And given that they need to grab it with the shuttle arm, and that it is both long and has wide solar panel arms, they can't safely get the shuttle in close enough if it its spinning. And if the gyros go, its liable to be spinning.
So, citation for the BS comment please, or kindly retract it back up your ass.
Hmm, I suspect it doesn't require the same rotational accuracy as hubble. Also, its an earth observer, so it just points at earth, hubble has to be able to rotate to any part of the sky.
Even if it were possible for hubble to operate in a gyro-less state, its extremely unlikely that it could be converted to one in-situ.
From wikipedia:
In August 2004, O'Keefe requested the Goddard Space Flight Center to prepare a detailed proposal for a robotic service mission. These plans were later canceled, the robotic mission being described as "not feasible".
I'm a bit of a Hubble fanboy, and I'm appauled that its gotten into such a state, so I'm actually quite keen on this upgrade going ahead. I'm the sort that, while I appreciate the necessity of them installing an end-of-life de-orbiter, I'm saddened that it can't be recovered and brought back & stuck in a museum somewhere so that I could go & hug it. Seriously, has any one instrument ever done so much for science?
I say this to demonstrate that I'm not just being antagonistic!
The visible & UV channels of the Advanced Camera for Surveys have been out of operation since january 07, when its backup electronics died.
Hubble was originally intended to operate with 3 functional gyros at all times, but since 2005 has been operating on 2-gyro mode, to extend its useful lifetime in the face of continuing gyro failure. This limits the area of the sky it can view, and makes precise measurements more difficult. Only 3 of its 6 gyros remain functional, and 2 of these are in continual use just maintaining sub-par orientation.
And of course, we all know that the primary command & data handling unit died last year.
All of this information is readily available wikipedia.
So its main camera is broke, it can't point itself properly, the data handling hardware is broke, the batteries are failing, and there's half a dozen less important things that haev also either failed completely (eg the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph) or partially.
That doesn't come under my definition of 'fine'
Eh, no. Its practically dead. Thats why every delay to this service mission is so critical - if another couple of gyros go, it won't even be able to orient itself well enough to allow the astronauts to get up close. As it is, most of its main instruments are currently out of action.
Only... the guns don't seem to be used to get rid of greedy leaders. You wouldn't stand a chance, in all probability. When they are used, they're used against other citizens. Isn't that messed up?
and the signature time-slowing ability doesn't work because it'd be impossible to code
I gotta be fickle here. It would be perfectly possible to code. It would, however, suck to play. Especially for everyone far away from the player using reflex mode.
Unless the author meant that it would be impossible to have players experience different time rates, without going out of sync with other players in the game. And the impossibility of that isn't a coding issue, its simple physics. If it were even possible to accelerate players and their computers up to relativistic speeds and back down again in the timeframe of a few seconds, they'd be turned to mush.
No offense taken, and none intended either; its just such a different world view to by own that I have simply never been able to comprehend the reasoning behind it.
My understanding was that this wasn't to do with war, but internal conflict. Specifically The State vs The People, and Good People vs Criminals. If you'll tolerate the stereotyping, I'm imagining that americans don't all own guns in case the commies show up anymore?
Thomas Jefferson summed these sentiments up nicely,
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
So basically, for americans to be 'free' - they have to have a bloodbath from time to time? This gun stuff always seems really bizarre from a european perspective. These guns are to use against tyranical authorities? So its your constitutional right to own guns, but not to actually shoot anyone... especially not the people in positions of authority that you have the guns to use against in the first place?
I have to disagree, its discovery has no implications whatsoever for non-physicists, apart from potential future technology.
Its non-discovery would excite most phyicists even more than its discovery, as that means that the standard model is wrong, and that there's a lot more theoretical work for physisists to start thinking about. At the moment, we have many very plausable models of the universe, and measurements are needed to help us see which are closer to the truth - measurements of the existance/nonexistance of the Higgs, and its mass(es), for example.
Frankly, I think a more appropriate name would be "the weakest link particle" as it will allow us to leave a variety of erroneous theories behind.
Again, I'd say that the Higgs has no more business being "the God particle" than any other particle; all particles of the standard model are crucial to the functioning of the universe, after all! And if we're going to be giving them more "memorable" names, then why aren't we rolling out "the Devil particle", "the fun particle", "the justice particle" and so on?
