A friend of mine who works with the Australian bid says that there is a lot of talk about the European partners indulging in a lot of colonial guilt apologetics and seeing a fair bit of posturing to be had from handing such a big futuristic project to Africa. China will also be horse trading for all they're worth. As with all political decisions, the logically best option may not be the most politically juicy one.
Mercury has a magnetic field, which quite surprised planetary scientists when it was first discovered by MAriner 10, as the prevailing theory at the time was that Mercury's small size would have led to its core solidifying by now and stopping the dynamo that generated the field.
There's obviously a lot we don't know about planetary magentic fields, and I wouldn't want to judge the entire theory just by something I read on Slashdot, but I find it hard to understand how oceanic currents could account for Earth's magnetic field but not for Mercury's.
Oh, those scientists are still unable to do what cro-magnon man could: make a simple obsidian rock pointy like an arrowhead.
Um, what? Obsidian knapping is practiced by many people around the world who are quite capable of producing fine points. You can find howtos on YouTube, so it's far from being a lost secret of the ancients.
Best to check those overly broad claims before committing yourself to perpetuating them.
Given there has already been rebuttal on the Buddhism claim, I'm calling shenanigans on the "arrow towards Mecca" bit. If that was true, Google would be full of references to it, but there's nothing even close. Also,the inheritance bit does sum properly, as the various clauses are conditional, not additive. Was this a windup?
One big advantage Mars has over Venus in terms of terraforming potential is that Mars' day length is really close to that of the Earth (43 minutes longer, I think). Venus, on the other hand, has a day longer than its year. You would either have to spin up the planet somehow (good luck with that) or else have a series of mirrors and shades at the Venus-Sun Lagrangian points to allow the simulation of a proper day/night cycle. This might lead to the interesting situation where the entire planet shares the same time zone, with night falling across the entire planet simultaneously.
It obviously isn't completely unviable, as they have their first customer lined up. It must make economic sense to them.
It also doesn't require that the oil produced be comparable in price to the imported stuff, as there is additional value added in the form of reduced processing of their auto waste. If the machine creates real savings in that area then the fact that it powers itself is a nice secondary feature.
A landfill reducing device that powers itself with a net energy surplus doesn't sound like it has no commercial value.
The article doesn't give exact figures, but it does say:
GRC says its Hawk-10 can extract enough oil and gas from the left-over fluff to run the Hawk-10 itself and a number of other machines used by Gershow.
That addresses the energy issue, but still leaves open the question of how much it costs to maintain the equipment. You'd have to think they've got some sort of business model worked out if they've progressed to the point of selling to customers.
It doesn't work that way. Orbital mechanics often works counterintuitively. There are no figures in this article, but it states that a good push off from the ISS would send you perhaps 3 kilometers away from the ISS, inot an orbit that would intersect with the station one or twice per 90 minute orbit. The space suits are good for 7+ hours, so provided you didn't do it at the end of the EVA there would be plenty of time to pick you up.
As for knowing EVERYTHING, wouldn't the storage required for that be no less than the entire state of the Universe, and so be the same as the Universe? i.e. knowing everything will always be an unreachable goal. As interconnected and deep as everything in the Universe is, the "true nature of reality" may be no less complex
It depends on whay you mean by knowing everything. Knowledge can be somewhat compressed in comparison to raw reality. I can describe the chemical characteristics of a grain of salt in much less space than it would take to map the precise location of every single atom that makes it up. If I'm discussing the solubilty of salt in water, that level of detail is potentially superfluous. For the vast majority of purposes, much of the information in the universe is trivial and of no deep meaning except in aggregate. Atmospheric physics is complicated (Navier-Stokes equations, Rossby number, adiabatic lapse rate and the like), but the gross principles can become reasonably well understood. Applying this knowlege to global weather prediction is something else entirely, and is in that theatre in which the prohibitively comprehensive level of detail can become a problem if you desire extreme levels of precision. The same situation may well be applicable to the fundamental laws of the universe. We may be able to comprehend them without having to know the entire, exhausive state of everything.
Well, that was basically his point. There are _no_ integers between 3 and 4
Perhaps you should re-read his point to see if that's what he actually said. You may be unpleasantly surprised.
so the statement "there's an infinite number of numbers between 3 and 4" doesn't even make sense if you're talking about complex numbers.
Again, the grandparent merely said numbers, he didn't specify type. As a general statement, that is undeniably true. If he more specifically mentioned complex numbers, then your point may have some validity.
So you aren't even nitpicking, you're just plain putting words in his and my mouth.
why not build a huge tube out to the vacumn, pump the air out, release the valve and use the atmospheric pressure to rise on?
I'm sure you weren't being serious, but just in case anybody else is wondering...
