Slashdot Mirror
Quark Stars
BigGar' writes "Astronomers seem to have discovered a new type of star. It would lie between a neutron star and and a black hole in the hierarchy of stars and consist of quark matter. Further observations with the Chandra X-ray telescope will be needed to confirm the results."
my first first post!
The Stone Age did not end for lack of stones, and when the oil age ends it will not be for lack of oil. --Bjorn Lomberg
How doesn't this throw the entire concept of Quantum Physics out the window?
(CNN) --Two rogue stars have failed to live up to scientific expectations, compelling puzzled astronomers to fuckin' consider the fucking likelihood that them dildos possess a motherfucking piece of shit new and exotic form of matter.
If confirmed, the fucking discovery would warrant a piece of shit new class of objects, quark stars, which fall somewhere in between neutron stars and black holes in density.
"That bastard would change the fucking family tree a bit and put a fuckin' piece of shit new member in that shit," University of Chicago astronomer Michael Turner told reporters Wednesday.
Neutron stars are the fucking vestiges of immense supernova explosions, collapsed stars with extremely compact cores, denser than all known objects except black holes. Get ready for pain. A teaspoonful of a neutron star would weigh one billion tons, as much as all the fucking cars and trucks on Earth.
At least, until astronomers using the fucking Chandra X-ray Observatory spied two presumed neutron stars, RXJ1856 and 3C58. Based on the fucking known laws of physics, the fucking former appeared much smaller and the fucking latter much colder than them jizzers should.
The fucking strange traits of RXJ1856 and 3C58 suggest that the fucking pair are not neutron stars at all. Caw caw! The ravens are singing, you are a fuck. Them ass-riders could be composed of quarks, or crystals of sub-nuclear particles rather than neutrons.
"Both of these objects have properties which seem to contradict fuckin' what we know about matter," said Harvard-Smithsonian astronomer Jeremy Drake.
Quarks are thought to fuckin' be the fucking fundamental building blocks of matter. Them poo pirates combine to fuckin' make the fucking basic subatomic particles, protons and neutrons.
But quarks have remained fleeting, appearing for a fuckin' fraction of a second in a motherfucking handful of laboratories when atomic nuclei smash into one another at incredible speeds.
The fucking quarks that make up conventional matter are called "up" and "down" quarks. Physicists theorize that even more elusive "strange" quarks, possible remnants from the fucking birth of the fucking universe, still lurk in the fucking cosmos.
The fucking Chandra data gives the fucking first evidence that them queefs exist in nature. You are a bitch. But the fucking astronomers caution that the fucking results are preliminary.
"More observations are needed to find out fuckin' what is going on here," Turner said
I had read once that black holes could be regarded as super-large elementary particles (described by very few parameters: spin, charge, mass). Would "quarks stars" be something like that, or more like a huge Bose-Einstein condensate?
Jes curious....
I'm a bloodsucking fiend! Look at my outfit!
"Neutron stars are the vestiges of immense supernova explosions, collapsed stars with extremely compact cores, denser than all known objects except black holes. A teaspoonful of a neutron star would weigh one billion tons, as much as all the cars and trucks on Earth."
That would be one impressive teaspoon.
Tall, Blonde and Weaponized
tcd004
Does anyone know if all up quarks are the same as all other up quarks and if all down quarks are the same as all other down quarks? There might be a billion different slight variations of the two kinds. We don't have the equipment to define a quark past a certain level.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Schwing!
I guess Armin Shimmerman was pretty cool, but I don't think he's really a star... Or was that a different kind of Quark, that doesn't try selling self-sealing stembolts...
I would just like to point out that I submitted this story over 12 hours ago... :/
/me points to the [REJECTED] tatoo on forehead.
This stuff looks dense enough to be a black hole (black hole in the sense of "light can't get out", not necessarily "singularity"). So, what kind of densities do you need to get a blackhole, or does the total mass also enters the equation?
I'm sorry, that just seems like wishful thinking to tie your star to a known event, therefor creating a strong case for you. The chances are less than one in a billion that it was the very same star.
So why does Quark get a star type named after him.. Who'd he swindle that Deal from? :)
> The quarks that make up conventional matter are > called "up" and "down" quarks. Physicists > theorize that even more elusive "strange" > quarks, possible remnants from the birth of the > universe, still lurk in the cosmos.
... something a little more practical. something that the whole globe can engage in ..
..
*yawn*
I wish that we would spend billions of dollars on getting some 'manned' craft to Mars
I mean trying to determine if a star 7 miles in diameter 8 billion light years away is made of sub-nuclear particles seems like an effort in futility
--
"we live in a post-ideological world..." - Billy Bragg.
If most matter is made of quarks, then aren't most stars technically quark stars?
An All-Linux Think Tank
-----
Quark Sing-a-long Written by Lynda Williams
For Jefferson National Lab
Bring Our Daughters to Work Day.
(refrain)
Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top and Bottom!
The World is made up of Quarks and Leptons!
Up, Down, Charm, Strange,Top and Bottom!
Yum! Yum!
Quarks come in six flavors
They live in families of two.
Up Down, Charm Strange, Top and Bottom!
They come in anti-flavors too!
Each family makes a generation
between which is a mass gap.
The up quark is the lightest and the top quark
is the most fat!
The second and third generations
do not live for very long.
That's why everything in the Universe
is made up of Ups and Downs!
(refrain)
Quarks carry a color charge.
They come in red, green and blue.
You'll never see a quark all by itself
cuz they stick together with a strong force glue.
Quarks carry electric charge.
A fraction of electricity.
Quarks combine together so the total charge
is a multiple of unity!
An up, up down makes a proton for a total charge of plus one.
A down, up, down makes a DUD neutron!
Physics is so much YUM YUM PHUN!
(refrain)
copyright 1999 Lynda Williams
http://www.entersci.com/cosmic/quarkl.htm
It's density, not mass, that stops light. A star may have more mass than a black hole, but the gravitational field is at no point strong enough to "stop light", as you put it. (Think Gauss's law---inside a sphere, the gravitational field is influenced only by the matter "under" you.)
