These are the latest articles and videos I found most interesting.
- Guerrero Negro – Exploring Baja
- Face Time: How Quickly Do You Judge A Face?
- Polywell Fusion: Electrostatic Fusion in a Magnetic Cusp
- Project Loon – Google’s Internet Balloons – Future Thinking
- Far Side of Moon
- NASA Shows Far Side of Moon As Never Seen Before
- Marcus Brigstocke and Seven Serious Jokes About Climate Change
- Over a Million Flamingos – The Great Rift
- Launch of Russian Proton Rocket with British Inmarsat 5-F2 Sat
Exploring Baja
Guerrero Negro
Road to Guerrero
Amazing Ojo de Liebre lagoon, one of the most important habitats for the reproduction and wintering of the gray whale
Face Time: How Quickly Do You Judge A Face?
By looking at a face for less than a second, we can judge someone’s age, gender, race, emotional state and even their trustworthiness. High-speed scanning and perception experiments by social neurologist Dr. Jon Freeman have revealed our brain’s ability to generate character assessments in less than blink of an eye. These first impressions can linger in our brains and influence our real-world interactions.
Polywell Fusion: Electrostatic Fusion in a Magnetic Cusp
Nuclear fusion power is considered the ultimate energy source because of its nearly inexhaustible supply of cheap fuels, intrinsic safety, zero emissions and lack of long-lived radioactive waste. Despite tremendous progress in science and technology of fusion reactors, the general consensus has been, and still is, “fusion is always 20 years away”. In this talk, I will introduce the Polywell fusion concept that may offer a low cost and rapid development path to power the world economically and sustainably. As conceived by Dr. Robert Bussard at EMC2 in 1983, the Polywell fusion concept combines electric fusion with magnetic cusp confinement. This allows the Polywell reactor to be small, stable, and highly efficient. The successful development of Polywell reactor hinged on validating magnetic cusp confinement. Since 1994, EMC2 had built and operated successive test devices from Wiffle-Ball-1 (WB-1) to WB-8. Finally, EMC2 carried out an experiment that demonstrated dramatically improved high-energy electron confinement in a magnetic cusp system in late 2013. A committee of fusion science experts independently reviewed this work and stated that it was “a major achievement and a prerequisite to concept success”. I will present a roadmap to complete the proof-of-principle test toward a net power producing Polywell fusion reactor.
Project Loon – Google’s Internet Balloons – Future Thinking
We are becoming increasingly more dependent on the internet to help run our lives. But much of the planet is outside the web, zones that are without web coverage. Ordinarily, this is more of a nuisance than a calamity. But in the aftermath of disasters, restoring internet coverage can be the difference between life and death.
The dark side
All we can see around us, from planet Earth to distant galaxies, represents just five per cent of the Universe – the rest is dark energy or dark matter. So what do we know and what do we not know about these elusive components of the cosmos?
NASA Shows Far Side of Moon As Never Seen Before
NASA has published a video that shows the far side of the moon as never seen before.
Marcus Brigstocke and Seven Serious Jokes About Climate Change
Climate change is no laughing matter, but when all else fails, perhaps it’s time to take humour a bit more seriously?
With the climate clock ticking we witness a seemingly endless cycle of public talks, journalistic comment pieces and debates on old turf, mostly reinforcing what we already know and fear.
You can read Jonathan Rowson’s blog on the event where you can also get details of the report http://www.rsablogs.org.uk/2015/socia…
In a bid to generate a new dialogue that sparks enduring change, the RSA is embarking on a series of climate events with a difference, starting with a comedy night.
Humour has long been a powerful tool in the social-change arsenal, but is it powerful enough to help us break through the static on this colossal issue? Is ‘laughing-it-off’ just about evasion, or is it the key to transforming public perspective at scale, in time?
Working alongside BBC comedian and Sunday Assembly founder Pippa Evans, we have gathered a group of talented comics to inject fresh life and verve into what is often a technocratic debate.
Marcus Brigstocke, Steve Punt, The Showstoppers, Rob Auton, Jessica Fostekew, Holly Burn and Pappy’s will help us think through how to reimagine the climate challenge, loosely based on RSA’s Seven Dimensions of Climate Change framework.
Over a Million Flamingos – The Great Rift
Flamingos gather in their tens of thousands on the edges of Lake Bogoria, a saline, alkaline lake fringed with giezers.
Launch of Russian Proton Rocket with British Inmarsat 5-F2 Sat
SpaceVids
Вывоз РКН Протон-М с КА Inmarsat-5F2
A Russian rocket took a rare day time launch this afternoon, February 1st 2015 at 12:31 UTC from Kazachstan. The Proton-M on it’s 402nd mission lofted the British Inmarsat 5-F2 satellite into orbit. Inmarsat 5-F2 is part of a planned three satellite fleet, with F1 having launched 2013, that will provide communications and internet over each of the 89 Ka-band transponders onboard.
Alan Tatourian 