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I'll see your five year old national geographic fluff piece, and raise you a two year old government study.

simulations of iron fertilization of the oceans in the Southern Hemisphere initially showed that almost 8 billion tons of carbon would be absorbed by the ocean each year. Yet, after 500 years of continuous fertilization, the net increase in absorption would be less than 1 billion tons of carbon per year.

Now, considering that fossil fuels contribute roughly 4-5 billion tons of C to the atmosphere annually, and we've got about 100 years of fossil fuels left... How in the hell is this not a perfect solution? Oh yeah, that's right... too many global warming chicken littles out there are going to have egg on their face if atmospheric C is reduced to pre-industrial levels and global temps are still rising thanks to the simple fact that the sun is getting hotter. We wouldn't want to actually test that "greenhouse gases cause global warming" theory, now would we? Better just stick to those computer models...

Oh no! I'm challenging global warming rhetoric with scientific studies! Damn!! There goes my Karma! *sniff* Goodbye sweet Karma <sarcasm />

I'm personally more amused by the proposed OWL telescope, which stands for OverWhelmingly Large. It's makes you wonder what they will call the next one after that. The So Enormously Large that Gosh We're All Really Impressed Telescope?

He was waxing his chest.

The best idea I've heard is to simply make the designation 'planet' a non scientific term. Given the confusion and sometimes less than civil debate, it's a comprimise that could work for both camps.

The best idea I've heard is to simply make the designation 'planet' a non scientific term. Given the confusion and sometimes less than civil debate, it's a comprimise that could work for both camps.

This is nothing new at all

I'll grant you that yes, prices have come down recently but surely every geek wants our scientific research budgets spent on a much worthier use for nanotubes.

http://www.space.com/adastra/adastra_tumlinson_060 130.html

At this point I would rather save money by ending NASA's manned space program instead of continuing to piss money down ratholes such as the Shuttle, ISS and now the Crude Exploration Vehicle all of which are just ways for NASA to hand money to large aerospace companies so that they can pad their bottom lines and continue to bribe congressmen.

As an engineer you look at many things, one of them is trends. The shuttle has been getting progressively worse with time. That is why it is being replaced with the CEV. The Soyuz on the other hand has been experiancing less failures with time - most of the failures you cite were early in the development cycle and have been resolved. The Soyuz has been so successful that (a) NASA is purchasing Soyuz flights and (b) China is implementing the Soyuz design for their own space program. Like it or not, the Soyuz design is proven, cost-effective and may very well prove to be the workhorse for the next 10 years while the CEV is being developed.

And then there are a handful of us who majored in environmental science in college who think that computer models are as susceptible to subjective modelers as computer benchmarks are to industry types trying to sell you their latest processor. Large majority eh? Got any relevant links? I'm not going to pick on you specifically MightyMartian, because there are a lot of people here racking up +5's with nothing but rhetoric. Here's why I think this global warming business is a sham.

The soil releases an order of magnitude more CO2 into the atmosphere than all the fossil fuels burned each year combined. No till farming in America could take as much CO2 out of the atmosphere as taking half of all the cars in America off the road. A full 40% of the Earth's arable land is being used for agriculture and most of it is being severely degraded by tillage. Why aren't you people up in arms about that? Hey, burn the f'in farmers right? They're greedy evil bastards.

Studies have shown that fertilizing plankton with iron sulfate could significantly reduce atmospheric CO2. (IronEx II is a notable success.) "Oh teh Noes!!11oneone1eleventyone! After 500 years it wont teh wurk anymore!?ONE" Well gee, we'll be out of fossil fuels by then. So why aren't you guys who are belly aching about global warming doing it? Afraid you'll have egg on your face if CO2 drops and mean temps continue to rise? What you say? Your models might be flawed?

Wow, the Sun IS getting hotter, and Earth's temperature correlates directly with it.

And as for plastics, we can make most of that out of corn and it's more environmentally friendly. Most of the crowd around here loves parroting each other with this global warming chicken little horseshit, but I personally am sick to death of hearing it. Produce something besides a BBC article written in layman's terms that says the sky is falling, PLEASE! I thought this was news for nerds, not drama queens.

Would anyone like to provide a little evidence to the contrary that is not entirely based on a computer model?

