The Big Picture: Science!

[scarab7]

This episode made me smile so hard my face hurts. But it's a good hurt.

 

[Jumpingbean3]

The problem with the "lying to get to space" plan is that, above all other things, scientists value credibility. These are the guys we trust to tell ushow the universe works. If they lie to us it all comes crashing down and the uneducated can claim that they are lying about everything and get away with it.

 

[coolkirb]

Im going to assume that this was more of a rant that wasnt to serious, afterall their are a few problems with his ideas.

 

[unlimitedwin]

That makes sense. And now my imagination is wheeling considering the implications of animal self-awareness. How do they determine such a thing as "self awareness" in a creature, if you know (and don't mind me going way off topic)?

As far as I know the animal has to be able to show that it can recognise itself in a mirror. Whether it's just the animal itself or whether it has to display somehow that it can distinguish itself in the mirror from among others of it's kind I'm not sure.

In reference to dolphins, it was believed that Flipper (from the T.V. show) could recognise itself on T.V. (his/her carer used to bring a T.V. out to the pond or whatever that Flipper lived in and they would actually watch the show together).

This whole thing is a big part of the reason many people are so utterly disgusted with whaling and dolphin hunting. When you think about it, it's on the same level as walking down the street with your family and having them harpooned in the back in front of your eyes. The whales understand whats happening... Scary.

 

[coolkirb]

Also as economics tells you nothing will get done without incentive, if their is no value to a company to grow meat when its cheaper to raise cows they wont do it, same with going to space its alot of money put it to something that has little financial reward. If their was oil or gold on mars companiese would develop the technology to get their and bring it back once the incentive outweighd the cost.

 

[Ukomba]

I'm surprised how many people are pointing out the logic problems of these statements when it's a joke video. At least I think Bob's smarter than that.

My main complaint is the lack of comments during the credits.

 

[Skratt]

Goddamn, I am totally geeking on the bear the size of a hamster thing. I've give my lunch money to a project like that.

 

[DTWolfwood]

I have a horrifying aversion to the prospect of "cultured meat" seriously the whole idea grosses me out Dx

Thats not meat! thats just vegetables with proteins.

 

[bpl]

I believe this is currently the closest thing to a practical jetpack. Technically it's more of a backpack helicopter, but still:

 

[Jumpingbean3]

Well to answer the question about why you'll never have a jetpack we need to stop and break the idea down into a more basic overview.

You are wondering why no-one in their right mind would mass produce what would essentially be a jet with shoulder straps?

1- It would potentially be dangerous to wear (unless it was designed in such a way as to have the propulsion take place a significant distance away from the wearer, which would potentially result in it being bulky and impractical to wear).

2- It would be heavy, and this isn't just taking into accomidation the aforemention bulky design (nessercary to avoid burning yourself with your own jetpack) but it would also need to have plenty of fuel for take-off, flight and landing (imagine carrying a large petrol tank on your back in addition to a jet engine, you'd need to be seriously strong to lug all that around reliably).

3- It would be hard to steer, this would also result in it being stupidly dangerous to use in any built up areas due to the risk of losing control and/or crashing (being just a jetpack there would be no chasis or frame to take the impact, just your fleshy body).

4- It would be expensive, jet fuel is not cheap (that's assuming it wouldn't need some even more specialised type of fuel that could potentially be more expensive) and seeing as you'd need a lot of it for even a simple flight (depending on your weight I would assume) you'd find it being a massive money sink.

5- There's really no need for it, if you want to fly then we already have the airplane, the helicopter, the paracute, the glider, those weird glider suits and many other ways of taking to the sky (all of which are vastly more practical and don't endanger their passengers and crew for no reason).

As a general rule, if there's something that scientists haven't gotten around to doing yet or something that hasn't been adopted or widely used then odds are on that there's probably good reasons for it.

Thanks for reminding me why reality sucks. Oh well, a guy can always dream... I guess.

