Well, the mathematics are more complicated, but the number of assumptions are significantly reduced. In most cases, it boils down to, "the universe is the way it is because of it's geometry" more or less.
As for the lack of testable predictions.... I would disagree with that, string theory actually makes quite a few predictions, the trouble is that the amount of energy required to see the effects are beyond anything we are currently capable of. It is testable in principle, it's just not within our practical means to do so. Now we can argue about the practicality of devoting resources to a theory that is completely beyond our ability to test, but that doesn't put it into the field of philosophy.
Well, this isn't the first time it's happened. So it's unlikely to be the last one. In some sense, this is what happens in scientific paradigm shifts (although this is a very small scale example of one). Generally speaking scientists will continue to build on a theory until it just can't go any further. The explanatory power of the theory deminishes while the number of parameters and requirements of the theory continue to increase, and then someone happens across a new way of looking at the problem that simplifies all the baggage that has accumulated. In this case, it's looking very much like darkmatter may be excess baggage, but I don't think it's anywhere near resolved yet.
It's quite possible that something along these lines is happening between quantum mechanics and string theory. Although string theory is not anywhere close to being able to suplant quantum theory, string theory does have some of the hallmarks of the kind of paradigm shift that happens when a mature theory has "run it's course."
My question about dark matter has always been "Why is it more acceptable to make up a new type of matter, rather than deal with the idea that the fundamental forces may work differently than is believed?"
Well, because there was no theoretical framework to explain the data without the use of darkmatter. Let's face it, the whole darkmatter hypothesis is extremely ad-hoc, a fudge factor added into galactic rotation calulations to make them fit to what was expected. The outcome was a predicition that darkmatter must exist.
Now, there is nothing particularly unscientific about this. Go take a look at particle physics where all kinds of particles were predicted to exist, and as a result many particle physicists went out looking for these particles. When they were found, this confirmed the theory, when the particles were not found, they continued to look, or they revised the theory.
The same kind of thing happened here. People have been looking for darkmatter for quite some time, however, it appears that a revision to the models used to predict galactic rotation curves *and* galactic clustering is what's needed.
Why was the existance of darkmatter more "acceptable?" 1) Basically, because it was a prediction that fit the models. That's something that scientists like a lot, it gives the experimentalists something to really sink their teeth into. And 2) there was no way to predict that a change in the theory was needed without having already developed a theoretical framework that could explain galactic rotation curves without the need for darkmatter.
As an astronomer, I would say that you're not wrong to ask your question, however, without having any idea of how our theory might need to be changed, it's kind of a pointless question. And in this case, it sounds like we really don't need to change our theory at all, it turns out that the range of validity of Newtonian gravity is a lot smaller than we thought.
I think the bigger question in my mind is why hadn't someone tried to do this before now? In some sense, it's one of those things that just kind of surprises you, because all of a sudden you realize that *everyone* has been operating under the same false assumption about Newtonian gravity, and then you wonder why nobody thought to check that out.
Of course, this all assumes that this new model using relativity is correct... It probably is, but I think it does need to under go the usual scrutiny just to be sure.
Well, it depends. If you define a Christian as someone that really tries to follow the teachings of Christ, and live their lives by what Christ taught, regardless of whether or not they belong to a church, then the reality is that there are very few real followers of Christ. Most churches are more akin to a cult of personality than about teaching their members to really live according to the teachings of Jesus. Jesus himself, didn't seem to be particularly enamored of the church as an organization, and the faith itself didn't seem to organize itself into official churches until Paul started building the church after Christ's death. And there are those that would say that Paul started the first church as a cult of personality in tribute to Christ the man instead of in tribute to what he taught, meaning that the religion got sidetracked almost immediately.
Anyway you are right that these kinds of semantic games can be played until one is out of breath. I don't claim to be the arbiter over who's a "good" Christain and who's a "bad" one, what I am pretty sure of, is that much of modern Christianity has little to do with what Christ actually taught, no matter what you actually call it.
