Plus if you look at the last set of images in the article, it appears as if there is ground slumping going on above and to the left of the flow. Just what one would expect if there was a subsurface ice layer that melted there.
Mechanism is difficult - micrometeroid impact? Subsurface "hot spots"? *shrug*
I had my doubts until I saw that last set of images. Carbon dioxide doesn't behave like that at martian pressures and temperatures.
So it's back to the more basic question - how *much* water, and how accessible? This evidence would appear to lend to it being more accessible, at least in some places.
I'd like to nominate this story as a top ten slashdot story of the year. It's always fascinating to hear about people's inventions or projects, and I think we could use more stories and commentary like this, it's the essence of hacking.
I don't know what I'd nominate as my "coolest" invention, but a few weeks back I got sick of buying vacuum cleaner bags (I'm owned by cats) and kludged together a canister from a dead vacuum found in a dumpster to work on my existing one using a toilet tank-bowl gasket, a piece of cheesecloth (filter), a pair of window blind clips )which mysteriously required no alteration whatsoever to lock the canister in place), silicone caulk and odd-ends parts from my junk box, + duct tape (of course). It even fits in the original case after some carving with a dremel, and seems to have improved the suction of the vacuum cleaner some; plus it literally cost me nothing but time spent. I'm rather proud of that one:-)
Next project is to take the couple hundred feet of 1/4" & 3/8" plastic tubing I found for 50 cents at a garage sale, and adapt it to the exhaust on the shop vac so I have something quick and easy to use for blowing the dust bunnies out of computer boxes and other things like electric baseboard heaters (maintenance man by trade). I have a small portable compressor I use for that right now, but the shop vac goes everywhere anyway, and if it can do both jobs that's one less thing to cart around...
Oh, agreed. My point was KISS. If you really, really need the bomb to be detonated, find some young moron and convince him or her to sit on the bomb with a simple toggle switch and a watch. There's not shortage of them, apparently.
More high-tech methods such as laser links would be more likely to be used by government or corporate sanctioned professional assassins - or other more well-organized movements. Gaining access to a target for long enough to set your explosives *and* run a hardlink to your laser receiver - plus the beforehand footwork in setting up the secure location to "transmit" the detonation sequence - requires much more resources/access/skill than setting your explosives and plugging in an AM radio detonator. If the terrorist just has the intent of blowing something up, the detonation method hardly matters that much compared to the harder problem of finding the bomb.
You're right tho, cell phone jammers have no effectiveness in a terrorist situation, and are likely to cause many more problems than they solve. (Ditto on the drug raid thing, you'd just be offering an incentive for them to change tactics, and inconveniencing a whole lot of innocent people)
But then our reaction to 9/11 has been a boon for people with fundamentally unworkable ideas and frightened ears; and for those who think technology can solve the most fundamental of Operational Intelligence problems, mouth-ear transfer;-)
I could argue your last point, but that's neither here nor there. It does seem that the average technical skill level is increasing, but that's hardly surprising.
Well, if you had a rough idea of the line of sight, you could drop a few tons of aluminum chaff. Temporary reprieve, but you may be able to pick up reflections from the pointer and pinpoint it better that way.
Actually the real weakness of such a detonator is weather. You're all set up, line of sight established, and when the time comes to detonate the bomb it's snowing or raining heavily, or it's foggy...
Got punched in the face? Analyze the situation, figure out why you got punched in the face and take a-p-r-o-p-r-i-a-t-e action to reduce the chance of it happening again to an acceptable level. Maybe that means killing the guy punching you. Maybe it means using a different swing on the playground. Maybe it just means kicking the guy in the nads. Maybe it means calling your older brother over to intimidate the guy.
Another option is to apologize for being an asshole and hope your antagonist accepts it;-)
No, and I had to have a background check for my current job, although it may not have been one as thorough as that.
Before I moved, I did have to go and explain to the local PD why, when and where of the move, however, so I imagine that somewhere in the local PD there is a file on me. Not sure I care that much anymore, it's not likely it's still open unless they really have their heads up their jocks.
I haven't had any brushes with the law, no. Unlikely to, unless it's for playing Rush too loud on a weekday night, but the neighbors seem to like it... *grin*
I assumed that burnable trash could be fairly easily shredded, and you push it thru the focus in a small steady stream. One ould have multiple mirrors, of course, perhaps some way (centrifuge?) on the path of seperating burned and unburned bits. Electromagnetic and electrical fields for seperating other things. Yeah, it's an interesting engineering problem, but I wouldn't think it'd be that difficult.
