Evacuated Tube Travel To Replace Trains, Planes And Automobiles?

Some people spend their life watching the tube, but Daryl Oster is spending his trying to get people to travel in one.

With experience that includes farming; marine, aeronautical and mechanical design and certification; and stock-trading, Oster is now trying to engineer the biggest change in transportation since the invention of the car cup holder: Evacuated Tube Travel.

To be fair, Evacuated Tube Travel might be even bigger — Oster is proposing uisng magnetic levitation to send car-sized capsules through giant long vacuum tubes at speeds of up to 4,000 miles per hour.

The passenger vehicle is pressurized and has plenty of air, but moves through the airless tube on a magnetic track and all movement is controlled by manipulating the magnetic forces that are at play between the track and the capsule, according to Discovery.

That means the approximately 8,000-mile trip from Washington, D.C., to Beijing might take two hours, compared to the 14 hours it currently takes, not counting layovers.

And, he claims, the cost for the trip would only be $100.

Some people look at what Oster is proposing and think of the pneumatic tubes used at banks to transport cash and checks to car customers, but Oster says the real inspiration came from the great beyond.

“I was looking at how the moon moves around the Earth so fast and the perpetual motion that exists with all the planets,” Oster told HuffPost Weird News moments before presenting his concept to California state officials in hopes of getting permission to build the first 3-mile track on a state right-of-way.

Oster sees the tubes being routed along current freeway right-of-ways to avoid congestion, but says building above ground will be the most cost-effective solution at first.

“Building across water will be the most expensive part, but even if you go from Washington to Beijing, you only need to build 90 miles of track across the Bering Strait,” he said.

The idea of traveling by capsule may sound claustrophobic, but Oster’s ET3 consortium claims that the transport would provide more room per passenger than airplanes or cars, and TVs could be provided to “provide distraction from negative thoughts,” Gadling reported.

In addition, each tube would be constructed with emergency escape hatches and EMT facilities in case of emergency. Likewise, the braking system would be automatic with multiple backups, unlike, the website points out, the Springfield monorail.

Oster believes ETT is a cheaper alternative to other forms of transportation because it uses lighter, stronger materials. For instance, a 400-pound-capsule can hold up to 800 pounds and says he could get a sample track up in a year that only costs 25 percent of constructing a freeway.

“Also, it will be possible to ship goods and services the size of a single pallet without having to load up a full truck,” Oster said.

Oster and his team are selling licenses for the rights to build the tracks and tubes, but says the ultimate network will need both private and public funding. He also plans to start a Kickstarter campaign in hopes of raising funds for a documentary about ETT. …

via Evacuated Tube Travel To Replace Trains, Planes And Automobiles? (VIDEO).

Kimberly Smedley Pleads Guilty To Illegal Silicone Butt Injection Charges

She’s going to jail for literally putting junk in the trunk.

Georgia native Kimberly Smedley — accused of traveling across the East Coast injecting women’s buttocks with toxic silicone to enlarge them — pleaded guilty today to a felony conspiracy charge stemming from the illegal operation, according to the Smoking Gun.

Smedley, 45, reportedly had clients in Baltimore, D.C., Detroit, Philadelphia and New York City who would pay a mere $1,600 for the injections. Smedley admitted to a New York Post reporter in 2008 that she was “not a nurse,” yet her clients would pay for the process that included pumping their butts full of a silicone used for “metal or plastic lubrication, as an additive for paint and coatings, and furniture or automotive polishes,” court documents show.

When an undercover Post reporter probed Smedley, she claimed that she used “medical-grade” silicone, even though real plastic surgeons use fat transfers or butt implants. She would inject each cheek up to 10 times with the stuff, then plug any holes with cotton balls and super glue.

Illegal silicone treatments have killed people whose injections hit a vein and caused blood clots, the paper reported.

Clients paid Smedley a total of $200,000 between 2003 and 2011, prosecutors charged. A real butt implant procedure can cost up to $10,000, and doctors told the Post that illegal injections are “dirt cheap” in comparison.

Another person charged in the case is ex-D.C. cop Martin Freeman, who allegedly gave security to Smedley while she injected her clients from hotel rooms.

Smedley faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine when she’s sentenced on July 12, according to the Washington Examiner. …

via Kimberly Smedley Pleads Guilty To Illegal Silicone Butt Injection Charges.

Ancient Underground City in Turkey

UFO Discovered on Google Sky (Video)

A gigantic UFO was discovered by a Google Sky user poring over the constellation Sirius which looks man-made. There is no spacecraft in that region of deep space. So what is it?

The unidentified flying object looks like a satellite with massive solar panels powering its flight. But its size in relation to the surrounding star field is larger than any satellite ever launched.

The object seems transparent with stars visible in front and behind it. If the object was added as an image overlay, who put it there? Is Google aware that the program may have been hacked?

