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[MetalSlimeHunt]

[Skepticism Intensifies Rapidly]

[Max™]

They're mixing up the definitions, the first one discussed here was the system where you arrange it, set it in motion and rather than trending towards a chaotic state it can be set to oscillating in certain fashions even when you try to kick it off towards chaos again, which arguably fits the definition because you can't just set up the oscillating state, unkick it, and have it produce the original state, so it's a broken symmetry, and thus a crystal.

Having one that starts oscillating and remains in that state is more like a spatial crystal in that sense, but if it can be set up in reverse it doesn't seem as legitimately defined as a time crystal to me.

[redwallzyl]

How can anyone deny the existence of the flying spaghetti monster now?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Eric Blank]

Its like a little baby Saturn itself.

It looks from other photos that that ring is around its orbital plane where it intersects Saturn's ring most directly. Its probably accreted material that isn't being pulled down because the moons gravity isn't strong enough to even it out, so it stays where it lands. Its fascinating. I bet its nice and porous, gravel and boulders, within the accretion ring

Edit; actually that's what the available wikipedia information says is going on too (I can't load anything else because I'm out of high speed data)

[ChairmanPoo]

more on time crystals http://www.nature.com/news/the-quest-to-crystallize-time-1.21595?WT.mc_id=FBK_NA_1703_FHNEWSFTIMECRYSTALS_PORTFOLIO

[Puzzlemaker]

So I haven't been keeping track, but has the EM drive been disproven/proven or anything yet?

[hops]

It violates Newton's Fourth Law of Physics: "You can't have nice things that solve humanity's problems."

[forsaken1111]

Even if it works as advertised it wouldn't really solve anything regarding manned spaceflight, but it would make small unmanned craft easier to build. It would need to be a bit more powerful to be useful for manned flight

[Telgin]

Yeah, it would mostly be useful for station keeping maneuvers for satellites, unless it turns out you can optimize it to produce millions of times as much thrust.

It would be much more interesting just because it would open up new avenues in physics research.  It would invalidate some theories and require us to rethink them, which in turn could lead to more useful discoveries.

But it's likely it just doesn't work and everything up to this point has been experimental error.

[wierd]

Given the tiny thrusts reported, even in space, there would be people saying the thrust is attributable to blackbody radiation from the RTG/power source, rather than from the thruster.

Unless they can get a very clear "wow" signal out of the noise, I wouldnt get my hopes up on getting the physics community to give it serious thought.

[sluissa]

China supposedly launched on on/to their latest tiangong station. Hopefully a practical run in space will give us some good info.

[Reelya]

Inside tardigrades, those tiny animals that can survive exposure in outer space, they found a new class of proteins that cause the cells to go into suspended animation when liquid water is not present. They've been able to revive a tardigrade that was frozen for 30 years for example.

This new protein has a lot of potential uses, e.g. they added it to yeast and now have yeast that are more tolerant to dehydration. The real money here would be adding it to crops, then you can start engineering drought and frost tolerant plants, which could potentially massively increase biomass growth in currently marginal areas.

But it's not only tolerant of freezing and drying out, this stuff apparently absorbs 40% of the radiation that hits the organism. So you can make radiation shielded organisms. Combine this with the some of the plants they've been testing out as possibilities to grow in Martian conditions and you have a real winner. A green Mars is looking more possible with some of the current biotech discoveries.

[wierd]

Only issue is that even under best case circumstances, Mars will still have a very rarefied atmosphere. (There is only so much plumping action that water vapor can do, and mars has a significant shortage of nitrogen.)

Unless you want to rain ammonia asteroids on the planet for several decades, Mars is going to be a really tough sell.

[Starver]

/must have read the prior message before the edit that prompted that reply.  Confusion momentarily reigns, quickly resolved...

[Sergarr]

Inside tardigrades, those tiny animals that can survive exposure in outer space, they found a new class of proteins that cause the cells to go into suspended animation when liquid water is not present. They've been able to revive a tardigrade that was frozen for 30 years for example.

This new protein has a lot of potential uses, e.g. they added it to yeast and now have yeast that are more tolerant to dehydration. The real money here would be adding it to crops, then you can start engineering drought and frost tolerant plants, which could potentially massively increase biomass growth in currently marginal areas.

But it's not only tolerant of freezing and drying out, this stuff apparently absorbs 40% of the radiation that hits the organism. So you can make radiation shielded organisms. Combine this with the some of the plants they've been testing out as possibilities to grow in Martian conditions and you have a real winner. A green Mars is looking more possible with some of the current biotech discoveries.

Cool, the Malthusianists are crushed once again under the heel of science! Yes!