Slashdot Mirror
NASA Sending Probe to Saturn
Plissken writes "Nasa along with the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency have launched a towards Saturn in hopes of obtaining vital data to help understand the mysterious, vast region. The Cassini-Huygens mission is composed of two elements: The Cassini orbiter that will orbit Saturn and it's moons for four years, and the Huygens probe will dive into the depths of Titan and land on it's surface. If all goes well, more than 200 scientists worldwide will study the data collected."
FP!!
send a probe to uranus?
Yeeeehhhaaaa !!!!!!
I guess we'll see!
< )
( \
X
8====D
Uhh.. Didn't they launch Cassini a *ling* while ago?
What's the news value of this?
How long has this mission been running for .. is slashdot really stuck in a timewarp?
Is sending a 'probe' to Uranus.
People that can think about Stellar IP, and assign an IP to the Moon, don't have to be afraid of the /. effect...
They just turn their DNS in such a way that your packets have to go to Saturn, Jupiter, Webhop in a small private Europa-Io-X firewall and then allow you access to 0.0.0.1:0.0.0.255 (Earth)
Hopefully, your lag will only be a couple centuries.
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
How can any of you "Anonymous Cowards" claim a FP? Seems like kind of an empty victory to me.
someone tell me the data is public domain... anyone?
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
OMFG!!! Click here to was hyou eyeballs WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
I knew /. liked to post old stuff, but its starting to get out of hand
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It'
Nasa along with the European Space Agency
;)
ESA Engineer: We need to calibrate the spinoff vector 3 micrometers forward.
NASA Engineer: Micrometers?
ESA Engineer: Yes, metric units.
NASA Engineer: Metric?
A bit over the top perhaps, but it's not like it hasn't happened before
.: Max Romantschuk
I don't see why we're so interested in Titan. The big deal about Titan is it might have life on it. But the fact is, we live in a vast universe and the possibility that we are the only life is very slim. It's also a particularly arrogant and foolish belief. But if we found life on Titan, it would likely be in the very early stages and it wouldn't be particularly interesting. So I don't see why we're making a huge fuss over it.
This raises another question. We might be looking for life in all the wrong places. We assume that all life in the universe is created in our image. We expect that chemically, all other life will be similar to ours. When we go hunting for life on other planets and other moons, our search is limited to this kind of life. This is a rather narrow view of things, and who knows what we're missing? For all we know, there could be life in the volcanoes of Venus. It could be Silicon based, and it'd thrive in an environment rich in Sulfur compounds such as Sulfuric acid and Hydrogen sulfide.
Maybe we're looking in all the wrong places and for all the wrong things. And that's why it's hard for me to get excited about missions like this.
I suppose the submitter wanted both karma and attention whoring. Soon we'll see the following story:
New transportation system invented.
Megawhore writes: I seems that researchers have invented a revolutionary new transportation system called wheel which enables people to get around loads without carrying them....
I think this will enable us to transport our MP3 server's around.
It launched in October 2002 and won't arrive until mid-2004. So, what's the news?
This is supposed to be new news??? This is like 7 years old! Cassini has been mentioned on slashdot numerous times, and the fact that Cassini-Huygens is en route to Saturn is pretty common knowledge... why suddenly make a story about it now, as if NASA only just launched this beast...
Infact there was alot of Cassini news on slashdot (and other sites) when Cassini did its Jupiter flyby, alowing us to examine and study jupiter from 2 vantage points... Cassini on its flyby, and Galileo in orbit.
Anyway. This'll be fantastic news once Cassini does approach Saturn, and inserts itself into orbit!
D.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Cassini was launched 15th Oct 1997, and will insert into orbit around Saturn 1st July 2004.
The spacecraft is in good health and is undergoing routine checkouts of the systems and is downlinking pictues of Saturn.
Not exactly front page news....
NASA launched two probes to the outer solar system in the late 1970's: Voyager and Voyager 2. Slashdot is just reporting this amazing story today...