Searching the sky in the constellation of Sirius, the Dog Star, reveals the UFO and another strange object floating nearby. It seems to be metallic and is shaped aerodynamically.

This is probably not an object made by extraterrestrials, so that’s not the issue raised by the video. The question is, has NASA launched a secret spacecraft, for whatever publicly unknown purpose? What is it being used for? …

via UFO Discovered on Google Sky (Video) | Gather.

Eight from ‘Holy Death’ cult arrested in Mexico over ritual sacrifices of woman and two 10-year-old boys

Eight people have been arrested in northern Mexico have over the killing of two 10-year-old boys and a woman in what appears to be ritual sacrifices.

Prosecutors in Sonora, in the north-west of the country have accused the suspects of belonging to the La Santa Muerte (Holy Death) cult.

The victims’ blood has been poured round an altar to the idol, which is portrayed as a skeleton holding a scythe and clothed in flowing robes.

The cult, which celebrates death, has been growing rapidly in Mexico in the last 20 years, and now has up to two million followers.

Jose Larrinaga, spokesman for Sonora state prosecutors, said the most recent killing was earlier this month, while the other two were committed in 2009 and 2010.

Their bodies were found at the altar site in the small mining community of Nacozari, 70 miles south of Douglas, Arizona.

Investigations were launched after the family of 10-year-old Jesus Octavio Martinez Yanez reported him missing early this month. …

via Eight people from ‘Holy Death’ cult arrested in Mexico over ritual sacrifices of woman and two 10-year-old boys | Mail Online.

We must be alert to resurfacings of witch hunts and human sacrifices from a much stupider time in human history. May these murderous idiots rot in jail and never breed.

Dead stars ‘to guide spacecraft’

… Spacecraft could one day navigate through the cosmos using a particular type of dead star as a kind of GPS.

German scientists are developing a technique that allows for very precise positioning anywhere in space by picking up X-ray signals from pulsars.

These dense, burnt-out stars rotate rapidly, sweeping their emission across the cosmos at rates that are so stable they rival atomic clock performance.

This timing property is perfect for interstellar navigation, says the team.

If a spacecraft carried the means to detect the pulses, it could compare their arrival times with those predicted at a reference location. This would enable the craft to determine its position to an accuracy of just five kilometres anywhere in the galaxy.

“The principle is so simple that it will definitely have applications,” said Prof Werner Becker from the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching.

“These pulsars are everywhere in the Universe and their flashing is so predictable that it makes such an approach really straightforward,” he told BBC News.

Prof Becker has been describing his team’s research here at the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Manchester.

The proposed technique is very similar to that employed in the popular Global Positioning System, which broadcasts timing signals to the user from a constellation of satellites in orbit.

But GPS only works on, or just above, the Earth so it has no use beyond our planet.

Currently, mission controllers wanting to work out the position of their spacecraft deep in the Solar System will study the differences in time radio communications take to travel to and from the satellite. It is a complex process and requires several antennas dotted across the Earth.

It is also a technique that is far from precise, and the errors increase the further away the probe moves.

For the most distant spacecraft still in operation – Nasa’s Voyager probes, which are now approaching the very edge of the Solar System, some 18 billion km away – the errors associated with their positions are on the order of several hundred km.

Even for a probe at the reasonably short separation of Mars, the positioning uncertainty can be about 10km.

It is unlikely though that navigation by pulsar beacon will find immediate use.

The telescope hardware for detecting X-rays in space has traditionally been bulky and heavy.

Engineers will need to miniaturise the technology to make a practical pulsar navigation unit.

“It becomes possible with the development of lightweight X-ray mirrors,” said Prof Becker.

“These are on the way for the next generation of X-ray telescopes. Current mirrors have a 100 times more weight and would be completely unusable.

“In 15-20 years, the new mirrors will be standard and our device will be ready to be built.”

The scientist believes his navigation solution will certainly find use on Solar System probes, providing autonomous navigation for interplanetary missions and perhaps for future manned ventures to Mars where high performance systems will be an absolute requirement for safety reasons. …

via BBC News – Dead stars ‘to guide spacecraft’.

Gleaming Venus to have rendezvous with ‘Seven Sisters’ on Tuesday

This week, Venus will exhibit a remarkable celestial display when it shines near the well-known Pleiades star cluster in the western sky on Tuesday (April 3).

As the bright planets Venus and Jupiter go their own separate ways after their stunning tryst in mid-March, Venus continues to grow ever-brighter as the northern spring evenings warm up.

The planet seems to gleam almost like a sequined showgirl, hovering in the west-northwest sky high above the setting sun.

While our “sister world” Venus has attracted a lot of attention from its recent displays with Jupiter and a lovely crescent moon, come Tuesday night it will have a rendezvous with another noteworthy celestial landmark, popularly known in their own right as the “Seven Sisters” or the Pleiades.

There is nothing else like the Pleiades star cluster in the sky. Few observers can look very long at the night sky at this time of year without noticing the Pleiades stars and wondering what they really are.