And if you look at the "leadership" of the Catholic church during those days, you will find most of them were NOT Christian.
Well, I would agree with you that they were almost certainly not Christian, but they were almost certainly not atheists either. I'm pretty sure they had strong beliefs in God, they just reinterpreted the bible in whatever way they saw fit. Which isn't so different from what's been going on today. Of course, I'm of the opinion that the vast majority of people that call themselves Christian really aren't, but that still doesn't mean they aren't religious. It just means that their actual religious views are contrary to what the say they believe...but that gets into another topic...
Uh... Yeah, that's right. I think you better go back to your history books. The communists might have been athiests, but it was not their atheism that killed people. The massacres ordered by the communists were the result of politics at their worst... IMHO, the number of people killed is deplorable, but when you look at the reasoning behind it, you realize that it's not really all that different from the reasoning used to kill people in the bible.
So which is worse? The actual numbers of people killed? Or the mentallity that allows one to justify that performing a massacre is a civil service? I would argue that it is the latter, since the numbers don't really matter to the people performing the massacre. The whole point is to eliminate those who oppose you, their numbers are irrelevent. The only reason the communist massacres were larger is because they were dealing with larger populations. I can assure you that had the populations been similar during biblical times, those massacres would be equally as large.
The history of any group seeking (or maintaining) power by force will always be bloody, and to the extent that they can, the leaders of such forces will always abuse religion for thier own ends wherever possible. At least in the case of the communists, they had to be slightly more honest about why there were doing what they were doing. They couldn't fall back on the old "God told me to do it" defence. Although, I am quite certain that they utilized their political double speak to pull it off.
1. SCO has pretty much already completely destroyed it's credibility. Even the main stream press has more or less figured this out, even if they don't quite understand all the technical details. No matter what happens, SCO's days as a functioning corporation are numbered.
2. SCO's money is not coming from lawsuits against linux users. Name one linux related lawsuit that SCO has won. While some linux friendly vendors have had to expend funds for their defense, SCO hasn't received one red cent from any of it.
3. A very small portion of SCO's revenue is coming from some linux users that were worried about getting sued by SCO. Yes, this is deplorable, but the vast majority of companies and users have not fallen for this trickery, and those that did fall for it have been suitably chastised for it. The vast majority of SCO's money has been coming from other sources, and this has been well documented.
In other words, the money that SCO is funneling to MySQL AB probably isn't coming from a "tainted" source in the sense that you mean it. One could argue more strongly that Microsoft is indirectly funding MySQL development, since SCO has gotten more money from Microsoft than from it's shenanigans regarding linux.
Don't get the impression that I am defending MySQL AB here, because I'm not. However, I think you are taking a rather extreme position. MySQL AB has done things that have given me pause, and this is certainly one of those sorts of moves. MySQL AB is definitely walking a very fine line to be sure, however calling them tainted and their motivations "extraordinarily suspect" doesn't quite wash given the nature of what's really going on here.
You would've have found out that MySQL AB isn't paying SCO a dime. In fact,
SCO is PAYING MySQL to support MySQL on OpenServer, the cross marketing crap, is well, SCO marketing crap (The following is pasted from a message from one of the MySQL developers to the mysql mailing lists):
Nothing to hide, no conspiracy here;-)
I think the discussion here has hinged on "the nature of the
partnership". Let me assure you that no money has gone towards SCO.
They have provided us with the means to build and support binaries on
SCO OpenServer 6. So they're paying us for... developing our software,
which is all GPL licensed (yes we do sell non-GPL licenses as well, for
the same code).
Knowing this fact (SCO funding GPLed development), most people regard
the partnership with a benign smile;-)
The other issue I spotted was about "commercial binaries". Users with
OpenServer 6 get a trial subscription to our MySQL Network subscription
service. These are certified binaries, but still GPL licensed. Non-GPL
(aka commercial) binaries are an optional (but free) extra under MySQL
Network. That option exists mainly to assist companies where using
GPL-licensed software runs into policy problems, etc.