While the results of the star survey do not disprove the nemesis theory, they do seem to lessen the chance of it being correct. With red dwarves being being the most likely suspect for nemesis (see http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/ nemesis_010320-1.html/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_(star)/) and at the same time not likely to be a companion star, I guess they'll have to look for different astrological suspects.

Well we should take your word for it then because of course NASA never makes a mistake.

A while back, NASA conducted a fifteen year anniversary study on the savant known as Kim Peek. Peek was born with a strange brain deformity known as macrocephaly which results in the two hemispheres of the brain being linked due to a pocket of water at the base of the brain.

Now, there has been a lot of speculation about how neurons work and what makes someone autistic. I once had a lengthy conversation with James Olds of George Mason's Krasnow Institute and asked him about Peek. Olds explained to me that it's very mysterious how savants develop. I asked him if Peek had an abnormally large cortex but he dismissed this, citing that elephants are not geniuses. He also gave me an anecdotal story of a Harvard football player that injured his shoulder blade as the star quarter back. When they x-rayed him, they also found out that his head was mostly filled with water and the result was a severe lack of brain tissue. However, he was a 4.0 grade point average student. I asked Dr. Olds if Peek's neurons might be more densely populated but he also dismissed this saying that neurons are huge on nutrient consumption and if they grow too closely together, they will kill each other.

Anyone care to take a stab at this? Can anyone speculate on this?

For a more up-to-date account of research in this area, consider reading The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene (available at Amazon of course). I heard Brian Greene give a talk and it was an excellent explanation of complex theories (relativity, string theory) for a general audience. I have not read The Elegant Universe, but I'm told it's a good book.

In terms of what has been disproven, I think the major changes that are worth noting are:

1. At the time the book was written, it was assumed that the universe was expanding, but the rate of expansion was slowing. The question was: how much mass is there in the universe? Will the universe re-contract at some point (Big Crunch) or expand forever? However, modern measurements have actually shown that the universe is expanding, and the rate is accelerating! This has required the introduction of a new concept into cosmology: dark energy, which is not at all understood.

2. As in point #1, it was previously assumed that the mass of the universe would control the shape/topology of the universe (open vs. closed)... Modern measuremens (of the CMB for instance) show that the curvature of the universe is nearly zero. That is, the universe is flat on large scales.

3. Previously, Hawking was very clear about the fact that information that goes into a black hole can never be recovered. He even made a bet that this would never be disproven. However, Hawking recently admitted defeat. Actually, it is Hawking himself who claims to have proven that information can escape from a black hole. However, the rest of the scientific community does not agree (yet--they are looking into the matter).

4. Modern versions of string theory have added alot to the discussion, although none of them have experimental evidence backing them up (yet).

That's all that I'm aware of... there may be more changes. Still, most of the content in "A Brief History of Time" is a general explanation of relativity and cosmology. None of that has been disproven. Modern experimental results have further validated those theories, in fact, which is interesting in and of itself!

Damnit... smart ass comment made me do my own darn Google search. Genesis was the mission and the parachutes didn't deploy so it smashed into the ground and the helicopters obviously couldn't catch it. Note the photos of the helicopters catching probes on training missions. I believe there was a sensor installed upside down. I read recently that the mission is considered a success though because the collectors were recoverable. There was some more recent news on this this week, I just can't find the link.

Oh well, so there I go, answering my own question.

The linked article is not really about Nemesis, a distant companion to the Sun supposedly linked to regular massive exctinctions through its influence on the Oort cloud (where comets come from).

It is, however, about an unseen Sun companion responsible for the precession of the equinox. The precession of the equinox is the observation that as the Earth orbits the Sun, after a full year around the Sun the Earth does not realign itself with the distant stars, there is a difference of about 50 arcseconds. This correspond to a period of about 24,000 years.

Current theory for precession says the phenomenon is due to tidal effects due to the Moon acting on the non-perfectly-spherical Earth.

TFA makes the simple point that this could be also more easily explained if the Sun was revolving around an heretofore unseen companion for the same period. This would also explain a number of other more complex phenomena, such as why this the precession rate seems to slowly, but undoubtedly change with time, why the angular momentum of the Sun appears to be so low compared to that of the planets, etc.

