In many countries firing lasers in any format of away from the surface of earth would require co-ordination with the national aviation administration agency. Clearly flying aircraft through the beam of a 30MW visible light laser would be a lot worse than having a laserpointer aimed at them by kids. I heard this all day on April 1st on NPR and the BBC. Although the BBC news site dates it March31st I doubt the story is anything more than an April Fool joke by the original authors.

There is never no direction from which the earth is not currently transiting the sun. April Fool.

What's that current ad that starts with the question: "Constipated?" I can't wait until some show has as a placement the product that's for. Plus, the ad I'm thinking of shows a handful of features it has so if it became the Hawaii Five O season laxative some year they could show a different feature in different episodes just like they do with the cars. Same goes for a show that has a season ED medicine some year. That would be great if they also showed the side-effects as well and there was the character with the four-hour-boner worked into the plot who did the right thing and consulted his doctor.

...in the case of religion perhaps. Science on the other hand plainly advances because it has advanced, often even in the presence of a single soul with an alternative opinion (not consensus plainly). Some of the greatest rewards in science appear to be seeking out individuals like that especially (aiming at creating new consensus from individuals with the courage to explore). IOW, if there is any consensus in science then you are only describing a limited set of cases of consensus and not all cases having it, particularly not science it seems.

But that hasn't yet stopped someone who feels the evidence has problems from expanding the science in some way and changing the direction. The governments of most of us have little interest in not expanding science honestly, the same goes for other funders of research. The US government can't wait for it's own discovery of interstellar transport at little cost. It doesn't care what science is done honestly. The ones who have cheated have been individual scientists who found a way to obtain income for nothing. Those cases that have been reported where people have been found lying for funding have resulted in very severe outcomes for the liar. Whatever there is in the way of consensus in sciences doesn't undermine their honesty or progress. The group who do behave the way you describe are the chaplains. Let's say there is a god, the Christian faiths are finished exploring it because it is already all defined in full.

The prosthetic must have two selectable operations so that his run can be guaranteed to be so balanced and he also does well to ensure that he always launches the jump from the prosthetic. At the end of the day, if there has to be a new competitive division for those with a prosthetic then his most important goal is to avoid it being a lower athletic standard than the ones he divides from so good luck to him in trying to avoid it being called paralympics or equivalent.

Rehm might go faster than naturally legged racers in the 100m circle.

That part is not fair. The other day when I got hooked on watching large building controlled explosion demolitions (implosions) were it not for a local Las Vegas TV station's news department's one hour coverage of it I would not have discovered the superb footage of the thirty second downing of the Alladin with the inclusion of sacrificial cameras. I love you balcony cam!

Indeed, most drawings I can think of can be reproduced by moving the drawing device using only two directional references regardless of how thick the material placed on the paper is. Therefore, the drawing is two dimensional in a real sense even though it is simultaneously three dimensional in terms of deposit of crayon, pencil, chalk, ink, etc.

Correction: I used transistor in places I meant to use atom: None of the materials the transistor is made of is a few atoms thick. Read the story more carefully. There was never a claim that the transistor was 2D, only that each of the materials the transistor used multiple layers of was 2D. Well, even an atom is thick but it is also true that in each layer of the materials used in the transistor the position of any atom with respect to any other atom only requires two dimensions to describe it (right a couple of atoms and forward a couple of atoms, no third direction required for each material used).

None of the materials the transistor is made of is a few atoms thick. Read the story more carefully. There was never a claim that the transistor was 2D, only that each of the materials the transistor used multiple layers of was 2D. Well, even an atom is thick but it is also true that in each layer of the materials used in the transistor the position of any transistor with respect to any other transistor only requires two dimensions to describe it (right a couple, forward a couple, no third direction).

I wondered about that one for a bit but no-one said the transistors were 2D, only that the materials the transistors were made were two dimensional. The transistors themselves consist of layers of these materials, each one atom thick giving the transistor itself three-dimensions: "First Transistors Made Entirely of 2-D Materials". Underscore materials not transistors. Every atom in each layer can be referenced by it's position relative to any other position in the layer using only two dimensions (left a couple, forward a couple but never up or down any atoms in that layer regardless of up or down being relevant in the multi-layer transistor itself). There are no transistors made of only one material so it was already implicit in the headline that the transistors had three dimensions due to the need to use multiple layers in each one.

