I assume I'd convince my band of basque fishermen to go to California and make a literal city of gold where I, the prophet king, would rule over my vast empire.

Yes, but by and large it's abyssaly plain.

I always found it kinda sad that I was born too late to explore the earth and too early to explore the galaxy. But I suppose things like this are pretty damn awesome.

For all Orison Scott Card's baseness and bigotry, He did attempt to examine what a galactic nation made up of a plurality of worlds would look like if every subculture, religious sect, and ethnicity was given their own world. Its kind of fascinating if you think about it.

lol well ok fair enough.

you do know that there are active thrust faults in the transverse ranges and mojave desert right?

Geophysicist here.. those look like phreatic eruption craters to me. They're very conical, steep-angled, and seem clustered together.

I would so put this on my christmas tree!

what about a wave?

I'm down with this. Time to use it in daily speech as much as possible. An io9 writer should write an article "Stockman Effect" so I can share it to my fb wall and spread awareness of this phenomenon.

which is why its important to draw the distinction between public scientific research and private sector research. While Microsoft is technically a private entity, its research grants and funding are (what I assume) to be directed towards public research. If you're a scientist, you're being paid (or funded) to conduct…

have there been any unpredicted discoveries that have come out of cern?

or we could just recycle them into nuclear fuel?

close! 23 actually. Trying to get my grad program in barcelona (looks like its coming together! and all paid for too)

This isn't always possible for some people. Example: me. Sure I'm smart, but from the time I was young I couldn't give a rats ass about what other people wanted or would buy, I'm just happy learning about rocks and the processes that make them. I'm going into a Geophysics graduate program studying deep earth…

I was recently in a big rut (in some ways I still am), and in part it was because of my philosophy training, deep scientific nature, and training in rhetoric; Whenever I'd get help from people, they would try and provide me with quotes, point to religion, or tell me what I was feeling was unwarranted or wrong. After…

Hey Mika!

or.. you know.. you could just be terrible with women. Thats 100% effective according to one early 20s geophysicist.

I actually like this. Far too many planets have been reported that are 'earth like' that are, in fact, very different from earth in terms of likely environment.

I just did. That was actually quite satisfactory! thank you