Please people, can't you atleast study the basic isses of poverty and starvation based on facts rather than just having strong opinions based on assumptions? The info is on wikipedia, if you can't be bothered to even read wikipedia, you're not entitled to an opinion!
Thats true, but I'm not sure if exomoons are that interesting in that sense.
Since moons tend to have no or very thin atmospheres, finding oxygen on them would be hard, and free oxygen would probably be the best proof of life that we can find on exoplanets with current technology. So even though moons probably are likely places for life, it will be very hard to prove its there.
The IDEEA system comprises a small recorder worn at the waist and five sensors attached to three thin and flexible wires that connect to the recorder. Sensors are attached to the centre of the subject's chest (about 4 cm below the clavicle), the front of each thigh, and the underside of each foot on the outside arch, using porous hypoallergic medical tape. Sensors measure the acceleration and angle of each body segment. I must say, this seems a bit stupid. If you guesstimate how much someone moves like this (or by counting steps or whatever) you will sometimes get strange results, especially with so few participants. Without going into the finer points of biology, let me just say what they should have done:
They should have measured the amount of CO2 produced by the participants. Sure, this means they can't do this study at home and it will cost a lot more to do. But on the plus side, it will be actual, meaningful science that is really undisputable. I know their method is both common and accepted, but I also know that similar systems have created a lot of confusion in the past because the results are not what you'd expect.
No, it cant. Because, as I said, even if ALL our energy came from energy beams, they'd still count for less than 0,01% of the incomming energy to the earth. Completely insignificant, and about 1% of the CO2, CH4, halocarbons, etc (that is, greenhouse gasses that humans take part in producing) in the atmosphere. For this to contribute as much to global warming as burning fossil fuels per unit of energy in our grid, 99% of it needs to be lost to the atmosphere in the beaming.
Also, this energy increase is basically equal to what you'd get from nuclear power. Not even solar power on the ground can give us energy without heating the earth up.
Well, does anyone claim this will improve the learning? I don't know, i thought this was more about making education cheaper in the long run and all the other features as ways of making the children more aware of the world that surrounds them, and in that way being an important part of their education.
The thing is, one CO2 molecule will trap much more energy in the atmosphere over its lifetime there (which can, theoretically be almost forever) than it generated for us when it was burnt.
For a beaming technology to work, it has to have relatively low power loss to the atmosphere, which means that most of the energy given to the atmosphere will actually be just waste heat from our appliances, which is so minimal compared to the total amount of energy the atmosphere gets from the sun that it will not matter.
Ok, maybe I've been a bit confusing here, but to summarize it: Even if ALL of our energy came from a beam like this, it would not have any measurable effect on the earths temperatures. Not directly anyway, chemical reactions happening as a result of the beam is another issue although I don't think that would have any impact either.
Yes, this is one of the biggest issues when it comes to personal transportation. The most efficient way is that everyone has access to several cars, ranging from this tiny car to small trucks. When they want to do something, they pick the one that suits their needs most.
But this is expensive if you don't share the cars in a pool together with other people, but people don't like to do that.
In other words, this is how effective cars look. Sure, you can make the detals a bit more aestethically pleasing, but this "futuristic golf car"-look will generally stick because it gives a perfect mix between performance and efficiency. They do what they were designed for well, and those who desire this mix of performance and efficiency will learn to like this look, because it will symbolize what they desire.
So basically, this is a case of the beuty being in the eye of the beholder. However, I do think this car was unusually ugly, but its over all style was good.
And note how this comes just as ion thrusters are becoming common in space exploration. Dawn was launched just months ago and is propelled by ion thrusters, for example. 200 kW for 40 years is exactly the right order of magnitude that's interesting these days. I'm not sure exactly how much power Dawn uses for thrust, but it can make 10 kW, this would give 20 times more. This might seem like an overkill, but it might be usefull when visiting the outer planets moons, since you can carry enough propellant to go into low orbits of several moons with one craft. Theoretically, you could even have it return for a refuel.
The solar panels of ISS can generate power in the same order of magnitude as this power plant and one can probably assume that a mission to mars would require a similar amount, assuming any propulsion was done the old fashioned way. Probably more though, but since redundancy is always good, 2 or 4 of these might be perfect. For the moon, this obviously would help a lot to survive the lunar night. 200 kW is probably about right here too, and you'd have much to waste on various kinds of machinery.
So I think this was clearly designed for space applications. I wonder how long it would take to get to mars if you strapped one of these and some ion thruters onto ISS... Better than letting it fall into the atmosphere.
You seem to persue perfect solutions too, I must say.
