The relative sizes of the Earth/Moon system is a total anomaly,
Is it? Moon diameter is 0.2724 that of Earth ; Charon's diameter is 0.5050
that of Pluto. For masses the corresponding ratios are 0.0122 (1/81) and 0.1160 (1/9). so, is the Moon a "total anomaly"?
so much so that it is very very close to the point where you have to call them a double planet rather than a planet and moon.
I've been taking an interest in astronomy for 40 odd years now, and I don't know what the point where I'd "have to" call a system a "double planet" is. I don't recall ever seeing the term defined in the astronomical literature. Even Wikipedia puts it as no stronger than an "informal term".
What would be the benefit of such a term? Once you acknowledge that two objects are in an orbital relationship, you need to calculate various properties (mutual eccentricities, velocities, masses, periods), but these are going to be essentially the same calculations whether you're looking at Pluto-Charon or Pluto-Nix (or is it Hydra that's the smallest known component of that system?). It's only when systems are close enough that they become tidally-locked that you get something new happening. Until the atmospheres meet. It's the same situation for multiple stars too - until you have to account for mass transfers from one to the other, then you're still looking at a Keplerian system.
Wouldn't Camera shake for cameras mean a need for faster image acquisition?
That is one possible solution. On the other hand, better technique in the photographer is a zero-cost option that has been available for a century or so.
Using a tripod is a solution too. But leaning on a wall, post, whatever has always been available (unless you're into really unusual sports). Changing your shutter speed is normally an option too. But that's all down to the most important lens in the camera - the one behind the viewfinder.
I don't need to worry about it - it happens. when I go to work, I'm typically a hundred or so kilometres beyond the reach of the last cellphone tower (they don't build them in the middle of the ocean). There are other options for regaining access, typically by sending an email to another (non-Google) account. Since I have my work-supplied email (which we're required to use our own webmail ; forwarding to any other account is not permitted ; we've had people miss flights in the past through failures of third-party email, hence the only way to get work email is by logging in to our webmail server), a google account, and at least two others, that's not a problem.
In answer to someone below who posits your house burning down - this is why you have things called "friends" and keep backups of important documents and data (or some of the originals, as appropriate) in a locked box at their house. And you reciprocate, of course. It's called "off-site backup" - you may have heard of it.
If you've got too few friends for that, then you probably have bigger problems.
The oldest references that I can find to the age of the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) is the Florida Museum of Natural History, who are of the opinion that the morpological differences between Alligator olseni (White, 1942) and Alligator mississippiensis (Daudan, 1802) are insufficient to justify calling them separate species. By the rules of zoological nomenclature the senior synomym applies. Specimens ascribed to olseni (and therefore, if you accept the FLMNH position, to mississippiensis) date back to the early Miocene at 16-18 Myr, possibly the earliest Miocene at 22-23 Myr. If you don't accept the FLMNH synonymy, then the oldest known fossils of Alligator mississippiensis date to the Pliocene around 5 million years.
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/vertp...http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/vertp...
Sorry to destroy your assertion by doing the most trivial of research. I hope that your attention to detail is better when you're coding Ruby, but you've hardly left that impression.
If I had time, I might look it up by checking for reports of fossils. But what would I know - I'm just a working geologist who deals with this stuff every day of the week. I'm sure you claimed experience in coding Ruby is far more relevant.
How much variation in tooth profile and spacing do you see in the fossils you have access to?
The likelihood of getting a vaguely complete DNA sequence from multi-billion-year old fossils is slender. Our best example of "ancient DNA" from fossils has a less than 1% complete genome from rocks a little over 100Myr old. 2000 Myr old fossils might have a 0.0000000000000000001 % complete genome (if preserved in exceptionally well.
I don't have access to the full paper, but this doesn't surprise me.
The morphology-based âoeconcept of hypobradytely does not necessarily imply genomic, biochemical, or physiological identity between modern and fossil taxa," a claim of extreme evolutionary stasisâ"a lack of speciation over billions of yearsâ"would be strengthened not only by discovery of additional fossil communities but by firm evidence of their molecular biology
Schopf may have had his boldest claimed discovery challenged (successfully) by Brasier (recently deceased, alas ; Intended to buy the guy a whiskey if I ever met him ; fun writer), but that doesn't make Schopf a fool. Unlike some of the dimmer denizens of Slashdot, he wasn't going to make that error.