There was a sudden mass extinction of dinosaurs. More on this as it develops.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- They were flirting with danger, tempting fate. How, Wild players wondered, were they going to pull themselves out of another mess when history said it couldn't be done?
Turns out, they were simply setting the stage for the crowning achievement in a season that began with modest expectations and morphed into a charmed life of unexpected rewards.
Given a chance to make history, hockey's Houdini made another improbable escape, overcoming a two-goal deficit to defeat the Vancouver Canucks 4-2 in Game 7 at GM Place and advance to the Western Conference finals.
Richfield native Darby Hendrickson scored the game-winner on a slapshot with five minutes, 12 seconds remaining in regulation to etch the Wild's name in the record book.
The Wild became the first team to overcome two 3-1 series deficits in the same postseason. Game 1 against the Anaheim Mighty Ducks will be Saturday at Xcel Energy Center.
Can you believe it?
I saw a turtle.
Well it seems that CowboyNeal has just awoken from a five year coma. The Cassini-Huygens satellite is currently nearing the end of its seven-year voyage to Saturn! It was launched on way back in October 1997 and will arrive in July 2004. In December 2004 the Huygens probe will be ejected from the orbiter and will descend into Titan's cloudy atmosphere. For those that care, there is a huge archive of Cassini Jupiter data availible. Sadly, there are few (if any) Jupiter publications as it seems a few NASA engineers & scientists are still mucking around with the calibration.
How long will it take Slashdot to post a dupe of this "story"?
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
"..hats are on heads and ice-creams are in cornets." (Brian Kant, 1975)
Slow news day, huh?
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
I love you.
Please stand on my penis.
Man, I've been watching to much southpark. Every time I hear the word "probe" I get an image in my head of Cartman "I know it was just a dream" .....
I'm waiting for NASA to probe my anus, or atleast Uranus
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
...... have launched a towards ....
So now Slashdot wan'ts us to work out what the story is about? What's next - a totally blank story to comment on?
"Nasa along with the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency have launched a towards Saturn
A car ?, a piece of fruit ?, a major new military offensive ?. Please don't tell me it's just a boring old probe.
* Rob Malda celebrates the launch by standing on his head, burps Chips&Dips, while thinking "Build http:///.com and I will create a new effect".
* Netscape notices Microsft stealing da biz.
* Linux is broken
* Windows markets a patch fix for Windows 95....It's called Windows 97.
* It's called a US Robotics Palm Pilot.....Fingers are extra.
* The USB research team gets disappeared by the RS-232 research team.
* I had money in my pocket.
* The internet was kEWl, not WORK.
"Nasa along with the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency have launched a towards Saturn"
Goddamn. They're spending our letters like they grow on trees. Sure, today they're just launching 'a', but tomorrow it'll be 'x', and then 't'. I want to know when they're planning on launching'u' and 'i' in to space...
Kevin Fox
I have a honeycombe weaves just over me, what can I do ! I am afraaaaaaaaaaaaaaid !
ok, so there's the european spaceagency, and then we have the italian spaceagency... what excactly are those guys up to? Interstellar pizzadelivery? Pan solar system opera transmissions?
Japan just launched a space probe for a sample return mission from an asteroid. Here is a home page for the mission (but rather outdated). Apparently, it also uses electric propulsion.
They launched A into orbit? I know 'starbucks' was cack compared to their other stuff, but...
So far, all we have seen of Titan is the Orange clouds circling the planet. The Huygens probe will dive through Titan's atmosphere and reveal what lies below the clouds.
My boyfriend just broke up with me and I need to get my ass probed on a regular basis.
in fact, i'm just reading it right now... it's a novel from 1997 that is based on the assumption that Huygens, when it descends to Titan, will actually find life based not on carbohydrogens but on ammonia and other stuff.
talk about a visionary novel: it opens with a scene aboard space shuttle Columbia, and during the first fifty pages of the book, Columbia gets destroyed in an accident during reentry in the earths atmosphere. Furthermore, Baxter mentions one contemporary dictator, and guess who it is: Saddam Hussein! Even more, he predicts a victory for a Republican president in the presidential elections, and one of the first things this president does in reinstate the Strategic Defense Initiative (AKA Star Wars)... Sounds familiar?
