Ah, that's what NSFW means... I got to remember that so that I don't click on the link next time.
Thank God it didn't load because of being slashdotted...
I got the printer (well, access to one...), but I don't have a room with more than 70m of wall. That's if you want to print it 250cm wide. But somehow I doubt the operator will want to print it for me...
Sticking it to a wall is the next challenge...
There is no size constraint on planets other that it has to be spherical, which requires a certain size. It doesn't say there can't be objects out there in the solar system that are of similar size or larger than planets! Otherwise Mercury had to be demoted as well (there are moons larger than Mercury).
The definition is: "A celestial body that is (a) in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit." (From Wikipedia)
And before you start on "cleared the neighbourhoud", please also read the explanation, before starting your ill informed rant again.
Personally, I'd have changed the classification to a more logical Major/Dwarf/Minor Planets system. Major would require the same conditions as planets do now, Dwarf would drop the 3rd condition but should be spherical and everything else orbiting the Sun is Minor (with further sub-classes).
As for diseases, there is no earthly disease that kills 100% of its victims, (because such a disease would then itself become extinct).
Rabies comes pretty close. Lucky for us it isn't very contagious (not through air/aerosols) and there are vaccins.
A virus can easily kill 100% of it's victims and survive because for most viruses the victims are not the carriers. For example plague is pretty good at killing humans but doesn't seem to eradicate rat populations...
The article claims the boy did calculations using observations of one optical telescope and accounting for the influence of Sun, Earth and Moon. The JPL calculations however take into account 731 optical, 2 radar delay and 5 doppler observations. Without the radar observations NASA was unable to rule out a 2029 impact. Furthermore, JPL takes into account perturbations of: Sun, Earth, Moon, every other planet and for asteroids like Aphophis even other asteroids are taken into account. There is just no way the kid could have gotten a more reliable result.
The large majority of satellites is in LEO, which is too low or in or near the geostationary belt, which it will not cross. The chances it will hit one of the rare objects in the nearly empty stretch of space it will pass through are probably much lower than 1/45000...
I doubt NASA said anything else than: "Right, we didn't take into account that it might hit a satellite (because it is very very unlikely that it would)".
This is an image/video of the solar chromosphere, and as far I can judge not a full disc image. There is no sign of the typical distortion you get at the edge of the visible half.
In addition to that it is a magnetogram, not a visible light photograph. Shades of white to black visualize the magnetic fields present on the surface of the sun. Depicting stars in a magnetogram is just silly...
There is no instrument on this planet that can detect light (maybe neutrinos) that comes through that part of the Sun. As I said, you can detect stars through the corona. Doing so in one exposure and getting surface details is very impractical due to the ridiculous brightness difference. You don't get even close with a 16-bit sensor and blooming, diffraction, scatter will probably still ruin you day. Even SOHO's coronographs don't image closer than 1.3 solar radii because of such problems.
Your complaint is like getting evidence for alien life and complaining there's no flying saucer in the image, for eductional purposes...
And finally, our eyes are actually pretty damn good at seeing faint things next to bright objects. If you ever handled a camera you would realise that the shadows are always to dark and the highlights burned out. Taking this to the extreme and expecting an instrument to capture details on the chromosphere and stars in the space around it is just ridiculous (if you got a counterexample, please show me). The biggest issue to see stars next to the sun is our atmosphere, not the eyes.
and some of the stars beyond shining through Have you ever looked at the Sun?? It's millions of times brigther than the brightest star. Except for the corona the sun isn't translucent. And when you are imaging the surface the corona will be very very dark and stars near the Sun too dim to detect... That's why they have coronagraphs.
I agree that they could have cleaned it up a bit for the public. But making it totally unrealistic is doing no service at all to science or the public.
But they tend to forget that collisions with cosmic rays with energies millions of times higher than can be achieved with the LHC occure almost constantly in our atmosphere, the moon and all other planets in our solar system since it's creation. Yet there's not a single black hole in the solar system...
Indeed, try to get underground and see one of the detectors and the accelerator itself. These will be locked down and not opened for public soon after the Open Day. Unline LEP which was still accessible during periods of inactivity. I gathered this was due to radiation induced by the bombardment of high energy particles.
You should be able to visit the above ground parts later on. Prepare yourself with some basic knowledge about particle physics, the LHC and CERN so you don't have to waste time with that then!
I had the luck to visit CERN last Saturday. We got a very interesting and educational lecture. Then a tour through the permanent exhibition, which is pretty cool with scale models of the detectors and some legacy detectors. The cream on the cake however was going down to CMS. First you get to see the simply huge assembly hall with some equally huge hardware (the crane to lift the 2000+ ton CMS parts down is already dissambled but still on site) and a little exhibition about the technology of the CMS. Finally you go down to the one of the great cathedrals of modern science. While not as big as ATLAS it is still HUGE: the size and complexity are baffling. The associated facilities (cryogenics, computer centre, BIG helium tanks,....) are impressive as well.
If you manage to go: Enjoy If you don't: Try harder...