Raman spectrscopy can detect gross differences in composition and structure - lipids versus cellulose, for example, but in such old rocks it's not going to be a high precision tool. It's about the best tool we've got for such old fossils though.
Many bacteria - I don't know if this particular group - can engage in varying degrees of horizontal gene transfer by conjugation or a number of other processes. Most bacterial reproduction is asexual, but it's not the only trick in their repertoire.
every software house I worked for in the last couple of decades had people constantly talking about what the code "thinks", "wants", etc.
A recent article I listend to o nAI development suggested that it was better to name your routines like "B217" instead of "Understand_Question", precisely to dodge anthropomorphic thinking like this.
I would suggest Neil Shubin's "Your Inner Fish" finds its way onto your bookshelf. Or video feed. While that's a superficially appealing way to envisage things, the fossil record of the evolution of land-dwelling tetrapods was considerably more complex.
Lamarck called; he wants his discredited theory back.
Lamark's theory is perfectly fine. It's not a good explanation for natural biological evolution, but it is a fair explanation for the evolution that takes place in the cultures of social animals, including humans.
If these things haven't evolved in 2 billion years, it simply means that any mutations that may have occurred resulted in lines that did not reproduce as effectively.
The reproductive efficiency can change appreciably. what doesn't seem to have changed is the gross morphology of the organism.
[..] I suspect genomic changes have still occurred. Neutral drift alone would assure that these bacteria were not identical at the molecular level to their two billion year old ancestors.
I would put good money on this being true. Not my normal "1 pint" bet, but this time a whole hangover!
This is extremely implausible. I suspect you have been the victim of the misreporting of the actual science results. As I elaborate in my comment on your FP.
I'm pretty dubious about this - and your assertion down-thread that the "American alligator" hasn't evolved for 150 million years" is frankly incredible.
I don't know where you're getting your palaeontology from, but you need better sources.
I'm not terribly up to scratch on the palaeontology of wasps, though I do recall that one of the large insect-rich deposits of amber is from Dominica and is about 35 million years old, so I'm going to hypothesise that you've got the far end of a "Chinese Whisper" which started with "organisms which look like modern wasps were found in (Dominican amber) which is 35 million years old".
I know my reptile evolutionary history somewhat better. While there were undoubtedly suchiform ("crocodile shaped") Suchian reptiles (ancestors of crocodiles) around 150 million years ago, that does not mean that they're the same species as the modern American alligator. At the very least, there was a modest burst of suchian evolution in the period shortly after the Cretaceous-Palaeocene boundary extinctions, which would very likely have affected many aspects of the lives of all large organisms that survived the end-Cretaceous events. Shortage of large prey would have made dwarfism a common strategy for tens of millennia, followed by an opportunity for the suchians to become the dominant land animals. Which they would have been in competition with phorusrachid "terror-birds" and mammals. It's arguable if the mammals (about 6000 species) or the birds (nearly 10000 species) won that race.
A few years ago I had the pleasure (I'm a geologist - I have... abnormal... pleasures) of spending an afternoon going through the Natural History Museum's cabinets of fossil coelocanths from the Mesozoic, and comparing them with the 1960-odd specimen in the main hall of the museum. From personal observation I can assert that this famous "living fossil" has changed over the 90-odd million years during which we haven't had a fossil record for it. For a start, it's about 4 times the size of it's older relatives.
they found that the bacteria look the same as bacteria of the same region from 2.3 billion years ago
I was making exactly this point - the difference between true biological species and the palaeontologist's approximation of a "morphological species" - earlier today on a Coursera dinosaur palaeontology course.
On the other hand, in most palaeontological circumstances, morphology is all we've got to go on.
Even defense contractors like Boeing use stock computers from large OEMs like Dell.
I don't know about defence contractors, but I'll be in the offices of an oil major tomorrow lunch time because they wipe the hard drives of all their OEM laptops and re-image them with a heavily customised version of XP, Vista or Win7 with all sorts of weird different networky things. Pain in the arse, but that costs them money - I go into their office for a videoconference meeting (because their laptop won't work on anyone else's network), and they pay a day's day-rate.
