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His personal page is promising more details by last thursday... (oops). He's out to lunch right now (OK: Supper), so It'll be at least a couple of hours before he gets the update installed (he has been given the heads up).

Take a look at the higher resolution image, and you'll see that every star has that pattern.

To answer my own question, here is the link.

Schrodinger's Cat

Good points you have made. However, I'd like to defend my original post:

1. Even though nuclear waste can be contained somewhat safely, I think it would become a much bigger issue when hundreds of thousands of nuclear power plants start producing wastes that take thousands to millions of years to fully decay. Even though, the amount of "global warming" pollutants may be reduced, this is a trade off with the introduction of more radioactive waste.

2. My point there was that it takes many years to get by regulations to even start building a nuclear power plant. Even then, it'll take another few years for the plant to complete. It doesn't seem likely that the construction of 10,000 nuclear power plants will start construction within days of each other. Suppose you construct a batch every 5 years, then you need to start with 1000 new constructions every 5 years which still seems unfeasable.

3. Right, solar energy is our best chance. No other power source has been estimated to have the scalability to meet our energy needs in 50 years. Being our "best chance" does not mean that all associated hurdles have been solved. That's why I mentioned solar energy storage as fuels. Significant research is being conducted today on converting solar energy into a fuel (kind of like photosynthesis in plants). Doing that will not only make it viable for "darker" areas to power themselves, but will also meet the needs of non-electrical energy.

I'm basing my arguments off of this document: Scientific Challenges in Sustainable Energy Technology. If you're interested, it's a good read.

Nuclear power isn't a fix because it just won't scale and causes pollution in other ways such as in radioactive waste. Energy researcher Dr. Nathan Lewis of Caltech and perhaps many others in the industry have already estimated that in order to even become close to the approx. 13 terawatt energy that the world is using every year, "producing 10 TW of power would require construction of 10,000 new nuclear power plants over the next 50 years, i.e., one every other day somewhere in the world for the next 50 years." Considering the fact that getting even one nuclear power plant built takes years, nuclear power does not look optimal.

However, about "1.2x105 TW of solar energy" hits the Earth's surface, and from "50 TW to optimistic estimates of 1500 TW" can be harvested each year. Therefore, solar energy is our best chance at meeting our energy needs.

But two of the biggest factors in holding this technology back is the increase in efficiency of solar cells, and solar energy conversion/storage (into a fuel).

Caltech solar sail enthusiast's list of Books about Solar Sails

... Project: Solar Sail - editor: Arthur C. Clarke, managing editor: David Brin.
Penguin Books, 1990. ISBN: 0-451-45002-7
A collection of essays and short stories about solar sails. This book was part of a fund-raising effort for the World Space Foundation....

Locus describes this as:

Project Solar Sail ed. Arthur C. Clarke (NAL/Roc 0-451-45002-7, Apr '90 [Mar '90], $4.50, 246pp, pb); Anthology of seven stories, three originals, featuring solar sails plus five essays, four poems, and introductions by Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. The profits from this anthology are to go to the World Space Foundation to help fund a solar sail project.
1 Foreword: The Winds of Space Arthur C. Clarke fw
3 Introduction: Sailing the Void Isaac Asimov in
9 The Wind from the Sun ["Sunjammer"] Arthur C. Clarke nv Boys' Life Mar '64
33 To Sail Beyond the Sun (A Luminous Collage) Ray Bradbury & Jonathan V. Post pm *
41 The Canvas of the Night K. Eric Drexler ar *
53 Ice Pilot David Brin ss *
67 A Solar Privateer Jonathan Eberhart pm, 1981
69 Sunjammer Poul Anderson nv Analog Apr '64
95 A Rebel Technology Comes Alive Chauncey Uphoff & Jonathan V. Post ar *
105 Argosies of Magic Sails--Excerpts from "Locksley Hall" Alfred Tennyson, Lord pm
107 Ion Propulsion: The Solar Sail's Competition for Access to the Solar System Bryan Palaszewski ar *
115 The Grand Tour Charles Sheffield ss Analog May '87; as "Grand Tour"
137 Lightsail Scott E. Green pm *
139 Rescue at L-5 Kevin J. Anderson & Doug Beason ss *
153 Lightsails to the Stars Dr. Robert L. Forward & Joel Davis ar *
163 The Fourth Profession Larry Niven nv Quark #4, ed. Samuel R. Delany & Marilyn Hacker, Paperback Library, 1971
219 Goodnight, Children Joe Clifford Faust ss *
231 Solar Sails in an Interplanetary Economy Robert L. Staehle & Louis Friedman ar
245 Afterword Arthur C. Clarke aw

