BellGab.com Archive

Quote from: Art Bell on July 20, 2015, 03:48:45 AM
I thought she was great as well, people are strange, let a bit of time pass. I think they just hate change

Art

Follow what your gut says when it comes to a co-host. Let the fan base deal with it.

Was great to hear you back on tonight, and neat to hear how excited you were when you got a call from a far away place!

I liked Redacted on the show, I thought she did a great job. If she is not a permanent fixture then I hope she calls often and Art keeps her around for a while each time she gets on. I like the idea of a public forum and a roundtable discussion. Could make for more interesting talk.

All the best with the tech problems Art, I'm sure they will get cleared up. If a show gets cancelled here or there because of a rain day once in a while, no sweat. This is breaking new and interesting ground, and in order to do that you need to solve problems no one has really run into before.

Quote from: jazmunda on July 20, 2015, 12:27:11 AM
Blame Jazmunda

haha

omg Redacted! Gratz

And nice to hear you as well Jaz... even though this grim omen may spell certain doom!

These Pluto flyby photos are incredible....

DOOOOOOOOOOOOM

Quote from: area51drone on June 20, 2015, 01:00:10 AM
Where is agent orange when we need him to answer some of the biggest questions in our universe?

Off trying to answer smaller and more manageable questions.

Just dropped in on a whim today but glad that I did. Hope you guys are all doing well and you had a nice July 4.

I've been working hard since the beginning of the year and running stealthy and quiet ever since. Have kept my head down and had some serious results work out in my favor. So the summer has turned out to be very busy (in a positive way) with some unexpected travel and conferences come up on my radar.

Anyway this story came up as a press release yesterday:
"Biggest explosions in the Universe powered by strongest magnets"
http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1527/
which made my antennae perk up. Art needs to have an expert on magnetars come on his show and discuss these objects with him. They are not as nearly well-known as black holes but are in many ways more interesting - at least to me anyway

Hah.
"That's funny... Every time the Philae lander is around Cam is not. And every time Cam's around the Philae lander is nowhere to be seen...
wait a sec... maybe Cam IS the Philae lander!!
Oh, Agent : Orange, that is the dumbest idea I've ever thought of."
And somewhere Clark Kent pushes his glasses up to the bridge of his nose and winks at a camera. 

Anyway was just passing through and noticed the previous post, very interesting Zeebo! Honestly I've never run into the idea of an E-sail before but it seems like it could be plausible. The wires have to be very long, because part of the trick here is to get the electric field from the wire to drop off very slowly. From Maxwells equations you can show that an infinitely long wire will produce an electric field that will drop off as 1/r instead of the usual 1/r^2 drop off you get from a point charge (as an example the solution is given here http://faculty.wwu.edu/vawter/PhysicsNet/Topics/ElectricForce/LineChargeDer.html). Of course an infinitely long line charge is unrealistic but the upshot of this argument is that the effective cross-section of the wires will increase with their length. Just changing the geometry from a point to a line produces a much stronger electric field that drops off more slowly. Not an exact argument at all because it ignores what happens at the ends of the wires where there will be large fringe fields but for all intents and purposes I would not be surprised that you could get an effective (but still small) boost from this kind of method.
If you wanted to make an even bigger effect - but one which is totally unrealistic - you could use a solid charged sail. Then the electric field will drop off even more slowly near the surface of the disk (ie http://www.physics.udel.edu/~watson/phys208/exercises/kevan/efield1.html) and you'd get an even bigger boost. Of course any fast moving grain of dust will punch a hole in your charged disk and ruin it so the long wires seem more plausible.

You will want to make sure you launch your E-sail during or near a solar maximum as well to optimize the amount of plasma the Sun will barf at you. And, why not double your fun with a two stage E-sail and solar sail further up along the line? When you're near the Sun you can have both deployed, then once you're up to speed eject them at the edge of the solar system to cut down your mass and get even more of a boost. I've not kept up with the current state of the Art's new upcoming show (so I'm sorry if it's a painful topic if something has gone wrong with it since I've been gone) but I hope Art does a whole upcoming show on potential unconventional propulsion systems for space-craft and how they could be used. Would be very interesting.

Incidentally by analogy you should get a stronger force of gravity near a long string of mass than you would from a point mass as well, part of what would make a cosmic string so interesting.

Hope you are all doing well!

And Cam - please keep sending science data back from comet 67P. I'm glad the Sun once again shines on you and that you were able to efficiently recharge your batteries. Your secret is safe with me.

