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I think ultimately the question is whether there is a single continuous "initial mass function" of isolated objects or not. The best idea as to how stars acquire their initial mass is that turbulence in the interstellar medium, which exists on all scales, establishes a power-law distribution of initial masses. Every once in a while, you get a very strong shock which passes by inside a giant molecular cloud and forces the collapse of a large region which then goes on to form a massive star. But more typically, you form stars more like our sun. And just as rare as massive collapses are very small mass ones which go on to form isolated brown dwarfs and free-floating planets. If this model holds up to be true, then we are all mincing words in our definitions of isolated systems, since they are all manifestations of the same universal formation process.

However, to avoid the difficult question of formation mechanisms, an IAU working group of some of the most respected people in the field established a working definition [ciw.edu] to define by fiat what it means to be a brown dwarf, and a planet. Extrasolar "planets" are those objects orbiting a star which are beneath the deteurium-burning limit -- regardless of how they are formed. "Brown dwarfs" are defined to be those which burn deuterium but not lithium, and "sub-brown dwarfs" (NOT free-floating planets!) are defined to be those isolated objects which do not burn deuterium. Even the working group itself admitted that this definition was not satisfying to a single member of the group, and so it is likely it will be replaced at a later time with something more physically-motivated. The "planet/planetismal/KBO" distinction was pushed back to our own solar system, since it will be some time before anyone sees anything that small in another system.

Also of interest is the following link, which gives a history of previous claims for additional planetary members of our solar system : SEDS [arizona.edu].

ebi

Out in the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud [arizona.edu] there are thought to be as many as one trillion objects - most small 1 to 10 km chucks of ice.

The really interesting question is, what is the mass distribution ? (I.e., how does the number of objects scale with their mass ?) This is basically unconstrained by real data. All such cosmic mass distributions are steep, but many (for example, planets in the Solar System, Asteroids in the Asteroid belt) are dominated by the most massive bodies.

If this holds true in the Oort cloud, in particular, there could be some pretty big objects. Even a Jupiter sized object might be able to hide from the Infrared surveys (the best way of detecting such an object). jp

Just to compare, this Bay of Bengal quake was 8.9 Richters and let's say it caused maybe 10 000 casualties.

According to http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/ 2004 MN4 could cause only a 7.0 Richter seismic effect (worst case scenario) when hitting water depth of 100m. Those kind of quakes happen all the time around the world's oceans, causing negligible casualties.

According to this calculator the crater would be about 9 kilometers in diameter, It would cause a 7.1 strong earthquake and a 44 m/s shockwave a hundred kilometers from the epicentre. (Assuming 90 degree collision angle and iron composition - basically, the worst.)

Note that this assumes 4940 megatons in kinetic energy, and Nasa says it's "only" 1600.

Here some calculations I made via the Earth Impact Effects Program.
My Parameters: Diameter 390m, Density 3000kg/m^3, Impact Velocity 11 km/s, Angle 45 degrees, Distance from Impact 25 km (sounds acceptably close but not "hey, it hit me on the head" close - if you are closer than that... though luck.)
If it hits Rock:
Final Crater Diameter: 4.87 km = 3.02 miles
The major seismic shaking will arrive at approximately 5 seconds. Richter Scale Magnitude: 6.6
But watch for the air blast... Max wind velocity: 186 m/s = 416 mph - Multistory wall-bearing buildings will collapse.

If you are at least 100 km away, you will still feel the earth shake and hear the air blast, but little damage will be done.
To sum it up, sorry, nope, humanity won't get extinct if this one hits us, and you won't be too affected unless you are rather close to it (100km) or if it hits water (Tsunami anyone) and you live nearby on the coast.

Two links that will answer your questions. Look at the pretty pictures describing the cloud of probabilities.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news146.html
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2004mn4.html

An interesting page to play with is here: http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/

I think it would be very bad if one were living close to Yellowstone and having the impact close to the caldera. Put in the values for 2004MN4 at a distance of 50 km. Assume it is a density of 2600 kg/m3, hits the lake of 30m depth and at an angle of 50 degrees. The effects are quite devastating without having factored in the effects on such an impact on Yellowstone's caldera.

Now, if you put in a density of 6000 kg, it gets really interesting!