Jonathan Vos Post, former Adjunct Professor of Astronomy, Cypress College

Furthermore, he doesn't just read modern novels and name-drop about their authors, but writes novels too -- including "The Reunion" which was in part based on his actually attending a Caltech reunion and and having dinners with fellow alumni, including yours truly. Caltech summarizes his credentials thus: Alan Lightman PhD '74 Physics "Alan Lightman is a physicist, novelist, and educator. After receiving his PhD in theoretical physics from Caltech in 1974, he taught astronomy and physics at Harvard. In 1989 he went to MIT with a joint appointment in physics and the humanities. His scientific research has been in the area of relativity and astrophysics. In the early 1980s, Lightman began writing essays about the human dimensions of science. His essays and reviews have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, the New Yorker, and the New York Review of Books. He is the author of a dozen books, the most recent being the novels The Diagnosis, Good Benito, Einstein's Dreams, and the forthcoming Reunion, which will be available in July. In 1996, Lightman won the Gemant Prize of the American Institute of Physics for linking science with the humanities." In addition, he only published on science fiction poem that I know of, "In Computers" -- and that won the 1983 Rhysling Award for Best Short Science Fiction Poem of the Year: SFPA Grand Masters and Rhysling Winners: 1978-2005. By the way, I talked with Kip Thorne a few hours ago, about how Harvard Professor Lisa Randall does actually look like Jodie Foster, although she always says in interviews how she hates to be told that. -- Jonathan Vos Post Caltech Class of 1972/73 1987 winner of Rhysling for "Before the Big Bang: News from the Hubble Large Space Telescope"

The attempts to come up with alternative theories of gravity are quite noble, but they only work on certain scales

the proponents of these theories sometimes neglect examples that invalidate their theory

This effect is impossible to reproduce using alternative theories of gravity

You will find that yes, these alternative theories do work quite well at describing the rotation curves of galaxies, as TFA suggest. But on larger scales, such as in cluster of galaxies and the cosmic microwave background, they seem to fail convincingly

The attempts to come up with alternative theories of gravity are quite noble, but they only work on certain scales

the proponents of these theories sometimes neglect examples that invalidate their theory

This effect is impossible to reproduce using alternative theories of gravity

You will find that yes, these alternative theories do work quite well at describing the rotation curves of galaxies, as TFA suggest. But on larger scales, such as in cluster of galaxies and the cosmic microwave background, they seem to fail convincingly

All the posts so far seem to be joking about this, but it sorta freaks me out!
 
Yeah, it is kind of freaky. But the cornerstone of evolutionary survival strategies is predictability. Human behavior is way too complicated for a species to base an entire phase of its life cycle on all of them acting the same way in response to a given set of chemicals flooding their brain. And parasites are extremely specific to their hosts, especially when trying to control their behavior. (The linked article doesn't discuss it, but these snails, when infected, hang out on the top of blades of tall grass when infected, reversing their natural instinct to stick to the ground where birds can't see them.
 
  Anyone familiar with these parasites in more detail?
 
A little. I've got an AAS in Medical Laboratory Technology and had a half-semester of parasitology.
 
  Are there other parasites that humans have that do cause changes of behavior?
 
Of course not, that would be a much more sensational article, and that's what they'd be plastering on the front page ;) But seriously, there are parasites that infect the human brain but they treat it like any other tasty organ to eat. So rest assured that if you get a brain parasite you can't shake, you'll go insane and die, but you'll do it without serving any sinister protozoan agenda.
 
  How do these things evolve? Are they complex lifeforms, or very very simple?
 
IANA Evolutionary Biologist. But I can tell you even if you want to confine the question to parasites that enter animals rather than riding around on their backs like that rhino-riding bird, you're talking about parasites that range from a single cell that's significantly larger than a bacterium but significantly smaller than a human body cell, up to a fish that's about an inch long. More information here.

The US Southern Calfornia Earthquake Center has had several versions in place (also) since the late 1980s. Oil company refineries, L.A. Metro Rail, and gas utility companies are among important customers.

