Re:Wow @ that image of details...
on
Tune in to Titan
·
· Score: 3, Informative
You weren't. We can't see the surface, not in the visible. The pictures were taken in the infrared. (Earth-based radar has also been used.)
Venus's surface has also been mapped from orbit (by Magellen) using radar. And, of course, the Venera landers got some pictures very small bits of the surface.
The topology of the Sun wouldn't change with any size bulge. However, if the buldge were really severe, it would affect the convection's behavior. *That* would affect the field topology. But moving the equator out a bit wouldn't much change how the field lines get tangled, so it shouldn't affect things much.
It's difficult to see how; the topology hasn't changed. If the bulge were really severe, I could imagine it altering the way convection works, but there's no way that it is.
Oh, I should have noted that the Sun rotates ever 30 days or so. The buldge moves across the Sun on that timescale, so Jupiter's orbital period is nearly irrelevent. (There's a slight effect from eccentricity of the orbit, but Jupiter's orbit is pretty circular.)
The tidal force on the Sun due to Jupiter should be down by around a factor of 100,000 from that of the Moon on the Earth, I figure. And it's difficult to see how tides would affect the field. They create a bulge, they shouldn't tangle up field lines. And there is no reason that I can figure that would explain why it's a 22-year cycle, rather than an 11-year. (We see a maxiumum is solar activity every 11 years, but the Sun's field returns to the same orientation (north or south) every 22 years.) So while I'd say you've got a good thought, it doesn't look like it would pan out.
What seems to be happening is that the convection and rotation that generates the field also tangles it all up. Eventually, it's so messed up that it starts to reconnect and straighten itself out, getting simpler and weaker. And the cycle starts again, but in the opposite direction.
Incidentally, Earth seems to do the same thing, just much more slowly. Look for "magnetic reversals" with Google.
I should preface this by admitting that I'm not a palentologist or a geologist, but this sounds like a sketchy argument. It is (as the article points out in the middle) difficult to pin down the date of an extinction from the fossil record. Since only a small fraction of the dead organisms are preserved, you will generally see the last fossil of a given species some time before the actuall extinction event, even if the extinction is basically instantaneous. (i.e. -- a steady population to the moment of extinction, then zero population.) We had a colloquium speaker here in my (Astronomy) department a couple of years ago who explained how this works in pretty convincing detail. So you'll always see what looks like a decline in the biodiversity before an extinction event. Exactly how to deconvolve the effects of the spotty fossilization and the actual event itself is a bit tricky. So I approach the claims for the gradual decline with a lot of caution.
Which isn't to say that it's impossible. But given the trickiness of the data analysis and the odd coincidence of the asteroid impact just then, I'm skeptical.
Providing equipment to deal with a problem isn't the same as expecting in. Cars are designed to handle a roll, but I don't expect it to happen to me. Which is just the point, really: NASA is ready to provide mid-mission fixes to all kinds of problems, including ones that they don't anticipate or really expect.
And since I was privy to what was going on when the fogging was being dealt with, I can say that (unless my sources, who are very much involved with this, are lying), they didn't really expect the fogging and they certainly didn't know for sure that that's what it was. I heard alternate theories right up until the last baking fixed the problem.
No, the fogging wasn't expected. They had the equipment on board to *deal* with it, but there were a LOT of scared people at NASA (and in the planetary community) for months over that one. They didn't even know for sure that it was fogging for quite a while. So you can't call that a "planned operation", I'm sorry.
The number of automobiles that have been built isn't what you're after; it's the number of MODELS that you need to look at. And whether a spacecraft passes the Moon's orbit or not doesn't change a lot of the design. We have a lot of experience with spacecraft. I'd agree, we probably have more with cars. But we also spend a lot more on checking spacecraft over and adding more redundancy to the system before we launch them. And we spend more time analyzing failures (large and small) in the spacecraft to learn from them than is typically done with cars. The two situations are just too different to compare. The very fact that cars are more numerous than spaceprobes also means that the latter get a lot more care and attention than the former.
The size of Cassini is also a red herring on your part. Sure, it's the biggest yet. But it's not really all that much bigger or more complex than, say, Galileo. Most of the parts on board are time-tested designs.
I doubt that anyone involved is assuming that things will go smoothly. NASA checks and rechecks these things (for a mission this size, anyway). But to pretend that NASA Cassini is some brand new territory for NASA is just wrong. As always, there are new aspects, but it's not like they have no experience with this stuff.
