INSA - Big in Birmingham
(Source: mivoltmaaneten)
Space elevator project announced.
A Tokyo company has announced a project to develop an elevator which would take 7.5 days to take passengers and cargo to a station 36,000km above Earth.
Obayashi Corp says it hopes to use carbon nanotubes to produce cables for the elevator, which would have one end anchored at a ground-based spaceport, and the other end fitted with a counterweight which would be 96,000km above the Earth - one quarter of the distance to the Moon. Solar power generation facilities would also be set up around the terminal station to transmit power to the ground.
The idea of a space elevator has been around for a while, first being suggested in science-fiction novels, and more recently with NASA giving it more serious consideration, although they admit it is definitely a long term project, with many small goals to achieve before it can be built. In 2009 they awarded a US$900,000 prize to company LaserMotive for demonstrating a laser powered robot able to climb a 900m cable - that technology will later be put towards the space elevator project.
It’s not the first time a Japanese company has announced a huge project like this: last year Shimizu Corp unveiled their ‘Master Plan’ to build a belt of solar panels around the Moon and beam the power back to Earth. Check out that story, here.
Meanwhile there seems to be no other details from Obayashi Corp on the space elevator, with an official saying “At this moment, we cannot estimate the cost for the project. However, we’ll try to make steady progress so that it won’t end just up as simply a dream”.
(Source: yomiuri.co.jp, via 8bitfuture)
When it comes to connecting networks or other systems together, it is best to have many, but not too many, connections, mathematicians have found.
Administrators and network engineers have long assumed that the more connections they insert between multiple networks the more resilient the communications between these networks will be. The Internet, for example, derives much of its resiliency from multiple, redundant links. But this is true only up to a point. Too many connections can actually be dangerous, because failures in one network can easily cascade to the other, noted Charles Brummitt, a mathematics researcher at the University of California, Davis, who led a team that looked into this issue.
Instead, network owners should fine-tune the number of connections for maximum resiliency, Brummitt said.
via IT World
New Bat Has Odd-Shaped Nose
Is that the head of an owl you see on the nose of this new bat species or an elaborate shield?
There’s a joke in psychiatry: If you talk to God, it’s called praying; if God talks to you, you’re nuts. In Jerusalem, God seems to be particularly chatty around Easter, Passover, and Christmas—the peak seasons for the syndrome. It affects an estimated 50 to 100 tourists each year, the overwhelming majority of whom are evangelical Christians. Some of these cases simply involve tourists becoming momentarily overwhelmed by the religious history of the Holy City, finding themselves discombobulated after an afternoon at the Wailing Wall or experiencing a tsunami of obsessive thoughts after walking the Stations of the Cross. But more severe cases can lead otherwise normal housewives from Dallas or healthy tool-and-die manufacturers from Toledo to hear the voices of angels or fashion the bedsheets of their hotel rooms into makeshift togas and disappear into the Old City babbling prophecy.
(via the-feature)
Sad Kitty!!! Kitty needs a hug!
(via:nanner)
Sad kitty for Caturday
(Source: tagged.com)
