Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2015 June 12

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June 12

Energy

Can "Dark energy" be converted into useful electrical energy by a generator?182.185.56.56 (talk) 11:51, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

We don't even know what dark energy is yet, or even if it exists for that matter. Plasmic Physics (talk) 12:11, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

What is clear is that the stuff doesn't appear to interact with normal matter at small scales - if it did, we'd have noticed and categorized it a very long time ago. That's a bad sign for anyone thinking of extracting useful energy from it.

It's really only detectable at the scales of galaxies where something out there definitely has a gravitational pull that is measurable. But no, right now we know so little about dark matter and dark energy that we certainly can't use it for anything yet. Whether we could eventually use it to power stuff is a total unknown at this point. Anyone who says otherwise is almost certainly a member of the loonie wing of the "free energy" movement - and belongs in the same category as those who believe we can get energy from Zero point energy, Simple Magnetic Overunity Toy, Perpetual motion machines, Casimir effect generators, Water fuelled cars, etc, etc. SteveBaker (talk) 12:51, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

There are legitimately scientific ideas about how the Casimir effect could be used to stabalise an Einstein Rosen wormhole. Plasmic Physics (talk) 13:07, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Would you care to cite these ideas by referencing legitimate, peer-reviewed scientific publications? Nimur (talk) 14:51, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm out of my element here, and perhaps way off base, but these legitimate, peer-reviewed articles seem relevant to PP's claim: [1], [2]. This guy [3] is arguing against such a possibility - but he does acknowledge that it is a somewhat serious idea that real scientists have seriously investigated. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:51, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

The problem is that "dark energy" is a misnomer. It is just the lambda term in the Einstein equations. So, I am not sure it represents any real energy. Ruslik_Zero 20:31, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Misuse of medication

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Tevildo (talk) 07:53, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Oldest fossil of MODERN humans

what is the oldest fossil of MODERN Humans. — Preceding unsigned comment added by A8v (talk • contribs) 21:15, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

I think THIS is what you are looking for. Agent of the nine (talk) 21:19, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

We have an article on Anatomically modern humans.--Aspro (talk) 21:28, 12 June 2015 (UTC)