General science thread

Quote: rxwine

There are wars going on we aren't even aware of.

I think India and Pakistan have been shooting at each other at a border glacier for years...

Quote:

Bots roaming the Internet can interact in unintended ways.

It's similar like bots roving DC already do. See, the orange bot takes a policy position, and then the cabinet bot says the exact opposite. A flunky bot brings word back to the orange bot, but by then he has found a shiny new thing to tweet about. Then a few days later the cycle repeats for some reason.

MIT has come up with a novel method of robot control.

An eeg and interpretive algorithms can detect when you notice an error. This is sent to the robot and the robot gets info that the movement was incorrect.

Don't think that will be so useful defusing bombs, but for other remote control use where nothing too critical can occur, it would be useful.

One other useful factor; the size of the error can be quantified.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/mit-finds-an-easy-way-to-control-robots-with-your-brain/ar-AAnXoc1?li=AA4Zoy&ocid=spartanntp

Quote: Nareed

I think India and Pakistan have been shooting at each other at a border glacier for years...

Freedom always exists in the hills, not the agricultural flatlands. The more inaccessible the location, the more the anarchist types flock to it.

Where credit is due:

http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2017/03/07/why_georges_lematre_should_be_as_famous_as_einstein.html

"When Lemaître heard that Pope Pius XII intended to speak to members of the International Astronomical Union in Rome, he urged the Pope's advisors to ask the Holy Father to refrain from using his findings as evidence for divine creation. "

Quote: Fleastiff

Freedom always exists in the hills, not the agricultural flatlands. The more inaccessible the location, the more the anarchist types flock to it.

Hills are harder to take and easier to defend. Why Poland has been invaded many times but Switzerland has been left alone.

Quote: AZDuffman

Hills are harder to take and easier to defend. .

Is that why castles were built on hills
and mountains? I read the other day
that it can't be called a castle unless
it was originally built for defense.
All the homes the rich built in England
in the mid 1800's and are called castles
today, really are not.

Quote: Evenbob

Is that why castles were built on hills
and mountains? I read the other day
that it can't be called a castle unless
it was originally built for defense.
All the homes the rich built in England
in the mid 1800's and are called castles
today, really are not.

I've climbed up one of the hills to get to the ruins of a castle. It was no easy jaunt just to get to the first stones. It wasn't that it was so high although it was pretty high, but it was often steep in places.

It's a good defensive place for medieval warfare, but there's hell to pay if you ran out of supplies and nowhere to run if you're finally in trouble.

Quote: rxwine

It's a good defensive place for medieval warfare, but there's hell to pay if you ran out of supplies and nowhere to run if you're finally in trouble.

Lets not forget the Trebuchet which could knock down walls

Quote: terapined

Lets not forget the Trebuchet which could knock down walls

Not very well.

Constantinople withstood all siege attempts, until the introduction of gunpowder and cannon managed to punch holes in Theodosius' walls.

The trick was to have part of the city face the sea, allowing for resupply, and a navy that could prevent a successful blockade.

Sappers often took care of stout walls. A seige engine of any sort rarely worked sufficiently well. A trebuchet was powerful but of short range and abysmal accuracy. Even canon originally could not pound walls since there was such poor accuracy. It was the invention of corned power that gave canons accuracy with identically weight charges and no settling during transport by oxcart.

That is why you saw Europe adopt the round towers of the Ottoman empire, but eventually castles became places of temporary refuge.