Lots of mistakes there. In the experiment you are referring to, the whole thing was NOT "positioned under water". In fact, the mercury siphon and both beakers of mercury were positioned in a larger container exposed to the air. The siphon tube has an extra pipe exposing the top of the bend to the air as well. The outer container that contains the siphon is "slowly filled with water". Since the two beakers that make up the siphon containers both contain mercury the siphon tube is then filled with mercury from the lower beaker before the higher one because of the weight of the water appearing on the lower one first. The extra tube at the bend in the siphon prevents any compression of the air in it. With properly selected heights of the two beakers of mercury the siphon pipe can fill from the lower one first, over the bend and into the higher one and the mercury will flow "upwards" due to the weight of the water only being present on the lower mercury. However, as soon as the weight of the water is present over both containers of mercury then the flow will reverse and go "downhill".

Well, I stand by the fact that the ones you refer to didn't work in the MH370 case and a new generation of doppler science on Inmarsat data was required instead to reach an accepted location of the crash as being a more likely indicator that ELTs of that kind are not deployed on the MH370 airframe rather than a very good reason for passenger/crew families to sue Boeing and/or Honeywell. I never said such devices don't exist, the answer to your question "Isn't there supposed to be several salt-water activated beacons that are automatically released upon a crash?" is no. Quoting wikipedia for example:

"Most general aviation aircraft in the U.S. are required to carry an ELT, depending upon the type or location of operation, while scheduled flights by scheduled air carriers are not. However, in commercial aircraft, a cockpit voice recorder or flight data recorder must contain an Underwater locator beacon."

As far as I know from two respected broadcast news sources' stories (quoting government search organizations among sources) that automatic water activated ultrasound locators were being sought with urgency in the days following the MH370 crash due to their limited power life but that the problem was it was not worth searching other than in the region of the locator due to the low output power of the locator. A functioning floating VHF/UHF or even HF ELT would have been located with precision by satellite within no more than hours of the crash with half the world's ham radio operators contributing references from ground as well. It would not have been at the location of the crash when discovered if it was floating and would not have stayed where it was when located anyway. An underwater RF transmitter of the same type at the depth of ocean floor in this case would not have moved but would not be receivable other than in a small region around the crash, which is the reason ultrasonic ones are used underwater and why submarine external communications systems are not HF, VHF or UHF. I'm listening to a BBC World Service story right now where they are saying the new "rough" crash site is the size of Portugal and there's no knowledge of whether the "ultrasound" locator being sought is on a flat surface or down a sea-floor canyon.

I also heard a magazine style story using the Air France 447 crash as a frequent example and quoting US government aviation safety sources describing an intended design goal of ultrasound locators and the recorders themselves being to not leave the scene of the crash and that anything of interest leaving that location would be sought after based on best available knowledge of forces capable of moving them (tides for example). The reverse being intended if the debris is found away from the crash site. A floating radio ELT could not serve the same purpose and any on-board that did float could not be expected to go in the same direction as all survivors anyway so would have a lower than 100% effectiveness anyway. The only news discussion I've heard of ELT type locators is of the form where the reporter makes scathing comments about how outdated the system being sought is and how we must be able to do better with satellites and GPS for example and the interviewee points out that's not the problem, deploying such systems on all the world's existing civil aircraft makes it prohibitive to be considered an official safety system. In that case, I assume the Honeywell ELT system used by Boeing, for example, is a commercial locator that no airlines are required to deploy but can choose to buy.

The answer to your question was "no" with regard to MH370 and you've done nothing to show otherwise and quoted no sources of your own in response to several of mine. There were no RF ELT's on-board or required to be on-board MH370 and they would only be partially effective anyway. It contains one or two ultrasonic locators designed to have stayed at the crash site with the flight recorders and they cannot be discovered outside of a limited distance from them hence the need to know the crash site.

NPR and the BBC in the first week following the disappearance but here's some BBC magazining of it: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-... Besides, plainly if you were correct they would have to have completely failed for the search to have taken three weeks. Also, if they were "released" on a salt-water crash then if they floated they would not remain at the location of the crash even though the recorders would unless the beacons didn't float and if they didn't float they would be exactly what I described anyway.