Here's a question that a few of us in our lab are wondering about (we're physical chemists):
Why do electrons and positrons annihilate when they come into contact with one another, instead of forming a bound state, like the proton and electron do? I mean, what is it about the proton (rather the quarks that make up the proton) or the positron that either keeps the annihilation from happening or makes the two annihilate? The radial distribution of an electron around a regular proton (roughly exp(-r)) shows that the electron is frequently in the region of the proton. So why doesn't the electron hit the proton and annihilate the same way it would for the positron?
Pulling rogues out of your data is far from massaging it. Many experiment now obtain millions of data points in a matter of minutes. You're bound to have some rogues in there somewhere. But statistical analysis of your data tells you whether or not the "rogue" data should be considered in your data analysis. Yes, this means that you may miss something in your data analysis (those rogues may mean something after all), but if you spent the entire time trying to figure out where these rogues are coing from, you'd lose sight of why you did the experiment in the first place. This is why you repeat your experiment several times. Do it over and over again. If you see that the rogues are not random, then you need to understand where they're coming from. Otherwise chances are that they are just noise and can be omitted. This is standard data analysis that is taught to most college science majors. It's not sloppiness from the classroom.
"The different electrical resistances in the hybrid cable cause the waves in the pulse's rear to reflect off each other, accelerating the pulse's peak forward."
If the pulse's peak is being accelerated forward, isn't that basically saying that the group velocity is being accelerated? Am I correct that the group velocity is essentially the speed of the peak of the wavepacket?
Or are they saying that they are increasing the phase velocity to superluminal speeds but the group velocity, while increasing, is still staying below c?
"Nobody at physics seminars actually understands more than about the first 20% of a talk, but no one will speak up for fear of looking like an idiot."
Most talks people go to during the week are in fields that aren't their own. So they're not in a position to ask very in depth questions. Big deal. It's not about looking like an idiot, it's about not being able to ask questions because you don't have much background knowledge on the subject. But then again, that's why they go to these talks, right? So they can get this background information and not be isolated in their own field.
So I agree that many if not most people at these talks don't understand everything that's said, but the lack of questions isn't from a fear of looking stupid, it's from a lack of thorough understanding of the subject.
Now you might ask, "well why don't they ask not-so-in-depth questions, more general types?" The answer is because the general types a) usually take a long time to answer, more than the talk allows, and b) because this general sort of information is something that can be found elsewhere.
This is not true. There people out there that are interested in finding out the truth. In fact I'm willing to bet most scientists out there are truth-seekers. Remember, while being published is exciting, if you are found to be fraudulent, your career is over. This keeps people in check. All a professor needs to do is publish once in a certain amount of time to keep tenure and such. Seeing as how most professors publish far more than once in that time, fudging data is certainly not necessary.
There is no room in science for fraudulence. That's why we have things like double-checking, and why more and more papers are being published with links to their raw data. The increased communications between scientists (if you're in the field, it is amazing how email has increased the communication over the past few years) has allowed for more ideas to flow back and forth, and for data to be analyzed by more people, different groups, etc. Two major cases of fraudulence in the past few years is an amazing rate, considering that hundreds of thousands of papers are published yearly. Find another field that has such a low fraudulence rate.
Don't get me wrong, there are people out there that produce fraudulent data. But they are few and far between. Scientific method isn't dead. If it were, this sort of fraudulence would never be tracked down. Scientific method brought this scandal out.
I'm not saying that a woman has no other values, for crying out loud. Nor am I saying that a woman has no other value in movies than as eye candy. I'm not even saying that the woman characters in Batman movies have no other value than the way that they look!
What I'm saying is that Batman is a movie that is designed from a comic in which everyone is attractive (a trend in comics). As a consequence, when that script is written, it's written with the intent of having beautiful people playing the parts. Therefore when they are casting the movie, being attractive WILL be a requirement. If you want to point a righteous finger of misogynism, point it at the makers of the comic, not at the makers of the movie who have an obligation to adhere to the comic.
Second, I'm not saying that a woman should be cast SOLELY on the basis of her attractiveness. That's stupid, then we would have supermodels playing all the lead roles. However, seeing as how being attractive is a requirement for the role in Batman, you will want to find a person that is both attractive AND has acting skills. And yes, I do think Uma Thurman and Michelle Pfieffer are good actresses. Please do not mistake what I am saying: I'm referring to the role that women recieve in the movie Batman. I'm not talking about any other movie, nor am I talking about the movie industry in general. Only Batman.