- 1. Floppy The Robot (2 parts unobtainium)
- 2. Crusty The Clown (1 part cheeseium)
Film at 11You are not allowed to love my penis bird! Find your own penis-sitting-object!
Waggly cocks.
Almost from the start, sex and UFOs were inseparable bedfellows. The adventure of 23-year-old Antonio Villas Boas on 16 October 1957 in Brazil is probably the most famous case of interstellar intercourse.
Antonio was ploughing a field on the family farm when the engine of his tractor cut out; at the same time, an object with purple lights descended from the sky. Humanoids in spacesuits emerged from the object and took him into their craft, subjecting him to what seemed like a medical examination. They stripped him, spread a strange liquid over him and took a sample of his blood. He was left alone in a room for what seemed a long time, until a beautiful, fair-haired woman arrived.
She was naked and Antonio was instantly attracted to her. Without speaking or kissing, they had sex, during which she growled like a dog. Despite his strange circumstances or perhaps because the alien liquid had Viagra-like properties Antonio was soon ready for a second helping. Interviewed later, he said: "Before leaving she turned to me, pointed to her belly, and smilingly pointed to the sky."
Before letting him go, his captors gave Antonio a guided tour of the spaceship. Antonio went on to become a successful lawyer and still stood by his story over 30 years later.
Equally lurid stories of sexual liaisons with UFO occupants came from the world-famous contactees of the 1950s. Howard Menger, for one, had regular meetings with Marla, a beautiful blonde from space who claimed to be 500 years old. She projected "warmth, love and physical attraction," which he found irresistible. Menger divorced his wife to marry Marla (aka Connie Weber).
From July 1952, Truman Bethurum had many meetings with Aura Rhanes, the captain of a flying saucer, whom he found to be "tops in shapeliness and beauty". Bethurum's wife wasn't so impressed with this "queen of women" and cited Rhanes in her divorce petition. From the late Forties to the early Sixties, female contactees in contrast to today's female abductees are few and far between. This is more than made up for by the astonishing story of Elizabeth Klarer, who in 1956 fell in love with Akon, a scientist who took her to his home planet, Meton. There, he seduced her, saying: "Only a few are chosen for breeding purposes from beyond this solar system to infuse new blood into our ancient race."
This smooth talk worked; "I surrendered in ecstacy to the magic of his lovemaking," she wrote later. Klarer said their "magnetic union" produced a perfect and highly intelligent son named Ayling. She was sent back to South Africa alone and died in 1994; as far as we know her starman and son live on somewhere beyond Alpha Centauri. Rather ordinary tales of 'contact' are thus transformed into heroic fantasies of youthful virility. Antonio Villas Boas claimed to have done what any healthy young man would have done in the same situation; he and Elizabeth Klarer delivered the goods, helping to save an alien race from extinction.
Scientific ufologists, more interested in 'hard' evidence (like radar traces, photographs and forensic samples) condemn this 'wet' material as too subjective, relegating claims of sexual assault and abduction to the fields of psychology and folklore (which they likewise distrust). The early contactee literature provides a rich variety of such stories and, whatever their validity, it is a pity they have been largely neglected or ridiculed.
When ufologist John Keel visited college communities in Northeast America during the mid-1960s, several young women told him they had been raped by aliens, and young men confessed that aliens had extracted their semen.