TFA goes on to make prediction where this companion might be in the sky, and how far away it should be (between 0.01 and 0.03 of a LY), using nothing more complicated than basic Newtonian celestial mechanics.

Well, time will tell, and I'm not an astronomer, but the theory is actually very simple and testable (in the mid to long run), so either evidence will mount in this direction or it will be disproved.

For example we could measure precession rates on Mars. Since Mars has no large satellite, if it is found to have a precession rate similar to that of the Earth, then this will be very strong evidence that the tidal theory cannot be correct, and that the distant companion one is more likely to be. On the other hand if precession on Mars is very low, then this theory cannot be correct.

In short I think the guy might be wrong but he is no crackpot.

Space.com has a breakdown of responsibility by country of some of the larger debris in space.

And if you're really hardcore into space debris (it's hard to even type that without laughing), Orbital Debris Quarterly News is your magazine!

While the mine is indeed very impressive, it's only one of MANY man-made objects visible from space.

NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe has said repeatedly that he favors putting off the mission until sometime next decade when nuclear propulsion systems could enable a probe to reach the distant planet faster and stay there longer.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/ pluto_options_020128-1.html

There's a fair amount of landfills out there that probably have useful amounts of copper. That'll probably be the first place to dig. The hard part is separation and removing toxic waste from useful minerals.

Mining the asteroids is currently prohibitively expensive, but costs will eventually go down. I'd like to see some legislation to encourage such endeavors, which might be the next profitable commercial activity after space tourism.

Of course, we could always wait for them to fall to the Earth, but that requires lots of patience.

The conference, on the "Future of Transatlantic Military Space Relations", was held at London's Royal United Services Institute, this month. A senior European delegate said: "The Americans were very calm. They made it clear that they would attempt what they called reversible action, but, if necessary, they would use irreversible action."

The US would first try unilaterally to jam Gallileo's signals, but if this failed it would use attack satellites to destroy one or all of its units, in an unprecedented Star Wars-style raid.

may also provide an opportunity to solve a question that's been vexing many; should Pluto even be counted as a planet or just a small body as part of the Kuiper belt.

Frankly, spending 800 million USD to figure out how to classify a body is probably not worth it by iself. However, knowing if and why there is a difference between Pluto and other Kuiper objects is definitely a worthy goal.

Here is more info on the probe's problematic political history:

http://space.com/spacenews/businessmonday_041004.h tml

http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/advocac y_and_education/pluto/pluto_campaign_timeline.html

The stolen "nuke tape" fiasco at the Los Alamos National Laboraty almost delayed or reduced the delivery of the radioactive power cell. I've read later that they met their goal eventually.

Anyone who has seen the Time Machine would know that mining the moon is a really bad idea...

The thing to remember about H3 on the moon is that it's only in the soil. From Space.com:

"When the solar wind, the rapid stream of charged particles emitted by the sun, strikes the moon, helium 3 is deposited in the powdery soil. Over billions of years that adds up. Meteorite bombardment disperses the particles throughout the top several meters of the lunar surface."

The harvesting of H3 from the moon wouldn't anything like the mining of coal or diamonds here on Earth. Think of it more like raking, not mining :-P

It means something to someone.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/white_hole_0 30917.html
http://www.astronomy.pomona.edu/Projects/moderncos mo/Sean's%20mutliverse.html

Additionally, a singularity is defined as a point in space that has such intense gravitation that spacetime is curved infinitely around it (a theory about gravity states that it does not "pull" things towards it, but rather warps space, and objects caught in gravitation are just following the curvature of said space) It seems to me that when this happens, nothing can enter or leave. That sounds like a spacetime bubble to me.

The use of the words "folded into this dimension" sounds a little cliche, I agree. But we can also agree that this universe has 3 dimensions, but has no detectable edge.

Consider what we thought about the earth a relatively short time ago...It was thought the earth was flat (2-D), because that's the way it looked from our perspective. Obviously we know better now and the earth is actually spherical (3-D). In this sense, does it defy logic that our universe exists in a 4-D or greater system?

Wasnt there a story a couple of months ago about dark matter not existing? I am not sure whether i believe that, though it sounded plausible.
(The article was about that the classical approximation just wasnt good enough, the mass came out correct without dark matter with general relativity.)