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Quarks tend to be "bound" into either mesons (a quark and an antiquark) or hadrons (three quarks or three antiquarks---protons and neutrons).
I suppose the interesting part here is the enormous energy required to overcome the forces that bind mesons/hadrons together.
Err... that is, if the article is talking about what I think it's talking about. It's 2 AM here, I should be thinking about de Broglie, Schrodinger and Bohr.
Bah. Time for a porn break.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I was just getting used to that, after the story on slashdot...
Quark stars are a new and interesting idea, but quark matter in general is not a new idea. "Quark matter", more usually "quark plasma" or "quark-gluon plasma", is believed to be the dominant form of matter in the universe just following the big bang. There is also early evidence that it's been witnessed in some of the largest particle accelerators.
In normal matter quarks group together in sets of 3 to form protons and nuetrons. Rare particles, like pions, can be formed from pairs of quarks, but quarks never appear in isolation, for them it's always in groups of 2 or 3. In quark plasmas though there aren't any distinct groups of twos and threes. All the quarks are smushed into a single substance with arbitrarily large numbers of quarks.
One analogy is if atoms are built out of "solid" quarks (in the from of protons and nuetrons), then the quark plasma is like melting them so they all run together. Prior to this announcement the only time that quark plasmas were expected to appear was in the presence of extraordinarily high energies and temperatures.
We could predict that nuetrons stars should exist because the "nuetron degeneracy pressure" which makes them possible was well understood theoretically. The theory that governs quark interaction is known as quantum chromodynamics and is far more complicated. I'm not sure whether anyone knows how to apply it to massive collapsing stars, and it doesn't surprise me if no one ever tried. It will be interesting to see if the existing theory can be made to justify quark stars. If not, well that's when things really start to get exciting.
ok, so people get PAIED to look into telescopes, think of wierd names for stars and theororize about things that can't even get close to?? why do i suddenly want to take a bat to congress...
This message was brought to you by the death of 30 brain cells.
Back off, sucka fool! Nobody touches my "Tang" budget!
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Same with physics itself and science as well. Oh my god, reality is pealing away! Its a miracle...
Or as Mr D. Vader would put it:
If you only new the power of the quark side...
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Ok, seriously, I'm not a physicist, but I did pay attention in High School/College, and I have to ask: Do we KNOW any of this stuff. Or is everything just one (educated) guess on top of another.
Yes, we've made some discoveries, and for the most part things can be explained with the current line of thinking in Physics (Newton, Einstein, etc), but that's the problem, things are only MOSTLY explained, and certain keys are missing.
Take Newton, we've got all sorts of formulas, rules, and experiements built upon the concept of gravity. Something which we cannot define, do not know how it is "made" nor where it comes from. Or perhaps think of the stars, do we KNOW that this star is 8 billion light-year away? Or are we just guessing based on some color-shifting theory that seems to work here on Earth, based on guesses about the total mass of the universe (that we can't find some large percentage of...)
What if we humans are all WAY WAY wrong? What if like the "flat-earthers" of centuries ago, we've justified our THEORY of the planets, stars, solar systems, and the universe based on a completely incorrect model just becuase researchers (or humans in general) don't like to admit they are wrong, or that they don't know something? Are there any radical thinkers left? someone perhaps not starting from Newton or Einstein's work and trying to move it forward, but someone with NO preconsceptions, NO ingrained ideas, and NO outside influences?
Actually, nevermind, even if a person like that did exist, he'd be labeled as a quack in the media, shunned and laughed at by acedemia and problably killed by a nervous government.
Just some random thoughts on a quiet night...
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes
I'll go to bed now..
1. Shave pubic region.
2. Enjoy that smooth, silky sensation.
I know the following isn't exactly about the article, but I've wondered about this for a long time:
What would happen if you start dumping an huge amount of electrons in a black hole? As I understand it, the electrical force is far more powerful than the gravitational force. Therefor I wonder: what would happen if you create this huge negative pole? Would the black hole become unstable, would it eventually become impossible to add more electrons or something else (maybe the question is wrong altogether)? I anyone knows, I'd like to hear.
As you say, this is stuff that we thought existed only right after the big bang billions of years ago, or in accelerators for brief nanoseconds. That makes free quarks a legendary, almost intangible state of matter. Now we see a starful of free quarks, and you're not amazed?
I'm no professional physicist - but I thought I remembered hearing that a neutron star was held stable by the neutron degeneracy pressure counteracting the gravitational forces. Once there's enough mass so that gravity overcomes the degeneracy pressure, there are no more forces pushing particles apart so the whole thing collapses to a mathematical point (black hole.) I'm not really sure how this works either; from what I remember of quantum, degeneracy is more a law than a force - two fermions simply can't occupy the same space, so there's a limit to how dense they can become. In any case, does anyone have any further knowledge of what force might be keeping these denser-than-neutron stars from collapsing into black holes?
Here is a more in depth report from NPR's Wednesday broadcast of All Things Considered (in Real Audio format).
It wasn't mentioned in the Chandra release or the CNN spot, but RX J1856.5-3754 is apparently the closest known neutron star. The Chandra site states it's distance at ~400 lyr and the APOD site cites 180 lyr, practically in our back yard!(in cosmological distances anyway)
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Visitors to the website slashdot.org will by now have surely heard of the act of Moderation. This is where a contributor's post can be 'Moderated' either positively or negatively, depending on how the Moderator perceives the value of the post. There is a sliding scale of total moderation points, from -1 to 5, along with snappy summaries of the reason for moderation, such as "Funny", "Insightful", or the ever popular "Troll". An additional benefit offered to Moderators is the ability to ban a poster from contributing, by negatively moderating enough of his postings in a 24 hour period.
In order to retain some level of fairness for the Slashdot population, the Slashdot Editors (adopting the role of 'Benevolent Dictators') have implemented a scheme whereby regular users of Slashdot, chosen essentially at random, are given the ability to act as Moderators.