What would you need refractory bricks for? You have a solar mirror composed of foil on a form, and the focus is free-floating; just push the trash thru the focus and collect the particles that come out the other side, no need for any enclosure of any sort if you can generate really high temps - and you can, you can build the mirror pretty much as big as you like.
If you really do need to enclose it, reflective foil with lightweight insulation backing (aerogel?) would likely work just fine. Remember, your heat losses to a vacuum environment are much lower than your heat losses to air or thru a massive oven - little material convection, just emr.
We're substituting concentrated sunlight for enclosed heat, here. The mirror comes as a folded foil-and thin-strut package, shouldn't weigh much even for large ones. Then you have some sort of shredding device, which could be solar or hand powered, with a small electric motor or hand drive crank which operates a squirrel cage style fan blade assembly to push your debris down the tube and into the focus. The shredder ought to be relatively uncomplicated, you can freeze-dry your burnables pretty quick just by exposing them to vacuum.
Metallics and synthetics would of course be a bit more of a problem, But since they constitute for the most part reusable materials, you should hang on to them anyway. Put them in tight mesh bags and distribute them around the living quarters for radiation shielding, or something;-)
I haven't done any math yet, but I'd imagine a 10 meter or so diameter mirror could probably provide a 600F-700F six inch wide or so focus point; that ought to incinerate most organics or bulk waste. Note that this is just a guess based off experiments I did with telescope mirrors years ago.
Brainstorming is fun, tho. I'm willing to bet someone smarter than me could design a trash incineration system like this with no moving parts whatsoever;-)
Oh, and eventually trash incineration gets integrated into resource recovery, and becomes but a side effect of your machine shop *grin* except that the only thing you are shredding is documents, as all bulk organics go back into the hydro module...
"Yeah - We will propel a highly explosive cargo ship to the moon carrying people."... "and bring them back safely to earth"... which was the hardest part.
Don't I know it. It was brought up more than once.
Pretty much the only thing I owned at the time that was worth anything was my carpentry tools, maybe a few thousand dollars, and my lawyer pointed out that they were my primary source of income, and unless they were directly connected with any potential charges couldn't be legally seized. Right about there was the turning point wrt to them leaving me alone.
I'm not ashamed to admit that I was scared shitless for quite a long time - I didn't even dare walk down to a bar for a while, for fear that they'd find some way to make my life worse. It was my first direct experience with the abuses I'd read about for years, and I didn't know how to deal with it.
My biggest mistake was in not getting a lawyer right away. I'm sure you understand the irony in that. I sure do. Now.
Exactly. The real shit of it is that my name was released as being a part of the initial police report, and they wouldn't publish a retraction, saying that it was "still under investigation", months later, to my face.
I suspect money played a large part there; the bust was apparently funded by state/federal DEA expansion grants which, of course, they have to use up lest they get less next year. I'll never know for sure, and it was long enough ago and is far enough away now that I don't really care anymore. I just hope that she got her life straightened out, because she was a good woman otherwise. Anyone who can glance at the night sky and identify constellations has a virtually granted pardon in my POV;-)
The "child protection industry" is noted for this sort of abuse of power as well. I'm sure we've all heard those stories.
She was an intelligent woman, raising a (at the time) 14 yo young man who was a boy scout in good standing, and we could talk. She played chess (not well, but she did). We shared interests in the outdoors, in firearms, in fishing, computers, and she was adamant about voting. She was "under the radar" in terms of the internet, and I'm not in the habit of running background searches on my girlfriends. I guess that might be a little old-fashioned for folk like you:-)
She was at least as intelligent as me, and hid her "third life" quite well.
Maybe it was the 10% of "mystery woman" which drew me in, eh? Heh
How can you date a criminal for several months without realizing something is wrong?
Simple. She had the experience to hide it, I didn't have the experience to recognize it. I learned a lesson, and that my point in posting about it. Don't ever think there isn't someone out there smarter than you; and don't assume that they have just one thread in life.
I feel the police owed me an apology - I was unjustly accused and harassed over *very* circumstantial evidence, and it had a significant monetary and personal cost. This was a very small town and I'd lived there for years - I was rather well known, and if they'd bothered to ask around about me, they'd have quickly realized I wasn't a dealer or some sort of speed freak.
