Non-political things that make you say...WTF?!?! (Welcome To Florida!) **NOT CV RELATED** NO TALKY!

I'll take "Nope" for $400 Alex!

 

I hope the manatees at least had a good time.

 

Pairs well with gummi worms...

 

I'm sure the manatees were drunk and they had to lower their standards but we've all been there at last call.

 

Never went to bed with an ugly woman but I've woken up with a few...

 

To Infinity and Beyond!!

Engineers Have Proposed The First Model For a Physically Possible Warp Drive



The idea of a warp drive taking us across large areas of space faster than the speed of light has long fascinated scientists and sci-fi fans alike. While we're still a very long way from jumping any universal speed limits, that doesn't mean we'll never ride the waves of warped space-time.

Now a group of physicists have put together the first proposal for a physical warp drive, based on a concept devised back in the '90s. And they say it shouldn't break any of laws of physics.

Theoretically speaking, warp drives bend and change the shape of space-time to exaggerate differences in time and distance that, under some circumstances, could see travelers move across distances faster than the speed of light.

One of those circumstances was outlined more than a quarter of a century ago by Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre. His idea, proposed in 1994, was that a spacecraft powered by something called an 'Alcubierre drive' could achieve this faster-than-light travel. The problem is it requires a lot of negative energy in one place, something that's simply not possible according to existing physics.

But the new study has a workaround. According to researchers from the independent research group Applied Physics based in New York, it's possible to ditch the fiction of negative energy and still make a warp drive, albeit one that's maybe a bit slower than we'd like.

"We went in a different direction than NASA and others and our research has shown there are actually several other classes of warp drives in general relativity," says astrophysicist Alexey Bobrick, from Lund University in Sweden.

"In particular, we have formulated new classes of warp drive solutions that do not require negative energy and, thus, become physical."

Why is negative energy such a big deal? The need for negative energy gets around some of the general relativity problems of faster-than-light travel, by allowing for space to expand and contract faster than light, while keeping everything within its warping within universal speed limits.

Unfortunately, it introduces more problems of its own – primarily that the negative energy we'd require exists only in fluctuations on a quantum scale. Until we can figure a way to scoop up a Sun-sized mass of the stuff, this kind of drive just isn't possible.

The new research works around this – according to the paper, negative energy wouldn't be required, but a hugely powerful gravitational field would be. The gravity would do the heavy lifting of bending space-time so that the passage of time inside and outside the warp drive machine would be significantly different.

You won't be able to book tickets just yet though – the amount of mass required to produce a noticeable gravitational effect on space-time would be at least planet-sized, and there are still plenty of questions to answer.

"If we take the mass of the whole planet Earth and compress it to a shell with a size of 10 metres, then the correction to the rate of time inside it is still very small, just about an extra hour in the year," Bobrick told New Scientist.

One other interesting finding from the research concerns the shape of the warp drive: a wider, taller vessel will need less energy than a long and thin one. Think of a plate being held upright thrown at a wall face first, and you have an idea of the optimum warp drive shape.

Even though the reality of travelling to distant stars and planets is still a long way off, the new study is the latest addition to a growing body of research that suggests that the principles of warp drives are sound in scientific terms.

The researchers admit that they're still not sure exactly how to put together the technology that they've described in their paper, but at least more of the numbers add up now. They're confident that far into the future, the warp drive will become a reality.

"While we still can't break the speed of light, we don't need to in order to become an interstellar species," says Gianni Martire, one of the scientists at the Applied Physics group behind the new study. "Our warp drive research has the potential to unite us all."

The research has been published in Classical and Quantum Gravity.

 

... about those laws of physics, @Shelf Life ...

Walker 'stunned' to see ship hovering high above sea off Cornwall




There are only so many polite words that come to mind when one spots a ship apparently hovering above the ocean during a stroll along the English coastline.

David Morris, who captured the extraordinary sight on camera, declared himself “stunned” when he noticed a giant tanker floating above the water as he looked out to sea from a hamlet near Falmouth in Cornwall.

The effect is an example of an optical illusion known as a superior mirage. Such illusions are reasonably common in the Arctic but can also happen in UK winters when the atmospheric conditions are right, though they are very rare.

The illusion is caused by a meteorological phenomenon called a temperature inversion. Normally, the air temperature drops with increasing altitude, making mountaintops colder than the foothills. But in a temperature inversion, warm air sits on top of a band of colder air, playing havoc with our visual perception. The inversion in Cornwall was caused by chilly air lying over the relatively cold sea with warmer air above
Because cold air is denser than warm air, it has a higher refractive index. In the case of the “hovering ship”, this means light rays coming from the ship are bent downwards as it passes through the colder air, to observers on the shoreline. This makes the ship appear in a higher position than it really is – in this instance, above the sea surface.

“Superior mirages occur because of the weather condition known as a temperature inversion, where cold air lies close to the sea with warmer air above it,” said David Braine, a BBC meteorologist. “Since cold air is denser than warm air, it bends light towards the eyes of someone standing on the ground or on the coast, changing how a distant object appears.”

He added: “Superior mirages can produce a few different types of images – here a distant ship appears to float high above its actual position, but sometimes an object below the horizon can become visible.”

Photographers around the world have captured striking images of ships, yachts and other vessels apparently hovering in mid-air thanks to superior mirages. One potential clue that the sight is a mirage is the lack of any detail below the vessel’s waterline – for example a mirage of a “hovering” yacht lacked the lower hull and keel.

The latter effect is well known to sailors who can sometimes rely on refraction to spot ships that are geometrically beyond the horizon. Sailors say such ships are “looming” over the horizon and sometimes report distortions that stretch or compress the images, making them “towering” or “stooping” mirages, respectively.

More familiar optical illusions are the “inferior mirages” that give rise to apparent oases in the desert and puddles on hot summer roads. These mirages happen when cooler air sits on a layer of hot air, directly above a road, for example. When sunlight coming down from the sky approaches the air near the hot surface, it is bent back upwards to the observer’s eye, making the sky appear to be reflected on the road.
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Catalytic converter thief.

Video:

 

Too bad you couldn’t get a good picture of his face or his license plate...

He on his way to jail yet?

 

idk but it was shared 4000 times about 30 min ago, now shows shared 5000 times.

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CMDZ8vJAUzb/?igshid=1rprwen3g1w0i

 

Anvils float!

https://youtu.be/f5U63IGmy6Q

 

Mercury is cool stuff.

 

Lawyers , am I right.