Wandering Adventure Party

Good to know!

How had I not thought of using sesame oil this way?

It’s not really a smoking gun, but if their analysis is correct it’s highly suggestive, especially when alternatives to LambdaCDM still consistent with measurements have proven really hard for the theorists to make.

Edit: Although what does this say about the cosmic distance ladder?

We’re still in a galaxy.

Ability to travel implies nanotechnology which allows metabolizing any resource which deterministically leads to expansion

Both of those aren’t really supported. Maybe all matter will be useful, or maybe rare elements will still be preferred, and what exactly nanotechnology will look like is up in the air (it could be that life has explored the space of possible nanomechanisms pretty well already). Similarly, it’s totally plausible an advanced species could stay in place. I actually worry we won’t have the attention span to fund slow interstellar expansion.

I’d agree there isn’t really a rational reason to cross interstellar space just to be a dick. Irrational reasons are possible, but seem unlikely. The only way dark forest makes sense is if competition is an issue, and the nature of space warfare leaves a strong pressure to strike early.

The motivation isn’t, but the technology to generate a slop paper is.

I’ll be interested to see how journals and (even better) the scientific community at large deals with this. Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise?

Interesting, that’s not one you hear often. Was it like a money thing?

Don’t dung beetles do this as well? I’m pretty sure there was an Attenborough documentary with that in it, even.

Yeah, the basic principle does sound solid. It looks like they’re not even relying on it to neatly work like random filters, but are applying statistical analysis to whatever superposition of speckle patterns comes out of the device.

The level of precision they’re talking about sounds more impressive than I would guess for it, though (1nm over 1um), and I don’t see the connection claimed with optical trapping or ultrafast imaging at all. If it checks out, I expect we’ll hear more in not too long.

Wow. Big if true!

These popsci sources will republish anything, though, and East Asia has a bit of an academic integrity problem, so I think I’ll wait for someone to replicate it.

If someone can replicate this research, it would basically amount to a way to measure the composition of anything. That seems like it could be handy to me.