You don't NEED to have a powerplant nearby. Sure, it helps, but with a good grid you can transport electicity great distances. It just costs more.
Your argument sounds a bit like "we need to build a canal here because I dont live close enough to the river". Who's problem is that? I can tell you this, if I ever buy land as an investment, I'll make sure there are many sources of renewable power, good rail access and a nearby port, because that's where humans will live in the future. So as mentioned before, to get power to place where there is none, you can use some fossil fuel or you can transport clean energy there with some loss or you can just move. Fossil fuel is obviously the cheapest, but moving will save you the most money in the long term.
And this would actually have a similar impact to medicine as formula 1 has had for car safety. Drugs would lead to ways to maximize human strength without killing them. Bones would be replaced with titanium/nanomaterials to avoid breaking all the time. Eventually, even the mentality of the athletes would be modified to keep their confidence and mental activity at maximum during events and training.
This in turn would lead to more fulfilling lives for elderly who are weak, people with a whole range of diseases and also people with all sorts of mental disorders.
Of course, there would be rules. For example, a good rule might be that any score or record is deemed invalid if the athlete dies within a month from the event, just to prevent obvious suicide drugs. In formula one, the size of both cars and engines are regulated in great detail, and this might good here too. To keep everything fair. All (male) athletes must be between 175 and 190 cm and perhaps also have a "normal" body mass composition when registering as an athlete so that we don't get any freaks of nature, but pure, regular humans.
Lots of people have died during space missions, especially if you count all those who have died in events surrounding the space missions. In that case, we're up to several hundred.
Finding people willing to go wouldnt be a problem even if the chance of dying was 90%. The problem is finding the RIGHT people. If safety standards are lowered, you'll get more nutcases and people who's brain can't quite judge risks. These are not the kind of people you want to be handling million dollar equipment.
Lastly, space is 100% prestige and publicity these days, so doing science and looking good while doing it are just as important. Ask the russians if they think its cool that they are just as famous for killing rocket scientists in huge fireballs as they are for putting the first man in space. Unlike other screw ups, space disasters tend to be too spectacular to cover up.
This has been the case in the past (in the 80's, this was hardly a "little known fact"), but I'd really like to know if you have any proof for that claim regarding modern solar cells.
Or maybe the people who watch movies in the middle of the week are people who see movies as a kind of art and few movies can really live up to that. While people who watch movies in the weekends simply see them as entertainment and nearly all movies can live up to that.
No, its not following the path of aviation. See, aviation competed with trains and boats, and eventually won. The space industry isn't competing with any other industry. While there are many reasons to go from London to New York, there are few reasons to go from some pacific island to the moon, other than research or publicity.
Now, as long as there are no reasons to go into space, the Free Market is getting nowhere here. All these projects you see are funded on charity. People with too much money pay to do something mostly to keep the industry alive.
Space exploration is actually following the path of polar exploration. Many people got both private and government funding to go to the poles, and some of the succeeded. But very few things except for science came of it, and that was the government funded kind of science.
Sure, some fishermen had semi permanent settlements on the the south pole, but they have mostly been replaced by scientists now. It's possible we'll see mining or oil drilling on the poles, but this hasn't happened yet, partly for legal reasons but also actually for practical reasons. There is some tourism too, but its pretty insignificant, and it will be the same for space. Once the hype fades, interest will drop. After all, a private island in the pacific is nicer than orbit around space.
Don't get me wrong, I think this is exciting too, but don't get too optimistic. Comparing it to aviation doesn't make sense at all. There is no brave new world here, just barren wastelands. Obviously, one day it will become profitable to bring platinum and other really expensive metals back to earth, and at that point the free market will take over, but I'd say that's atleast 100 years away. Deep sea mining will happen long before that, for example.
Well, what do you think it should be then? 100 million? If you have 100 million, I'm sure no one would mind of put that up as a prize as well. If you don't have 100 million, you can only be happy that someone with a lot of money is willing to put it up as a prize, rather than complaining that the prize is too small.
Besides, someone is apparently willing to do this, and that means the reward is good enough.
Well, I've yet to find a windows app that I had to compile myself.
But yeah, as long as the software you need can be installed with apt-get, Ubuntu is much easier than windows. The problems start where apt-get ends, and the problem is that if 9/10 installs go smoothly, the user will only remember the 1/10 that didn't.
Of course, the same could be said for any country. Making sure 100% the population speaks english fluently should be on the agenda for any government. I think that countries that have big language are at a disadvantage here though. There is so much entertainment and decent translations of anything for the spanish language, so why should people learn english? The same is true for german, french, the various forms of chinese, for example.