By the 1970s, the idea of hybrid 'space babies' was more widely known but taken seriously only by UFO cultists who, said Keel, feared, that "the flying saucer fiends are engaged in a massive biological experiment creating a hybrid race which will eventually take over the Earth." A decade later, these notions were part of mainstream ufology. Serious researchers some of them academics, like John E. Mack and David Jacobs openly d
NASA Sending Probe to Saturn, vell it is at least not uranus :)
The written word is the lifeblood of the Internet and nowhere is this blood thicker than on the many erotic slash fiction sites. However, these websites are so numerous that the average erotic fan fiction author's readership is limited to himself and one other guy who keeps sending him creepy e-mails about wearing a Knuckles costume with a genital sheath. Don't get lost in the shuffle! You slave over your 25 chapter epic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Beverly Hills 90210 crossover and it deserves to be read by thousands of people almost as scary as you are. We here at Something Awful support the efforts of these highly creative people who are in no way degenerate obsessive freaks worthy of derision at best and mandatory execution at worst. To lend them a helping hand we have put our knowledge of how computers, technology, and the ancient Sumerian language can get the most mileage for your Pikachu Bukkake story.
Carefully Plan Your Story - A world of creativity and intellectual discourse awaits you!
If you read a lot of "Due South" gay fan fiction, like I tend to, then you know that most fan fiction writers are prone to poorly planning out their masterpieces ahead of time. They'll ramble on describing characters that we've all seen on TV a hundred times, spending paragraphs on the oil greasing up their chiseled abs, that by the time it gets to the hardcore rape sequence most people have already closed their browser window. The worst is when this sort of thing goes on and on for twenty or thirty chapters of buildup and coyness.
PRO TIP: No matter how good of a writer you think you are, you are not a better writer than the original script writers for "The Gummi Bears" cartoon. People are reading your story because they want to jerk off to Spock having sex with Captain Janeway, not because they wondered where they would go on their first date.
So you're sitting down with your Word window open and you've got your taped episodes of the Zelda cartoon playing while you stare wistfully at your poster of Megaman. There is the inspiration you need right there. Inspiration can be found all around you, especially when you surround yourself with the stupid cartoons and TV shows you obsess over. So the main characters are Link, Megaman, and Zelda, now you need to structure your story ahead of time. Some of the greatest novels were written stream of consciousness, but describing Link fucking Megaman in a bathroom of the top of your head is not advisable. You want this story to run like a Swiss clock, so begin outlining your plot. Let's go ahead and do that with what I just described.
Great, that's a framework we can hang a nice meaty story on! I mentioned being concise is important but you don't want to be too concise, you need to draw out the action that's the most vital to your story. The action that is the most important is of course the hot sex between fictional characters, which should span anywhere from ten pages per scene to an entire chapter per scene.
The Do's and Don'ts of Fan Fiction Sex - (Case study) "Cookin' in the Boy's Room".
The most important rule of writing your hot crossover fanfic is that no adjectives should be spared. Heap them on, dip into the well of unusual adjectives, extend your feelers out into verbs and nouns that make the loins of perverts around the world churn with delight.
Let's take a look at this sample from a Paul Prudhomme/
Life discovered on earth. Scientists uncertain if it is intelligent.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
They probe us, We probe them. Its only fair.
"No, don't get up," Nurse Kathryn commanded. Darren lay on his back on the chiropractic table and watched as the nasty nurse rummaged through a drawer. He would be motionless if that's what this ill-tempered health care professional demanded. Her fearsome presence made his whole vertebrae tremble.
"Now, then," she said, turning around to face his supine body. A gleaming anal probe rested firmly in her gloved hand. "Let's get to the bottom of that back problem, shall we?"
She stood at the foot of the table. "Show me your ass."
His eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He wasn't sure what she wanted.
"Throw your legs over your head and show me your ass!" She said, louder than before.
As his knees came closer to his head, her palms met the undersides of his thighs and pushed. He heard the bottom half of the table fold to allow the nurse better access to his sphincter.
She poured something slippery between his chilled, exposed cheeks and rubbed it efficiently over his puckered opening. With her index finger, she rimmed her target until it relaxed. Then she slipped the same finger up inside him, slowly at first, letting his second set of anal muscles relax before plunging in completely. When she met with no resistance, she wiggled her finger to make him squirm, then replaced her digit with the tip of the anal probe.