Thanks for all the numbers, but using this page is more fun ... (no HTML, it's short enough to cut and paste)
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/

You knucklehead, you spent more effort explaining why you didn't add an href than the href itself would have taken.

sheesh

Use the info from this site over here to make your own doomsday scenario with this chunk of happy fun rock.

And for the truly lazy ...

Enjoy.

Your Inputs:

Distance from Impact: 0.00 km = 0.00 miles
Projectile Diameter: 16.00 m = 52.48 ft = 0.01 miles
Projectile Density: 8000 kg/m3
Impact Velocity: 17.00 km/s = 10.56 miles/s
Impact Angle: 45 degrees
Target Density: 2500 kg/m3
Target Type: Sedimentary Rock
Energy:
Energy before atmospheric entry: 2.48 x 1015 Joules = 592.27 KiloTons TNT
The average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth is 73.5 years
Atmospheric Entry:
The projectile begins to breakup at an altitude of 13400 meters = 44100 ft
The projectile bursts into a cloud of fragments at an altitude of 6880 meters = 22600 ft
The residual velocity of the projectile fragments after the burst is 5.02 km/s = 3.12 miles/s
The energy of the airburst is 2.26 x 1015 Joules = 0.54 x 100 MegaTons.
No crater is formed, although large fragments may strike the surface.

Major Global Changes:
The Earth is not strongly disturbed by the impact and loses negligible mass.
The impact does not make a noticeable change in the Earth's rotation period or the tilt of its axis.
The impact does not shift the Earth's orbit noticeably. Air Blast:

Out in the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud [arizona.edu] there are thought to be as many as one trillion objects - most small 1 to 10 km chucks of ice.

The really interesting question is, what is the mass distribution ? (I.e., how does the number of objects scale with their mass ?) This is basically unconstrained by real data. All such cosmic mass distributions are steep, but many (for example, planets in the Solar System, Asteroids in the Asteroid belt) are dominated by the most massive bodies.

If this holds true in the Oort cloud, in particular, there could be some pretty big objects. Even a Jupiter sized object might be able to hide from the Infrared surveys (the best way of detecting such an object). tja

I think ultimately the question is whether there is a single continuous "initial mass function" of isolated objects or not. The best idea as to how stars acquire their initial mass is that turbulence in the interstellar medium, which exists on all scales, establishes a power-law distribution of initial masses. Every once in a while, you get a very strong shock which passes by inside a giant molecular cloud and forces the collapse of a large region which then goes on to form a massive star. But more typically, you form stars more like our sun. And just as rare as massive collapses are very small mass ones which go on to form isolated brown dwarfs and free-floating planets. If this model holds up to be true, then we are all mincing words in our definitions of isolated systems, since they are all manifestations of the same universal formation process.

However, to avoid the difficult question of formation mechanisms, an IAU working group of some of the most respected people in the field established a working definition [ciw.edu] to define by fiat what it means to be a brown dwarf, and a planet. Extrasolar "planets" are those objects orbiting a star which are beneath the deteurium-burning limit -- regardless of how they are formed. "Brown dwarfs" are defined to be those which burn deuterium but not lithium, and "sub-brown dwarfs" (NOT free-floating planets!) are defined to be those isolated objects which do not burn deuterium. Even the working group itself admitted that this definition was not satisfying to a single member of the group, and so it is likely it will be replaced at a later time with something more physically-motivated. The "planet/planetismal/KBO" distinction was pushed back to our own solar system, since it will be some time before anyone sees anything that small in another system.

Also of interest is the following link, which gives a history of previous claims for additional planetary members of our solar system : SEDS [arizona.edu].

wrg

Bah, I've got a better page than that: calculate your own custom asteroid impact.

also see collection of philosophy papers on emergence

First of all, the earth is coming out of an ice age. In geologic terms, the ice ages were yesterday, and the day before it was hot and sunny. Right now, we're in spring after the ice age, and it's hard to predict if we've reached summer or not, but we know it's not as hot as it was before the winter.

You could find the answers to this yourself with a little web research, c.f.: this. Peak temperatures were reached over 5000 years ago.

We haven't been observing long enough to be able to make any conclusion about what's going on in geological terms.

Only, of course, if you exclude all of the isotopic data, tree ring data, pollen data, etc, etc.

