Slashdot Mirror

A movement of continental plates, like the Indian subcontinent, may have initiated a release that led to the LPTM, Schmidt said. We know today that when the Indian subcontinent moved into the Eurasian continent, the Himalayas began forming. This uplift of tectonic plates would have decreased pressure in the sea floor, and may have caused the large methane release. Once the atmosphere and oceans began to warm, Schmidt added, it is possible that more methane thawed and bubbled out.

From: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NasaNews /2001/200112106303.html

I think my sources are more reasonable than your sources!

If you read closely you will see they speak of the "polar" temperatures rising as much as 13C. This is possible and the paleo record confirms this. This is to be expected - however the amount of temperature rise is a bit of a question.

Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene-Eocene_Ther mal_Maximum

Please note that the eocene was already warm. We have cooled more since then that it warmed during the PETM.

Antarctica was not frozen over back then.

Also - the PETM is not likely to have warmed the tropical regions significantly. What made a huge difference was the alteration of a major ocean current.

While volcanic eruptions may have played a role - that period of time corresponds to a period of orogenic activity that eventually lead to a lot of mountains chains. This uplifted large amounts of seafloor which would have contained sediments with a substantial amount of methane. The upwelling would have take place slowly resulting in a protracted methane release.

The temperature anomaly chart in use before the 'hockeystick' chart presented in 2001, has been used to argue that the falling average temperature in the northern hemisphere had contributed to everything from the fall of Anastazi culture, to the onset of the Black Death, to the emergence of the Golden Horde. (I believe that the IPCC presented the chart I am refering to in 1990 to argue that global temperature had wide ranging impact on human society, but I haven't been able to confirm that yet.)

If the chart currently in use by the IPCC is correct, then there probably wasn't a Medeival Warm Period and there probably wasn't a Little Ice Age. If these events did happen, then they were regional - perhaps even local. All of the historical evidence that global temperature has any impact on human civilization is null and void.

It's no longer possible to associate the wide-scale distruptions in human societies that happened in the 13th and 14th centuries with a drop in global temperature of several degrees C. This is encouraging, or atleast less disturbing than the theory that several degrees of temperature leads to the end of civilization as we know it.

On a side note, any distruptions in the north atlantic circulation will probably be much milder than previously thought. http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/ab rupt_change.html

According to NASA the five warmest years on record are (in order) 2005 1998 2002 2003 2004

Ya, that's absolutely true -- I did read that, and I thought the "official" party line was that other mythologies would be not for planets and their moons, but for other solar system objects. Actually, if anyone knows what the official naming system is, I'd like to see it. One website is a little ambiguous on whether it has to be Roman/Greek mythology, as is wiki.

The very successful Mars Rovers, which have no one around to give them a "three finger salute," are based on Wind River's VxWorks RTOS.

Thanks to Moore's law embedded systems have grown up enough to use CORBA. I know this because I work on a project which uses CORBA heavily (at least in the TAO and JacORB incarnations). Since CORBA has strong typing, it is attractive to developers who depend heavily on typeness to provide checks in systems where no one likes bugs. And really, who wants to write another middleware to deal with distributed systems? I sure don't.

There is no disclaimer in the article so I think it is worth mentioning that even though Michi was CORBA for all intents and purposes for a number of years, his current employer provides a competitor to CORBA and Web Services. And, you guessed it, that product addresses each and every flaw he outlines in his article.

To be fair ZeroC and Michi do put their money where their mouth is by supplying Ice in source form, licensed under the GPL. Although I do not see them putting this in front of a body like the IETF or trying to get Ice bindings integrated into something like boost. This would really attack that one point in the article talking about having real systems implemented and having it in front of a standards body.

Now that I have put in the proper disclaimers, I have to say that having used CORBA the last 5 years I agree with Michi on every point. Our knowledge of POAs is just now getting to the point where we are comfortable using it in complex ways. We are only now willing to entertain the notion that we are actually using CORBA the right way. We have spent weeks reading, coding, recoding, testing and testing again to understand the spec and the real world usage. The learning curve is easily the steepest and tallest of any technology I have had to learn. I said "Amen" out loud when Michi mentions that people really screw up when they don't do it right.

