Unless you can really see some non-flatness of the universe, these "is it flat" news stories aren't very interesting...makes good headlines, but the meat of the story is elsewhere.
The really cool thing about the CBR measurements is the fine-structure of correlations between different parts of the sky. When the measurements are transformed (a la Fourier transformations) you get an energy spectrum of primordial fluctuations.
And seeing some structure in that energy spectrum would be wild: you're seeing how different species of particles dominated the early universe, as they in turn decay to lighter particles.
New forces, new particles, the source of "dark matter"; when you have the whole universe as your particle physics experiment, something interesting should result.
Just ignore the ELVIS LIVES that shows up in the CBR map, and you'll be happier. FNORD.
I find that one of the most important features is the effective bandwidth of the interface.
Just think of a human as an i/o device, and you'll get the general idea.
To get high input bandwidth to your human, visual media are best; not much argument here, I suspect.
But for the best output bandwidth from the human, you have to get all 10 fingers involved. So a keyboard with *copious* function keys is much better than anything with a rodent.
One beef I have with mainframe unix/Xterm keyboards is that they have the functionality of an ADM-3A. You'd *think* things have improved since those days.
Oh, and you don't think Arecibo has "custom low noise preamps"? In fact, much better ones than would be worthwhile on a dinky 12 foot dish? For one big dish, you can spend $1M on a preamp and it's worthwhile. How much will you spend for your backyard dish?
Hell, with a big dish it's worthwhile using cryogenic cooling of your preamp. Get your preamp down to 3K and you cut the noise quite a bit. But add up 6000+ dishes, and you add the noise from all those preamps.
Now as for interferometry, it's great stuff if the goal is precise angular resolution. Mapping structures in the center of galaxies and the like.
But for SETI, there's nothing to map until you find a signal, and to find a signal you need sensitivity. Breaking the sky into smaller bits doesn't help push down your noise floor significantly.
I would also like to see SETI be able to scan more of the sky, but realistically that requires the use of a few large steerable dishes. They won't be quite as large as Arecibo (~100m rather than 300m), so Arecibo will do a better "depth" search, but they both should be done.
Being enthusiastic about the tech is great; it helps if you actually know something about it.
So congress gives away all that HDTV bandwidth, a very valuable commodity, for free to the broadcasters, with the understanding that the broadcasters will convert to HDTV and release their old frequencies for other uses.
Naturally, the broadcasters reneg...going for $$$ using the HDTV bandwidth for other stuff while continuing to hold the old bandwidth too.
Does anyone else see this as a blatent spectrum theft? Of course, we can't expect our elected representitives to do anything about it; pissing off the broadcasters is electoral death.
When one industry gets a veto on who gets to be our government, you should be worried.
Personally, I was looking forward to everyone having to toss their old TVs...maybe it would wean people from sucking on the glass teat, and that would raise the collective IQ of the country.
"once you've seen one 300 meter radio dish, you've seen 'em all!"
To put this in perspective, you need to have 6,824 of the little 12 foot dishes to equal the collection area (and hence sensitivity) of Arecibo...
..assuming that you can combine all of those signals without preamp noise killing your S/N ratio. The "S" for the 1000's of little dishes might be the same, but you'd have 1000's of preamps contributing to "N", rather than one.
Telemarketers piss me off. I prefer a "technical solution": track them down and remove a 1-foot section from their phone trunk in the dark of the night.
For SPAM, that dastardly UCITA may come to our aid:
220-Access to this site's SMTP mailer requires agreement to the following terms:
220-"I agree to pay $1000 per unsolicited commercial e-mail (SPAM) transmitted." 220-"I will not attempt to relay SPAM, and will pay $10000 per relay attempt." 220-"This agreement can be enforced by confiscation of all my assets" 220-"This agreement shall be based on the UCITA. Tough noogies, spammer!" 220 To signify your binding agreement, type "HELO" or "EHLO". If you do not agree type "QUIT".
Boy would I love to see UCITA bite a spammer in the ass.
CmdrTaco wrote: I don't think anyone should ever be able to say, "You may not link this page" since that is fundamentally the anti-point of the Web.
Okay, everyone...put up your "do not link to pages on this site" notices. Then sue the crap out of Mattel when they stick your URLs in their blocking software.
...the authors of hacking tools included code that checks for the presence of EverQuest during installation, and, if present, installs the "extra-strength super-dooper stealth" version.
Those who attempt 'security through obscurity' achieve 'obscurity through stupidity'. Frankly, I prefer 'security through perversity'.
Slashdot Mirror
The really cool thing about the CBR measurements is the fine-structure of correlations between different parts of the sky. When the measurements are transformed (a la Fourier transformations) you get an energy spectrum of primordial fluctuations.
And seeing some structure in that energy spectrum would be wild: you're seeing how different species of particles dominated the early universe, as they in turn decay to lighter particles.
New forces, new particles, the source of "dark matter"; when you have the whole universe as your particle physics experiment, something interesting should result.
Just ignore the ELVIS LIVES that shows up in the CBR map, and you'll be happier. FNORD.
Just think of a human as an i/o device, and you'll get the general idea.
To get high input bandwidth to your human, visual media are best; not much argument here, I suspect.
But for the best output bandwidth from the human, you have to get all 10 fingers involved. So a keyboard with *copious* function keys is much better than anything with a rodent.
One beef I have with mainframe unix/Xterm keyboards is that they have the functionality of an ADM-3A. You'd *think* things have improved since those days.
Hell, with a big dish it's worthwhile using cryogenic cooling of your preamp. Get your preamp down to 3K and you cut the noise quite a bit. But add up 6000+ dishes, and you add the noise from all those preamps.
Now as for interferometry, it's great stuff if the goal is precise angular resolution. Mapping structures in the center of galaxies and the like.
But for SETI, there's nothing to map until you find a signal, and to find a signal you need sensitivity. Breaking the sky into smaller bits doesn't help push down your noise floor significantly.
I would also like to see SETI be able to scan more of the sky, but realistically that requires the use of a few large steerable dishes. They won't be quite as large as Arecibo (~100m rather than 300m), so Arecibo will do a better "depth" search, but they both should be done.
Being enthusiastic about the tech is great; it helps if you actually know something about it.
Naturally, the broadcasters reneg...going for $$$ using the HDTV bandwidth for other stuff while continuing to hold the old bandwidth too.
Does anyone else see this as a blatent spectrum theft? Of course, we can't expect our elected representitives to do anything about it; pissing off the broadcasters is electoral death.
When one industry gets a veto on who gets to be our government, you should be worried.
Personally, I was looking forward to everyone having to toss their old TVs...maybe it would wean people from sucking on the glass teat, and that would raise the collective IQ of the country.
To put this in perspective, you need to have 6,824 of the little 12 foot dishes to equal the collection area (and hence sensitivity) of Arecibo...
For SPAM, that dastardly UCITA may come to our aid:
Boy would I love to see UCITA bite a spammer in the ass.
Okay, everyone...put up your "do not link to pages on this site" notices. Then sue the crap out of Mattel when they stick your URLs in their blocking software.
Those who attempt 'security through obscurity' achieve 'obscurity through stupidity'. Frankly, I prefer 'security through perversity'.