Third, get off of your silly righteous pedestal. There are actors/actresses out there that have achieved status because of their acting skills. Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Dustin Hoffman, Harrison Ford, Robert DeNiro, Michelle Pfeiffer...the list goes on. These are people that have achieved status because of their acting skills. And yes, I will continue watching the dribble that comes out of these people, like A Beautiful Mind, Saving Private Ryan, Indiana Jones, Erin Brockovich, etc.. I'l watch them because they are entertaining, and believe it or not, that's why I go to the movies - to be entertained.
Thanks for not passing judgement on me, though. Last thing I'd want you to do is pass judgement on me, then draw very general conclusions about the type of person I am based on what I say about how one role was cast in one movie. That would be bad.
Of course it's ok to cast a woman on her sex appeal if her character is supposed to be sexy. For crying out loud, remember this is Gotham, where everybody is physically beautiful. Specifically, Catwoman was supposed to be luring Batman around, trying to get him attracted to her.
And as far as status in the film industry goes, what's wrong with casting ANYBODY based on their status in the industry. They weren't just given status, they earned it. Why would you cast Harrison Ford, or Tom Hanks for something, then? Because they have a history of making great movies, so they have developed a reputation in hollywood as a good actor.
Well, the question is whether or not the stars can register on the photographic film. That is, in the amount of time the shutter is open, have enough photons hit the film to "leave a mark"? Yes, starlight is diminished in the presence of an atmosphere, but not that much - it's more just distorted. Regardless of that, if a 1/125th exposure is made on the moon, not enough photons from stars can possibly make it to the film for it to register. So in many of these pictures, there are in fact NO stars in the picture. For the longer exposures, i.e. in areas where there wasn't much sunlight and the exposure was longer, the shutter was open for long enough for the film to get enough photons from the stars to "register" them. That's why there are a few out there that show starlight.
With respect to you the "no stars" issue, I suggest you grab a camera, go outside at night, and take a nice 1/125 second exposure of the night sky. In fact, while you're at it, take a 1 second exposure and a 10 second exposure. Develop them, and I bet I can predict what you'll see - completely black images. Pictures containing stars need to be exposed for at least a 30 seconds before you'll see anything at all. On the moon, things were bright enough that they could take sub-second exposures without a problem. So stars would not be expected to be in those pictures anyway.
No, first of all, Hubble is using it's CCD imager, which only has so many pixels, so it's resolution is limited there. On top of that, there is a fundamental resolution limit that is a consequence of the size of the focusing lens. I forget what the relationship is, but the larger lens you have, the more resolution you can have. I don't *think* it's a focal length issue, but I could be wrong. In addition, the optics on Hubble are good, but they aren't THAT good.
Sorry, that wasn't a billion dollar project. That mission was a part of Dan Goldin's "Faster, Better, Cheaper" campaign, and it only cost a few hundred million (327.6 million, to be exact). Remember Pathfinder landing on Mars? THAT was a billion dollar project. And lo and behold, it worked!
Yes, that's right, NASA does what it wants to do, regardless of public opinion. After Apollo 17, I bet NASA just said, "this moon stuff is boring, let's make a shuttle."
Come on, do you really think that NASA is spending millions and billions on something that has no public interest behind it? More precisely, do you really think that Congress is willing to give NASA millions and billions for something that they believe the public doesn't want?
It also needs to be said that NASA doesn't exist to provide eye candy for the public. I mean, they want to look interesting to the public, but when it costs several billion dollars to send someone to the moon, public interest isn't nearly as important as what scientific knowledge will be gained out of the mission. A primary purpose of the ISS is to perform experiments that might result in materials, medicines, and knowledge that could be of use to humans. So I'm sorry some of these experiments might not be incredibly exciting, but that's not what NASA's here for. NASA is here to do science, not make the public go ooh and aah.
If you have read any of the previous posts or looked into the matter a bit before pointing fingers, you'd see that the magnetic field has been switching back and forth for a long time before humans, let alone industrial humans. On top of that, man doesn't mettle with nature like I open up my VCR and mettle with it. Man is a part of nature, not external from it. We have the right, just like any other being in nature to affect our surroundings and to survive and flourish from what the universe has provided us. We're not mettling with nature, we're simply being a part of it.
On another note, how much do you think humans would be affected right now by a pole switch? I really don't know...
This may be redundant, I haven't read all of the posts yet.
If you look at Blue Gravity's webpage (www.bluegravity.com, it's framed, so a link is useless) in their section 5 of the terms ad agreements, the first sentence is:
"Client agrees to use the service in a manner consistent with all applicable laws and regulations of the United States of America, the State of New Jersey, and the Client's locality."
When the client signed onto this service, they agreed that their website must agree with not only US law, but their own local law, which is, of course, italian law. If they break italian law, then they and their webpage are at the mercy of italian law. It's right there in the terms of agreement. That being the case, what is the issue at hand?
