Taking out a power plant is silly, they can get it back online too easy. Much better to bomb it to rubble.
It depends on how you take it out. Simply turning it off probably won't do any realy damage and only forces the plant to go to the trouble of restarting. From a dead stop, a coal or oil fired power plant can get back on the grid generating power in about half a day.
To take the plant offline permanently you'd have do some real damage. Here are a few random ideas:
1. Cut the supply of lube oil to the turbine's bearings. Steam turbines and generators rotate on large bearins that need a constant supply of cool, pressurized oil. Bearing surfaces are integral to the rotor. Wreckin a bearing neccesitates taking the entire turbine/generator offline for several months, minimum.
2. Modulate steam flow to overspeed or underspeed the turbine. Running at the wrong speed may cause harmonic vibrations to damage and shake apart the generator and/or turbine. In addition to the ovbious hazards of overheating and blowing up the generator won't be producing electricity at the required 50 or 60 Hertz. Dumping a couple megawatts of 70 Hz AC into the grid is sure to mess things up, or at least force the plant offline
3. Screw up the fuel supply into the boiler. It might be possible to dump too much fuel into the boiler/burner/whatever and melt it. Modern boilers operate very near the melting points of the materials they're made from. An extra hundred dergees could be enough to wreck it.
Personally, I'd target the bearings first. Be forewarned that most bearings have elaborate temperature and vibration sensors that will trip the turbine (shut it off) if it overheats or starts to run roughly. **Disclaimer - all of this is purely hypothetical. Don't go out to your local electric company and blow it up! **
After reading Katz's editorial and some of the comments on Slashdot I had a mental image of the kid who wrote the story. I imagined the kid was a tormented, intellgent and socially-inept nerd who had dropped some kind of literary bombshell on the school. Katz's article seems to imply (at least to me) that young Chris had written an Opressed Work of Great Literature(tm) that had gotten him in political hot water with the school. Not true.
A short while later read the Dallas Metropolitan article and Chris' story. Chris is a moron, even by 13-year-old standards. His story is semi literate drivel. I wonder if Chris' teacher was have been huffing freon as well when she gave him an A+.
Stereotyping every oppressed kid as a "geek" does help out when we're trying to expose the evils of American schools and society. Every kid is unique and has the the potential be as stupid, inhale as much freon or smoke as much dope as they wish.
The authorties obviously did a dumb thing in this situation and Chris did not deserve to sit in jail for a week. However, Katz' s portrayal of the kid as does not jive with reality.
Yeah. Can't blame slack for going to 7.0. After all, the previous beta was 6.5 *g* But seriously, my department (which runs Solaris heavily) recently got two hand-me-down Alphas which we _desperately_ need to replace aging pizza boxes. The admins are understandably annoyed that Solaris is not available for Alpha. I'm a bit hesitant to suggest BSD (or even -gasp- Linux) because the folks in charge have a rather narrow and negative view of OSS. However, management also happens to have a negative view of the $$$ it takes to license DG/UX. Any ideas?
I bet this is from the same person who flamed Free BSD here. Dude, if you're actually writing this by hand, get a job in advertising or politics. If it's an automated program, link please?
there is more to anime than pokemon, sailor moon, and robotech
Absolutely! It's too bad that the majority of 'anime' that reaches the US mainstream media is crap. Ask any anime fan about what movies and books they prefer. There are much much better shows than Sailor Moon et.al. Would you decide that Western television is stupid if the only shows you could get were Power Rangers and Teletubbies? Certainly.
All of the Ghibli movies I've seen are totally excellent. Slashdot nerds might particularly like Wings of Honneamise.
Well, it should be painfully obvious that Forum2000 is not an advanced supercomputing cluster.
The sad/humorous/lame image I have in my mind is a loosely organized group of studends and faculty who sign up to receive incoming questions and come up with witty replies. Seems like there's an automated replier (the cube?) in addition to the humans.
login CMU geeklab: **** passwd: *******
...blah...
[GMT 23:13:21] There are 3 pending question(s) from Forum2000. Respond? (y/n) $:_
No;) www.forum2000.org is NOT a C64. The telnet server just pretends to be one (very funny).
www.forum2000.org responds to the following ports:
13 daytime
21 ftp
23 telnet
35 printing?
53 dns
79 finger
113 auth ident tap
118 nntp
Doesn't look like a C64, eh? Whoever created this is extra cool in my book whether it's a hoax or not. Forum2000 et.al. have been enthralling me all evening.