Using CORBA as a real distributed object system is not possible unless the system is in a network that you have complete control over. Even now we use cumbersome workarounds to develop our system remotely because we can't use CORBA like we were supposed to. Thank you very little script kiddies for making us use firewalls every where! But if CORBA had been built with security in mind in the beginning at all, it would be vastly more useful then it is now.

And we have not moved on to things like Web Services precisely because we do not want to move away from type checking and we can see the train wreck associated to security. So we use CORBA the best we can (and we have been largely successful, BTW).

Now I am going back to checking whether try blocks have been done properly for the naming service code we have to implement because of the exact reasons Michi says most implementers need the CORBA naming service.

NASA shows that of all the attenuation of a laser signal from Mars to Earth, the biggest loss is in the Earth's atmosphere, which even for sunlight is only about 25%. The spreading does not need to be large with sufficient collimation, though it can start out very narrow and have large receivers to compensate for any unavoidable spread, or start out very wide for maximum parallelism. When we spend the Star Wars $BILLIONS on conserving the laser power across the length of its beam for power supply, it'll work a lot better than it even does now.

Shooting down missiles didn't work, as I've posted many times on Slashdot. But the defense corporations will get the money to keep doing it anyway, because they own Congress. That's why applying their tech to energy instead is a double win.

It was easy to find a NASA study showing that a solar satellite in Earth orbit produces power at competitive prices, even when the design's laser produces only 330W:m^2, while the Sun already produce at least that amount averaged over day/night, seasons, and weather through the temperate lattitudes. That price includes launching the entire machine, with current tech, not developing new tech from the Star Wars stuff and building the machine on the Moon from local materials. And without the money and personnel that have been so far wasted on Star Wars weapons.

Turn those resources to inventing an energy platform and we'll get real security.

NASA shows that of all the attenuation of a laser signal from Mars to Earth, the biggest loss is in the Earth's atmosphere, which even for sunlight is only about 25%. The spreading does not need to be large with sufficient collimation, though it can start out very narrow and have large receivers to compensate for any unavoidable spread, or start out very wide for maximum parallelism. When we spend the Star Wars $BILLIONS on conserving the laser power across the length of its beam for power supply, it'll work a lot better than it even does now.

Shooting down missiles didn't work, as I've posted many times on Slashdot. But the defense corporations will get the money to keep doing it anyway, because they own Congress. That's why applying their tech to energy instead is a double win.

It was easy to find a NASA study showing that a solar satellite in Earth orbit produces power at competitive prices, even when the design's laser produces only 330W:m^2, while the Sun already produce at least that amount averaged over day/night, seasons, and weather through the temperate lattitudes. That price includes launching the entire machine, with current tech, not developing new tech from the Star Wars stuff and building the machine on the Moon from local materials. And without the money and personnel that have been so far wasted on Star Wars weapons.

Turn those resources to inventing an energy platform and we'll get real security.

NASA and their Gamma Ray Spectrometer disagree

Yeah, we've learned a whole lot. We learned from the Challenger disaster that rubber gets inelastic in the cold.... oh wait - we've known that for over 100+ years. We've learned from the Columbia disaster that chunks of low density materal can damage stuff at high speeds. I think that's been known somewhere around when we figured KE = 1/2*m*v^2.

I know you are trying to make a reasonable point about having to take risks to achieve goals in space, but the pieces of the shuttle that were considered most susceptible to failure - the main engines fuel pumps, the main engine exhaust guides, and a few hundred other "critical" (meaning no backup system - system fails, hull loss occurs), are NOT the ones that have brought down the shuttles - stupid, wishful thinking about simple risk assessment did. Read the detailed write-up on the Challenger by Feynman, right from NASA's own website: http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/ docs/rogers-commission/Appendix-F.txtThings that could be FIXED, if we actually put a fraction of the dollars (real dollars, not nominal ones) that we put into the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, along with some engineering sense. We are doing space on the cheap, and ignoring ways of improving it. If we were finding new and useful information about the dangers and engineering necessary to enter space, great. But we are not - we are "discovering" that foam at the speed of sound can hurt things, that rubber is brittle in the cold, and that a launch date is more important than fixing a problem. That, to me, is not balls, but whistling in the dark and hoping you don't get snake-eyes this time round.

