Damn... you beat me to it. The Tunguska Event didn't leave much behind except for wreckage, certainly there have been no reports of meteor fragments found. This meteorite was almost certainly brought in from elsewhere, mostly to show visitors what one looks like.
A 3 tonne nickel-iron meteorite wouldn't need to be very large, maybe the size of small refrigerator. A 5-ton truck outfitted with a lift would all that would be needed to take it away.
And for every successful modification, there are 999 unsuccessful modifications. Nature isn't kind to mutations, most of them are completely unsuccesful and result in the death of the organism.
OTH, these numbers probably aren't all that far off from number of successful programs. You start with the programs that someone thinks of, but are so useless or unworkable that they can't find a backer or buyer for them, so they never make it to the store shelf. Then go to the programs that actually make it as far as the store shelves, versus those that might be found there five years later....
A related article at The Guardian may provide the insight needed. The Shuttle isn't wanted by the current administration, it exemplifies civilian uses of Space, which is obviously too important strategically to have mere people allowed to be involved.
The of NASA Administrator puts it this way:
Michael Griffin, the Nasa administrator, overruled colleagues who wanted the mission postponed for safety improvements, arguing that there was no danger.
"We have elected to take the risk," he said. But he admitted that a "major incident" would lead to the closure of the 26-year-old shuttle programme and the likely scrapping of the half-built International Space Station. "If we were to lose another vehicle, I would be moving to figure out a way to shut the programme down," he said. "I think at that point we're done."
I don't know how he can possibly believe that he would be looking to shut down the NASA Space Program in the event of a disaster. He should be looking either for another job, or good counsel to help him keep out of jail when the investigation follows. Unless of course, he is simply following orders...
It might not have been great writing, but it was great storytelling. The opening scene of "Babylon 5 - The Gathering" where Ambassador Londo Mollari lays out the story arc is right out of "A Tale of Two Cities" by Dickens. Unfortunately, I missed it in it's original airing, but when I got back to it several years later I was struck by how strong it was, and how well it described the show.
This was a grand tale, told on a grand scale. I'm forever grateful that Straczynski managed to get it to us.
Give me a good story any day. The best effects are the ones we create in our minds eye.
One of the techniques (I'm not sure how widely used it is) involves using a thin stream of water as an optical guide for a laser. The LMJ (Laser MicroJet) reduces the amount of chipping that occcurs at the cut, allows for cutting curved lines, and operates at cooler temperatures.
In general, the thermal gradient as you descend is about 30C/km. In a descent to this depth, this would translate out to around a 54C increase in temperature. But they've only barely gone below the surface, geologically speaking.
So climate becomes a factor. Up to about 10,000 years ago, this whole area was covered by a mile thick layer of ice. The pleistocene ice ages go back about 3 million years, so during the last couple of million years much of the northern hemisphere has been covered by ice and it's left its effects on the earth underneath.
I suspect this is why the cave is so chilly, give it another million years or so, and it will become quite the vacation spot.
Good data on thermal gradients is spotty, much of it coming from the efforts of oil drillers in the last century or so, and they are notoriously stingy about sharing any information that could give a competitor a heads-up. But my wild-assed guess is that by the time they got to 5km, the normal thermal gradient would kick in, and they'd start to see warmer temperatures.
This wouldn't work if the message contains some sort of 'Heartbeat Event' - the equivalent of "I've got the incriminating papers hidden and ready to be released in the event of my death"
Significant amounts of other information could be passed along as well.
While we're exploring pedantics, it should be noted that Googol was not a word either, until it was coined about 65 years ago as an example of a non-infinite number that was nonetheless unimaginably large.
If P2P networks follow the same growth path of the VCR, 5 years from now that ratio will be 50/50.
People found that VCR's were a convenient way to bring some porn into the house, then after a bit they also realized that 'Hey, there are a lot of legitimate movies I can watch too'
For the record, about 95% of what I have available when I fire up my P2P is stuff downloaded from.gov domains.
After 9/11 the Federal Government decided that the security of the American people was better served by keeping them in the dark as to what they were up to, and took a lot of stuff off their internet servers.
So now I get what I can on topics that interest me, and post them for sharing, before they disappear also.
if eavesdropping on the encrypted transmission destroys it, couldnt the eavesdropper do so on purpose everytime, effectively jamming all transmission? Little point in having a secure way to communicate if no message can ever get through.
I think that it may be argued that it is better to secretly know your opponent's plans than it is to stop his planning.
If one communication channel is too disrupted, your opponent will presumably seek another channel, one you don't know about, or can't affect.
This is large part was the basis of the decision to keep the existence of the British Enigma machine a secret during WWII. Even though a lot of the message traffic for the German U-Boats was decoded, the information was used sparingly in order to keep the Germans from deducing that their traffic was being read.
I don't know how 'revolting' the smell would be. Our sense of smell is linked in part to the threat level associated with the smell. Decomposing lizard is not great, fish is bad, decomposing cow is worse, but the worst is decomposing human.
And that's because we 'recognize' that the decomposing human presents the greatest threat in terms of exposure to infection.
