that article in forbes seems to have more real info than the company site itself. but they still dont mention the frequency the lasers use. they dont say anything about beam width etc. the guy who did the interview with forbes says he used "special glasses" to view the beam, which almost certainly means theyre using infrared which therefore means water (eyes for example) is going to appear opaque to the beam. now if the beam power is going to be continually adjusted for atmospheric conditions (btw. what about heavy snow?) im guessing its going to have to be fairly intense at times. i dont know if i trust their cheery "it's even safe to look in the beam" propaganda. they could've at least given the laser CDRH/ANSI classification somewhere on the site.
"wouldn't the liquid be under really, really high pressure at those temperatures anyway?"
uhm....what temperatures?
"Or is it a difference of really really high vs. a couple orders of magnitude higher really really high?"
uhm...... heheh.... huh?:o\ liquid nitrogen is 'ok' at it's boiling point (77K) at ambient pressure (1 atmo.). it dosent 'need' to be actively refrigerated. but if it isnt it will slowly evaporate away.
"As for storage, it doesn't require any energy to store; you just stick it in a container when it's cold, cap it really tight, and it stays liquid because it can't expand into a gas."
hey be sure to call me when you do this and half your house is blown thru the roof because your dewar explodes. it will ALWAYS vaporize because there is no such thing as a perfect dewar and because the critical temperature of LN2 is waaayy below room temp.:]
this is just plain false/stupid. refer to here. there is no reason to keep high pressures in liquid nitrogen dewars. there is however sometimes a low pressure (>10-15 psi) kept on the liquid to facilitate easy vertical extration from a cylinder.(its own pressure caused by evaporation is used to push it up/thru tubes.
false. nitrogen boils at 77K at 1 atm. it will not liquify at room temperature simply by being compressed(ie. like propane can be). its called the critical temperature(for Nitrogen it's like 126 Kelvin[-233F] at 33 atmospheres). below which, you cannot liquify a gas no matter what the pressure is increased to.
that makes no sense at all. clearly the joke's humor lies in the fact that ralph dosen't understand grammar even when he's talking about his english grade. using "un" instead of "im" in "impossible" is funny because it points out the non-uniform use of prefixes in english. OMpossible makes no sense at all. besides, even the SNPP says it's "unpossible" http://www.snpp.com/episodes/2F05.html.
last month NASA uploaded a second batch of software upgrades to Cassini [ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/status/cas/cs000802.html ] providing more precise attitude controll using Cassini's gyroscopes instead of just firing thrusters.
the new sofware will allow steadier pointing of imagers during capture etc. and therefore sharper pictures to be taken by the probe. uploading the last of the software upgrades will be completed in just over two weeks.
In December of 1999 astronomers in Britain announced they directly observed the extrasolar planet of Tau Bootis by analyzing what is thought to be starlight reflected from the surface of the planet(with a 1/20 chance of error). this was the first time ever for such an observation. now considering some facts about the tau bootis system, the Epsilon Eridani system should be FANTASTIC for this kind of spectroscopic analysis (ie. we might be able to see what it's atmosphere is made of right now!).
tau bootis is 51 light years away from earth (roughly 5 times the distance of Epsilon Eridani, the star in question for this article) and it's planet orbits the star at an average distance of 20 times closer than earth from our sun (not a good situation for the resolving power of hubble, for instance, yet they were still able to extract the reflected surface light of the planet from the light of the star using a doppler shift trick) while the planet orbiting Epsilon Eridani is at a distance of about 3 times the radius of earths orbit about the sun (much better for the resolving power of current telescopes). IANAA (astrophysicist) but couldnt we use hubble or keck right NOW to do these observations and for the first time study the atmospheric contents of extrasolar planets?
