I'd be extremely interested to see their 'spectra' of the chlorophyll patches. I've worked with broadband astronomical imaging for a few years, and even straight forward accurate photometry can be fraught with subtle systematic effects due to the nature of the camera and the filters. My money is on scattered light from a combination of the sun-camera-rock position causing the measured colours to go skew, or an inorganic mineral with a similiar response curve to chlorophyll.
Of course, I can't go and look at the paper for myself because there is no refereed and accepted paper - releasing it as a press release when the work hasn't been peer-reviewed is just fucking stupid.
My God, how the heck will they get that on TV? The original animation had enough sexual innuendo to give any Conservative American a heart attack. Mind you, it had some excellent quotes:
Why don't you fight without using your faggot clown powers, son? -- Chode
Come on you lipstick wearing felch monkey! -- Chode
Never underestimate the power of a dark clown!! -- Darph Bobo
Yes, the probability of any one system having an edge-on set of orbits for its planets is small. That's why a few groups are monitoring globular clusters with up to 10e6 stars in them, and are also looking toward the bulge of the Galaxy, where you get many stars in a given field of view.
A small probability multiplied by lots of stars all at once = a reasonable chance.
A second selection effect also helps you. All the orbits of the planets in our solar system all lie in a common plane called the ecliptic. It's a result of the conservation of angular momentum.
So the trick is, find a star with transiting hot jupiters, then intensively monitor that system to find the smaller signals of smaller diameter earth-sized planets, as chances are that they will also transit the star's disk!
A small correction - most of the planets have been found by Doppler reflex motion of the parent star, not by the star's parallax. They're two VERY different methods.
Parallax determines the presence of an undetectable massive companion by the sinusoidal proper motion of the star system over a course of a few years. On the ground, you can do this for only a dozen of the closest stars (10 parsecs) or so.
Doppler reflex motion detects the companion by the Doppler shift in spectral lines in the parent star's spectrum as the planet/star orbit about their mutual centre of gravity. You can do this out to 100 parsecs or so.
HD209458 was a candidate from the Butler and Marcy Doppler survey that had a high inclination (edge-on) orbit. Brown and Charbonneau then did photometry to get the transit of the planet across the star's disk. Parallax did not come into it.
Working on the edge of commonly accepted science must be hard on the nerves for these researchers. Exceptional results require exceptional evidence, to mangle a Carl Sagan quote, and they must cut a *very* fine line between caution and excitement when they think they've got a positive detection of some kind of cold fusion result.
If cold fusion is discovered and turned into a viable alternative energy, then good on them and I wish them well. But if it turns out to be experimental error or more conventional phenomenon, well.....it could easily leave them out in the cold when looking for a new job - I hope that they all have more mainstream research that can provide bread and butter on their table.
....are The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C Clarke, and Feersum Endjin by Iain M. Banks. Clarke came up with the ides of geosynchronous satellites, and Banks' book is an excellent hard-SF read.
You'd also have the weird effect that a hundred miles away or so on the ground, the top of the tower would be *clearer* than the base on the ground, as you are looking through a smaller wedge of atmosphere for higher elevation.
The version I worked on had 37 elements instead of 1500, and required the individual alignment of 15 micron diameter optical fibers with individual lenslets in an optical array. It was painstaking work, to say the least, and my hat goes off to the Gemini IFU team for getting their first light for this instrument at long last!
IANAL, but then again ICRGAS(*) about this. Apple are just obeying the law. I hope they can get it sorted out though, as he seems to have contributed a lot to the project.
Ah, but what you are forgetting is that if you look at 90 degrees to the *right* of the covariant space-time metric, the Riemann tensors that describe PhysicsGenius' metric can be seen to trivially allow light from MANY times the event horizon distance to reach your observable cone.
It is a matter of simple algebra and some unique insight to get a recursive solution for Hubble length closed universes.
My only comment is that the repaired plastic would not be optically flat after the repair, and so after a few cracks you'd get optical distortions that would distract you when driving. Possibly another hazard in addition to the safety aspect?
A friend's sister converted to Scientology and she promptly dated a 50 year old bloke - she was 22 at the time. Even ignoring the age difference, the sudden and radical change in her whole personality (from friendly and a good laugh to extremely insular and compulsive neurotic) scared me *a lot*.
She left the cult (whoops, I meant "religion") two years ago and with the support of her family is on the road to recovery. I don't know if her family persuaded her to leave or they did a rescue mission for her.
I don't know what she thinks of Scientology nowadays.