You need to search a bit...

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station /crew-6/ndxpage9.html for example.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station /crew-6/hires/s113e05433.jpg in particular

See?

Nice, expensive wallpaper. :D

You need to search a bit...

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station /crew-6/ndxpage9.html for example.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station /crew-6/hires/s113e05433.jpg in particular

See?

Nice, expensive wallpaper. :D

• Challenger - Blown up
• Columbia - Blown up
• Enterprise - Stripped for parts and now a museum piece
• Endeavour - Still undergoing testing to possibly be ready for flight late this year
• Discovery - That's the one they're leaving in

Sorry, but when the destruction of western civilization is on the line, a well-supported hypothesis is enough to go on. You're just pissed off that you might not get to drive an SUV anymore.

I can't speak to whether the OP has hard feelings about his/her SUV, but (again) there are *multiple* lines of thought and well-supported hypotheses about global warming, some of which do not point to mankind as the reason for change (at least not all by itself).

Along the lines of your own example, suppose that global warming is tied directly to solar activity cycles (the actual output of the sun has been rising, and we've even seen evidence of climate change on mars). If that's the case, and a well-supported hypothesis is enough to go on, do we continue to pour *all* of our effort into studying man's possible effect on global warming, or do we also spend some time trying to figure out how to survive the opposite of an ice age?

For something so potentially huge, it makes sense to cover your bases, don't you think?

I would also like to see you defend your comment about most of the space research budget has been diverted to militarizing space. That just sounds like a whole lot of bunk.

Nasa's 2005 budget was $16 billion
In 2005, the US spent $10 billion on Space Weapons R&D

The US is helping quite a bit with the LHC, in addition to many other non-European countries. I'm not sure how you came up with the 20-year European lead on particle physics (maybe you pulled it out of your ass), but as with any other research facility I'm sure there will be plenty of US scientists making progress there. How many European scientists do you think are working with NASA on the Mars rover data? Quite a few. The US is already putting billions behind the LHC, doesn't seem obvious that US scientists would contribute significantly to LHC research once it's fully built? Major research is largely an international affair today; most mature scientists put patriotism aside (unless you think Harvard's being pro-Bush by researching with stem cells).

"Europe and Japan are doing advanced medical research" - such as? And the US isn't? Stem cells aren't the last word in medical science. The US stem cell situation sucks to be honest, but that's not enough to pass judgment on any nation's medical progress. I wouldn't be surprised if the 2008 presidential election changed things dramatically, possibly moreso than the 2004 election did. Why couldn't it?

Yes, the Hubble is dead. That's why there are multiple replacemetns being proposed. I'm intrigued by your claim that NASA's abandoning manned space travel; I suppose this whole Project Constellation business is a great hoax, and that Lockheed and Boeing are in on it too. Yes, the US wants to militarize space, but they're doing a lot more too. And the Taikonauts are a joke compared to the routine ISS missions by NASA.

Seriously, if you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, just shut up.

The US is helping quite a bit with the LHC, in addition to many other non-European countries. I'm not sure how you came up with the 20-year European lead on particle physics (maybe you pulled it out of your ass), but as with any other research facility I'm sure there will be plenty of US scientists making progress there. How many European scientists do you think are working with NASA on the Mars rover data? Quite a few. The US is already putting billions behind the LHC, doesn't seem obvious that US scientists would contribute significantly to LHC research once it's fully built? Major research is largely an international affair today; most mature scientists put patriotism aside (unless you think Harvard's being pro-Bush by researching with stem cells).

"Europe and Japan are doing advanced medical research" - such as? And the US isn't? Stem cells aren't the last word in medical science. The US stem cell situation sucks to be honest, but that's not enough to pass judgment on any nation's medical progress. I wouldn't be surprised if the 2008 presidential election changed things dramatically, possibly moreso than the 2004 election did. Why couldn't it?