I have heard of several studies (but not actually read the papers coming from them) that find that homosexuality rates have historically risen during times and in areas of overpopulation. The conclusion, if I recall, was that this rise was a natural way to reduce the population without resorting to disease or war.
Does anyone know more about this (i.e.: where are the papers, what are the official conclusions, etc.)?
Newton spent the balance of his life as an alchemist and theologian. He believed, like many at the time, that scientific method was not the only way to obtain knowledge about nature. In fact, he spent a lot of his life reading ancient scripture and biblical passages, attempting to make a connection between religious knowledge and scientific knowledge, specifically in regard to the Temple of Solomon. His work in physics and mathematics is a mere fraction of his lifetime work. So it is quite possible that he had certain religious convictions that kept him a virgin. In any case, we now very many details about his life, as he and his assistant both kept detailed logs/diaries. So any romantic relationships would have probably popped up in there somewhere.
I'm guessing he knew that. But this is really interesting...almost amusing...our computers are processing data faster than the oscillation of the electric fields in these photons. That's pretty phenomenal, if you ask me.
I'm still learning some of this stuff, but as far as I know, neutrons do exist on their own, just not very long. That is, a "free" neutron has a lifetime of something like 15 minutes, which is MORE than enough time to perform measurements on it. After 15 minutes, they break down into a proton and an electron. Experiments like neutron scattering, which have been verified and validated, rely on this lifetime. If these were actually protons or electrons, we could see them bend with the application of an electric field. On top of that, there is an overwhelming amount of data supporting the fact that neutrons are made up of three charged particles with integer-1/3rd values of charge (quarks). Can you give us a link to this theory anywahere, I'm really curious about it.
You're right if the chicken is in cold weather, i.e. England or something. However, in the story, they are saying that it will be useful for chicken farmers in warm weather, where the chicken feathers are useless. But I don't see their argument for why featherless means less fat, either.
"Dude do you notice the air getting clearer or dirtier?"
Dude I live in Pittsburgh, where 30 years ago people didn't know what a blue sky was because of all of the smokestacks in the area. Now it's one of the most livable cities in the US. So as far as I'm concerned, air is getting cleaner. This doesn't just apply to Pittsburgh either. I used to live in Philadelphia, where, likewise things have cleaned up dramatically.
Yes, in many areas it is getting dirtier, but isolated areas of high pollution, like very urban areas, do not mean that the rest of the air in the world is going to get dirty.
The world has gone through dramatic air-quality problems in the past. For example: have you ever heard of the volcano Krakatoa (or Kraktau) that erupted in 1883. It was an island that literally exploded, then imploded, sending up billions of tons of dust into the atmosphere, along witha few tsunamis. So much dust was there that the average global temperature dropped by a few degrees for the next several years! That's big! Most people have never heard of Krakatoa. Why? Because it didn't have a lasting effect. Nature fixed itself. Likewise, it can fix itself if a few billion people feel like making a lot of smoke.
Does that make it alright to pollute? No, we should minimize pollution, of course. It will make us healthier and cleaner. But the fact that air is dirty in urban areas in no way implies that the planet, or humanity, is doomed to die by asphyxiation.
"The hole is a mechanism? thats one theory out of many, the most likely theory is we created the hole considering it wasnt there until we started polluting."
Yes, the hole-is-a-mechanism theory is one theory out of many. You said that it wasn't there until we started polluting. Likewise, we had been polluting for hundreds of years (since the industrial revolution) before the ozone opened up. The fact that in a mere few years (during the mid-seventies) the ozone hole appeared implies that it is more than just humans causing it. Some scientists believe (and have rigorous theories supporting) that ozone holes have appeared in the past, and it is a part of a NATURAL global cooling/warming mechanism that the earth periodically goes through. See http://www.sepp.org/ozone/ozoneeos.html for more.
"pollution really exsists, you can ignore it and hope the world still exsists, or you can assume its all our fault and make SURE the world exsists"
First, it's exists, not exsists. Second, we KNOW pollution is our fault. Nature doesn't pollute itself. Third, the problem is finding out what the global effect of pollution is, not whether or not we're polluting. The fact that pollution and major global changes have occured at the same time does not imply that one caused the other, that's a logical fallacy. The ability of humans to detect global changes has also increased during this time. It may very well be that the earth goes through these sort of global changes all the time, and now we have the ability to "see" them. In fact, I assure you that this is a large part of the issue at hand that many people refuse to see.
For the time being, yes, we should reduce pollution to clean things up. But earth has gone through a lot worse than a few billion stupid humans polluting it. It'll survive again.
