What you misheard/misunderstood was the standard NASA procedure for data. The Principal Investigator gets the data exclusively for a year, then it's released into the public domain along with the specs/calibration data needed to analyze it.
Yes, and this is why they embargo the Hubble pictures too.
Just because it is standard procedure doesn't make it right. When I wrote out my check for taxes this last week, some of that money goes to fund NASA. The public funds NASA in its entirety. So, they should have access to the data at the same time as anyone else, IMNSHO.
And saying that the "public is too stupid" for the data doesn't hold water either. There are scientists amongst the general populace that can interpret the data just as well as any NASA funded scientist.
I know that a 99.99% percent of the public doesn't care about this. There are a few scientists/astronomers peeved about hubble pictures though. Also, for me, it's the principle of the thing. Spending billions of public money on medical research and then give the patents to drug companies to exploit is another area that I think needs looking at. The patents should belong to the public that funded the research in the first place.
Live data frankly wouldn't mean much - even to a scientist. It will take considerable calibration work to convert the raw data into valid data
"Calibration work" or "making fudge"? I think that the complicated nature of this is being overplayed.
They have an idea of what the gyro spin should be like if frame dragging exists (or what it should be like if it does not exist). They can plot this against the the data they receive from the gyros, and post it on the website.
the experimental data increasingly shows that Einstein was mostly right.
The only kind of data that we have had up to this point is time dilation data, outside some drifting satellites that may have experienced frame dragging. This probe is the first to measure directly the effects of one of his theories.
So I would argue that it is not so much "increasing data" but "scientist's increasing faith" that Einstein was right.
The second reason is that there's nothing an average person, or even an average Ph.D. physicist, could reasonably hope to accomplish by looking at the mounds of raw data this probe will produce.
I disagree. The spinning rate of the gyros is a statistical process and can be measured that way. They can plot data points of rate of spin due to frame dragging against where they should be if there was no frame dragging.
Sure, their paper is going to use math that is going to require heavy lifting, but that shouldn't stop a gyro speed plot.
There's a reason not many people do it. If you want to learn the differential geometry and all the other math and physics that goes into a detailed understanding of GR, be my guest -- just be prepared to spend 5 years or so doing it.
If NOVA and Scientific American can break up GR into segments that the general public can get a gist of what is going on, they could do the same here. I don't have to be a postdoc to understand that gyro spin should be affected by frame dragiing.
The rest of the site also reads like a tinfoil-hat type group... focusing a lot on why they are persecuted and not at all on actual evidence.
Some of it does, some of it doesn't. I think that the opinion that some of them have that Einstein's theories can be described by earlier scientist's work interesting, and worth looking into when I have the time.
Some of them have been persecuted. But to say that this is all that they are basing their arguments on would be wrong.
Just because some of their ideas seem too weird to handle, I would submit that this is the case because they are not accepted politically in the scientific community. Not that their theories don't carry any worth (even though they may not).
After all, that's where some science starts with. Rough, strange ideas that are difficult to accept. One example of this is black holes. When this idea was first proposed back in the seventies, nobody gave it the time of day.
So I think it would be safe to say tinfoil is in the eye of the beholder.
In fact Westinghouse owed Tesla many million (I think an estamate was around 6 million) for royalties on patents Westinghouse purchased on AC generators and motors
I think billions in today's money is more like it. It is unfortunate that he did not have the business accumen to negotiate ongoing royalties so he could fund his later experiments.
Instead of negotiating a lower royalty rate, he let Westinghouse off the hook.
Tesla was a great person. But what I am referring to are people who live in the realm of pseudoscience with perpetual motion machines and free energy devices.
The difference between Tesla and these people is that Tesla produced stuff that worked. While these latter people use his technologies to justify stuff they have that does not/can not work.
And, as other people have pointed out, interpreting the data is undoubtedly complicated. Getting started with the data will require considerable knowledge about the design and implementation of their probe. Analysis software will have to be written, procedures developed, etc. This isn't something that even someone in the field will be able to do without essentially becoming part of the collaboration
My point exactly. By time they release the paper, it will have been extremely pasteurized.
While I'm sure that the data may require advanced and difficult mathematical analysis for a paper, that doesn't have to stop them from posting spin rate data for the gyros and statistical plots that somebody who can read Scientific American can understand.