Why would the air in the evacuated tube rise any higher that the external atmosphere? Vacuum doesn't actively suck, it just seems that way in our everyday experience because air pressure will equalise if given the chance. This is not the same as building a tube up out of the atmosphere, as this is on an entirely different scale. We have an atmosphere because the Earth's gravity pulls the air down, and pressure is a function of this. If you are higher than the atmosphere, there is no pressure to equalise. To analogise, an open ended tube placed in a bucket of water will not spontaneously start fountaining water out the top end, the interior of the tube will merely fill up to the same point as the external water level.
As usual, with groundbreaking theories and inventions, we will deny it's possibility even after (if) we see it's work.
What an incredibly overbroad statement. Theories are only considered 'groundbreaking' in retrospect. Phrenology, the aether, phlogiston and Rutherford's model of the atom are examples of theories that had their moment in the sun and were found to be inadequate. You can't use the initial scepticism that inventions or theories that later proved to be correct faced in support of your desire to see this particular invention become possible, it's a spurious relationship. At least you phrased it in terms of if and may. If potential groundbreakingness and scepticism are a firm indicator as to validity, then I guess there's hope yet for the Keely Motor.
What's your point? He just said "numbers", so that could include any or all of the types you listed. Do you dispute the statement that there are an infinte number of numbers between two integers? Be specific.
Re:Perhaps this film explains why
on
Back to the Moon
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· Score: 1
And perhaps this site will explain why Bart Sibrel is a lying, attention seeking con artist without a clue. When the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter takes pictures of the Apollo hardware on the surface I would dearly love to see some documentary crew follow him around and hound him relentlessly like he does to the astronauts. Not that he won't just claim that the new evidence is faked as well.
Re:Why Then Not Now?
on
Back to the Moon
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· Score: 2, Informative
The crew of Soyuz 11 died while attempting to return from the Salyut 1 space station. A faulty valve led to the loss of all their air just prior to re-entry when the service module was separated from the descent module. They had fired the de-orbit burn, so they were not technically in orbit, but they died in space proper rather than the upper atmosphere like the crew of Columbia.
I would rather say that ESA landed a probe (along with NASA) on Titan. The probe was European, they landed it. Cassini took it there and acted as relay, thus NASA deserve the co-starring accreditation.
Your other examples were good, there was no need to co-opt others achievements. Giving credit where it's due shouldn't be done backhandedly.
Actually, I think the most likely path to manned space exploration is to reengineer people: radiation hardening, hibernation, vacuum resistance, and changes to the skeletal system, among others.
Bravo! Somebody give this person some mod points.
Space is far too hostile and Homo Sapiens is far too frail and squishy for any large scale space travel. Somebody during the Apollo program made an estimate (conceivably pulled out of their butt) that there was a 10% chance per flight that there would be a solar flare large enough to kill the crew or at least abort the mission. There actually was a lethally large flare between Apollos 15 and 16. (Note that this doesn't mean it was all a hoax and they didn't go: it means they were heroes).
I firmly believe that intelligent life from Earth has a great future ahead of it in space. I just don't think it will be human life.
Currently en route to a close rendezvous with comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, to be followed by releasing a lander (which will use a harpoon to cling to the surface). It was in a position to make distant observations of comet Tempel for the current fireworks show.
It won't do what you describe but will instead take a roundabout route that will allow it to basically sneak up on the comet.
The Solar System Exploration Strategic Roadmap lays out NASA's current plans/wishlist for robotic exploration in the next 20+ years. Basically, they foresee one Discovery class (NEAR, Mars Pathfinder, Deep Impact, etc) mission every two years or so; two or three more expensive New Frontiers missions per decade such as the Pluto New Horizons probe or the newly announced Juno Jupiter Polar Obiter; and one or possibly two $1 billion+ "Flagship" missions. The first flagship mission will be the much delayed Europa Geophysical Orbiter. The second Flagship mission, slated for 2013 or therabouts, will most likely be a Titan Explorer, an RTG-powered blimp to cruise around the surface for an extended period.
Keep in mind that this is obviously subject to political whim, but it shows that Titan is a really high priority for future exploration.
Oh, please. I said the Earth back to its preindustrial state, not humanity. Given that I then talk about posthuman or AI space exploration, I think it was blatantly clear that I wasn't being a luddite.Watch that kneejerk, fella, you could put someone's eye out.
Terraforming is a quaint relic of a bygone age when Nature was humanity's plaything, the same era that dreamt of weather control and reclaiming the Sahara. These dreams came before we truly understood complexity and chaotic systems, showing just how difficult it would be to get them right.
I have to agree with the notion that if terraforming was so easy, maybe we could try to get the Earth back to its pre-industrial state before worrying about other worlds.