Yes, the Hubble is dead. That's why there are multiple replacemetns being proposed. I'm intrigued by your claim that NASA's abandoning manned space travel; I suppose this whole Project Constellation business is a great hoax, and that Lockheed and Boeing are in on it too. Yes, the US wants to militarize space, but they're doing a lot more too. And the Taikonauts are a joke compared to the routine ISS missions by NASA.

Seriously, if you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, just shut up.

That might be a potential winner of a theory.

I was thinking maybe it was something like this here, but then they would know about the currents that would be needed to produce such a thing...

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImage s/images.php3?img_id=17303

I love how people can assume that pumping killotons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere every day

Respiring lifeforms have been doing so for billions of years to the glory of all plant life. 6 billion people on earth will have an effect. As a Kyotoist you should be able to scare me better than that.

We know there is a hole in the ozone layer - we've seen it, photographed it.

And we've watched it shrink, most likely as part of a natural cycle. But that wouldn't serve political ends. The ozone holes have always been there. It just happened that as soon as we started to launch spacecraft and balloons we saw it. There have always been Chlorine compounds in the atmosphere, and they have always been activated by low temperature to reduce ozone. I am just thankful I can use the present facts to refute Kyotoists.

As an aside note, the space shuttle ET insulation system never exhibited a catastrophic failure when the insulation was applied with CFC's. It did when engineers started using a green substitute. Therefore I blame Kyotoists for bringing down the Columbia. Let that be a lesson of unexpected consequences of green engineering.

Changes of that variety will have cascading changes all over - the butterfly effect on the environment.

Your implicit assumption is that we can steer climate in some kind of positive way by manipulating CO2 emissions. Yet you appeal to the fact that climate is a chaotic system. Chaotic systems vary unpredictably with small changes of input. If you manipulate CO2 emissions (at huge cost) what kind of benefit can those who invested expect to get? Don't deceive yourself or others by thinking you can favorably manipulate climate.

Maybe you don't like the "noise", but you also seem to dislike facts. If anything, there was no trend in temperatures from the 30's to the 70's if you believe NASA (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/). According to the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC, the effect of solar cycles is considerably smaller than the effect of increased greenhouse gases.

Your solution? Let's wait until 2020, and then we can safely conclude whether we should have acted on global warming or not.

It's called fluctuations. Fluctuations are superimposed on any climate trend, and so, if you cherry-pick your years, you can draw any conclusion you want. Take a look at the NASA temperature record (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/) and then tell me what you think the trend is.

http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/forums/index.php?sho wtopic=1427
is a nice map. Either way as I stated yes in CO2 levels the US is overproducing, but Asia and now South Africa are starting to compete with us very well. Either way we were creating much more partical pollution in the 80's and 90's than we are today most of these reductions are due to technology and knowledge something many developing nations don't have the time to worry about.

"New Scientist is reporting that NASA's Mars Opportunity rover has freed itself from the sandy soil that ensnared it for more than a week. This is the second time the rover has gotten bogged down in a Martian sand trap. Both times, the rover has managed to escape to solid bedrock by churning its wheels in reverse."

<sarcasm>

</sarcasm>

A better idea is a little research. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/about_JPL/jpl101.pdf

Hardly a week goes by that someone or another on the outside doesn't ask exactly what JPL is. Is it a branch of the government? Part of a university? A private company? All, or some, or none of the above? JPL is most decidedly a unique institution with an identity that is, in some ways, complex. In many respects, the Laboratory enjoys the best of several worlds. JPL as a physical place is a federal facility. As a human organization, it exists as a division of Caltech, which manages the Lab for NASA under a contract renegotiated every five years. Whereas most NASA centers are run by a core staff of government employees with support from on-site contractors, JPL's management and staff are employees of Caltech. Another 10 percent of the workforce are on-site contractors who work for private companies, somewhat like other NASA centers. In addition, there is a small group of on-site government employees who act as NASA's liaison to the Lab. In formal talk, JPL is a "federally funded research and development center," putting it among a small cadre of similar institutions around the country. The closest comparable organizations might be the Lawrence Livermore or Los Alamos national laboratories, both of which the University of California manages for the Department of Energy. Although the Lab's dual identity can be challenging, it has its definite upsides. Caltech has prided itself on its stewardship of JPL over the decades, believing that the intellectual cross-fertilization with the campus has made both communities stronger.