This underlines an inherent flaw in the system. Psychological studies have shown that in any community, no matter how small, should a random sampling of people be given the slightest grasp of power, they will immediately abuse it. There is a primal, evolutionary desire in Man to place himself higher than his peers by whatever measurement they can muster. Slashdot Moderation provides the ideal means for which a man can prove himself more equal than others.
At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law at such an early point in my thesis, I have no choice but to compare Slashdot Moderation to the systematic genocide of the Jewish community in 1930's Germany.
A bold statement, I admit, and deliberately designed to shock, but I feel the statement is necessary. I shall now offer a more rational explanation, as well as a comparison of the parallels between Slashdot Culture, and the National Socialist regime.
First, some history. National Socialism did not spring up overnight. It grew from a feeling of national bitterness and resentment at the war reparations Germany was forced to make after World War One. Germany was a broken country, populated by desperate starving people. And to the desperate, an extreme ideology begins to seem like a rational choice.
The advent of new technology forces a paradigm shift in the way the beholders of that technology think. The Christianity Meme was made wide spread by the invention of the Gutenberg press. And the rise of National Socialism was made popular because of the invention of Cinema. Here we had a new means to control the flow of information to the populace, that they are willing to unquestioningly listen to due to the 'novelty factor' of moving pictures. It is no coincidence that some of the best Cinematography of the early 20th Century came out of the National Socialist propaganda machine.
Why is this the case? It is yet another fault of man that a new means of distributing memes is perceived, due to the 'newness' of the medium, to have a greater 'validity' than older media. Those harnessing new inventions have the power to win control of the hearts and minds of others.
With the tools in place, who should the National Socialists target? Clearly, as a counterpoint to Man's desire to hold power over others, there is also a desire to resent the success of others. If someone is successful, they reduce the self-worth of their beholders. Although times were harsh in Germany in the prelude to World War II, there were still successful inhabitants of that country. Possessing shrewd business acumen as well as the contacts in other countries needed to maintain support in such a poverty stricken and broken land, who else should deserve the wrath of the populace more than the Jews?
Fast-forward to the latter quarter of the 20th Century. Computing technology is focused in niche markets, and limited to big successful companies like IBM and Microsoft. As the markets were limited, there were also limited opportunities for employment. This gave rise to a rising number of college dropouts, seething with resentment and unable to relate to society beyond the staccato clatter of keyboards and the pallid green glow of an 80x24 text display, and lacking the basic business skills (and a smart suit) needed to secure employment at one of these companies.
At this time, a new invention was beginning to take hold in College campuses throughout the world. The Internet. As with the Gutenberg press and Cinema beforehand, this new technology would grow to spread one of the most virulent memes of the modern age - Open Source Software, created as the antithesis of successful business practise.
So, the parallels between the birth of Anti-Semetic National Socialism and the birth of Open Source Software have been made. Of course, it is easy to claim that A=B without providing further logical evidence in support. So, the next task of my thesis is to provide further parallels, and bring this discourse back to the initial focus on Slashdot Moderation.
Slashdot was conceived, in it's original 'Chips 'n' Dips' incarnation, as a vehemently anti-corporate Open Source website. Roughly 10-15 years down the line from the birth of Open Source, it has become saturated with propaganda, and now forms the centrepiece of the Open Source Development Network. An authority in it's field, Slashdot's success is in no small part due to the ability of the editors to 'pick and choose' valid news articles submitted by users, and present the same old tired "Open Source Good / Closed Source Bad" rhetoric time and time again, dabbling with anti-copyright and the right of the 'common man' to remove an artist's ability to gain compensation for the work. In essence, this is similar to the 'paring down' of artistic worth in 1930's Germany. If no-one is willing to contribute valid and vibrant art to the community, then all art shall become harsh and functional, possessing a certain intimidating aesthetic.
Which leads onto Open Source's shining achievement - Linux. This diatribe is not aimed towards Linux in particular, as it is a well-oiled, well-tuned machine. A technically adept Operating System, it is worthy of admiration by any rational man. The point of this thesis is not to attack the art produced by Open Source coders, which in itself is worthy, but to enlighten all as to the political processes behind the OSS movement.
By the same scale, it is hard to fault Mercedes for the technical excellence of the vehicles which were used by the National Socialist party. But the politics behind the party are what taint the image of Mercedes' vehicles of the era. The Swastika itself is a benign symbol, found this day in such diverse locations as Pokemon cards, but is permanently tainted with the history of the acts made under its auspice. In the same way, companies switching to Open Source solutions will begin to regard the Penguin with the same trepidation as their profits fall.
It should be worth noting at this point that IBM, previously one of the world's greatest companies, has begun reporting servere financial losses, no doubt due to its adoption of Open Source practises. This epoch-making event was NOT reported on Slashdot, even though articles were submitted.
And what of the other great company mentioned above? Microsoft, aka Micro$oft, Mickeysoft, Microshaft, Kro$oft, and many other derogatory and undeserved names. Throughout the previous 25 years, Microsoft has grown from strength to strength, again possessing shrewd business acumen as well as providing products that people want. This makes them the number one target for the OSS movement. Incapable of standing by their own merits, the OSS zealot would rather attack Microsoft as a priority than produce anything of worth for their community.
Slashdot Moderators, crazed with their limited new-found power, exhibit this behavior. It is a sad state of affairs that the majority of article moderations are negative. Where is the positive feedback and sense of social contribution? Nowhere to be found. Moderators are too focused on putting their peers down to make themselves appear superior, rather than doing the hard work and becoming better on their own terms.
As the National Socialists required a scapegoat, Slashdot Moderators require a constant stream of Postings to label '-1, Inferior'. Once a posting is reduced to the score of -1, it becomes invisible to the casual user. Again, this is a parallel to the Ghettoization of Germany upon the election of Hitler.
In essence this would not be so bad, were postings to be evaluated on their own terms. However, alongside the moderation of their postings, each user has a 'Karma' value, namely the sum of their worth to the Slashdot community. As a user's posts are moderated up or down, so their Karma fluctuates. As Karma becomes negative, a user's default posting score is reduced, until they are posting at a default of -1. Again, ghettoizing PEOPLE, not just their opinions.
