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The team overcame a longstanding obstacle that has caused grief for graphene researchers for decades. Semiconductors require a band gap, across which electrons might or might not be able to jump. Graphene’s lack of a band gap meant that many scientists expected graphene electronics to be doomed – until now. “We now have an extremely…
Yet there’s potentially a more sinister angle. California Forever aligns suspiciously with a cultish dystopian movement to build so-called “network states”—private zones where tech zillionaires can abandon democratic society to live under the rule of their own private micro governments. The secret plot to assemble vast swaths of land and build a new city fits…
If you’re not happy with the spec, change it. But once there’s a spec, goodenough is good enough.
Add these factors together: how do you run a society with a constantly, rapidly increasing subset of the population long-term ill? Frankly, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s not only a moral issue; yes, I believe it’s wrong to forcibly infect everyone with a vascular disease with unknown long-term health effects over and over again.…
While the exact composition of these worlds remains unclear, estimates of their surface temperatures from previous studies point them being significantly colder than Earth. They’re also each less dense than Earth, despite being roughly the same size as our planet. “Our analyses predict that these 17 worlds may have ice-covered surfaces but receive enough internal heating…
Richard Murphy provides a fine takedown of the pernicious role neoclassical economists have played by overstating the risk of inflation and using it as a pretext to cruch wages. However, Murphy, no doubt due to space constraints, understates the scope and nature of damage done by neoclassical economics, which has become the foundation of mainstream…
A discussion of false quantisation, the danger it presents us with and our fucked up digital definition of “the ground”. …not to be conspiratorial, but this virus is weird. I had decided to follow my good mate Tyson Yunkaporta’s advice, and use the occasion of this infection to listen to what information the virus may have…
When I was older, I became enthralled with the idea of epistemology. What is knowledge, and how do we come to understand it? In a Western worldview, the question can be difficult, burdened by philosophical “thinkers” who try to understand the intricacies of what they sometimes label as a “problem.” In an Indigenous worldview, it…
On November 8th, NASA’s Curiosity Rover paused its incessant science work and just watched the day unfold on Mars. The rover used its black-and-white Hazard-Avoidance Cameras (Hazcams) to watch an entire 12-hour day on Mars as the shifting Sun cast shadows across the Martian landscape. NASA chose this day because of the Mars solar conjunction…
The more I see a lack of success in the SETI field, the more I feel our own bio-chem chauvinism is getting the in way… Our own planet teaches us that life is weirdly untethered from our surface dwelling norms. Astrobiologists hunting for the first definitive signs of life outside of Earth often target planets…
Dave5 