How do you figure we've never had practice building or repairing these things? Cassini/Huygens specifically, no. But it's not like the technology is brand new to us. There are Voyager spares on board Cassini, for example. And it's not like we've never had to do a long-distance repair on one of these guys before. So far, Cassini has had the main camera go foggy (repaired it) and the Huygen's probe turn out to be unable to communicate with Cassini (altered the flight plan to circumvent the problem). To use your car analogy, it's like saying that we're in the dark about building a given new model. Of course we aren't, most of what's there is old hat to the designers.
Besides, when you spend $3 billion on the thing, you buy a lot more quality control than your typical automobile.
Also, you shouldn't forget that Cassini has heaters on board. So "cold" might not be as much of a worry as you think.
Oxygen is heavier than air, too. Yet it's abundant all through the atmosphere. Turbulent mixing is an amazing thing. You don't get a lot of segregation until you get higher up in the atmosphere. And I already told you why you see it mainly in Antarctica as has another poster.
When Antarctica is tilted away from the Sun, there's no UV to destroy O3, either. So you wouldn't expect a hole. Even if *you* do, then you had better explain why the north pole doesn't have as much of one.
Please stop trolling and posting this muck. If you don't understand it, don't pretend to.
Re:You are proving my point here.....
on
Can Coal Be Green?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
This research was put forward by Yang Xuexiang, a professor of geological sciences at Changchun University of Technology in China. His research showed that the ozone layer was affected by certain energetic particles striking the earth's atmosphere and breaking up the ozone layer.
(Why is it that when someone publishes something you don't like, it's "junk science", but when you like the result he's "showed" it? (As opposed to "suggesting"?)
Is this" the guy? If so, do you know anything about ozone or atmospheres? If so, why do you believe him? He says:
Yang argues the northern hemisphere is where the use of freon is concentrated and so if the freon theory was correct, the ozone hole should have appeared above the north pole instead of the south pole, Xinhua says. He says that most planets, including the earth, may lose part of their mass when they move toward the sun. This lays the foundation for the evolution of atmospheres on planets. For instance, he says, planets near the sun, such as Mercury, have very thin atmospheres, while planets far from the sun have much thicker atmospheres.
He apparently didn't check his data on the planets, since Venus has a thicker atmosphere than Earth does. (And Jupiter and Saturn have thicker atmospheres than Uranus and Neptune.) Come to think of it, without any magnetic field, Venus should really be screwed by his logic, shouldn't it?
His claim that the north pole should have more ozone depletion tells me that he hasn't even read the literature on CFCs and polar stratospheric clouds. The latter are aid in the chemistry of ozone destruction, and occur in the south pole. (Circulation patterns are different, leading to different weather patterns.)
Come to it, if his theory is valid, he should be able to correlate solar activity to the ozone hole's growth and decay. I can tell you right now that it doesn't track, so he's got an uphill battle there.
If you're going to accuse the climate researchers of "junk science" it really behooves you to be damn sure the alternatives you're putting forward are reasonable.
Sorry, but no. "Junk science" would be "science" shoehorned to fit a particular pre-determined point of view. The global warming research has in almost all cases not been of this nature. You might disagree with the conclusions and you certainly might not like them, but please don't insult the scientists involved because their results don't make you happy. If you want to pick apart their arguments carefully with your own data and models, you're welcomed to present these results at any number of conferences or in quite a few peer-reviewed journals. (And please don't try to fall back on the "I'll be censored" nonsense. If you could convincingly shoot down global warming, there are dozens of journals, starting with Science and Nature, that would trip overthemselves to print it. It'd be a coup to publish such a paper.)
On the other hand, if you want to talk about "junk science", you could look at the numerous cases where Washington has instructed scientists to change their conclusions to fit the administration's views. There are plenty of examples from the current administration, although I suspect that you could find some in almost any presidency. (The USSR was also quite fond of this sort of thing.)
Climate research is certainly tricky business and no one in the field pretends to have a total handle on how things work. However, we can say some things with pretty good confidence. That global warming is happening and that humans are responsible is one of them. Even the Bush administration, a group dead-set against dealing with the problem, has admitted this much. What we should do about it, exactly, is an entirely different question.
Ah, here's the origins forwarded message I got 13 months ago just after the mishap. I knew I had a copy somewhere.