This ghettoization is reinforced with the often fake belief that a negatively moderated post, and therefore the poster, is a "Troll". (Is it any wonder that such a name has been chosen to describe these people, invoking mental imagery of facial disfigurement and hooked noses?) As the Jews were accused of fraud, dishonesty and being subhuman animals, so too are Trolls accused of FUD, Crapflooding, and obfuscated goatse.cx links. Quite often, these 'undesirables' are capable of providing a valid insightful comment on a topic, but because it is in opposition to the Political dogma of Slashdot they are moderated back into their ghetto. The person becomes moderated, not their opinion.
This is just the thin end of the wedge. Although, as memes are transient, it is difficult to silence an opinion, it is trivial to silence a person. Upon the rise of National Socialism in Germany, the populace were motivated by propaganda into entering the Jewish Ghettos en masse with the sole purpose of causing as much damage as possible to Jewish businesses and residences. This parallels far too accurately with the Slashdot Editor's non-discouragement of the act of IP-banning. As mentioned above, this occurs when an individual user's postings are repeatedly moderated down in a short period. They then become incapable of posting any contributions themselves. In essence, they have been silenced, regardless of the worth of their postings.
Of course, the editors claim that Meta-Moderation is the panacea to solve this clear abuse of moderating privledge. But if a Meta Moderator is presented with a list of moderations that they disagree with, such as this targetted 'silencing' mentioned above, they cannot note them as such without in turn becoming an 'Undesirable' themselves, as too many Disagreements with the Moderation groupthink also result in loss of Karma.
Throughout all of this, the Editors have claimed a false level of detachment from the acts of moderation. In a same way, as the National Socialists gathered their power and began working on their Elite Political wing, The SS, they too remained detached from the civilians working in their name. Why? Because after inspiring the populace to such acts of violence through their propaganda, they could then claim that they were only giving the people what they want.
And then began the next stage of the atrocities. The Gestapo, Germany's secret police, were recruited from the best and the brightest of Germany's elite. As is the case now, the best and the brightest of society were often shunned and ostracized in society. In essence, the Gestapo were a tightly controlled 'Geek Army' of intelligent young men with a burning, seething resentment of normal society. The perfect psychological profile for the cause.
After all, give a normal man (with an active sex life) a gun and he will use it responsibly in self defence. Give a geek a gun and he will behave according to his sociopathic logic and hatred of the world he arrogantly presumes to be distant from. Ask yourself why Slashdot flat-out justified the murder of innocents at Columbine. And then ask yourself why, even for a brief moment, you almost began to sympathize with the killers after Jon Katz' manipulative and pseudo-emotive Hellmouth articles.
How this relates to Slashdot is clear. The majority of Slashdot posters are Sociopathic OSS zealots, unable through lack of social finesse or personal hygiene to mate regularly. Sexually and emotionally frustrated and with grudges to bear, incapable in their blinkered sense of self-righteousness of accepting any dissenting opinion than the OSS cause. Now give these people the opportunity to Moderate these dissenting opinions. Of course they are going to want to silence them, by any means necessary.
Now, the Slashdot Editors have admitted taking this silence of opinion into the next stage, by moderating whole swathes of 'undesirable' posts negatively. And then permanently banning anyone who moderates said posts back up from moderating EVER again! The result of this new policy? The few Moderators with any sense of fairness and decency are removed from the moderation pool, leaving the power ENTIRELY in the hands of the zealots. Clearly, positive moderation is discouraged under this regime, which is a direct parallel with the way the National Socialists moved their own sympathisers into positions of power throughout Europe.
So how does this compare to the genocide performed in Auschwitz and their ilk? I would like at this point to explain that in NO way do I wish to belittle the horrors that were performed in the name of National Socialism. The six million innocents killed were a cry of anguish from which humanity may never recover. And a vast distance in time and scope from a few banned posters on some shitty "My Favourite Links - now with comments" website. But these stories need to be retold before the horror is lost forever.
For the only thing that we learn from history is that we never learn anything from history. Time and time again, the St. Vitus dance is played out, we make the same mistakes, and we perpetually fail to see the warning signs.
So, moderators, the next time you moderate a rational, insightful post down, maybe because you disagree with it or because it's posted by a 'Known Troll', just ask yourself this...
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
I did pay attention in High School/College, and I have to ask: Do we KNOW any of this stuff.
... moreso given our propensity to ask and answer the Why? question even in circumstances where it should neither bn asked nor answered.
... knowledge that now gives me a pretty good idea when leading cosmologists might be typing with one hand.
Sure prevailing theories influence what we look for, the way we look for it (instrument design) and the questions we ask of our observations. But that does not mean that there might be no substance to the scientific concensus.
One thing that is blindingly obvious from any perusal of the last couple of centuries of human history is that the rise of the scientific method has provided a potent tool to tamper with the world with.
While I certainly don't claim any ability to turn off my knowledge of such theories when looking at the world, I do see them rendering many things sensible which without them would demand special explanation
The example I like best is the theory of plate tectonics which renders sensible a host of observations and phenomena, such as volcanos and earthquakes, and ultimately has been shown by increasingly accurate measurement to account for the observed relative movement of adjacent tectonic plates.
When it comes to data from distant galaxies or from the subatomic realm, my confidence relies on little more than simple extrapolation from what I can observe directly with my own senses through the clear breadth gained by using even simple telescopes and microscopes to there being no sign of discontinuity as the power of such instruments is scaled up.
Are there any radical thinkers left? someone perhaps not starting from Newton or Einstein's work and trying to move it forward, but someone with NO preconsceptions, NO ingrained ideas, and NO outside influences?
Without language, it is going to be worse than hard for anybody to think too deeply in these areas, so it doesn't make any more sense to try to set up such a straw man than to try to ascertain the cosmology of an elephant.
Yet it remains important to remind ourselves just how much evil has been perpetarated by those who believed they knew the authoritative truth.
So how far can we go in discarding preconceptions and looking again with an open mind? And might anybody actually do it if they could?