But when some mass is missing in the estimates, it seems like that mysterious "dark matter" of which we know _nothing_ is blamed, just stuff some of that where your missing mass.
Here a quote from when you click through darkmatter:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/da rk_matter_sidebar_010105.html

"By measuring these mysterious effects of gravity, researchers determine how much "extra" gravity is present, and hence how much extra mass, or dark matter, must exist."

Thank you for making my point space.com (i know maybe not the most scientific source, but gravity really is the only way to measure "dark matter" currently)

By the way dark energy isnt so vague, i am convinced that that exists.
also how did they simulate the dark matter?

I'm quite sure you're mistaken. I'm not Christian, but I have read the Bible, and I believe it claims that the star appeared in the west and that the 'three wise men from the east' followed it to find Jesus. That would preclude it being Polaris.

There are a lot of theories on what the star was, but I've never heard any in which the star is Polaris.

Do you have any references to it being Polaris?

Umm nice troll, That would be buy seats on the soyus because it cheaper to fly then the shuttle, which is still grounded(whole other issue). Did you read the story you linked too? The ISS was almost put completely on hold because Russian could not afford to build the pieces of the ISS they where committed to build. I am not saying that other countries are not making HUGE strides in space but where did you get this whole notion of we are broke as the reason for that comment? I mean here is NASA's budget and operating plan for 2006 http://www.nasa.gov/about/budget/ Having a 16 billion dollar budget doesn't sound broke to me. (yes the U.S. has a huge amount of dept and that sucks for us, Bush sucks.) Maybe its not enough to do all the thing they want to do because of cutbacks but I am not that well informed on that subject. Oh here is a link to the Russian financial issue that put the whole ISS in jeopardy though http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/progress_iss_ 020425.html

Quick Google search found it. It looks like it was true. Carl Sagan even worked as part of the project.

http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/nuke_moon_0 00514.html

You mean this rock?

Why not? NatGeo even talks about flying whales and hydrogen-filled floating plants...

While we're discussing related stuff, you should have a look at this article, which has a beautiful animation of light echoes from a suddenly brightening star (but not a supernova).

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/cartosat1_lau nch_050505.html

"Cartosat-1 can capture details spanning 2.5 meters (8.20 feet) on the Earth and will be followed in 2006 by the launch of Cartosat-2 with a spatial resolution of about 1 meter (3.28 feet)."

India spent millions of dollar implementing remote sensing by launching a satellite to watch over natural disasters and environmental changes, obviously those Tsunami is so small, you need 1 meter spatial resolution to detect its occurance.

Who should be worrying about who's watching who here???

Since it is Christmas, I shall be kind to such a response. Mars is experiencing Global Warming.

So is NASA lying? Or don't you believe in their facts?

The main danger of such explosions is the static and toxic moondust, which is thrown around."

The main danger to what, the other moon rocks lying around within 10m of the impact point? Gimme a break, already!

The space.com headline is a bit closer to the mark... "Small space rock spotted hitting the moon".

--
Sometimes I think the only reason I read Slashdot is to complain about it

As pointed out here , Stardust uses the same re-entry method and was built by the same contractor (LockMart) as the Genesis probe which cratered into the Utah desert in 2004 (Sarcastic photo caption: "Thud!"). An investigation revealed that the gravity switches (sensors which are to detect the probe's deceleration in the atmosphere and trigger parachute deployment) were the most likely installed in the "incorrect orientation," which sounds like bureacraticese for "backwards."

land like the last one.

Well, you can prove that at least one thing was left behind by bouncing a laser off the reflector array deployed by Apollo 11. Don't bother trying it with your laser pointer though.

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/davinci_xpriz eupdate_040805.html
Xprize
http://www.kindersley.ca/future.html

Ion drives. Apparently they've taken 60 years to get here, they don't go very fast, but they're very fuel efficient. And yes, I'm off-topic. :(

The linked article isn't very informative. More information can be found here and here. a brief history of the company can be found here and a brief readout of this particular rocket can be found here.

The New Horizons probe to Pluto launches next month. The latest news has the probe launching between January 17 (a six-day delay from the original plan, due to a fuel tank problem) and February 14.