Definitely very creepy fuckers. Best avoided, or failing that, best viewed in a strong critical light. Are they working for your spiritual development, or are they fleecing you for all your money?
This method uses measurements of the rotation rate of the neutron star and the tiny amount by which that rotation slows over time to arrive at an estimate called the pulsar's "characteristic age."
Given that the characteristic age model only takes into account the current rotation period and it's derivative, a factor of two estimate is a pretty good guess to me!
Is there any pulsar astronomer out there in/. who can explain the "characteristic age" estimate?
I have been watching the discover and history channels lately, and one thing that seems to stick out like a sore thumb in science is people finding incredible discoveries, and then shelving them or ignoring them becuase it isn't part of the expierement that was being performed. Then maybe 5, 10 or even 100 years later someone will stumble on to it and change the world.
It could also be that they repeated the experiment many times, subsequently realised that it was a known side-effect that they hadn't taken into account the first time around, and then carried on as normal.
The difference is that the History and Discovery channels rarely do programs on "Incredible discovery of the millenium turns out to be misunderstood version of the photoelectric effect".
Please don't misunderstand me, I'm just as excited about new, interesting and unexplained phonomena too. It's just that the media hypes up the unexplained whilst dismissing it as 'boring' if scientists then find out an explanation using known physics.
> First the possible. A quick, back of a napkin > calculation shows that a supernovae at around 3 > light years would appear roughly as bright as the > sun (depending on the circumstances).
What was your calculation? I'm interested in how you got those numbers. I presume you were comparing visual magnitudes or some such?
IAAPA (I am a professional astronomer), and there are two effects that you may have not considered.
(i) A supernove explosion produces a LOT of high energy radiation compared to the sun in quiescence. This is what can ionise the upper atmosphere in a few seconds and let the remaining radiation down to sea level. This probably increases the distance at which the supernova can do significant harm.
(ii) Star groups move relative to the Sun. I don't do proper motion studies of the local groups, but the ScoCen association may have been closer to the Solar system in the past than it is now.
I apologise if you already took this into account!
The fact that you have a doctorate in anything, but still can't write a proper sentence, says much about the value of college degrees these days.
I apologise for my sloppy sentence construction. And I'll ignore the excessive use of question marks for extra emphasis on your prior posts. "Pot calling the kettle black" springs to my mind....
The fact that you think possessing a doctorate in astronomy makes you qualified to judge a book dealing with physics - and without first gathering pertinent information at that - says a great deal about you.
Most astronomy degrees require a firm grounding in basic physics, so I should add that I took an undergrad degree in Physics and passed with honours. If Dr. Bentov's book requires more than graduate level physics, then it will have a very small target audience indeed.
I have also read through many crank letters sent to our astronomy department over a few years, and this book has all the hallmarks of crankdom to me.
So, I still maintain that I *am* qualified to make a snap judgement on this crank book. However, I'm more than happy to judge this book after reading it. Since you imply you have a copy of the book, I invite you to scan in and post up one of the other chapters. I'm interested in reading it, but not to the point of spending $4 for a returned copy:)
I humbly suggest you read "The Demon Haunted World" by Carl Sagan. It's a refreshing look at pseudoscience and crankdom such as this.
I might point out that Dr. Bentov didn't choose the category Amazon puts his book in, but I would clearly be trying to teach a pig to sing in this case.
So which category do you believe it should be put in? Ficton, maybe?
Of course, you should absolutely judge it with a quick look at reviews from people whose qualifications you know nothing of, rather than actually reading and judging it.
...but since I have a doctorate in astronomy, I think I *can* make that judgement call. Especially when the book is in the "New Age" section of Amazon.
On second thought, don't read the book... you'd never understand it anyway 8^}
You're absolutely right. I'd never understand it. Crank books are rarely any fun to read.
*backs away slowly*
Important note to other slashdot users: note the number of question marks used...
And as far as claiming that they stopped the platform from moving goes, did someone achieve the temperature my name describes and forget to tell me???
Presumably he meant periodic motion and not thermal energy within the platform itself.
Those who want a better understanding of this, and many other secrets of the universe may want to read..... Stalking the Wild Pendulum
Or on the other hand, you may not. A quick look at the reviews and the sampler on Amazon showed me it's a crank's book. Read only if you want pseudoscience and sinister conspiracy theories.
But then... I could be one of the Illuminati trying to DEFLECT YOU FROM THE TRUTH!!!!!!!!!!!!
Slashdot Mirror
Couldn't have put it better myself - please mod the parent up!