I understood their methodology and agreed with it right up until it went too far - and then it went too far for months. They were no longer just chasing connections, they were justifying their salaries.
Your last paragraph... tell me something, why do you think that law enforcement in the US is any different? Much less personal honor here, but it's still as corrupt. Humans are humans, everywhere - it's pretty much the same proportion of assholes to elbow-benders, just the techiques that differ depending on the local opportunities, and still the same proportion of people who are trying to do right. Difference is, we have a lot more money than Brazil, so more incentives to tie knots in the legal system. We're certainly doing a good job of it.
Note to metamods: parent shouldn't be troll, rather +1 interesting
And you do this in your enormous amount of spare time, yes?
I'm not generally in the habit of running background searches on my girlfriends, either. It's kinda over the line, know what I mean? Maybe I haven't always had the best judgement when it comes to women, but I tend to regard anyone who claims they do as a liar.
Oh, wait, why am I bothering to ask an idiot?
Dunno. Must be a personality defect. But when the time comes that someone rips *your* heart out by the roots, I'll be standing right behind you, laughing my ass off. Don't think it won't or can't happen; that just makes you a fool in good company.
Slashdot Mirror
this might live as long as nethack.
Oh, wait...
snarkth
Plus if you look at the last set of images in the article, it appears as if there is ground slumping going on above and to the left of the flow. Just what one would expect if there was a subsurface ice layer that melted there.
Mechanism is difficult - micrometeroid impact? Subsurface "hot spots"? *shrug*
I had my doubts until I saw that last set of images. Carbon dioxide doesn't behave like that at martian pressures and temperatures.
So it's back to the more basic question - how *much* water, and how accessible? This evidence would appear to lend to it being more accessible, at least in some places.
snarkth
Well, *something* happened to the Martian Information Minister. Speculation is that it was a team of InterPLAN marines... ;-)
I'd like to nominate this story as a top ten slashdot story of the year. It's always fascinating to hear about people's inventions or projects, and I think we could use more stories and commentary like this, it's the essence of hacking.
:-)
:-)
I don't know what I'd nominate as my "coolest" invention, but a few weeks back I got sick of buying vacuum cleaner bags (I'm owned by cats) and kludged together a canister from a dead vacuum found in a dumpster to work on my existing one using a toilet tank-bowl gasket, a piece of cheesecloth (filter), a pair of window blind clips )which mysteriously required no alteration whatsoever to lock the canister in place), silicone caulk and odd-ends parts from my junk box, + duct tape (of course). It even fits in the original case after some carving with a dremel, and seems to have improved the suction of the vacuum cleaner some; plus it literally cost me nothing but time spent. I'm rather proud of that one
Next project is to take the couple hundred feet of 1/4" & 3/8" plastic tubing I found for 50 cents at a garage sale, and adapt it to the exhaust on the shop vac so I have something quick and easy to use for blowing the dust bunnies out of computer boxes and other things like electric baseboard heaters (maintenance man by trade). I have a small portable compressor I use for that right now, but the shop vac goes everywhere anyway, and if it can do both jobs that's one less thing to cart around...
so much to do, so little time, but such fun!
Happy hacking,
snarkth
simple, cheap and pretty hard to detect.
;-)
Oh, agreed. My point was KISS. If you really, really need the bomb to be detonated, find some young moron and convince him or her to sit on the bomb with a simple toggle switch and a watch. There's not shortage of them, apparently.
More high-tech methods such as laser links would be more likely to be used by government or corporate sanctioned professional assassins - or other more well-organized movements. Gaining access to a target for long enough to set your explosives *and* run a hardlink to your laser receiver - plus the beforehand footwork in setting up the secure location to "transmit" the detonation sequence - requires much more resources/access/skill than setting your explosives and plugging in an AM radio detonator. If the terrorist just has the intent of blowing something up, the detonation method hardly matters that much compared to the harder problem of finding the bomb.
You're right tho, cell phone jammers have no effectiveness in a terrorist situation, and are likely to cause many more problems than they solve. (Ditto on the drug raid thing, you'd just be offering an incentive for them to change tactics, and inconveniencing a whole lot of innocent people)
But then our reaction to 9/11 has been a boon for people with fundamentally unworkable ideas and frightened ears; and for those who think technology can solve the most fundamental of Operational Intelligence problems, mouth-ear transfer
I could argue your last point, but that's neither here nor there. It does seem that the average technical skill level is increasing, but that's hardly surprising.
snarkth
Yeah, no kidding.
