If there weren't at least hypothesized 'same or different' consideration, there'd be no mention of Pioneers.
Unless they're often confused, which they are. Two anomalies involve spacecraft trajectories are obviously easy to mix up, whether or not there is any reason to suspect a relationship.
Sure, but just launching the spacecraft would cost serious cash. I'd bet around half a billion dollars or more. That's a large investment for this particular effect.
This isn't the Pioneer anomaly. The latter was seen not in flybys but during extended cruise phases with no maneuvers. As far as I know, it has only been seen in Pioneers, although that may be due to the particular nature of those spacecraft that make them excellent tests for this effect. (Assuming it's not entirely intrinsic to the spacecraft in the first place.)
This effect is a flyby effect and is different from the Pioneer Anomaly, as the article itself pretty clearly notes.
We can take this further: if you're lecturing the whole time, you've already failed. Lecturing. Doesn't. Work.
(And the blogger's cited study not withstanding, I've also seen studies that show that sitting in lecture furiously taking notes is *not* an effective way of learning. It may be better than sitting in lecture and zoning, but it's far better not to lecture.)
I'm a professor and I do use PowerPoint. For the 10-20 minutes of each period (70 min) that I actually am in lecture mode, anyway. It lets me post notes ahead of time (something many students have thanked me for, both for saving them time and for when they've gotten sick), put extra notes at the end I don't intended to cover in class (but want to add for anyone interested) and include a lot of figures and images that wouldn't work well with the board or transparencies. (A slide projector would, at minimum, be required.)
Now, granted, I don't follow my slides slavishly. I frequently (too frequently, it feels like) diverge from them. And I don't expect my lecture to actually cover the entire material. That's daft. The students have to do the reading, even in a science class. The lecture is just there to highlight the important points, add anything I feel would help, or clarify a poorly explained bit of the text. (The latter happens rarely since I chose the textbook carefully.)
That's certainly not the point I was making, far from it. I'm in no way trying to discourage alternate theories on this phenomenon, but rather trying to explain why the proposed connection is a reasonable starting point. (It may be wrong, but you have to start somewhere, in effect.)
It's sad that there are people who feel that credentials are what matter most; I'm sorry that you encounter them. Just know that we're not all like that, some of us are willing to listen.
Education repossession technology is still in beta
Nonsense. The wooden baseball bat to the head technique is a tried and true method. Admittedly, it lacks precision (hard to only get the college stuff and miss the K-12 or, you know, voluntary bladder control), but it works.
No again, they are high because the universities keep spending (on research programs, out of control construction projects, etc)
While it's certainly true that a lot of schools could lay off on the big-ticket items that they don't really need (new stadia? campus-wide wireless internet?), the research programs are what bring in the money in the first place. I don't know national averages, but I can tell you that at the University of Colorado, fully 40% of the operating budget is from grants and contracts. Since they skim off around 50% of anything that comes in before the investigators see the cash, that's quite a lot of money for the general fund. (It's the largest single source, in fact.) Tuition and taxes pay a significantly smaller portion.
(Standard number is that actual expenses for educating a student is 2 to 3 times the cost of tuition.)
The thing being... we have a 2D view of a 3D object. From our perspective it runs perpendicular to the axis of the magnetic field. But without a second observation point that's far enough away from the original observation point, we can't actually know that it actually *is* perpendicular to the axis, or whether it's an optical illusion and really going off at some oddball angle.
Again, sure. But we got what we got. And, once again, what's being suggested isn't that we know that these two things are connected. Merely that it'd be a heckuva coincidence if they weren't. If I hear a scream and rush around the corner to see someone unconscious on the sidewalk, I'm going to assume that the two are connected until I get further information suggesting otherwise. Certainly as I try to figure out what happened, that's my starting position. And similarly, the good folks working on this ribbon mystery are going to start by looking for ways of connecting the ribbon to the galactic magnetic field. They might be wrong. That might get them nowhere. But you start where the initial set of clues lead you and work from there.
So, once again: no one is saying that we know that the two are connected. It's just a reasonably strong hint in the initial stages of investigating a new phenomenon.