First off, that abstract, and the paper that he links to are NOT pq's. It is not pq's theory, and he never states that it is his, so I'd say maybe you should read the entire post before ripping into a person like that.
Second, to get to the point of my post, your childish use of Occam's (not Occum's) razor tells me that maybe you need to be informed of a few things yourself:
Occam's Razor comes from the English philosopher William of Occam (1300-1349). He stated: "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem."
The rough translation is: "Entities should not be multiplied more than necessary."
The modern version of this is the KISS theory (keep it simple stupid). Basically, don't make things more complicated than they need to be (i.e. don't include more entities [bodies, equations, questions, etc.] than needed). In normal everyday science, Occam's razor is useful. However, astrophysics is certainly not in a stage of normal science, as it is undergoing some pretty heavy revolutions all over the place. History has shown that in this sort of time, when a new theory is presented, it will always have more questions surrounding it than the old theory did. This is simply because the old theory has been around long enough for all of its wrinkles to be ironed out, while the new one, of course, hasn't. However, the few questions that it does answer are unanswered in the old theory. At that point, scientists need to make a decision: should we stick with the old theory or have faith that the questions surrounding the new theory can be solved in due time. For more on that, check out the works of Thomas Kuhn and Philip Kitcher. The point in the end is that Occam's razor will ALWAYS point towards the old theory, because there are fewer questions (entities) surrounding it. Thus, if we always went by the Occam's razor, new theories would never have a chance, and science would never advance! Here's an example: at the turn of the century, Max Planck proposed a very rough quantum theory. It had a HELL of a lot more questionas around it than the old theories, but it very slowly got accepted. Why? because it answered questions that the old theory couldn't, and many scientists believed that the new questions that it raised could be answered as the theory was fleshed out.
This doesn't mean that new theories are finally established by the few questions that they can answer - how one gets widely accepted is a whole different problem. However, to judge the theory by Occam's razor, especially an astrophysical theory, is far from valid. THAT's why Occam's razor is invalid here. The fact that the new theory is apparently more complicated has nothing to do with how valid it is.
The fact that this sort of thing was proposed in Brief History of Time does not validate it. Many things in BHoT have been proven wrong or outdated, and the information in it is far from second knowledge.
"Working at a hobby shop, selling telescopes, does NOT qualify you as a professional astronomer."
And posting on slashdot bragging that you've read a book and heard of a philosophical concept does not make your post insightful.
The number of things that people have done with a dramcast amazes me. I don't know much about Dreamcast hardware, so here's my question:
Has all of this stuff been done with the Dreamcast because its hardware is extremely flexible, moreso than any other console? Or is it simply because the Dreamcast has been around for long enough that people are starting to wonder what ELSE they can do with it, and modifying it?
"No, I am not joking. We make ordinary cops less effective than they could be by requiring warrants -- but we do this because the alternative is a threat to liberty. The CIA and the NSA, given their current level of secretiveness, are a threat to liberty."
We require cops to have warrants because we are constitutionally protected (rather, our liberty is protected) otherwise. I see no fundamental human right or any right in general that says that I must know my nation's secrets. I feel (and after doing a quick poll in my office, so do others) that my liberty is in no way threatened by the CIA having some secrets. Their secrets do not restrict me, they protect me. I'm curious how government secrecy threatens your liberty.
"Am I willing to risk lives for liberty? Of course! That's what people have been doing for ever; that's what the CIA claims to do (it probably puts its agents in danger all the time)."
Wait a sec, who's lives are we talking about here? CIA agents risk their lives because that's something that they have agreed to do to protect us. However, a civilian has not agreed to such a deal. Civilian lives are the lives I'm talking about. Since I don't see how government secrecy implies a loss of liberty, I suppose I can't understand risking people's lives so that we can know what our government knows. That's just me, I guess,
Wait wait wait. YOU'RE telling me that you are willing to make the CIA LESS effective so that you can know if they're good or not? Please, tell me you're joking.
The CIA's effectiveness, by definition, is measured in the end by how many lives they can save. That's what they're here for - protecting us.
(Sometimes they screw up, of course, but not always. And please don't ask me when they haven't screwed up - of course nobody is going to take note when the CIA prevents a plane from being hijacked, because nothing is out of the ordinary then. But when one does get hijacked, it's well known within minutes.)
With that in mind, you are willing to risk lives of however many Americans so that you can know how good your "secret" intelligence agency is? Please....