Of course the early version had some snafus in the 1994 Northridge quake. At that time it was pager-based and pager buffer overflowed with lesser aftershocks. They fixed it up in time to successfully warn construction crews repairing freeway overpasses.

Mexico has been working on this equally long. They can experience magnitude eight quakes off its western shores. But by the time these seismic waves reach Mexico City several minutes later, they're peak energy is just that to resonate skyscapers which were built in the old Aztec lake bed. Early years there were a number of false alarms, but some successes too. As with Japan and the US, the current systems are more robust.

can you give a pointer to this?

Officially classed as a WAD (Works As Designed) by RMS and company:

emacs setuid/movemail exploit Officially classed as a WAD by The GNU Foundation.

The Cuckoo's Egg

KFG

I did in fact intend phase diagram, not phase plane. The idea is, there are different distinct states of the system, such that in different states different symmetries or qualitative properties exist. As some parameter is adjusted, there is a change from one state to the other. When that change is discontinuous, you're seeing a phase boundary. Systems very close to the phase boundary may exhibit certain well-studied behaviors. In particular, if a system is near a critical point there are many things that may be said about its statistical properties.

Linearity has nothing at all to do with the success of statistical mechanics. In fact, to a good extent the more nonlinear the system, the better stat mech applies. The reason for this is ergodicity. A purely linear system will have certain invariances that prevent a random distribution from accurately modelling the population. In essence, the linearity makes it so that the initial state of the system controls its state from that time on - there is no interaction between the different bases. A nonlinearity added to the system permits mixing between states which, averaged over a large time, will tend to produce distributions that are well-behaved and predictable. Hidden symmetries in the rules may of course cause this to fail - there is some constraint which your statistical sampling fails to acknowledge, and so you miscount.

You mention turbulence. The statistical mechanics of turbulence is actually studied and forms the basis of much turbulence simulation these days. Since it's impractical to model the flow down to the smallest scale, the small-scale properties are replaced with models of the turbulent energy and turbulent energy dissipation rate. The big result in that field is 'K41 theory', K for Kolmogorov and 41 for 1941, when it was published. Among other things, this predicts the form of the energy spectrum of homogeneous isotropic turbulence, so you can determine how much of the turbulent energy is stored in each size of vortex. That result has been experimentally confirmed in atmospheric turbulence, superfluid helium, and a bunch of other systems.

As far as controlling the form of a snowflake, I've seen some stuff along those lines. The main problem with predicting nonlinear systems like turbulence and snowflakes and population dynamics is that if you need to calculate a microscopic state, it is naturally impossible because of chaos - you have a sensitive dependance on initial conditions. On the other hand, if you wish to calculate the bulk properties, it works quite well - it's a _statistical_ approach. The point here is, the political system of a country is a bulk property, not a specific microscopic state. You might not be able to predict what person will get the presidential nomination for a particular party in a century, but you may very well be able to predict certain things about what their party's platform will be.

Most scientists' theories are treated with skepticism at first, despite having proof. See for yourself:
http://www.einstein.caltech.edu/vol04_intro.htm
remained skeptical in their responses to Einstein's recent work
Even scientists having proof cannot convince other scientists. Why is that if science is based purely on truths? Scientists are people too, just like religious people. They too become emotional about their truths when someone else tries to show them they're incorrect.

Einstein didn't have 'proof' he had evidence in support of his theories, nothing in science can ever be proven because there's always the possibility of a new theory or evidence being found. Science sets the bar high on supporting evidence for new theories otherwise it would have no legitimacy - it'd swing from one half-baked theory to the next year-by-year. As it is a hypothesis has to have significant supporting evidence that has been independently repeated or verified before it becomes acceptable.

We have never seen the CREATION of a specialized cell from NOTHINGNESS.

Which is exactly what creationism/ID proposes.

Please note that in that context, I meant "everything" to mean everything in the realm of evolutionary science. The point was that evolutionary science only explains about 40%, yet you claim it explaisn EVERYTHING about how current species came to be.

Huh? 40%? Did you just pull that out of your arse? Why doesn't the evidence we have for evolution explain the development of organs such as the eye? What are you basing this on?

Yah, and religion X is better than religion Y because I think so also. Natural laws explain how atoms bond, how a book falls due to gravity. "Eye balls form due to pure chance and natural selection" is not natural law, it is an opinion.

