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Ever been locked out or forgotten your padlock keys.....

 

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Five simple tips to improve your Scrabble game

2:5314.3K VIEWS

Who doesn't love a bit of Scrabble? But it's better if you win! Here's five simple techniques to help make you a wizard with words

https://www.bbc.com/ideas/videos/five-simple-tips-to-improve-your-scrabble-game/p0749b5b

 

There are loads of planets!

Exoplanet tally set to pass 4,000 mark

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47681239

 

I wonder how many are going to be habitable? One day in the very distant future we'll have to leave this planet as we've destroyed it, and set up somewhere else!!

 

With the vastness of the unverse and the number of number of stars, thus planets, then there must be a statisitical chance.

It is possibly higher then the R's chances of being a stable and sucessful Premiership team which plays in the Champions League.

 

Wow! What an amazing discovery.

Huge fossil discovery made in China's Hubei province

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-47667880

 

we will all be dead long before the technology to actually do a battlestar galactica arrives

 

How the hell could this happen?

What was the “raise your hand” voting?

If it was printed on April’s Fools nobody would believe it!

BA flight lands in Edinburgh instead of Düsseldorf by mistake https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47691478

 

how can you fly all that way and no one notice
cant take a bottle of water on but you can fly 500 miles in the wrong direction and no one in charge of a radar notices

 

What about the flight schedule and air traffic controllers?

The flight is destined for Dusseldorf and heads off to Edinburgh. No one sees an error?

This was an BA flight!!!! Crazy!

 

Photographing the New York City Subway Cars That Retired as Artificial Reefs
How Stephen Mallon captured this unusual voyage to the bottom of the ocean.
by Winnie Lee
March 29, 2019
Photographing the New York City Subway Cars That Retired as Artificial Reefs
2,036

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The photographer Stephen Mallon specializes in documenting man’s industrial-scale creations. During his career, he’s focused his lens on the recycling industry, the largest floating structure ever built, and the transportation and installation of a new bridge in New York City. So it wasn’t surprising when, in 2008, he was drawn to an unusual program spearheaded by the MTA New York City Transit system: a multi-phased artificial reefing project that saw the shells of 2,580 decommissioned subway train cars repurposed and dropped into coastal waters off New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia, between 2001 and 2010.
Mallon arranged to follow the outdated subway cars as they were prepared and cleaned, loaded onto barges, and finally plopped into the sea. As he traveled with a crew in a tugboat to get his shots, the photographer developed his sea legs.
“I was never underwater, so just needed to keep myself steady on the back of the boat. It’s kind of like surfing or skiing—just keep your balance, keep the horizon line straight, bend your knees, and don’t fall overboard,” Mallon says.
With his Canon camera, Mallon shot more than 6,000 frames (only a tiny fraction of which are shown in a new exhibit, Sea Train: Subway Reef Photos by Stephen Mallon, currently on display at the New York Transit Museum) over the course of three years.

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The rooftops of subway cars. “Abbey Road, 2008.” Stephen Mallon
Though the subway car reefing project came to a close in 2010, its effects are evident today. “The subway car reefs have created almost 2 million cubic feet of new habitat for fish and invertebrates off South Carolina,” says Robert Martore, artificial reef coordinator with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources.
Related Stories
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Not all of the repurposed subway cars have performed as well as hoped, however. The “Redbird” models have held up well in deep waters (“about 90 percent of them remained intact and upright after 15 years,” Martore says), but the “Brightliner” cars have been a disappointment, with many collapsing after less than a year. Regardless, all of the subway car reefs have attracted attention from fishermen and divers, including Martore himself.
“The subway cars have always been some of my favorite diving off South Carolina. The variety of fish life is usually outstanding,” he says. “Occasionally we see pods of dolphin coming to feed on the tremendous schools of baitfish above the cars, and sea turtles are often found sleeping in and under the cars.”
Coordinates for the artificial reefs in South Carolina are available to the public, so anyone with access to a boat can visit them. For those who can’t make it in person, Mallon’s hard-earned, large-format photos provide an intimate view of how machines that once transported people in the city found new life as homes to sea creatures in nature.
Sea Train: Subway Reef Photos by Stephen Mallon is on exhibit at the New York Transit Museum through June 16, 2019.