the scientific community too; when he ran an article: http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/FredMoody/ moody990914.html about how the new relativisiic heavy ion collider expirements at brookhaven. apparently he thought they were going to accidentally create a black hole that would destroy the world(completely unaware of the fact that collisions of comparable energy occur in the upper atmosphere every day, and we still exist). so he wrote an idiotic little scare column about 'evil scientists'. after recieving a huge amount of email from scientists who work in the field, informing him of how much of a moron he is, he wrote another 'oh poor me' column a few weeks later. now he's doing it again with linux! good job fred, you did it again! and now your burning at the stake will come from the tech. community.:] enjoy!
or even better, IMO, the Casino-21 Climate Simulation Project.(once it gets underway of course.) Useful data would result, interesting question to be worked on, scientific; what more could you ask for in a distributed computing project?
are the voyager probes outside the solar system yet? they haven't passed the heliopause yet. which i thought was the boundary between interstellar space and the solar system.....or is the boundary simply the radius to the aphelion of pluto?
you say that: "Point being, drugs may be bad for your brain. I don't think many people will disagree." i do disagree. though, you seem smart enough to know that almost nothing is either totally 'bad' or totally 'good'(in other words, not everything is as black and white as people would like to believe[even sXe-er's]). keep in mind that drugs are simply chemical compunds. for example take a person who suffers from schitzophrenia, to them, the DRUG clozapine may be nessiscary for normal everyday functioning. so i wouldnt say that just because a chemical compund has an effect on the human nervous system, it is automatically "bad for your brain". also you say that you use alcohol and that: "I don't like either drug users, or alcohol abusers, particularly, but freedom is not about liking people" is all illegal drug use automatically "abuse"? but wait....isn't ethanol a drug...? why the double standard?
you mentioned that: "Different gasses that burned in different colors would be used in different tubes, the effect was as much visual as musical, and the colors were said to be quite vivid." do you have any information on what type of gasses? i thought the only 2 colors you could get from burning gas hydrocarbons was blue(stoichiometricly ballanced-plenty of oaxygen) and orange/yellow(O2 starved burn) from the resultant tiny incandescent carbon chunks. did they mix in noble gasses with low ionization energies....maybe?
yes, it's interesting that noone else has mentioned this as an option. the only problem i can see with it, is that the spacecraft would have a faster velocity because of it's lower orbit and may preclude the continuation of imagery science on board b/c of the exposure times needed(blurring)? someone mod the above post up so it gets more attention. why CAN'T we do this.
for the hundred millionth time. SILICONE IS NOT THE SAME AS SILICON!!! siliCON is an element with 14 Protons http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/te xt/key/Si.html. siliCONE is a large molecule (polymer) of a repeating Si-O backbone surrounded by methyl groups. http://www.silicones.net/silesson/ damn that joke is so tired anyway.
it is not a 'bomb'. liquid hydrogen peroxide will not detonate. and it will not decompose into water and oxygen unless it comes in contact with a catalyst (the silver in this case). or unless it is heated. it's less dangerous than liquid propane actually.... no one gives that a second thought when it's used in hot air ballons.
Alan Turing did not kill himself simply "because he was gay". he was never ashamed of his homosexuality. he kiled himself for several reasons. after his security clearance in the U.S. was revoked because homosexuals were considered 'security threats' and he was arrested for having a relationship with another male, he was then forced to undergo humilliating "treatment" for his homosexuality which included hormone injections to reduce his libido. in addition to that the hormone injections that he was forced to take(under threat of arrest and imprisonment) made him loose control of his weight and physical fitness. he died on june 8, 1954 after eating an apple soaked in cyanide.
