Stimulus

Hey sciencers,

we will have to wait and see, but from what i gather there is a opportunity for the U.S. to finally get some renewable energy infrastructure built. This blog is not for politics, so i will not discuss the political junk behind it, but included in the bill is some 80 billion dollars for new science and production of clean energies, which will have a hopeful impact on the dismal state of our energy economy. And I add, if nothing is done now, the planet will not be a fun place to live, unless you like more lightning.

So the government is finally realizing that markets alone will not fix the greenhouse gas issue. I don't know what will happen or when it will happen, but we could be at a cross roads for lowering the human impact on the planet. Being trained in meteorology, I have a unique perspective in this debate. Naysayers use manipulated scientific studies and lack of evidence to justify their position. The fact of the matter is that reducing the impact that humans have on the globe is the smartest thing that we can do right now, even if no doom and gloom scenario exists in the future. Preserving our planet is the best way to ensure that humans will thrive for years to come, for we evolved on this planet and are uniquely tied to the well being of the planet, no matter what technology arises to combat environmental challenges. So, I say, for the first time in my life, yeah! gov't for giving a damn about the planet while trying to fix the economy.

naked singularities

In this month's issue of Scientific American, there is an article postulating the possibility of having a singularity without having a event horizon. This has many, many implications to our knowledge of black holes, which are singularities that are shrouded by an event horizon, or boundary or point of no return for things being pulled into a black hole. The mechanism for creating these naked singularities arises from solutions to Einstein's General Relativity equations, that take density variations in account during star collapse. These solutions still do not take pressure against gravity, the force that keeps a star from collapsing. There are also other mechanisms that could cause a singularity to loose it's event horizon, by either adding spin or an electric charge to the singularity, but these solutions prove even MORE complicated than the already insanely complicated solutions. This also means that humans may finally be able to directly detect singularities, where as as of now the only means we have of detecting black holes is by watching the material and celestial bodies that are gravitationally bound to said black holes. We may also be able to create a singularity that we could see and detect, depending on how much mass and/or energy is required to make a singularity. Seems pretty cool to me, and it could shed light on a otherwise dark topic.