I dunno, that's a bit of a stretch. New York State is bigger than many people think, and Buffalo's really far west. For comparison, Buffalo is closer to Detriot than it is to NY City, and closer to Cincinnatti than to Boston. Buffalo's an 8 hour drive from NYC, so plan on losing two days if you try to visit Buffalo via the city.
If I had mod points, I'd mod this up.
I am not a spetroscoper--is it even theoriticaly possible that isotope ratios in the methane could be measured remotely?
There's be a couple of easy ways to check (well, easy compared with the effort of getting a sample back from mars): All life on Earth uses nearly identical DNA codes for particular amino acids. If the recovered organisims use a different one, probably not hitchikers. If they use the same one, it would be sort of like finding that your extraterrestial radio transmission was encoded in ASCII. There are many amino acids, and only 22 are generally found in Earthly life. If the organisim makes extensive use of different ones, you're a winner. Going a little deeper, there are proteins and DNA sequences that are nearly universal in terresteral life.
It's just that there's only a few grams of plasma in there. No matter how hot it gets, it will be quenched by the walls. Think putting out a candle with a block of ice: even though the candle is hot enough to melt the ice, the fire still goes out first.
IIRC, the article has it wrong. The problem isn't that solid materials can't contain the plasma, it's that touching the walls would cool and pollute the plasma.
Well, the best example I can think of that combines "secure underground bunker" and "happy place" is the title facility from Dollhouse. Think underground zen spa. Honestly, that space could very easily be modified to be an amazing and impressive control center--it even has the mezzanine monitoring section, but might not suit the Star Trek screen.
I'm not a professional, or even an amateur astronomer, but I think you're right, the region inside the Earth's orbit is less studied. See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcanoid_asteroid. The Messenger Mercury probe spends some of its spare time looking for those, so I assume there's still some legit scientific questions about if they exist or not.
Interestingly, a single hESC wouldn't count as an organism, either... you kind of need a lot of them surrounded by a trophoblast to really be capable of growing into an organism.
Most of the definitions of "organism" a google search turns up include single celled creatures. Some also say something about being able to function independantly, which may be the distinction. Though in that case, I'm not sure why something derrived from stem cells (or a fertilized egg, for that matter, would qualify as an organism either.
For purposes of this section, the term "human embryo or embryos" includes any organism...that is derived by...any other means from...human diploid cells.
(I know I left I lot out, but I don't think I'm distorting the meaning). As far as I can tell, liver cells in a petri dish would count as human embryos under that definition.
Does this give any justification to the "self-destructing" Motorola phones? (http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/10/07/15/1317205.shtml, though later stores say they don't really permanently self-destruct)
Looks like MOT is thinking about this--if you do want a secure phone, seems like hardware verification of ROMs and bootloader are a necessary starting point. That at least gives you a solid foundation to build a security infrastructure on. Now let's see MOT build on this by releasing rootkit detectors and we might actually be seeing a genuine step towards real secure computing.
Fair enough, and didn't mean to imply that IKAROS is not real. But, IKAROS is a technology demonstrator. As far as I can tell, the solar sail is the payload, and it's performance requirements are based around testing the solar sail. I was wondering about the amount of torque this kind of setup produces, and if this technology is a potential alternative to thrusters for bleeding the reaction wheels on future spacecraft.
Neat. Anyone have an order-of-magnitude idea if this could be used for stationkeeping on sats in Earth orbit or for attitude control in deep space missions? Just wondering if it produces enough torque to control a real spacecraft. IIRC, for most spacecraft fuel for attitude control is the limiting factor on mission duration, and I think in some cases (e.g., Kepler) it's the only expendable. Could a spacecraft using this technique have virtually unlimited life? If you're solar powered and don't burn fuel, what limits lifetime-- dust on the solar arrays? Battery degradation?
Generally agree with your post, but I believe there was fairly signifcant bombing of North Korean cities during the war. (Wikipedia says "eighteen of North Korea’s cities were more than 50% destroyed"). Herat 1979 might also count as carpet bombing of a civilian area, and Grozny 1995 almost certanly does.
Nope, the gig ended when the dinner was over. I had no overnight responsibilities. Probably a good thing, otherwise I might still be in China raising somebody else's kid.
I know, weird, right? It was a huge face thing...this poor Chinese girl believed the foreigner when he said he'd marry her, got pregnant, and her family plans this big wedding. The foreigner jets back to where ever he came from, leaving the woman pregnant and the family with a wedding. As I understand it, it would be absolutely unthinkable to cancel the wedding, and almost as bad for the woman to go through with having the child without getting married.
So, the went forward with the wedding, just without the groom. I was hired to pretend that I was the "manager" of the absent groom. I was there telling people how great the groom was, and that he was working on important overseas assignments for our company, and simply couldn't be there. Everyone there probably knew what was really going on, but this solution seemed to save face all around. And I got the best meal I had in two years in China out of the deal...