His collaboration gets first crack at the data because it's their toy. They designed it, they get to play with it first. Seriously. That's whole reason they became scientists
Excuse me, but who paid for "their toy"????
I've never understood the popular notion that scientists are a bunch of yes-men (women, whatever), keen on supporting the status quo. If their data disagree with GR, and they can establish a strong case that they haven't screwed up, they will be *extremely excited*.
I do not think that it is a question of supporting the status quo. I think that it is a question of being more politically succesful in the realms that they move about. String theory is an example of this. People do not want to say that it is wrong because of their careers.
So much as this experiment is concerned, if they did not detect frame dragging, that would open up the possibility that gravity is faster than the speed of light.
They already have roughly measured frame dragging with other satellites, so I expect there will be no surprises here.
While I completely agree that the data should be made public eventually, the scientific community has had many bad experiences when incomplete and poorly analyzed data has made it into the public and caused sensationalist headlines. Take for example preliminary asteroid observations.
Sensationalist headlines are going to continue to happen no matter what. I don't think that should be an excuse to spoon feed the public its science.
1. Those who claim that the theory of relativity is wrong in general. Those people ARE off their rockers and academically unsound, considering that all experiments to date have validated the theory.
The only experiments up to this point that have been conducted have been time dilation experiments.
While some of the arguments are unsound, there are a few who have interesting and thought provoking ideas.
It is possible but unlikely that this probe will measure such deviations.
agreed. They already have roughly measured frame dragging with other satelites.
Indeed, most scientists probably view Einstein as the greatest physicist of all time.
This is what I mean. The emotional admiration of Einstein interferes with objective science. But that it is my personal opinion.
It is an interesting question on who would be the greatist scientist of all time. I think that Newton should be right up there, as he laid the foundation for all present day theories as well as calculus (along with Leibniz) that has applications in other fields.
The problem with doing that is some crazy will look at the data and 'see' proof that we never went to the moon and that the fall of the Roman empire was due to aliens being afraid of Christians.
That's pretty irrelevant. Some crazy will do that anyway after the paper is published.
The question remains is what happens if Frame Dragging isn't observed
You can listen to John Turneaure, co principle investigator for Gravity Probe B. He was interviewed by Ira Flatow on NPR's Science Friday.
When Ira Flatow asked him what would happen if the probe did not find anything and that Einstein might be wrong, he "hemmed and hawwed" a lot and said that wouldn't be the case - that Einstein was right. He also mentioned that the data would go to a physicist and then be released to the public.
It's not that I'm wearing a tin-foil hat (well maybe), but science is based on conducting experiments in the open and openly sharing data with an unbiased view and procedure, even if it means that Einstein might be wrong.
If they really wanted to do this neat, they would stream the data live to a website, rather than can up the data until they are ready to release it.
There are critics of Einstein that are academically serious and not off their rocker like some zero point/tesla fanatics. There have been critics of Einstein ever since he released his theories. You don't hear much about them as they are all heaped into one group and astrocized.
I am not saying that Einstein was wrong (not in the sense that Newton was wrong either), but that true science is keeping an open mind, rather than cower to the politically favorable theory of the moment.
As an aside, frame dragging is like when you take a single electric mixer and use it in a bowl of pudding. Or when you use an electric stirrer in a can of paint. That is frame dragging.
This happens because gravity is a field (according to Einstein). Newton treated gravity like a force.
Well you might be right. But on the other hand, this should increase the demand for GameBoys (maybe the reason the reader was created in the first place).
The more games for the Gameboy means increased interest for the Gameboy, which would seem to me something Nintendo would want.
But as you said, there is a disconnect between some companies and their legal department, so you never know.
If you look at the press releases they came out with an add-on that allows the machine to scan at 10k lines in 12 seconds.
As an aside, the smaller film scanners that capture 35mm slides have Digital Ice to remove surface blemishes. Part of it works by shining an infrared light through the film. The infrared light is unaffected by the different shades of color, but the dust "stops" it and therefore is detected. Quite ingenious.
I imagine as expensive as this machine is, it uses this and other techniques to remove surface and film imperfections. If you use an original to scan that has been well cared for, the results should be impressive.
I toyed around with the idea of homebrewing such a machine to convert some old family super8 movies.
The two problems that you are going to have is the film transport, and the amount of time it takes to scan the film. As it stands, it would be time intensive to build such a machine and technically challenging. That and not having a workspace, it will have to wait for another day.
