No need for the blue monkeys?

 awesomeness, blather, Hmm..., news, science, youtube  No Responses »
Jul 282023
 

The driving motivation behind everything in the movie “Avatar” was humanity’s need of the mineral “Unobtanium.” It was special since it was a room temperature superconductor, allowing for a lot of advanced technologies. In the movie, humanity would travel light years and wipe out primitive alien civilizations to get it. But recent news suggests that we might not need to… but only if the study turns out to be true. And scientists are dubious.

 

A spectacular superconductor claim is making news. Here’s why experts are doubtful

Korean scientists claim to have created a room temperature superconductor (up to 127 decrees C). The video *seems* to back that up, but who knows. This will need to be tested and replicated. And the chunk they’ve displayed seems kinda cruddy… but the history of prior low-temperature superconductors seems to be that the first bits out the gate are cruddy, with quality following along as production techniques are refined.

*IF* this pans out, there are two fantastic takeaways here. The first is “hey, awesome, room temperature superconductor.” Maglev trains and such become a lot easier. CAT scanners won’t need liquid helium supplies to keep their magnetic bearings working.

But the second thing to note should be noted and noted *hard:* the material is primarily lead, doped with copper oxygen and phosphorus. You know what I *don’t* see there? I don’t see “rare-earth elements that we have to go hat in hand to the Chinese to obtain.” We don’t need to throw money into third-world hellholes to have them scrape vast pits into the ground. Domestic mining and production would seem entirely feasible.

That’s all great. I hope it bears out. But history is full of fabulous press releases that turned out to be fraudulent or simply wrong. That’s certainly possible here. We’ll just need to wait and see.

 

Here’s how Wikipedia describes the material. See how far you get before you go “I dunno what the frak they’re talking about:”

The chemical composition of LK-99 is approximately Pb9Cu(PO4)6O such that—compared to pure lead-apatite (Pb10(PO4)6O)[4]: 5 —approximately one quarter of Pb(II) ions in position 2 of the apatite structure are replaced by Cu(II) ions.[1]: 9  This partial replacement of Pb2+ ions (measuring 133 picometre) with Cu2+ ions (measuring 87 picometre) is said to cause a 0.48% reduction in volume, creating internal stress inside the material.[1]: 8 

The internal stress is claimed to cause a heterojunction quantum well between the Pb(1) and oxygen within the phosphate ([PO4]3−) generating a superconducting quantum well (SQW).[1]: 10  Lee et al. claim to show LK-99 exhibits a response to a magnetic field (Meissner effect) when chemical vapor deposition is used to apply LK-99 to a non-magnetic copper sample.[1]: 4  Pure lead-apatite is an insulator, but Lee et al. claim copper-doped lead-apatite forming LK-99 is a superconductor, or at higher temperatures, a metal.[4]: 5 

 

Here’s a video discussing the “discovery” and the causes of skepticism:

 

 Posted by at 2:40 am

Need a 4K release of this

 AARRRGH, art, awesomeness, Crazy, Gah., Hmm..., religion, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jul 272023
 

“The 13th Warrior” was, shockingly to me, one of history’s great box office bombs… budget was about $100 million in 1999, but it only made about $33 million domestically, less than that foreign. Counting marketing, it lost well over a hundred million dollars. I’ve never understood why this was so; it was a substantially badass movie, based on a Michael Chrichton novel (“Eaters of the Dead”) not long after the success of “Jurassic Park,” starring Antonio Banderas. It had Vikings fighting Neanderthals. What was not to like? Well, apparently the movie going public wasn’t interested. My ass was in the theater on opening weekend.

It had a DVD release, but never a valid Blu Ray. I’d be all over a 4K release.

 Posted by at 1:34 pm

“The Creator”

 art, awesomeness, science fiction, youtube  No Responses »
Jul 252023
 

The forthcoming “The Creator,” due to hit theaters in September, *looks* awesome. Long have I and many others bitched that Hollywood seems incapable of doing something that’s not a sequel, prequel, reboot, remake or based on an existing IP of some kind. But here’s one that seems to be entirely original, and it *looks* fantastic… on a budget of a relatively paltry $86 million. Now, we’ve been stung before… for example, “Elysium” looked, early on, like it’d be something fantastic but it turned into meh. “Interstellar” similarly had mountains of potential, much of it squandered by being both depressing and gibberishy.

