This article previously on slashdot provides a useful prospective. It's interesting to look at where he was then, and how close he is now. I honestly hope it works.... would be nice to see that you can get into space without being an astronaut, or more money than a small country.
Just my two cents.
Do we really need more things dependent on the internet? I mean, so much already is today, if something happenned to the internet, the economy would be a disaster. Do we want grampa to crash cause he's connected through AOL?
According to this article, the companies are expected to drop the lawsuit. Interesting that no one posted this before, I just saw it on CNN Headline News.
Corporate America bashing is very popular here on/., I guess it's cause most of the people reading this web site work under the iron thumb of one big corporation or another. I can't say I'm a big fan myself, however they aren't always so evil...
If you'd have read the posts or the article, you'd have found out that the word "diamond" was being used very figuratively. Neutron stars may have DIAMOND-LIKE crystaline structures. They used "diamond" in the title as a buzzword, thus making the article stick out more. People think "big diamond, wow... I want one" and read the article.
The strong nuclear force is the force between hadrons (particles composed of quarks, like protons and neutrons). Planets do not have gravity capable of overcoming the repulsive force of ELECTROMAGNETISM, which is respulsive only because the nuclei are positively charged (try sticking two like ends of a magnet together, pretty tough sometimes). To create neutronium, you basically have to do a massive-scale fusion reaction (usually caused by gravity) that creates one giant nucleus. And they are saying in the article that it's thought that the structure of the neutronium would be such that it would be transparent at visible wavelengths. That's all.
As for hardness, you have to remember it's only stable at those pressures. How you test hardness of something under super-high pressure, I honestly don't know.
I am an Engineering Physics student at Cornell University, and I plan on eventually plan on obtaining my PhD, and I appreciate magazines that can quickly summarize new research without using prohibitive quantities of jargon. I somehow doubt Scientific American is trying to appeal to "dumb" people, only those with less than 10 years of research experience in the field involved! Journals like Nature provide in-depth, technical information for those so inclined. For those who are not, yet have the interest and wish to be informed without wading through pages of unnecessary details and obfuscating terminology, there is Scientific American. I will be publishing a paper with my advisor on research I've done with computer simulations of plasma jets from accretion disks. No one I know (other than professors here at Cornell) can understand the paper, in fact I do not think I would understand it if I had not done the research myself! Yet the concepts behind it are actually not too difficult to understand, assuming they are actually explained to the reader.
So I say save the hard-science PhD prerequisite stuff for journals like Nature, and allow those who have not had the oppertunity to obtain a PhD to get their science news from magazines like SciAm. Young scientists-to-be deserve to know what is going on in the scientific community too. Science is for all who seek truth and understanding of the universe, not simply those fortunate to have obtained a doctorate.
My girlfriend's uncle happens to be the Keir Dullea, who portrayed the astronaut Dave in 2001, and she remarked to me while we viewed it that in the ending sequence he is shown greatly aged, and that the makeup job was very well done because that is in fact what he looks like today (he is now 65).
I'm actually looking forward to meeting him, as he should probably be able to explain the movie *wink*
I am an Applied and Engineering Physics major at Cornell University (which is providing and coordinating the instrumentation for the 2003 Mars Mission and managing the mission operations) and I work for the Principal Investigator of the project, and that gives one a unique perspective on what is really going on inside NASA.
It is true that there are a lot of internal politics and rivalries, and it's these things that we should worry about. Faster, Better, Cheaper comes with the price tag of being risky. The point is not to do *EVERY* mission better for less money and less time, but to increase the overall science done for the taxpayer's money.
It is true that there have been embarassing past failures which are most unfortunate, and were caused by very stupid errors, however the amount of money that it takes to go through every line of code and every circuit connection far exceeds that which is available. NASA can no longer afford to spend multiple billions of dollars on a single mission; it instead chooses to take chances where it can, and if some missions are lost, at least the overall effect is positive.
I ask that you look to the NEAR project, and tell me it was not an astounding success. 150 million dollars, (compared to the billion or so spent on larger missions like Galileo) and the craft not only took reams of extra data, but landed on the surface, and *SURVIVED* the impact, which it wasn't even designed for. It is these kinds of successes which outweigh the failures (from which we've also learned).
If there is something to be worried about, it is that our populace may forget that space really is the final fronteir, and that some day we will have to conquer it if man is to survive. I fear that our politicians see less and less importance in such persuits, from which we have gained so much.