We do also sell non-GPL licenses separately from MySQL Network, to
OEM/embedded customers.
I hope this clarifies the situation to your satisfaction.
If you have any further questions, please feel free to ask me.
Regards,
Arjen.
--
Arjen Lentz, Community Relations Manager
MySQL AB, www.mysql.com
I don't know why they are so worried about imaging the Mars Polar Lander crash site. HiRISE will be doing that, and at a much better resolution when it gets there next year.
Because strychnine will kill you. If you don't believe me, go ahead and try some.
I don't mean to sound trite, but ultimately all moral beliefs such as you describe boil down to this. If I have found a truth that helps me to improve my life in one way or another, and you refuse to believe it for whatever reason, then I will necessarily live a better life than you, and my children will grow up to be better and stronger while yours will die off. Evolution at work.
Now if you don't care about your own existence, that's your affair, but I like mine and want to enjoy it while I have it. There are plenty of very rational reasons to care about the truth, the number one reason: ignorance can kill you. If you don't think that's important, then sooner or later, your genes will be removed from the gene pool. So you either care about the truth, or you are an evolutionary dead-end.
More over why should I care about the consequences of my actions on YOU if I like their consequences on me and those I consider important, supposing I don't like you or consider you important.
Because with that attitude, there will always be someone bigger and badder than you that will feel the same way about you, and will also have no qualms with squashing you if it suits them.
The golden rule isn't religious in origin. It makes damn fine sense whether you believe in a god or not.
Yes, but the intelligent design part of this still isn't science. It's proper place is in the church or a philosophy class, not in the biology class room.
Well, it's moving fast, but it's not moving fast enough for those kind of relativistic effects to play a role here. My concern is that the radius of a planet in general is just so small compared to it's companion star that it's difficult to get an accurate measurement.
Also, as for Mercury... Mercury's perihelion advance isn't due to a change in mass from speed variation, it's velocity doesn't vary *that* much. The perihelion advance is actually due to the warping of space-time close to the sun.
Yeah I haven't read the journal article yet either... But, I would say that being accepted by the ApJ just means that the reviewers couldn't find anything wrong with it. But I am pretty skeptical of the values. The techniques for observing the orbital period and mass are pretty well established, but the measurement of the radius of the planet has me pretty concerned, there are pretty well established methods for doing this with stars, but this planet is *a lot* smaller. I think there is a lot of potential for error there. The radius is just not an easy thing to measure, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if the radius measurement were off by a factor of 3 or 4, or perhaps more. That's the really tricky part I think.
You have a right to your opinion of course, but I think it's flawed.
The reason it's flawed is because science is unpredictable. We dont really know where, and when the next great discovery is really going to take place or how that discovery will affect us. For all we know, this discovery may be laying the ground work for something truly amazing, but neither you nor I know.
Think of it this way. A little over 200 hundred years ago, people were just starting to play around with electricity. At the time, it was really little more than an intellectual curiosity and nobody had any idea that it would lead to anything useful. Fast forward 200 years, and most of us can't survive without it. That's how most science has worked. A seeming innocuous discovery is made that is later found to completely change how we make our way in the world.
That is why it is reasonable to hedge our bets and pursue lines of research that may not have immediate outcomes. Aren't you glad that Schroedinger and his cronies developed the field of quantum mechanics that made modern computers possible, even though it had a little practical benefit to them during their lifetimes?
Just like the rocky planet discovered earlier, the finding of this dense-core planet may lead to better understading of the formation of rockey planets in the Universe."
I think this is a very interesting result to be sure, but I think I would like to see it confirmed. I am a little concerned that perhaps there may be something wrong with their analysis. I am familiar with this kind of work and there are a lot of places where errors can creep into the analysis and give spurious results. I hope that their discovery stands up, but I'm not convinced, yet.