The traditional Greek legend for the Seven Sisters — as this cluster has long been known — is that they are the daughters of Atlas and Pleione.

Their father, Atlas, rebelled against Zeus, the king of the gods, who retaliated by sentencing him to forever holding up the heavens on his shoulders.

This so grieved the sisters that Zeus placed them in the heavens so that they could be close to their father.

Interestingly, widely separated and totally different cultures have always described the Pleiades as the “Seven Sisters,” “Seven Maidens,” or “Seven Little Girls.” Yet, only six stars are readily visible to most observers.

Those with more acute eyesight may glimpse up to 12 under good conditions. But why this cluster has been cited by more than one early people as having seven members remains a mystery.

It will, however, be a bit more difficult to see them on Tuesday night, since brilliant Venus with its great brilliance will nearly overpower the star cluster. …

via Gleaming Venus to have rendezvous with ‘Seven Sisters’ on Tuesday – Phenomenica.

Link between fast food and depression confirmed

A new study along the same lines as its predecessors shows how eating fast food is linked to a greater risk of suffering from depression. This study has been published in the Public Health Nutrition journal

According to a recent study headed by scientists from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the University of Granada, eating commercial baked goods (fairy cakes, croissants, doughnuts, etc.) and fast food (hamburgers, hotdogs and pizza) is linked to depression.

Published in the Public Health Nutrition journal, the results reveal that consumers of fast food, compared to those who eat little or none, are 51% more likely to develop depression.

Furthermore, a dose-response relationship was observed. In other words this means that “the more fast food you consume, the greater the risk of depression,” explains Almudena Sánchez-Villegas, lead author of the study.

The study demonstrates that those participants who eat the most fast food and commercial baked goods are more likely to be single, less active and have poor dietary habits, which include eating less fruit, nuts, fish, vegetables and olive oil. Smoking and working more than 45 hours per week are other prevalent characteristics of this group.

With regard to the consumption of commercial baked goods, the results are equally conclusive. “Even eating small quantities is linked to a significantly higher chance of developing depression,” as the university researcher from the Canary Islands points out.

The study sample belonged to the SUN Project (University of Navarra Diet and Lifestyle Tracking Program). It consisted of 8,964 participants that had never been diagnosed with depression or taken antidepressants. They were assessed for an average of six months, and 493 were diagnosed with depression or started to take antidepressants.

This new data supports the results of the SUN project in 2011, which were published in the PLoS One journal. The project recorded 657 new cases of depression out of the 12,059 people analysed over more than six months. A 42% increase in the risk associated with fast food was found, which is lower than that found in the current study.

Sánchez-Villegas concludes that “although more studies are necessary, the intake of this type of food should be controlled because of its implications on both health (obesity, cardiovascular diseases) and mental well-being.” …

via Link between fast food and depression confirmed.

Clocking an accelerating universe: First results from BOSS

Some six billion light years ago, almost halfway from now back to the big bang, the universe was undergoing an elemental change. Held back until then by the mutual gravitational attraction of all the matter it contained, the universe had been expanding ever more slowly. Then, as matter spread out and its density decreased, dark energy took over and expansion began to accelerate.Today BOSS, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, the largest component of the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey SDSS-III, announced the most accurate measurement yet of the distance scale of the universe during the era when dark energy turned on.”We’ve made precision measurements of the large-scale structure of the universe five to seven billion years ago — the best measure yet of the size of anything outside the Milky Way,” says David Schlegel of the Physics Division at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley Lab, BOSS’s principal investigator. “We’re pushing out to the distances when dark energy turned on, where we can start to do experiments to find out what’s causing accelerating expansion.” …

via Clocking an accelerating universe: First results from BOSS.

Video: Flying Car (or Driving Autogyro) Completes First Flight Tests

… this video was uploaded on April 1st (*danger! danger!*) but we’ve known of the Pal-V for a few years and we’ll assume for the moment that the Dutch company was not aware of the risk in uploading a video of a flying car on April Fool’s Day. The Pal-V, which stands for Personal Air and Land Vehicle, is actually more of a driving autogyro than a flying car, but it can drive like a car, and it can also fly, so we are definitively on board.

An autogyro is an old idea–it uses an unpowered rotor on the top of the vehicle, but it’s not like a helicopter, which generates lift by blasting air downwards with it. Instead, power is provided by a smaller propellor at the rear, and the top rotor is used for pitch and yaw, more like a glider. (That also means if your power goes out, you can glide slowly to the ground.) The Pal-V, a small, one-person autogyro that also drives sort of like a three-wheeled motorcycle, leaning into turns, has been around for a few years, but it just completed and post the video of its first flight. The video:

APRIL 2, 2012
http://pulse.me/s/7IYdU

**Pal-V Flying Car** _Pal-V_ So this video was uploaded on April 1st (*danger! danger!*) but we’ve known of the Pal-V for a few years and we’ll assum… Read more