Re:Aren't we still in an Ice Age?
on
A New Ice Age?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Half a million years is enough for scientists to conclude that CO2 concentrations are at abnormal levels, both by the quantity and rate of increase.
It's true. When the earth was cooling and there was nothing but volcanoes everywhere 5 billion years ago, there could have been more CO2. And when there was an "extinction event" the concentrations could have been higher. But the fact remains, we are in uncharted territory when it comes to CO2 levels.
Saying that I was inaccurate is myopic in the extreme.
Re:Aren't we still in an Ice Age?
on
A New Ice Age?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
You sir no nothing about science. You CANNOT make a claim with the limited data points that humans currently have about weather patterns.
First, I'm only repeating what the general scientific consensus is. This is nothing new or strange.
Second, If we had limited data points, you would have a valid point. But the fact is we have very precise data points garnered from ice cores drilled in the Antartic that shows the content of CO2 in the atmosphere and the related temperature changes for the past 500,000 years.
Slashdot Mirror
What you misheard/misunderstood was the standard NASA procedure for data. The Principal Investigator gets the data exclusively for a year, then it's released into the public domain along with the specs/calibration data needed to analyze it.
Yes, and this is why they embargo the Hubble pictures too.
Just because it is standard procedure doesn't make it right. When I wrote out my check for taxes this last week, some of that money goes to fund NASA. The public funds NASA in its entirety. So, they should have access to the data at the same time as anyone else, IMNSHO.
And saying that the "public is too stupid" for the data doesn't hold water either. There are scientists amongst the general populace that can interpret the data just as well as any NASA funded scientist.
I know that a 99.99% percent of the public doesn't care about this. There are a few scientists/astronomers peeved about hubble pictures though. Also, for me, it's the principle of the thing. Spending billions of public money on medical research and then give the patents to drug companies to exploit is another area that I think needs looking at. The patents should belong to the public that funded the research in the first place.
Live data frankly wouldn't mean much - even to a scientist. It will take considerable calibration work to convert the raw data into valid data
"Calibration work" or "making fudge"? I think that the complicated nature of this is being overplayed.
They have an idea of what the gyro spin should be like if frame dragging exists (or what it should be like if it does not exist). They can plot this against the the data they receive from the gyros, and post it on the website.
the experimental data increasingly shows that Einstein was mostly right.
The only kind of data that we have had up to this point is time dilation data, outside some drifting satellites that may have experienced frame dragging. This probe is the first to measure directly the effects of one of his theories.
So I would argue that it is not so much "increasing data" but "scientist's increasing faith" that Einstein was right.
The second reason is that there's nothing an average person, or even an average Ph.D. physicist, could reasonably hope to accomplish by looking at the mounds of raw data this probe will produce.
I disagree. The spinning rate of the gyros is a statistical process and can be measured that way. They can plot data points of rate of spin due to frame dragging against where they should be if there was no frame dragging.
Sure, their paper is going to use math that is going to require heavy lifting, but that shouldn't stop a gyro speed plot.
There's a reason not many people do it. If you want to learn the differential geometry and all the other math and physics that goes into a detailed understanding of GR, be my guest -- just be prepared to spend 5 years or so doing it.
If NOVA and Scientific American can break up GR into segments that the general public can get a gist of what is going on, they could do the same here. I don't have to be a postdoc to understand that gyro spin should be affected by frame dragiing.
The rest of the site also reads like a tinfoil-hat type group... focusing a lot on why they are persecuted and not at all on actual evidence.
Some of it does, some of it doesn't. I think that the opinion that some of them have that Einstein's theories can be described by earlier scientist's work interesting, and worth looking into when I have the time.
Some of them have been persecuted. But to say that this is all that they are basing their arguments on would be wrong.
Just because some of their ideas seem too weird to handle, I would submit that this is the case because they are not accepted politically in the scientific community. Not that their theories don't carry any worth (even though they may not).
After all, that's where some science starts with. Rough, strange ideas that are difficult to accept. One example of this is black holes. When this idea was first proposed back in the seventies, nobody gave it the time of day.
So I think it would be safe to say tinfoil is in the eye of the beholder.
In fact Westinghouse owed Tesla many million (I think an estamate was around 6 million) for royalties on patents Westinghouse purchased on AC generators and motors
I think billions in today's money is more like it. It is unfortunate that he did not have the business accumen to negotiate ongoing royalties so he could fund his later experiments.
