Simple life lives here on Earth in the driest of dry places. Now Mars is dryer still, but that does not preclude the possibility of life still existing there.
Furthermore, this is valuable information for any future manned Mars mission. Any such mission will need a native supply of water. And if there was water on Mars at one point, then there must still be at least a small amount left, though it's probably locked up in hydrates and under the surface.
Finally, information like this is valuable as it shows that water on planets is very common (we've found it on Earth, Venus, Mars, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn). This lends credence to the idea that water is common on extrasolar planets.
Which kind of software gets hacked more, open source or closed source?
Which kind of software has flaws that are corrected more quickly, open source or closed source?
Which kind of software is more flexible under unanticipated new situations, open source or closed source?
Which kind of software should run your car? Easy answer.
That's because you're talking with a Space Nutter. There's nothing rational about what they propose. They just think space is some kind of giant Wal Mart filled with resources waiting to be plundered, instead of the deadly, hostile, huge vacuum it really is. Any sci-fi they read is the equivalent of fully thought-out realistic engineering.
I'll make an exception.
I'm a physicist, so I'm willing to bet I know more than you do about this topic. I'm familiar with the idea that space is, in fact, a deadly, hostile vacuum. But I'm also familiar with the fact that lack of gravity is, at least currently, horribly detrimental to human health. If we are going to exist in space long term, we need gravity.
The beauty of a rotating station is that the hub has zero centripetal acceleration. I'll simplify that for you: THE MIDDLE DOESN'T SPIN. That means that you can do all kinds of great zero-g research in the middle and also do your fuel transfers and other "easier in zero g" things there. And on the rim you can do all of the other valuable things I mentioned previously.
Now go back to your Jersey Shore and your Lite Beer and leave this conversation to people who know of what they speak.
Orbital flight is great. So is docking with the ISS.
But my hope is that the future of private space is a private space station that does what a space station really should: Serve as an rotating orbital way station (e.g. see 2001). If you store fuel there, NASA can purchase fuel for fast-track missions to Mars, Europa, whatever. Let SpaceX raise money via space tourism and charging for the fuel. People can LIVE there (artificial gravity eliminates many problems) and train for Lunar or Martian missions there (closer to the rotating hub there are natural low-gravity zones). People can also increase their gravity on the return trip from these missions so as to be able to return to earth.
This would make the space station a usable thing for MANY missions, not just an extremely expensive orbital platform. It would also facilitate our permanent colonization of other worlds. And (best part) it can be done with existing tech.
Agreed. The article says we should send up a microscope and watch the bacteria move. It is this kind of evidence that will be required to substantiate such a claim.
That said, I don't think the soon-to-land Curiosity has a "microscope" of this sort. Has one ever been sent to Mars?
The paper suggests that evolution favors cooperation but that it also favors low-cost solutions (i.e. lots of little dumb brains (ants) vs. singular powerful brains (humans)). Perhaps this explains the Fermi Paradox: Aliens are all over the place on other worlds, but they're mostly the former kind of cooperative rather than the latter.
Though the odds of a plane crash are low, they are not zero, and I imagine having a space shuttle strapped to the back of the plane makes it slightly more likely. What a tragedy it would be if this publicity stunt resulted in numerous deaths and the destruction of irreplaceable scientific artifacts.
...is that as more technology becomes available, the true believers seem MORE certain of their faith. I'm not sure if that is a result of the technology or just a shift in the way religions operate, but it seems like questioning your faith used to be considered a good thing and is now very much a bad thing.
Don't announce where they're going, tend to shy away from appearing in public places for 12 hours consecutively, are capable of wearing disguises, etc.
This is possibly useful for finding the average citizen.
How many words are "created" by young people to replace their parents' generation's word for the same thing? I suspect that many of the "new" words are already covered, but teenagers want to sound cooler than their parents, or hide their true intentions from them.
We used to have half-penny coins (and others). They were done away with for the same reason the penny (and probably nickels and dimes, too) should be: they became essentially worthless.
But, since this process makes sense, it probably won't happen. This IS America, after all. We have a reputation to maintain.
I love this idea... but the implementation is awful. In the chemistry book there are dead links, bad formatting, numerous typos. I know it's a work in progress, but there needs to be a great deal of progress before any school will conceive of using these.
Seems like several times a year now we are hearing about SpaceX successes - and few if any failures. They are scheduled to begin testing and then delivering cargo to the Space Station within the next year. It will be able to launch cargo to the space station at about 1/10th the cost (around $50 million as opposed to nearly $500 million) as the space shuttle.
Perhaps all that talk of a moon base, trips to Mars, etc. aren't that far-fetched after all.
TFA says that the wires were deposited lithographically (the technique currently used to make chips) and then the phosphorus was deposited. So this, in theory, could be done cheaply.
