Tags for this video have been changed from 'magnetic, levitation, device, pillow, millenium falcon' to 'magnetic, levitation, device, pillow, millennium falcon' - edited by brycewi19

I'm such a dork. But the Millennium Falcon is what earned up upvote on this one!

Many years ago, in a millennium gone past, I remember when people first start talking this thing called the internet.

"It's amazing" they said. "There's all kinds of fascinating information on there. People will learn heaps of new stuff"

But there were naysayers. "What about all these people who will tell people how to build nuclear weapons, napalm and explosives?"

And goddamnit, after over 20 years...somebody finally has.

Well done sir!

*sift of the millennium

sift of the millennium

I had the Millennium Falcon, the X-Wing, and the B-Wing and MY MOM GAVE THEM AWAY WHEN I WAS TEN!

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, or one of the less-grounded members of this community (you all know who you are!), and I'm not trying to make this out to be the good/bad/evil scenario, i.e. Emperor Palpatine et al. I use "government" as a collective, general term, however I felt it was apt in this context given that people strictly within the government, and maybe lobbyists to an extent, are responsible for these various decisions that have led us to this point.
No, they don't seek power for it's own sake, but the handful of objectives I listed in my last post are a sampling of what might drive an organization to pursue power fervently.

There does seem to exist a greater, definitively single-minded pursuit of lessening the civil rights of US citizens since the turn of the millennium, in an attempt to have more power over them, and while "government" at large generally fumbles over itself when it attempts to get all the parts moving together as one, I believe you can see the broader cooperation happening here. From inclusion of said US Tech companies roles, the nation-wide abuse by the police force, aggression of US border patrol agents, random TSA checkpoints on some state highways, and the statements made by the president and his staff, which only seem to serve to blow off civil concerns with one breath while granting increased power to these same entities with the next.

At this point in a country's history, it seems to me that the only thing that can change the course of an entire nation is decisive action by it's citizens on a scale that would simultaneously qualify as an act that justifies all their overreaches of power. And I don't mean in any way acts of violence, but if there were a 5-million-man-march on the capitol tomorrow to show a mass appeal for reason and demand accountability, I believe it would be used as an example of why the government is pursuing such surveillance to begin with.

Sorry this is long winded, but lastly, I wouldn't feel too bad about Obama's allegedly targeting only foreign individuals. To me that felt like damage control to appease the US populace rather than an affront to foreign nationals. They said the Exact. Same. Thing. about the Patriot Act, and that was being used to arrest US citizens for minor infractions by local law enforcement not 6-months after it was passed. Disgusting.

Did one of these INSIDE the millennium dome - ie ceiling is coming at you at ARGGGHmph.

Didn't tell my wife I hated her 30 times - only worry was we realised we'd left our father in law watching with our 3 kids and if anything went wrong our 4 year old had the best chance of getting them the 20 miles home!

Isn't that the Millennium Falcon move?

*promote

This is most likely the most AMAZING filament eruption to be caught on video. It is caused by a little process called magnetic reconnection. It's a little process that gives us our solar flares, these filaments, CMEs (Coronal Mass Ejections), auroras, and the possible potential for very dangerous radiation storms every few millennium--give or take a few. Basically, plasma flows along these field lines of magnetism. When things get out of hand, then those field lines distort and change and all of a sudden things get very dangerous (AND sometimes beautiful). The faster the magnetic field changes the faster the particles will travel making them more and more dangerous as the events unfold fast enough giving them more energy (kinetic & heat), which in turn if directed at us means it penetrates much further into our protective field and anything outside of the field, crispy--in the shredded DNA, cells, you name it sense.

Occasionally, Earth's magnetic field breaks down a bit (if I remember why correctly it was a certain "sequence" within our magnetic shield and it reacts badly with the Sun's--don't quote me though, I really need to look it back up again it was a very long time ago I remember this from), if a large solar flare directed towards Earth ever happened before Earth had enough time to fully build back it's strength we would be FAR more in trouble than usual, but this would be a rare event. Usually what happens is that the charged particles follow Earth's magnetic lines and go to the poles, which is the one place on Earth where you do suffer the most radiation from the Sun (basically wherever the poles are as the plasma follows the polarity or "field lines" of Earth's magnetic field). It's also why the closer you are to the poles the better your view is of the aurora as the particles streaming in, if there is a sufficient quantity moving very fast (the more energy, especially kinetic--speed, the farther the penetration into the atmosphere and the lower the aurora becomes visible), will enter the atmosphere and begin to be absorbed by various elements that our atmosphere is compromised of like Nitrogen.

Here's a quick explanation. Basically, the particles collide with atoms of molecules/elements or anything in the higher atmosphere, exciting their electrons into higher energy levels, which is known fundamentally in science as quantum leap/atomic transition/electron transition it's one of the atom's most fundamental abilities dealing with "extra energy" being pushed into a system that wants balance (this is a very common process that happens ALL DAY long, EVERYWHERE around you; it transfers photons essentially--pure energy--BUT, what is the energy in the form of as it's energy level makes it do very many different things; you could see things, what you consider the normal range of light--it's EXACTLY how light goes THROUGH a window--it doesn't go through the window it is transferred via the atoms from one side to the next, this is ALSO why people are trying to get invisibility to work as it just might; HEAT is another one that is transferred all the time--it literally radiates outwards from our bodies and then we are surrounded by excited electrons and the infrared range of light we are putting out, the heat of a human body...or any animal; this goes on and on, it happens everywhere and as I said ALL-THE-TIME, it's perhaps one of the most critical processes and abilities of the atom and how photons also transfer their energy between areas in a direction; a little off-topic information for those that don't realize how much is going on, everywhere, all the time, at any given second...it's a complicated, but beautiful world)), and making them give off light that we see when the charge they've taken on finally returns the molecule/element's electrons to their normal orbits in the electron shell; the color depends on what molecule/element was being bombarded and how much energy was involved from the particle that hit it). This of course transfers all the energy that those particles had and we get a nice light show.