Does make me wonder if there are similarly farcical things that we do here, but that are somehow invisible to us because we all just accept it as normal.
I lived in China for a few years, and had two of these gigs. Once, I had to pretend I was someone from the midwest interested in investing in a chemical factory somewhere. It got very surreal, because once the conference started, even the people who hired me seemed to forget that I was just playing a role...the extent of the communal illusion was mindboggling. In another one, I had to pretend I was the coworker of some guy who knocked up a Chinese woman, representing him at they're own wedding that he couldn't attend for "business reasons".
Not sure, but I think there are many amino acids, and at least 2 isomers of each, and it's just arbitrary that we happen to use the ones we do. (I've seen the fact that all life on earth uses the same amino acids as an argument that life only origniated here once.)
This is what makes the alien disease/alien predator idea unrealistic--highly unlikley that they'd be able to get all the nutrients they need from our biochemistry.
True enough, but a hostile species is not going to pull into orbit, send down a bunch of landing craft, and run around setting fires. All they have to do is not slow down--a ship 10x the size of the space shuttle, moving at 0.99c, has about the same energy as the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Over interstellar distances, it's a lot easier to sterilize a planet than it is to invade it. Hell, it might even be easier to melt the crust than it is to invade.
I think SF has made us completely forget how far away other stars are. Everything we know about physics says that interstellar distances are fundamental barriers, not just technological ones. I'm almost certain that for the cost of sending a person on a one way trip to another star, you can support many people in roomy, comfortable space habitats. Getting 1kg of mass up to near light speed requires more than 1kg of energy, so even for a civilization with direct mass-energy conversion, it's not economical to ship things interstellar distances in reasonable time.
Of course, you might want to extinguish other species for some reason, or you might want to expand your species with von-newman type probes, or you might have some cultural urge for research/contact. But I don't think 18th century style colonization ever makes sense. Alpha Centuri is just a lot farther away then Portugal.
Don't forget that other nations have internal politics too. The current Russian leadership banks heavly on a "we're making Russia strong again" sort of nationalisim for their support. Showing off something like this is probably as much aimed at their own people as anyone else.
Slashdot Mirror
Maryland is a retail choice state for electricity. BGE does not have a monopoly. In the BGE service area, there are 64 electric service providers to choose from: http://webapp.psc.state.md.us/intranet/supplierinfo/searchsupplier_new.cfm
I dunno, that's a bit of a stretch. New York State is bigger than many people think, and Buffalo's really far west. For comparison, Buffalo is closer to Detriot than it is to NY City, and closer to Cincinnatti than to Boston. Buffalo's an 8 hour drive from NYC, so plan on losing two days if you try to visit Buffalo via the city.
If I had mod points, I'd mod this up.
I am not a spetroscoper--is it even theoriticaly possible that isotope ratios in the methane could be measured remotely?
There's be a couple of easy ways to check (well, easy compared with the effort of getting a sample back from mars): All life on Earth uses nearly identical DNA codes for particular amino acids. If the recovered organisims use a different one, probably not hitchikers. If they use the same one, it would be sort of like finding that your extraterrestial radio transmission was encoded in ASCII. There are many amino acids, and only 22 are generally found in Earthly life. If the organisim makes extensive use of different ones, you're a winner. Going a little deeper, there are proteins and DNA sequences that are nearly universal in terresteral life.
It's just that there's only a few grams of plasma in there. No matter how hot it gets, it will be quenched by the walls. Think putting out a candle with a block of ice: even though the candle is hot enough to melt the ice, the fire still goes out first.
IIRC, the article has it wrong. The problem isn't that solid materials can't contain the plasma, it's that touching the walls would cool and pollute the plasma.
Well, the best example I can think of that combines "secure underground bunker" and "happy place" is the title facility from Dollhouse. Think underground zen spa. Honestly, that space could very easily be modified to be an amazing and impressive control center--it even has the mezzanine monitoring section, but might not suit the Star Trek screen.
I'm not a professional, or even an amateur astronomer, but I think you're right, the region inside the Earth's orbit is less studied. See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcanoid_asteroid. The Messenger Mercury probe spends some of its spare time looking for those, so I assume there's still some legit scientific questions about if they exist or not.
Doesn't it also need to be surrounded by a woman?
Most of the definitions of "organism" a google search turns up include single celled creatures. Some also say something about being able to function independantly, which may be the distinction. Though in that case, I'm not sure why something derrived from stem cells (or a fertilized egg, for that matter, would qualify as an organism either.
(I know I left I lot out, but I don't think I'm distorting the meaning). As far as I can tell, liver cells in a petri dish would count as human embryos under that definition.
I dunno, seems like once you've got antimatter batteries, you can finally extend the time between recharges a bit.