-- freelance journalist for Wired, New York Times, Seattle Times, and other earnest publications
Um, I think we've found out why you got good service :)
Dr Fish
I'd be extremely interested to see their 'spectra' of the chlorophyll patches. I've worked with broadband astronomical imaging for a few years, and even straight forward accurate photometry can be fraught with subtle systematic effects due to the nature of the camera and the filters. My money is on scattered light from a combination of the sun-camera-rock position causing the measured colours to go skew, or an inorganic mineral with a similiar response curve to chlorophyll.
Of course, I can't go and look at the paper for myself because there is no refereed and accepted paper - releasing it as a press release when the work hasn't been peer-reviewed is just fucking stupid.
Sloppy. Damn sloppy.
Dr Fish
My God, how the heck will they get that on TV? The original animation had enough sexual innuendo to give any Conservative American a heart attack. Mind you, it had some excellent quotes:
Why don't you fight without using your faggot clown powers, son? -- Chode
Come on you lipstick wearing felch monkey! -- Chode
Never underestimate the power of a dark clown!! -- Darph Bobo
I'm looking forward to it!
Dr Fish
Yes, the probability of any one system having an edge-on set of orbits for its planets is small. That's why a few groups are monitoring globular clusters with up to 10e6 stars in them, and are also looking toward the bulge of the Galaxy, where you get many stars in a given field of view.
A small probability multiplied by lots of stars all at once = a reasonable chance.
A second selection effect also helps you. All the orbits of the planets in our solar system all lie in a common plane called the ecliptic. It's a result of the conservation of angular momentum.
So the trick is, find a star with transiting hot jupiters, then intensively monitor that system to find the smaller signals of smaller diameter earth-sized planets, as chances are that they will also transit the star's disk!
Dr Fish
Parallax determines the presence of an undetectable massive companion by the sinusoidal proper motion of the star system over a course of a few years. On the ground, you can do this for only a dozen of the closest stars (10 parsecs) or so.
Doppler reflex motion detects the companion by the Doppler shift in spectral lines in the parent star's spectrum as the planet/star orbit about their mutual centre of gravity. You can do this out to 100 parsecs or so.
HD209458 was a candidate from the Butler and Marcy Doppler survey that had a high inclination (edge-on) orbit. Brown and Charbonneau then did photometry to get the transit of the planet across the star's disk. Parallax did not come into it.
Dr Fish
Working on the edge of commonly accepted science must be hard on the nerves for these researchers. Exceptional results require exceptional evidence, to mangle a Carl Sagan quote, and they must cut a *very* fine line between caution and excitement when they think they've got a positive detection of some kind of cold fusion result.
If cold fusion is discovered and turned into a viable alternative energy, then good on them and I wish them well. But if it turns out to be experimental error or more conventional phenomenon, well.....it could easily leave them out in the cold when looking for a new job - I hope that they all have more mainstream research that can provide bread and butter on their table.
Dr Fish
Dr Fish
You'd also have the weird effect that a hundred miles away or so on the ground, the top of the tower would be *clearer* than the base on the ground, as you are looking through a smaller wedge of atmosphere for higher elevation.
Dr Fish
This is just a ploy by Nicole to get the remainder of the divorce settlement out of him.
OTOH, this means he could remake "Top Gun" for the NASA astronaut corps.... blech.
....about 6 years ago for my thesis project.
The version I worked on had 37 elements instead of 1500, and required the individual alignment of 15 micron diameter optical fibers with individual lenslets in an optical array. It was painstaking work, to say the least, and my hat goes off to the Gemini IFU team for getting their first light for this instrument at long last!
Dr Fish
IANAL, but then again ICRGAS(*) about this. Apple are just obeying the law. I hope they can get it sorted out though, as he seems to have contributed a lot to the project.
Dr Fish
(*) I Couldn't Really Give A Shit
It is a matter of simple algebra and some unique insight to get a recursive solution for Hubble length closed universes.
For more information, have a look at my earlier post on this thread
A most excellent troll!
Thanks for making me smile, PhysicsGenius!
My only comment is that the repaired plastic would not be optically flat after the repair, and so after a few cracks you'd get optical distortions that would distract you when driving. Possibly another hazard in addition to the safety aspect?
A friend's sister converted to Scientology and she promptly dated a 50 year old bloke - she was 22 at the time. Even ignoring the age difference, the sudden and radical change in her whole personality (from friendly and a good laugh to extremely insular and compulsive neurotic) scared me *a lot*.
She left the cult (whoops, I meant "religion") two years ago and with the support of her family is on the road to recovery. I don't know if her family persuaded her to leave or they did a rescue mission for her.
I don't know what she thinks of Scientology nowadays.