In the end, I believe that our descendants are much more likeley to alter themselves to survive in new environments than to expend huge amounts of time and energy making silly, primitive monkey people comfortable far away from their natural habitat. It would be like creating an enormous refrigeration unit the size of Greenland so that polar animals could live on an iceberg at the equator: Sure you could do it, but maybe polar bears just don't belong there.
Intelligent life from Earth has a marvellous future ahead of it in space. Very little of it will be unmodified homo sapiens, though.
Slashdot Mirror
A friend of mine who works with the Australian bid says that there is a lot of talk about the European partners indulging in a lot of colonial guilt apologetics and seeing a fair bit of posturing to be had from handing such a big futuristic project to Africa. China will also be horse trading for all they're worth. As with all political decisions, the logically best option may not be the most politically juicy one.
Lolwhut? Fuel costs are an utterly insignificant fraction of the cost of a launch.
Mercury has a magnetic field, which quite surprised planetary scientists when it was first discovered by MAriner 10, as the prevailing theory at the time was that Mercury's small size would have led to its core solidifying by now and stopping the dynamo that generated the field.
There's obviously a lot we don't know about planetary magentic fields, and I wouldn't want to judge the entire theory just by something I read on Slashdot, but I find it hard to understand how oceanic currents could account for Earth's magnetic field but not for Mercury's.
Oh, those scientists are still unable to do what cro-magnon man could: make a simple obsidian rock pointy like an arrowhead.
Um, what? Obsidian knapping is practiced by many people around the world who are quite capable of producing fine points. You can find howtos on YouTube, so it's far from being a lost secret of the ancients.
Best to check those overly broad claims before committing yourself to perpetuating them.
Given there has already been rebuttal on the Buddhism claim, I'm calling shenanigans on the "arrow towards Mecca" bit. If that was true, Google would be full of references to it, but there's nothing even close. Also,the inheritance bit does sum properly, as the various clauses are conditional, not additive. Was this a windup?
One big advantage Mars has over Venus in terms of terraforming potential is that Mars' day length is really close to that of the Earth (43 minutes longer, I think). Venus, on the other hand, has a day longer than its year. You would either have to spin up the planet somehow (good luck with that) or else have a series of mirrors and shades at the Venus-Sun Lagrangian points to allow the simulation of a proper day/night cycle. This might lead to the interesting situation where the entire planet shares the same time zone, with night falling across the entire planet simultaneously.
Done years ago. It's why planetologists talk about periods like the Late Heavy Bombardment.
It obviously isn't completely unviable, as they have their first customer lined up. It must make economic sense to them.
It also doesn't require that the oil produced be comparable in price to the imported stuff, as there is additional value added in the form of reduced processing of their auto waste. If the machine creates real savings in that area then the fact that it powers itself is a nice secondary feature.
A landfill reducing device that powers itself with a net energy surplus doesn't sound like it has no commercial value.
That addresses the energy issue, but still leaves open the question of how much it costs to maintain the equipment. You'd have to think they've got some sort of business model worked out if they've progressed to the point of selling to customers.
It doesn't work that way. Orbital mechanics often works counterintuitively. There are no figures in this article, but it states that a good push off from the ISS would send you perhaps 3 kilometers away from the ISS, inot an orbit that would intersect with the station one or twice per 90 minute orbit. The space suits are good for 7+ hours, so provided you didn't do it at the end of the EVA there would be plenty of time to pick you up.
It depends on whay you mean by knowing everything. Knowledge can be somewhat compressed in comparison to raw reality. I can describe the chemical characteristics of a grain of salt in much less space than it would take to map the precise location of every single atom that makes it up. If I'm discussing the solubilty of salt in water, that level of detail is potentially superfluous. For the vast majority of purposes, much of the information in the universe is trivial and of no deep meaning except in aggregate. Atmospheric physics is complicated (Navier-Stokes equations, Rossby number, adiabatic lapse rate and the like), but the gross principles can become reasonably well understood. Applying this knowlege to global weather prediction is something else entirely, and is in that theatre in which the prohibitively comprehensive level of detail can become a problem if you desire extreme levels of precision. The same situation may well be applicable to the fundamental laws of the universe. We may be able to comprehend them without having to know the entire, exhausive state of everything.
Perhaps you should re-read his point to see if that's what he actually said. You may be unpleasantly surprised.
Again, the grandparent merely said numbers, he didn't specify type. As a general statement, that is undeniably true. If he more specifically mentioned complex numbers, then your point may have some validity.
So you aren't even nitpicking, you're just plain putting words in his and my mouth.
I'm sure you weren't being serious, but just in case anybody else is wondering...