He's saying that beings which exhibit life must be made of matter, yes. After all, how else can something interact with the world? There might by some stretch of the imagination be energy-based (a variant on mass-based, by the way) life possible, but that's called science fiction for the time being.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a question that a few of us in our lab are wondering about (we're physical chemists):
Why do electrons and positrons annihilate when they come into contact with one another, instead of forming a bound state, like the proton and electron do? I mean, what is it about the proton (rather the quarks that make up the proton) or the positron that either keeps the annihilation from happening or makes the two annihilate? The radial distribution of an electron around a regular proton (roughly exp(-r)) shows that the electron is frequently in the region of the proton. So why doesn't the electron hit the proton and annihilate the same way it would for the positron?
JoeRobe
Pulling rogues out of your data is far from massaging it. Many experiment now obtain millions of data points in a matter of minutes. You're bound to have some rogues in there somewhere. But statistical analysis of your data tells you whether or not the "rogue" data should be considered in your data analysis. Yes, this means that you may miss something in your data analysis (those rogues may mean something after all), but if you spent the entire time trying to figure out where these rogues are coing from, you'd lose sight of why you did the experiment in the first place. This is why you repeat your experiment several times. Do it over and over again. If you see that the rogues are not random, then you need to understand where they're coming from. Otherwise chances are that they are just noise and can be omitted. This is standard data analysis that is taught to most college science majors. It's not sloppiness from the classroom.
"The different electrical resistances in the hybrid cable cause the waves in the pulse's rear to reflect off each other, accelerating the pulse's peak forward."
If the pulse's peak is being accelerated forward, isn't that basically saying that the group velocity is being accelerated? Am I correct that the group velocity is essentially the speed of the peak of the wavepacket?
Or are they saying that they are increasing the phase velocity to superluminal speeds but the group velocity, while increasing, is still staying below c?
"Nobody at physics seminars actually understands more than about the first 20% of a talk, but no one will speak up for fear of looking like an idiot."
Most talks people go to during the week are in fields that aren't their own. So they're not in a position to ask very in depth questions. Big deal. It's not about looking like an idiot, it's about not being able to ask questions because you don't have much background knowledge on the subject. But then again, that's why they go to these talks, right? So they can get this background information and not be isolated in their own field.
So I agree that many if not most people at these talks don't understand everything that's said, but the lack of questions isn't from a fear of looking stupid, it's from a lack of thorough understanding of the subject.
Now you might ask, "well why don't they ask not-so-in-depth questions, more general types?" The answer is because the general types a) usually take a long time to answer, more than the talk allows, and b) because this general sort of information is something that can be found elsewhere.
This is not true. There people out there that are interested in finding out the truth. In fact I'm willing to bet most scientists out there are truth-seekers. Remember, while being published is exciting, if you are found to be fraudulent, your career is over. This keeps people in check. All a professor needs to do is publish once in a certain amount of time to keep tenure and such. Seeing as how most professors publish far more than once in that time, fudging data is certainly not necessary.
There is no room in science for fraudulence. That's why we have things like double-checking, and why more and more papers are being published with links to their raw data. The increased communications between scientists (if you're in the field, it is amazing how email has increased the communication over the past few years) has allowed for more ideas to flow back and forth, and for data to be analyzed by more people, different groups, etc. Two major cases of fraudulence in the past few years is an amazing rate, considering that hundreds of thousands of papers are published yearly. Find another field that has such a low fraudulence rate.
Don't get me wrong, there are people out there that produce fraudulent data. But they are few and far between. Scientific method isn't dead. If it were, this sort of fraudulence would never be tracked down. Scientific method brought this scandal out.
I'm not saying that a woman has no other values, for crying out loud. Nor am I saying that a woman has no other value in movies than as eye candy. I'm not even saying that the woman characters in Batman movies have no other value than the way that they look!
What I'm saying is that Batman is a movie that is designed from a comic in which everyone is attractive (a trend in comics). As a consequence, when that script is written, it's written with the intent of having beautiful people playing the parts. Therefore when they are casting the movie, being attractive WILL be a requirement. If you want to point a righteous finger of misogynism, point it at the makers of the comic, not at the makers of the movie who have an obligation to adhere to the comic.
Second, I'm not saying that a woman should be cast SOLELY on the basis of her attractiveness. That's stupid, then we would have supermodels playing all the lead roles. However, seeing as how being attractive is a requirement for the role in Batman, you will want to find a person that is both attractive AND has acting skills. And yes, I do think Uma Thurman and Michelle Pfieffer are good actresses. Please do not mistake what I am saying: I'm referring to the role that women recieve in the movie Batman. I'm not talking about any other movie, nor am I talking about the movie industry in general. Only Batman.
Third, get off of your silly righteous pedestal. There are actors/actresses out there that have achieved status because of their acting skills. Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Dustin Hoffman, Harrison Ford, Robert DeNiro, Michelle Pfeiffer...the list goes on. These are people that have achieved status because of their acting skills. And yes, I will continue watching the dribble that comes out of these people, like A Beautiful Mind, Saving Private Ryan, Indiana Jones, Erin Brockovich, etc.. I'l watch them because they are entertaining, and believe it or not, that's why I go to the movies - to be entertained.
