The Official Science Thread

If we keep pushing our questions further and further into the unknown, is it not inevitable that we run into paradox?

Yes: I know there are many versions of string theory, differing on how many dimensions, etc. They are narrowing it down to 9 or 11 at this point. Non?

A paradigm shift can't happen fast enough for me.

Originally Posted by i_ween

Yes: I know there are many versions of string theory, differing on how many dimensions, etc. They are narrowing it down to 9 or 11 at this point. Non?
:

I honestly don't keep up with it very much. I've read a few books but I don't dare look at a legitimate paper on anything more than GR; the math is way too complex for me right now, and even reading papers on relativity I'm lost a lot of the time.

Originally Posted by i_ween

If we keep pushing our questions further and further into the unknown, is it not inevitable that we run into paradox?

I don't know if it's inevitable, I just think we'll have to start bolting on some hardware to our brains to really grasp what's going on. There's no doubt in my mind that infinities exist, just look at how ubiquitous fractals are in nature, but I don't think humans at their current level of evolution have the mental capacity to fully comprehend their inherent complexity. I'm like you, I can't wait to see what happens. I just hope we (read: sociopath politicians) don't kill ourselves off in the meantime.

I <3 science. I'm such a dork

Originally Posted by cowmoo32

I just hope we (read: sociopath politicians) don't kill ourselves off in the meantime.

+1

It is difficult at times to come to terms with the stupidity I encounter in the world. For the most part, I have stopped fighting it. Like you, I just hope.

http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/news/w...ewspecies.html


DAVIS--A warrior wasp? A wasp with jaws longer than its front legs?

The new species of wasp that Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, discovered on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, has scientists abuzz.

The jaw-dropping, shiny black wasp appears to be the "Komodo dragon" of the wasp family.

It's huge. The male measures about two-and-a-half-inches long, Kimsey said. "Its jaws are so large that they wrap up either side of the head when closed. When the jaws are open they are actually longer than the male's front legs. I don't know how it can walk. The females are smaller but still larger than other members of their subfamily, Larrinae."

Kimsey discovered the warrior wasp on the Mekongga Mountains in southeastern Sulawesi on a recent biodiversity expedition funded by a five-year grant from the International Cooperative Biodiversity Group Program.

The insect-eating predator belongs to the genus Dalara and family Crabronidae. "I'm going to name it Garuda, after the national symbol of Indonesia," Kimsey said. Garuda, a powerful mythical warrior that's part human and part eagle, boasts a large wingspan, martial prowess and breakneck speed.

"The first time I saw the wasp I knew it was something really unusual," said Kimsey, a noted wasp expert who oversees the Bohart Museum's global collection of seven million insect specimens, including 500,000 wasps. "I'm very familiar with members of the wasp family Crabronidae that it belongs to but had never seen anything like this species of Dalara. We don't know anything about the biology of these wasps. They are only known from southwestern Sulawesi."

In her entire career as entomologist, she's discovered close to 300 new species. But on three trips to Sulawesi, she's brought back to the Bohart Museum "hundreds, maybe thousands of new species."

"It will take years, maybe generations, to go through them all," Kimsey said.

"I consider Sulawesi one of the world's top three islands for biodiversity-that along with Australia and Madagascar."

Sulawesi, a large Indonesian island located between Borneo and New Guinea, is known not only for its endemic biodiversity, but its rainforest and its proximity (three degrees) to the equator. Development threatens plant and animal life.

On the last three-week expedition, the UC Davis team of Lynn Kimsey, husband Robert Kimsey, a forensic entomologist in the UC Davis Department of Entomology, and Alan Hitch, assistant curator of the Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology, hooked up with 12 scientists from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI).

The 67-member expedition also included 12 members of Kendari's Chitaka mountaineering group, which guides mountain climbers to the top of the 9,117-foot volcanic peak; and a 40-member porter team that carried the equipment, set up camp and cooked the food, "which was steamed rice and ramen noodles three times a day," she said.

"Eventually we had to leave because we ran out of food."

The terrain was steep, slippery and overall, physically challenging, Lynn Kimsey said. "This part of Sulawesi gets about 400 inches of rain a year," she said. "We were told that Sulawesi has a dry and rainy season. But the only difference we could see between the dry and rainy season is that during the dry season, it rains only in the afternoon."

Kimsey expressed amazement at the biodiversity of the flora and fauna. "We saw a colonial spider web that stretched across two acres. The adult spiders were about two inches long."

"We saw evidence of wild cows, anoa, found only in Sulawesi, and found the first record in that region of a (Sulawesi) palm civet, a weasel-like predator."

The director of the Bohart Museum since 1989, Kimsey is an insect taxonomist, specializing in bees and wasps and insect diversity. She received her doctorate in entomology from UC Davis in 1979 and joined the faculty in 1989.

Over the last four years, the international team of scientists has collected about a million specimens. Among the new species: a bat, two frogs, two lizards, two fish, a land crab and many insects.