Definitely very creepy fuckers. Best avoided, or failing that, best viewed in a strong critical light. Are they working for your spiritual development, or are they fleecing you for all your money?
Wow, helluva barbeque opportunity missed there...
A zero radial motion means the star is not heading towards us.
Dr Fish
This method uses measurements of the rotation rate of the neutron star and the tiny amount by which that rotation slows over time to arrive at an estimate called the pulsar's "characteristic age."
Given that the characteristic age model only takes into account the current rotation period and it's derivative, a factor of two estimate is a pretty good guess to me!
Is there any pulsar astronomer out there in /. who can explain the "characteristic age" estimate?
Cheers,
Dr Fish
It could also be that they repeated the experiment many times, subsequently realised that it was a known side-effect that they hadn't taken into account the first time around, and then carried on as normal.
The difference is that the History and Discovery channels rarely do programs on "Incredible discovery of the millenium turns out to be misunderstood version of the photoelectric effect".
Please don't misunderstand me, I'm just as excited about new, interesting and unexplained phonomena too. It's just that the media hypes up the unexplained whilst dismissing it as 'boring' if scientists then find out an explanation using known physics.
Dr Fish
Hi there,
> First the possible. A quick, back of a napkin
> calculation shows that a supernovae at around 3
> light years would appear roughly as bright as the
> sun (depending on the circumstances).
What was your calculation? I'm interested in how you got those numbers. I presume you were comparing visual magnitudes or some such?
IAAPA (I am a professional astronomer), and there are two effects that you may have not considered.
(i) A supernove explosion produces a LOT of high energy radiation compared to the sun in quiescence. This is what can ionise the upper atmosphere in a few seconds and let the remaining radiation down to sea level. This probably increases the distance at which the supernova can do significant harm.
(ii) Star groups move relative to the Sun. I don't do proper motion studies of the local groups, but the ScoCen association may have been closer to the Solar system in the past than it is now.
I apologise if you already took this into account!
Dr Fish
NASA is held publicly accountable for their research, but the military (who has n times the NASA budget) has had many more disasters.
Difference is, we don't get to hear about many of the military cock-ups - National Security, and all that.
Research is always going to have a certain fraction of experimental failure in it. It's the nature of the beast.
I apologise for my sloppy sentence construction. And I'll ignore the excessive use of question marks for extra emphasis on your prior posts. "Pot calling the kettle black" springs to my mind....
The fact that you think possessing a doctorate in astronomy makes you qualified to judge a book dealing with physics - and without first gathering pertinent information at that - says a great deal about you.
Most astronomy degrees require a firm grounding in basic physics, so I should add that I took an undergrad degree in Physics and passed with honours. If Dr. Bentov's book requires more than graduate level physics, then it will have a very small target audience indeed.
I have also read through many crank letters sent to our astronomy department over a few years, and this book has all the hallmarks of crankdom to me.
So, I still maintain that I *am* qualified to make a snap judgement on this crank book. However, I'm more than happy to judge this book after reading it. Since you imply you have a copy of the book, I invite you to scan in and post up one of the other chapters. I'm interested in reading it, but not to the point of spending $4 for a returned copy :)
I humbly suggest you read "The Demon Haunted World" by Carl Sagan. It's a refreshing look at pseudoscience and crankdom such as this.
I might point out that Dr. Bentov didn't choose the category Amazon puts his book in, but I would clearly be trying to teach a pig to sing in this case.
So which category do you believe it should be put in? Ficton, maybe?
Ah well, back to my singing lessons then :)
Of course, you should absolutely judge it with a quick look at reviews from people whose qualifications you know nothing of, rather than actually reading and judging it.
... you'd never understand it anyway 8^}
...but since I have a doctorate in astronomy, I think I *can* make that judgement call. Especially when the book is in the "New Age" section of Amazon.
On second thought, don't read the book
You're absolutely right. I'd never understand it. Crank books are rarely any fun to read.
*backs away slowly*
Important note to other slashdot users: note the number of question marks used...
And as far as claiming that they stopped the platform from moving goes, did someone achieve the temperature my name describes and forget to tell me???
..... Stalking the Wild Pendulum
Presumably he meant periodic motion and not thermal energy within the platform itself.
Those who want a better understanding of this, and many other secrets of the universe may want to read
Or on the other hand, you may not. A quick look at the reviews and the sampler on Amazon showed me it's a crank's book. Read only if you want pseudoscience and sinister conspiracy theories.
But then... I could be one of the Illuminati trying to DEFLECT YOU FROM THE TRUTH!!!!!!!!!!!!