All posts by Chris

nanotube sheets

It looks like the field of nanotubes in the 21st century is looking as fertile as that of plastics in the 20th. The latest breakthrough is “nanotube sheets”:http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8976160/, super-strong super-thin sheets with a whole list of promising applications. (Think “space elevator”:http://www.spaceelevator.com/, but that’s just one of them.)

spurious assertion of the month award

To take my mind of the latest “depressing Shuttle news”:http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/12424377.htm, I followed a Google Ad to the “Moon Landing Hoax”:http://www.moonmovie.com/ page. Since “they faked the moon landing” is a running joke at “the office”:http://evdb.com, I figured it would be worth a chuckle. Unfortunately, the assertions were so rhetorical and so easily debunked that it was unsatisfying. (And the really compelling evidence? “Buy my movie and I’ll show you.” Feh.)

If you decide to watch the intro, here’s a hint: think about speed and mass instead of distance. The Shuttle flies at 17,000 mph and carries tons more payload than Apollo did. Now spot the fallacy.