I work peripherally with some of the Cassini people, and the "hot spot" theory has been more or less abandoned. Radar observations have already confirmed that the spot isn't glowing or emitting energy on it's own. But they still don't know what it is.
Well, your criticism is valid, but I think it misses the point.
A lot of hard sci fi, and speculative fiction in particular, really can't fully flesh out all the ramifications of their universe. If they did, they would get bogged down in handling all those details and never get to the real plot of the story. So science fiction and literature, in general, will always have to cut corners in order to move the story along. There will always be things left out, plot holes that the author missed, etc. But those details aren't necessarily as important as the idea that's driving the story. Of course if the plot holes are big enough to make the story itself internally inconsistant, then you've just got a case of an author that just didn't do his homework, or just didn't care...
I don't know if I would call this problem per se, it's just a shortcoming of the medium. No story will ever be able to reliably mimic all the details of reality, reality is just too rich a medium to succesfully model in all it's details.
Comet magnitudes (as well as galaxies and nebulae) are integrated magnitudes. That is, the magnitude measurement comes from integrating the light over the entire "surface" of the object. The magnitude is calculated from the total amount of light gathered from the object over the entire area of the sky that the object occupies.
In other words, those 3.5 magnitudes are spread out over the entire "surface" of the comet, as opposed to a 3.5 magnitude star, in which the light is almost perfectly concentrated into a single point. This means that a 3.5 magnitude comet (while it likely is visible to the naked eye) is a lot fainter to the eye than a 3.5 magnitude star.
Basically, when it comes to comets, galaxies, and nebulae, what really matters is the surface brightness (magnitudes/arc-second), not the integrated magnitude, which doesn't necessarily tell you anything about just how easy (or difficult) to spot an object might be. For example, there are several galaxies that have rather high integrated magnitudes (between 4 and 5), that are nearly impossible to spot without binoculars even under the best of conditions. They have large integrated magnitudes, but their surface brightness is actually quite a bit below the threshold for the human eye to detect.
Unfortunately, it won't. Hyakutake made a fairly close pass at earth, and hence put on a pretty good show. Macholz will be over 1/2 an AU away at it's closest, and from the data I've seen so far, it looks like it's a fairly small comet. There's just not enough surface area to allow the kind of sublimation needed for the comet to become bright (although that does not rule out some kind of outburst occuring). Also, this comet is nearly at opposition when it will be at it's brightest, meaning that the earth is almost directly between the comet and the sun, so the tail is pointing almost directly away from earth, which means you won't see a nice long tail either (even if by some chance the comet flares up and becomes real bright for a few days).
I consider myself to be an agnostic atheist. Strictly speaking the two aren't incompatible. I am an atheist because no religion I have encountered has a plausible, non-circular, non-paradoxical definition of god, and therefore, I don't believe any of them can actually plausibly exist (that's the atheist part). However, I concede that I cannot prove that some kind of greater being or beings we might call gods do not exist. I can only say that I think it is extremely unlikely that they do, and I can also say with some certainty that if such beings do exist, they are a hell of lot different from the fairy tales told to us by religion to make us feel better (that's the agnostic part).
Perhaps it is all semantics, but when your religious neighbor that you were on friendly terms with starts calling you a devil worshipper, and all kinds of other other untrue things, and isn't interested at all in learning anything about what you believe because you are either "with them or against them," its hard not to get bent out of shape over such things.
I agree that Galen is one of the coolest characters. At the end of the technomage books, he is a total bad-ass, and easily the most powerful of all the technomages. However, that may not necessarily work in the new story's favor. My concern is that Galen may actually be too powerful. Now it's true that his full set of talents and capabilities were never fully revealed in Crusade. If Crusade had continued, Galen's powers could've allowed a lot of sloppy writing to occur, no matter what situation they got into, Galen could probably get them out of it. That may be why he kind of popped in and out of Crusade, so that Galen could be there when they really needed him, but keep him out when the story needed to build some intensity.
