Links for 2009-09-24

"The fact is, there is only one problem worth speaking about in space development, and that is the problem of cost-to-orbit. It currently costs around $10,000/kg to launch anything at all.

That price will never come down as long as chemical rockets are the only technology we use. "

"Unfortunately, the real problem with our medical malpractice system isn't that it costs too much. The real problem is that it's a lottery. Some people get money they don't deserve because it's cheaper to settle with them even if their claims are frivolous. But far more people who are victims of genuine malpractice never sue and never get a dime. A genuinely fair reform, one that cut frivolous malpractice suits but also did a better job of compensating everyone who was genuinely injured, would almost certainly end up costing us more, not less."

"[A] great physicist named Siméon-Denis Poisson thought Fresnel's idea was self-evidently ridiculous. "If Fresnel's idea is correct, then the edges of a circular obstruction will act as sources of light waves. Most of these will cancel out and produce a shadow behind the object, as expected. But because the path length from the edge to the middle of the shadow is equal no matter where on the edge you start, the cancellation can't happen and there has to be a bright spot right in the middle of the shadow. This is self-evidently bogus.""

"Now, white boards have their problems too. They're easier to see, but the markers are always dried out (and expensive to replace as well). They also are somewhat dusty (though not nearly as bad as chalk). Progress, but not perfect.

The solution, however, currently lies in your toddler's grasp."

"An angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy study of electron transport along quasi-one-dimensional Mo-O chains of Li0.9Mo6O17 reveals puzzling behavior that does not fit within the available one-dimensional theory frameworks and likely points to undiscovered physics."

"In part I of this series, we talked about a number of different ways -- all using gravity -- to measure the amount of matter in galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and the entire Universe. We got the same measurement no matter which method we used, finding out that 25-30% of the total energy of the Universe is in some type of matter. But, only about 0.5% of the total energy is in stars, which means that nearly all of this matter doesn't give off light! So what is the rest of this matter?"

No, you insensitive dolt.

"My small kitchen has a volume of about 25 cubic metre. So, I should light it with 75 bulbs of 100 Watt each to "simulate" the solar interior. This would be very bright, and blow the fuses, but it is a quantity conveniently to imagine, compared to the huge numbers we usually deal with in astronomy!"

"Conservationists should "pull the plug" on giant pandas and let them die out, according to BBC presenter and naturalist Chris Packham.

"Here's a species that, of its own accord, has gone down an evolutionary cul-de-sac," Packham told Radio Times magazine.

The 48-year-old believes that money spent on conserving the panda would be better invested in other animals as the species is not strong enough to survive alone."

"Early in this decade, the University of Notre Dame's economics department was bruised by a long series of quarrels over methods and ideology. So in 2003 the university's leaders came up with a Solomonic solution: They split the department in two.

Some of the faculty members stayed in what became known as economics and policy studies, a heterodox department that made room for post-Keynesians, Marxians, and historians of economic thought. (Broadly speaking, that had been the character of Notre Dame's economics program since the 1970s.) Others moved into economics and econometrics, a more-mainstream department with an emphasis on quantitative tools."