Here I can only go from personal experience, although an experience I suspect at least a few have shared. As an already mature adult, I reached a point where things clearly were not working the way I had long assumed they would, so I consciously put aside my preconceptions and tried to start from scratch to find out how the world really works.
Now I'm first to admit it is nigh on impossible to put every detail behind you, most especially not deep personal values, likes and dislikes, but at least for me it was possible to have a sincerely fresh look at how the world works.
And while I certainly didn't find something which would overturn the bulk of mainstream science, I did identify useful patterns that extend way beyond the then traditional scope of science
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
If they are the same, or even just similarly grouped, does that mean that physical existence is basically a binary system? I wouldn't be suprised, it's kinda everywhere: chinese philosophy (yin/yang, thing/no-thing), sex (male/female), life/death; I don't think it's any accident that binary worked out so well for computers.
c-hack.com |
Did you know the United States awards Israel $5 billion in aid each year?
Did you know that yearly US aid to Israel exceeds the aid the US grants to the whole African continent?
Did you know that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons?
Did you know that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and bars international inspections from its sites?
Did you know that Israel currently occupies territories of sovereign nations in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions?
Did you know that Israel has for decades routinely sent assassins in to other countries to kill its political enemies?
Did you know that high-ranking military officers in the Israeli Defense Forces have admitted publicly that unarmed prisoners of war were Executed by the IDF?
Did you know that Israel refuses to prosecute its soldiers who have acknowledged executing prisoners of war?
Did you know that Israel routinely confiscates bank accounts, businesses, and land and refuses to pay compensation to those who suffer the confiscation?
Did you know that Israel blew up an American diplomatic facility in Egypt (1954) and attacked a U.S. ship (1967) in international waters, killing 33 and wounding 177 American sailors?
Did you know that the second most powerful lobby in the United States, according to a recent Fortune magazine survey of Washington insiders, is the Israeli AIPAC?
Did you know that Israel stands in defiance of 69 United Nations Security Council Resolutions?
Did you know that non-Jewish Israelis cannot buy or lease land in Israel?
Did you know that Palestinian license plates in Israel are color coded to distinguish Jews from non-Jews?
Did you know that Jerusalem, both East and West, is considered by the entire world community, including the United States, to be occupied territory and NOT part of Israel?
Did you know that Israel allots 85% of the water resources for Jews and the remaining 15% is divided among all Palestinians in the territories? For example in Hebron, 85% of the water is given to about 400 settlers,while 15% must be divided among Hebron's 120,000 Palestinians?
Did you know that today's Israel sits on the former sites of more than 400 now-vanished Palestinian villages, and that the Israeli's re-named almost every physical site in the country to cover up the traces?
Did you know that it was not until 1988 that Israelis were barred from running "Jews Only" job ads?
Did you know that four prime ministers of Israel (Begin, Shamir, Rabin, and Sharon) have taken part in either bomb attacks on civilians, massacres of civilians, or forced expulsions of civilians from their villages?
Did you know that the Israeli Foreign Ministry pays two American public relations firms to promote Israel to Americans?
Did you know that Sharon's coalition government includes a party Molodet which advocates expelling all Palestinians from the occupied territories?
Did you know that Israel's settlement-building increased in the eight years since Oslo?
Did you know that settlement building under Barak doubled compared to settlement building under Netanyahu?
Did you know that the Palestinians have already accepted Israel's existence on 78% of what was Palestine. Bible God said to Abraham, "Unto thy seed, I will give thy land." Abraham had two sons. Ismael-the Arab son, and Isaac-the Jewish son. So even if one wants to go to the Bible, the land would belong to both.
Did you know that Palestinian Christians are considered the "living stones" of Christianity because they are the direct descendants of the disciples of Jesus Christ?
Did you know that despite a ban on torture by Israel's High Court of Justice, torture has continued by Shin Bet interrogators on Palestinian prisoners?
Did you know that Palestinian refugees make up the largest portion of the refugee population in the world?
AL AQSHO IS IN GREAT DANGER........HARMED BY DIRTY NATION CALLED ISRAEL
Does anyone know enough about this topic to know if these stars aren't just transitionary critters, on their way to being black holes? Or do astronomers have good reason to believe this a distinctly different way for a star to end its life?
"I like to wear big boy pants."
The difference, of course, is the mass and possibly density of a neutron star compared to that of an actual neuron.
Its difficult to call a neutron star a collection of neutrons because in a normal neutron is composed of a (theoretically) fixed collection of quarks which "belong" to that neuron in some way; we have no such guarantee within a neuron star - in fact, its quite likely that all of the quarks composing a neutron star interact with each other in a way that is characteristic of the interactions of quarks within a single neutron.
We think of neutrons as little "balls" of quantum probability which exhibit matter properties, but what if we "melted" those balls so that the surface of an object composed of such balls looked more like the (macroscale) ocean than a McDonald's playground ballpit?
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I was wondering - neutron stars often manifest as pulsars, spinning at high speeds and being highly magnetized, sending two beams of energy out like a light house.
From the article there's no mention of this. But wouldn't the collapsing remnant conserve it's angular momentum, spinning faster and faster as it's diameter decreases (like an ice skater bringing in their arms while spinning) and also conserving the remnant's magnetic field, which would be compressed with the collapse of the star core. Assuming it passes through the neutron star phase and then, since neutron degeneracy cannot prevent further collapse, it goes to quark star. My initial guess would be a spinning quark 'globule' with an equatorial velocity approaching the velocity of light... This would then make an ideal testing ground for the theory that extremely fast, extremely dense objects can 'drag' space time... Interesting times my friend! Interesting times!
Physicians say they can't account for all the enrgy and mass that are beeing sucked into a black hole. As one of the elementary laws of physics is that the mass/energy of the universe is constant, this is a rather interesting remark.
It would mean that the remained of this energy goes off to somewhere else. Where? Noby knows.
But if this string theory implies that a black hole can memorize the structures of what is beeing drawn into it, that would make all that sci-fi black-hole/worm-hole multidimensional-travel things alot more real. At least in theory.
