'd go crazy left alone in one (at least if they left the light on), but it's also not a place to go to take a nap. Cool find!

[stessier]

I couldn't think of a more appropriate thread.

Behold - THE FONDOODLER: "Hot Glue Gun" - But For Cheese

[Max Peck]

Quantum entanglement, science’s ‘spookiest’ phenomenon, achieved in space

Imagine you are a photon, a packet of light. You are a tiny blip of energy, hurtling through the universe on your own. But you have a twin, another photon to whom you have been intimately connected since the day you were born. Now matter what distance separates you, be it the width of a lab bench or the breadth of the universe, you mirror each other. Whatever happens to your twin instantaneously affects you, and vice versa. You are like the mouse siblings in “An American Tail”, wrenched apart by fate but feeling the same feelings and singing the same song beneath the same glowing moon.

This is quantum entanglement. To non-physicists it sounds about as fantastical as singing mice, and indeed, plenty of physicists have problems with the phenomenon. Albert Einstein, whose own research helped give rise to quantum theory, derisively called the concept “spooky action at a distance.” Quantum entanglement seems to break some of the bedrock rules of standard physics: that nothing can travel faster than light, that objects are only influenced by their immediate surroundings. And scientists still can't explain how the particles are linked. Is it wormholes? An unknown dimension? The power of love? (That last one's a joke.)

Luckily for quantum physicists, you don't always need to explain a phenomenon in order to use it. Ancient humans didn't know about friction before inventing the wheel; doctors in medieval China didn't know about antibodies when they began inoculating people against smallpox 600 years ago. Not knowing what's behind quantum entanglement didn't stop Jian-Wei Pan, a physicist at the University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai, from rocketing it into space.

In a new study in the journal Science, Pan and his colleagues report that they were able to produce entangled photons on a satellite orbiting 300 miles above the planet and beam the particles to two different ground-based labs that were 750 miles apart, all without losing the particles' strange linkage. It is the first time anyone has ever generated entangled particles in space, and represents a 10-fold increase in the distance over which entanglement has been maintained.

“It's a really stunning achievement, and I think it's going to be the first of possibly many such interesting and exciting studies that this particular satellite will open up,” said Shohini Ghose, a physicist at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada. “Who knows, maybe there’ll be a space entanglement race?”

[Kraken]

Quantum entanglement works without violating relativity if the entangled particles are actually the same particle in two places at once. Which probably violates all kinds of other theories, but at least makes some kind of sense.

This is my theory, which is mine, and is supported by absolutely nothing and nobody, but because it's mine I'm sticking to it.

[Paingod]

As soon as you get into quantum anything, you could put a pancake on your head and call it Prince Herring and it wouldn't seem any stranger than anything else they offer.

[Isgrimnur]

Swedish doctors claim first uterus transplant:

Texas baby!

It took well over a year to determine if a woman who received a womb transplant would become the first in the U.S. to give birth, transplant surgeons in Dallas said Monday.

Baylor University Medical Center officials said at a news conference that the mother has returned home and her newborn son is fine. He remains hospitalized for monitoring.

It took months to ensure that the transplanted uterus would be functional and then many more to determine if the implanted embryo would prove viable, Dr. Tiffany Anthony said.

Officials on Friday confirmed the birth. They have declined to identify the mother, who was born without a uterus.

A birth from a transplanted uterus is a milestone for the U.S. but one achieved several years ago in Sweden.

Baylor officials said Monday that eight transplants have been performed and that one of those women currently is pregnant as a result.
...
Baylor has had a study underway for several years to enroll up to 10 women for uterus transplants. In October 2016, the hospital said four women had received transplants but that three of the wombs had to be removed because of poor blood flow.

A doctor in Sweden, Mats Brannstrom, is the first in the world to deliver a baby as a result of a uterus transplant. As of last year, he had delivered five babies from women with donated wombs.

There have been at least 16 uterus transplants worldwide. Last month, Penn Medicine in Philadelphia announced that it also would start offering womb transplants.

Womb donors can be dead or alive, and the Baylor study aims to use some of both. The first four cases involved “altruistic” donors — unrelated and unknown to the recipients. The ones done in Sweden were from live donors, mostly from the recipients’ mother or a sister.

The transplanted uterus can be removed after birth or could remain if the woman wants another pregnancy.

[Isgrimnur]

[Moliere]

Photosystem II Subunit S overexpression increases the efficiency of water use in a field-grown crop

tl;dr
Science has found a way to grow plants using 25% less water, delaying Peak Water.

[Ralph-Wiggum]

Seems like a pretty big deal. Now just a matter of which company will be the first to develop the genetically modified seeds for the major crops. Presumably (?), the researchers patented the technique they describe...

[Isgrimnur]

BBC

A team of researchers has built a prototype phone case that mimics human skin.

A video released by team members shows them using it to control a handset by pinching, squeezing and prodding it to zoom in or out, and carry out other functions.

[Daehawk]

Thats just gross.

[Ralph-Wiggum]

Do not want.

[xwraith]

It is inevitable



(I'm thinking it's a animation -- I don't think something like that could climb a wall)

[The Meal]

The lack of audio displacement makes me guess this is animation as well.

[Kraken]

The Milk illustrates what Wife and I love about working for MIT.

[Daehawk]

Whats me to register and sign in

I went back and it didn't. Strange.