Scientists are mixed on how much the contribution matters, and not long ago, were predicting that there would be ice ages (the theory before global warming).

References, please. This particular piece of fiction is based on a couple of pop-science articles, but that dosen't seem to stop people echoing it repeatedly.

Shoemaker-Levy

ftp://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/pub/astro/SL9/images/re cent/ALL/PMO_L1.gif

Yeah, I was disappointed to find the headline does not match the reality here - I was expecting to read about an eyepoppingly large CCD array. The "biggest digital photo" here is not by any stretch of the imagination the biggest, nor is it a "photo": it's a mosaic. And as digital image mosaics go, we're hosting bigger ones on our sites as a matter of everyday business practice. Want one huge single image? Try HiRISE collecting 20Kx40K (red band) in a short swipe (one image, longer swaths will be 70K lines long). A mosaic will break the farm - At 1.1+ billion pixels every 3 seconds (including blue-green and NIR), in 70 minutes, we're talkin' a pedabyte-and-a-half image mosaic... and more importantly, the subject will be far more interesting.

I just emailed this to PV, but thought I'd share it here as well. One very overlooked chronic infection problem in CA and other southwestern states is valley fever. This Arizona Univ site explains it a bit: http://www.vfce.arizona.edu/. It's often misdiagnosed as a bacterial infection, but it's actually a fungal infection, so antibiotics may knock down secondary infections but do nothing about the primary cause. There's probably a ton of people out there in the affected areas or who have visited the affected areas who have chronic coughs, fatigue or other symptoms that go undiagnosed or worse, labeled as hypochondriacs, because this disease is so poorly screened for by clinicians. Even if a patient brings it up, they'll often only do a chest xray instead of cultures and microscopic inspection of fluid. People who move into the area as adults and who spend time outside in dust storms or working in the soil are at prime risk. Children born in the affected areas tend to pick up immunity from mild infections in childhood, but may still suffer problems (I often wonder if the rise in asthma in the areas is really due to the ag pollution and/or smog as commonly suggested or if there's a valley fever component too). Those who work in construction, agriculture or oil might think twice before relocating to the affected areas as this risk is often poorly explained to workers. As someone who has grown up in a strongly affected area, I constantly find myself explaining to people why staying sealed inside during windy/dusty days is well advised. I remember a decade or so ago the disease got a lot of local attention because a popular weatherman from the area became seriously ill (ie in the hospital for weeks on antifungal drips and still nearly dying) from valley fever, likely picked up when he was outside covering a dust storm. Nasty little disease when it hits seriously. Life affecting even when just a moderate chronic infection.

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I was under the impression that the camera package on Cassini has two cameras - one very long focal length [very small field of view] and one wider focal length with 10x the field of view of the other camera.

Yes, they are 1 megapixel chips, but you have to remember, the design for this started in 1990 and it was launched in 1997, so its not going to be up-to-the minute technology.

Also, if you are going to send a probe all of the way to Saturn, you want to cram as much instrumentation on board as you can whilst being constrained by weight, size, payload, fuel, electrical power etc. Sure Cassini is massive, but when is the next time we will send a probe to Saturn - 20 or 30 years in the future ? As for using ION Propulsion, Deep Space 1 wasn't launched until Oct 24th 1998 - that's a year after Cassini. I'm not an expert on this, but I always through Ion propulsion was for slow acceleration up to speed - Cassini needs manouvering and I presume slowing down to insert itself into orbit around Saturn - can ion propulsion produce such deacceleration ?

Finally, as for Huygens staying around on Titan, is the knowledge about the atmosphere pressure/density/temperature/wind speed or surface composition sufficient to plan for an extended stay ? If not, then surely plan for an exciting but short lifespan for the probe. If the atmosphere or surface is more benign than was thought, then future missions could be planned to stay longer.

There's an article Buyer s guide to telescopes at the best sites which considers deep space lunar and Antartica locations in detail. All have pros and cons.

Let's not forget this telescope almost didn't make it -- it nearly burned in July. And that wasn't the first fire to give the LBT a scare.

Let's not forget this telescope almost didn't make it -- it nearly burned in July. And that wasn't the first fire to give the LBT a scare.

Sadly, I'm not qualified for any of them.

Did you look at the comparison in the summary?

