General Science Thread

Exactly, it probably wouldn't drive ranchers out of business. Especially because there are still people who will want natural meal, a market will still be there.

I'm sure they'll try, not really convinced they'll succeed.

Yes, because it's not like these extremist politicians then screw up other people's lives...

What are you even arguing? Yes disgruntled farmers could succeed in electing some anti-vat grown meat extremist or maybe they won't, this hypothetical is extremely vague.

It is not a hypothetical, as can be seen from the fact that coal mining regions in the US have started electing people like Trump and other Republican Party politicians who make unrealistic promises to resurrect coal mining. It won't work in their favour but the votes are valid either way, as are the political consequences of their votes.

So yes, before launching a major economic change you need to account for the people that will lose out. Otherwise they become easy target for political snake oil salespeople.

That's nice but not every destructive economic change leads to Donald Trump, assuming otherwise is just confirmation bias. There will always be the potential for backlash, I for one do not believe that vat grown meat has any serious chance for significant backlash.

I mean, I've definitely seen plenty of uninformed GMO backlash in my time (there's a few problems with current practices, but the basic idea is perfectly sound), can't imagine something similar won't happen here.

Sure, but the anti-GMO backlash for the most part doesn't stop GMO's being made and sold. I don't see any reason for it to be any different here.

Didn't some starving African nation decline being given food aid, because the corn was GMO?

I was purely thinking of the US, but that has probably happened.

Mmm, that was Zambia if I recall. One of those cases where fear mongering and quackery had spread through the government and general populace thanks to our lovely all-natural evangelists.

There were also Anti-GMO terrorists in the Philippines who destroyed a project growing rice genetically modified to be vitamin enriched for poor and malnourished corners of the world. Idiots at their finest.

edited 27th Feb '18 9:33:13 AM by carbon-mantis

Ugh, horrible people. Ignorance and irrationality like that kills and we should make a societal effort to stamp it out.

People have tried that. Did not go well.

Hardly, negative social sanction works all the time. I'm not saying the law should get involved and they should be sent to the guillotine or something, just that society collectively should work on containing that kind of irrational thought.

edited 27th Feb '18 9:51:20 AM by Fourthspartan56

I agree with that sentiment. I thought you were suggesting something entirely different.

Understandable, "society should stamp them out" in-hindsight can easily give the wrong impression. My apologies for that.

Bloomberg article

protein engineering may be the future of science.

edited 27th Mar '18 11:03:31 AM by Demongodofchaos2

This year's meeting of the World Metereological Organization has four of last year's hurricane names, with Harvey, Irma, Maria and Nate replaced by Harold, Idalia, Margot and Nigel.

Ample warning of supervolcano eruptions likely, experts say: "Concern over the potential imminent eruptions of Earth's supervolcanoes, like Taupo in New Zealand or Yellowstone in the United States, may be quelled by the results of a new study suggesting that geological signs pointing to a catastrophic eruption would be clear far in advance."

Don't know if it's the right thread to ask, but what are good sources of info about bear behavior? Specifically, those would answer a question "How to pull off It Can Think on an already pretty damn intelligent beast?"

edited 5th Jun '18 9:06:19 AM by Millership

Not sure if this is the best place to ask this but here's my question: if you use solar panels to acquire energy from red dwarf or blue supergiant suns for power like with our sun, would it work?

Yes.

Yes, but you might want to use solar panels with better performance in the IR or UV for maximum efficiency.

Bumping this up since a while ago the International Commission on Stratigraphy has decided to subdivide the Holocene period (last 10,000 years, roughly) into three sub-periods:

• The Greenlandian between 11700 and 8200 years ago.
• The Northgrippian between 8200 and 4200 years ago.
• The Meghalayan from 4200 years ago to today.

The dividing points are the 8.2 kiloyear event caused by the final disappearance of Lake Agassiz in North America and the 4.2 kiloyear event a northern Hemisphere drought of uncertain origin.

Dazzling Laser Feats Earn These Physicists Nobel Prize—Plus, first female winner in physics since 1963.

Does anyone have any ideas about how this rainbow could have happened? I saw the video on You Tube, and I was intrigued.

It’s obviously a real rainbow, complete with a very faint secondary bow (you can see it at around 0:54 seconds), but I’ve never seen a natural one that small or localized.

Edited by megaeliz on Oct 21st 2018 at 12:11:43 PM