"Uuuugh!" He exclaimed, gripping the sides of the table. "How is this helping my back?" He managed to ask.
"Are you questioning my methods?" She purred, twisting the probe sharply.
"No, I just -- "
"Dark Angel! Get in here!"
Beautiful, dark-haired Max strode in and looked to the nurse for some sign of permission. The nurse nodded.
Max climbed up on the table and straddled Darren's face. The small metal ring through her clit touched his lips, inviting him to touch it. But he didn't want to incur the nurse's wrath for licking this tasty clit if he wasn't supposed to. Her juices were starting to smear all over his chin... Max squirmed around on his face while the anal probe continued to turn in his lubricated hole.
"Chase the ring. Tongue it when you find it. It's good for your neck and back."
Nurse Kathryn reamed him harder as he tried to follow Max's moving pussy. He flicked at the ring intermittently until the nurse instructed him to eat out both their cunts before he could be sent home.
Much to his great disappointment, his back pain never returned.
Can I have Natalie Portman sit on my penis? I sure would love to have some HOT GRITS poured into my pants.
i spit out a booger and ther was a toof in it
uh oh
RiffRaff: It's astounding;
Time is fleeting;
Madness takes its toll.
But listen closely...
Magenta: Not for very much longer.
RiffRaff: I've got to keep control.
I remember doing the time-warp
Drinking those moments when
The Blackness would hit me
RiffRaff: And the void would be calling...
Transylvanians:
Let's do the time-warp again.
Let's do the time-warp again.
Narrator: It's just a jump to the left.
All: And then a step to the right.
Narrator: With your hands on your hips.
All: You bring your knees in tight.
But it's the pelvic thrust
That really drives you insane.
Let's do the time-warp again.
Let's do the time-warp again.
Magenta: It's so dreamy, oh fantasy free me.
So you can't see me, no, not at all.
In another dimension, with voyeuristic intention,
Well secluded, I see all.
RiffRaff: With a bit of a mind flip
Magenta: You're into the time slip.
RiffRaff: And nothing can ever be the same.
Magenta: You're spaced out on sensation.
RiffRaff: Like you're under sedation.
All: Let's do the time-warp again.
Let's do the time-warp again.
Columbia: Well I was walking down the street just a-having a think When a snake of a guy gave me an evil wink. He shook-a me up, he took me by surprise. He had a pickup truck, and the devil's eyes. He stared at me and I felt a change.
Time meant nothing, never would again.
All: Let's do the time-warp again.
Let's do the time-warp again.
Narrator: It's just a jump to the left.
All: And then a step to the right.
Narrator: With your hands on your hips.
All: You bring your knees in tight.
But it's the pelvic thrust
That really drives you insane.
Let's do the time-warp again.
Let's do the time-warp again.
I believe he posted the story 7 years ago. However, his body mass must've gone critical perhaps after one bag of chips too many, and warped the space-time continuum around his computer enough to cause significant time dilation. The poor sod is calling out for rescue:
<>
"Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated!"
<*click whir weedle weedle click whir bleep bleep*>
My first thought was - "Well that should improve Ford's image."
Full-Featured GPL Web Hosting Control Panel
All space exploration is a waste of YOUR money.
How about we sort out life on Earth, before attempting to destroy that of other life forms?
The South African Space Agency (or to give the propper pronunciation, Sas Effriken Spes Ejinsee) have announced that they are also planning a mission. Not to be outdone by the Americans, Europeans, Japanese and Chinese, they decided to send a manned mission to the sun.
At a press conference held to announce this bold mission, a very un-PC reporter dared to point out that the space craft would burn up long before it reached the shores of its destination.
The quick-thinking comrade minister for culture and technology replied that this had been thought of, and that the mission would therefore take place at night.
have launched a what? It's the first sentence!This site sucks! Where do I subscribe - I want to give these guys my money!
Yes, as far as we know, Titan has 150% the atmospheric pressure at surface level as does the Earth, and those gases are not corrosive/poisonous to human life.
