number 61

Q: What Happens to a Linebacker's Neurons?

A: Bad, bad stuff.

This new(ish) article in Discover explains what happens to your neural architecture when your brain gets beat up repeatedly.

The Fake Science Blog

Just like the title says, really.

All you need is a wormhole, the Large Hadron Collider or a rocket that goes really, really fast

Stephen Hawking, writing for the Daily Mail¹, describes how to build a time machine.

1. A piece that seems excerpted from his new TV series [↑]

Making Water Run Uphill

What happens when you add water, a silicone surface and a laser? Gravity-defying water, apparently:

[P]rofessor Chunlei Guo and his assistant Anatoliy Vorobyev demonstrate that by carving intricate patterns in silicon with extremely short, high-powered laser bursts, they can get liquid to climb to the top of a silicon chip like it was being sucked through a straw.

Popular Science

The folks at Popular Science have partnered with Google to make every single issue in the magazine’s 137-year catalogue available online. In full, scanned glory. For free.

It’s a good day.

Real Rules for Time Travelers

Discover blogger Sean Caroll, wielding an adapted passage from his book, dispels some popular myths about time travel:

Since time is kind of like space (the four dimensions go hand in hand), a working time machine would zoom off like a rocket rather than disappearing in a puff of smoke.

Read more.

Thorium

The January issue of Wired included an extremely interesting story on the benefits of replacing uranium nuclear reactors with thorium nuclear reactors. Among other things, thorium doesn’t create dangerous waste, doesn’t produce plutonium and is both infinitely efficient and very common.

The article mentions a blog—Energy From Thorium, run by aerospace engineer Kirk Sorensen—that’s worth a look if the above appeals to you in the slightest.

The HAARP Conspiracy

Right or wrong, the Norwegian Sky Spiral appears to have brought renewed scrutiny to the Department of Defense’s disturbing, ionosphere-boiling HAARP Project. The accompanying gallery of pictures.

Soviet Russia had one too. It’s since been abandoned. Here’s some pictures of that.

In Defense of Slacking Off

Research to take to heart. While slacking off may be pushing it, neuroscience suggests that, perversely, workahaulics can maximize their output over time by working somewhat less often.

Via The Morning News

See also: 30 Minutes a Day.

The Burden of Omniscence

If the temperature fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background (read: the universe) could be represented by a finite amount of water—and it can; as far as we know, the universe is finite—would drinking all of it at once be a danger to science?

Via New Scientist, the downside of knowing everything all at once.

A Question of Scale

Lost productivity during the recession has caused a net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions roughly equivalent to the reduction that would result from shutting the planet down for three days.

NPR’s David Kestenbaum wonders whether it has left behind an ecological record—tree rings, ice gas-bubbles, etc—that could someday be ‘read’ by alien visitors.

Chomsky & Trivers

Originally published in Seed Magazine in 2006: Noam Chomsky and Robert Trivers sit down for a lengthy discussion about deceit, self-deception and denial.

Here’s the transcript. Have at it, nerds!

Eureka?

The Large Hadron Collider finally worked.

Granted, it was only a low-power calibration run—pure bush league stuff. Stay tuned for the real, reality-ending stuff.

On a semi-related note, here’s your required viewing for the weekend: The Quiet Earth.

Yes, there will be an exam.

Optogenetics

Blue means go, yellow means stop: controlling animal brains with genes from light-sensitive algae.

I know.

I, For One, Welcome Our New Dolphin Overlords

Hot news: a captive dolphin in Mississippi masters the market economy.

The end is (probably) near.

LHC, Cont'd

The Large Hadron Collider is stalled again. This time, one of its cooling units was mysteriously jammed up by a baguette sent from the future.

Also, Bill Bryson visited the LHC and wrote an article about it for The Times .

Last: In the Event That You Have Accidentally Swallowed the Higgs Boson.