Kimsey is a collaborator of a five-year $4 million grant awarded to UC Davis scientists in 2008 to study the biodiversity of fungi, bacteria, plants, insects and vertebrates on Sulawesi, all considered threatened by logging operations and mining developments. Much of the mountain was logged two decades ago and now there are plans for an open pit nickel mine, Kimsey said.

"There's talk of forming a biosphere reserve to preserve this," she said. "There are so many rare and endangered species on Sulawesi that the world may never see."

An international team of collaborators is conducting biodiversity surveys, as well as screening microbes and plants for applications to human health and energy needs, recommending strategies to conserve endangered species, and developing and encouraging local conservation, according to principal investigator Daniel Potter of the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences. Other collaborators from UC Davis are from the UC Davis Herbarium, Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology, Plant Pathology and the Phaff Yeast Culture Collection in the Department of Food Science and Technology.

Shortly after receiving the grant, Potter, a plant systematist at the Agricultural Experiment Station and director of the UC Davis Center for Plant Diversity, said: "The alarming rate at which biodiversity is being lost in many tropical regions has resulted in an urgent need for such efforts."

The International Cooperative Biodiversity Group Program is a multi-agency program led by the National Institutes of Health with contributions from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation.

As for the warrior wasp that Lynn Kimsey discovered, it's now being intensely studied at the Bohart Museum of Entomology where she has long been known as "The Wasp Woman," an affectionate term signifying her specialty.

The director of the Bohart Museum since 1989, Kimsey is an insect taxonomist, specializing in bees and wasps and insect diversity. She received her doctorate in entomology from UC Davis in 1979 and joined the faculty in 1989. Kimsey served as the interim chair of the UC Davis Department from 2008 to 2009.

Her mentor, the late professor Richard M. Bohart (1913-2007), for whom the museum is named, was world-renowned for his expertise on wasps and mosquitoes. Kimsey was his last graduate student.

During his career, Bohart identified more than one million mosquitoes and wasps, many now displayed at the Bohart Museum, a teaching, research and public service facility that he founded on campus in 1946.

That is terrifying

Originally Posted by cowmoo32

That is terrifying

Yeah no kidding

Still waiting for someone to find a new or previously unknown large predator. Seems like most recently discovered species are relatively small however.

I visit Sulawesi quite often. Damn that wasp is scary.

I wonder how they would fare against the giant Japanese Hornet?

I dk how they got there, but Japanese hornets have moved in to the area where my parents live. When I was still in HS, they had built a nest in a dead tree on my friend's farm, so naturally we filled a super soaker with gasoline and tag teamed it from an ATV. They chased us, but only so far. We showed up the next week in his truck with a 12ga. We made sure to turn the air off and close all the vents before we unloaded 3-4 shells directly into the nest. For the next 5 minutes we watched as 20-30 hornets attacked the truck. They stung the windows and I remember seeing the venom running down the glass. Those things are nothing to fvck with.

!

NASA Science News for August 24, 2011
Stars as cool as the human body? Believe it. A NASA spacecraft has discovered a half-dozen "Y dwarfs" with atmospheric temperatures as low as 80 F.

FULL STORY at

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news..._coldeststars/

Originally Posted by Rubenk

I wonder how they would fare against the giant Japanese Hornet?

Revenge:

Originally Posted by i_ween

Revenge:

Crazy how something so small like a honeybee can evolve and learn how to defend it self...

Originally Posted by TayloMade[07]

awesome quote

Originally Posted by shockin330i

Crazy how something so small like a honeybee plant can evolve and learn how to defend it self...

Venus fly trap
Water pitcher plant
waterwheel plant

That doesn't blow anyone else's mind? There is no brain there, no consciousness, no means of trial and error, just a plant....eating things. WTF.

Wow, bees learned/evolved how to COOK an intruder! And their heat tolerances are so close so they must be precise in their heat generation.

Originally Posted by cowmoo32

I don't know if it's inevitable, I just think we'll have to start bolting on some hardware to our brains to really grasp what's going on.

The brain is actually an organic computer.
I wonder if there will be a day when we can download an entire B.S. degree into our brains like we download a movie. Man....that would be awesome.
You could become knowledgeable about everything instantaneously.
Shakespeare, History, Philosophy and subframe issues with an E46.

There's no doubt in my mind that infinities exist, just look at how ubiquitous fractals are in nature, but I don't think humans at their current level of evolution have the mental capacity to fully comprehend their inherent complexity. I'm like you, I can't wait to see what happens. I just hope we (read: sociopath politicians) don't kill ourselves off in the meantime.

What is amazing is that we see the stars at night and think that is it.
Then you see so many more with a telescope and infinitely more with the Hubble.

They have been there all along, we just did not know it. I wonder if there are other dimensions or parallel universes that coexist with us and we don't know it because we can't comprehend it?

Originally Posted by shockin330i

Crazy how something so small like a honeybee can evolve and learn how to defend it self...

I watched part of the video and two of those Japanese hornets looked at each other in mid flight like they were talking to each other...

The sun, doin' its thang