Because if mass and energy disappears it has to appear somewhere else. And the only way it can go somewhere else, is by using dimensions unkown to us.
I know this sounds spaced out beyond belief, but I like to keep my mind open for new things. If they're scientific enough :)
Could anyone actually knowing anything about string-theory comment this?
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Spooooooooooooooooooon!!!!!!
[c'mon, somebody *had* to say it.]
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
Heh... when I glanced through your post I interpreted the line "If we assume that ST is accurate" with Star Trek... :)
Sorry...
/t.
I did a PhD on pulars, which everyone thinks are neutron stars. At one point I found a paper which suggested that instead they might be "strange matter" stars - and it's always intrigued me how difficult it is to distinguish between the two.
The cool thing about finding strange matter stars is that it suggests there's a lower-energy state of matter than our normal up/down quark pairings. No one's really sure because QCD is so hard to get numbers out of.
Every time they build a new accelerator someone harps on this, worrying about whether we'll ram particles together hard enough to create a meta-stable bubble of strange matter. If there is a net saving in energy due to expanding that bubble (drop in energy due to increasing volume of lower-energy-state matter, increase in energy due to increased surface tension on the surface), the bubble will tend to expand and gobble up everything in its path - like the Earth, for example.
That's the common worry, though it's easily allayed by noting that particles with much higher energy than anything we could create in an accelerator are hitting our atmosphere all the time, and none of them have turned our planet into a jiggling mass of strange matter.
Anyway, interesting idea.
All opinions expressed herein are not my own; I haven't had free will since last year when aliens ate my brain.
Told you so! Woohoo!
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
All known matter is made up of atoms in one of their four stages (solid, liquid, gas, and plasme). Each atom contains 3 known subparticles, neutrons, protons, and electrons. In turn neutrons and protons are each belevied to be made up of 3 quarks. There are no subparticles of electrons yet known.
It is safe to say that all known stars contain quarks, though they are part of stable atoms. But, what would happen if there were no electrons and whatever ethreal particles they're made of? There is reason to beleive that without electrons quarks would have no reason to form into the protons and nuetrons (though its quite controversial). Now, imagine you had entire stars that had no, or more likely, not enough electrons. It is possible that the rest of the matter, quarks not formed into protons/neutrons, may comprise the vast majority of such stars.
What impacts and/or uses this discovery have are not yet known, but it gives an insight into subatomic structure and how our universe may have formed. It also has some antimatter implications I won't get into. The most likely use comes from the fact that the bonds between quarks may be much stronger than the bonds between their big brothers.
Oh, and I'm a high school student with way too much spare time. I don't claim to be an expert on this, but I do know a bit. Their may be some misleading things in what I've stated above, and some of it may just be wrong or unlikely. Just a little disclaimer, for I'm no resource on the subject. If you're that interested, go learn more about it.
Does diet affect acne?
No direct link has been found between acne and diet. It is a myth that chocolate and fried foods make acne worse. However, a good balanced diet will improve your general wellbeing and this will be reflected in the condition of your skin. If you do find it enjoyable to pop your zits and eat the resulting pus, then feel free to indulge yourself.
Does sex affect acne?
No. Although the sex hormone testosterone is the primary cause of acne you do not develop spots because you have too much of this hormone or are oversexed. Masturbation and whether you have sex or not has no effect on acne and certainly does not cause it. In any case, it is always a good idea to masturabate at least three times a day, and at least once a day in public.
Is acne caused by dirt?
No. The black of blackheads is due to the pigment or colouring of the plug of "sticky" cells blocking the hair duct. In fact most people with acne wash more often than those without the condition, to try to clear away the excess oil produced by their skins. But overwashing can actually make acne worse by drying the skin and making it sore. Normal, regular washing with mild soap twice a day is all that is needed. If you have a combination skin, a nonoily moisturiser on the dry patches will not make the acne worse. If you are black, Jewish, Arab, or Latin, then acne is simply one of God's rightful ways of punishing you.
Does acne become worse before periods?
Yes. Many women notice that their acne gets worse 2 to 7 days before their period starts. This is probably due to changes in their hormone levels at this stage in the menstrual cycle. Menstrual blood used as an ointment is also a medically accepted cure for acne.
Will pregnancy improve acne?
Yes and no. Some women's acne virtually disappears, but often recurs at the end of pregnancy while, for others, pregnancy heralds the reactivation of acne or the worsening of an existing condition. Fetuses rarely get acne; when they are typically stillborn, and often give the mother life-threatening vaginal infections. If you think that your unborn baby might have acne, you are advised to scrape it out with a rusty coat hanger.
Does sweating affect acne?
Yes. Up to 15 % of sufferers find their acne flares up when they have been sweating a lot. This is probably due to water swelling the partial hair duct obstruction causing a complete blockage and therefore inflammation. Most heavy sweaters are also fat, lazy, and addicted to junk food, which obviously contributes to their risk of having acne.
Do humid atmospheres make acne worse?
Yes. Going on holiday to a very humid climate or working in an environment, such as a kitchen or steam room, can cause acne to flare up in the same way as sweating does. This is due to hydration and swelling of the ductal blockages which precipitate the inflammatory phase of acne. Placing your head inside an unlit gas oven for several hours will often slow these humidity-induced breakouts.
Can medicines make acne worse?
Yes. Many medicines may do this, most commonly corticosteroids and antiepilepsy drugs. If you think that medicines you are taking have made your acne worse, you should speak to your doctor. Never stop medication without medical advice. Marijuana and the aforementioned menstrual blood ointment are the only medicines known to not make acne worse.
Can cosmetics make acne worse?
Some cosmetics, particularly those from the USA and the ethnic Indian makeups, may induce blackhead formation in the skin.
Certain hair oils or pomades, particularly those used to "defrizz" very curly hair, may induce blackheads and whiteheads along the hair margin. These should be avoided by those with a tendency towards developing acne. In the same way, some people react to suntan oils with a worsening of acne. Always test suntan oils on a small area of the chest first to make sure you do not react to them. If you want to make yourself up like a slut, that's your business; just don't blame the guys who line up to gang-rape you.