------------- Begin Forwarded Message-------------
Earth Science Missions Anomaly Report: GOES/POES Program/POES Project: 6 Sep 2003 EARTH SCIENCE MISSIONS ANOMALY REPORT TO: GSFC: 100/A. Diaz, 100/W. Townsend, 100/ 400/D Perkins, NASA HQ: Y/G. Asrar, Y/M. Luther, Q/B O?Connor FROM: GSFC/POES Project/480/K. Halterman DATE: September 6, 2003 PROGRAM/PROJECT: GOES/POES Program/POES Project DATE OF ANOMALY: September 6, 2003 LOCATION OF ANOMALY: Lockheed Martin, Sunnyvale CA
DESCRIPTION OF EVENT:
As the NOAA-N Prime spacecraft was being repositioned from vertical to horizontal on the "turn over cart" at approximately 7:15 PDT today, it slipped off the fixture, causing severe damage. (See attached photo). The 18' long spacecraft was about 3' off the ground when it fell.
The mishap was caused because 24 bolts were missing from a fixture in the ?turn over cart?. Two errors occurred. First, technicians from another satellite program that uses the same type of ?turn over cart? removed the 24 bolts from the NOAA cart on September 4 without proper documentation. Second, the NOAA team working today failed to follow the procedure to verify the configuration of the NOAA ?turn over cart? since they had used it a few days earlier.
IMPACT ON PROGRAM/PROJECT AND SCHEDULE:
The shock and vibration of the fall undoubtedly caused tremendous damage. Significant rework and retest will be required. NOAA-N Prime is planned for launch in 2008.
CORRECTIVE ACTION:
Lockheed Martin formed an Accident Review Team in which GSFC is participating. The immediate actions concern safety (preventing the spacecraft from rolling, discharging the batteries, and depressurizing the propulsion system). NOAA-N Prime is under guard, all records have been impounded, and the personnel interviewed. After the safety issues are addressed, attention will focus on assessing the damage to NOAA-N Prime.
That's exactly what they said had happened right after the accident. A detailed study of the cause is always in order, but I'm surprised that it took a year to verify what they apparently knew at that outset.
Technically, melting the ice caps and lower Earth's albedo makes us warmer. At least in the short run. (Feedbacks with oceanic circulation and such make the ultimate effect harder to predict.) A lower albedo means MORE sunlight is being absorbed so that the Earth has to warm up to radiate that energy back to space.
Luckily for pop-fiends, there's a lot less caffeine in a can of pop than in a cup of coffee. (And the former is nearly twice the volume of the latter, too.) Which isn't to say that it's a healthy habit, of course.
Yeah, it's a fair kick of the stuff. But I find your last sentence the most telling. A typical cup of coffee will have as much or more caffeine than a dose of Excederin. (And at only a bit over half the volume of a can of pop, no less.) Since you're taking the latter for a specific medical reason, it seems to me to be less scary than the cup of coffee (or two or three) that many people drink almost automatically every day without even thinking about it.
Not quite. 250 mg of acetaminophen, 65 mg of caffeine, and 250 mg of aspirin. The aspirin is important for migraines, since it's a blood thinner. (The fact that I can recite the ingredients of the drug from memory tells you how much I take.)
The real trick here would be to seperate the caffeine addiction with the pain-killer habituation. Even without caffeine, you can get habituated to pain-killers so that your body stops producing enough of its own. The result is pain, so that you take the drugs. Although a tame kind of an addiction overall, it's still rather nasty business.
I would assume that most "Other" votes went to Nader and that a fair number of them would have voted for Gore if this system had been in use. (I know of a lot of people in states whose leanings were not in question who voted for Nader because they didn't figure their vote made a difference anyway.) So I'm not sure what this test care really tells us.
I find the headline a bit misleading; this isn't a power source, it's a way to convert the source's output (heat) into electrical power. You will still need a power supply. (Probably an RTG.) You'll just get more electrical power by using this system.
Except that there's never been a lot of accuracy in predictions of comet returns, has there? (That's due to the comets themselves, though.)
Oddly, comets do provide an interesting clue on this puzzle. A paper came out about a year ago where they analyzed the orbits of *first time* comets from the Oort cloud. They found that if the anamolous acceleration on Pioneer were real and affecting comets, the distribution of orbital elements would be inconsistent with what is observed.
So it looks more like the accelerations are due to something on Pioneer.
Slashdot Mirror
You weren't. We can't see the surface, not in the visible. The pictures were taken in the infrared. (Earth-based radar has also been used.)
Venus's surface has also been mapped from orbit (by Magellen) using radar. And, of course, the Venera landers got some pictures very small bits of the surface.