Science is based on observations of the physical universe, not blind faith. Saying eye balls can be explained by evolution is supported by real scientific evidence.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB921_1.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ce/3/part8.html

Is it, though? How many years did it take Einstein to finally convince other scientists? Many "scientists" rejected his theories, despite them being correct

Most scientists' theories are treated with skepticism at first, despite having proof. See for yourself:
http://www.einstein.caltech.edu/vol04_intro.htm
remained skeptical in their responses to Einstein's recent work
Even scientists having proof cannot convince other scientists. Why is that if science is based purely on truths? Scientists are people too, just like religious people. They too become emotional about their truths when someone else tries to show them they're incorrect.

You should observe an embryo develop

What does this have to do with anything? "The creation of a specialized cell, such as our nerve cells" does not include COPYING of a cell, which is what the development of an embryo is. The code was there to begin with. We have never seen the CREATION of a specialized cell from NOTHINGNESS.

No I'm not. I'm making statements about how organisms could have arisen . Natural selection can explain how an eye ball came about. It says nothing about composition of stars...

Please note that in that context, I meant "everything" to mean everything in the realm of evolutionary science. The point was that evolutionary science only explains about 40%, yet you claim it explaisn EVERYTHING about how current species came to be.

In any case, I think that any explanation based on natural laws is better than one based on a super-natural invisible being.

Yah, and religion X is better than religion Y because I think so also. Natural laws explain how atoms bond, how a book falls due to gravity. "Eye balls form due to pure chance and natural selection" is not natural law, it is an opinion.

No it's not a religion. What do you call all the fossils, what do you call the computed age of the earth, what do you call the presence of DNA in every living organism?...

You continue to compare evolution to other sciences. Of course I know that electrons exist. How do I know, you ask? Because if they didn't, why would my lightbulb be on? We know, and can prove beyond reasonable doubt, that electricity does exist. "DNA in every living organism" and "fossils existing" in no way implies that eyeballs must thus be created due to pure chance and natural selection!

Note: some of the replies to my posts have fixed mistakes I made in the explanations. For instance, it is more correct to specify that the maximum range over which a force acts has to do with the mass of the particle (which is related to particle energy, of course). Massless particles can operate over (in principle) infinite distances, so there is no upper bound to EM and gravity forces... however the "perceived distance" over which a force acts also has to do with how quickly it decays, and I believe this is related to what I was describing.

It's important to distinguish between virutal particles and real particles. Take E&M for a moment: an electric field exists because of the exchange of virtual particles between the (charged) objects in question. However, a beam of light (or radio waves etc.) is an E&M wave, and is carried by real photons. The terms 'real' and 'virtual' were used because you can directly measure real particles, whereas virtual particles are detected only indirectly (by their effect). So a beam of light is 'real' and its constituent particles will not "pop out of existence" ever (they may be absorbed or otherwise interact with other particles, mind you). So a beam of light will eventually reach the other end of the universe. However, the field "emanating" from an electrically charged stationary particle will be infinitely weak if you go infinitely far away (because only extremely low-energy virtual particles can reach out that far).

Similarly, the graviational field is made by exchanging virtual gravitons. In principle, an accelerating mass creates gravitational waves: REAL gravitons. Efforts are underway to detect these gravitational waves directly (LIGO).

Not even "close", so I imagine it may be a bit dimmer than you imagine.

It has been quite a while since the crash landing of the sample capsule. I have seen absolutely no intermediate results, or how compromised the samples might be. My understanding is that many isotope ratios of the Sun's photosphere preserve those of the pre-solar nebula. Genesis is supposed to measure these. I found this at Caltech that highlights one of the isotope problems being investigated.

Pluto is not the last planet in the system.

2003 UB313 (code name: xena [Not a official IAU name]) is the last known planet in the system. The information about the new planet can be found at Wikipedia but a more trusted and respected source, Caltech, has information as well. Caltech also decribes a possible discovery of a moon of 'Xena'. Perhaps if 'Xena' is nearby, New Horizons can swing by the new planet.

Also, many astronomers argue that Pluto is not in fact a planet.

I thought Pluto was no longer a planet; maybe they expect that it will re-gain planet status by 2015? But by then the argument will be that Quaoar is the only planet that hasn't had a mission.

This why the technological singularity is preferable and unavoidable if you or I wish to continue to exist.

Ah. Techno-messiahism, where AI or IA ("intelligence amplification") will rapture us all up into cyberspace or augmented reality heaven.