Has anyone looked at Andrej's Become and Objectivist in Ten Easy Steps? I'm leaning towards mad genius now; although it might be a mad genius who has set up a hoax. Very curious.
So is this one, simply entitled "Andrej Bauer Fan Club.
All of the evidence seems to fit together and support non-hoaxness of Forum2000. Or but at least, somebody bothered to set up a LOT of extra crap to make it look real. Definiately more believable than FuckU/FuckMe.
Is Andrej Bauer a mad genius? A nonperson? A pseudonym? Come on, Slashdotters, let's get to the bottom of this one!
I just checked with Forum2000's nameserver (unnamed here, in order to give the poor guy a break). He confirms that the Forum2000 people are indeed legit students/faculty from CMU who do Weird Things. The reply was basically "Yeah I just do nameservice for them, but they're real people down at CMU who have been working on some kind of project."
It could very well be a hoax. However, be sure to check out Andrej Bauer's site at CMU. And draw your own conclusions. It looks very thorough. If it is a hoax the hoaxers have gone to great lengths to add depth and detail. I'm still skeptical--waiting to see how the machine responds to more questions.
First of all, I have no problem with Dresden opening a new.18 micron fab. Good for them. Yay.
Why did AMD feel the need to open a brand new factory? Aren't there _already_ fabs that can do.18 micron? In Taiwan: yes (several) in the USA: yes- WaferTech, (others??)
Maybe AMD felt the need to start from scratch because their new process really different. Oh well. Anyhow, go AMD! wooh!
I agree that it's best to remain quiet and not reveal critical secrets. However, admitting to electronic warfare in a vague, nonspecific way can generate a certain amount of intimidation (and ph33r?).
A lot of the power in having lots of nuclear weapons is the sheer intimidation factor. The actual details of the weapons were closely guarded secrets. All the public knew was that they might be vaporised from 12,000 miles away, with only 20 minutes warning if you're lucky enough to detect the launch. Both the US and CCCP openly admitted having weapons. They even bragged about how _many_ they had.
Bragging about 'cyber-war' without divulging any facts seems like a simliar tactic.
The problem in this case is that unlike the cold war, the US does not have a monopoly on the weapon.
I sort of doubt that any Yugoslavian air defense computers were online and connected to the internet. You can't just knock down their systems while sitting behind a computer back in the USA.
So what did the US do? EMP? HERF? Trained rats that chew through the wires?
I can just imagine commando teams of SEALS and Rangers secretly digging thru dumpsters in Belgrade, looking for l337 inph0z. *g*
Apache 1.x does indeed use fork()s. You must consider that apache is ony a *port* and not at all optimized for BeOS' threading model. I only mentioned it because it's the most widely accepted web server.
Apache 2.0 for BeOS will probably switch to modern threads. In the meantime, there are several other decent servers. Better yet, use a different OS. R4.x is not really suited for heavy duty service.
I agree with the other post about BeOS giving NT a run for the money. R5 might just turn out to be a decent server OS.
..and I ended up doing the SAME THING with QB on my parent's 386. It was great fun! that damn article got me thoroughly involved with fractals and chaos for most of my high school career. I later ended up building the 'syncronized chaos generators' project in a latter issue of Sci Am. ah yes. them was the days.
#begin recollection of silly fun projects
At the same point in time, a friend of mine was working on a crude (_CRUDE_) first person shooter called "Revenge of the Lagomorphs". You basically stood in 1 place while ascii rabbits came at you from all directions. The weapon of choice was a GAU-8 which shot a stream of uranium '.'s, IIRC.
I also did a planetary gravity simulator in 9th or 10th grade. It was fun to watch but i got tired of plain old gravity and added multiple planets, moons, and even took a shot at relativity (it only succeeded in making everything run slooowww).
other projects you might try-- +create your own ascii-art gui on an ancient computer +emulate cryptography machines +simulate plate tectonics +make MUSIC!!
ExoPC? That one's new to me, though I'll probably go and learn all about it this evening.
BeOS is a really nifty operating system for a number of reasons (this is just my lameass opinion, of course)
developing BeOS applications is painless... even _enjoyable_
BeOS, although not free, is quite cheap at around US$40
Be people are enthusiastic, cool, and not broken into factions
POSIX compliant. Most unix apps only require a recompile to run under BeOS.
It's super-configurable, yet Mom can still figure out how to play Mah Jongg.
BeOS does SMP better than Linux could ever hope to
and looking ahead at what the future may bring....