A meteorite was found in Texas a year or so ago that had water trapped inside a crystal of salt as well. the link to the artice on that can be found here: http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNe ws/meteorite990826.html What's new here (I guess) is the dating of the meteorite to within 2 million years after the birth of the solar system. I'm rather skeptical of that claim and would be very interested in how they conducted their tests. A quick check at webelements reveals I 129's half life to be 17 Million years which means that the Iodine in that sample MUST have gone through at least 265 or so half lives!! That should leave practically no I 129 at all in a sample so tiny!! And definitly not enough to obtain an accurate measurement to within 2 million years. Am I missing something or is this bad science?
that is completely...TOTALLY incorrect! in fact it is hard to imagine a paragraph containing more bullshit pseudoscience than the post above. the aurora is NOT caused by thermal radiation in the upper atmosphere, it is caused by high energy particles (fast moving protons and electrons) slamming into the neutral atoms of gas of the atmosphere and ionizing them. when the electrons of the ionized atoms fall back to lower energy levels they emit light. it has nothing to do with "superheating of the atmosphere". there will be no effect on global warming(if indeed it is occuring) because the amount of energy deposited in the atmosphere by aurorae is miniscule compared with the huge amount of insolation the daytime side of the eath recieves every day. the arorae will NOT have any effect on atmospheric pollutants since pollutants are restricted amlost entirely to the troposphere and stratosphere and the aurora happen in the upper atmosphere(mesosphere). honest, you really dont need to make a hilariously innacurate post if you dont have a clue about the subject matter.
just to be annoying..... actually the compton gamma ray observatory DOES have a radioactive source on board, it is solar powered like you mentioned so does not contain any RTG's (radioisotope thermoelectric generators) for power. but it does contain two small Cobalt 60 gamma emitters for calibration of the COMPTEL instrument. the amount of radioactive material contained in the sources is so small however, that when dispersed in the atmosphere, it can be considered negligable when compared to natural background radiation.
are you sure youre not thinking of neptune and uranus? it may rain diamonds on those planets but the center of jupiter is thought to be made of liquid metal hydrogen. there may or may not be a rocky core after that in the direct center. but its not diamond, if you look at a phase diagram for carbon the center of jupiter is too hot for diamond to exist.
Slashdot Mirror
that article in forbes seems to have more real info than the company site itself. but they still dont mention the frequency the lasers use. they dont say anything about beam width etc. the guy who did the interview with forbes says he used "special glasses" to view the beam, which almost certainly means theyre using infrared which therefore means water (eyes for example) is going to appear opaque to the beam. now if the beam power is going to be continually adjusted for atmospheric conditions (btw. what about heavy snow?) im guessing its going to have to be fairly intense at times. i dont know if i trust their cheery "it's even safe to look in the beam" propaganda. they could've at least given the laser CDRH/ANSI classification somewhere on the site.
"wouldn't the liquid be under really, really high pressure at those temperatures anyway?" uhm ....what temperatures?
"Or is it a difference of really really high vs. a couple orders of magnitude higher really really high?"
uhm...... heheh.... huh? :o\ liquid nitrogen is 'ok' at it's boiling point (77K) at ambient pressure (1 atmo.). it dosent 'need' to be actively refrigerated. but if it isnt it will slowly evaporate away.
"As for storage, it doesn't require any energy to store; you just stick it in a container when it's cold, cap it really tight, and it stays liquid because it can't expand into a gas."
:]
hey be sure to call me when you do this and half your house is blown thru the roof because your dewar explodes. it will ALWAYS vaporize because there is no such thing as a perfect dewar and because the critical temperature of LN2 is waaayy below room temp.
this is just plain false/stupid. refer to here. there is no reason to keep high pressures in liquid nitrogen dewars. there is however sometimes a low pressure (>10-15 psi) kept on the liquid to facilitate easy vertical extration from a cylinder.(its own pressure caused by evaporation is used to push it up/thru tubes.
false. nitrogen boils at 77K at 1 atm. it will not liquify at room temperature simply by being compressed(ie. like propane can be). its called the critical temperature(for Nitrogen it's like 126 Kelvin[-233F] at 33 atmospheres). below which, you cannot liquify a gas no matter what the pressure is increased to.
shit. then we'll need to know stoichiometry in order to match dimm pairs on the motherboard!
that makes no sense at all. clearly the joke's humor lies in the fact that ralph dosen't understand grammar even when he's talking about his english grade. using "un" instead of "im" in "impossible" is funny because it points out the non-uniform use of prefixes in english. OMpossible makes no sense at all. besides, even the SNPP says it's "unpossible" http://www.snpp.com/episodes/2F05.html.