Since T-Rex's diet would have been almost entirely other reptiles, with maybe the occasional fish thrown in, it's breath would not have been too bad. There would have been some mammals, but they probably weren't high on the menu list, especially since they would have been smaller and faster than T-Rex. It's breath would be more like decomposing reptile than decomposing mammal
This all might be balanced out by something else however. We currently don't enjoy any serious predation, but if a walk to the local park carried significant risk of being lunch for a 30 foot lizard, we'd probably be pretty sensitive to any clues, including olfactory ones, of their presence.
Not being a girl of any species, I can only speculate.
But from what I hear the behavioural biologists say, the reasons why the girls like the guys they do, links back to ability the guys have to survive and provide for, at least until the young are out of the way.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn... you beat me to it. The Tunguska Event didn't leave much behind except for wreckage, certainly there have been no reports of meteor fragments found. This meteorite was almost certainly brought in from elsewhere, mostly to show visitors what one looks like.
A 3 tonne nickel-iron meteorite wouldn't need to be very large, maybe the size of small refrigerator. A 5-ton truck outfitted with a lift would all that would be needed to take it away.
And for every successful modification, there are 999 unsuccessful modifications. Nature isn't kind to mutations, most of them are completely unsuccesful and result in the death of the organism.
OTH, these numbers probably aren't all that far off from number of successful programs. You start with the programs that someone thinks of, but are so useless or unworkable that they can't find a backer or buyer for them, so they never make it to the store shelf. Then go to the programs that actually make it as far as the store shelves, versus those that might be found there five years later....
The of NASA Administrator puts it this way:
I don't know how he can possibly believe that he would be looking to shut down the NASA Space Program in the event of a disaster. He should be looking either for another job, or good counsel to help him keep out of jail when the investigation follows.
Unless of course, he is simply following orders...
This was a grand tale, told on a grand scale. I'm forever grateful that Straczynski managed to get it to us.
Give me a good story any day. The best effects are the ones we create in our minds eye.
See this CleanRooms article for more details
In general, the thermal gradient as you descend is about 30C/km. In a descent to this depth, this would translate out to around a 54C increase in temperature. But they've only barely gone below the surface, geologically speaking.
So climate becomes a factor. Up to about 10,000 years ago, this whole area was covered by a mile thick layer of ice. The pleistocene ice ages go back about 3 million years, so during the last couple of million years much of the northern hemisphere has been covered by ice and it's left its effects on the earth underneath.
I suspect this is why the cave is so chilly, give it another million years or so, and it will become quite the vacation spot.
Good data on thermal gradients is spotty, much of it coming from the efforts of oil drillers in the last century or so, and they are notoriously stingy about sharing any information that could give a competitor a heads-up. But my wild-assed guess is that by the time they got to 5km, the normal thermal gradient would kick in, and they'd start to see warmer temperatures.
Pandemonium did not reign; it poured. ~ John Hendrick Bangs
This wouldn't work if the message contains some sort of 'Heartbeat Event' - the equivalent of "I've got the incriminating papers hidden and ready to be released in the event of my death"
Significant amounts of other information could be passed along as well.
While we're exploring pedantics, it should be noted that Googol was not a word either, until it was coined about 65 years ago as an example of a non-infinite number that was nonetheless unimaginably large.
The public should be thankful that she went into a subset of nursing that doesn't require her to poke a needle in someone :)
Why take a chance with known copyright problems?
Keeping copyrighted material in a directory shared with the P2P network is just an invitation to a warrant someday in the future.
If P2P networks follow the same growth path of the VCR, 5 years from now that ratio will be 50/50.
.gov domains.
People found that VCR's were a convenient way to bring some porn into the house, then after a bit they also realized that 'Hey, there are a lot of legitimate movies I can watch too'
For the record, about 95% of what I have available when I fire up my P2P is stuff downloaded from
After 9/11 the Federal Government decided that the security of the American people was better served by keeping them in the dark as to what they were up to, and took a lot of stuff off their internet servers.
So now I get what I can on topics that interest me, and post them for sharing, before they disappear also.
I think that it may be argued that it is better to secretly know your opponent's plans than it is to stop his planning.
If one communication channel is too disrupted, your opponent will presumably seek another channel, one you don't know about, or can't affect.
This is large part was the basis of the decision to keep the existence of the British Enigma machine a secret during WWII. Even though a lot of the message traffic for the German U-Boats was decoded, the information was used sparingly in order to keep the Germans from deducing that their traffic was being read.
And that's because we 'recognize' that the decomposing human presents the greatest threat in terms of exposure to infection.
Since T-Rex's diet would have been almost entirely other reptiles, with maybe the occasional fish thrown in, it's breath would not have been too bad. There would have been some mammals, but they probably weren't high on the menu list, especially since they would have been smaller and faster than T-Rex. It's breath would be more like decomposing reptile than decomposing mammal
This all might be balanced out by something else however. We currently don't enjoy any serious predation, but if a walk to the local park carried significant risk of being lunch for a 30 foot lizard, we'd probably be pretty sensitive to any clues, including olfactory ones, of their presence.
But from what I hear the behavioural biologists say, the reasons why the girls like the guys they do, links back to ability the guys have to survive and provide for, at least until the young are out of the way.