I make it a smidgin under $400, since I've got bigger hard drives already available. Assuming you're talking about US dollars.
Say you wanted to spend $750 on a newer laptop, then needed to spend 10 hours researching it and working out how to disable all remote management things and remove proprietary blobs from the firmware. Oh, and add in a modern WIFI chip too. That would be implying that you value your time at ~$35/hour.
If you value your time more highly than that... well, it may become worthwhile to look at a solution like this.
Will a modern (last couple of years) laptop really let you get your work done more rapidly?
Slashdot Mirror
Is it? Moon diameter is 0.2724 that of Earth ; Charon's diameter is 0.5050 that of Pluto. For masses the corresponding ratios are 0.0122 (1/81) and 0.1160 (1/9). so, is the Moon a "total anomaly"?
I've been taking an interest in astronomy for 40 odd years now, and I don't know what the point where I'd "have to" call a system a "double planet" is. I don't recall ever seeing the term defined in the astronomical literature. Even Wikipedia puts it as no stronger than an "informal term".
What would be the benefit of such a term? Once you acknowledge that two objects are in an orbital relationship, you need to calculate various properties (mutual eccentricities, velocities, masses, periods), but these are going to be essentially the same calculations whether you're looking at Pluto-Charon or Pluto-Nix (or is it Hydra that's the smallest known component of that system?). It's only when systems are close enough that they become tidally-locked that you get something new happening. Until the atmospheres meet. It's the same situation for multiple stars too - until you have to account for mass transfers from one to the other, then you're still looking at a Keplerian system.
That is one possible solution. On the other hand, better technique in the photographer is a zero-cost option that has been available for a century or so.
Using a tripod is a solution too. But leaning on a wall, post, whatever has always been available (unless you're into really unusual sports). Changing your shutter speed is normally an option too. But that's all down to the most important lens in the camera - the one behind the viewfinder.
In answer to someone below who posits your house burning down - this is why you have things called "friends" and keep backups of important documents and data (or some of the originals, as appropriate) in a locked box at their house. And you reciprocate, of course. It's called "off-site backup" - you may have heard of it.
If you've got too few friends for that, then you probably have bigger problems.
Didn't Kodak stop producing Tech Pan a few years ago? (They may have sold the brand and production to some other company?)
Out-source the work to overseas zombies, of course.
The oldest references that I can find to the age of the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) is the Florida Museum of Natural History, who are of the opinion that the morpological differences between Alligator olseni (White, 1942) and Alligator mississippiensis (Daudan, 1802) are insufficient to justify calling them separate species. By the rules of zoological nomenclature the senior synomym applies. Specimens ascribed to olseni (and therefore, if you accept the FLMNH position, to mississippiensis) date back to the early Miocene at 16-18 Myr, possibly the earliest Miocene at 22-23 Myr. If you don't accept the FLMNH synonymy, then the oldest known fossils of Alligator mississippiensis date to the Pliocene around 5 million years. http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/vertp... http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/vertp...
Sorry to destroy your assertion by doing the most trivial of research. I hope that your attention to detail is better when you're coding Ruby, but you've hardly left that impression.
If I had time, I might look it up by checking for reports of fossils. But what would I know - I'm just a working geologist who deals with this stuff every day of the week. I'm sure you claimed experience in coding Ruby is far more relevant. How much variation in tooth profile and spacing do you see in the fossils you have access to?
The likelihood of getting a vaguely complete DNA sequence from multi-billion-year old fossils is slender. Our best example of "ancient DNA" from fossils has a less than 1% complete genome from rocks a little over 100Myr old. 2000 Myr old fossils might have a 0.0000000000000000001 % complete genome (if preserved in exceptionally well.
Schopf may have had his boldest claimed discovery challenged (successfully) by Brasier (recently deceased, alas ; Intended to buy the guy a whiskey if I ever met him ; fun writer), but that doesn't make Schopf a fool. Unlike some of the dimmer denizens of Slashdot, he wasn't going to make that error.