 

[CAPTCHA]

There are no man made fusion reactors. Fusion is the process of new element been formed by compressing another until the atomic structure of two atoms are combined into one and the excess is fired out as radiation. Gold for example is the result of iron that has undergone fusion. The end result however is very similer to nucular power, which is based upon the use of elements that have undergone an incomplete fusion and are still expelling their excess atomic contents.

Yep, currently it's all experimental. I guess that could be assumed from how I wrote that though.

They are working on fusion reactors, however and everything actually written in my piece on fusion is true.

Here is the big project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

I'm not sure about creating gold in a fusion reactor though... Anything heavier than iron requires the energy of supernovae (exploding star) to form... sounds dangerous to me

Cool. If they can get this working then all they have to do is develop atomic transmutation (splitting of atoms to create multiple, less massive atoms) and we'll have an unlimited, renewable fuel source to power the fussion reactors.

That'll be a real special day for humanity. It really would change everything.

 

[godfist88]

i'd love to have an elephant the size of a hamster, that'd be sweet.

 

[unlimitedwin]

There are no man made fusion reactors. Fusion is the process of new element been formed by compressing another until the atomic structure of two atoms are combined into one and the excess is fired out as radiation. Gold for example is the result of iron that has undergone fusion. The end result however is very similer to nucular power, which is based upon the use of elements that have undergone an incomplete fusion and are still expelling their excess atomic contents.

Yep, currently it's all experimental. I guess that could be assumed from how I wrote that though.

They are working on fusion reactors, however and everything actually written in my piece on fusion is true.

Here is the big project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

I'm not sure about creating gold in a fusion reactor though... Anything heavier than iron requires the energy of supernovae (exploding star) to form... sounds dangerous to me

Cool. If they can get this working then all they have to do is develop atomic transmutation (splitting of atoms to create multiple, less massive atoms) and we'll have an unlimited, renewable fuel source to power the fussion reactors.

That'll be a real special day for humanity. It really would change everything.

For those who don't get the joke: atomic transmutation = nuclear fission. Nuclear fission reactors do already exist!

Yeah, it'd be pretty sweet Djinn8

 

[Sen Adara Gar]

Today was going to be a good day, there was a new moviebob update. Today is no longer a good day and i'll be looking forward to his stuff next week much less.

 

[CAPTCHA]

trolling post

Yeah we might not have got flying firemen, but you know what we did get: pneumatcs to lift platforms and tools that can pry open metal to pull people out. Vans that can deliver those fire men to where they need to be quickly and pumps that can deliver a thousand times the amout of water to a fire than a bucket chain can. In the case of your phone example, also the ability to communicate the need for help in the first place.

We got stuff a thousand times better than flying firemen. Stuff people back then couldn't have even dreamed off. Why don't you give up this pretense to nhilism you've got and try to look at what is right with the world. If you think the world really is fucked, then what the hell are you doing to help? Maybe your the problem that need a solution.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

Aaaaaand this is why I kind of HATE nerds....

Rather than just enjoying the episode, we feel the need to pick apart every single thing he said.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

I don't need to be psychic to know these things. Just like I know that Jesus will never come back, there will never be peace on Earth, and that coal will never spontaneously turn into gold.

Your life will be a lot better if you take off the rose colored glasses and accept that this world is shit and that science is no longer about innovation and advancement, merely profit and finding better ways to put dumb YouTube videos on a telephone.

This is completely necessary.

[image/]http://www.moonbattery.com/44511751_SouthParkGothKids.jpg[/IMG]

 

[klasbo]

Spoiler: Spoiler'd for space

As a Science student in University studying Astrophysics and Biology, I can give tell you the actual basic reasons none of these are commonplace.



[HEADING=2]1) Jetpacks:[/HEADING]

Far too energy inefficient with current technology.
We simply do not have the resources to run these on a large scale.

Personal Jetpacks exist, as do flying cars, the issue is providing an efficient energy source in terms of space required for fuel, price of fuel and energy output.



[HEADING=2]2) Cultured Meat:[/HEADING]

Religion and the related "not what God intended" morality.
Like it or not, religion does legitimately hold back science, for better or worse.