So JPL's primary employees are employed by CalTech and CalTech staffs the center under a five year contract. That makes them seperate enough from NASA for me to recognize thier work independently of other NASA work.

It was my understanding that JPL was part of NASA. JPL's website seems to concur:

Pushing the outer edge of exploration, in fact, is the reason JPL exists as a NASA laboratory.

JPL is a NASA center staffed and managed for the government by a leading private university, Caltech -- and thus we are known as a federally funded research and development center. I believe that this marriage of the government and university worlds lends us a wonderful intellectual infusion to drive our exploration efforts. Caltech anchors us in the world of excellence and academic curiosity, while NASA gives us the opportunity to reach for the stars.

JPL developed those. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/current/2001marso dyssey.html

Wouldn't want to give NASA credit that it doesn't deserve.

Weirder still is the fact that Duke Nukem Forever has taken more time to create than NASA took to design & build a pair of robots, fly them to Mars, and drive them around for a year.

I know you're referring to the 2003 rover missions but, and this may sound crazy, you can also include much of the Mars Pathfinder mission too.

Due to the commercial success of DukeNukem3D, one could argue that a franchise sequel was unofficially in the works immediately after its release date.

DukeNukem3D release date: 29-Jan-96
Mars Pathfinder launch date: 04-Dec-96

Final transmission from Pathfinder was on 27-Sep-97, so some of the mission was being exercised even after DNF's official announcement in Apr-97.

More various astromovies:

Lunar Transit by the International Space Station Alpha: http://members.aol.com/mrtsp91/iss.htm

Meteor explodes in Earth's atmosphere:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap981123.html

A Martian dust devil passes rover Spirit:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050426.html

Fast moving stars orbiting black hole SgrA* in the Milky Way's center:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001220.html
http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2002/vide o/vid-02-02.mpg

Dynamic rings, wisps and jets of matter and antimatter around the pulsar in the Crab Nebula:
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2002/0052/movies. html

Cat's Eye nebula expanding:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990916.html

Variable stars "twinkling" in globular cluster M3 over a single night:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap041012.html

Shock wave of supernova SN1987A creates hot spots in surrounding material:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/ releases/2004/09/video/a

To find more videos try searching NASA's astronomy picture of the day archive: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/apod/apod_sear ch

I *heart* astronomy :]
Me too.

More various astromovies:

Lunar Transit by the International Space Station Alpha: http://members.aol.com/mrtsp91/iss.htm

Meteor explodes in Earth's atmosphere:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap981123.html

A Martian dust devil passes rover Spirit:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050426.html

Fast moving stars orbiting black hole SgrA* in the Milky Way's center:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001220.html
http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2002/vide o/vid-02-02.mpg

Dynamic rings, wisps and jets of matter and antimatter around the pulsar in the Crab Nebula:
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2002/0052/movies. html

Cat's Eye nebula expanding:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990916.html

Variable stars "twinkling" in globular cluster M3 over a single night:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap041012.html

Shock wave of supernova SN1987A creates hot spots in surrounding material:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/ releases/2004/09/video/a

To find more videos try searching NASA's astronomy picture of the day archive: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/apod/apod_sear ch

I *heart* astronomy :]
Me too.