Raman spectrscopy can detect gross differences in composition and structure - lipids versus cellulose, for example, but in such old rocks it's not going to be a high precision tool. It's about the best tool we've got for such old fossils though.
Many bacteria - I don't know if this particular group - can engage in varying degrees of horizontal gene transfer by conjugation or a number of other processes. Most bacterial reproduction is asexual, but it's not the only trick in their repertoire.
A recent article I listend to o nAI development suggested that it was better to name your routines like "B217" instead of "Understand_Question", precisely to dodge anthropomorphic thinking like this.
I would suggest Neil Shubin's "Your Inner Fish" finds its way onto your bookshelf. Or video feed. While that's a superficially appealing way to envisage things, the fossil record of the evolution of land-dwelling tetrapods was considerably more complex.
Lamark's theory is perfectly fine. It's not a good explanation for natural biological evolution, but it is a fair explanation for the evolution that takes place in the cultures of social animals, including humans.
The reproductive efficiency can change appreciably. what doesn't seem to have changed is the gross morphology of the organism.
I would put good money on this being true. Not my normal "1 pint" bet, but this time a whole hangover!
Goddish idiots like you shouldn't be allowed to use modern technology. Like medicine, or electricity.
This is extremely implausible. I suspect you have been the victim of the misreporting of the actual science results. As I elaborate in my comment on your FP.
I don't know where you're getting your palaeontology from, but you need better sources.
I'm not terribly up to scratch on the palaeontology of wasps, though I do recall that one of the large insect-rich deposits of amber is from Dominica and is about 35 million years old, so I'm going to hypothesise that you've got the far end of a "Chinese Whisper" which started with "organisms which look like modern wasps were found in (Dominican amber) which is 35 million years old".
I know my reptile evolutionary history somewhat better. While there were undoubtedly suchiform ("crocodile shaped") Suchian reptiles (ancestors of crocodiles) around 150 million years ago, that does not mean that they're the same species as the modern American alligator. At the very least, there was a modest burst of suchian evolution in the period shortly after the Cretaceous-Palaeocene boundary extinctions, which would very likely have affected many aspects of the lives of all large organisms that survived the end-Cretaceous events. Shortage of large prey would have made dwarfism a common strategy for tens of millennia, followed by an opportunity for the suchians to become the dominant land animals. Which they would have been in competition with phorusrachid "terror-birds" and mammals. It's arguable if the mammals (about 6000 species) or the birds (nearly 10000 species) won that race.
A few years ago I had the pleasure (I'm a geologist - I have ... abnormal ... pleasures) of spending an afternoon going through the Natural History Museum's cabinets of fossil coelocanths from the Mesozoic, and comparing them with the 1960-odd specimen in the main hall of the museum. From personal observation I can assert that this famous "living fossil" has changed over the 90-odd million years during which we haven't had a fossil record for it. For a start, it's about 4 times the size of it's older relatives.
I was making exactly this point - the difference between true biological species and the palaeontologist's approximation of a "morphological species" - earlier today on a Coursera dinosaur palaeontology course.
On the other hand, in most palaeontological circumstances, morphology is all we've got to go on.
(2) don't get vaccinated and be thrown into a convenient pit (or offshore island) surrounded by automated shoot-to-kill machine gun robots.
Simples!
Some large tournament for ten-pin bowling? Or that variant of cricket that you play over there (but I thought you called bowling "pitching")?
Sauron was corrupted by Morgoth as a mature Vala.
I don't know about defence contractors, but I'll be in the offices of an oil major tomorrow lunch time because they wipe the hard drives of all their OEM laptops and re-image them with a heavily customised version of XP, Vista or Win7 with all sorts of weird different networky things. Pain in the arse, but that costs them money - I go into their office for a videoconference meeting (because their laptop won't work on anyone else's network), and they pay a day's day-rate.
Say you wanted to spend $750 on a newer laptop, then needed to spend 10 hours researching it and working out how to disable all remote management things and remove proprietary blobs from the firmware. Oh, and add in a modern WIFI chip too. That would be implying that you value your time at ~$35/hour.
If you value your time more highly than that ... well, it may become worthwhile to look at a solution like this.
Will a modern (last couple of years) laptop really let you get your work done more rapidly?