Pioneer 10's position outside the solar system is a rather unique one, which allows it to give us direct indications of what its local environment in extrasolar/interstellar space is like. It has instruments like a plasma analyzer and ion detector which give us a detailed picture of the constituents of the nearby space. Also, it has micrometeorite detectors which can indicate whether there are any outside the solar system, and if so, how far away.
After all, although we think we know what's out there between the stars, we have very little direct evidence. That's an especially important issue nowadays because of indications that the expansion of the universe is accelerating -- there must be something out there generating the negative pressure (which effectively produces the opposite of gravity)!
Wow, that's great, but didn't Dejanews go out of business precisely because they offered free usenet archive access?
How long do we have until Google demands that we get a subscription? And how much will it cost? Hope it's less than google dollars.:-)
Is there anything else Google can do to avoid the same fate?
I'm concerned that the sad realities of the new-new economy may be difficult even for Google to avoid in the long-term.:-(
Aimster was designed to provide the safety and security of swapping files with your buddies.
I don't know that it's legal to share files only with your buddies, per se, but it's certainly harder for the RIAA to track, for the reasons you cite. That's becoming increasingly important, too. Evidently, the MPAA has already started hiring companies to track individual Gnutella users' downloads and proceeded to "re-educate" them, even at places like Harvard, see here.
The RIAA can't be far behind. Bring on Aimster & Freenet!
One of the significant properties of photonic band gap materials is that they reflect a whole range of frequencies extremely well, so that they can certainly compete with fiber optic cables. You can even write a program to optimize the size of the band gap, see the MIT photonic bands
documentation at http://jdj.mit.edu/mpb/.
Unfortunately, it's difficult to route them around bends in a lossless fashion; it can be done, but there's a limitation on how sharp the bends can be at the moment.
The reason they're called photonic band-gap materials is by the analogy to solid state semiconductors, which have a large range of forbidden energies (before doping).
Which brings me to the next point, that the article neglects: photonic materials can be used for optical computing! One can (at least theoretically) construct optical analogues to transistors that perform switching at light speed! Conversion between light and electrons probably is the biggest bottleneck of the internet backbone nowadays. Optical computing would obviously eliminate that; realizing that physically is the real, most important long term goal of the telecom photonic technologies. Of course, the improved efficiency of photonic band-gap fibers would save money on amplification as well....
The paper only talks about two planets, not the three referred to in the BBC article. The first one mentioned has a "year" of only a few Earth days, which the paper calls "51 Peg"-like, alluding to one of the first planets detected, and the class of extra-solar planets named after it. The second star is a brown dwarf candidate with a mass between 46 and 190 times that of Jupiter. I see no mention whatsoever of the really exciting third planet which supposedly has a period of a little over one Earth year, orbiting a Sun-like star. The most exciting possibility is not that liquid water would exist on the gas giant (it can't), but that it might have terrestial moons at a habitable temperature. Empirically, moons have been observed to have volcanic activity (Io) as well as atmospheres (Titan), which could pave the way for life to come into being.
The article does bring up the interesting point that the "51 Peg"-like stars are ideal candidates to be observed during a transition (like an eclipse, the planet is temporarily between us and the star in a transition). However, it seems that the astronomers conducting the so-called "Anglo-Australian Planet Search" were unable to observe one. It would be ideal to see one, though, because it would provide strong evidence something is actually there (they haven't actually seen anything besides the stars!), and tell the astronomers the inclination and radius (which would instantly give us mass and density of the planet to within experimental error).
Sorry, but that doesn't work. Liquid CO2 can't exist with an Earth-like atmospheric pressure. Considering that the atmosphere is a little less than 80% non-O2 constituents, it's probably had a pressure of at least 0.8 atm since the Hadean era (when the Earth was born, in the infancy of the solar system).
No one knows for sure how life began, but one promising theory by Stuart Kauffman proposes that autocatalytic chains of RNA can form a self-perpetuating system that could eventually evolve into the prokaryotes (bacteria) we see today. I've never heard of a theory involving liquid CO2; it isn't physically likely or biologically necessary.
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After all, although we think we know what's out there between the stars, we have very little direct evidence. That's an especially important issue nowadays because of indications that the expansion of the universe is accelerating -- there must be something out there generating the negative pressure (which effectively produces the opposite of gravity)!
Is there anything else Google can do to avoid the same fate?
I'm concerned that the sad realities of the new-new economy may be difficult even for Google to avoid in the long-term. :-(
I don't know that it's legal to share files only with your buddies, per se, but it's certainly harder for the RIAA to track, for the reasons you cite. That's becoming increasingly important, too. Evidently, the MPAA has already started hiring companies to track individual Gnutella users' downloads and proceeded to "re-educate" them, even at places like Harvard, see here.
The RIAA can't be far behind. Bring on Aimster & Freenet!
One of the significant properties of photonic band gap materials is that they reflect a whole range of frequencies extremely well, so that they can certainly compete with fiber optic cables. You can even write a program to optimize the size of the band gap, see the MIT photonic bands documentation at http://jdj.mit.edu/mpb/. Unfortunately, it's difficult to route them around bends in a lossless fashion; it can be done, but there's a limitation on how sharp the bends can be at the moment. The reason they're called photonic band-gap materials is by the analogy to solid state semiconductors, which have a large range of forbidden energies (before doping). Which brings me to the next point, that the article neglects: photonic materials can be used for optical computing! One can (at least theoretically) construct optical analogues to transistors that perform switching at light speed! Conversion between light and electrons probably is the biggest bottleneck of the internet backbone nowadays. Optical computing would obviously eliminate that; realizing that physically is the real, most important long term goal of the telecom photonic technologies. Of course, the improved efficiency of photonic band-gap fibers would save money on amplification as well....
The paper only talks about two planets, not the three referred to in the BBC article. The first one mentioned has a "year" of only a few Earth days, which the paper calls "51 Peg"-like, alluding to one of the first planets detected, and the class of extra-solar planets named after it. The second star is a brown dwarf candidate with a mass between 46 and 190 times that of Jupiter. I see no mention whatsoever of the really exciting third planet which supposedly has a period of a little over one Earth year, orbiting a Sun-like star. The most exciting possibility is not that liquid water would exist on the gas giant (it can't), but that it might have terrestial moons at a habitable temperature. Empirically, moons have been observed to have volcanic activity (Io) as well as atmospheres (Titan), which could pave the way for life to come into being.
The article does bring up the interesting point that the "51 Peg"-like stars are ideal candidates to be observed during a transition (like an eclipse, the planet is temporarily between us and the star in a transition). However, it seems that the astronomers conducting the so-called "Anglo-Australian Planet Search" were unable to observe one. It would be ideal to see one, though, because it would provide strong evidence something is actually there (they haven't actually seen anything besides the stars!), and tell the astronomers the inclination and radius (which would instantly give us mass and density of the planet to within experimental error).
Sorry, but that doesn't work. Liquid CO2 can't exist with an Earth-like atmospheric pressure. Considering that the atmosphere is a little less than 80% non-O2 constituents, it's probably had a pressure of at least 0.8 atm since the Hadean era (when the Earth was born, in the infancy of the solar system). No one knows for sure how life began, but one promising theory by Stuart Kauffman proposes that autocatalytic chains of RNA can form a self-perpetuating system that could eventually evolve into the prokaryotes (bacteria) we see today. I've never heard of a theory involving liquid CO2; it isn't physically likely or biologically necessary.