So all in all, they're pretty equivelent.
The topology of the Sun wouldn't change with any size bulge. However, if the buldge were really severe, it would affect the convection's behavior. *That* would affect the field topology. But moving the equator out a bit wouldn't much change how the field lines get tangled, so it shouldn't affect things much.
It's difficult to see how; the topology hasn't changed. If the bulge were really severe, I could imagine it altering the way convection works, but there's no way that it is.
Oh, I should have noted that the Sun rotates ever 30 days or so. The buldge moves across the Sun on that timescale, so Jupiter's orbital period is nearly irrelevent. (There's a slight effect from eccentricity of the orbit, but Jupiter's orbit is pretty circular.)
The tidal force on the Sun due to Jupiter should be down by around a factor of 100,000 from that of the Moon on the Earth, I figure. And it's difficult to see how tides would affect the field. They create a bulge, they shouldn't tangle up field lines. And there is no reason that I can figure that would explain why it's a 22-year cycle, rather than an 11-year. (We see a maxiumum is solar activity every 11 years, but the Sun's field returns to the same orientation (north or south) every 22 years.) So while I'd say you've got a good thought, it doesn't look like it would pan out.
What seems to be happening is that the convection and rotation that generates the field also tangles it all up. Eventually, it's so messed up that it starts to reconnect and straighten itself out, getting simpler and weaker. And the cycle starts again, but in the opposite direction.
Incidentally, Earth seems to do the same thing, just much more slowly. Look for "magnetic reversals" with Google.
Total nitpick, but it's about 2 years early.
I should preface this by admitting that I'm not a palentologist or a geologist, but this sounds like a sketchy argument. It is (as the article points out in the middle) difficult to pin down the date of an extinction from the fossil record. Since only a small fraction of the dead organisms are preserved, you will generally see the last fossil of a given species some time before the actuall extinction event, even if the extinction is basically instantaneous. (i.e. -- a steady population to the moment of extinction, then zero population.) We had a colloquium speaker here in my (Astronomy) department a couple of years ago who explained how this works in pretty convincing detail. So you'll always see what looks like a decline in the biodiversity before an extinction event. Exactly how to deconvolve the effects of the spotty fossilization and the actual event itself is a bit tricky. So I approach the claims for the gradual decline with a lot of caution.
Which isn't to say that it's impossible. But given the trickiness of the data analysis and the odd coincidence of the asteroid impact just then, I'm skeptical.
Providing equipment to deal with a problem isn't the same as expecting in. Cars are designed to handle a roll, but I don't expect it to happen to me. Which is just the point, really: NASA is ready to provide mid-mission fixes to all kinds of problems, including ones that they don't anticipate or really expect.
And since I was privy to what was going on when the fogging was being dealt with, I can say that (unless my sources, who are very much involved with this, are lying), they didn't really expect the fogging and they certainly didn't know for sure that that's what it was. I heard alternate theories right up until the last baking fixed the problem.
No, the fogging wasn't expected. They had the equipment on board to *deal* with it, but there were a LOT of scared people at NASA (and in the planetary community) for months over that one. They didn't even know for sure that it was fogging for quite a while. So you can't call that a "planned operation", I'm sorry.
The number of automobiles that have been built isn't what you're after; it's the number of MODELS that you need to look at. And whether a spacecraft passes the Moon's orbit or not doesn't change a lot of the design. We have a lot of experience with spacecraft. I'd agree, we probably have more with cars. But we also spend a lot more on checking spacecraft over and adding more redundancy to the system before we launch them. And we spend more time analyzing failures (large and small) in the spacecraft to learn from them than is typically done with cars. The two situations are just too different to compare. The very fact that cars are more numerous than spaceprobes also means that the latter get a lot more care and attention than the former.
The size of Cassini is also a red herring on your part. Sure, it's the biggest yet. But it's not really all that much bigger or more complex than, say, Galileo. Most of the parts on board are time-tested designs.
I doubt that anyone involved is assuming that things will go smoothly. NASA checks and rechecks these things (for a mission this size, anyway). But to pretend that NASA Cassini is some brand new territory for NASA is just wrong. As always, there are new aspects, but it's not like they have no experience with this stuff.
It's worth also noting, for those that missed the quote, that he was talking about Iraq. Not that it should really matter much, of course.