Thanks for not passing judgement on me, though. Last thing I'd want you to do is pass judgement on me, then draw very general conclusions about the type of person I am based on what I say about how one role was cast in one movie. That would be bad.
Of course it's ok to cast a woman on her sex appeal if her character is supposed to be sexy. For crying out loud, remember this is Gotham, where everybody is physically beautiful. Specifically, Catwoman was supposed to be luring Batman around, trying to get him attracted to her.
And as far as status in the film industry goes, what's wrong with casting ANYBODY based on their status in the industry. They weren't just given status, they earned it. Why would you cast Harrison Ford, or Tom Hanks for something, then? Because they have a history of making great movies, so they have developed a reputation in hollywood as a good actor.
Geez, man, calm down.
Well, the question is whether or not the stars can register on the photographic film. That is, in the amount of time the shutter is open, have enough photons hit the film to "leave a mark"? Yes, starlight is diminished in the presence of an atmosphere, but not that much - it's more just distorted. Regardless of that, if a 1/125th exposure is made on the moon, not enough photons from stars can possibly make it to the film for it to register. So in many of these pictures, there are in fact NO stars in the picture. For the longer exposures, i.e. in areas where there wasn't much sunlight and the exposure was longer, the shutter was open for long enough for the film to get enough photons from the stars to "register" them. That's why there are a few out there that show starlight.
With respect to you the "no stars" issue, I suggest you grab a camera, go outside at night, and take a nice 1/125 second exposure of the night sky. In fact, while you're at it, take a 1 second exposure and a 10 second exposure. Develop them, and I bet I can predict what you'll see - completely black images. Pictures containing stars need to be exposed for at least a 30 seconds before you'll see anything at all. On the moon, things were bright enough that they could take sub-second exposures without a problem. So stars would not be expected to be in those pictures anyway.
No, first of all, Hubble is using it's CCD imager, which only has so many pixels, so it's resolution is limited there. On top of that, there is a fundamental resolution limit that is a consequence of the size of the focusing lens. I forget what the relationship is, but the larger lens you have, the more resolution you can have. I don't *think* it's a focal length issue, but I could be wrong. In addition, the optics on Hubble are good, but they aren't THAT good.
Sorry, that wasn't a billion dollar project. That mission was a part of Dan Goldin's "Faster, Better, Cheaper" campaign, and it only cost a few hundred million (327.6 million, to be exact). Remember Pathfinder landing on Mars? THAT was a billion dollar project. And lo and behold, it worked!
Yes, that's right, NASA does what it wants to do, regardless of public opinion. After Apollo 17, I bet NASA just said, "this moon stuff is boring, let's make a shuttle."
Come on, do you really think that NASA is spending millions and billions on something that has no public interest behind it? More precisely, do you really think that Congress is willing to give NASA millions and billions for something that they believe the public doesn't want?
It also needs to be said that NASA doesn't exist to provide eye candy for the public. I mean, they want to look interesting to the public, but when it costs several billion dollars to send someone to the moon, public interest isn't nearly as important as what scientific knowledge will be gained out of the mission. A primary purpose of the ISS is to perform experiments that might result in materials, medicines, and knowledge that could be of use to humans. So I'm sorry some of these experiments might not be incredibly exciting, but that's not what NASA's here for. NASA is here to do science, not make the public go ooh and aah.
JoeRobe
If you have read any of the previous posts or looked into the matter a bit before pointing fingers, you'd see that the magnetic field has been switching back and forth for a long time before humans, let alone industrial humans. On top of that, man doesn't mettle with nature like I open up my VCR and mettle with it. Man is a part of nature, not external from it. We have the right, just like any other being in nature to affect our surroundings and to survive and flourish from what the universe has provided us. We're not mettling with nature, we're simply being a part of it.
On another note, how much do you think humans would be affected right now by a pole switch? I really don't know...
This may be redundant, I haven't read all of the posts yet.
If you look at Blue Gravity's webpage (www.bluegravity.com, it's framed, so a link is useless) in their section 5 of the terms ad agreements, the first sentence is:
"Client agrees to use the service in a manner consistent with all applicable laws and regulations of the United States of America, the State of New Jersey, and the Client's locality."
When the client signed onto this service, they agreed that their website must agree with not only US law, but their own local law, which is, of course, italian law. If they break italian law, then they and their webpage are at the mercy of italian law. It's right there in the terms of agreement. That being the case, what is the issue at hand?