"Man was simply not meant to be intermingled with machines." uhm.... so what about those glasses youre wearing genius.
last month NASA uploaded a second batch of software upgrades to Cassini [ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/status/cas/cs000802.html ] providing more precise attitude controll using Cassini's gyroscopes instead of just firing thrusters.
the new sofware will allow steadier pointing of imagers during capture etc. and therefore sharper pictures to be taken by the probe. uploading the last of the software upgrades will be completed in just over two weeks.
In December of 1999 astronomers in Britain announced they directly observed the extrasolar planet of Tau Bootis by analyzing what is thought to be starlight reflected from the surface of the planet(with a 1/20 chance of error). this was the first time ever for such an observation. now considering some facts about the tau bootis system, the Epsilon Eridani system should be FANTASTIC for this kind of spectroscopic analysis (ie. we might be able to see what it's atmosphere is made of right now!). tau bootis is 51 light years away from earth (roughly 5 times the distance of Epsilon Eridani, the star in question for this article) and it's planet orbits the star at an average distance of 20 times closer than earth from our sun (not a good situation for the resolving power of hubble, for instance, yet they were still able to extract the reflected surface light of the planet from the light of the star using a doppler shift trick) while the planet orbiting Epsilon Eridani is at a distance of about 3 times the radius of earths orbit about the sun (much better for the resolving power of current telescopes). IANAA (astrophysicist) but couldnt we use hubble or keck right NOW to do these observations and for the first time study the atmospheric contents of extrasolar planets?
the scientific community too; when he ran an article: http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/FredMoody/ moody990914.html about how the new relativisiic heavy ion collider expirements at brookhaven. apparently he thought they were going to accidentally create a black hole that would destroy the world(completely unaware of the fact that collisions of comparable energy occur in the upper atmosphere every day, and we still exist). so he wrote an idiotic little scare column about 'evil scientists'. after recieving a huge amount of email from scientists who work in the field, informing him of how much of a moron he is, he wrote another 'oh poor me' column a few weeks later. now he's doing it again with linux! good job fred, you did it again! and now your burning at the stake will come from the tech. community. :] enjoy!
or even better, IMO, the Casino-21 Climate Simulation Project.(once it gets underway of course.) Useful data would result, interesting question to be worked on, scientific; what more could you ask for in a distributed computing project?
are the voyager probes outside the solar system yet? they haven't passed the heliopause yet. which i thought was the boundary between interstellar space and the solar system. ....or is the boundary simply the radius to the aphelion of pluto?
you say that: "Point being, drugs may be bad for your brain. I don't think many people will disagree." i do disagree. though, you seem smart enough to know that almost nothing is either totally 'bad' or totally 'good'(in other words, not everything is as black and white as people would like to believe[even sXe-er's]). keep in mind that drugs are simply chemical compunds. for example take a person who suffers from schitzophrenia, to them, the DRUG clozapine may be nessiscary for normal everyday functioning. so i wouldnt say that just because a chemical compund has an effect on the human nervous system, it is automatically "bad for your brain". also you say that you use alcohol and that: "I don't like either drug users, or alcohol abusers, particularly, but freedom is not about liking people" is all illegal drug use automatically "abuse"? but wait....isn't ethanol a drug...? why the double standard?
you mentioned that: "Different gasses that burned in different colors would be used in different tubes, the effect was as much visual as musical, and the colors were said to be quite vivid." do you have any information on what type of gasses? i thought the only 2 colors you could get from burning gas hydrocarbons was blue(stoichiometricly ballanced-plenty of oaxygen) and orange/yellow(O2 starved burn) from the resultant tiny incandescent carbon chunks. did they mix in noble gasses with low ionization energies ....maybe?