A brief blurb about a new formation channel for Wolf Rayet stars.

http://phys.org/news/2015-05-hubble-one-of-a-kind-star-nicknamed-nasty.html

Maybe of interest because Art and Michio Kaku captured our collective imaginations with the discussion of WR104 on the first DM show?

I don't remember how the lone gunmen died...
luckily there's time to do some catching up before the new episodes come out!

All the best Art. Hope you feel better soon.

"Astronomers unveil the farthest galaxy"

http://news.yale.edu/2015/05/05/astronomers-unveil-farthest-galaxy

Quote from: coaster on March 26, 2015, 01:24:20 PM

This is awesome

Gillian Anderson back as Scully?
*gush*

So far all the netflix series have been well produced, I hope the same holds for the new X-Files episodes. Also really hope the series does well and comes back beyond the first six.

Quote from: wotr1 on May 03, 2015, 10:57:33 AM
So we have a physicist and a chemist on the board?  I can say that hearing AO he would be good for commentary as he has the voice and the ability to explain what he is talking about and dumb it down for us mere mortals.  Possibly chefist could comment on the danger of all drugs and how c-a-r-i-n-o-v-a can cure any ailment?
So far the weekend has been good...  It would have been great to hear you call in during the interview.  Art has a history of letting smart and knowledgeable callers run with it for awhile while sitting back and listening.

Quote from: wotr1 on May 03, 2015, 05:10:13 PM
I don't know how I forgot about Astroguy... I have even enjoyed listening to his podcasts...

You are too kind Wotr!

I vote for Astroguy as a guest, he definitely has the presence and experience to make for interesting conversation. And, I'm sure, would be better suited to do battle with all sorts of callers.

Quote from: aldousburbank on May 03, 2015, 09:38:05 AM
Wow that's cool. Some of my best friends are chemicals.

haha
Hey Aldous, long time no speak. How's the cacti in your part of the world?

Quote from: chefist on May 03, 2015, 09:33:30 AM
Hi AO...what's your science background?  Just curious...I'm a chemist...

Hi Chefist
I have a Ph.D in physics and I specialize in astrophysics. I'm currently just a lowly post-doc in the grim and frostbitten great white north. My main interests are in theory and computational work. What kind of chemistry do you do?

Hey also, did Don Zaidle only do one show with Art? I keep running across the interview where he promoted a book called "American Mankillers" and I remember back in the day his stories about animal attacks kept me on the edge of my seat. One of my favorite shows that Art ever did.

Quote from: wotr1 on May 02, 2015, 10:56:37 PM
AO!!! Please call into MITD a few times to discuss all things science.

Hey wotr! How's it going?
I'm kicking myself for not calling in the first DM show with Michio Kaku on it. One day I'll speak with both of them!

Quote from: (Redacted) on May 02, 2015, 11:13:13 PM
I.  Don't.  Have.  The.  Words.   

haha

Quote from: (Redacted) on May 02, 2015, 09:46:48 PM
Going good, your jones will soon be satisfied.  It's been quite a ride just getting ready for it, as Art has been keeping us in the loop on some of the production.  Been wondering when you were going to show up again.   

Waiting for the times to get better...

But glad to be back in the meantime (even if just to poke my head in).

Also how cool is it that Art still walks among us?!

Hey

Just wanted to drop by and say hello and thanks for all the free entertainment. Making my way through the shows, not caught up yet, but savoring each one.

The most interesting new approach for me with respect to the UFO business has been Greg Bishop's stance that was generally adopted in the film Mirage Men. The combination of psyops and experimental aircraft would have been just the right mix to perk up my ears back in the days when Art was on the air and I'm enjoying how this show has explored that general theme. So it's nice to hear Ty Rogoway (sp?) and others expand a bit on aspects of the air defense and secret projects that are apparently behind the scenes. Other than the information on these shows I have not done much reading on the Bennewitz/Doty affair and I found that story also extremely interesting.

Actually a lot of the "contactee" stories from the fifties and sixties take on a different (and much more sinister) air when examined with the idea that high grade psychedelics and narcotics were being commonly experimented with as weapons and interrogation methods during that timeframe. After all, how many of the contactees had to eat or drink something before they had their claimed experiences? I feel it adds a bit to the eerie atmosphere around some of these stories regardless of their actual nature.

Quote from: (Redacted) on May 02, 2015, 09:18:42 PM
Agent : Orange!