I disagree. The probability of the ribbon running perpindicular to the galactic magnetic field is pretty low if it's a coincidence and it's not implausible that there are interactions between the heliosphere and the magnetic field (given that the heliosphere is set by plasma interactions and all, especially). So to infer that the galactic magnetic field plays a role is perfectly reasonable.
Perhaps you mean that it isn't *proof* that the galactic magnetic field is responsible? (Which is true. Granted, there is no proof in science, just sometimes strong evidence. Which this isn't, either.)
And the problem isn't having dishes pointing in the right directions, it's having too *few* of them. For example, when Saturn and Mars are near conjunction in our sky, we have to choose whether to talk to Saturn or Mars with the 70-m dish.
This is slightly tangential, but worth noting I think:
This will be handy when we can't afford to lose contact with Mars for even a few days, but there's a bigger problem lurking in inter-planetary communications: bandwidth. We don't really have enough Deep Space Network dishes (particularly, the large 70-m ones) to talk to all of our missions as much as we should. We're sacrificing data collection on billion-dollar missions on a daily basis on the grounds that we don't have enough bandwidth to get it back. When we put people or even just more missions on Mars, that'll only get worse.
That's 24 people who reported AT age 10 that they had candy regularly and later become criminals. Not eight criminals who report that they had candy way back when. The time of reporting matters. If you're claiming that the small number makes a difference, you need to explain why they would be more likely to lie as 10-year-olds. (This is possible, but it's not obviously true.)
While I agree that a sample of 35 isn't great statistics, the odds of having 69% of them in the candy-eating category if they WERE the same as the background population is under 0.05%, as I'm sure you know. (I just did a Monte Carlo simulation with 100000 trials.) So it's not the best study in the universe, but this is real human data: you take what you can get, particularly in sample size. It's not enough of a study to drive policy, but it's certainly enough to be publishable and enough to warrant further attention.
As an astronomy professor (teaching an observational class this term), I can tell you that you're wrong. Angular diameter is a often-used and highly appropriate way of measuring things on the sky. I can't understand why you're concerned about them being spheres, though. (There is little distortion because the distance over the diameter is very small, meaning we see nearly the entire hemisphere facing us and that the small angle approximation is valid.)
I'd agree with you if there weren't a review process in place. If there were and obvious mistake, the reviewers should catch it even if the authors did not.
"'There are a large number of authors, all of them excellent and credible researchers. "
You do realize, sir, that this really proves little, right? I'd say around 90+% of scientists I know are credible and excellent researchers. We all *want* to do good work and few of us would willingly or knowingly compromise that.
This doesn't stop us from making honest, hard-to-spot mistakes. It's one thing to be sloppy (and that does happen sometimes) or to be dishonest (that also happens, rarely). But in any research, there will be factors you simply didn't know about and, let's be fair, shouldn't be expected to anticipate.
So saying that these are good researchers is, at best, suggesting that you think that they didn't lie or miss something obvious that they should have noticed. At worst, it sounds dangerously like an argument from authority.
While I think that it's wrong to say that Republicans as a monolithic group oppose science, I think it is fair to say that as an ensemble average, they fight against a lot of it. It does seem to be Republicans (and their base) that systematically fight against evolution being taught in schools, deny the science on climate change (and pretty much any environmental issues), and oppose funding basic science.
On the flip side, the Democrats (and their base) seem to be equally incensed about studies that go against their pre-conceived ideology, so I hesitate to say that this is an intrinsic problem with one party or the other.
Slashdot Mirror
If there weren't at least hypothesized 'same or different' consideration, there'd be no mention of Pioneers.
Unless they're often confused, which they are. Two anomalies involve spacecraft trajectories are obviously easy to mix up, whether or not there is any reason to suspect a relationship.
Sure, but just launching the spacecraft would cost serious cash. I'd bet around half a billion dollars or more. That's a large investment for this particular effect.