More various astromovies:

Lunar Transit by the International Space Station Alpha: http://members.aol.com/mrtsp91/iss.htm

Meteor explodes in Earth's atmosphere:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap981123.html

A Martian dust devil passes rover Spirit:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050426.html

Fast moving stars orbiting black hole SgrA* in the Milky Way's center:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001220.html
http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2002/vide o/vid-02-02.mpg

Dynamic rings, wisps and jets of matter and antimatter around the pulsar in the Crab Nebula:
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2002/0052/movies. html

Cat's Eye nebula expanding:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990916.html

Variable stars "twinkling" in globular cluster M3 over a single night:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap041012.html

Shock wave of supernova SN1987A creates hot spots in surrounding material:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/ releases/2004/09/video/a

To find more videos try searching NASA's astronomy picture of the day archive: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/apod/apod_sear ch

I *heart* astronomy :]
Me too.

More various astromovies:

Lunar Transit by the International Space Station Alpha: http://members.aol.com/mrtsp91/iss.htm

Meteor explodes in Earth's atmosphere:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap981123.html

A Martian dust devil passes rover Spirit:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050426.html

Fast moving stars orbiting black hole SgrA* in the Milky Way's center:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001220.html
http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2002/vide o/vid-02-02.mpg

Dynamic rings, wisps and jets of matter and antimatter around the pulsar in the Crab Nebula:
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2002/0052/movies. html

Cat's Eye nebula expanding:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990916.html

Variable stars "twinkling" in globular cluster M3 over a single night:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap041012.html

Shock wave of supernova SN1987A creates hot spots in surrounding material:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/ releases/2004/09/video/a

To find more videos try searching NASA's astronomy picture of the day archive: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/apod/apod_sear ch

I *heart* astronomy :]
Me too.

More various astromovies:

Lunar Transit by the International Space Station Alpha: http://members.aol.com/mrtsp91/iss.htm

Meteor explodes in Earth's atmosphere:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap981123.html

A Martian dust devil passes rover Spirit:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050426.html

Fast moving stars orbiting black hole SgrA* in the Milky Way's center:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001220.html
http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2002/vide o/vid-02-02.mpg

Dynamic rings, wisps and jets of matter and antimatter around the pulsar in the Crab Nebula:
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2002/0052/movies. html

Cat's Eye nebula expanding:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990916.html

Variable stars "twinkling" in globular cluster M3 over a single night:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap041012.html

Shock wave of supernova SN1987A creates hot spots in surrounding material:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/ releases/2004/09/video/a

To find more videos try searching NASA's astronomy picture of the day archive: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/apod/apod_sear ch

I *heart* astronomy :]
Me too.

More various astromovies:

Lunar Transit by the International Space Station Alpha: http://members.aol.com/mrtsp91/iss.htm

Meteor explodes in Earth's atmosphere:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap981123.html

A Martian dust devil passes rover Spirit:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050426.html

Fast moving stars orbiting black hole SgrA* in the Milky Way's center:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001220.html
http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2002/vide o/vid-02-02.mpg

Dynamic rings, wisps and jets of matter and antimatter around the pulsar in the Crab Nebula:
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2002/0052/movies. html

Cat's Eye nebula expanding:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990916.html

Variable stars "twinkling" in globular cluster M3 over a single night:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap041012.html

Shock wave of supernova SN1987A creates hot spots in surrounding material:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/ releases/2004/09/video/a

To find more videos try searching NASA's astronomy picture of the day archive: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/apod/apod_sear ch

I *heart* astronomy :]
Me too.

It wasn't that extreme although the risks tend to get exaggerated to provide a margin of safety. But there's been quite the "Chicken Little" attitude about lately for some reason. Possibly because there's been so much interest focused on private space launches due to the X-prize and such. NASA's official stance has actually been along the lines that the risk was of developing cancer before they died and it was actually quite a bit less for somebody travelling to Mars than for someone who smoked cigarettes. The biggest problem is that until we actually GO there we really won't KNOW and can only SPECULATE about the risks....
Here's a few links with some info:
http://hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=162 0
http://www.spacefellowship.com/Forum/about1155-0-a sc-60.html
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/news/rel eases/2003/03-183.html

The crab nebula in motion:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/ releases/1996/22/video/a

Herbig-Haro object 47 in the Orion Nebula, look at this! This is similiar to the "Pillars of creation in M16.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:HH47_animation. gif

V838 expanding in Monoceros:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030402.html

The ebb and flow of clouds around Jupiters Red Spot:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001123.html

The crab nebula in motion:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/ releases/1996/22/video/a

Herbig-Haro object 47 in the Orion Nebula, look at this! This is similiar to the "Pillars of creation in M16.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:HH47_animation. gif

V838 expanding in Monoceros:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030402.html

The ebb and flow of clouds around Jupiters Red Spot:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001123.html

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I am seriously looking at Java/Swing as the next wave of what started as DOS/Turbo Pascal and got reimplemented in Windows/Delphi.