Pardon me for asking, but isn't atmospheric interference still a factor for ground-based observatories? Won't this affect their observations?

Granted, the telescope's location is a plus in this department (there are few locations more suitable) but the potential interference is still a consideration. I've read their page on ground versus space telescopes and it touches on this issue, talking about fast computers and adaptive optics that correct atmospheric blurring, but it's not an issue for which you can completely compensate.

Having said that, a ground-based observatory is a heck of a lot cheaper than an orbital one...

Just adding to this point eveidence also suggests that their is no impact crater big enough to completly support a theroy of a meteor impact.

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/SIC/impact_cratering/Ch icxulub/Discovering_crater.html

........BBBB
PPPPPPPPRRRRPPPPPPPP
........GGGG

Where the middle layer three CCDs deep are the "Blue", "Red", and "Green" (approx.) CCDs, while the others are the panchromatic (really the same as the "Red" in the color portion of the array). Each of the CCDs is something like 1024 pixels across, with a 6 pixel overlap on each side.

Check out:

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/hirise

Back in the days of the Homebrew computer club, you literally did build a PC. These days, whacking a load of PCBs into a case isn't quite the same level of complexity. I remeber telling people I built PCs where I worked and they looked amazed. As far as I was concerned, it was nothing more complex than Lego with static. The hardest part was installing software.

Things have definately changed.

Yeah, totally. Which was why I was surprised when I heard that one of my co-workers has designed and built (well, is building -- it's a work in progress) one ompletely from scratch. Although he doesn't mention it on the page, he's written games for it and everything. (I said, "does it have games?" and the next week it did). It's pretty much the most amazingly geeky thing I've ever seen, and seriously deserves to get slashdotted. :)

Take a one cubic mile mass of solid granite. 5280 x 5280 x 5280 (cubic mile) x 170 lbs (one cubic foot of granite) and you get:

25,023,651,840,000 pounds, or

12,511,825,920 tons

this is an object MUCH SMALLER than the asteroid in question. In fact, I would say it is 1/4 the size of the obect in question, but I doubt the asteroid Toutanis is made completely of granite. It's probably part rock, iron, and ice like most of these things, and so it's mass (my pure out of my ass guess) is probably only 2 - 3 times that a 1 cubic mile of granite. so let's be generous to the ice-side and say 2.5 times. that would be:

31,279,564,800 TONS.

THIRTY ONE BILLION TONS.

OK....

And it's what?: 2.7 miles x 1.3 miles (roughly). Which means it is probably tumbling through space and is (obviously) not spherical. so you blow it up in the middle and you get TWO big chunks of say 15 billion tons each and a billion or so tons of gravel and million ton objects.

So, what say we put THAT in a trajectory through space in such a way that it directly impact over your head. Better yet: I'll even give you some room: I'll put you 500 miles away.

And THIS is what would happen, and this is assuming it's made out of average loose crap and I averaged it to a 2 mile object:

(per this site: asteroid impact effects calculator

Your Inputs:
Distance from Impact: 805.00 km = 499.90 miles
Projectile Diameter: 3218.68 m = 10557.27 ft = 2.00 miles
Projectile Density: 1500 kg/m3
Impact Velocity: 20.00 km/s = 12.42 miles/s
Impact Angle: 90 degrees
Target Density: 2500 kg/m3
Target Type: Sedimentary Rock

Energy: Energy before atmospheric entry: 5.24 x 1021
Joules = 1.25 x 106 MegaTons TNT. The average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth during the last 4 billion years is 5.4 x 10^6years

Atmospheric Entry:
The projectile begins to breakup at an altitude of 75100 meters = 246000 ft. The projectile reaches the ground in a broken condition. The mass of projectile strikes the surface at velocity 19.9 km/s = 12.4 miles/s. The impact energy is 5.19 x 1021 Joules = 1.24 x 106MegaTons. The broken projectile fragments strike the ground in an ellipse of dimension 3.32 km by 3.32 km

Transient Crater Diameter: 25.2 km = 15.6 miles. Transient Crater Depth: 8.89 km = 5.52 miles

Final Crater Diameter: 38.5 km = 23.9 miles. Final Crater Depth: 0.888 km = 0.551 miles

The crater formed is a complex crater.