However, the surface temperature of Titan is 95 Kelvin. Liquid nitrogen is 75 Kelvin at 1 atmosphere pressure. Water ice melts at 273 Kelvin at one atmosphere. Water boils at 373 Kelvin at one atmosphere.
You would need some pretty DAMN warm clothes. In fact, you would need better insulation on Titan than you would on the dark side of the Moon, as Titan's atmosphere would be conducting and convecting heat away from you at a prodigious rate.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Nasa has planned a probe to Uranus next month. The probe is going to confirm many suspicions about this planet. The strange fact that it seems to expel gas at random intervals, and the even stranger fact that you can hear/feel it. Even here on Earth! The probe will be equipped with the latest sniffing technology. It will be capable of determining the exact chemical composition of these expulsions of gas.
It will even come equipped with a fibrous discharge weapon to remove any blockages that may from as it travels through Uranus. Keep a close watch at NASA.com for the latest photos of Uranus and it's satellites. Expect great detail of the inner workings of Uranus, as the probe will be going deep to the core.
find ~your -name '*base* | xargs chown
It seems that seniority really does play a big part in who gets the data and when. She was just starting out, and was way down on the list, and had a hard time getting access to new data. She eventually chucked astrophysics and started doing plain old software development.
I guess that if you get your hands on the data first, you've got a pretty good chance at writing some important papers and perhaps getting into mass media for a couple of seconds, so I can understand why people would want to fight that chance. But the 'merkin taxpayers are footing the bill, so why should only a few benefit?
Seems like a shame to me, although she made a pretty good boss.
Are things getting better? It seems to me that a lot of satellite data is available on the internet. Anyone know?
-- ac at home
Like dude...you can assume "there's guaranteed to be more life *somewhere* in the galaxy" all you want, nobody is gonna believe you until we actually find some (proof of) life on/in a place other than earth.
:)
:) How does either one see/know that the other is alive? How does a silicon-based lifeform perceive the world? Does it actually have senses? Do those senses overlap our own?
:)
:o
;)
Let's start by looking in the obvious places first.
It doesn't matter so much WHAT we find, as long as we find something. Then we can see whether [we|life on earth] is a fluke or not. (And we can see whether or not there are/have been paralllellls in the development of either - or whether one is the origin of the other...etc etc
And obviously, by looking in obvious (and familiar) places, we increase the probability that we will actually recognize the life-forms that we find!
e.g.
Silicon life-forms? Sure...eh..ok...how do you know it's alive? What might be a hundred years to carbon-based life-forms might be 1 second of comparative time to a silicon based-lifeform (or even the inverse of that
Let's start by finding alien bacteria and stuff like that....much easier
Oh, just a thought:
** If NASA *DO* find signs of life on another planet then I think the same thing will happen as what happened with the so-called 'martian' bacteria that supposedly arrived on earth by hopping on a comet/asteroid/rock -> We will end up with endless arguments over cross-contamination and whether or not we put those bugs there in the first place.
Space might be freakin' cold and a very convenient vacuum, but it doesn't stop pollen and bacteria and god knows what else from happily travelling along with our space-probes
(And I need someone to confirm this: Was there stuff growing on the outside of ol' MIR? or is that a myth?)
I was going to add another bit on how religious groups might get upset when the scientific community announces they've found life on other planets....but that's just asking for a troll-rating (:o (Hmm...some cults/sects would be ecstatic I'd imagine
No news is good news.
If it isn't true, don't say it. If it isn't helpful, don't say it. If it's true and helpful, wait for the right time.
Yeah, as many have already pointed out, this is not new news. But it is worth discussing. Why? Because Cassini is the last real NASA probe, made in the old way. None of that cheaper/faster/destroyed on entry/by miscommunication/flat out lost in space crap. It should give us some good data to chew on and maybe, but not probably, inspire NASA to cut the crap and get back to real space exploration.