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The abstract beauty of stripped-down vehicles in “Transfer, 2009.” Stephen Mallon

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Subway cars hoisted in the air in “Mind The Gap, 2008.” Stephen Mallon

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Nearing the final destination—“The End, 2008.” Stephen Mallon

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A train carriage about to make a splash. “Air Break, 2008.” Stephen Mallon

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“Redbird Reef” is now a go-to place for marine life. Robert Martore/Courtesy of South Carolina Department of Natural Resources

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Close-up of a subway car’s new home. Robert Martore/Courtesy of South Carolina Department of Natural Resources

 

Ever wondered how cold a black hole is.......?

Taking the temperature of black holes

By Kenneth Macdonald
BBC Scotland Science Correspondent

• 2 April 2019

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Researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh have developed a new formula to quickly calculate the temperature of a black hole.

They say it is simple and powerful, and offers fundamental insights into space and time.

The formula owes its origin to observations made on the Union Canal near Edinburgh 185 years ago.

The idea that black holes have temperatures at all came as something of a surprise to researchers.

They have so much mass and exert a gravitational pull so strong that nothing - not even heat or light - was expected to escape.

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Professor Stephen Hawking predicted black holes would emit thermal radiation
However, Professor Stephen Hawking changed that.

In 1974, at the age of just 32, he proposed the concept of what is now called Hawking radiation.

He predicted black holes would emit thermal radiation and gradually evaporate.

This is still at the frontiers of theory, with different schools of thought on the exact process.

Contradictory answers
One major issue is calculating how much radiation a black hole gives out.

Accuracy has proved elusive. Complex calculations have produced contradictory answers.

At Heriot-Watt, Dr Fabio Biancalana and his colleagues have come up with their new formula to quickly and precisely calculate the Hawking radiation temperature from any kind of black hole.

Dr Biancalala says they tested it against all published types of black holes - whether static, rotating, charged or even more exotic - and it always produced the exact Hawking temperature.

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A coffee mug and a doughnut are the same in topological terms
The key is the mathematical discipline of topology.

It deals with the properties of space - and not just outer space.

Topology treats things according to the fundamental properties they possess, even if they are bent, crushed, folded or otherwise deformed. Tearing, cutting, gluing or poking holes would be cheating.

One celebrated example is a coffee mug and a doughnut.

In topological terms, they are the same. That's because each is a lump of stuff with a single hole in it. In theory you could even squish the mug into the shape of a doughnut if you fancied (provided you didn't mind how it tasted).

New formula
"We discovered that only the topology of black holes matters when it comes to determining Hawking radiation," says Dr Biancalana.

"Not the size, not the electric charge, the spacetime in which they are embedded, or how they spin around their axis.

"Black holes can be physically very different, but if they have the same topology they will emit the same amount of Hawking radiation."

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In effect the new formula counts the holes of a black hole and the spacetime that surrounds it (yes, even black holes have holes in them).

This information is enough to determine the temperature.

Dr Biancalana calls it a "magic formula".

"For years scientists have been theorising about four dimensions and whether space has more dimensions we are still ignorant of, and now we know only two dimensions really matter in the description of all these astronomical monsters."

Which leads us to the banks of the Union Canal, not too far from the Heriot-Watt campus on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

'Something fundamental'
It was there that the Scottish engineer John Scott Russell first described what he called a "wave of translation" - a solitary wave that kept its shape while travelling at a constant speed.

He hoped his work would lead to a better canal barge. These days - now called solitons - these waves are important in laser physics and fibre optics.

The Heriot-Watt team realised that, as solitons and black holes shared identical mathematical properties, Hawking radiation would follow the same rules.

Dr Biancalana says it takes us a step closer to understanding how the universe works.

"This must mean something fundamental about space and time," he says.

"Now we just need to find out what

 

Funny little car that may have bummed a few people off.