I think many african countries are in a better position in that way actually. In the old british colonies, english is the official language even though most speakers only learn it as a second language. The incentive to learn english in those countries is very strong. Besides, wages are generally much lower in african countries.
However, I don't really think the language barrier is as important as you portray it. China has shown better growth than India, and some african countries do not really grow at all even though they have populations more or less fluent in english. Infrastructure and politics is what matters.
And to bring this back to topic, I hope that Infrastrucutre and politics is what these computers might give to the children. Hopefully, it will be more profitable to trade ideas through wifi than goods on roads, and hopefully democracy becomes more powerful when ideas spread more easily.
I don't, but mostly because I've had an AGP-computer for the last few years.
But now with my new system, I do intend to upgrade graphics card every 2 year or so. I won't get the latest and greatest though, thats usually not worth it. Its often just factory overclocked cards anyways.
But the problem is that we get more and more screens to look at all the time. Our eyes get all the input, but that means the rest of our senses are just sitting around, basically, which is a waste.
Its the same with aircraft controls, that have been debated for many years. There are many advantages to making them all electronic, but the problem is that electronics tend to only give information to the user through lights and sounds. Mechanical operation on the other hand gives feel to the controls, which gives the pilot further information.
Its basically a good thing if designers stop every now and then and ponder "hey, is this information really best delivered through a screen or a sound, or would it be more convenient with shake or vibration". Obviously, this has already happened for cellphones many years ago, but it can be taken much further.
The real revolution comes when we start wearing gloves that through electrical impulses tickle in hundreds of different ways, but are easily recognized by the brain since it was designed to read input from the hands. Or keyboards that sting a little when you make a possible typo, or mouses that basically allows webpages to have "surfaces" that feel different when you hover over them... The possibilities are endless.
Well, to be honest, there IS a third option, though it requires a really massive comet to have any measurable effect: Gravitational slingshot. Not at all as effective as just using planets, but I suppose if we ever wanted to send a probe to the north or south of our planetary system, this could be an option.
Well, I'll tell you something. Most criminals suck at judging risks. They simply tend to forget that robbing a bank is very likely to put them in jail. On the other hand, some people are afraid of speeding even though they're driving on a road that is extremely unlikely to be patrolled by cops. My point is that different people have completely views on risks and I think it's extremely rare that people actually back up their actions with maths and statistics, instead its all about emotions.
I think its good that these competitions are popping up. Those who like risks get a chance to make an honest living instead of opting for gambling or crime. If you don't wanna play, that's fine.
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Europe is a net exporter of food.
Please people, can't you atleast study the basic isses of poverty and starvation based on facts rather than just having strong opinions based on assumptions? The info is on wikipedia, if you can't be bothered to even read wikipedia, you're not entitled to an opinion!
Thats true, but I'm not sure if exomoons are that interesting in that sense.
Since moons tend to have no or very thin atmospheres, finding oxygen on them would be hard, and free oxygen would probably be the best proof of life that we can find on exoplanets with current technology. So even though moons probably are likely places for life, it will be very hard to prove its there.
They should have measured the amount of CO2 produced by the participants. Sure, this means they can't do this study at home and it will cost a lot more to do. But on the plus side, it will be actual, meaningful science that is really undisputable. I know their method is both common and accepted, but I also know that similar systems have created a lot of confusion in the past because the results are not what you'd expect.
No, it cant. Because, as I said, even if ALL our energy came from energy beams, they'd still count for less than 0,01% of the incomming energy to the earth. Completely insignificant, and about 1% of the CO2, CH4, halocarbons, etc (that is, greenhouse gasses that humans take part in producing) in the atmosphere. For this to contribute as much to global warming as burning fossil fuels per unit of energy in our grid, 99% of it needs to be lost to the atmosphere in the beaming.
Also, this energy increase is basically equal to what you'd get from nuclear power. Not even solar power on the ground can give us energy without heating the earth up.
Well, does anyone claim this will improve the learning? I don't know, i thought this was more about making education cheaper in the long run and all the other features as ways of making the children more aware of the world that surrounds them, and in that way being an important part of their education.
Actually, your bio teacher was stupid.
The thing is, one CO2 molecule will trap much more energy in the atmosphere over its lifetime there (which can, theoretically be almost forever) than it generated for us when it was burnt.
For a beaming technology to work, it has to have relatively low power loss to the atmosphere, which means that most of the energy given to the atmosphere will actually be just waste heat from our appliances, which is so minimal compared to the total amount of energy the atmosphere gets from the sun that it will not matter.
Ok, maybe I've been a bit confusing here, but to summarize it: Even if ALL of our energy came from a beam like this, it would not have any measurable effect on the earths temperatures. Not directly anyway, chemical reactions happening as a result of the beam is another issue although I don't think that would have any impact either.