:-)
In related news, Sharp Objects can produce Flesh Wounds... gory film at 11 (on scifi, of course)
snarkth
Note: Do not attempt this while the package is on your lap, even if it is lap-sized. Sharp objects and Mr or Mrs Winky are natural enemies. :-)
snarkth
Well, if you had a rough idea of the line of sight, you could drop a few tons of aluminum chaff. Temporary reprieve, but you may be able to pick up reflections from the pointer and pinpoint it better that way.
Actually the real weakness of such a detonator is weather. You're all set up, line of sight established, and when the time comes to detonate the bomb it's snowing or raining heavily, or it's foggy...
snarkth
No, no, you don't get it.
:-)
See, this is the true beginning of the DeathWatch. Expect more semi-overlapping articles...
w00t
snarkth
Got punched in the face? Analyze the situation, figure out why you got punched in the face and take a-p-r-o-p-r-i-a-t-e action to reduce the chance of it happening again to an acceptable level. Maybe that means killing the guy punching you. Maybe it means using a different swing on the playground. Maybe it just means kicking the guy in the nads. Maybe it means calling your older brother over to intimidate the guy.
;-)
Another option is to apologize for being an asshole and hope your antagonist accepts it
Just pointin' out....
snarkth
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf054/sf054a02.ht m
:-)
Sounded familiar, this was in my bookmarks. There's more thru google.
If the lab is correct, at least some of the stones were indeed poured.
Now if they found the Hoffa of the Priesthood's bones in there as well, I think that'd cement the hypothesis
snarkth
If it it arcs enough it could burn out the magnetron. This is fatal for the microwave and (at least in the old days) could often start one on fire.
Dunno about the more modern ones, I gave up that sort of fun many years ago.
snarkd
Microwaving random objects was much more fun back in the 80s when microwave ovens were expensive ;-)
snarkd
No, and I had to have a background check for my current job, although it may not have been one as thorough as that.
Before I moved, I did have to go and explain to the local PD why, when and where of the move, however, so I imagine that somewhere in the local PD there is a file on me. Not sure I care that much anymore, it's not likely it's still open unless they really have their heads up their jocks.
I haven't had any brushes with the law, no. Unlikely to, unless it's for playing Rush too loud on a weekday night, but the neighbors seem to like it... *grin*
Life goes on.
snarkth
I assumed that burnable trash could be fairly easily shredded, and you push it thru the focus in a small steady stream. One ould have multiple mirrors, of course, perhaps some way (centrifuge?) on the path of seperating burned and unburned bits. Electromagnetic and electrical fields for seperating other things. Yeah, it's an interesting engineering problem, but I wouldn't think it'd be that difficult.
;-)
;-)
What would you need refractory bricks for? You have a solar mirror composed of foil on a form, and the focus is free-floating; just push the trash thru the focus and collect the particles that come out the other side, no need for any enclosure of any sort if you can generate really high temps - and you can, you can build the mirror pretty much as big as you like.
If you really do need to enclose it, reflective foil with lightweight insulation backing (aerogel?) would likely work just fine. Remember, your heat losses to a vacuum environment are much lower than your heat losses to air or thru a massive oven - little material convection, just emr.
We're substituting concentrated sunlight for enclosed heat, here. The mirror comes as a folded foil-and thin-strut package, shouldn't weigh much even for large ones. Then you have some sort of shredding device, which could be solar or hand powered, with a small electric motor or hand drive crank which operates a squirrel cage style fan blade assembly to push your debris down the tube and into the focus. The shredder ought to be relatively uncomplicated, you can freeze-dry your burnables pretty quick just by exposing them to vacuum.
Metallics and synthetics would of course be a bit more of a problem, But since they constitute for the most part reusable materials, you should hang on to them anyway. Put them in tight mesh bags and distribute them around the living quarters for radiation shielding, or something
I haven't done any math yet, but I'd imagine a 10 meter or so diameter mirror could probably provide a 600F-700F six inch wide or so focus point; that ought to incinerate most organics or bulk waste. Note that this is just a guess based off experiments I did with telescope mirrors years ago.