Why would the air in the evacuated tube rise any higher that the external atmosphere? Vacuum doesn't actively suck, it just seems that way in our everyday experience because air pressure will equalise if given the chance. This is not the same as building a tube up out of the atmosphere, as this is on an entirely different scale. We have an atmosphere because the Earth's gravity pulls the air down, and pressure is a function of this. If you are higher than the atmosphere, there is no pressure to equalise. To analogise, an open ended tube placed in a bucket of water will not spontaneously start fountaining water out the top end, the interior of the tube will merely fill up to the same point as the external water level.
What an incredibly overbroad statement. Theories are only considered 'groundbreaking' in retrospect. Phrenology, the aether, phlogiston and Rutherford's model of the atom are examples of theories that had their moment in the sun and were found to be inadequate. You can't use the initial scepticism that inventions or theories that later proved to be correct faced in support of your desire to see this particular invention become possible, it's a spurious relationship. At least you phrased it in terms of if and may. If potential groundbreakingness and scepticism are a firm indicator as to validity, then I guess there's hope yet for the Keely Motor.
What's your point? He just said "numbers", so that could include any or all of the types you listed. Do you dispute the statement that there are an infinte number of numbers between two integers? Be specific.
And perhaps this site will explain why Bart Sibrel is a lying, attention seeking con artist without a clue. When the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter takes pictures of the Apollo hardware on the surface I would dearly love to see some documentary crew follow him around and hound him relentlessly like he does to the astronauts. Not that he won't just claim that the new evidence is faked as well.
The crew of Soyuz 11 died while attempting to return from the Salyut 1 space station. A faulty valve led to the loss of all their air just prior to re-entry when the service module was separated from the descent module. They had fired the de-orbit burn, so they were not technically in orbit, but they died in space proper rather than the upper atmosphere like the crew of Columbia.
Your other examples were good, there was no need to co-opt others achievements. Giving credit where it's due shouldn't be done backhandedly.
I guess you missed the fuss last year when it crossed the termination shock
Space is far too hostile and Homo Sapiens is far too frail and squishy for any large scale space travel. Somebody during the Apollo program made an estimate (conceivably pulled out of their butt) that there was a 10% chance per flight that there would be a solar flare large enough to kill the crew or at least abort the mission. There actually was a lethally large flare between Apollos 15 and 16. (Note that this doesn't mean it was all a hoax and they didn't go: it means they were heroes).
I firmly believe that intelligent life from Earth has a great future ahead of it in space. I just don't think it will be human life.
You mean the Rosetta mission?
Currently en route to a close rendezvous with comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, to be followed by releasing a lander (which will use a harpoon to cling to the surface). It was in a position to make distant observations of comet Tempel for the current fireworks show.
It won't do what you describe but will instead take a roundabout route that will allow it to basically sneak up on the comet.
Oh, and it's European, not American :-)
The Solar System Exploration Strategic Roadmap lays out NASA's current plans/wishlist for robotic exploration in the next 20+ years. Basically, they foresee one Discovery class (NEAR, Mars Pathfinder, Deep Impact, etc) mission every two years or so; two or three more expensive New Frontiers missions per decade such as the Pluto New Horizons probe or the newly announced Juno Jupiter Polar Obiter; and one or possibly two $1 billion+ "Flagship" missions. The first flagship mission will be the much delayed Europa Geophysical Orbiter. The second Flagship mission, slated for 2013 or therabouts, will most likely be a Titan Explorer, an RTG-powered blimp to cruise around the surface for an extended period.
Keep in mind that this is obviously subject to political whim, but it shows that Titan is a really high priority for future exploration.
Oh, please. I said the Earth back to its preindustrial state, not humanity. Given that I then talk about posthuman or AI space exploration, I think it was blatantly clear that I wasn't being a luddite.Watch that kneejerk, fella, you could put someone's eye out.
Terraforming is a quaint relic of a bygone age when Nature was humanity's plaything, the same era that dreamt of weather control and reclaiming the Sahara. These dreams came before we truly understood complexity and chaotic systems, showing just how difficult it would be to get them right.
I have to agree with the notion that if terraforming was so easy, maybe we could try to get the Earth back to its pre-industrial state before worrying about other worlds.
In the end, I believe that our descendants are much more likeley to alter themselves to survive in new environments than to expend huge amounts of time and energy making silly, primitive monkey people comfortable far away from their natural habitat. It would be like creating an enormous refrigeration unit the size of Greenland so that polar animals could live on an iceberg at the equator: Sure you could do it, but maybe polar bears just don't belong there.
Intelligent life from Earth has a marvellous future ahead of it in space. Very little of it will be unmodified homo sapiens, though.
Oh, please. Get a sense of proportion.
Hey, I peed in the ocean the last time I went swimming. Call the EPA!