100 watts @50% efficiency x 5 year mission = 8760kWH = 0.25 micrograms antimatter (=7.5 tons TNT, but who's worrying?)
I'd think I'd rather have my phone brick than get rooted, as long as there's some way I can reset it to factory config.
Does this give any justification to the "self-destructing" Motorola phones? (http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/10/07/15/1317205.shtml, though later stores say they don't really permanently self-destruct)
Looks like MOT is thinking about this--if you do want a secure phone, seems like hardware verification of ROMs and bootloader are a necessary starting point. That at least gives you a solid foundation to build a security infrastructure on. Now let's see MOT build on this by releasing rootkit detectors and we might actually be seeing a genuine step towards real secure computing.
Fair enough, and didn't mean to imply that IKAROS is not real. But, IKAROS is a technology demonstrator. As far as I can tell, the solar sail is the payload, and it's performance requirements are based around testing the solar sail. I was wondering about the amount of torque this kind of setup produces, and if this technology is a potential alternative to thrusters for bleeding the reaction wheels on future spacecraft.
Neat. Anyone have an order-of-magnitude idea if this could be used for stationkeeping on sats in Earth orbit or for attitude control in deep space missions? Just wondering if it produces enough torque to control a real spacecraft. IIRC, for most spacecraft fuel for attitude control is the limiting factor on mission duration, and I think in some cases (e.g., Kepler) it's the only expendable. Could a spacecraft using this technique have virtually unlimited life? If you're solar powered and don't burn fuel, what limits lifetime-- dust on the solar arrays? Battery degradation?
Generally agree with your post, but I believe there was fairly signifcant bombing of North Korean cities during the war. (Wikipedia says "eighteen of North Korea’s cities were more than 50% destroyed"). Herat 1979 might also count as carpet bombing of a civilian area, and Grozny 1995 almost certanly does.
Nope, the gig ended when the dinner was over. I had no overnight responsibilities. Probably a good thing, otherwise I might still be in China raising somebody else's kid.
I know, weird, right? It was a huge face thing...this poor Chinese girl believed the foreigner when he said he'd marry her, got pregnant, and her family plans this big wedding. The foreigner jets back to where ever he came from, leaving the woman pregnant and the family with a wedding. As I understand it, it would be absolutely unthinkable to cancel the wedding, and almost as bad for the woman to go through with having the child without getting married.
So, the went forward with the wedding, just without the groom. I was hired to pretend that I was the "manager" of the absent groom. I was there telling people how great the groom was, and that he was working on important overseas assignments for our company, and simply couldn't be there. Everyone there probably knew what was really going on, but this solution seemed to save face all around. And I got the best meal I had in two years in China out of the deal...
Does make me wonder if there are similarly farcical things that we do here, but that are somehow invisible to us because we all just accept it as normal.
I lived in China for a few years, and had two of these gigs. Once, I had to pretend I was someone from the midwest interested in investing in a chemical factory somewhere. It got very surreal, because once the conference started, even the people who hired me seemed to forget that I was just playing a role...the extent of the communal illusion was mindboggling. In another one, I had to pretend I was the coworker of some guy who knocked up a Chinese woman, representing him at they're own wedding that he couldn't attend for "business reasons".
Not sure, but I think there are many amino acids, and at least 2 isomers of each, and it's just arbitrary that we happen to use the ones we do. (I've seen the fact that all life on earth uses the same amino acids as an argument that life only origniated here once.) This is what makes the alien disease/alien predator idea unrealistic--highly unlikley that they'd be able to get all the nutrients they need from our biochemistry.
Unless,of course, they want our women.
True enough, but a hostile species is not going to pull into orbit, send down a bunch of landing craft, and run around setting fires. All they have to do is not slow down--a ship 10x the size of the space shuttle, moving at 0.99c, has about the same energy as the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Over interstellar distances, it's a lot easier to sterilize a planet than it is to invade it. Hell, it might even be easier to melt the crust than it is to invade.
I think SF has made us completely forget how far away other stars are. Everything we know about physics says that interstellar distances are fundamental barriers, not just technological ones. I'm almost certain that for the cost of sending a person on a one way trip to another star, you can support many people in roomy, comfortable space habitats. Getting 1kg of mass up to near light speed requires more than 1kg of energy, so even for a civilization with direct mass-energy conversion, it's not economical to ship things interstellar distances in reasonable time.
Of course, you might want to extinguish other species for some reason, or you might want to expand your species with von-newman type probes, or you might have some cultural urge for research/contact. But I don't think 18th century style colonization ever makes sense. Alpha Centuri is just a lot farther away then Portugal.
Don't forget that other nations have internal politics too. The current Russian leadership banks heavly on a "we're making Russia strong again" sort of nationalisim for their support. Showing off something like this is probably as much aimed at their own people as anyone else.