nudge

This is class

Haha it's never his fault is it, always finds someone or something else to blame. What an arrogant miserable little shit. Rinus van Kalmthout surprisingly good! Also David Schumacher looks to be improving fast.

Drink in a hotel bar. Problem solved

Is this a capybara?

Ask and you shall receive... They're not exactly erupting with joy haha... Different culture.

Finally we get more infos and photos/videos of the Chinese Chang'e-4 lunar lander and rover on the far side of the moon! Here's the actual landing video from the onboard camera released earlier today:

This is for suborbital VTOL tests. Orbital version is taller, has thicker skins (won’t wrinkle) & a smoothly curving nose section. Looks like a typical 50s or 60s scifi rocket That's how the actual Starship should probably look:

Race 1 is already finished; Ticktum's car stopped working and David Schumacher finished 7th... And yes, it's on youtube; both remaining Saturday races will be shown on the official channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUNlMDabhmu0y7qD4rcgizg Race 2: 4:10am CET Race 3: 11am CET

F3 Asian Championship Winter Series first round in Thailand this weekend. David Schumacher drives for Pinnacle Motorsports (Philippines) and will have to compete against his girlfriend who's also a racing driver and is participating in this series too Ticktum on pole for Race 1. @Tommy

No pressure... You can always binge-watch the Expanse instead

Absolutely...Let me know what you think if you do read them!

That would be great... The Chinese apparently tried to make a film adaptation but the first cut was apparently so awful they ended up canceling it altogether haha... now reading this it actually looks like it's going to be released in China but no word on Amazon https://gbtimes.com/film-based-on-three-body-problem-writers-sci-fi-story-set-for-february-release-in-china

I used to teach applied statistics to a bunch of 19 year olds who used to put on exactly the same face most of the time; I know well how to keep fragile egos in tact At any case, the Drake equation shouldn't be taken too seriously as it's just a conceptual framework; it's essentially impossible to assign values for most of the variables in the equation with certainty in order to apply it practically. Here's a good infographic for more info...

Inspired by @CaaC - John's post in the Space thread yesterday about the discovery of repeated fast radio bursts and the subsequent discussion with @Bluewolf, I thought it'd be a good time to recommend a very fascinating sci-fi book (or rather a trilogy) that deals with the subject and which is a part of the best sci-fi literature in recent years for sure. But before that, it's important to be familiar with a few concepts as the books deal with all these great theories about physics and the universe and threads them together into a fantastically epic story that determines the course of all humanity. So first of all, the Drake equation. As you're probably aware the equation is a science based thought experiment that is used to estimate the number of communicating civilizations in the cosmos, or more simply put, the odds of finding intelligent life in the universe. Here's it is illustrated: I won't go into detailed discussion about each variable in the equation but one way or another, even if you were to plug in the lowest possible values for each component of the equation, it still indicates that alien life is statistically inevitable (even if not in our galaxy, but rather the universe as a whole.) So given that, we come to another interesting concept called the Fermi Paradox which refers to the contradiction between the absence of evidence and the high probability estimations for the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations. There are a growing number of hypothesis trying to solve the paradox by looking for potential reasons why there has been no contact or at least signs of intelligent life out there; I posted a few videos about it earlier in this thread, but I would like to leave this video here as it's a very nice overview of the topic on hand: And finally we come to the last thing to be familiar with before I move to the actual book recommendation (bear with me! ); and that's one of the hypothesis for the Fermi Paradox which is known as the Dark Forest theory, and it is, well, dark... The main postulates of this hypothesis claim that: All life desires to stay alive. There is no way to know if other lifeforms can or will destroy you if given a chance. Lacking assurances, the safest option for any species is to annihilate other life forms before they have a chance to do the same. So basically the hypothesis claims that all intelligent life forms are expected to be risk-averse, contact of any kind is dangerous, as it almost assuredly would lead to the contacted race wiping out whoever was foolish enough to give away their location. Therefore civilizations are so fearful of being detected that they purposely avoid sending out any radio evidence of their existence and choose to hide in radio silence instead. And thus the proponents of this hypothesis raise the question whether we should stop broadcasting our existence to the universe too then as being found would inevitably end in our demise and destruction? And so I finally move to the actual book trilogy recommendation starting with an excerpt from one of the novels: "The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds another life—another hunter, angel, or a demon, a delicate infant to tottering old man, a fairy or demigod—there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them." And at last, I present you Cixin Liu’s highly acclaimed trilogy Remembrance of Earth's Past. It consists of three novels: #1 The Three-Body Problem #2 The Dark Forest #3 Death's End Highly recommended. Do yourself a favour and read it!

This would be more like "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..." though, considering the signals are coming from a galaxy 1,5 billion light years away... Imagine if it's some intelligent life form, how more advanced would they be by now after all these years when their signals finally reached us?... Or a bit more depressing thought, what if those signals come from an advanced intelligent life form that doesn't exist anymore...gone extinct due to some catastrophic events, have been exterminated or just simply destroyed itself billions of years ago and we're just getting their desperate calls for help now... This fits better in the sci-fi thread though haha. I'll be posting there shortly with a good book recommendation...

Yes, read it earlier today, fascinating stuff The most supported theory among the astronomers at the moment is it being a young neutron star with an insanely huge magnetic field. Well either that or aliens Seriously though, it's very fascinating as we haven't got any natural explanation to FBRs at the moment, nevermind repeating ones, so it's definitely huge!

I really need to watch the reboot... I've only ever seen the Stallone one and never read the comics so it's been pretty much off my radar. On a somewhat related note, have you read Frank Herbert's Dune or seen the movie (pretty bad)/mini-series (pretty decent)? Well the news are that Dennis Villeneuve, the director of Arrival and the new Blade Runner, has acquired rights a few years ago and is now working a new film adaptation of the novel; in fact he's hoping to make two or more Dune movies I'm sooooo looking forward to someone getting it right...

Never seen that before Perfection

Never liked Arrivabene myself. Removing him and installing Binotto was apparently part of Marchionne's master plan before he passed away; it will be interesting to see how it works out for Ferrari!

There have been previous attempts and there surely will be many more; some are tragic such like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dina_Ali_Lasloom and who knows how many had the same ending without anyone "on the outside" even knowing those people existed... Definitely a very brave young woman. An Australian ABC's journalist Sophie McNeill apparently stayed with her in the barricaded room and helped spread the word to the media worldwide.

She was on a trip in Kuwait with her family when she fled; and with Thailand being a popular destination for medical treatment it didn't look suspicious.

Hopefully. She's apparently been threatened by the staff of Saudi embassy that they'd find, kidnap and then deal with her if she doesn't comply. Her cousin allegedly sent her a message saying she will be slaughtered. She's lucky she was able to make it public and spread it around as Thailand is not a signatory to international agreements allowing travelers to seek asylum and thus was not bound to honor her asylum request...

Almost finished with Kimi's book; this is the next in line:

Anyone heard of Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun story? An 18 year old Saudi girl who renounced Islam and fled her abusive family and transited via Thailand for a connecting flight to Australia for asylum had her passport seized by a Saudi diplomat who met her coming off the flight at the Bangkok Suvarnabhumi airport. Thailand were initially going to deport her back on Saudis request, but the girl barricaded in her airport transit hotel room and tweeted her story live which caused a big uproar and now she's been finally allowed to meet UN refugee agency representatives and has been promised protection and safe passage to another country (probably Australia).

LARS' BIRTHDAY!!!!