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Mars & The Teachable Moment
Gallenod writes "In this article at space.com, Edna DeVore, Director of Education and Public Outreach for SETI, states that people are being continually exposed to pseudo-science from watching television and reading tabloids. Her examples include the "face" on Mars (which she discusses in detail in the article), alien autopsies, Area 51 in the Nevada desert as alien storage quarters, the "non-landings" on the Moon, UFO's, and alien kidnappings. DeVore describes the current Mars missions as a "teachable moment," an opportunity to teach factual science and astronomy in the context of sensationalistic psuedo-science and the legion of money-grubbing opportunists who make their living churning it out."
There's a great book by Carl Sagan that talks about his perspective on Pseudo-Science and how it's affecting Science, as well as the dangers. It's a wonderful read. The book is called The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in this topic.
Life today. Uncertainty tomorrow.
The science of an ozone generator is simple. Ozone (O3) will give up an oxygen atom easily, to the other molecules in the air (the stinky ones), which then become oxidezed - and no longer stinky.
Ozone is poisonous. But it reacts so quickly that the meager amount a small generator puts out is quickly nullified.
It's a radical smell-removal approach, nevertheless. Never grow pot without one. Nothing masks the distinctive smell of a budding indica plant like ozone.
In a regular non-pot-growing home, there'd be no use. You'd be better off attacking the source of the small (cat pee in carpet padding, etc).
There aren't any canals. The "belief" that there were canals on Mars, carrying water was an artifact of the relatively poor resolving power of the telescopes of the day, and the human mind's desire to find patterns. It's virtually the same process behind the claims of the "Mars face".
Current science says that it would be extremely unlikely that you would find liquid water, on the surface of Mars given it's current conditions (temperature, pressure).
Evidence found by the Rovers indicates that at some point in Mars past, there was likely a standing body of water, probably a highly saline "ocean".
These statements are not contradicting each other.
Antidotes:w w.randi.org
http://www.badastronomy.com
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I thought it was very funny, and I'm certain it was done that way on purpose... maybe just to piss off people like you, and amuse people like me.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
No. There is absolutely NO evidence for that, and it's not even physically possible for it to have happened.
badastronomy.com has an execelent debunking of that rediculous claim and many others.
Ah, but you miss the reason that rocketry hasn't expanded further. There's been no driving force. No "mandated" moon missions. No space race. No national pride riding on developing further. To sum it up, no Cold War.
Aviation was furthered because of 4 major wars in the last century. It didn't go from the Wright brothers to the 707. It went from the Wright brothers to the Fokker bi-planes to the Spitfire/FW-109/Zero/Corsair/Mustang to the B-17/27/52 to the C-47/C(A)-147 to the F-15/16/22 and the MiG/15-29. The passenger planes are just an extension of the military transport airframe. A missile still only has to travel so far to deliver a payload.
No argument though that Star Trek helps NASA. Maybe they need to convince people the Klingons are coming to further rocket science.Mars and Luna are both essentially airless.
Wait, Mars essentially airless? Mars has an atmosphere, even if it is pretty thin, of mostly CO2. We can't breathe this, of course, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.
Please learn some scientific theory.
Yes, you can test a theory by making a prediction with it and see if it fits the outcome of an experiment. If it does not, then there is soemthing wrong with the theory. If it does, then we keep the theory. (That is the idealised idea, at least.)
But you can not disprove the existense of something. It is not possible. You can only prove the existence of something.
Taking your idea of a test "It's possible - all you have to do is show that the existance of extraterrestrial travel is a self-contradicting notion.". That would be a valid test only under the circumstance that we regard our understanding of physics and the universe as complete. Which we do not. The test works in mathematics, which is a closed theoretical system. It does not work for physics. There is a lot of things that are possible within our understanding of physics/cscience, but that does not make them true. Examples would be the face on mars, still living Bigfoot in some jungle etc. Nothing really contradicts physics/biology there, but that does not make the theories "true", or probable.
Okay... I'll bite:
ask yourself how the shadow on the moon is produced while it goes through one "monthly" cycle and how the sun and the earth are involved.
Sun, Earth, and Moon are all, more or less, orbiting each other in nearly the same plane. The moon moves around the Earth roughly once every 28 days or so. When the moon moves to be furthest from the sun (instead of the Earth), the light reflects off of it and comes back to us on Earth, giving us Full Moon. When it moves closest to the sun, we can't see it because all the light from the sun hits the side away from us and thus isn't reflected to the Earth, and thus we get New Moon. What's so hard to understand about that?
ask yourself how the seasons come into being and what role the precession of the earth axis plays in combination with the sun
The Earth is tilted at an angle from its plane of orbit around the sun. This angle is what gives us seasons. Considered from the Northern Hemisphere, during the months of roughly June to August, it's summer. Summer means that the angle of the earth's rotation combined with its position in orbit about the Sun puts the Northern Hemisphere more directly under the sun at noon. The difference is only that of a couple hundred miles or so, compared to winter, but that's enough. The seasons get reversed in the southern hemisphere because it's on the opposite side, obviously.