How do you figure we've never had practice building or repairing these things? Cassini/Huygens specifically, no. But it's not like the technology is brand new to us. There are Voyager spares on board Cassini, for example. And it's not like we've never had to do a long-distance repair on one of these guys before. So far, Cassini has had the main camera go foggy (repaired it) and the Huygen's probe turn out to be unable to communicate with Cassini (altered the flight plan to circumvent the problem). To use your car analogy, it's like saying that we're in the dark about building a given new model. Of course we aren't, most of what's there is old hat to the designers.
Besides, when you spend $3 billion on the thing, you buy a lot more quality control than your typical automobile.
Also, you shouldn't forget that Cassini has heaters on board. So "cold" might not be as much of a worry as you think.
You really need to actually take some science.
Oxygen is heavier than air, too. Yet it's abundant all through the atmosphere. Turbulent mixing is an amazing thing. You don't get a lot of segregation until you get higher up in the atmosphere. And I already told you why you see it mainly in Antarctica as has another poster.
When Antarctica is tilted away from the Sun, there's no UV to destroy O3, either. So you wouldn't expect a hole. Even if *you* do, then you had better explain why the north pole doesn't have as much of one.
Please stop trolling and posting this muck. If you don't understand it, don't pretend to.
This research was put forward by Yang Xuexiang, a professor of geological sciences at Changchun University of Technology in China. His research showed that the ozone layer was affected by certain energetic particles striking the earth's atmosphere and breaking up the ozone layer.
(Why is it that when someone publishes something you don't like, it's "junk science", but when you like the result he's "showed" it? (As opposed to "suggesting"?)
Is this" the guy? If so, do you know anything about ozone or atmospheres? If so, why do you believe him? He says:
Yang argues the northern hemisphere is where the use of freon is concentrated and so if the freon theory was correct, the ozone hole should have appeared above the north pole instead of the south pole, Xinhua says. He says that most planets, including the earth, may lose part of their mass when they move toward the sun. This lays the foundation for the evolution of atmospheres on planets. For instance, he says, planets near the sun, such as Mercury, have very thin atmospheres, while planets far from the sun have much thicker atmospheres.
He apparently didn't check his data on the planets, since Venus has a thicker atmosphere than Earth does. (And Jupiter and Saturn have thicker atmospheres than Uranus and Neptune.) Come to think of it, without any magnetic field, Venus should really be screwed by his logic, shouldn't it?
His claim that the north pole should have more ozone depletion tells me that he hasn't even read the literature on CFCs and polar stratospheric clouds. The latter are aid in the chemistry of ozone destruction, and occur in the south pole. (Circulation patterns are different, leading to different weather patterns.)
Come to it, if his theory is valid, he should be able to correlate solar activity to the ozone hole's growth and decay. I can tell you right now that it doesn't track, so he's got an uphill battle there.
If you're going to accuse the climate researchers of "junk science" it really behooves you to be damn sure the alternatives you're putting forward are reasonable.
Sorry, but no. "Junk science" would be "science" shoehorned to fit a particular pre-determined point of view. The global warming research has in almost all cases not been of this nature. You might disagree with the conclusions and you certainly might not like them, but please don't insult the scientists involved because their results don't make you happy. If you want to pick apart their arguments carefully with your own data and models, you're welcomed to present these results at any number of conferences or in quite a few peer-reviewed journals. (And please don't try to fall back on the "I'll be censored" nonsense. If you could convincingly shoot down global warming, there are dozens of journals, starting with Science and Nature, that would trip overthemselves to print it. It'd be a coup to publish such a paper.)
On the other hand, if you want to talk about "junk science", you could look at the numerous cases where Washington has instructed scientists to change their conclusions to fit the administration's views. There are plenty of examples from the current administration, although I suspect that you could find some in almost any presidency. (The USSR was also quite fond of this sort of thing.)
Climate research is certainly tricky business and no one in the field pretends to have a total handle on how things work. However, we can say some things with pretty good confidence. That global warming is happening and that humans are responsible is one of them. Even the Bush administration, a group dead-set against dealing with the problem, has admitted this much. What we should do about it, exactly, is an entirely different question.
They knew that people hadn't followed procedures right away, too. See the email forward posted above.
Ah, here's the origins forwarded message I got 13 months ago just after the mishap. I knew I had a copy somewhere.
