So um, I saw this in the Atlantic. And I can’t wrap my little cerebral cortex around it. Is it me, or the journalist, or the story?
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Me too. But most of the phases mentioned in the article are at the quantum level, which seems to me to be fundamentally different than the phases we see in macroscopic quantities of matter (themselves dependent on quantum effects). Perhaps these will be useful for computer chips, superconductors, and so on, but on a macroscopic scale? I mean, a superconductor would still look like a solid, wouldn’t it?
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Yeah, I’m wondering how they discovered something about a 2-dimensional gas…
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“lasers”
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Would it help if I put it through Google translate??
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Maybe try it.
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I did not know this!
I … still do not know this.
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This sounds dubious to me. However, the existence of ovarian tumors is known, and it remains to be seen if a surviving baby could actually grow out of one. You’d have to do DNA testing on mother and baby to be sure.
Frankly, I think too many things could go wrong to make it very likely.
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If we live super-close to nature then super-natural things might occur such as, super health, vivid dreams, clairvoyant visions, and/or simple feelings of happiness.
Most womyn so blessed draw the short straw and only receive “feelings of happiness,” or a loose approximation thereof. If you don’t feel happy, perhaps you aren’t close enough to nature, and are tainted by Man.
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Pew pew pew!
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I remember an article about this in one of the kids’ mags in our school library way back in '81 or 82. It was considered a problem then, it must be exponentially worse in 2017.
If they made the lasers safely control-able via a web interface, they could forgo hiring staff for that task, the entire world would line up to blast IRL lasers at IRL space junk for free.
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Just remember to add in the sound effects.
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What if they happen to hit a US military satellite “by mistake” . . . ?
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To be fair anything that will remove debris from orbit can be repurposed as a space weapon.
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Irony of ironies.
from the article:
Back in 2007, China conducted a anti-satellite missile test that resulted in the creation of over 3000 bits of dangerous debris. This debris cloud was the largest ever tracked, and caused significant damage to a Russian satellite in 2013. Much of this debris will remain in orbit for decades, posing a significant threat to satellites, the ISS and other objects in LEO.
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Wasn’t this the instigating action in the film Gravity? Except IIRC it was the Russians, not the Chinese, in the film.
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