I also recall JMS saying something similar about the telepath from the Mind War episode (iirc), that was the telepath that became so powerful he almost destroyed the station. JMS said something along the lines of, "We won't be seeing this guy again, he's too powerful, and would deflate all the tension in the plotline." I think Galen is powerful enough to play the spoiler role as well.
Scientists are most definitely concerned with what caused the big bang, but basically, the physical laws and theories that we have actually break down when you get into that regime. Essentially, the mathematics turn to mush and all you get is nonsense. You get results along the lines of individual photons being able to turn into incredible tiny black holes, which doesn't really make any sense.
In fact, I consider it a strong likelihood that it may very well be impossible to figure out just what caused the big bang. The best we may ever be able to do is simply come up with some plausible (but unsupportable) conjectures. Some of the people that have been working on string theory have come up with some semi-plausible causes for the big bang, but there is practically no way to collect the evidence that would be needed to support those ideas (and that assumes that string theory is even right in the first place, which is yet to be seen).
Slashdot Mirror
As for the lack of testable predictions.... I would disagree with that, string theory actually makes quite a few predictions, the trouble is that the amount of energy required to see the effects are beyond anything we are currently capable of. It is testable in principle, it's just not within our practical means to do so. Now we can argue about the practicality of devoting resources to a theory that is completely beyond our ability to test, but that doesn't put it into the field of philosophy.
It's quite possible that something along these lines is happening between quantum mechanics and string theory. Although string theory is not anywhere close to being able to suplant quantum theory, string theory does have some of the hallmarks of the kind of paradigm shift that happens when a mature theory has "run it's course."
My question about dark matter has always been "Why is it more acceptable to make up a new type of matter, rather than deal with the idea that the fundamental forces may work differently than is believed?"
Well, because there was no theoretical framework to explain the data without the use of darkmatter. Let's face it, the whole darkmatter hypothesis is extremely ad-hoc, a fudge factor added into galactic rotation calulations to make them fit to what was expected. The outcome was a predicition that darkmatter must exist.Now, there is nothing particularly unscientific about this. Go take a look at particle physics where all kinds of particles were predicted to exist, and as a result many particle physicists went out looking for these particles. When they were found, this confirmed the theory, when the particles were not found, they continued to look, or they revised the theory.
The same kind of thing happened here. People have been looking for darkmatter for quite some time, however, it appears that a revision to the models used to predict galactic rotation curves *and* galactic clustering is what's needed.
Why was the existance of darkmatter more "acceptable?" 1) Basically, because it was a prediction that fit the models. That's something that scientists like a lot, it gives the experimentalists something to really sink their teeth into. And 2) there was no way to predict that a change in the theory was needed without having already developed a theoretical framework that could explain galactic rotation curves without the need for darkmatter.
As an astronomer, I would say that you're not wrong to ask your question, however, without having any idea of how our theory might need to be changed, it's kind of a pointless question. And in this case, it sounds like we really don't need to change our theory at all, it turns out that the range of validity of Newtonian gravity is a lot smaller than we thought.
I think the bigger question in my mind is why hadn't someone tried to do this before now? In some sense, it's one of those things that just kind of surprises you, because all of a sudden you realize that *everyone* has been operating under the same false assumption about Newtonian gravity, and then you wonder why nobody thought to check that out.
Of course, this all assumes that this new model using relativity is correct... It probably is, but I think it does need to under go the usual scrutiny just to be sure.
Anyway you are right that these kinds of semantic games can be played until one is out of breath. I don't claim to be the arbiter over who's a "good" Christain and who's a "bad" one, what I am pretty sure of, is that much of modern Christianity has little to do with what Christ actually taught, no matter what you actually call it.