If you are looking for the next One Great Language (as I was last year) I'd strongly urge you to look beyond Java for a few practical reasons:

1) Sun and IBM may be gung-ho on Java, but it's losing ground compared to Python, Ruby, C#/Mono, etc. (Check this out too: http://oodt.jpl.nasa.gov/better-web-app.mov .) As a former J2EE developer, let me also state that Sun is very slow with fixing critical bugs, and many more of those bugs appear on typical desktop applications than the server.

2) As a language, Java is "OK" but not all that great, and it doesn't look like it's going to get much better over the next decade. "Better" in this case means how quickly you can write good abstractions.

3) Its lack of a Java-certified yet free-as-in-speech runtime stack is a problem. I wouldn't commit any of my future livelihood to the sufferance of any vendor, Sun or otherwise.

4) Java doesn't integrate that well with non-Java code. JNI is a pain to use (I've done it), the APIs that do talk to the OS are lowest-common-denominator and hence usually incomplete for any serious work, forcing you into JNI. If you're going to use a platform that insists on a clear separation between its runtime and the underlying OS, you may as well go with Lisp and at least get multiple free implementations and serious language abstraction.

Anyway, I'm not trying to preach here, Java's got a great place and powers a lot of the world. It's just (to me) not a good choice for the One Great Language, he one that you switch your primary problem-solving-think into. It would be like deliberately choosing to use Cobol in 1988 when Turbo Pascal was already available.

Closest open source program is probably... NASA's World Wind.

It's definitely native.

Only native x86. I don't see any native amd64/x86-64, sparc etc. versions.

NASA's World Wind offers some hope for non-x86 platforms, but it's a way off yet.

It isn't, and the robot in question had less automated safety features than your average modern metal press.

There's no need to invoke Asimov's laws for something which has less AI than an automatic door. Even a few sensors linked to a cutout switch could have prevented the accident. Something like this: http://gsfctechnology.gsfc.nasa.gov/FeaturedRobot. html could even have prevented the accident and allowed the robot to continue working.

Probably AeroGel It's 99.8% air and IIRC it's one of the best insulator materials we have available today. They use it on some Capacitors today. Many electronic devices have 5V AeroGel Caps that can hold charges for hours or even days to keep the clock alive. The Xbox has one; which is why the clock doesn't reset when you change outlets. It works much better then a battery in a lot of applications.

it seems like we're back to just complaining about NASA's ineffectiveness.

Most people don't understand NASA. NASA does what most other people think is impossible. I'm sorry if it takes a little longer.

And it takes longer because Congress decides how much money NASA gets, in large part, from year to year. Would you buy a new car or new house if you don't know if you can make the payments next year?

And lastly, many of NASA's projects go on for decades. NASA had a big involvement with the development of the F-22 Raptor, designed the variable-sweep wing on the F-14, the hypersonic X-43, which made the world speed record, and has a sucessful Mars program. Now how many private companies would be willing to take these projects on, when most people think it couldn't be done?

it seems like we're back to just complaining about NASA's ineffectiveness.

Most people don't understand NASA. NASA does what most other people think is impossible. I'm sorry if it takes a little longer.

And it takes longer because Congress decides how much money NASA gets, in large part, from year to year. Would you buy a new car or new house if you don't know if you can make the payments next year?

And lastly, many of NASA's projects go on for decades. NASA had a big involvement with the development of the F-22 Raptor, designed the variable-sweep wing on the F-14, the hypersonic X-43, which made the world speed record, and has a sucessful Mars program. Now how many private companies would be willing to take these projects on, when most people think it couldn't be done?

it seems like we're back to just complaining about NASA's ineffectiveness.