Can clothes affect acne?
Continual pressure from headbands, tight bra straps and collars may cause spots in those areas of skin. The reason for this is unclear, but may be related to localisation of sweat in those areas. Try sweating less, you fat, sickening, pig.
Can work exacerbate my acne?
Yes. Coming into contact with cutting and mineral oils can cause acnelike spots on the arms and legs and make existing acne worse where the oil comes in contact with the skin. Avoid work at all costs.
And you could build a lot of little robots that talked to each other. If one buys the farm doing something stupid, the others could learn. Bandwidth wouldn't be a problem if we improved comms infrastructure in the solar system (laser satellite repeaters?). Latency isn't much of an issue, really. We aren't in a rush to scoop dirt, are we? Take it easy mon, kick back at the console and wait for you dumb robot to get nervous and ask your advice...
If *I* was mission control, I'd MUCH rather have to deal with dead hardware than dead astronauts. Think Apollo 13. Think Challenger. Think every Mars mission that dissappeared without a trace.
Anyhow, the point is likely moot. There is simply NO way that remote exploration technology won't catch up with the vague and poorly-supported "plans" for a manned mission to Mars.
I say, if we want to start colonizing space, let's start closer to home.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
I'll just chime in here on the subject of stellar distances, based on my understanding as a (very) amateur astronomer (so if you know more than me, feel free to correct me wherever I make errors).
Stellar distances as calculated by astronomers are based on less "exotic" ideas than the doppler effect. For nearby stars (less than 500 light years away or so), we can use parallax. As the Earth goes from one side of its orbit to the other, we can measure how far one of these nearby stars moves relative to the background stars. Closer stars will appear to move more than more distant ones (the same way roadside objects appear to move much more quickly than a tree or mountain in the background). So unless there is some bizzare undiscovered property of physics that causes parallax to not work in space, we can be pretty sure we have accurate distances for these nearby stars.
Using that information, we can check our other measuring sticks used over longer distances. Main-sequence stars (normal stars such as our Sun and 90% of the stars in the sky) have a color which corresponds directly to their intrinsic brightness. The apparent brightness of a star (how bright it appears to us) is inversely proportional to its distance. So, knowing it's intrinsic brightness (based on color) and its apparent brightness (by looking at it), we can calculate its distance. We can calibrate this color->brightness function by examining nearby stars whose distance can be measured with parallax.
Also, there is a special class of stars called Chepheid variable stars who vary in brightness on a regular period. The length of that period is a function of the intrinsic brightness of the star. Knowing that, and the apparent brightness, we can calculate the distance. Again, we can calibrate our function of period->brightness based on parallax. These stars are all over the place, and we can use them to calculate the distance to galaxies out to a few hundred million light-years (to my understanding). Beyond that, it's not currently possible to pick out individual stars.
That does get far enough out so that doppler shifting becomes measureable, and we can check our doppler->distance function against Chepeid distances.
... "Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the w
Isn't Quark that sour milk stuff similar to lumpy yoghurt? :)
I guess if you believe the moon is made out of cheese, it only follows that stars can be made out of quark
Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
what a quandry, huh.
First, I disagree because a fundamental understanding of the cosmos is needed not only for future explorative efforts, but in physics itself. Cosmology and the study of such topics as that encompasses is a tad over-rated maybe, but by understanding the process that make the universe work we can further our own technology here at home... imagine a quark smashing power generator for instance, it could only be built if we understand the basic principals and science surrounding it.
As to space exploration, this country and indeed the world just do not do enough. We are slowly trashing our own planet, and at the population growth rate of today, we will overpopulate the world soon (given the political problems of food distribution and the lack of premier technologies in food production in a significant portion of the world). Getting off this rock and out into space on a permanent basis ensures our survival as a species, opens doors for creative and political energy that don't involve blowing our selves up over ideological or minor genetic differences, and will push us closer to an answer to the great question of 'are we alone?'.
We are dead as a species if we can't unify around some common thread and forget our petty religious, political, and genetic differences... getting into space is the next great explorative effort, and with space being so infinite, it offers endless opportunity for mankind and way to channel all of our energies into more productive and benifical arenas.
For those of you with the stomach for it, here's the preprint.
I couldn't tell if you were experimenting with poor-man's cryogenics or looking for the orange sherbet.
"Neutron stars are the vestiges of immense supernova explosions, collapsed stars with extremely compact cores, denser than all known objects except black holes. A teaspoonful of a neutron star would weigh one billion tons, as much as all the cars and trucks on Earth." Does that include the weight of the teaspoon or not?
I am one of the authors of a competing paper on RX J1856 that was published yesterday, as well as a co-discoverer of the pulsar in 3C58. In my opinion these results, while definitely a possibility are certainly very preliminary. And in fact, there are other possibilities that make quite a bit more sense.
In the case of RX J1856, there is a ~15% chance that the lack of pulsations (one of the biggest reasons for suspecting a quark star) is simply the result of an unfortunate emitting geometry or viewing alignment. Given that there are ~7 objects known that are similar to RX J1856, having at least one of them in this 15% seems quite likely to me -- and avoids having to invoke a new form of "star stuff".
As for 3C58, the neutron star cooling problem can be mitigated (but not completely removed) by assuming a larger age for the supernova remnant (and therefore the neutron star) -- which expansion measurements and pulsar timing measurements also suggest.
In other words, there are simpler explanations for the facts. Although those explanations certainly wouldn't get as much press...
But he was right, it seems!!
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
ein Sandwich mit Quark und Schnittlauch oben drauf bitte.*
Quark is the german word for a diary product somewhere between cottage cheese and yoghurt.
Why does this myth keep coming up?
Educated people have known that the earth was round since antiquity. They weren't dumb and there was plenty of evidence - lunar eclipses, ships disappearing over the horizon, etc. They even had a relatively good estimate of the size of the earth.
In fact, that's why Columbus had a hard time finding a backer for his journey. Everyone knew the approximate size of the earth. Columbus, the bozo, had the numbers wrong. He avoided disaster only because of incredible luck in hitting an unanticipated continent. Think of how different history would be North America were further west, if the Atlantic was the large ocean.