Yes, this is one of the biggest issues when it comes to personal transportation. The most efficient way is that everyone has access to several cars, ranging from this tiny car to small trucks. When they want to do something, they pick the one that suits their needs most.
But this is expensive if you don't share the cars in a pool together with other people, but people don't like to do that.
When american culture stops idealizing the 60's.
In other words, this is how effective cars look. Sure, you can make the detals a bit more aestethically pleasing, but this "futuristic golf car"-look will generally stick because it gives a perfect mix between performance and efficiency. They do what they were designed for well, and those who desire this mix of performance and efficiency will learn to like this look, because it will symbolize what they desire.
So basically, this is a case of the beuty being in the eye of the beholder. However, I do think this car was unusually ugly, but its over all style was good.
And note how this comes just as ion thrusters are becoming common in space exploration. Dawn was launched just months ago and is propelled by ion thrusters, for example. 200 kW for 40 years is exactly the right order of magnitude that's interesting these days. I'm not sure exactly how much power Dawn uses for thrust, but it can make 10 kW, this would give 20 times more. This might seem like an overkill, but it might be usefull when visiting the outer planets moons, since you can carry enough propellant to go into low orbits of several moons with one craft. Theoretically, you could even have it return for a refuel.
The solar panels of ISS can generate power in the same order of magnitude as this power plant and one can probably assume that a mission to mars would require a similar amount, assuming any propulsion was done the old fashioned way. Probably more though, but since redundancy is always good, 2 or 4 of these might be perfect. For the moon, this obviously would help a lot to survive the lunar night. 200 kW is probably about right here too, and you'd have much to waste on various kinds of machinery.
So I think this was clearly designed for space applications. I wonder how long it would take to get to mars if you strapped one of these and some ion thruters onto ISS... Better than letting it fall into the atmosphere.
You seem to persue perfect solutions too, I must say.
You don't NEED to have a powerplant nearby. Sure, it helps, but with a good grid you can transport electicity great distances. It just costs more.
Your argument sounds a bit like "we need to build a canal here because I dont live close enough to the river". Who's problem is that? I can tell you this, if I ever buy land as an investment, I'll make sure there are many sources of renewable power, good rail access and a nearby port, because that's where humans will live in the future. So as mentioned before, to get power to place where there is none, you can use some fossil fuel or you can transport clean energy there with some loss or you can just move. Fossil fuel is obviously the cheapest, but moving will save you the most money in the long term.
And this would actually have a similar impact to medicine as formula 1 has had for car safety. Drugs would lead to ways to maximize human strength without killing them. Bones would be replaced with titanium/nanomaterials to avoid breaking all the time. Eventually, even the mentality of the athletes would be modified to keep their confidence and mental activity at maximum during events and training.
This in turn would lead to more fulfilling lives for elderly who are weak, people with a whole range of diseases and also people with all sorts of mental disorders.
Of course, there would be rules. For example, a good rule might be that any score or record is deemed invalid if the athlete dies within a month from the event, just to prevent obvious suicide drugs. In formula one, the size of both cars and engines are regulated in great detail, and this might good here too. To keep everything fair. All (male) athletes must be between 175 and 190 cm and perhaps also have a "normal" body mass composition when registering as an athlete so that we don't get any freaks of nature, but pure, regular humans.
Lots of people have died during space missions, especially if you count all those who have died in events surrounding the space missions. In that case, we're up to several hundred.
Finding people willing to go wouldnt be a problem even if the chance of dying was 90%. The problem is finding the RIGHT people. If safety standards are lowered, you'll get more nutcases and people who's brain can't quite judge risks. These are not the kind of people you want to be handling million dollar equipment.
Lastly, space is 100% prestige and publicity these days, so doing science and looking good while doing it are just as important. Ask the russians if they think its cool that they are just as famous for killing rocket scientists in huge fireballs as they are for putting the first man in space. Unlike other screw ups, space disasters tend to be too spectacular to cover up.
Well, we have a few hundred years to figure it out, we're not gonna lack uranium for quite a while.
[citation needed]
This has been the case in the past (in the 80's, this was hardly a "little known fact"), but I'd really like to know if you have any proof for that claim regarding modern solar cells.
Or maybe the people who watch movies in the middle of the week are people who see movies as a kind of art and few movies can really live up to that. While people who watch movies in the weekends simply see them as entertainment and nearly all movies can live up to that.
No, its not following the path of aviation. See, aviation competed with trains and boats, and eventually won. The space industry isn't competing with any other industry. While there are many reasons to go from London to New York, there are few reasons to go from some pacific island to the moon, other than research or publicity.