Most people don't understand NASA. NASA does what most other people think is impossible. I'm sorry if it takes a little longer.

And it takes longer because Congress decides how much money NASA gets, in large part, from year to year. Would you buy a new car or new house if you don't know if you can make the payments next year?

And lastly, many of NASA's projects go on for decades. NASA had a big involvement with the development of the F-22 Raptor, designed the variable-sweep wing on the F-14, the hypersonic X-43, which made the world speed record, and has a sucessful Mars program. Now how many private companies would be willing to take these projects on, when most people think it couldn't be done?

it seems like we're back to just complaining about NASA's ineffectiveness.

Most people don't understand NASA. NASA does what most other people think is impossible. I'm sorry if it takes a little longer.

And it takes longer because Congress decides how much money NASA gets, in large part, from year to year. Would you buy a new car or new house if you don't know if you can make the payments next year?

And lastly, many of NASA's projects go on for decades. NASA had a big involvement with the development of the F-22 Raptor, designed the variable-sweep wing on the F-14, the hypersonic X-43, which made the world speed record, and has a sucessful Mars program. Now how many private companies would be willing to take these projects on, when most people think it couldn't be done?

There is one major difference you seem to disregard in your comparison between Earth and Jupiter. On Earth, we know most of it's topography, we know what it's core, shell, and atomosphere consist of, we know how it spins and the general dynamics of its weather (with some exceptions, of course, but for the most part). With Jupiter, we know very little about it other than what we've been able to speculate. We speculate that it's a still-born star, so we speculate it has a mass similar to that of a small star. From our knowledge of what small stars consist of and what kind of gravity required to keep certain elements in an atomosphere, we can speculate the contents of Jupiter's atomosphere. We've even been able to see the top few layers with The Galileo Project, but the surface, if there is one, is still a mystery. So, not only do we not know what the surface is like, or how it affects the surrounding clouds and storms, but we're not even sure there is a surface. And we certainly don't know if these storms go all the way down to the surface. Who's to say the core even rotates? Or rotates at the same speed or in the same direction as everything else? This one's going out on a limb, I know, but space can already easily break many of the scientific laws that we've established (light itself breaks several of these), so who's to say that what goes on in the depths of a stillborn star goes against everything we consider to be logical?

Meteorologists say that it's practically an unsolvable problem, and that's on a planet which they already know a lot about. With a planet such as Jupiter, there's simply too many unknowns. Everyone knows that the more unknowns you have in a problem, the harder it becomes to solve. The problem here is that, for Jupiter, the problem/formula is almost entirely unknowns.

I LOVE astronomy. I think it is simply the most profound thing that we have been able to take the eye and stretch it to points beyond imagination. To look out into the cosmos is so humbling and awe-inspiring. Truly if one science has shown us simple magnificent beauty it is astronomy.

Now having said that I will say that only one thing makes astronomy better - seeing these object in motion! Galaxies and nebula seem so unreal in hubble's photos - it's hard to fully comprehend what exactly they are - what they are really like. But when you view those precious few object we have been able to capture in motion, to me it is exquisite! Somehow, to me, it makes them that much more real, more tangible. And that is truly the dream of the soul - to somehow touch, taste, smell that which is so beautiful :)

I hope these astronomers string together this phenomenal convergence into a movie!

Jupiter's storms in motion
Solar flares

Do you have any other cool astronomical movie links?
--
Music should be free

1) Humans are the only super devices currently on the planet. A device that can do more will cost more. A humanoid torso with stair-climbing could be teleoperated by remote human operators. That would be the cheapest way to get a robot to be a general purpose device. It would cost more than an ASIMO, which is at least $100,000.

2) It isn't PR. It's reality. Talk to any roboticist. We are decades away from autonomous general purpose robotics. A few folks are working on the tele-op problem in #1. I just watched a presentation on the Robonaut yesterday.
http://robonaut.jsc.nasa.gov/