Networking is getting tweaked and written into the kernel for R5. with hot networking BeOS would make the ideal server. Yes, BeOS runs Apache just fine.
Multiuser might be coming with R5 too.
Yeah, I think Be is great. But it's not the One True OS. There is no such thing. Go use whatever the hell you want.
Oh-no! I maybe log into the New York times once per month to read the occasional article and I never liked the idea of signing up for the free account.
As many slashdotters probably remember, the default free log/pass was cypherpunks/cypherpunks. Can you tell it's been awhile since I tried to log in? heh.
Absolutely correct. At this point nobody's sure if the problem is one-of-a-kind or if it affects all of the orbiters. A valve somewhere in the OMS was leaking, IIRC. NASA will most likely inspect the equivalent valves on all of the other orbiters to see what the real situation is.
Not to worry, however, because now that the Pizza Hut flight carrying the SM (service module) has been postponed, all of the subsequent missions will slip as well.
Before the slip the next scheduled mission after the Servce Module was STS-101 (Atlantis) carrying the spacehab cargo module (the hab) in December 1999.
Ever since the last Mir crew have returned to Earth there have been ZERO people in space. This is the first time no people have been in space for over 10 years. I think it's quite safe to say that there won't be any ISS flights until 2000 (or should that be Y.D.A.U.?)
My apologies for quoting the incorrect 2.5 million number. It wasn't Hemos' fault.
OK, who remembers the episode(s) of The Tick where Chairface Chippendale tries to burn "CHAIRFACE" on the moon with an enormous laser, but only gets as far as "CHA"??
But seriously, I honestly don't have a problem with Pizza Hut's advertising. After all, national governments put their logos and symbols on rockets all the time. The Russian Space Agency is really strapped for cash needs all the help they can get. Kudos to Pizza Hut for the donation!
As the department of energy euphemistically likes to call such things, a criticality excursion often results in a flash of light and a sensation of warmth. The blue glow is called the Heaviside effect, IIRC. It happens because there's a shitload of ionizing radiation in a small area causing nearby matter to glow. The Trinity Atomic Web Site at enviroweb.org lists a scary-big table of past US accidents and has a nice index of criticality accidents. The people living near the Japanese plant probably have little to fear. Workers and rescuers who got too close to the tank as it was fissioning, however, could be in a world of hurt. Radiation affects the body's ability to generate new cells and repair existing ones. Immedeately after a fatal dose the victim may feel nauseous and disoriented, but soon 'recovers'. Several days later the white blood cell count drops to zero and the GI tract's lining begins to disolve and sluff off. It's a horrible agonizing way to die. I really, really, really hope that no one took a heavy dose.
Well, Richard Feynman was involved in the investigation after the Challenger disaster. Someone who knew him as a friend asked for his opinion---which spiralled into Feynman sort of joining the investigation and uncovering some key evidence.
I couldn't say for sure what "six lines" means. Maybe the seven separate segments that form the SRB? Beleive it or not, here I am at NASA and we haven't even got a picture of an SRB handy. The irony!
quickie definitions for the acronym impaired-- SRB = solid rocket booster STS = space transportation system (the shuttle)
Offtopic: Saw a diagram the other day with an object labelled `RMS handle'. No, don't get your hopes up that's Stallman's going into space. It only meant `remote manipulator system';)
This would probably be a good place to disclaim my opinions as my own and not those of any employers or agencies. Blah.
I wasn't thinking straight. If there was enough matter to affect the probes we'd be able to detect its effects on the planets. Crazy theory.
Come to think of it, 27000 miles per hour is not all that fast. That's only a few kfps more than the top speed that the Apollo astronauts travelled at during their lunar transfer.
In order to get all the way out to Jupier, Saturn, etc, the probes must have started out MUCH faster. A tiny relativistic error could throw off NASA's calcuations by a whole lot.
It depends on how they're calculating distance to the probes. Suppose the probes are sending beeps that are known to be 1 second apart. Compare the measured time between beeps and you can find the probe's _speed_. To get the actual distance, you'd probably have to ping it and wait for it to respond while measuring the time it took.
Another possible way that you might determine speed and distance could be for the probe to send precise time from an onboard atomic clock. The clock would measure different time than on earth due to relativisitic speeds; the total difference
between earth time and space probe time would be a history of the probe's entire journey. It's pretty complicated. You'd have to know how far away the probe was in order to figure out how much of the time difference was due to distance and how much was due to time dilation.