Live stream will be free, downloadable podcast without music & other perks $5 a month.  Last one to the party is a square.  Art says he will have more, but can't reveal everything now.

Hey Red how's it going? Good to see you up & around!

The other day I was jonesing for new content and hoped the plans were still going forward. Very happy to hear they are.

Nice thanks, can't wait to listen in!

I love the name Midnight in the Desert, glad that this is happening.

Is the plan for free live streaming but paid archives? Or is a subscription needed to listen live as well? Thanks

Also.... is ... is that Fort Rock on the tab for this site now?

It just takes a few months for the place to go to the scorpions...

Quote from: zeebo on April 07, 2015, 06:13:04 PM
Newly-found gravitationally-lensed galaxy ring as predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity. 

"Astronomers have discovered that a distant galaxyâ€"seen from Earth with the aid of a gravitational lensâ€"appears like a cosmic ring, thanks to the highest resolution images ever taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) [...] Discovered by the Herschel Space Observatory, SDP.81 is an active star-forming galaxy nearly 12 billion light-years away, seen at a time when the Universe was only 15 percent of its current age. It is being lensed by a massive foreground galaxy that is a comparatively nearby 4 billion light-years away. [...] Gravitational lensing occurs when a massive galaxy or cluster of galaxies bends the light emitted from a more distant galaxy, forming a highly magnified, though much distorted image. In this particular case, the galaxy known as SDP.81 and an intervening galaxy line up so perfectly that the light from the more distant one forms a nearly complete circle as seen from Earth."

*gush*

This paper ( http://arxiv.org/abs/1503.08720 ) does a jaw-dropping job modeling the total lens mass distribution and also the source light distribution. Amazing.

Hey everyone, nice to see this thread is still around!! It's been so long since I have bounced around this place...

My plan was to skype into the last gabcast but sadly my Dad was readmitted to hospital yet again on that exact day so needless to say I missed the show. Between dealing with that ongoing saga and my work I have not had time for much else online. But I'm proud to say I have had my first solo-authored paper accepted by a well-known journal in March and I am still grinding on (for now).

Hope everyone is doing well and the skies remain clear.

... and before I get off on a rant let me say its my opinion this EM-drive and Alcubierre business that's being tossed about online (say, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3063082/Has-Nasa-built-WARP-DRIVE-Engineers-claim-tested-impossible-engine-travel-faster-speed-light.html or http://io9.com/new-test-suggests-nasas-impossible-em-drive-will-work-1701188933), along with any other system that claims to break classical conservation of momentum is really most likely bunk. If I were forced to bet I will say that these effects will go the way of OPERAs faster than light neutrinos before long.
But - of course - that lack of vision may be why I'm not working at NASA right now! Meanwhile I'll be keeping my fingers crossed even if the outcome doesn't look great.

Quote from: Georgie For President 2216 on February 03, 2015, 09:42:02 PM
This has more ups and downs than the unfolding Art Bell saga  .

Absolutely!

There's a lot on the line and the measurements are extremely difficult to make so people are scrambling for any clues they can find that will help in moving on.
There's still room for this to be a dust contaminated signal but we have to wait for the upcoming observations to know that for sure. What is clear is that there is a signal over what is expected from the standard cosmology and that signal remains consistent with BICEP2.

The previous BICEP2/planck paper from two days ago shows there is some contribution from dust in the B-mode signal, so that some of the signal must be the result of dust. But it does not mean all of it must be from dust. There's still room for primordial B-modes in the BICEP2 data. That's why its so important to get this new paper from Keck. Maybe there is something more interesting there beneath the surface that needed a better instrument to be studied. We'll see.

Amazing paper just posted to the arXiv a few hours ago, the Keck array seems to argue for primordial B mode gravitational wave signature consistent with BICEP2 and not due to systematics.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1502.00643

The situation is even more exciting now! I'm sure this will attract a lot of discussion in the next few weeks...

No mention of dust or how to distinguish primordial B-modes from dust, but this says plenty about the ability to detect gravitational waves. Will be interesting to see what multiple frequency observations have to say about all of this.

Looks like the BICEP2 results on primordial B-modes (gravitational waves) in the early universe were incorrect after all. The joint paper they collaborated with the Planck team acknowledges they likely just detected polarization from galactic dust.
http://phys.org/news/2015-01-planck-gravitational-elusive.html
Too bad... but there may still be primordial B-modes lurking out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered.

Exciting times