However, TFA also mentions low temperature. It doesn't measure exactly what temperature, but processors are not usually operated at low temperatures. If this is a "liquid nitrogen cold" temperature, then this could very well be useless on a grand scale. But if the effect survives to room temperature (or higher), then this could have a huge impact.
Just a first order approximation would show that these wires are about 5 times smaller than the current 22nm state-of-the-art. In two dimensions, that means roughly a 2500% increase in density, enough to keep Moore's law alive and well for some time to come.
Thumb drives now can easily exceed the capacity of a Blu-Ray. They are more expensive, but Microsoft can certainly bundle that price into the cost of the game and get a discount for buying in massive bulk?
This would also prevent them from having an (expensive) optical drive with moving parts and the like. They could replace it with 2 (much cheaper) USB ports and call it a day.
This patent is from 1998. I'm not saying Xerox shouldn't have gotten a patent for this (though it is awfully broad), but that patent should be long dead by now. 13 years is an eternity in the tech world and Apple is going to lord this over Google and everyone else for... 17 years? Longer?
...but this is an important experiment to perform. Obviously they can't easily simulate the zero-g, radiation exposure, etc. of a long space mission, but the psychological question of "can you lock 5 people in a single-wide trailer for 2 years and expect them to not go completely bat shit insane?" is a valid one.
520 days is definitely enough to complete a round-trip Mars mission. This experiment suggests that you can successfully go "there and back again" without making your astronauts lose their mind.
Malaria is incredibly resistant to both the immune system and treatment. This is an impressive result.
And as for all of the "Won't this lead to overpopulation" comments, I think it will do the opposite. Birth rates in malaria areas are very high in part because of the poverty and lack of education in those areas. Those areas are poor in part because of malaria and its ability to ravage families. There may be an initial population spike from this vaccine, but time and again we have seen that increasing the standard of living lowers the birth rate. The best way to control overpopulation is to reduce poverty and educate people (specifically women). This vaccine goes a long way to doing both.
Slashdot Mirror
And finish reading Fahrenheit 451. All this censorship all in a row...madness.
Simple life lives here on Earth in the driest of dry places. Now Mars is dryer still, but that does not preclude the possibility of life still existing there.
Furthermore, this is valuable information for any future manned Mars mission. Any such mission will need a native supply of water. And if there was water on Mars at one point, then there must still be at least a small amount left, though it's probably locked up in hydrates and under the surface.
Finally, information like this is valuable as it shows that water on planets is very common (we've found it on Earth, Venus, Mars, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn). This lends credence to the idea that water is common on extrasolar planets.
Which kind of software gets hacked more, open source or closed source?
Which kind of software has flaws that are corrected more quickly, open source or closed source?
Which kind of software is more flexible under unanticipated new situations, open source or closed source?
Which kind of software should run your car? Easy answer.
That's because you're talking with a Space Nutter. There's nothing rational about what they propose. They just think space is some kind of giant Wal Mart filled with resources waiting to be plundered, instead of the deadly, hostile, huge vacuum it really is. Any sci-fi they read is the equivalent of fully thought-out realistic engineering.
I'll make an exception.
I'm a physicist, so I'm willing to bet I know more than you do about this topic. I'm familiar with the idea that space is, in fact, a deadly, hostile vacuum. But I'm also familiar with the fact that lack of gravity is, at least currently, horribly detrimental to human health. If we are going to exist in space long term, we need gravity.
The beauty of a rotating station is that the hub has zero centripetal acceleration. I'll simplify that for you: THE MIDDLE DOESN'T SPIN. That means that you can do all kinds of great zero-g research in the middle and also do your fuel transfers and other "easier in zero g" things there. And on the rim you can do all of the other valuable things I mentioned previously.
Now go back to your Jersey Shore and your Lite Beer and leave this conversation to people who know of what they speak.
Orbital flight is great. So is docking with the ISS.
But my hope is that the future of private space is a private space station that does what a space station really should: Serve as an rotating orbital way station (e.g. see 2001). If you store fuel there, NASA can purchase fuel for fast-track missions to Mars, Europa, whatever. Let SpaceX raise money via space tourism and charging for the fuel. People can LIVE there (artificial gravity eliminates many problems) and train for Lunar or Martian missions there (closer to the rotating hub there are natural low-gravity zones). People can also increase their gravity on the return trip from these missions so as to be able to return to earth.
This would make the space station a usable thing for MANY missions, not just an extremely expensive orbital platform. It would also facilitate our permanent colonization of other worlds. And (best part) it can be done with existing tech.
If only we were able to have an organized party like this in the U.S.
Our only choices are "In the pocket of the MPAA" and "In the pocket of the MPAA"...oh, wait...