The volume of the target melted or vaporized is 46.2 km3 = 11.1 miles. Roughly half the melt remains in the crater , where its average thickness is 93 meters = 305 feet

Seismic Effects: The major seismic shaking will arrive at approximately 161 seconds.Richter Scale Magnitude: 8.7.Mercalli Scale Intensity at a distance of 805 km:
III. Felt quite noticeably by persons indoors, especially on upper floors of buildings. Many people do not recognize it as an earthquake. Standing motor cars may rock slightly. Vibrations similar to the passing of a truck.

IV. Felt indoors by many, outdoors by few during the day. At night, some awakened. Dishes, windows, doors disturbed; walls make cracking sound. Sensation like heavy truck striking building. Standing motor cars rocked noticeably.

Ejecta:

The ejecta will arrive approximately 436 seconds after the impact. At your position the ejecta arrives in scattered fragments
Average Ejecta Thickness: 7.99 mm = 0.315 inches
Mean Fragment Diameter: 1.01 mm = 0.0396 inches

Air Blast:
The air blast will arrive at approximately 2440 seconds.
Peak Overpressure: 13600 Pa = 0.136 bars = 1.93 psi
Max wind velocity: 30.3 m/s = 67.9 mph
Sound Intensity: 83 dB (

As you get to the very lowest masses of the low-mass stars (about .08 solar masses, or 80 Jupiters), I think you do start getting water lines. The issue is that most stellar photospheres (like our sun's, say) are so hot you can't have molecules of any kind, whereas in cooler stars or brown dwarfs you can. Most people are at least vaguely familiar with the idea of atmoic spectra, where you get some number of sharp (more or less) lines throughout the visible, which, in theory, could be mistaken for one another (it certainly happens for some of the low-strength metal lines). Molecules, on the other hand, have large "bands" of absorption, where light over a large wavelength range is heavily absorbed. It's fun quantum mechanics, but basically the central line is some transition to do with the molecule vibrating (the distance between the oxygen and hydrogen atoms in the water molecule oscillating, say), which is then broadened by a number of transitions to do with the whole molecule rotating.

The end result is you get very distinctive molecular features. See the bottom image on this page on another way of looking for planets, where the black line is the spectrum of the first brown dwarf discovered, Gliesse 229B. Everything in that spectrum redward (longer wavelength) of 1.6 microns is heavily suppresed by methane (another common molecule, CH4)...and I think after about 1.8 you start getting into water bands, too, but don't quote me on that. Anyway, that's all a convoluted way of saying if it looks like water, it probably is water. But there's a large range of planets and brown dwarfs expected to have such water bands in the spectrum (indeed, the parent brown dwarf shows similiar spectral features to the companion)

As to the photo, the data have certainly gone through a lot of processing in the reduction process, but that shouldn't be though of as having photoshopped the result. I've used this same instrument, and there are some features I'm curious about (lack of diffraction spikes from spider arms, mainly), but it seems pretty legitimate. It's just important to realize what this image is showing.

For one thing, that isn't reflected light making the "planet" shine, but rather the planet is powering itself. When you form something like a planet or brown dwarf, and it isn't massive enough to start fusion, gravity will make the object contract. The potential energy of that contraction needs to go somewhere, so half of it heats the gas, the other half comes out as radiation (mostly infrared). As the object ages, the contraction slows, and it gets much fainter. As an aside, even after 5 billion years, Jupiter emits more radiation than it receives from the sun. That's part of the trouble with detecting planets in general, in cases like this we know how much energy is coming out of the object, roughly how old it is, and then we have to rely on theoretical models (which aren't well-tested at all) to tell us how massive the object should be.

The second point is to remember that the "size" of the two objects in that image aren't the physical sizes at all. In fact, the telescope is barely able to resolve the separation between the two, let alone physical structure of the surfaces of these bodies (a scale 10,000 times smaller or so). "Size" of the disk on the detector is simply a matter of our imperfect telescope optics (and basic physics of diffraction) taking the points of lights from parent and companion and smearing them out: brighter objects seem to reach further out on the detector. The diffuse structure near the edge of the bright parent is again introduced by the optics, and isn't a real feature.

The image itself is your typical false-color image. All the data are in the infrared, so for us to see it, a quick remapping has to be done. Rather than have red (0.65 microns), green (0.55 microns), and blue (0.45 microns) filters that are then reproduced by red, green, and blue pixels,

Link: the Vatican Observatory. Really.