yes, it's interesting that noone else has mentioned this as an option. the only problem i can see with it, is that the spacecraft would have a faster velocity because of it's lower orbit and may preclude the continuation of imagery science on board b/c of the exposure times needed(blurring)? someone mod the above post up so it gets more attention. why CAN'T we do this.
i get the joke fuckwit. it's lame. apparently you need to read it again.
for the hundred millionth time. SILICONE IS NOT THE SAME AS SILICON!!! siliCON is an element with 14 Protons http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/te xt/key/Si.html. siliCONE is a large molecule (polymer) of a repeating Si-O backbone surrounded by methyl groups. http://www.silicones.net/silesson/ damn that joke is so tired anyway.
it is not a 'bomb'. liquid hydrogen peroxide will not detonate. and it will not decompose into water and oxygen unless it comes in contact with a catalyst (the silver in this case). or unless it is heated. it's less dangerous than liquid propane actually.... no one gives that a second thought when it's used in hot air ballons.
Alan Turing did not kill himself simply "because he was gay". he was never ashamed of his homosexuality. he kiled himself for several reasons. after his security clearance in the U.S. was revoked because homosexuals were considered 'security threats' and he was arrested for having a relationship with another male, he was then forced to undergo humilliating "treatment" for his homosexuality which included hormone injections to reduce his libido. in addition to that the hormone injections that he was forced to take(under threat of arrest and imprisonment) made him loose control of his weight and physical fitness. he died on june 8, 1954 after eating an apple soaked in cyanide.
A meteorite was found in Texas a year or so ago that had water trapped inside a crystal of salt as well. the link to the artice on that can be found here: http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNe ws/meteorite990826.html What's new here (I guess) is the dating of the meteorite to within 2 million years after the birth of the solar system. I'm rather skeptical of that claim and would be very interested in how they conducted their tests. A quick check at webelements reveals I 129's half life to be 17 Million years which means that the Iodine in that sample MUST have gone through at least 265 or so half lives!! That should leave practically no I 129 at all in a sample so tiny!! And definitly not enough to obtain an accurate measurement to within 2 million years. Am I missing something or is this bad science?
that is completely...TOTALLY incorrect! in fact it is hard to imagine a paragraph containing more bullshit pseudoscience than the post above. the aurora is NOT caused by thermal radiation in the upper atmosphere, it is caused by high energy particles (fast moving protons and electrons) slamming into the neutral atoms of gas of the atmosphere and ionizing them. when the electrons of the ionized atoms fall back to lower energy levels they emit light. it has nothing to do with "superheating of the atmosphere". there will be no effect on global warming(if indeed it is occuring) because the amount of energy deposited in the atmosphere by aurorae is miniscule compared with the huge amount of insolation the daytime side of the eath recieves every day. the arorae will NOT have any effect on atmospheric pollutants since pollutants are restricted amlost entirely to the troposphere and stratosphere and the aurora happen in the upper atmosphere(mesosphere). honest, you really dont need to make a hilariously innacurate post if you dont have a clue about the subject matter.
just to be annoying..... actually the compton gamma ray observatory DOES have a radioactive source on board, it is solar powered like you mentioned so does not contain any RTG's (radioisotope thermoelectric generators) for power. but it does contain two small Cobalt 60 gamma emitters for calibration of the COMPTEL instrument. the amount of radioactive material contained in the sources is so small however, that when dispersed in the atmosphere, it can be considered negligable when compared to natural background radiation.
1 million says it's a type of boring slime algae. ;)
are you sure youre not thinking of neptune and uranus? it may rain diamonds on those planets but the center of jupiter is thought to be made of liquid metal hydrogen. there may or may not be a rocky core after that in the direct center. but its not diamond, if you look at a phase diagram for carbon the center of jupiter is too hot for diamond to exist.