Now, as long as there are no reasons to go into space, the Free Market is getting nowhere here. All these projects you see are funded on charity. People with too much money pay to do something mostly to keep the industry alive.
Space exploration is actually following the path of polar exploration. Many people got both private and government funding to go to the poles, and some of the succeeded. But very few things except for science came of it, and that was the government funded kind of science.
Sure, some fishermen had semi permanent settlements on the the south pole, but they have mostly been replaced by scientists now. It's possible we'll see mining or oil drilling on the poles, but this hasn't happened yet, partly for legal reasons but also actually for practical reasons. There is some tourism too, but its pretty insignificant, and it will be the same for space. Once the hype fades, interest will drop. After all, a private island in the pacific is nicer than orbit around space.
Don't get me wrong, I think this is exciting too, but don't get too optimistic. Comparing it to aviation doesn't make sense at all. There is no brave new world here, just barren wastelands. Obviously, one day it will become profitable to bring platinum and other really expensive metals back to earth, and at that point the free market will take over, but I'd say that's atleast 100 years away. Deep sea mining will happen long before that, for example.
Well, what do you think it should be then? 100 million? If you have 100 million, I'm sure no one would mind of put that up as a prize as well. If you don't have 100 million, you can only be happy that someone with a lot of money is willing to put it up as a prize, rather than complaining that the prize is too small.
Besides, someone is apparently willing to do this, and that means the reward is good enough.
Yes, an intersting article by David Brooks. But what was your point?
Well, I've yet to find a windows app that I had to compile myself.
But yeah, as long as the software you need can be installed with apt-get, Ubuntu is much easier than windows. The problems start where apt-get ends, and the problem is that if 9/10 installs go smoothly, the user will only remember the 1/10 that didn't.
Of course, the same could be said for any country. Making sure 100% the population speaks english fluently should be on the agenda for any government. I think that countries that have big language are at a disadvantage here though. There is so much entertainment and decent translations of anything for the spanish language, so why should people learn english? The same is true for german, french, the various forms of chinese, for example.
I think many african countries are in a better position in that way actually. In the old british colonies, english is the official language even though most speakers only learn it as a second language. The incentive to learn english in those countries is very strong. Besides, wages are generally much lower in african countries.
However, I don't really think the language barrier is as important as you portray it. China has shown better growth than India, and some african countries do not really grow at all even though they have populations more or less fluent in english. Infrastructure and politics is what matters.
And to bring this back to topic, I hope that Infrastrucutre and politics is what these computers might give to the children. Hopefully, it will be more profitable to trade ideas through wifi than goods on roads, and hopefully democracy becomes more powerful when ideas spread more easily.
I don't, but mostly because I've had an AGP-computer for the last few years.
But now with my new system, I do intend to upgrade graphics card every 2 year or so. I won't get the latest and greatest though, thats usually not worth it. Its often just factory overclocked cards anyways.
But the problem is that we get more and more screens to look at all the time. Our eyes get all the input, but that means the rest of our senses are just sitting around, basically, which is a waste.
Its the same with aircraft controls, that have been debated for many years. There are many advantages to making them all electronic, but the problem is that electronics tend to only give information to the user through lights and sounds. Mechanical operation on the other hand gives feel to the controls, which gives the pilot further information.
Its basically a good thing if designers stop every now and then and ponder "hey, is this information really best delivered through a screen or a sound, or would it be more convenient with shake or vibration". Obviously, this has already happened for cellphones many years ago, but it can be taken much further.
The real revolution comes when we start wearing gloves that through electrical impulses tickle in hundreds of different ways, but are easily recognized by the brain since it was designed to read input from the hands. Or keyboards that sting a little when you make a possible typo, or mouses that basically allows webpages to have "surfaces" that feel different when you hover over them... The possibilities are endless.
Is that you, Cameron?
Well, to be honest, there IS a third option, though it requires a really massive comet to have any measurable effect: Gravitational slingshot. Not at all as effective as just using planets, but I suppose if we ever wanted to send a probe to the north or south of our planetary system, this could be an option.
Well, I'll tell you something. Most criminals suck at judging risks. They simply tend to forget that robbing a bank is very likely to put them in jail. On the other hand, some people are afraid of speeding even though they're driving on a road that is extremely unlikely to be patrolled by cops. My point is that different people have completely views on risks and I think it's extremely rare that people actually back up their actions with maths and statistics, instead its all about emotions.
I think its good that these competitions are popping up. Those who like risks get a chance to make an honest living instead of opting for gambling or crime. If you don't wanna play, that's fine.