Agreed. The article says we should send up a microscope and watch the bacteria move. It is this kind of evidence that will be required to substantiate such a claim.
That said, I don't think the soon-to-land Curiosity has a "microscope" of this sort. Has one ever been sent to Mars?
The paper suggests that evolution favors cooperation but that it also favors low-cost solutions (i.e. lots of little dumb brains (ants) vs. singular powerful brains (humans)). Perhaps this explains the Fermi Paradox: Aliens are all over the place on other worlds, but they're mostly the former kind of cooperative rather than the latter.
They will be sued...probably later this week.
As has been said previously, all this accomplishes is a gross waste of taxpayer money.
Though the odds of a plane crash are low, they are not zero, and I imagine having a space shuttle strapped to the back of the plane makes it slightly more likely. What a tragedy it would be if this publicity stunt resulted in numerous deaths and the destruction of irreplaceable scientific artifacts.
...is that as more technology becomes available, the true believers seem MORE certain of their faith. I'm not sure if that is a result of the technology or just a shift in the way religions operate, but it seems like questioning your faith used to be considered a good thing and is now very much a bad thing.
Don't announce where they're going, tend to shy away from appearing in public places for 12 hours consecutively, are capable of wearing disguises, etc.
This is possibly useful for finding the average citizen.
Oh, I see where they're going with this now...
How many words are "created" by young people to replace their parents' generation's word for the same thing? I suspect that many of the "new" words are already covered, but teenagers want to sound cooler than their parents, or hide their true intentions from them.
We used to have half-penny coins (and others). They were done away with for the same reason the penny (and probably nickels and dimes, too) should be: they became essentially worthless.
But, since this process makes sense, it probably won't happen. This IS America, after all. We have a reputation to maintain.
Most sinus infections are viral. Nothing to see here.
I love this idea ... but the implementation is awful. In the chemistry book there are dead links, bad formatting, numerous typos. I know it's a work in progress, but there needs to be a great deal of progress before any school will conceive of using these.
Seems like several times a year now we are hearing about SpaceX successes - and few if any failures. They are scheduled to begin testing and then delivering cargo to the Space Station within the next year. It will be able to launch cargo to the space station at about 1/10th the cost (around $50 million as opposed to nearly $500 million) as the space shuttle.
Perhaps all that talk of a moon base, trips to Mars, etc. aren't that far-fetched after all.
TFA says that the wires were deposited lithographically (the technique currently used to make chips) and then the phosphorus was deposited. So this, in theory, could be done cheaply.
However, TFA also mentions low temperature. It doesn't measure exactly what temperature, but processors are not usually operated at low temperatures. If this is a "liquid nitrogen cold" temperature, then this could very well be useless on a grand scale. But if the effect survives to room temperature (or higher), then this could have a huge impact.
Just a first order approximation would show that these wires are about 5 times smaller than the current 22nm state-of-the-art. In two dimensions, that means roughly a 2500% increase in density, enough to keep Moore's law alive and well for some time to come.
Already Here: Ubiquitous Long-Term Surveillance From Big Brother
There, fixed that for you.
Thumb drives now can easily exceed the capacity of a Blu-Ray. They are more expensive, but Microsoft can certainly bundle that price into the cost of the game and get a discount for buying in massive bulk? This would also prevent them from having an (expensive) optical drive with moving parts and the like. They could replace it with 2 (much cheaper) USB ports and call it a day.
Topographic maps have curves that connect equal elevations. This is an elevation heat map.
This patent is from 1998. I'm not saying Xerox shouldn't have gotten a patent for this (though it is awfully broad), but that patent should be long dead by now. 13 years is an eternity in the tech world and Apple is going to lord this over Google and everyone else for ... 17 years? Longer?
...but this is an important experiment to perform. Obviously they can't easily simulate the zero-g, radiation exposure, etc. of a long space mission, but the psychological question of "can you lock 5 people in a single-wide trailer for 2 years and expect them to not go completely bat shit insane?" is a valid one.
520 days is definitely enough to complete a round-trip Mars mission. This experiment suggests that you can successfully go "there and back again" without making your astronauts lose their mind.
Regulate college costs. But ending student loans and expecting the colleges to magically lower tuition in response is ludicrous.
Malaria is incredibly resistant to both the immune system and treatment. This is an impressive result.
And as for all of the "Won't this lead to overpopulation" comments, I think it will do the opposite. Birth rates in malaria areas are very high in part because of the poverty and lack of education in those areas. Those areas are poor in part because of malaria and its ability to ravage families. There may be an initial population spike from this vaccine, but time and again we have seen that increasing the standard of living lowers the birth rate. The best way to control overpopulation is to reduce poverty and educate people (specifically women). This vaccine goes a long way to doing both.