Now there's a solution to global climate threats.

Look, Vinge's "singularity" is an interesting idea; if we create more-intelligent-than-human artifical or amplified intelligence, then that intelligence creates a greater one, and so on, then a rapid cascade would happen. But it's not clear that we can create such intelligence at all, or what the limits of the cascade would be. The idea that AI or IA will save us from the problems we face is literally hoping for a deus ex machina.

Such a singularity is not unprecedented in human history - the development of language, and then of writing, allowed for shared intelligence greater than that of an individual brain, and created a feedback that allowed the individual brain to learn and grow more. That's great. But it didn't repeal the laws of physics, or make us immortal in any but a metaphorical sense. (Which is still pretty good. I have ambition that someone will read a poem or play a song of mine years after I die.)

Heck, it could be argued that we're living in the singularity right now. Is not an internet feed a basic form of intelligence amplification?

• "Cal" (alone) = University of California, Berkeley (usually). Other UC schools are usually written "UC Irvine" or "UCI".
• "Cal State" = CSU = California State University (many campuses abound).
• "Cal Poly" = California Polytechnic State University, a public institute outside the UC and CSU systems.

This article, published 5 weeks ago by the CalTech PR office, is slightly better-written than the yahoo version.

This has slightly more info. Check out the last five paragraphs.

From the linked (LiveScience) article:

The bees made up for the extra work by stretching out their wing stroke amplitude but did not adjust wingbeat frequency.

"They work like racing cars," Altshuler said. "Racing cars can reach higher revolutions per minute but enable the driver to go faster in higher gear. But like honeybees, they are inefficient."

I know what you're thinking: this makes absolutely no sense. Caltech's own press release is at least intelligible.

-Carl

It says: That it was presented in "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" (that's the November 28 issue). That leads us to the Abstract for the paper, where you have to BUY the paper, you know peer review costs lots of money.

In the Cal tech press release, you can see that the researches are Michael H. Dickinson, Esther M. and Abe M. Zarem, and Douglas L. Altshuler. They all work in the Dickinson Lab which has some cool equipment for researching flight of insects.

It says: That it was presented in "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" (that's the November 28 issue). That leads us to the Abstract for the paper, where you have to BUY the paper, you know peer review costs lots of money.

In the Cal tech press release, you can see that the researches are Michael H. Dickinson, Esther M. and Abe M. Zarem, and Douglas L. Altshuler. They all work in the Dickinson Lab which has some cool equipment for researching flight of insects.

I wouldn't call this timely news as there was a flurry or reports about determining the physics of bee flight in late November 2005 Deciphering the Mystery of Bee Flight
Secrets of bee flight revealed">
Longstanding Puzzle of Honeybee Flight Solved at Last

But as wikipedia shows this problem had been essentially resolved since the early 90's, though I'm sure I been hearing that this problem is "Finally Solved" every year or two and has been since the early 70's.

Researchers will continue to refine their understanding of the process and claim to finally or fully understand the problem at last.
Some, mostly religious types, will claim scientists don't understand the process because there was some mystery at some point a few decades ago. It seems every few years we get similar pronouncements about the trajectory of a thrown baseball.

While Bee flight does little to disprove ID, ID proponents do frequently use examples like bee flight to bolster their ID arguments regardless of what the current scientific consensus is. Urban legends and wives tales do not die easily.

My last journal entry was actually on the topic of ID Christians in Scientists' Clothing

Person 1 leaves point A and travels to point B in one day.

According to special relativity directions through spacetime fall into 5 types: forward looking timelike vectors that are in your forward light cone, reverse looking timelike vectors in your backward light cone, spacelike vectors and forward and backward vectors actually in the light cone surface. By changing frame of reference any vector in one of these can be converted to any other in the same class. If you're traveling along in the normal way your velocity is a forward timelike vector. And from anyone else's frame of reference it will always look like a forward timelike vector. So if you're not traveling FTL nobody else will think you are either. But the class of spacelike vectors is difference. A forward spacelike vector in one person's frame of reference looks like a reverse spacelike vector in someone else's. This means there is no essential difference between a forward and backward spacelike vector. A spacelike vector is your direction of travel if you're traveling FTL. So if you have the physical means to travel FTL then the same physical means will allow you to travel back in time. There's some discussion of the 5 classes of vector here (they add a sixth for the zero vector). Note that like I say they make no distinction between forward and reverse spacelike vectors. In a sense nature can't tell the difference between travel forward and backwards in time when you travel outside the light cone. See here also.