We are using a PIC 16F877 microcontroller. We chose a PIC because it was simple to implement, simple to program (not counting compiler bugs), and power efficient.

Radiation is certainly a concern, but there have been a handful of other successful small satellite missions using PICs so there is some prior usage. I don't have links handy, though. I do know, however, that because of cost and simplicity, a number of other Cubesats are also using PICs.

A hang or single event upset is still a danger, though. To provide some protection, we have a simple onboard clock chip which has an alarm feature. This alarm is set to trigger weekly and this will reset the PIC.

The 16F877 model has flash memory for program storage making it great for development. We could have added another layer of safety by using the 16C877 which is the same chip, but with EEPROM program storage.

For storing sensor data and persistent settings, our board has 64K of FRAM (Ferromagnetic RAM). We had done some reading/research that indicated this would perform well in space.

Still, in low Earth orbit, there really isn't THAT much radiation, so the problems should be minimal. Also, the planned lifetime for this satellite is not very long. If we needed it for years, we probably would have made some different choices.

If you're still interested, my documentation for the code I wrote is at:
http://bach.as.arizona.edu/~cubesat/cubesat_manual

It's mostly just software documentation and doesn't touch too much on the hardware issues, but they are mentioned. I like talking about this. :) So if you've got any more questions feel free to ask.

> There is no liberal or conservative media...it's a myth.

Oh really?

Pray tell, why are Rupert Murdoch's, Mellon Scaifes's, and Rev Moon's papers/media are so far to the right they make Bob Dole blush?

Ownership bias is quite real. In other countries its very common to have a "liberal" paper and a "conservative" paper all of whom are open with their bias. At least here in the states the alternative weeklies don't shy away from the fact that they have a liberal bent, but Fox News and the Washington Times and others still play the "we're just newsmakers without an agenda" card. Which is highly disingenious and leads to more dangerous beliefs than "al gore invented the internet." How about the millions who believe Saddam had a hand in 9/11?

They're going to try for a high-latitude landing again, but this time in the northern hemisphere. The Mars Phoenix lander is scheduled for 2008. You can read more about it here:
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/objectives.php

Thank you for taking the time for your response.

Saturn's missing ring spokes.
"scientists are already puzzling over the noticeable absence of the ghostly spoke-like dark markings in the rings first seen by Voyager on its approach to the planet 23 years ago"

Oxygen on Venus
"An unexpected sign of atomic oxygen has been found in spectroscopic data of Venus' atmosphere. This comes as a major surprise since data from earlier studies had shown molecular oxygen, O2 and ozone, but not single oxygen atoms.

It wasn't just a weak trace of atomic oxygen either. The data shows a green line nearly as intense as the glow from Earth's atmosphere, even after taking that effect into account in the ground based data.

"I certainly trust those data," stated Dr. Crisp. "Something weird is going on in the upper atmosphere of Venus."

The first bottom line is that we just don't know what's going on."

Hot Io Temperatures
"In its chilly corner of the universe, Io needs to release its inner heat, just as a cup of hot coffee cools by releasing steam. Scientists have known for a while that Io is the solar system's most volcanically active planetary body. Yet scientists were surprised by the extreme temperatures.

"Given Io's intense vulcanism, we expect extreme differentiation," McEwen says. "The evidence suggests we're seeing heavy magma erupt to the surface. How do we explain that? It's harder for dense material to rise through a low-density crust, although this has occurred on Earth's moon. Perhaps some process mixes the crust back into Io's interior, so the crust has a higher density."

On Earth, the tectonic plates move slowly around the surface, forming new crust at mid-ocean ridges, for example, and recycling oceanic crust into the hot mantle where two plates collide, one diving under the other. Scientists don't know yet how to explain what's happening on Io."

I am interested in your explanation about precipitative heating, but I don't see any information on it. A quick google for "precipitative heating" "gas giants" returns zero results. I have to say I still find it hard to believe that denser elements sinking would cause greater energy radiation than the entire planet is receiving from the Sun though, or that this process is still going strong after billions of years.

