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Atomic Clock Turns 50
karvind writes "BBC has an interesting story on the 50th birthday of atomic clocks. The first accurate caesium atomic clock was developed at the NPL in 1955 by Dr Louis Essen. And after 5 decades In September the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) used computer chip fabrication techniques to make a small atomic clock. The final development should see a battery-operated system about the size of a sugar lump. NIST also has a page on history of atomic clocks"
first post.
Does your girlfriend know you call her that?
(And use her as a unit of measurement?)
If it was running winzdoz?! Off byu 21 years evvery second laffo?!
The country itself need not have enough bandwidth. Distributed DoS could take down a box using american zombie PCs. And let me tell you, there is no dearth of those. An attack from the inside of the network is perfectly possible - ever read Andromeda Strain
There have been a number of other projects to drill deep into the Earth's crust, though none has succeeded in reaching the mantle, as this Japanese team is trying to do. Some of the more well-known ones:
Another poster already provided the wikipedia page for Project Mohole available.
This Japanese project is going to drill through the sea floor in the Pacific, in a spot where the crust is thin, which will hopefully allow them to reach the mantle in only 7 km, under 2.5 km of water. For comparison: the previous record seafloor drill was only 2.1 km. So they've definitely got their work cut out for them.
In two years, the all-volunteer force will have had such a nightmare in recruiting for the festering Iraq occupation that the U.S. military will be stretched even THINNER than it is today.
Iraq was supposed to be a pushover, with terrain perfectly suited for the U.S. (see Gulf War I), had only Russia as a half-hearted partner.
North Korea has been girding for this fight ever since the Korean War armistice. They have a major Asian capital held hostage by 50 years worth of artillery emplacements. They are also right in China's backyard, and China, while completely uninterested in the North Korean regime, doesn't want some flood of hungry refugees when they are busy dealing with millions of their own rural workers looking for jobs. That's why none of this has gone to the U.N.: China has enough power to keep the U.S. from steamrolling them; Russia had no choice but to let Iraq get smacked around.
The U.S. would certainly prevail in a North Korean war, but millions of Koreans would die, with untold damage to a major economy. Samsung, LG, Hyundai, etc., are real economic players [try naming an Iraqi multinational]. Now, Japan getting nuked by North Korean warheads might be equally disastrous, so there is at least one way this could spiral out of control, but this is a war that NOBODY wants.
That said, the Bush administration has been bungling the situation from day 1, particularly because the proper order of threats was 1) North Korea, 2a) Al-qaeda 2b) Pakistan 3) Iran 4) Iraq, and they started at #4, put #2b on the wrong list, and by attacking #4 managed to spook #3 and #1 enough to make the situation even trickier. Their only policy achievement in NK is a totally non-functional diplomatic arrangement that they screw up with the most childish kind of namecalling.They may very well bungle enough to get the war they don't want.
The problem is holding on to that atmosphere. Mars has weak gravity and a weak magnetic field. That allows light atoms and molecules to escape into space, and it's aggravated by the solar wind.
You could sell it on eBay for well over $100. Which sounds better to you?
Actually, the parent poster is more insightful than the mods have thought (modded +4 Funny right now). There actually are engine control systems for motors with more than 4 cylinders that automatically turn off a few cylinders when running at low load. That moves the working point for the remaining cylinders to a more economical point (ie running at very low load is very inefficient), saving fuel (but not as much as when choosing a smaller motor - but maybe you just need the power sometimes etc).
I bet there's some scientists who'll be wanting the rover to reverse back a bit - it looks like they've dug the deepest trench yet on Mars, and I wouldn't be surprised if they've already done risk assesments regarding getting the rover to peer in with its instruments... ;-)
Totally off-topic, but I just got my first DVD burner, and I'm loving it. You should check out how cheap they've gotten -- I was surprised.
t egory=10
...
http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/Category.asp?Ca
The burn-any-format drives are less than $50, and media is $35/100. That's definitely getting down in the why-the-hell-not range, for me