Precession is the fact that, like a top, the Earth's rotation angle rotates around a circle, describing a cone if you consider the motion of the line along the axis of rotation. After a large amount of time (millions of years), the Earth will have precessed enough to, essentially, move the times in it's orbit that coincide with the seasons. And thus the seasons, slowly, gradually, move along the calendar year. After a long time, the seasons will have rotated and the southern hemisphere will get summer in June-August instead of from Dec-Feb like it does now.
Again, what's so hard to understand about that? Every schoolchild should have learned these things. I did, in like 2nd or 3rd grade.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
As of 2001/2002, it seems you're wrong. People really do believe in this crap.
http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/seind02/toc.htm
13% of Americans believe that both evolution and creationism should be taught as scientific theories in science class.
16% percent want no mention of evolution at all.
More than 25% of the public believes in astrology, that is, that the position of the stars and planets can affect people's lives.
60% of respondents agreed that "some people possess psychic powers or ESP" in a 2001 NSF study.
In 2001, 30% of NSF survey respondents agreed that "some of the unidentified flying objects that have been reported are really space vehicles from other civilizations"
Between 25% and 50% of people believe in haunted houses, ghosts or communication with the dead.
Only about half of the respondents knew that the earliest humans did not live at the same time as dinosaurs.
And many other interesting tidbits.
For the sake of argument, let's assume that it is possible to read license plates from space. The angular size of the numbers on a license plate (~1 inch) as viewed from low Earth orbit (~200 mi) is on the order of about 1e-7 radians.
The closest approch of Mars to Earth in the last fifty thousand years was about thirty-five million miles. Assuming the same angular resolution, that same telescope pointed at Mars should be able to resolve details about five miles across under absolutely ideal conditions.
In practice, the idea that satellites can read license plates is a myth. See here.
To actually read license plates, you'd need to put something like the Keck telescope in orbit--and ten-meter scopes don't generally fly well. Even then, you can't get great pictures of Mars. The only way to get high-resolution photographs of Mars is to send a probe there and take pictures from Mars orbit--which is exactly what NASA has been doing. So far, there hasn't been anything which suggests more than microbial life on Mars, and even that's still very much an open question. We do know there aren't obvious large-scale features of civilization--dams, highways, walls, skyscrapers.~Idarubicin
The resolution limits of a telescope are bound by the laws of physics. The military has excellent hardware, and probably some image processing algorithms that are head and shoulders above what civilians have access to, but they can't circumvent the wave nature of light. Unless the military has been sneaking ten-meter telescopes into space, then they're not anywhere close to reading license plates. For what it's worth, I do have formal training in physics, and optical systems is one of my areas of expertise. There are lots of more interesting conspiracy theories out there--why not pursue one of those?
~Idarubicin
While they do not fly or take a part or store alien space craft at the location. More funky unusual aircraft have flown from Groom lake than you can shake stick at. The U2, SR-71 family, Have Blue, F-117 and even some Russian aircraft used for evaluation have flown and still fly from that area.
Lots of cool stuff but no space people I am afraid.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Unfortunately, no... Not even the Hubble has a fine enough resolution to see the rover (it's only about 8 feet long).
However, the Apollo missions did leave a reflective disc up there which thousands of people (including school children) have used to bounce lasers off to measure Earth-Moon distance.
-T
Erm, no, that's not how it works.
The first 4 years all German kids go to the same form of school - Grundschule(loosly tranlated: basic school) - where you learn to read and write, basic math and all the rest.
After that there are three forms of schools which cover 5th - 10th year.
Which school form you go on to, is not decided by a test, but from overall grades on your yearly report. Plus the teachers give recommendations and the parents have a say too.
The three school forms are:
Hauptschule, for the weakest pupil. Which is aimed at preparing the children for the crafts and trades.
Realschule for the middle Ground.
Gymnasium for the strongest. Which is aimed at preparing the children for Univerity.
After the 10th year Haupt and Realschoolers can choose to go upwards to Gymnasium which then goes on for 3 years. After that you get a certificate called Abitur. Which is basically just a university permit.
But you can STILL get the abitur even when your already adult, your not barred from it. And you can even get to University without Abitur, if you worked for some amount of time in a line of work corellated with your study, e.g. working as a carpenter you can go to University to study architecture, or as a metal worker you can study engeneering and so on.
As for the number of people who visit each school form I have only the 1995 numbers - which were as follows
Hauptschule 26 %, Realschule 40 %, Gymnasium 24 %.
The missing percent come from some special school forms which I didn't list in my summary.
Hope that clears it up a little.