This stuff ought to be better known. I don't know if FTL will ever be possible. But if it is, the consequences are dramatic - either the basic axioms of special relativity are very seriously wrong or we have time travel. This isn't some obscure result but follows directly from the very first assumptions relativity makes.

I don't think so. Let me tell you from 15 years of publishing in scientific journals, and reviewing the proposed publications of others, that there is no clear and sharp division between an "honest" mistake and a mistake into which you are led by bias, preconceived notions, or your personal feelings for another scientist whose work you are challenging or confirming. Scientists are human beings as much as the next person. Very few will deliberately and with malice aforethought falsify data. But plenty will talk themselves into believing that a certain dubious "correction" of the data makes sense.

It's a lot like high-school chemistry lab, in which (if you were decently smart), you knew what the results of the lab should be. Does that affect the way in which you write down the data? You bet. You do the experiment once, and you get a result you "know" is crazy. So you say: "That can't be right, something must have gone wrong..." and you do it again. If you get the result you expect, then you tend to just write it down uncritically.

Just expand that typical human behaviour to much more complex experiments, and you'll see what I mean. Grown-up scientists do an experiment, and they get a result that "can't be right," so they do it again until they get a result that "seems right," or they talk themselves into some kind of data analysis that "corrects" the raw data. Have a look here (warning: PDF link) for an interesting discussion of the case or Robert Millikan, who "framed a guilty man", in the phrase made immortal by the LAPD, by falsely presenting experiments that led to a correct scientific conclusion.

The long and short of it is that the question of the "honesty" of the author of a publication is very much a gray area, and anyone who seriously just assumes that all the data from an experiment have been presented, and all the data analysis has been done in completely neutral way, without any influence of preconceived notions, is a fool. You must assume that the personal predispositions of the scientist doing the work had some influence on the experimental data reported. This isn't meant to be pejorative -- I'm not saying you assume other scientists are routinely dishonest. You just assume they're human, and may have fooled themselves or have a bit of an agenda when they present their data, and you take that into account. Healthy skepticism is the order of the day. That's why we like to see even experiments that seem completely unexceptional and from scientists of unimpeachable reputations repeated several times by a broad range of other workers before we accept them.

I certainly agree deliberate fraud is way out of any "gray area" about the motivations of the scientist submitting articles for publication. (And that's why the punishment for doing so is far, far harsher than for simply making an "honest" mistake, or even a mistake into which you are led by bias or incompetence.) But there is no way one can, or should, draw a sharp line between completely unconscious error and semi-conscious half-deliberate fudge, and it would be a great error for anyone to blindly assume that the data in any scientific publication is beyond question.

I have some old film negatives that I took by putting the camera on a tripod and rotating it, and just mounted the prints very carefully with a razorblade so they looked psuedo-panoramic, that I'll have to scan in and give a try.

That works well if all the pictures are of stuff relatively far away, but you'll notice some horizon distortion for instance. Hugin/panotools warps the whole picture digitally, projecting onto a cylinder or sphere, so you won't have this problem. You may want to scan the individual pictures you took, and stitch them digitally in Hugin/panotools, will be much nicer. Another advantage is that the joints between the pictures will be smoothed out, so it will look much better.

How does it do with interior panoramas? Have you tried standing in the center of a room and doing a full cylindrical 360? I'm curious how it looks under real-world, non ideal conditions. I know some realtors that would probably be impressed by something like that.

I haven't tried 360 panoramas indoors. I _have_ tried standing in the corner of a room and taking a full shot of the room like that, and that works really well. Just remember to rotate the camera only, keeping the focal plane in the same position. Particularly important for indoor shots is to use the same white balance, shutter time etc for all your shots, otherwise it's going to look funny. So either don't use automatic mode, or depress the button half way while pointing at the same area for every shot, and then pan over to the position that you want to take a picture of and take your picture.

For a 180 degrees shot in front of our new house, look here. You'll notice some brightness variation, and small stitching errors, because I wasn't too careful.

Any idea how it compares to the in-camera stitching that some of the new digis do?