PS. If you want to take pictures, I recommend to bring a tripod along. A flash is simply unable to help you in that cavern... PPS. If you played Half Life too much, like me, you can get some flash backs...
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, that's what NSFW means... I got to remember that so that I don't click on the link next time. Thank God it didn't load because of being slashdotted...
I got the printer (well, access to one...), but I don't have a room with more than 70m of wall. That's if you want to print it 250cm wide. But somehow I doubt the operator will want to print it for me... Sticking it to a wall is the next challenge...
There is no size constraint on planets other that it has to be spherical, which requires a certain size. It doesn't say there can't be objects out there in the solar system that are of similar size or larger than planets! Otherwise Mercury had to be demoted as well (there are moons larger than Mercury).
The definition is: "A celestial body that is (a) in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit." (From Wikipedia)
And before you start on "cleared the neighbourhoud", please also read the explanation, before starting your ill informed rant again.
Personally, I'd have changed the classification to a more logical Major/Dwarf/Minor Planets system. Major would require the same conditions as planets do now, Dwarf would drop the 3rd condition but should be spherical and everything else orbiting the Sun is Minor (with further sub-classes).
Rabies comes pretty close. Lucky for us it isn't very contagious (not through air/aerosols) and there are vaccins.
A virus can easily kill 100% of it's victims and survive because for most viruses the victims are not the carriers. For example plague is pretty good at killing humans but doesn't seem to eradicate rat populations...
Or they could have appealed to the Neon Genesis Evangelion fanboys and called it MAGI and named the cores Melchior, Balthasar and Casper.
That would make more sense...
The article claims the boy did calculations using observations of one optical telescope and accounting for the influence of Sun, Earth and Moon. The JPL calculations however take into account 731 optical, 2 radar delay and 5 doppler observations. Without the radar observations NASA was unable to rule out a 2029 impact. Furthermore, JPL takes into account perturbations of: Sun, Earth, Moon, every other planet and for asteroids like Aphophis even other asteroids are taken into account. There is just no way the kid could have gotten a more reliable result.
The large majority of satellites is in LEO, which is too low or in or near the geostationary belt, which it will not cross. The chances it will hit one of the rare objects in the nearly empty stretch of space it will pass through are probably much lower than 1/45000...
I doubt NASA said anything else than: "Right, we didn't take into account that it might hit a satellite (because it is very very unlikely that it would)".
This is an image/video of the solar chromosphere, and as far I can judge not a full disc image. There is no sign of the typical distortion you get at the edge of the visible half.
In addition to that it is a magnetogram, not a visible light photograph. Shades of white to black visualize the magnetic fields present on the surface of the sun. Depicting stars in a magnetogram is just silly...
There is no instrument on this planet that can detect light (maybe neutrinos) that comes through that part of the Sun. As I said, you can detect stars through the corona. Doing so in one exposure and getting surface details is very impractical due to the ridiculous brightness difference. You don't get even close with a 16-bit sensor and blooming, diffraction, scatter will probably still ruin you day. Even SOHO's coronographs don't image closer than 1.3 solar radii because of such problems.
Your complaint is like getting evidence for alien life and complaining there's no flying saucer in the image, for eductional purposes...
And finally, our eyes are actually pretty damn good at seeing faint things next to bright objects. If you ever handled a camera you would realise that the shadows are always to dark and the highlights burned out. Taking this to the extreme and expecting an instrument to capture details on the chromosphere and stars in the space around it is just ridiculous (if you got a counterexample, please show me). The biggest issue to see stars next to the sun is our atmosphere, not the eyes.
But they tend to forget that collisions with cosmic rays with energies millions of times higher than can be achieved with the LHC occure almost constantly in our atmosphere, the moon and all other planets in our solar system since it's creation. Yet there's not a single black hole in the solar system...
Indeed, try to get underground and see one of the detectors and the accelerator itself. These will be locked down and not opened for public soon after the Open Day. Unline LEP which was still accessible during periods of inactivity. I gathered this was due to radiation induced by the bombardment of high energy particles.
....) are impressive as well.
You should be able to visit the above ground parts later on. Prepare yourself with some basic knowledge about particle physics, the LHC and CERN so you don't have to waste time with that then!
I had the luck to visit CERN last Saturday. We got a very interesting and educational lecture. Then a tour through the permanent exhibition, which is pretty cool with scale models of the detectors and some legacy detectors. The cream on the cake however was going down to CMS. First you get to see the simply huge assembly hall with some equally huge hardware (the crane to lift the 2000+ ton CMS parts down is already dissambled but still on site) and a little exhibition about the technology of the CMS. Finally you go down to the one of the great cathedrals of modern science. While not as big as ATLAS it is still HUGE: the size and complexity are baffling. The associated facilities (cryogenics, computer centre, BIG helium tanks,
If you manage to go: Enjoy
If you don't: Try harder...
PS. If you want to take pictures, I recommend to bring a tripod along. A flash is simply unable to help you in that cavern...
PPS. If you played Half Life too much, like me, you can get some flash backs...