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[Shinotsa]

I'm currently in a required low-level physics course titled something along the lines of "Technology in Society" which, despite being mostly old physics information, seems to have a pretty good premise. It's trying to get younger people to keep up to date with the incredible pace at which scientific advancements are being made and applied to our lives in the form of technology.

Having been on the forums for a while I've noticed that some people here are far better informed about technological advancements, debates, dilemmas, and so on than your average man. I've also noticed that discussions stemming from this knowledge take place all around the forum, from the emotion threads to the hypothetical doomsday threads. This is a place to put all of that information in a place where it can be discussed with others who are knowledgeable or at least interested, so go ahead and share your thoughts, ideas, articles and anything else you wish on every technological topic from sea to stars. Talk about solar sails and space elevators, or the newest electric toothbrush. If it's a step up, if the current step is good, or if you think we should just fall down the damn stairs and go back to sticks and stones then I want to hear about it. Just don't start fighting and throwing the sticks and stones, make sure to keep it civil even if you don't agree.

[Kedly]

Is it pretty well supported that Light is related to universal max speeds and time itself at this point? Because I have a hard time believing that light is related to anything other than heat and illumination O.o (Although I have done barely any research, so I realise my opinion in this is worthless)

[Siquo]

Is it pretty well supported that Light is related to universal max speeds and time itself at this point?

Yep, pretty much. The speed of light is an actual constant value used for stuff not related to light at all, for instance space dilation (When something goes faster, it becomes longer, for instance) and nuclear fission.

Edit: Speed of light in a vacuum, to be precise. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Indeed, it has been said that the definition of "having mass" is literally "not moving at the speed of light".

Shinotsa, this should scratch your tech itch pretty well.

[shadenight123]

Hasn't the 'thing' responsible for mass been discovered recently?
If so, when are they going to try and use it to give mass to light?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Hasn't the 'thing' responsible for mass been discovered recently?
If so, when are they going to try and use it to give mass to light?

The Higgs field is what causes mass to exist, and the Higgs boson is an excitation of that field.

We can't give mass to light, its impossible. If light had mass it wouldn't be light.

[Siquo]

Turning excess heat into electricity material breakthrough: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/09/20/3594573.htm

[Skyrunner]

How fast can modern PCs calculate? Say I have the overhelming urge to, dunno, calculate the distance and hence the gravitational force between a million particles? How long would it take?

[alway]

How fast can modern PCs calculate? Say I have the overhelming urge to, dunno, calculate the distance and hence the gravitational force between a million particles? How long would it take?

That's known as n-body simulation. Nvidia has sample code in C++ for both CUDA and DirectCompute which do just that on the GPU.
CUDA samples (Nvidia cards only)
DirectCompute samples
They have precompiled binaries of the programs, and it looks like they go up to 65k particles.

[Hubris Incalculable]

If light had mass it wouldn't be light.

I see what you did there.

[Skyrunner]

alway- I know that it's n-body simulation. I also know that I don't want to use GPGPU. :/

I'm just curious about a regular omputer. :<

[MetalSlimeHunt]

If light had mass it wouldn't be light.

I see what you did there.

I didn't even realize that. I just mindfucked myself.

[alway]

alway- I know that it's n-body simulation. I also know that I don't want to use GPGPU. :/

I'm just curious about a regular omputer. :<

The app also shows Gflops/s and frame computation time with a variable number of particles. It is an O(n) = n^2  algorithm in time complexity; and judging from the numbers from the app, I think I can estimate the required computing power required for 1 million at about 19 teraflops (16k particles is 9ms on my ~600 Gflop/s GPU, 32k is 36ms, 65k is 140ms). On an Nvidia 680 GPU (pretty much highest stuff out there), you can get ~3 teraflops/s; for general computing, I'll down to 2 teraflops; or approximately 10 seconds to compute an update frame. I'm not too up to date on the CPU market atm, but they are usually somewhere around 1-2 orders of magnitude behind GPUs for highly parallel tasks like this one, so somewhere around 100-1000 seconds per frame on a high end CPU; though that would depend a bit on algorithm implementation.

In unrelated news, the first 3D printer retail store is opening: http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2012-09/first-3-d-printing-store-opens-world-domination

[Shinotsa]

Hasn't the 'thing' responsible for mass been discovered recently?
If so, when are they going to try and use it to give mass to light?

The Higgs field is what causes mass to exist, and the Higgs boson is an excitation of that field.

We can't give mass to light, its impossible. If light had mass it wouldn't be light.

So the Higgs boson is evidence of the Higgs field? I wish I could understand sub-subatomic particles, but it seems like at smaller levels the beautiful simplicity of elementary school atomic composition degrades into a mess fitting for how complicated the world can be. I know my grandfather helped discover one of the quarks but I still have no clue what that means. Or, more on topic, what uses we could find for that information in everyday life.

[shadenight123]

Aw.
Pity.
Light-sabers could have actually been masses of light!
...I'll stop now before my sci-fi heart breaks any more.