It used a micropulse of IR laser. Your eye couldn’t see it, nor focus it properly. However, it had just enough power to overheat and damage the mosquito wings.
I believe the issue was with the targeting. It could don’t, but not cheap enough for the mass deployment they intended. Mosquito nets were far more effective, once cost was accounted for.
Ultimately, physics follows the maths, everything else is interpretation to comprehend what the maths is telling us.
In relativity, gravity is a smooth, continuous distortion of spacetime. In QM, gravity is just another force, mediated by the graviton. Both theories are consistent with the known maths. The fact that they don’t agree shows the large hole we have in the maths.
In short, we don’t know what gravity is. Then again, we don’t know what most things are, once we did deep enough. We just have maths, with interpretations that let our monkey brains make sense of them.
My favourite example ample of this is the “dark sucker theory”. Envision a universe where light producing objects don’t produce light, but suck up dark. We can make the model work for our universe. The reason we don’t use it is due to it being harder to work with than the light emitter model. Another one is the rabit hole of what relativity says about the existence of light (hint light doesn’t exist, from light’s point of view).
The big bang wasn’t an explosion in space, but OF spacetime. Anything that might have existed before would have been fundamentally different, and completely destroyed in the event.
The forces, to be a useful modelling tool, need a medium to interact with matter. E.g. an equivalent of charge would always be zero, if matter didn’t have the ability to have charge. At that point, it effectively doesn’t exist.
Interestingly, the strong, weak and electromagnetic forces are also aspects of the same force. They unify at high enough energy levels. They only appear different. The exception is gravity. It doesn’t fit the mould. Basically we don’t currently have 4 forces, but only 2. Scientists suspect it’s actually only 1, but can’t yet unify gravity into a theory of everything via a theory of quantum gravity.
The problem is that nuclear reactors can’t be built fast. We’ve also lost a lot of the expertise to age and retirement.
Nuclear should have been a major factor in dealing with climate change. Unfortunately, we no longer have time for it to take up the slack. It will need to catch up with other renewable energy sources, we can’t wait for it.
Particularly since coal power stations emit FAR more radioactive material, routinely, than most nuclear “leaks”.
You still need to sort out and sign a bunch of identity confirmation/anti money laundering stuff. The government has a good track on you, at that point. It’s far from perfect, but stops people getting it signed off by a random friend, that the government has no clue about, and might not even exist.
They are all professions that require a good reputation and are non-trivial to up and abandon. Some require government licenses, others imply a strong societal standing. All have something to lose, if they commit fraud.
The problem is that, in this situation, no decision IS a decision.
Up until puberty, boys and girls are quite similar. It’s puberty that causes the lifelong changes. We already know that delaying puberty doesn’t cause long-term issues. Puberty blockers are used to treat or help with other conditions. By blocking puberty, you are buying time. Time for the child to mature. Time for phycologists to assess. Time to practice the role before locking it in permanently. Time to grow, learn, and make the very decision you are talking about.
What we need is clean, efficient treatment paths for acute depression. Barriers to treatment are the worst thing possible.
We need to work on attacking root causes, not just throw some drugs at the person and call it a day.
We need to help teach depressed people HOW to start pulling themselves out, not just to try harder.
Once the patient is stable, we need to NOT just wash our hands of them, treatment wise. This is the time that spending mental effort will lead to far bigger gains.
It’s the difference between telling someone with broken legs to “walk it off” vs emergency treatment, casts for 6+ weeks, and then physiotherapy where “walk it off” becomes walk on it to rebuild your strength.
The “just try harder” mentality got me into the mess Ive been in. It burnt me out, and it took me decades to even realise how bad I actually was, and years more to even start getting the help I actually needed. Even now, I have to fight for it. 1 slip up, and I’m set back months or years in the process. It’s like putting the hospital A&E department on the 5th floor, with no lifts, and expecting people to walk up if they really want treatment.
All of those points are things that depression actively disrupts. It’s akin to asking an American, living hand to mouth, to just pay out of pocket. It’s not a case of not going on an extra holiday. It’s a case of not making rent payments to do it.
Depression can leave you without enough mental resources to even maintain basic functionality. An upfront cost, for a payout potential years down the line, is simply more than many can afford.
The worst part is that you are correct. However, it’s the same correctness as telling someone about to lose their house to “just make more money”. Technically correct, but useless and callous in practice.
If you watch the cooking shows with Gordon Ramsey dealing with kids, you would get half of it. He’s amazing with youngsters, and k ows exactly how to give them positive motivation. He saves his outbursts for the “professionals” who are being complete idiots. He also racks it up for American TV. He’s a lot more relaxed on UK TV.
Before you criticise, you should have seen the alternative timelines! If we had switched on sooner, we might have been able to avoid this one, but we didn’t.
All I will say is imagine a Trump with a triple digit IQ and competent advisors. It was horrifying. Multiple techs took compassionate leave after seeing some of the projections. Poor mark still can’t make himself enter the building!
Summer up how I feel about usb C now.
I have some sense of self preservation. She’s bad enough right now calling everyone a banana!
They definitely do!
First 3 should get a good reaction. The rest require context I’m more sure she’s picked up on properly yet.
There’s a few spellings I apparently have blind spot for. That is definitely one of them.
Both work for protecting humans. However, I believe vaccination is better overall. It also improves the quality of life of the chickens. Unfortunately, it’s also (very slightly) more expensive, so America went the cheap route. The EU mandated to reduce animal cruelty, by vaccination.
Most of the problem with lasers come from focusing them. The eye is incredibly good at it. This means even a small laser pen can reach MW/m^2 ranges by the time it hits the retina.
IR is a different story (at longer wavelengths). Without the ability to see it, our eye will not attempt to focus on it. Also, our eyes lenses are not particularly transparent to it. 3rd, the ultra short pulses mean that there is no time to focus.
As for the mosquito, the laser is tuned to a frequency that is strongly absorbed by their wings. Given their size and how delicate their wings are, a tiny amount of energy can cause significant damage. Conversely, the same energy on our eye will just cause a slight amount of heating. The bulk mass of the eye will absorb this fine, with no damage