Science!

[Blossom]

Used to be a milliard. Which is nonsense and rightly abandoned.

[François]

Heh, we still use milliard in French. Six zeroes, million. Nine zeroes, milliard. Twelve zeroes, billion. Fifteen zeroes, billiard. Trillion, trilliard, etc.

That took a long-ass time for me to wrap my head around as a kid.

[Büge]

Milliard:



Billiard:

[Büge]

[Mongrel]

Jalopnik: Elon Musk Says ‘Hyperloop’ Tunnel Is Now Just a Normal Car Tunnel Because ‘This Is Simple and Just Works’

Back in 2017, Elon Musk had grand visions for the Hyperloop test track built by The Boring Company, his tunneling firm, in Los Angeles. It would have proprietary vehicles with varying capacities for private travel, public transport, or freight. They would travel along electrified skates for frictionless movement. It would be fast and efficient, but more importantly, it would be different, because he’s a genius.

Six months ago, the first demonstration of that track didn’t quite match that vision: it was a Tesla Model X on a sled going down a very bumpy tunnel at roughly 50 mph.

At the time, Musk said the bumpiness was only temporary: “That bumpiness will definitely not be there down the road—it will be smooth as glass.”

Credit where credit’s due: it does appear to be smooth as glass now, according to a video The Boring Company released of a car going 127 mph down the tunnel. How did it achieve such miraculous speed and comfort improvements in a mere six months?

They paved it.

lol

[Mongrel]

Globe: Using powerful infrared light, researchers at the Royal Canadian Mint have found a way to tint metal without dyes or pigments – with scientific implications beyond coin-collecting

Our national mint is really cool like this. Possibly the top mint in the world for trying wild shit (it's at least top-three). I don't know how we ended up at this point, but they're always cooking up neat stuff.

The technique in question involves infrared lasers operating at pico- sizes and extremely short burst times. So it takes a couple hours to even do a large coin and for the time being the only applications they're really looking at seriously outside of minting collector's coins are medical ones. Even if they do someday find a way to greatly speed up the process, I'm sure simple economies of scale will mean that a simple coat of paint will still be used more often for large objects. But even though there's no mention of larger-scale operations, it would be pretty wild to imagine a day when some even larger items which are currently painted end up with an indelible metal colouring instead.

[McDohl]

Looking at it from an aviation perspective, you want the coat of paint on sheet metal (for aircraft that aren't built with composites) to prevent corrosion damage.

[Mongrel]

That's a very good point.

[Mongrel]

[Yoji]

I get it and I'm 1,000% behind it, but man that looks goofy as hell.

[Joxam]

I cant believe someone saw a fleshlight and were like, stick a fish in it.

[Brantly B.]

can't you

[beatbandito]

I was going to complain about the internet just finding this when Last Week Tonight famously did a bit. But they did it in 2014 already so I guess there's a whole new generation out there on the internet already.

[atog]

[Esperath]

Rats love driving tiny cars, even when they don’t get treats

[Friday]

cats

driving tanks

[Niku]

rolling out

killing me

killing you

[Niku]

SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET CAT WITH MINES

A BOOM BOOM BOOM

WAR TIMES NEVER SEEMED SO CUTE

[Mongrel]

[Mongrel]