Lastly, what if it turns out not to exist? I can picture the tabloid headlines already: "LHC proves that 'God' doesn't exist"
People will appreciate what its about less rather than more so, if such concepts are given completely unfounded connotations to things completely unrelated. Gravitons would make a better 'God' particle anyway...
It was referred jokingly to as "that goddamn particle"... but the relevant newspaper wasn't allowed to print such obscenties. Hence they went with 'God particle' and the nickname stuck, in the media at least.
Please explain what's refreshing about this silly media nickname. Surely you're not going to claim that there's somehow something more divine about the Higgs boson than other force carriers? Not to mention matter, or indeed anything else. Shall we say that God can only be found in the quantum realm, endlessly supporting a mass-creating field, and far too busy to pay even the slightest bit of attention to anything else? That seems rather silly.
Its the force carrier for the mass-providing Higgs field. Its a boson. It was proposed by a guy called Higgs. Higgs boson, anyone?
If this were to happen, civilisation would crumble.
All the money would go to cat & dog homes, and putting problems out of sight & out of mind. No one would every choose to pay for anything that involved digging up roads, for instance, no matter how much money it would save in the long run.
All it does is compare the encoded hash value in the Bittorrent header against a list of known illegal hashes. Hashes you have to program manually.
So in fact, to know whether you're downloading something illegally or not, they'll first have to download EVERY ILLEGAL FILE OUT THERE:O
We've got them!
Slashdot Mirror
Forget the shuttle, why is there an ISS?
Oh, charming.
Ok, firstly here's a citation of the failure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Equipment_failure
And given that they need to grab it with the shuttle arm, and that it is both long and has wide solar panel arms, they can't safely get the shuttle in close enough if it its spinning. And if the gyros go, its liable to be spinning.
So, citation for the BS comment please, or kindly retract it back up your ass.
Hmm, I suspect it doesn't require the same rotational accuracy as hubble. Also, its an earth observer, so it just points at earth, hubble has to be able to rotate to any part of the sky.
Even if it were possible for hubble to operate in a gyro-less state, its extremely unlikely that it could be converted to one in-situ.
They do this (or something very similar) in Italy. All internet access has to have a name attached to it, and a timestamp.
Anti terror legislation, apparently.
Because microwaves are a helluva lot cheaper, will work fine, and don't have "issues" of the sort that we simply can't currently see how to overcome.
From wikipedia:
In August 2004, O'Keefe requested the Goddard Space Flight Center to prepare a detailed proposal for a robotic service mission. These plans were later canceled, the robotic mission being described as "not feasible".
Shame, cos the robot sure did sound cool...
Same difference.
Too difficult = not going to happen
Impossible = not going to happen
=> Too difficult = Impossible
O rly?
I'm a bit of a Hubble fanboy, and I'm appauled that its gotten into such a state, so I'm actually quite keen on this upgrade going ahead.
I'm the sort that, while I appreciate the necessity of them installing an end-of-life de-orbiter, I'm saddened that it can't be recovered and brought back & stuck in a museum somewhere so that I could go & hug it. Seriously, has any one instrument ever done so much for science?
I say this to demonstrate that I'm not just being antagonistic!
The visible & UV channels of the Advanced Camera for Surveys have been out of operation since january 07, when its backup electronics died.
Hubble was originally intended to operate with 3 functional gyros at all times, but since 2005 has been operating on 2-gyro mode, to extend its useful lifetime in the face of continuing gyro failure. This limits the area of the sky it can view, and makes precise measurements more difficult. Only 3 of its 6 gyros remain functional, and 2 of these are in continual use just maintaining sub-par orientation.
And of course, we all know that the primary command & data handling unit died last year.
All of this information is readily available wikipedia.
So its main camera is broke, it can't point itself properly, the data handling hardware is broke, the batteries are failing, and there's half a dozen less important things that haev also either failed completely (eg the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph) or partially.
That doesn't come under my definition of 'fine'
Firstly, Hubble is working fine.
Eh, no. Its practically dead. Thats why every delay to this service mission is so critical - if another couple of gyros go, it won't even be able to orient itself well enough to allow the astronauts to get up close. As it is, most of its main instruments are currently out of action.