JoeRobe
I have heard of several studies (but not actually read the papers coming from them) that find that homosexuality rates have historically risen during times and in areas of overpopulation. The conclusion, if I recall, was that this rise was a natural way to reduce the population without resorting to disease or war.
Does anyone know more about this (i.e.: where are the papers, what are the official conclusions, etc.)?
Newton spent the balance of his life as an alchemist and theologian. He believed, like many at the time, that scientific method was not the only way to obtain knowledge about nature. In fact, he spent a lot of his life reading ancient scripture and biblical passages, attempting to make a connection between religious knowledge and scientific knowledge, specifically in regard to the Temple of Solomon. His work in physics and mathematics is a mere fraction of his lifetime work. So it is quite possible that he had certain religious convictions that kept him a virgin. In any case, we now very many details about his life, as he and his assistant both kept detailed logs/diaries. So any romantic relationships would have probably popped up in there somewhere.
JoeRobe
I'm guessing he knew that. But this is really interesting...almost amusing...our computers are processing data faster than the oscillation of the electric fields in these photons. That's pretty phenomenal, if you ask me.
I'm still learning some of this stuff, but as far as I know, neutrons do exist on their own, just not very long. That is, a "free" neutron has a lifetime of something like 15 minutes, which is MORE than enough time to perform measurements on it. After 15 minutes, they break down into a proton and an electron. Experiments like neutron scattering, which have been verified and validated, rely on this lifetime. If these were actually protons or electrons, we could see them bend with the application of an electric field. On top of that, there is an overwhelming amount of data supporting the fact that neutrons are made up of three charged particles with integer-1/3rd values of charge (quarks). Can you give us a link to this theory anywahere, I'm really curious about it.
JoeRobe
You're right if the chicken is in cold weather, i.e. England or something. However, in the story, they are saying that it will be useful for chicken farmers in warm weather, where the chicken feathers are useless. But I don't see their argument for why featherless means less fat, either.
"Dude do you notice the air getting clearer or dirtier?"
Dude I live in Pittsburgh, where 30 years ago people didn't know what a blue sky was because of all of the smokestacks in the area. Now it's one of the most livable cities in the US. So as far as I'm concerned, air is getting cleaner. This doesn't just apply to Pittsburgh either. I used to live in Philadelphia, where, likewise things have cleaned up dramatically.
Yes, in many areas it is getting dirtier, but isolated areas of high pollution, like very urban areas, do not mean that the rest of the air in the world is going to get dirty.
The world has gone through dramatic air-quality problems in the past. For example: have you ever heard of the volcano Krakatoa (or Kraktau) that erupted in 1883. It was an island that literally exploded, then imploded, sending up billions of tons of dust into the atmosphere, along witha few tsunamis. So much dust was there that the average global temperature dropped by a few degrees for the next several years! That's big!
Most people have never heard of Krakatoa. Why? Because it didn't have a lasting effect. Nature fixed itself. Likewise, it can fix itself if a few billion people feel like making a lot of smoke.
Does that make it alright to pollute? No, we should minimize pollution, of course. It will make us healthier and cleaner. But the fact that air is dirty in urban areas in no way implies that the planet, or humanity, is doomed to die by asphyxiation.
"The hole is a mechanism? thats one theory out of many, the most likely theory is we created the hole considering it wasnt there until we started polluting."
Yes, the hole-is-a-mechanism theory is one theory out of many. You said that it wasn't there until we started polluting. Likewise, we had been polluting for hundreds of years (since the industrial revolution) before the ozone opened up. The fact that in a mere few years (during the mid-seventies) the ozone hole appeared implies that it is more than just humans causing it. Some scientists believe (and have rigorous theories supporting) that ozone holes have appeared in the past, and it is a part of a NATURAL global cooling/warming mechanism that the earth periodically goes through. See http://www.sepp.org/ozone/ozoneeos.html for more.
"pollution really exsists, you can ignore it and hope the world still exsists, or you can assume its all our fault and make SURE the world exsists"
First, it's exists, not exsists. Second, we KNOW pollution is our fault. Nature doesn't pollute itself. Third, the problem is finding out what the global effect of pollution is, not whether or not we're polluting. The fact that pollution and major global changes have occured at the same time does not imply that one caused the other, that's a logical fallacy. The ability of humans to detect global changes has also increased during this time. It may very well be that the earth goes through these sort of global changes all the time, and now we have the ability to "see" them. In fact, I assure you that this is a large part of the issue at hand that many people refuse to see.
For the time being, yes, we should reduce pollution to clean things up. But earth has gone through a lot worse than a few billion stupid humans polluting it. It'll survive again.