And if you look at the "leadership" of the Catholic church during those days, you will find most of them were NOT Christian.
Well, I would agree with you that they were almost certainly not Christian, but they were almost certainly not atheists either. I'm pretty sure they had strong beliefs in God, they just reinterpreted the bible in whatever way they saw fit. Which isn't so different from what's been going on today. Of course, I'm of the opinion that the vast majority of people that call themselves Christian really aren't, but that still doesn't mean they aren't religious. It just means that their actual religious views are contrary to what the say they believe...but that gets into another topic...
So which is worse? The actual numbers of people killed? Or the mentallity that allows one to justify that performing a massacre is a civil service? I would argue that it is the latter, since the numbers don't really matter to the people performing the massacre. The whole point is to eliminate those who oppose you, their numbers are irrelevent. The only reason the communist massacres were larger is because they were dealing with larger populations. I can assure you that had the populations been similar during biblical times, those massacres would be equally as large.
The history of any group seeking (or maintaining) power by force will always be bloody, and to the extent that they can, the leaders of such forces will always abuse religion for thier own ends wherever possible. At least in the case of the communists, they had to be slightly more honest about why there were doing what they were doing. They couldn't fall back on the old "God told me to do it" defence. Although, I am quite certain that they utilized their political double speak to pull it off.
Ok, reality check.
1. SCO has pretty much already completely destroyed it's credibility. Even the main stream press has more or less figured this out, even if they don't quite understand all the technical details. No matter what happens, SCO's days as a functioning corporation are numbered.
2. SCO's money is not coming from lawsuits against linux users. Name one linux related lawsuit that SCO has won. While some linux friendly vendors have had to expend funds for their defense, SCO hasn't received one red cent from any of it.
3. A very small portion of SCO's revenue is coming from some linux users that were worried about getting sued by SCO. Yes, this is deplorable, but the vast majority of companies and users have not fallen for this trickery, and those that did fall for it have been suitably chastised for it. The vast majority of SCO's money has been coming from other sources, and this has been well documented.
In other words, the money that SCO is funneling to MySQL AB probably isn't coming from a "tainted" source in the sense that you mean it. One could argue more strongly that Microsoft is indirectly funding MySQL development, since SCO has gotten more money from Microsoft than from it's shenanigans regarding linux.
Don't get the impression that I am defending MySQL AB here, because I'm not. However, I think you are taking a rather extreme position. MySQL AB has done things that have given me pause, and this is certainly one of those sorts of moves. MySQL AB is definitely walking a very fine line to be sure, however calling them tainted and their motivations "extraordinarily suspect" doesn't quite wash given the nature of what's really going on here.
Nothing to hide, no conspiracy here ;-)
I think the discussion here has hinged on "the nature of the partnership". Let me assure you that no money has gone towards SCO.
They have provided us with the means to build and support binaries on SCO OpenServer 6. So they're paying us for... developing our software, which is all GPL licensed (yes we do sell non-GPL licenses as well, for the same code).
Knowing this fact (SCO funding GPLed development), most people regard the partnership with a benign smile ;-)
The other issue I spotted was about "commercial binaries". Users with OpenServer 6 get a trial subscription to our MySQL Network subscription service. These are certified binaries, but still GPL licensed. Non-GPL (aka commercial) binaries are an optional (but free) extra under MySQL Network. That option exists mainly to assist companies where using GPL-licensed software runs into policy problems, etc. We do also sell non-GPL licenses separately from MySQL Network, to OEM/embedded customers.
I hope this clarifies the situation to your satisfaction. If you have any further questions, please feel free to ask me.
Regards,
Arjen.
--
Arjen Lentz, Community Relations Manager
MySQL AB, www.mysql.com
I don't know why they are so worried about imaging the Mars Polar Lander crash site. HiRISE will be doing that, and at a much better resolution when it gets there next year.