Instead of negotiating a lower royalty rate, he let Westinghouse off the hook.
Tesla was a great person. But what I am referring to are people who live in the realm of pseudoscience with perpetual motion machines and free energy devices.
The difference between Tesla and these people is that Tesla produced stuff that worked. While these latter people use his technologies to justify stuff they have that does not/can not work.
Would that be to blast the offender into space to exile him, or to make him wear artificial turf?
Now you know what Gravity Probe C will do.
And, as other people have pointed out, interpreting the data is undoubtedly complicated. Getting started with the data will require considerable knowledge about the design and implementation of their probe. Analysis software will have to be written, procedures developed, etc. This isn't something that even someone in the field will be able to do without essentially becoming part of the collaboration
My point exactly. By time they release the paper, it will have been extremely pasteurized.
While I'm sure that the data may require advanced and difficult mathematical analysis for a paper, that doesn't have to stop them from posting spin rate data for the gyros and statistical plots that somebody who can read Scientific American can understand.
His collaboration gets first crack at the data because it's their toy. They designed it, they get to play with it first. Seriously. That's whole reason they became scientists
Excuse me, but who paid for "their toy"????
I've never understood the popular notion that scientists are a bunch of yes-men (women, whatever), keen on supporting the status quo. If their data disagree with GR, and they can establish a strong case that they haven't screwed up, they will be *extremely excited*.
I do not think that it is a question of supporting the status quo. I think that it is a question of being more politically succesful in the realms that they move about. String theory is an example of this. People do not want to say that it is wrong because of their careers.
So much as this experiment is concerned, if they did not detect frame dragging, that would open up the possibility that gravity is faster than the speed of light.
They already have roughly measured frame dragging with other satellites, so I expect there will be no surprises here.
Your "true science" doesn't exist in practice
That looks like an interesting (though probably difficult to read) book.
This is my point - science purports objective analysis and decision making, but in reality it is affected more deeply by sociologic factors.
While I completely agree that the data should be made public eventually, the scientific community has had many bad experiences when incomplete and poorly analyzed data has made it into the public and caused sensationalist headlines. Take for example preliminary asteroid observations.
Sensationalist headlines are going to continue to happen no matter what. I don't think that should be an excuse to spoon feed the public its science.
1. Those who claim that the theory of relativity is wrong in general. Those people ARE off their rockers and academically unsound, considering that all experiments to date have validated the theory.
The only experiments up to this point that have been conducted have been time dilation experiments.
While some of the arguments are unsound, there are a few who have interesting and thought provoking ideas.
It is possible but unlikely that this probe will measure such deviations.
agreed. They already have roughly measured frame dragging with other satelites.
Indeed, most scientists probably view Einstein as the greatest physicist of all time.
This is what I mean. The emotional admiration of Einstein interferes with objective science. But that it is my personal opinion.
It is an interesting question on who would be the greatist scientist of all time. I think that Newton should be right up there, as he laid the foundation for all present day theories as well as calculus (along with Leibniz) that has applications in other fields.
The problem with doing that is some crazy will look at the data and 'see' proof that we never went to the moon and that the fall of the Roman empire was due to aliens being afraid of Christians.
That's pretty irrelevant. Some crazy will do that anyway after the paper is published.
years of work designing and building the experiment, and then having someone else beat them into print with the bottom line: the actual results
I say whosever money they used to build the thing should have first dibs on the data.
Who would that be?
I didn't have time to spell check my post. I had to run out the door. I was a better speller as a kid than I am now.
I knew that there would be a slashdotter in the wings ready to point it out to me
So they will have to post blue prints on the site as well as describe each electrical element used. It will be quite a PITA
No, it wouldn't be as hard as you make it out to be.
Even though it might take a lot of math, computers are pretty powerful.
Even a flash graphic on how frame dragging would affect the gyros would be nice.
The question remains is what happens if Frame Dragging isn't observed
You can listen to John Turneaure, co principle investigator for Gravity Probe B. He was interviewed by Ira Flatow on NPR's Science Friday.
When Ira Flatow asked him what would happen if the probe did not find anything and that Einstein might be wrong, he "hemmed and hawwed" a lot and said that wouldn't be the case - that Einstein was right. He also mentioned that the data would go to a physicist and then be released to the public.