One of the discrepancies that drives the dark matter theories is that the universe appears to contain much more mass than we can see. Dark matter is just a theoretical substance that has not been proven to exist; many people would say that it's a fake thing made up to explain weird phenomena (like the ether theory 100 years ago).
Now we've got additional symptoms of the universe being more massive than it ought to be. The probes are slowing down faster than expected, as if there was 'dark matter' collected near the sun.
From these *observations* I propose 2 hypotheses---
1. If dark matter is real, it must be concentrated more densely near the sun and less densely farther away. Otherwise the distribution of dark matter would not slow the probes. This makes sense because dark matter, being massive and subject to normal physical laws, would tend to collect near stars and other massive objects. In any case, why heck can't we see it?
2. Like 'ether', dark matter is not real at all. There is an unkown phenomena manifesting itself here. If so, the unknown force(s) could very well be the same ones that caused the observations that led people to propose dark matter in the first place.
I'm guessing it ran embedded software on double- or triple-redundant systems connected with good old 1970-era MIL-STD-1553 busses. Whatever it was would have to be radiation hardened.
In the spirit of 'lighter-cheaper-faster' I wouldn't be surprised if NASA already has a standardized hardware layout for all these next generation mini-probes.
The 1553 bus is _everywhere_ in space. It's even going to be on the ISS. Fortunately the crew will have a wireless LAN and IBM Thinkpad 760's (with Solaris & Win95) as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Taking out a power plant is silly, they can get it back online too easy. Much better to bomb it to rubble.
It depends on how you take it out. Simply turning it off probably won't do any realy damage and only forces the plant to go to the trouble of restarting. From a dead stop, a coal or oil fired power plant can get back on the grid generating power in about half a day.
To take the plant offline permanently you'd have do some real damage. Here are a few random ideas:
1. Cut the supply of lube oil to the turbine's bearings. Steam turbines and generators rotate on large bearins that need a constant supply of cool, pressurized oil. Bearing surfaces are integral to the rotor. Wreckin a bearing neccesitates taking the entire turbine/generator offline for several months, minimum.
2. Modulate steam flow to overspeed or underspeed the turbine. Running at the wrong speed may cause harmonic vibrations to damage and shake apart the generator and/or turbine. In addition to the ovbious hazards of overheating and blowing up the generator won't be producing electricity at the required 50 or 60 Hertz. Dumping a couple megawatts of 70 Hz AC into the grid is sure to mess things up, or at least force the plant offline
3. Screw up the fuel supply into the boiler. It might be possible to dump too much fuel into the boiler/burner/whatever and melt it. Modern boilers operate very near the melting points of the materials they're made from. An extra hundred dergees could be enough to wreck it.
Personally, I'd target the bearings first. Be forewarned that most bearings have elaborate temperature and vibration sensors that will trip the turbine (shut it off) if it overheats or starts to run roughly.
**Disclaimer - all of this is purely hypothetical. Don't go out to your local electric company and blow it up! **
After reading Katz's editorial and some of the comments on Slashdot I had a mental image of the kid who wrote the story. I imagined the kid was a tormented, intellgent and socially-inept nerd who had dropped some kind of literary bombshell on the school. Katz's article seems to imply (at least to me) that young Chris had written an Opressed Work of Great Literature(tm) that had gotten him in political hot water with the school. Not true.
A short while later read the Dallas Metropolitan article and Chris' story. Chris is a moron, even by 13-year-old standards. His story is semi literate drivel. I wonder if Chris' teacher was have been huffing freon as well when she gave him an A+.
Stereotyping every oppressed kid as a "geek" does help out when we're trying to expose the evils of American schools and society. Every kid is unique and has the the potential be as stupid, inhale as much freon or smoke as much dope as they wish.
The authorties obviously did a dumb thing in this situation and Chris did not deserve to sit in jail for a week. However, Katz' s portrayal of the kid as does not jive with reality.
Yeah. Can't blame slack for going to 7.0. After all, the previous beta was 6.5 *g* But seriously, my department (which runs Solaris heavily) recently got two hand-me-down Alphas which we _desperately_ need to replace aging pizza boxes. The admins are understandably annoyed that Solaris is not available for Alpha. I'm a bit hesitant to suggest BSD (or even -gasp- Linux) because the folks in charge have a rather narrow and negative view of OSS. However, management also happens to have a negative view of the $$$ it takes to license DG/UX. Any ideas?
whoops! BSD flame here
I bet this is from the same person who flamed Free BSD here. Dude, if you're actually writing this by hand, get a job in advertising or politics. If it's an automated program, link please?
there is more to anime than pokemon, sailor moon, and robotech
Absolutely! It's too bad that the majority of 'anime' that reaches the US mainstream media is crap. Ask any anime fan about what movies and books they prefer. There are much much better shows than Sailor Moon et.al. Would you decide that Western television is stupid if the only shows you could get were Power Rangers and Teletubbies? Certainly.