I would ask that those who complain endlessly about mission failures and how NASA is not working to realize that space exploration is bigger than any one mission, and it is how we attack this amazing obstacle, how we eventually overcome the multitude of problems, that is what is most important. NASA is far from perfect, and there are internal problems to compound the engineering problems, but it is doing far more than it often gets credit for.
When one mixes Anti-Protons with Protons, they get a flash of light as the pair anhiliates (well, there's lots of other fun particles involved, but that's the end result). The article states that they mix protons with Positrons, which are the antiparticle of Electrons. This gives us the anti-hydrogen. Names are very important in Particle Physics:)
In a sense, many of you are right. It WAS the "caterpillar drive", but it did use magnetic fields. In fact it would pass an electrical current through the water, and then push it with a perpendicular magnetic field. I *THINK* that this is called the hall effect. They made a real version of this in real life, but I don't think it went faster than 6 nauts. So in short, it sucks. And it sounded like magma displacement, but I'm not sure what it'd REALLY sound like in real life. It should be close to silent, as there are no moving parts.
I am no RF expert, however I am a liscensed Amateur Radio operator. It's true that a Faraday cage would prevent much of the signal leakage, and one could even build on inside the casing. However the best way is to use active signal jamming, using a small transmitter of similar but slightly larger power, putting out random information signals on the same frequency as the computer or other device which is leaking information. Although the FBI no doubt has the signal processing capability to cut through the interference, if they really cared, I doubt your paranoid freaked out neihbor will have any thing sophisticated enough to discrimiate between the two RF sources. I'm not sure how one could possibly tap information from the weak signals coming from the microprossor, that sounds nearly impossible, but your CRT monitor just screams out for someone to tap into it. It's not the redirection of the electron beam which is detectable (if you detect that you might be able to tell their monitor resolution and refresh rate, but that's all) but the modulation of the beam strength that causes different colors to be displayed. Using an LCD screen should eliminate much of the RF leakage, and one can easily construct an active jammer to work at the same frequency as your monitor, at low enough power levels to be unnoticed by the FCC. Or you can just have two similar monitors in the same area, one displaying good stuff, one displaying garbage that's constantly changing, and that can at least make it much more challenging to tap into.
Slashdot Mirror
This article previously on slashdot provides a useful prospective. It's interesting to look at where he was then, and how close he is now. I honestly hope it works.... would be nice to see that you can get into space without being an astronaut, or more money than a small country. Just my two cents.
Do we really need more things dependent on the internet? I mean, so much already is today, if something happenned to the internet, the economy would be a disaster. Do we want grampa to crash cause he's connected through AOL?
Just a thought.
According to this article, the companies are expected to drop the lawsuit. Interesting that no one posted this before, I just saw it on CNN Headline News.
/., I guess it's cause most of the people reading this web site work under the iron thumb of one big corporation or another. I can't say I'm a big fan myself, however they aren't always so evil...
:)
Corporate America bashing is very popular here on
Well, we can at least pretend
If you'd have read the posts or the article, you'd have found out that the word "diamond" was being used very figuratively. Neutron stars may have DIAMOND-LIKE crystaline structures. They used "diamond" in the title as a buzzword, thus making the article stick out more. People think "big diamond, wow... I want one" and read the article.
The strong nuclear force is the force between hadrons (particles composed of quarks, like protons and neutrons). Planets do not have gravity capable of overcoming the repulsive force of ELECTROMAGNETISM, which is respulsive only because the nuclei are positively charged (try sticking two like ends of a magnet together, pretty tough sometimes). To create neutronium, you basically have to do a massive-scale fusion reaction (usually caused by gravity) that creates one giant nucleus. And they are saying in the article that it's thought that the structure of the neutronium would be such that it would be transparent at visible wavelengths. That's all.
As for hardness, you have to remember it's only stable at those pressures. How you test hardness of something under super-high pressure, I honestly don't know.
Just my two cents.
I am an Engineering Physics student at Cornell University, and I plan on eventually plan on obtaining my PhD, and I appreciate magazines that can quickly summarize new research without using prohibitive quantities of jargon. I somehow doubt Scientific American is trying to appeal to "dumb" people, only those with less than 10 years of research experience in the field involved! Journals like Nature provide in-depth, technical information for those so inclined. For those who are not, yet have the interest and wish to be informed without wading through pages of unnecessary details and obfuscating terminology, there is Scientific American. I will be publishing a paper with my advisor on research I've done with computer simulations of plasma jets from accretion disks. No one I know (other than professors here at Cornell) can understand the paper, in fact I do not think I would understand it if I had not done the research myself! Yet the concepts behind it are actually not too difficult to understand, assuming they are actually explained to the reader.