This isn't the Pioneer anomaly. The latter was seen not in flybys but during extended cruise phases with no maneuvers. As far as I know, it has only been seen in Pioneers, although that may be due to the particular nature of those spacecraft that make them excellent tests for this effect. (Assuming it's not entirely intrinsic to the spacecraft in the first place.)
This effect is a flyby effect and is different from the Pioneer Anomaly, as the article itself pretty clearly notes.
We can take this further: if you're lecturing the whole time, you've already failed. Lecturing. Doesn't. Work.
(And the blogger's cited study not withstanding, I've also seen studies that show that sitting in lecture furiously taking notes is *not* an effective way of learning. It may be better than sitting in lecture and zoning, but it's far better not to lecture.)
I'm a professor and I do use PowerPoint. For the 10-20 minutes of each period (70 min) that I actually am in lecture mode, anyway. It lets me post notes ahead of time (something many students have thanked me for, both for saving them time and for when they've gotten sick), put extra notes at the end I don't intended to cover in class (but want to add for anyone interested) and include a lot of figures and images that wouldn't work well with the board or transparencies. (A slide projector would, at minimum, be required.)
Now, granted, I don't follow my slides slavishly. I frequently (too frequently, it feels like) diverge from them. And I don't expect my lecture to actually cover the entire material. That's daft. The students have to do the reading, even in a science class. The lecture is just there to highlight the important points, add anything I feel would help, or clarify a poorly explained bit of the text. (The latter happens rarely since I chose the textbook carefully.)
Pity, too. They burned the three-volume series, Where We Buried Our Fabulous Treasures: A Step-By-Step Guide to Getting There and Back Alive.
Whoa, whoa. You have songs in your head?
Did you pay the licensing fee for them? Lawyers are on their way to you now.
I see.
That's certainly not the point I was making, far from it. I'm in no way trying to discourage alternate theories on this phenomenon, but rather trying to explain why the proposed connection is a reasonable starting point. (It may be wrong, but you have to start somewhere, in effect.)
It's sad that there are people who feel that credentials are what matter most; I'm sorry that you encounter them. Just know that we're not all like that, some of us are willing to listen.
Happens to all of us.
What were you trying to say before?
Education repossession technology is still in beta
Nonsense. The wooden baseball bat to the head technique is a tried and true method. Admittedly, it lacks precision (hard to only get the college stuff and miss the K-12 or, you know, voluntary bladder control), but it works.
No again, they are high because the universities keep spending (on research programs, out of control construction projects, etc)
While it's certainly true that a lot of schools could lay off on the big-ticket items that they don't really need (new stadia? campus-wide wireless internet?), the research programs are what bring in the money in the first place. I don't know national averages, but I can tell you that at the University of Colorado, fully 40% of the operating budget is from grants and contracts. Since they skim off around 50% of anything that comes in before the investigators see the cash, that's quite a lot of money for the general fund. (It's the largest single source, in fact.) Tuition and taxes pay a significantly smaller portion.
(Standard number is that actual expenses for educating a student is 2 to 3 times the cost of tuition.)
I can't even understand what you're trying to say, there.
The thing being... we have a 2D view of a 3D object. From our perspective it runs perpendicular to the axis of the magnetic field. But without a second observation point that's far enough away from the original observation point, we can't actually know that it actually *is* perpendicular to the axis, or whether it's an optical illusion and really going off at some oddball angle.
Again, sure. But we got what we got. And, once again, what's being suggested isn't that we know that these two things are connected. Merely that it'd be a heckuva coincidence if they weren't. If I hear a scream and rush around the corner to see someone unconscious on the sidewalk, I'm going to assume that the two are connected until I get further information suggesting otherwise. Certainly as I try to figure out what happened, that's my starting position. And similarly, the good folks working on this ribbon mystery are going to start by looking for ways of connecting the ribbon to the galactic magnetic field. They might be wrong. That might get them nowhere. But you start where the initial set of clues lead you and work from there.
So, once again: no one is saying that we know that the two are connected. It's just a reasonably strong hint in the initial stages of investigating a new phenomenon.