Which means that the temperature to which they are in equilibrium is 2.7 K, as I said before. This makes the trip phase colder than when at Pluto's surface, the only thing I wanted to say in the first post. The Spitzer satellite, for example, which is not that far away, is kept at much lower temperatures than 43 K.
http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_classroo m/ask_astronomer/video/transcripts/2003-001.pdf
Why make confusion with heliosphere if you yourself admitted it doesn't matter?

One thing to keep in mind when using hugin, is that if you dont keep your camera at the same position when taking different angle shots, objects very close by get distorted. Far away it's not so much of a problem and its quite fool proof. Check out some pictures I took of our new house http://www.its.caltech.edu/~postma/house/index.htm l. The panoramic ones are the first few.

You would not need just the images, but also very accurate positioning data on where the photos were taken.

Quite right!

In theory, perhaps you could extrapolate the positioning information by looking at static objects in the frame, shadows, etc., but I don't think that's anywhere near practical.

No; It actually exists, now. It's not just a theory. I have a video on my hard drive here, demonstrating it ("kitchen.mp4.avi",) but I can't find it online. No matter; do a google search on "real-time camera tracking in unknown scenes" (which is the title I see when I start up the video,

It's just as you say-- those little points are called "landmarks," and it uses them to track by.

However if you had a cellphone with augmented GPS (WAAS or something like it) that had submeter accuracy or better, and you were taking pictures of a large object, and maybe included a compass chip or something like it to give you an azimuth reading, then I think you could do what you're talking about. At the very least you'd be able to easily construct a photographic panorama / flyaround (a la Quicktime VR). The work necessary to produce a 3-D model might be, as a physicist I knew used to say, "really nontrivial." At least working just from the images and telemetry data without any other subjective stuff (like selecting out the areas by hand as those 2-d photogrammetry systems have you doing, it seems).

A blue bird in industry has told me that in the next 3-5 years, cell phones will have not only GPS, but $3 accelerometers capable of sub-meter resolution sustained for 1 hour without update. (Important for underground locations.)

The work to produce 3-D models may be non-trivial, but: Did you follow the links I gave you? It's all been done- and this isn't recent: This is a few years back.

Here's a very simple example, here's a more complicated one, and here's yet another, this time dated 2000. Be sure to check out the generated 3D models.

So the techniques are out there, and they're in practice, and many people are starting to wake up that these are useful things to do. There's a lot of money to be made here. So, this is why I don't think it'll be long before this is integrated into cameras.

We have 2D camera phone scanners. Why not 3-D? Some even do OCR.

But in general I think that's a very cool idea. It would be neat to see digital camera manufacturers start to embed GPS chips into cameras; at the very least it would be cool to open something in iPhoto and see a minimap of exactly where you took the photo. I know that there are some vacation photos of mine that I wish I knew exactly where I'd been standing when I took it, and there's no easy way to figure out now. It's not like the chips to do that would be bulky anymore, now that they've been miniaturized for cellphones. In fact I think I remember a fairly old Kodak DSLR (one of their really serious ones that were built on Nikon F1 frames) that had a serial port and might have been able to connect to a GPS, for that purpose. I think it's a feature that's ready for prime time.

The cell phones have cameras, and many phones already have GPS. It won't be long before they all do..!

My apologies.

If I did you wouldn't know the difference, apparently. This is ok reference on the East Africa Rift. And this talks about abandoned arms. This talks about membrane stresses and fault angles. I could go on. Just google on "triple junction", "failed arm", "rift system", etc. What I said really is geology 101. You simply can't spread along 3 axes. Afar may flood with sea water, but it will never be an ocean basin as the original article suggests.

If women want to make games that women want to play, make them.

You are exercising the "efficient sidewalk fallacy":
1. The free market efficiently incites producers to fill all consumers' needs.
2. Your need has not been filled.
3. Therefore, either your desire is impossible, or you don't really want it.

In truth, it is not correct to dismiss these complaints with "You can't really have a valid need, or someone would've marketed a solution already"... because it is only by hearing steady complaints over time that an entrepreneur decides to go ahead with a plan to serve that niche.

I found this at Caltech, a piece on quantum computers. I've never really taken quantum computation seriously -- it just seemed too far-fetched. If they've really got 8-bits, maybe quantum computing will matter in my lifetime.

From reading the piece, it sounds like we will have some major problems with our current cryptographic systems if quantum computers become available.