------------- Begin Forwarded Message-------------
Earth Science Missions Anomaly Report: GOES/POES Program/POES Project: 6 Sep
2003
EARTH SCIENCE MISSIONS ANOMALY REPORT
TO: GSFC: 100/A. Diaz, 100/W. Townsend, 100/ 400/D Perkins, NASA HQ: Y/G. Asrar,
Y/M. Luther, Q/B O?Connor
FROM: GSFC/POES Project/480/K. Halterman
DATE: September 6, 2003
PROGRAM/PROJECT: GOES/POES Program/POES Project
DATE OF ANOMALY: September 6, 2003
LOCATION OF ANOMALY: Lockheed Martin, Sunnyvale CA
DESCRIPTION OF EVENT:
As the NOAA-N Prime spacecraft was being repositioned from vertical to
horizontal on the "turn over cart" at approximately 7:15 PDT today, it slipped
off the fixture, causing severe damage. (See attached photo). The 18' long
spacecraft was about 3' off the ground when it fell.
The mishap was caused because 24 bolts were missing from a fixture in the ?turn
over cart?. Two errors occurred. First, technicians from another satellite
program that uses the same type of ?turn over cart? removed the 24 bolts from
the NOAA cart on September 4 without proper documentation. Second, the NOAA team
working today failed to follow the procedure to verify the configuration of the
NOAA ?turn over cart? since they had used it a few days earlier.
IMPACT ON PROGRAM/PROJECT AND SCHEDULE:
The shock and vibration of the fall undoubtedly caused tremendous damage.
Significant rework and retest will be required. NOAA-N Prime is planned for
launch in 2008.
CORRECTIVE ACTION:
Lockheed Martin formed an Accident Review Team in which GSFC is participating.
The immediate actions concern safety (preventing the spacecraft from rolling,
discharging the batteries, and depressurizing the propulsion system). NOAA-N
Prime is under guard, all records have been impounded, and the personnel
interviewed. After the safety issues are addressed, attention will focus on
assessing the damage to NOAA-N Prime.
------------- End Forwarded Message -------------
I keep expecting to see little ruby slippers sticking out from under the spacecraft, but I have a weird mind.
That's exactly what they said had happened right after the accident. A detailed study of the cause is always in order, but I'm surprised that it took a year to verify what they apparently knew at that outset.
Technically, melting the ice caps and lower Earth's albedo makes us warmer. At least in the short run. (Feedbacks with oceanic circulation and such make the ultimate effect harder to predict.) A lower albedo means MORE sunlight is being absorbed so that the Earth has to warm up to radiate that energy back to space.
Luckily for pop-fiends, there's a lot less caffeine in a can of pop than in a cup of coffee. (And the former is nearly twice the volume of the latter, too.) Which isn't to say that it's a healthy habit, of course.
Yeah, it's a fair kick of the stuff. But I find your last sentence the most telling. A typical cup of coffee will have as much or more caffeine than a dose of Excederin. (And at only a bit over half the volume of a can of pop, no less.) Since you're taking the latter for a specific medical reason, it seems to me to be less scary than the cup of coffee (or two or three) that many people drink almost automatically every day without even thinking about it.
Not quite. 250 mg of acetaminophen, 65 mg of caffeine, and 250 mg of aspirin. The aspirin is important for migraines, since it's a blood thinner. (The fact that I can recite the ingredients of the drug from memory tells you how much I take.)
The real trick here would be to seperate the caffeine addiction with the pain-killer habituation. Even without caffeine, you can get habituated to pain-killers so that your body stops producing enough of its own. The result is pain, so that you take the drugs. Although a tame kind of an addiction overall, it's still rather nasty business.
It's the only one that you've seen?
Then I take it that you didn't see Time's cover last January when they announced their "Persons of the Year"?
When I sic Perl on the data, I get:
Gore: 255
Bush: 261
Other: 22
Total: 538 (Good, it checks out)
I would assume that most "Other" votes went to Nader and that a fair number of them would have voted for Gore if this system had been in use. (I know of a lot of people in states whose leanings were not in question who voted for Nader because they didn't figure their vote made a difference anyway.) So I'm not sure what this test care really tells us.
I find the headline a bit misleading; this isn't a power source, it's a way to convert the source's output (heat) into electrical power. You will still need a power supply. (Probably an RTG.) You'll just get more electrical power by using this system.
Except that there's never been a lot of accuracy in predictions of comet returns, has there? (That's due to the comets themselves, though.)
Oddly, comets do provide an interesting clue on this puzzle. A paper came out about a year ago where they analyzed the orbits of *first time* comets from the Oort cloud. They found that if the anamolous acceleration on Pioneer were real and affecting comets, the distribution of orbital elements would be inconsistent with what is observed.
So it looks more like the accelerations are due to something on Pioneer.