I don't mean to sound trite, but ultimately all moral beliefs such as you describe boil down to this. If I have found a truth that helps me to improve my life in one way or another, and you refuse to believe it for whatever reason, then I will necessarily live a better life than you, and my children will grow up to be better and stronger while yours will die off. Evolution at work.
Now if you don't care about your own existence, that's your affair, but I like mine and want to enjoy it while I have it. There are plenty of very rational reasons to care about the truth, the number one reason: ignorance can kill you. If you don't think that's important, then sooner or later, your genes will be removed from the gene pool. So you either care about the truth, or you are an evolutionary dead-end.
More over why should I care about the consequences of my actions on YOU if I like their consequences on me and those I consider important, supposing I don't like you or consider you important.
Because with that attitude, there will always be someone bigger and badder than you that will feel the same way about you, and will also have no qualms with squashing you if it suits them.
The golden rule isn't religious in origin. It makes damn fine sense whether you believe in a god or not.
Yes, but the intelligent design part of this still isn't science. It's proper place is in the church or a philosophy class, not in the biology class room.
The lines for driver's licenses at the DMV are about to get a whole lot longer. Thanks a lot!
Also, as for Mercury... Mercury's perihelion advance isn't due to a change in mass from speed variation, it's velocity doesn't vary *that* much. The perihelion advance is actually due to the warping of space-time close to the sun.
Yeah I haven't read the journal article yet either... But, I would say that being accepted by the ApJ just means that the reviewers couldn't find anything wrong with it. But I am pretty skeptical of the values. The techniques for observing the orbital period and mass are pretty well established, but the measurement of the radius of the planet has me pretty concerned, there are pretty well established methods for doing this with stars, but this planet is *a lot* smaller. I think there is a lot of potential for error there. The radius is just not an easy thing to measure, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if the radius measurement were off by a factor of 3 or 4, or perhaps more. That's the really tricky part I think.
The reason it's flawed is because science is unpredictable. We dont really know where, and when the next great discovery is really going to take place or how that discovery will affect us. For all we know, this discovery may be laying the ground work for something truly amazing, but neither you nor I know.
Think of it this way. A little over 200 hundred years ago, people were just starting to play around with electricity. At the time, it was really little more than an intellectual curiosity and nobody had any idea that it would lead to anything useful. Fast forward 200 years, and most of us can't survive without it. That's how most science has worked. A seeming innocuous discovery is made that is later found to completely change how we make our way in the world.
That is why it is reasonable to hedge our bets and pursue lines of research that may not have immediate outcomes. Aren't you glad that Schroedinger and his cronies developed the field of quantum mechanics that made modern computers possible, even though it had a little practical benefit to them during their lifetimes?
Just like the rocky planet discovered earlier, the finding of this dense-core planet may lead to better understading of the formation of rockey planets in the Universe."
I think this is a very interesting result to be sure, but I think I would like to see it confirmed. I am a little concerned that perhaps there may be something wrong with their analysis. I am familiar with this kind of work and there are a lot of places where errors can creep into the analysis and give spurious results. I hope that their discovery stands up, but I'm not convinced, yet.
Graphics? Who needs fricking graphics? I was printing out ascii art playboy centerfolds in 1983 using a Commadore PET and a dot matrix printer!
I work peripherally with some of the Cassini people, and the "hot spot" theory has been more or less abandoned. Radar observations have already confirmed that the spot isn't glowing or emitting energy on it's own. But they still don't know what it is.
A lot of hard sci fi, and speculative fiction in particular, really can't fully flesh out all the ramifications of their universe. If they did, they would get bogged down in handling all those details and never get to the real plot of the story. So science fiction and literature, in general, will always have to cut corners in order to move the story along. There will always be things left out, plot holes that the author missed, etc. But those details aren't necessarily as important as the idea that's driving the story. Of course if the plot holes are big enough to make the story itself internally inconsistant, then you've just got a case of an author that just didn't do his homework, or just didn't care...