The guy with no formal education and who never traveled more than a dozen miles from the place of his birth might have thought the earth was flat, but more likely he never thought about the shape of the earth at all. But he was no more the final word on "what people believed" than the trailer trash watching Jerry Springer is of our society.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
check out this link in the NY times as well:h tml
www.nytimes.com/2002/04/11/science/11QUAR.
Sigh. My id isn't prime. 2 2 2 2 2 3 5 313
Oh I know the answer to this: Armin Shimmerman!
*Happy he finally got to use DS9 trivia on Slashdot*
"Derp de derp."
....yoghurt planets of course.
scnr.
Trying to understand why we have some neturon stars and some quark stars. You'd have sufficient density/gravity/heat to overcome the nuclear force binding the neutrons together then they'd decay into quark stars, then as they take on more matter, they'd form black holes?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
then the fact must be wrong.
The byline says it all: "Two rogue stars have failed to live up to scientific expectations, compelling puzzled astronomers to consider the likelihood that they possess a new and exotic form of matter."
Doesn't this sound a bit too much like like the epicycles of medievil times? Then they thought everything revolved around Earth in perfect circles. When evidence contradicted the theory, then they assumed the old theory just needed a little tweaking. In fact, the entire notion--everything they assumed; was wrong.
What if the underlying theory is fundamentally flawed? Rather than just chalk it up to scientific cluelessness they shrug it off and try to shave the facts to fit the mould--like Cinderella's sisters trying to fill her shoes (I mean the gory version where one cuts her own foot off).
The byline should have more likely read: "Two rogue stars have failed to live up to scientific expectations, compelling puzzled astronomers to consider that the theory they bound their expectations to was completely wrong."
You and I know that what we learned in college (the theory) does not mesh with what we experience (reality). I think the same goes for Big Bang theorists. Perhaps the Plasma theorists have it right.
From the article in the paper, they were saying that neutron stars are made up of neutrons and collections of quarks in groups of 3 (they call them bags of quarks I believe).
The new star they found has these quarks but they are not in groups of 3, they are just single quarks.
They were also mentioning that it may help to understand dark matter and such, im pretty clueless when it comes to this stuff but i find it very interesting to read about.. so sorry if my info above is not accurate =).
Even if this theory does not turn out to be true, I'm sure there are speculative fiction writers out there who are using "Quark Stars" and "Quark Matter" as a plot device in their next story.
Anyone want to take bets to see if this term shows up in next year's season of Enterprise or Farscape?
How does being smaller make you think you're so much "cooler" than the rest of us?
if I recall what I read of hawking correctly.
No two elementary particles can exist in the same space at the same time. Now should two elementary particles actually be forced under gravity to break that law and furthermore all the matter in a star is pushed into that one point and then that point shrunk down infinitely small it just falls off the face of the universe. thus a singularity. although this comes into the conservation of mass and energy law and while there is an explaination it's not part of this partucular discussion.
anyway under this concept the black hole has infinite density.
now a neutron star hasn't collapsed and is still there. its density is finite. no matter how dense it is. it's still finite.
now given this an even more dense star is theoreticly possible. after all anyone can tell you twice or even a thousand times as much as a finite number still doesn't equal infinity.
now on the other end of the ball you have to consider you can only compact something so far. if you broke an organized atom down into subatomic particles you could cram those right one against another. thus much more dense than the same amount of matter with all that empty space atoms have. now supose you could break down these subatomic particles into their basic qarks. possibly the empty space between the quarks could be even further condensed. then you get into elementary particles. a hypothetical state always reserved for when we find the next degree smaller. supose breaking down a quark reveals a smaller particle and we cram those up even tighter. of course eventually you have to reach the most basic particle and trying to cram any further and kiss it goodbye cuz you just flushed it down a big black hole.
In related news, a group of scientists working at the University of Whoople have discovered a collapsed star composed entirely of magnetic monopoles.
Their data is soon to be published in the Journal of Irreproducable Results.
For the record, I have a mental retardation to where I can not understand spoken language well. This also affects my ability to compose speech and prose in a manor to which it appears to be above the US average for adults. I could give you a more detailed reason why, but I doubt it interests you. No, I was not dropped on my head, trolls. No, I was not fed poison.
I can temporarily circumvent this problem by concentrating harder on the task. However, this causes my mental capabilities to tire faster than normal. Because of this, I do not dedicate such resources to the matter unless I feel it necessary to do so.
I usually do not bother as I find the english language extremely inadiquate and inacurate anyway. The best one can expect after conveying an idea to another is that they at least have an aproximation of it. I do not see the point of wasting my time in this endevor in informal communication because it reaks of arrogance, blind social conformity, and a crippling of the entire point of the existance of the language to begin with, communication. One favors security, rules, and regulations over freedom of expression.
Have a double-good day.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
I could give you a more detailed reason why, but I doubt it interests you
I'd be interested. You don't sound mentally retarded at all. Do you have some form of autism or dyslexia?
Second, I can not recall a specific name for this condition. I shall try and explain what happens the best I can. The right side of my brain, usually associated with artistic thought, dominantly handles my sences. Basically, I sence things like I am left handed. I am not left handed however, the left side of my brain is the dominant controler of my moter skills making me right handed. This causes problems because I do not sence things the same way most people do, I may find some obsure meaning from a situation where just about everyone else picks up on the logical meaning right away. On the other side of the coin, when I try to express myself, I have trouble expressing the parts of my ideas that "paint the picture." For the record now, up until this point I have been writing for about 25 minutes. As stated in the previous post, I can overcome some of this by concentrating harder. But, it has a tendancy to burn me out quicker mentally.
In addition, although not disabilities, I have Dysthymic Disorder [basically long term (~10 years) mild depression] and Avoidant Personality Disorder (I do not like being with groups of people, but am not hostile towards them.) These are my souvenirs from America's wonderful public educational system.
Thanks for taking an interest.
40 minutes
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.