It's amazing how much "mature wisdom" resembles being too tired. - Robert Anson Heinlein
This mission is the last of NASA's big budget planetary projects.
I agree.
/. could will post an article titled:
I think the probe should almost be there by now. If it's not already there (I can't remember).
Maybe
"No horses, just a Ford - A guy named Ford claims to have built a horseless carridge...."
How about we sort out life on Earth
One should choose one's battles, space seems easier...
So is NASA planning on probing Uranus next?
/me goes back to the corner.
Geddit?
No? Ok,
My patience is infinite, my time is not.
The "spinoff" vector. Thats rich. Yeah... those things need to be "calibrated". I think your computer must be HIV positive. Too much uprotected cybersex.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Actually, the 95K temperature can be useful since it can make high temperature superconductors work in the atmosphere without extra cooling. Some High Tc materias have a Tc (Critical Temperature) of 130K.
Alaska has been proposed as the new home of server megafarms. Google is at about 10,000 computers (running Linux) and assorted disks. Say 500W for each computer and assorted cooling, switches etc and you are talking about a megawatt farm.
Titan: the home of monster grade server farms?
Switching to a different measurement system is stupid if you don't actually intend to use it. What good is using meters when you still sell 4x8 ft plywood? Measurement system conversion must necessarily imply converting not just the units, but the physical object sizes as well. Sell 1x2 m plywood, 5 mm bolts, and 5 mm drill bits. Halfway conversion is simply an incovenience, since you end up with ugly fractional measurements which give an unjustifiably bad name to the metric system.
I love your score:
-1, Funny
Priceless!
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Apologizes and runs for cover
The Europeans are the ones who made the boneheaded screwup on this one.
:)
The European Space Agency built Huygens, the probe to be dropped into Titan's atmosphere. They made two big mistakes while designing the system for communicating between Huygens and the mothership, Cassini: They totally omitted part of the Dopler shift, and they made the radio bandpass an order of magnitude smaller than called for in the specs.
(The Doppler shift is very important because Cassini and Huygens will be moving at extremely different velocities, and those velocities will be changing quickly.)
If these mistakes had gone undetected, the radio signals from Huygens wouldn't have been received by Cassini for relay to Earth... the mission would have been a total loss. The problem was detected, though, a few years after launch. The early orbits of Saturn by Cassini had to be drastically redesigned, but a mission plan which reduced the second-order Doppler shift was developed. Thus, these problems have now been worked-around. What's the cost? Half of the spacecraft's expected end-of-primary mission fuel reserves. These spacecraft tend to last a hell of a long time, and these Huygens screwups have cost NASA half of the propellant it would otherwise have used for the extended mission.
Uggh.
So, try to make up some Dopler shift jokes so that you can overuse them as you overuse the metric jokes.
YOU FAIL IT!
NASA Sending Probe to Saturn
And I thought it was just a damn uncomfortable car seat. I feel so violated!
(For Europeans, Saturn is a US car company that make relatively... let's call them "efficient"... cars.)
On the bright side they didn't get /.'d
This story would have been much cooler if it was
NASA Sending Probe to Uranus
Maybe you should educate the morons of tomorrow so they'll stop believing the leaders of tomorrow. - Dogbert
Bad pickup lines: If you don't like red then stop running away from me,.. baby. Are you're eyes actually blue or its it that I'm falling into them? A Good Trafic Excuse: I'm sorry officer, but the light was blue when I entered the intersection. It didn't turn red until I got through the intersection.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I'd love to be a karma whore, but nobody wants me.
.NET get rejected in favor of THIS crap? Who do I have to sleep with to get MY stories accepted?)