/I thought I'd fill my promote with something useful; ...on why these happen...
//edit-For a little more clarity, grammar and a bit more information that I hope some will appreciate if it helps anyone learn something or atleast go look up some of this and learn some on their own; taking an interest in science, it's one of the most important things in the world that we have.
///Spreading science is just as important; it's the one literal thing we do/use that has ever allowed us to deal with the worst problems we have: fear, pain, death, disease, sorrow, despair, ignorance, etc... Science IS the light in the dark. It is our best hope for mankind's continued existence and a good life. It is the single most important activity we now do as a group; it's our savior from us and what's out there...

Boner: It is still confusing...

Astrophysicists have created the most realistic computer simulation of the universe's evolution to date, tracking activity from the Big Bang to now -- a time span of around 14 billion years -- in high resolution.

Created by a team at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics (CfA) in collaboration with researchers at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS), the Arepo software provides detailed imagery of different galaxies in the local universe using a technique known as "moving mesh".

Unlike previous model simulators, such as the Gadget code, Arepo's hydrodynamic model replicates the gaseous formations following the Big Bang by using a virtual, flexible grid that has the capacity to move to match the motions of the gas, stars, dark matter and dark energy that make up space -- it's like a virtual model of the cosmic web, able to bend and flex to support the matter and celestial bodies that make up the universe. Old simulators instead used a more regimented, fixed, cubic grid.

"We took all the advantages of previous codes and removed the disadvantages," explained Volker Springel, the HITS astrophysicist who built the software. Springel, an expert in galaxy formation who helped build the Millennium Simulation to trace the evolution of 10 billion particles, used Harvard's Odyssey supercomputer to run the simulation. Its 1,024 processor cores allowed the team to compress 14 billion years worth of cosmic history in the space of a few months.

The results are spiral galaxies like the Milky Way and Andromeda that actually look like spiral galaxies -- not the blurred blobs depicted by previous simulators -- generated from data input that stretches as far back as the afterglow of the Big Bang, thus portraying a dramatic cosmic evolution (see the above video for a sneak peek of that evolution from four billion years after the Big Bang).

"We find that Arepo leads to significantly higher star formation rates for galaxies in massive haloes and to more extended gaseous disks in galaxies, which also feature a thinner and smoother morphology than their Gadget counterparts," the team states in a paper describing the technology.

Though the feat is impressive -- CfA astrophysicist Debora Sijacki compares the high-resolution simulation's improvement over previous models to that of the 24.5-metre aperture Giant Magellan Telescope's improvement over all telescopes -- the team aim to generate simulations of larger areas of the universe. If this is achieved, the team will have created not only the most realistic, but the biggest universe simulation ever.



>> ^BoneRemake:

this video is a waste without addition information.
what am I looking at. spiraling gas' or something.
what is the significance, why did nine people upvote something they probably do not understand.
what part of the universe is this ? why didnt it start at the beginning ?
WHY WHY FUCKING WHY.

In reply to this comment by Kerotan:
It must have been a european thing, it was on every mobile phone, and on every advert break, at one point there was a number one song that beat coldplay to the top of the chart, chris martin later went onto a talk show to try and demonstrate he was not bitter about being pipped to post by a digital animation, and thus performed a cold play song interspersed with some of the crazy frogs signature noises.

It is at this point where I admit I know too much about the crazy frog , also I must apologise for my acidic tone earlier, I did (and still kinda do) have a stick my arse causing irritation.
In reply to this comment by PlayhousePals:
In reply to this comment by Kerotan:
The crazy frog, the most faddish meme from the early millenniums, from a time when the word meme didn't even hold currency. It boggles my mind that anyone finds it anything other than annoying.
In reply to this comment by PlayhousePals:
In reply to this comment by Kerotan:
So glad I could downvote this POS.


Thrilled to have made your day ... my work here is done =oD


AH!I missed that fad ... good to know. Now I understand peoples strong aversion. Thanks for the illumination =o)


No need to apologize ... I'm not very "social network" savvy. It's taking awhile to catch on to things in the relatively short time I've been here on the Sift. It's quite the learning curve and I'm developing a thick skin in the process ... heheh =oO


Without honest comments like yours I might never get a clue, so thanks for helping me out =oD

In reply to this comment by Kerotan:
The crazy frog, the most faddish meme from the early millenniums, from a time when the word meme didn't even hold currency. It boggles my mind that anyone finds it anything other than annoying.
In reply to this comment by PlayhousePals:
In reply to this comment by Kerotan:
So glad I could downvote this POS.


Thrilled to have made your day ... my work here is done =oD


AH!I missed that fad ... good to know. Now I understand peoples strong aversion. Thanks for the illumination =o)

Parov Stelar - Chambermaid Swing
In reply to this comment by NaMeCaF:
Sweet.

Does anyone know what song that was playing over the clip?

Thanks!
In reply to this comment by jonny:
*promote