I don't know if I would call this problem per se, it's just a shortcoming of the medium. No story will ever be able to reliably mimic all the details of reality, reality is just too rich a medium to succesfully model in all it's details.
Comet magnitudes (as well as galaxies and nebulae) are integrated magnitudes. That is, the magnitude measurement comes from integrating the light over the entire "surface" of the object. The magnitude is calculated from the total amount of light gathered from the object over the entire area of the sky that the object occupies.
In other words, those 3.5 magnitudes are spread out over the entire "surface" of the comet, as opposed to a 3.5 magnitude star, in which the light is almost perfectly concentrated into a single point. This means that a 3.5 magnitude comet (while it likely is visible to the naked eye) is a lot fainter to the eye than a 3.5 magnitude star.
Basically, when it comes to comets, galaxies, and nebulae, what really matters is the surface brightness (magnitudes/arc-second), not the integrated magnitude, which doesn't necessarily tell you anything about just how easy (or difficult) to spot an object might be. For example, there are several galaxies that have rather high integrated magnitudes (between 4 and 5), that are nearly impossible to spot without binoculars even under the best of conditions. They have large integrated magnitudes, but their surface brightness is actually quite a bit below the threshold for the human eye to detect.
Unfortunately, it won't. Hyakutake made a fairly close pass at earth, and hence put on a pretty good show. Macholz will be over 1/2 an AU away at it's closest, and from the data I've seen so far, it looks like it's a fairly small comet. There's just not enough surface area to allow the kind of sublimation needed for the comet to become bright (although that does not rule out some kind of outburst occuring). Also, this comet is nearly at opposition when it will be at it's brightest, meaning that the earth is almost directly between the comet and the sun, so the tail is pointing almost directly away from earth, which means you won't see a nice long tail either (even if by some chance the comet flares up and becomes real bright for a few days).
I consider myself to be an agnostic atheist. Strictly speaking the two aren't incompatible. I am an atheist because no religion I have encountered has a plausible, non-circular, non-paradoxical definition of god, and therefore, I don't believe any of them can actually plausibly exist (that's the atheist part). However, I concede that I cannot prove that some kind of greater being or beings we might call gods do not exist. I can only say that I think it is extremely unlikely that they do, and I can also say with some certainty that if such beings do exist, they are a hell of lot different from the fairy tales told to us by religion to make us feel better (that's the agnostic part).
Perhaps it is all semantics, but when your religious neighbor that you were on friendly terms with starts calling you a devil worshipper, and all kinds of other other untrue things, and isn't interested at all in learning anything about what you believe because you are either "with them or against them," its hard not to get bent out of shape over such things.
I agree that Galen is one of the coolest characters. At the end of the technomage books, he is a total bad-ass, and easily the most powerful of all the technomages. However, that may not necessarily work in the new story's favor. My concern is that Galen may actually be too powerful. Now it's true that his full set of talents and capabilities were never fully revealed in Crusade. If Crusade had continued, Galen's powers could've allowed a lot of sloppy writing to occur, no matter what situation they got into, Galen could probably get them out of it. That may be why he kind of popped in and out of Crusade, so that Galen could be there when they really needed him, but keep him out when the story needed to build some intensity.
I also recall JMS saying something similar about the telepath from the Mind War episode (iirc), that was the telepath that became so powerful he almost destroyed the station. JMS said something along the lines of, "We won't be seeing this guy again, he's too powerful, and would deflate all the tension in the plotline." I think Galen is powerful enough to play the spoiler role as well.
In fact, I consider it a strong likelihood that it may very well be impossible to figure out just what caused the big bang. The best we may ever be able to do is simply come up with some plausible (but unsupportable) conjectures. Some of the people that have been working on string theory have come up with some semi-plausible causes for the big bang, but there is practically no way to collect the evidence that would be needed to support those ideas (and that assumes that string theory is even right in the first place, which is yet to be seen).