So I say save the hard-science PhD prerequisite stuff for journals like Nature, and allow those who have not had the oppertunity to obtain a PhD to get their science news from magazines like SciAm. Young scientists-to-be deserve to know what is going on in the scientific community too. Science is for all who seek truth and understanding of the universe, not simply those fortunate to have obtained a doctorate.
Just my two cents.
My girlfriend's uncle happens to be the Keir Dullea, who portrayed the astronaut Dave in 2001, and she remarked to me while we viewed it that in the ending sequence he is shown greatly aged, and that the makeup job was very well done because that is in fact what he looks like today (he is now 65).
I'm actually looking forward to meeting him, as he should probably be able to explain the movie *wink*
I am an Applied and Engineering Physics major at Cornell University (which is providing and coordinating the instrumentation for the 2003 Mars Mission and managing the mission operations) and I work for the Principal Investigator of the project, and that gives one a unique perspective on what is really going on inside NASA.
It is true that there are a lot of internal politics and rivalries, and it's these things that we should worry about. Faster, Better, Cheaper comes with the price tag of being risky. The point is not to do *EVERY* mission better for less money and less time, but to increase the overall science done for the taxpayer's money.
It is true that there have been embarassing past failures which are most unfortunate, and were caused by very stupid errors, however the amount of money that it takes to go through every line of code and every circuit connection far exceeds that which is available. NASA can no longer afford to spend multiple billions of dollars on a single mission; it instead chooses to take chances where it can, and if some missions are lost, at least the overall effect is positive.
I ask that you look to the NEAR project, and tell me it was not an astounding success. 150 million dollars, (compared to the billion or so spent on larger missions like Galileo) and the craft not only took reams of extra data, but landed on the surface, and *SURVIVED* the impact, which it wasn't even designed for. It is these kinds of successes which outweigh the failures (from which we've also learned).
If there is something to be worried about, it is that our populace may forget that space really is the final fronteir, and that some day we will have to conquer it if man is to survive. I fear that our politicians see less and less importance in such persuits, from which we have gained so much.
I would ask that those who complain endlessly about mission failures and how NASA is not working to realize that space exploration is bigger than any one mission, and it is how we attack this amazing obstacle, how we eventually overcome the multitude of problems, that is what is most important. NASA is far from perfect, and there are internal problems to compound the engineering problems, but it is doing far more than it often gets credit for.
Thank you.
When one mixes Anti-Protons with Protons, they get a flash of light as the pair anhiliates (well, there's lots of other fun particles involved, but that's the end result). The article states that they mix protons with Positrons, which are the antiparticle of Electrons. This gives us the anti-hydrogen. Names are very important in Particle Physics :)
In a sense, many of you are right. It WAS the "caterpillar drive", but it did use magnetic fields. In fact it would pass an electrical current through the water, and then push it with a perpendicular magnetic field. I *THINK* that this is called the hall effect. They made a real version of this in real life, but I don't think it went faster than 6 nauts. So in short, it sucks. And it sounded like magma displacement, but I'm not sure what it'd REALLY sound like in real life. It should be close to silent, as there are no moving parts.
I am no RF expert, however I am a liscensed Amateur Radio operator. It's true that a Faraday cage would prevent much of the signal leakage, and one could even build on inside the casing. However the best way is to use active signal jamming, using a small transmitter of similar but slightly larger power, putting out random information signals on the same frequency as the computer or other device which is leaking information. Although the FBI no doubt has the signal processing capability to cut through the interference, if they really cared, I doubt your paranoid freaked out neihbor will have any thing sophisticated enough to discrimiate between the two RF sources. I'm not sure how one could possibly tap information from the weak signals coming from the microprossor, that sounds nearly impossible, but your CRT monitor just screams out for someone to tap into it. It's not the redirection of the electron beam which is detectable (if you detect that you might be able to tell their monitor resolution and refresh rate, but that's all) but the modulation of the beam strength that causes different colors to be displayed. Using an LCD screen should eliminate much of the RF leakage, and one can easily construct an active jammer to work at the same frequency as your monitor, at low enough power levels to be unnoticed by the FCC. Or you can just have two similar monitors in the same area, one displaying good stuff, one displaying garbage that's constantly changing, and that can at least make it much more challenging to tap into.