Brainstorming is fun, tho. I'm willing to bet someone smarter than me could design a trash incineration system like this with no moving parts whatsoever
Oh, and eventually trash incineration gets integrated into resource recovery, and becomes but a side effect of your machine shop *grin* except that the only thing you are shredding is documents, as all bulk organics go back into the hydro module...
snarkth
And make sure to press as much air out of it as possible.
snarkth
An oxyacetylene torch works nicely as well. Hard to recover data from little round melted lumps :-)
Not as fast as thermite or a shotgun, but easier to hide in plain sight.
snarkth
A blowtorch doesn't require any power either.
snarkth
but I think that we as a society should throw you a bone to encourage more songs
Outrageous prices for live concert tickets?
s
"Yeah - We will propel a highly explosive cargo ship to the moon carrying people." ... "and bring them back safely to earth"... which was the hardest part.
snarkd
Don't I know it. It was brought up more than once.
Pretty much the only thing I owned at the time that was worth anything was my carpentry tools, maybe a few thousand dollars, and my lawyer pointed out that they were my primary source of income, and unless they were directly connected with any potential charges couldn't be legally seized. Right about there was the turning point wrt to them leaving me alone.
I'm not ashamed to admit that I was scared shitless for quite a long time - I didn't even dare walk down to a bar for a while, for fear that they'd find some way to make my life worse. It was my first direct experience with the abuses I'd read about for years, and I didn't know how to deal with it.
My biggest mistake was in not getting a lawyer right away. I'm sure you understand the irony in that. I sure do. Now.
snark'd
Exactly. The real shit of it is that my name was released as being a part of the initial police report, and they wouldn't publish a retraction, saying that it was "still under investigation", months later, to my face.
;-)
I suspect money played a large part there; the bust was apparently funded by state/federal DEA expansion grants which, of course, they have to use up lest they get less next year. I'll never know for sure, and it was long enough ago and is far enough away now that I don't really care anymore. I just hope that she got her life straightened out, because she was a good woman otherwise. Anyone who can glance at the night sky and identify constellations has a virtually granted pardon in my POV
The "child protection industry" is noted for this sort of abuse of power as well. I'm sure we've all heard those stories.
snark!d
No.
:-)
She was an intelligent woman, raising a (at the time) 14 yo young man who was a boy scout in good standing, and we could talk. She played chess (not well, but she did). We shared interests in the outdoors, in firearms, in fishing, computers, and she was adamant about voting. She was "under the radar" in terms of the internet, and I'm not in the habit of running background searches on my girlfriends. I guess that might be a little old-fashioned for folk like you
She was at least as intelligent as me, and hid her "third life" quite well.
Maybe it was the 10% of "mystery woman" which drew me in, eh? Heh
snark?!D
How can you date a criminal for several months without realizing something is wrong?
Simple. She had the experience to hide it, I didn't have the experience to recognize it. I learned a lesson, and that my point in posting about it. Don't ever think there isn't someone out there smarter than you; and don't assume that they have just one thread in life.
I feel the police owed me an apology - I was unjustly accused and harassed over *very* circumstantial evidence, and it had a significant monetary and personal cost. This was a very small town and I'd lived there for years - I was rather well known, and if they'd bothered to ask around about me, they'd have quickly realized I wasn't a dealer or some sort of speed freak.
I understood their methodology and agreed with it right up until it went too far - and then it went too far for months. They were no longer just chasing connections, they were justifying their salaries.
Your last paragraph... tell me something, why do you think that law enforcement in the US is any different? Much less personal honor here, but it's still as corrupt. Humans are humans, everywhere - it's pretty much the same proportion of assholes to elbow-benders, just the techiques that differ depending on the local opportunities, and still the same proportion of people who are trying to do right. Difference is, we have a lot more money than Brazil, so more incentives to tie knots in the legal system. We're certainly doing a good job of it.
Note to metamods: parent shouldn't be troll, rather +1 interesting
snark;(d
Umm... you investigate them?
And you do this in your enormous amount of spare time, yes?
I'm not generally in the habit of running background searches on my girlfriends, either. It's kinda over the line, know what I mean? Maybe I haven't always had the best judgement when it comes to women, but I tend to regard anyone who claims they do as a liar.
Oh, wait, why am I bothering to ask an idiot?
Dunno. Must be a personality defect. But when the time comes that someone rips *your* heart out by the roots, I'll be standing right behind you, laughing my ass off. Don't think it won't or can't happen; that just makes you a fool in good company.
snark!d