It's not that I'm wearing a tin-foil hat (well maybe), but science is based on conducting experiments in the open and openly sharing data with an unbiased view and procedure, even if it means that Einstein might be wrong.
If they really wanted to do this neat, they would stream the data live to a website, rather than can up the data until they are ready to release it.
There are critics of Einstein that are academically serious and not off their rocker like some zero point/tesla fanatics. There have been critics of Einstein ever since he released his theories. You don't hear much about them as they are all heaped into one group and astrocized.
I am not saying that Einstein was wrong (not in the sense that Newton was wrong either), but that true science is keeping an open mind, rather than cower to the politically favorable theory of the moment.
As an aside, frame dragging is like when you take a single electric mixer and use it in a bowl of pudding. Or when you use an electric stirrer in a can of paint. That is frame dragging.
This happens because gravity is a field (according to Einstein). Newton treated gravity like a force.
Physicists reading may improve upon this anology.
they might need a parachute soon.
Please send your nickels and dimes to the "Darl McBride this-is-not-hopeless-really fund".
what is going to make him want to fill that position in the U.S. rather than overseas?
"Yessir Masser Sir, I can clean them shoes up real nice, Masser Sir."
I'm not the only one who immediately knew what the settlement terms are.
Free software for schools, and $5 dollars off your next X-box purchase.
And probably a few million for the cash-strapped state.
"Toss them a bone."
It works every time. And it's back to business as usually for our favorite megamonopoly.
ah, the smell of a new computer . ..works better than Viagra?
......nine hours later at the crack of dawn.
"Honey, I need to open this box from Alienware first."
"Honey, I'm done playing counterstrike. We can go to bed now."
"Yeah right. I need to get to work."
Well you might be right. But on the other hand, this should increase the demand for GameBoys (maybe the reason the reader was created in the first place).
The more games for the Gameboy means increased interest for the Gameboy, which would seem to me something Nintendo would want.
But as you said, there is a disconnect between some companies and their legal department, so you never know.
There is the laser record player.
The cost is only $10k, plus $500 for a record cleaner.
Anybody in slashdot land know of a cheaper version that us mere mortals might buy?
Before the song is "Good Bye Irene".
After the song is "Good By Webserver".
The sound of this new song is unusually pure and quiet. My congratulations to the Berkeley team.
Actually the workstation that controls the scanner runs linux.
You can see an overview here of the machine.
If you look at the press releases they came out with an add-on that allows the machine to scan at 10k lines in 12 seconds.
As an aside, the smaller film scanners that capture 35mm slides have Digital Ice to remove surface blemishes. Part of it works by shining an infrared light through the film. The infrared light is unaffected by the different shades of color, but the dust "stops" it and therefore is detected. Quite ingenious.
I imagine as expensive as this machine is, it uses this and other techniques to remove surface and film imperfections. If you use an original to scan that has been well cared for, the results should be impressive.
I toyed around with the idea of homebrewing such a machine to convert some old family super8 movies.
The two problems that you are going to have is the film transport, and the amount of time it takes to scan the film. As it stands, it would be time intensive to build such a machine and technically challenging. That and not having a workspace, it will have to wait for another day.
Is 30 million years a big enough number for you?
Maybe a more acceptable statement would be CO2 is at record levels
Half a million years is enough for scientists to conclude that CO2 concentrations are at abnormal levels, both by the quantity and rate of increase.
It's true. When the earth was cooling and there was nothing but volcanoes everywhere 5 billion years ago, there could have been more CO2. And when there was an "extinction event" the concentrations could have been higher. But the fact remains, we are in uncharted territory when it comes to CO2 levels.
Saying that I was inaccurate is myopic in the extreme.
Please guys... Let Amiga die with some dignity
Well, it did die with dignity.
But there are those that can't leave the dead alone.
But yet you post as an Anonymous Coward???
Amiga users never died - there are still thousands of them.
Boy, that truly is a scary thought.
You sir no nothing about science. You CANNOT make a claim with the limited data points that humans currently have about weather patterns.
First, I'm only repeating what the general scientific consensus is. This is nothing new or strange.
Second, If we had limited data points, you would have a valid point. But the fact is we have very precise data points garnered from ice cores drilled in the Antartic that shows the content of CO2 in the atmosphere and the related temperature changes for the past 500,000 years.
See this link
So I would say, it is you sir, who knows nothing about science.