(But my submissions about MS EULA forbidding users to even tell anyone benchmark results on
-Styopa
Doesn't it seem like today NASA really sucks ass compared to the 60s? Shuttles blowing up. They can barely get a working robot to Mars. What is their problem? Is it a case where they use have to have the best people in the world, and now they have shit people? Probably the quota system at work. Are NASA's challenges much different today than they were 40 years ago?
well, my signature is, anyway-p -cassini6 .html
http://planetary.org/news/Cassini/hot-to
"When the Cassini spacecraft launches, it will be carrying more than a probe and an instrument package to the saturnian system -- it will be carrying tens of thousands of signatures from people on Earth. "
Actually, there's a _real_ project that is designing a system to give the equivalent of IP addresses to spacecraft on/around other planets. Check out InterPlanNet for more details. And no, it's not IP based.
Only a Biologist would be so anal as to declare such a assinine statemate. The standards really don't give a crap, they are not living entities. Most scientists , and biologists that have a head above their sholders, use what ever is most convienint. Absolutely, no si unit is "anoying". Only those who do not understand physics want to use kilograms as a measurement of force. Not anyone in the scientific community(except maybe for nutritionists. I had to teach a physics for nurses class and the stupid book said that kilograms were a mesurement of force, and that Work=Weight x Distance).
SI does not apply to computer science. There isn't si a unit of data declared.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Charlie: Bloody typical, they've gone back to metric without telling us.
-- Brazil 1995, Terry Gilliam
wow! didnt know we could send a probe that far. Wonder if it will be nuclear powered?
Man, if it is I bet the environmentalists will pitch a fit!
An Anonymous Coward writes "Apparently, Christopher Columbus, an Italian navigator in the employ of the Kingdom of Spain has found a way to navigate west across the Atlantic Ocean to new territories in India." No word yet on we can expect broadband internet access there, but this could be a mighty blow to the RIAA.
Futurama:
Professor: "I'm sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all."
Fry: "Oh. What's it called now?"
Professor: "Urectum."
Suicide Booth: You are now dead! Thank you for using Stop and Drop, America's favorite since 2008.
JPL's Official Site
and
Current Location.
FYI: Cassini launched on Oct. 15 1997.
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
"Got Linux?"
More embarrassing illiteracy splashed on the front page -- for a bunch
... Space Agency have launched a towards Saturn ...
of geeks who spend a lot of time complaining about how stupid everyone
else is, you really make yourselves look pretty dumb on a regular
basis.
Missing word... launched a probe, or vehicle, or something.
data to help understand the mysterious, vast region.
What "region?" Saturn is a planet, not a "region."
The Cassini orbiter that will orbit Saturn and it's moons for four
years, and the Huygens probe will dive...
First, the word is "its," not "it's." Second, either use the pronoun
in both clauses ("that will orbit... that will dive..."), or in
neither. Third, it should be "which," not "that."
Nobody will read this but, for myself, I want to point out that the person who put this story here ( Commodore Too Kak ) is not willing to acknowledge that:
1. The post does not belong here ( not being news ).
2. The post is not written in English.
--
"Editor" ? Now what could that mean ?
What to do with civilians who think they understand science? Anyone here have any ideas? SciFi fans and technophiles think they understand scince because they have seen bayblon 5. Then they show up at public lectures and argue with the expert over special relitivity. Or they don't undestand the word convinent.
Convienient: The solution that accompleshes the requirements with the least ammount of effort.
or those that don't understand that mass can be accuratly measured with a spring scale if the gravitational pull is known.
It's an Opel although cheaper.
I'm a physicist, and still I had never heard a couple of these! :)
But seriously, all I really want to know is will it fry the cell phone of those people who can't seem to STFU in the restaurant. Perhaps a hand held version of this could be wielded by ushers in movie theaters.
A centimeter is not a different unit from a meter. It is simply a shorthand for "one hundredth of a meter". The reason you are asked to normalize (usually in scientific literature), is to facilitate comparisons of different values. You should also note that this normalization process is MUCH easier than in English units, since it involves only modifying the exponent (or moving the decimal point).
That's just the point. You stop manufacturing parts in English units and as soon as you run out of those parts, the old products become obsolete. There will always be mechanics who will rethread a bolt for your vintage car, but most people will soon only need metric parts. So recycle the old bolts.