Puzzling Seasons and Signs of Wind Found on Pluto
"Seasonal change on Pluto is causing the planet to warm up even as it moves away from the Sun, according to two studies that also detected the first firm signs of weather on the tiny planet.

In a deeper analysis of data first announced in October, researchers now say Pluto's atmospheric pressure doubled since 1988. They say the average global temperature must have climbed, too, by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius)."

Pluto is undergoing global warming, researchers find
"Pluto is undergoing global warming, as evidenced by a three-fold increase in the planet's atmospheric pressure during the past 14 years

"This is a very complex process, and we just don't know what is causing these effects" on Pluto's surface, Elliot said."

---------------

So it still appears to me, regardless of Hoagland's wild rantings, that there are indeed large scale planetary phenomena going on in the solar system which scientists are at a loss to adequately explain. The bottom line is that we seem to have a rather limited understanding of planetary climate change.

Subsequently, I am concerned that similar rapid and global change coul

Please explain the value of this?

Boy, does this take me back. Right back to seventh grade math, when we were learning to do stuff like factor polynomials and kids would ask in their whiniest voices: "But why do we have to learn this? What good is it for? I'm never going to have to do this in real life..."

Of course, there was never a satisfying answer from the perspective of a seventh-grader. The more perceptive among us knew that this was just stuff you had to learn, sorta like eating your vegetables. It turned out that it was a stepping stone to more advanced math, and that it was a tool that we could use to understand things that would otherwise have been difficult. But it's not like you ever factor a polynomial in the course of balancing your checkbook.

Well, lucky for you. Professor Mehl has a relatively easy to find and easy to understand web page that talks about his research. (Apologies to the good professor for any minor slashdottings this link may bring.) It turns out that this sampling is a tool that he uses to help answer questions about how people deal with life, and particularly with traumatic events. For example, he did a study where eleven students carried these recorders in the first days after the 9/11 attacks.

I don't know about you, but it sounds to me like this sort of research has plenty of value.

Why is it hard to buy enough recorders? Simple. It's because they're using Pocket PCs running their custom software. It seems overly complicated for something that could be accomplished with a hardware recorder and later parsing via software. Why distribute a handful of expensive recorders when you can distribute many cheaper recorders? Academia confuses me sometimes - the objectives seem much less spectacular than the methods proposed to reach such objectives.

To see what I'm talking about, check out the newest model of their EAR at the bottom of the page.

Think the nostalgia has clouded your vision.
DRM - Those 5 1/4 disks had anti-copying features. Try to copy and they made a terrible grating sound. Thats why there were programs like Copy II Plus, and Locksmith, to circumvent the copy protection (I think it was some intentionally bad sectors on the disk). Not to mention the other ghetto anti-piracy features, like code wheels, and "find the 3rd word of the second paragraph of page 6"
Crashes - There were horrible compatibility issues. Lots of games made you select from a list of components for video and sound. Alot of times my stuff wasn't on the list (darn you Tandy!). So I'd end up with junky graphics, and/or glitchy or non-working sound. Later on sound cards (like the first sound blaster) would randomly crash your system if things weren't setup just right (IRQs, memory addresses). Then when the first dedicated video cards started coming out they were the random crasher.
Internet - No, but there were BBS's which were as good, or bad as the internet. Chat, door games, message boards and 125k pr0n file... just start downloading and come back the next day.
Solitaire - Solitaire has always existed. This program references one version made in 1985.

Mysterious slow downs - No, pretty much everything was slow so didn't matter. Of course to get certain things running you'd have to mess around with the autoexec.bat and config.sys files to free up enough main memory, 640k my ass billy G!

you are more likely to die from the introduction of arthropod parts into your blood stream than you are to die from overdosing on diamorphine.

But check out the rocket between her legs here.

Oh, mama!

Doesn't look too bad either: pic

looks like she could be

She is.

I was an undergrad at the time; we were watching Jupiter with the Steward Observatory 21-inch telescope. The actual impact events were not visible from Earth, but as Jupiter spun around, we saw the scars left by the impacts. Very exciting stuff!

here troll boy.

Troll food

Resident Evil games have voice work so bad they offer up unintentional B-grade-movie-style chuckles

I'd call that authentic, what is Resident Evil if not the videogame incarnation of the classic b-movie theme Zombies

You can hardly complain about the acting in a game/movie of that genre!