If “The Creator” is actually good, I hope it does really well. Unfortunately, garbage often does fantastic business, and good stuff gets left behind.

 Posted by at 10:45 am

Somebody likes weed

 awesomeness, cats, Crazy, photography  No Responses »
Jul 242023
 

Of my four cats, two (Speedbump and Banshee) like catnip. Buttons has never cared for it; Billy shows no interest, though he’s still young (cats apparently don’t become interested in catnip until sexual maturity).

Speedbump’s interest is polite. He will sit silently and watch me carrying leaves and stems and will gently take a leaf and gnaw upon it. Banshee, in contrast, goes bugnuts.

 

 

 Posted by at 4:30 pm

STEM smartassery is best smartassery

 awesomeness, Crazy, Forward!, humor, news, politics, Worldwreckers  No Responses »
Jul 222023
 

Researchers horrified, decry rise of ‘fascism’ as students send mocking responses to woke survey

Academic researchers condemned students’ irreverent and offensive responses to an LGBTQ survey, claiming the pushback indicates “fascist ideologues” are “living ‘inside the house’ of engineering and computer science.”

In an article for the Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies, academics from Oregon State University wrote about their shock at receiving sarcasm and mockery in response to their research into undergraduate LGBTQ students studying in STEM fields.  …

According to the article, when the “malicious” subjects were asked to fill out demographic data, “12 respondents (24%) indicated their gender as being related to a helicopter or aircraft” ranging from an “Apache Attack Helicopter” to a “V22 osprey.” In the section declaring one’s disabilities, responses ranged from claiming to be “illiterate” to lamenting “My country is run by communists,” or even declaring that identifying as transgender is a disability in itself due to “the inability to come to terms with biological reality.”

One respondent claimed to identify as a gift card as their gender. Under racial and ethnic identities they said, “I’m an ethnic gift card,” and for disability the answer was “I don’t have enough gift cards.”

 

There is hope for the future; these kids have their heads on right.

 

Are you questioning whether there is increased mental illness in Certain Special Groups? Maybe this bit will help you make up your mind on the subject:

The research team declared that the mockery they received “had a profound impact on morale and mental health,” particularly for one transgender researcher who was “already in therapy for anxiety and depression regarding online anti-trans rhetoric.” The paper claimed that “managing the study’s data collection caused significant personal distress, and time had to be taken off the project to heal from traumatic harm” of having to read students’ responses in the survey.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

The whole article is entertaining as hell; the “researchers” are so screwed up that they think any mockery of their views is down to “fascism.”

 Posted by at 8:10 am

Babylon 5 coming to Blu Ray

 art, awesomeness, news, science fiction  No Responses »
Jul 202023
 

To be released on December 5, the full series (21 disks, nearly 79 hours) will cost about $100 to $135. The filmed scenes were scanned at 4K and color corrected and such, then brought down to Blu Ray rez; the CGI scenes were upscaled with AI. I do wonder if there might be thinking that in the future there’ll be a 4K release, but that would pretty much require the CGI scenes to be completely remastered. I’d support that, but I honestly doubt there’d be a financial case to be made for it. This release doesn’t seem to include the movies beyond the pilot.

 

 Posted by at 10:54 pm

Bell D188A Art

 aircraft, APR, art, awesomeness, books, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, projects, US Supersonic Bomber Projects Vol 2  No Responses »
Jul 202023
 

A cutaway illustration of the Bell D188A VTOL strike-fighter from the late 50’s/early 60’s. This Mach 2 aircraft would have used 8 small turbojets… two lift/cruise in the tail, two vertically mounted in the forward fuselage for lift and two each in wingtip nacelles that could tilt for VTOL or horizontal thrust. Often referred to as the XF-109, it was only called that in Bell PR material.. it never officially received that designation. The artwork below was scanned years ago at the Jay Miller archives.

There is more available on the D188A in two sources I highly recommend (because I wrote them):

1: Aerospace Projects Review issue V2N4. Jam-packed with info, diagrams, artwork of this and several variants.

2: US Supersonic Bomber Projects Vol. 2, which uses the D188A as the cover image.

If you’d like the full resolution version of the cutaway artwork, it has been uploaded to the 2023-07 APR Extras Dropbox folder, available to all $4 and up Patrons/Subscribers. If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 Posted by at 9:36 pm
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