I disagree. The probability of the ribbon running perpindicular to the galactic magnetic field is pretty low if it's a coincidence and it's not implausible that there are interactions between the heliosphere and the magnetic field (given that the heliosphere is set by plasma interactions and all, especially). So to infer that the galactic magnetic field plays a role is perfectly reasonable.
Perhaps you mean that it isn't *proof* that the galactic magnetic field is responsible? (Which is true. Granted, there is no proof in science, just sometimes strong evidence. Which this isn't, either.)
Why would putting them on the Moon help?
And the problem isn't having dishes pointing in the right directions, it's having too *few* of them. For example, when Saturn and Mars are near conjunction in our sky, we have to choose whether to talk to Saturn or Mars with the 70-m dish.
This is slightly tangential, but worth noting I think:
This will be handy when we can't afford to lose contact with Mars for even a few days, but there's a bigger problem lurking in inter-planetary communications: bandwidth. We don't really have enough Deep Space Network dishes (particularly, the large 70-m ones) to talk to all of our missions as much as we should. We're sacrificing data collection on billion-dollar missions on a daily basis on the grounds that we don't have enough bandwidth to get it back. When we put people or even just more missions on Mars, that'll only get worse.
Minor correction: they're the *only* stable Lagrange points. (And only then if the mass ratio of the primary and secondary body is high enough.)
Read the article before you spend at least as much time to criticize it here, please.
This was a cohort study. The candy reporting was done AT THE TIME WHEN THEY WERE KIDS.
No.
That's 24 people who reported AT age 10 that they had candy regularly and later become criminals. Not eight criminals who report that they had candy way back when. The time of reporting matters. If you're claiming that the small number makes a difference, you need to explain why they would be more likely to lie as 10-year-olds. (This is possible, but it's not obviously true.)
While I agree that a sample of 35 isn't great statistics, the odds of having 69% of them in the candy-eating category if they WERE the same as the background population is under 0.05%, as I'm sure you know. (I just did a Monte Carlo simulation with 100000 trials.) So it's not the best study in the universe, but this is real human data: you take what you can get, particularly in sample size. It's not enough of a study to drive policy, but it's certainly enough to be publishable and enough to warrant further attention.
As an astronomy professor (teaching an observational class this term), I can tell you that you're wrong. Angular diameter is a often-used and highly appropriate way of measuring things on the sky. I can't understand why you're concerned about them being spheres, though. (There is little distortion because the distance over the diameter is very small, meaning we see nearly the entire hemisphere facing us and that the small angle approximation is valid.)
I'd agree with you if there weren't a review process in place. If there were and obvious mistake, the reviewers should catch it even if the authors did not.
Scientists are not authorities. We're experts, on our good days. Never, ever authorities.
Beyond that, I have no clue what you're saying and how it relates to my post.
"'There are a large number of authors, all of them excellent and credible researchers. "
You do realize, sir, that this really proves little, right? I'd say around 90+% of scientists I know are credible and excellent researchers. We all *want* to do good work and few of us would willingly or knowingly compromise that.
This doesn't stop us from making honest, hard-to-spot mistakes. It's one thing to be sloppy (and that does happen sometimes) or to be dishonest (that also happens, rarely). But in any research, there will be factors you simply didn't know about and, let's be fair, shouldn't be expected to anticipate.
So saying that these are good researchers is, at best, suggesting that you think that they didn't lie or miss something obvious that they should have noticed. At worst, it sounds dangerously like an argument from authority.
While I think that it's wrong to say that Republicans as a monolithic group oppose science, I think it is fair to say that as an ensemble average, they fight against a lot of it. It does seem to be Republicans (and their base) that systematically fight against evolution being taught in schools, deny the science on climate change (and pretty much any environmental issues), and oppose funding basic science.
On the flip side, the Democrats (and their base) seem to be equally incensed about studies that go against their pre-conceived ideology, so I hesitate to say that this is an intrinsic problem with one party or the other.
"I am BEN FRANKLIN, master of SEX and VOODOO!"
I'm not sure if it's exactly relevant to this discussion, though...
I don't want to live in a society where that is not relevant.