There are also plenty of non-religious factors to the issue born of ignorance of the science, i.e. meat being dangerous to consume as it might change our genes or cause other defects. They may be factually wrong, but they can be loud...


[HEADING=2]3) Space Travel:[/HEADING]

Same issue as with Jetpacks: Energy source.

Our planet earth simply does not contain the amount of resources necessary for large scale space travel with current technology.

Fusion technology (same reaction that powers the Sun (and Ironman for that matter...)) is the current main hope for achieving this efficiency, but we are still MANY years away from seeing fusion reactors successfully scaled down to manageable sizes.


[HEADING=2]4) Small Animals:[/HEADING]

Smaller brain = less intelligence.

A creature that requires greater intelligence to survive would die if it were miniature.

There are lots of other biological issues with resizing animals.

Lets just put it down to being cruel, stupid and impractical.

You're getting a lot of attention with only four posts, so I thought I'd hop on the bandwagon.

Cultured meat: Still more expensive than abusing animals for food. I think that for now, it's more of an economical thing than an ideological thing. But when the economic difference starts to diminish, I think the nonsensical and fanatical ideological part will take over.

Space Travel: (You study astrophysics, so I take it you're comfortable with terminology) Look into Inertial Electrostatic Fusion, as well as Dense Plasma Focus fusion, both of which are based around an a-neutronic p+B11 fuel (ie does not emit neutrons during the fusion process; neutrons are basically useless for energy production). Both of these projects have come closer to fusion than ITER, for a fraction of the cost and and with a fraction of the size (Both reactor types could easily fit in my living room, though the control, fuel and cooling probably couldn't). I can't remember who said it, but it has been said that "The Russians gave us the Tokamak, so that we would never be able to achieve fusion". A Maxwellian particle distribution where a high enough temperature to achieve a nucleon-nucleon distance of 1.3 fermi to get a reaction with 78% loss due to neutron radiation, confined in a separate neutron-absorbing material, confined in a cathedral of supercooled superconducting magnets? Yeah ITER, how's that working out for you?

Small animals: I - too - see no point in breeding bears. And when you have jetpacks, why would you want tiny bears anyway?

 

[Moeez]

http://www.boutiqueteacuppuppies.com/images/products/large_547_01.jpg

Bob, you should educate yourself about "teacup puppies" (the ones whose pictures you showed and you see in women's purses). They are an awful and should-be-illegal practice. Yes, they're cute, too bad they have a disturbing life experience with crippled bodies, and die in a few months. They're a scam, and you should be against it.

The Sad Truth about "Teacup Puppies" [http://www.barkrescue.net/teacup.htm]

It's fucking sick, and now that you're informed about these mini animal abominations, don't ask that question again.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

I gotta say, I think I laughed more at this episode than any of Bob's earlier stuff. I don't know how serious he was about any of this (probably not very -- he ought to be smart enough to not think he's smarter than the entire scientific community combined), but he definitely came up with a funny way to say it.

I'm with you on basically all of that. The problem is that people with real drive and ambition to change the world are forced into corporate niches and never let out of boxes defined by profit margins.

Get rid of the all-consuming pursuit of money, which technically only has the value we decide it has anyway so it's actually worthless, and we solve that problem. Until then all the pure awesomeness that science is capable of will be sidelined, marginalised and just out-right ignored.

I'm curious how you propose we do this. Personal gain is known to be one of the few things human beings are capable of being motivated by. Maybe we could one day figure out a way to hack into people's brains to make them less selfish, but guess what we'd need in order to do that: more science. Science that there's probably even less motive to push for than any of the stuff Bob was talking about.

ITT:

Scientists come and give lame excuses for not giving us things that they have been promising us since the 1910s.

Having to stay within the laws of physics is a "lame excuse" now, is it? The people who "promised" us physics-defying gadgets way back then either were not actual scientists, or were naively assuming that future discoveries would negate what we thought we knew. Well, some of them did, but sadly gravity and the laws of thermodynamics were not among their victims.