At the 1967 Wistar Institute Symposium, top-level evolutionary biologists and mathematicians met to mathematically test the idea of evolution by mutation/selection. When the super-computers finished crunching their numbers, it was obvious that the answer was 'impossible'. It was reported that when someone very cautiously (maybe even rhetorically) asked whether this meant that perhaps one should look at special creation as an option, there were loud cries of 'No!' 'No!' from the floor.

Modern attempts at computational investigation of evolution have proven just the opposite. While the results are of course restricted to microevolution...evolution by mutation/adaption is computationally model-able, as well observable. Even distantly related bacteria have been observed exchanging dna fragments...thus undergoing a type of mutation. Viruses routinely mutate through random processes as well as exchanges of RNA. If we can observe such radical changes in the behavior and structure of such organisms within the lifespan of a human...how can creationists seriously challenge the idea of what might have been accomplished over billions of years?

I'll be the first to say that science can't discount that something or someone ultimately created the rules by which things that we observe behave. Well, others have said it before me...so I'll be the next. Even Stephen Hawking has commented that because we, and anything we create (including ideas) are contained within this universe, that by mathematical consequence of self-referencing systems we are incapable of completely describing the universe and all of its rules and behavior. However, we *can* see and describe discrete chunks of it, and to discount such behavior after we see it (as the creationist zealots do) is stupidity at its finest.

Also really plays:

http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~bret/create_electroni cs_airguitar.html

I think this is a terrible idea for any number of reasons, one being that supposedly "inaudible" noises effect people subconsciously. Even if the people involved don't report hearing anything.

Relevant link with EEG results-
http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~boyk/spectra/spectra.h tm

Oh, you can have it now, but first make some space in your basement for this equipment. :) Better ask your wife first.....

figure.

quantum computers have an enormous serial calculation potential; the clock speed would be limited by the plank time, which I am sure you know is 10^-43.
So... a quantum computer would process at 10^43Hz. This is fairly impressive isn't it? (remember a 1Ghz pentium ==10^9Hz).
Given this incredible computing power you could, I suppose, use it to game, rather than try to model the weather of the planet at 1cm scale, or solve untold protein folding medical problems, or develop fusion reactors...etc

The article you pointed at was all about
porting applications between platforms. The project refered to in the
original artical was about running an existing Linux binary inside
a zone on top of Solaris, with no recompilation.

OK, maybe I prematurely linked. I've heard of this before for at least a few years, maybe more than 5.

Here is lxrun from Sun that does direct running of linux binaries:

http://www.sun.com/software/linux/compatibility/lx run/

Here is another offering, maybe the original, don't know:

http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~steven/lxrun/

And for source level compatibility here is:

http://www.sun.com/software/linux/compatibility/to ols/

The lxrun looks to have started in 1997.

A better source would be John Preskill's website at Caltech for his PH 219 course on QC.

Includes course material, lecture notes and problems.

While we are on the subject of Quantum Mechanics. Check out Caltech's website on Quantum Computers.

I would also like to put you towards HP's Research on it.

The future is quantum mechanics, no matter the subject.

What are your thoughts on using autonomously adjusting electrodes to deal with the problem of neurons shifting about? Granted, the current systems are rather bulky, but much more compact ones are under development.

This reminded me of the research by Quian Quiroga et al in which they performed single-neuron recordings from MTL (upstream of IT, if I recall correctly) in humans. In that study they found neurons which would respond selectively to particular objects, such as Jennifer Aniston, Halle Berry, and the Sydney Opera House. Here's the abstract:

R. Quian Quiroga, L. Reddy, G. Kreiman, C. Koch & I. Fried Invariant visual representation by single neurons in the humanbrain. Nature (2005) 435, 1102-1107

It takes a fraction of a second to recognize a person or an object even when seen under strikingly different conditions. How such a robust, high-level representation is achieved by neurons in the human brain is still unclear. In monkeys, neurons in the upper stages of the ventral visual pathway respond to complex images such as faces and objects and show some degree of invariance to metric properties such as the stimulus size, position and viewing angle. We have previously shown that neurons in the human medial temporal lobe (MTL) fire selectively to images of faces, animals, objects or scenes. Here we report on a remarkable subset of MTL neurons that are selectively activated by strikingly different pictures of given individuals, landmarks or objects and in some cases even by letter strings with their names. These results suggest an invariant, sparse and explicit code, which might be important in the transformation of complex visual percepts into long-term and more abstract memories.