As Paul Marsh did here detecting the MRO on its way to Mars, one of the benefits of setting up the receiving system while the probe is outbound is that the signal starts out strong, so your first-generation system can be somewhat crude. As the signal weakens (over the years in the New Horizons case), you can gradually refine your setup (and perhaps count on new technology to be developed in the meantime).

BTW, for those interested in the technical details of telecommunications with NASA deep space probes, a good place to start is the Future Missions Planning Office site. It contains communication link design tools, HTML links to applicable CCSDS standards, etc.

He promoted a theory not a fact. So what if he promoted it, maybe it's true.

Somebody hand me my clue stick. Bam! Bam ! Bam! THE FOAM THAT FELL OFF OF THE COLUMBIA ET WAS MADE WITH FREON. Bam! Bam! Bam!

Rush's "theory" also involves the idea that freon somehow makes the foam stick to the tank: "They had to use something else to cause the foam to bond to the fuel tank, and it was not nearly as good as Freon was. And that's why the chunks started coming loose."

The BS he spouted was not only never NASA's theory about the cause, but is not grounded in reality.

I mean, this theory was never his to begin but that of NASA.

No. Actually read the fine space.com article you linked to above. NASA had a list of concerns in 2000, years before the Columbia disaster. The list included problems with the new foam, that have since been fixed. TFA does not say that the freon-free nature of the foam was a theory in the Columbia disaster, just that it was on this list of concerns.

Shame on you for putting the blame on Rush Limbaugh. He has nothing to do with this. And I quote from Space.com...

"NASA has said that the freon-free application method resulted in foam that initially did not adhere to the tank as well, but changes were later made to strengthen the bond of the environmentally friendly foam."
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sts107_foam_f t_030506.html

The Mars Climate Orbiter was lost at the Red Planet on Sept. 23,1999 because of a mistake by engineers who delivered navigation information in English rather than metric units, according to a mission failure investigation report released.

A nuke can be used for only one thing - cause destruction. The only positive use it might have is to threaten the other person with destruction. It has been created with the specific purpose and intent of causing mass destruction, and nothing else.

That's not true. That's simply not true. You can blow up nukes for peaceful purposes. For instance, you can excavate harbors in Alaska with nukes. You can also use them to launch spaceships. Mmm, Specific Impulse... Of course, the naysayers do tend to complain about fallout...

If you don't know much about the ion engine used in Deep Space I, look here before posting.

The article mentions that this new thruster design's "fuel efficiency" is comparable to the ion engine. This means that it has to propel about the same amount of ionized gas away to get the same amount of thrust (presumably at a similar velocity). However, I didn't see anything about "energy efficiency". Does it require a lot more electricity to get the same amount of thrust? For a space probe, 100kV is a LOT. The Deep Space I probe had solar panels that generated 2.5kV, and it didn't even have enough electricity to run its ion thruster simultaneously with most of its other systems. Sure it would be nice to have the option to accelerate more quickly, but will there be enough electricity available to take advantage of it for long periods of time?

That is the nail in the coffin of MOST companion models for the Sun. The Nemesis theory actually can deal with that see this article for a simple description.

If the orbits are correct then you can hide the companion from our view. Very unlikily but stranger things are seen in the galaxy.

Actually, TorC is a nice place. The wretched hive of scum and villainy is a couple hundred miles to the east.

No, they found out after the shuttle returned and after they could remove and gather and then interpret the data from the detection system. Possibly TFA is crap (BBC is no guarantee) but it's at least mentioned in or easily understood from this article: http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/ft_051211_dis covery_leak.html

Other things to mull over:
- three of the six "catch bottles" (name of the measuring devices) showed completely normal values, one had "corrupt data" (don't ask me why, perhaps a mechanical failure since the catch bottles seem to be mechanical in nature), and two "indicate higher-than-allowable levels of gaseous oxygen"
- if there is a problem at all it is the possibility of a leak somewhere because leaks tend to expand over time

The Uranus Experiment

You know, the Porn industry would pay you guys' big bucks!!! Think about it; a new DVD titled "Zero-G Spot" or something. I mean, video of zero-g sex in action would be very unique to the market.

There is another theory ...