 

Worth a glance before you eat your next meal.

Who does not want to suffer even longer watching the R’s!

The diets cutting one-in-five lives short every year https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47734296

 

If like me you cannot comprehend how the R’s have only picked up 6 points from 48 this year.

Then then I assure you that the concept of a boundary around an infinite Universe is much easier concept to fathom.

Sign him up as our next manager!

 

Taiwan doctor finds four sweat bees living inside woman's eye.

...as for me, I only need to watch the R’s to have my eyes water and to start crying!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-47876130

 

Technology and science is amazing!

First ever black hole image released

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47873592

 

New human species found in Philippines
By Paul Rincon Science editor, BBC News website

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Image copyright Florent Detroit
Image caption The finger and toe bones are curved, suggesting climbing was still an important activity for this species
There's a new addition to the family tree: an extinct species of human that's been found in the Philippines.
It's known as Homo luzonensis, after the site of its discovery on the country's largest island Luzon.
Its physical features are a mixture of those found in very ancient human ancestors and in more recent people.
That could mean primitive human relatives left Africa and made it all the way to South-East Asia, something not previously thought possible.
The find shows that human evolution in the region may have been a highly complicated affair, with three or more human species in the region at around the time our ancestors arrive.
One of these species was the diminutive "Hobbit" - Homo floresiensis - which survived on the Indonesian island of Flores until 50,000 years ago.
Prof Chris Stringer, from London's Natural History Museum, commented: "After the remarkable finds of the diminutive Homo floresiensis were published in 2004, I said that the experiment in human evolution conducted on Flores could have been repeated on many of the other islands in the region.
"That speculation has seemingly been confirmed on the island of Luzon... nearly 3,000km away."
DNA shows cave girl was half Neanderthal
Ancient humans interbred with us
Study backs 'hobbit' shrinking idea

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The new specimens from Callao Cave, in the north of Luzon, are described in the journal Nature. They have been dated to between 67,000 years and 50,000 years ago.
They consist of thirteen remains - teeth, hand and foot bones, as well as part of a femur - that belong to at least three adult and juvenile individuals. They have been recovered in excavations at the cave since 2007.
Homo luzonensis has some physical similarities to recent humans, but in other features hark back to the australopithecines, upright-walking ape-like creatures that lived in Africa between two and four million years ago, as well as very early members of the genus Homo.
The finger and toe bones are curved, suggesting climbing was still an important activity for this species. This also seems to have been the case for some australopithecines.

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Image copyright Florent detroit
Image caption The teeth of Homo luzonensis are consistent with the remains being assigned to a new species
If australopithecine-like species were able to reach South-East Asia, it would change the way our ideas about who in our human family tree left Africa first.
Homo erectus has long thought to have been the first member of our direct line to leave the African homeland - around 1.9 million years ago.
And given that Luzon was only ever accessible by sea, the find raises questions about how pre-human species might have reached the island.
In addition to Homo luzonensis, island South-East Asia also appears to have been home to another human species called the Denisovans, who appear to have interbred with early modern humans (Homo sapiens) when they arrived in the region.

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Image copyright Florent Detroit
Image caption Callao Cave, in the north of Luzon, is open to tourists
This evidence comes from analysis of DNA, as no known Denisovan fossils have been found in the region.
The Indonesian island of Flores was home to a species called Homo floresiensis, nicknamed The Hobbits because of their small stature. They are thought to have survived there from at least 100,000 years ago until 50,000 years ago - potentially overlapping with the arrival of modern humans.
Interestingly, scientists have also argued that Homo floresiensis shows physical features that are reminiscent of those found in australopithecines. But other researchers have argued that the Hobbits were descended from Homo erectus but that some of their anatomy reverted to a more primitive state.
In an article published in Nature, Matthew Tocheri from Lakehead University in Canada, who was not involved with the research, commented: "Explaining the many similarities that H. floresiensis and H. luzonensis share with early Homo species and australopiths as independently acquired reversals to a more ancestral-like hominin anatomy, owing to evolution in isolated island settings, seems like a stretch of coincidence too far.