JoeRobe
First off, that abstract, and the paper that he links to are NOT pq's. It is not pq's theory, and he never states that it is his, so I'd say maybe you should read the entire post before ripping into a person like that.
Second, to get to the point of my post, your childish use of Occam's (not Occum's) razor tells me that maybe you need to be informed of a few things yourself:
Occam's Razor comes from the English philosopher William of Occam (1300-1349). He stated:
"Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem."
The rough translation is:
"Entities should not be multiplied more than necessary."
The modern version of this is the KISS theory (keep it simple stupid). Basically, don't make things more complicated than they need to be (i.e. don't include more entities [bodies, equations, questions, etc.] than needed). In normal everyday science, Occam's razor is useful. However, astrophysics is certainly not in a stage of normal science, as it is undergoing some pretty heavy revolutions all over the place. History has shown that in this sort of time, when a new theory is presented, it will always have more questions surrounding it than the old theory did. This is simply because the old theory has been around long enough for all of its wrinkles to be ironed out, while the new one, of course, hasn't. However, the few questions that it does answer are unanswered in the old theory. At that point, scientists need to make a decision: should we stick with the old theory or have faith that the questions surrounding the new theory can be solved in due time. For more on that, check out the works of Thomas Kuhn and Philip Kitcher. The point in the end is that Occam's razor will ALWAYS point towards the old theory, because there are fewer questions (entities) surrounding it. Thus, if we always went by the Occam's razor, new theories would never have a chance, and science would never advance! Here's an example: at the turn of the century, Max Planck proposed a very rough quantum theory. It had a HELL of a lot more questionas around it than the old theories, but it very slowly got accepted. Why? because it answered questions that the old theory couldn't, and many scientists believed that the new questions that it raised could be answered as the theory was fleshed out.
This doesn't mean that new theories are finally established by the few questions that they can answer - how one gets widely accepted is a whole different problem. However, to judge the theory by Occam's razor, especially an astrophysical theory, is far from valid. THAT's why Occam's razor is invalid here. The fact that the new theory is apparently more complicated has nothing to do with how valid it is.
The fact that this sort of thing was proposed in Brief History of Time does not validate it. Many things in BHoT have been proven wrong or outdated, and the information in it is far from second knowledge.
"Working at a hobby shop, selling telescopes, does NOT qualify you as a professional astronomer."
And posting on slashdot bragging that you've read a book and heard of a philosophical concept does not make your post insightful.
JoeRobe
The number of things that people have done with a dramcast amazes me. I don't know much about Dreamcast hardware, so here's my question:
Has all of this stuff been done with the Dreamcast because its hardware is extremely flexible, moreso than any other console?
Or is it simply because the Dreamcast has been around for long enough that people are starting to wonder what ELSE they can do with it, and modifying it?
JoeRobe
"No, I am not joking. We make ordinary cops less effective than they could be by requiring warrants -- but we do this because the alternative is a threat to liberty. The CIA and the NSA, given their current level of secretiveness, are a threat to liberty."
We require cops to have warrants because we are constitutionally protected (rather, our liberty is protected) otherwise. I see no fundamental human right or any right in general that says that I must know my nation's secrets. I feel (and after doing a quick poll in my office, so do others) that my liberty is in no way threatened by the CIA having some secrets. Their secrets do not restrict me, they protect me. I'm curious how government secrecy threatens your liberty.
"Am I willing to risk lives for liberty? Of course! That's what people have been doing for ever; that's what the CIA claims to do (it probably puts its agents in danger all the time)."
Wait a sec, who's lives are we talking about here? CIA agents risk their lives because that's something that they have agreed to do to protect us. However, a civilian has not agreed to such a deal. Civilian lives are the lives I'm talking about. Since I don't see how government secrecy implies a loss of liberty, I suppose I can't understand risking people's lives so that we can know what our government knows. That's just me, I guess,
JoeRobe
Wait wait wait. YOU'RE telling me that you are willing to make the CIA LESS effective so that you can know if they're good or not? Please, tell me you're joking.
The CIA's effectiveness, by definition, is measured in the end by how many lives they can save. That's what they're here for - protecting us.
(Sometimes they screw up, of course, but not always. And please don't ask me when they haven't screwed up - of course nobody is going to take note when the CIA prevents a plane from being hijacked, because nothing is out of the ordinary then. But when one does get hijacked, it's well known within minutes.)
With that in mind, you are willing to risk lives of however many Americans so that you can know how good your "secret" intelligence agency is? Please....
JoeRobe
He's saying that beings which exhibit life must be made of matter, yes. After all, how else can something interact with the world? There might by some stretch of the imagination be energy-based (a variant on mass-based, by the way) life possible, but that's called science fiction for the time being.