Only... the guns don't seem to be used to get rid of greedy leaders. You wouldn't stand a chance, in all probability. When they are used, they're used against other citizens. Isn't that messed up?
Its kinda impossible not to sound glib in saying this:
So you're saying that europeans have moved on, but americans are stuck in the past?
and the signature time-slowing ability doesn't work because it'd be impossible to code
I gotta be fickle here. It would be perfectly possible to code. It would, however, suck to play. Especially for everyone far away from the player using reflex mode.
Unless the author meant that it would be impossible to have players experience different time rates, without going out of sync with other players in the game. And the impossibility of that isn't a coding issue, its simple physics. If it were even possible to accelerate players and their computers up to relativistic speeds and back down again in the timeframe of a few seconds, they'd be turned to mush.
No offense taken, and none intended either; its just such a different world view to by own that I have simply never been able to comprehend the reasoning behind it.
My understanding was that this wasn't to do with war, but internal conflict. Specifically The State vs The People, and Good People vs Criminals. If you'll tolerate the stereotyping, I'm imagining that americans don't all own guns in case the commies show up anymore?
Thomas Jefferson summed these sentiments up nicely,
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
So basically, for americans to be 'free' - they have to have a bloodbath from time to time? This gun stuff always seems really bizarre from a european perspective. These guns are to use against tyranical authorities? So its your constitutional right to own guns, but not to actually shoot anyone... especially not the people in positions of authority that you have the guns to use against in the first place?
the implications its existence poses
I have to disagree, its discovery has no implications whatsoever for non-physicists, apart from potential future technology.
Its non-discovery would excite most phyicists even more than its discovery, as that means that the standard model is wrong, and that there's a lot more theoretical work for physisists to start thinking about. At the moment, we have many very plausable models of the universe, and measurements are needed to help us see which are closer to the truth - measurements of the existance/nonexistance of the Higgs, and its mass(es), for example.
Frankly, I think a more appropriate name would be "the weakest link particle" as it will allow us to leave a variety of erroneous theories behind.
Again, I'd say that the Higgs has no more business being "the God particle" than any other particle; all particles of the standard model are crucial to the functioning of the universe, after all! And if we're going to be giving them more "memorable" names, then why aren't we rolling out "the Devil particle", "the fun particle", "the justice particle" and so on?
Lastly, what if it turns out not to exist? I can picture the tabloid headlines already: "LHC proves that 'God' doesn't exist"
People will appreciate what its about less rather than more so, if such concepts are given completely unfounded connotations to things completely unrelated. Gravitons would make a better 'God' particle anyway...
Seriously though, its not the physicists that keep referring to it as this! Its the media. Physicists really do say "Higgs"
My understanding is that the term "God particle" came about due to a newspaper's unwillingness to publish "goddamn particle"
It was referred jokingly to as "that goddamn particle" ... but the relevant newspaper wasn't allowed to print such obscenties. Hence they went with 'God particle' and the nickname stuck, in the media at least.
Please explain what's refreshing about this silly media nickname. Surely you're not going to claim that there's somehow something more divine about the Higgs boson than other force carriers? Not to mention matter, or indeed anything else.
Shall we say that God can only be found in the quantum realm, endlessly supporting a mass-creating field, and far too busy to pay even the slightest bit of attention to anything else? That seems rather silly.
Its the force carrier for the mass-providing Higgs field. Its a boson. It was proposed by a guy called Higgs. Higgs boson, anyone?
If this were to happen, civilisation would crumble. All the money would go to cat & dog homes, and putting problems out of sight & out of mind. No one would every choose to pay for anything that involved digging up roads, for instance, no matter how much money it would save in the long run.
They don't, so its far easier for them to just assume it was you and crucify you.
All it does is compare the encoded hash value in the Bittorrent header against a list of known illegal hashes. Hashes you have to program manually.
So in fact, to know whether you're downloading something illegally or not, they'll first have to download EVERY ILLEGAL FILE OUT THERE :O
We've got them!
The cable issue isn't about foraging, its about gnawing.
Like other rodents, their teeth grow continually, and they have to gnaw on really tough hard stuff to wear them down.
Cables, for instance.
Rats. Many times bigger: a mouse is smaller than a computer mouse, and even a small species of rat is bigger.
Giant African Pouch Rats are roughly the size of a tomcat.