All of the Ghibli movies I've seen are totally excellent. Slashdot nerds might particularly like Wings of Honneamise.
Well, it should be painfully obvious that Forum2000 is not an advanced supercomputing cluster.
The sad/humorous/lame image I have in my mind is a loosely organized group of studends and faculty who sign up to receive incoming questions and come up with witty replies. Seems like there's an automated replier (the cube?) in addition to the humans.
login CMU geeklab: ****
...blah...
passwd: *******
[GMT 23:13:21] There are 3 pending question(s) from Forum2000. Respond? (y/n)
$:_
omg,That's great.
No ;) www.forum2000.org is NOT a C64. The telnet server just pretends to be one (very funny).
www.forum2000.org responds to the following ports:
Doesn't look like a C64, eh? Whoever created this is extra cool in my book whether it's a hoax or not. Forum2000 et.al. have been enthralling me all evening.
Has anyone looked at Andrej's Become and Objectivist in Ten Easy Steps? I'm leaning towards mad genius now; although it might be a mad genius who has set up a hoax. Very curious.
Yay Andrej! is an Andrej Bauer fanclub.
So is this one, simply entitled "Andrej Bauer Fan Club.
All of the evidence seems to fit together and support non-hoaxness of Forum2000. Or but at least, somebody bothered to set up a LOT of extra crap to make it look real. Definiately more believable than FuckU/FuckMe.
Is Andrej Bauer a mad genius? A nonperson? A pseudonym? Come on, Slashdotters, let's get to the bottom of this one!
I just checked with Forum2000's nameserver (unnamed here, in order to give the poor guy a break). He confirms that the Forum2000 people are indeed legit students/faculty from CMU who do Weird Things. The reply was basically "Yeah I just do nameservice for them, but they're real people down at CMU who have been working on some kind of project."
It could very well be a hoax. However, be sure to check out Andrej Bauer's site at CMU. And draw your own conclusions. It looks very thorough. If it is a hoax the hoaxers have gone to great lengths to add depth and detail. I'm still skeptical--waiting to see how the machine responds to more questions.
First of all, I have no problem with Dresden opening a new .18 micron fab. Good for them. Yay.
.18 micron?
Why did AMD feel the need to open a brand new factory? Aren't there _already_ fabs that can do
In Taiwan: yes (several)
in the USA: yes- WaferTech, (others??)
Maybe AMD felt the need to start from scratch because their new process really different. Oh well. Anyhow, go AMD! wooh!
I agree that it's best to remain quiet and not reveal critical secrets. However, admitting to electronic warfare in a vague, nonspecific way can generate a certain amount of intimidation (and ph33r?).
A lot of the power in having lots of nuclear weapons is the sheer intimidation factor. The actual details of the weapons were closely guarded secrets. All the public knew was that they might be vaporised from 12,000 miles away, with only 20 minutes warning if you're lucky enough to detect the launch. Both the US and CCCP openly admitted having weapons. They even bragged about how _many_ they had.
Bragging about 'cyber-war' without divulging any facts seems like a simliar tactic.
The problem in this case is that unlike the cold war, the US does not have a monopoly on the weapon.
no no. You've got to spell it correcty or babelfish won't recognize the words: 1 4m 31337 h4x0r du0d.
I sort of doubt that any Yugoslavian air defense computers were online and connected to the internet. You can't just knock down their systems while sitting behind a computer back in the USA.
So what did the US do? EMP? HERF? Trained rats that chew through the wires?
I can just imagine commando teams of SEALS and Rangers secretly digging thru dumpsters in Belgrade, looking for l337 inph0z. *g*
Apache 1.x does indeed use fork()s. You must consider that apache is ony a *port* and not at all optimized for BeOS' threading model. I only mentioned it because it's the most widely accepted web server.
Apache 2.0 for BeOS will probably switch to modern threads. In the meantime, there are several other decent servers. Better yet, use a different OS. R4.x is not really suited for heavy duty
service.
I agree with the other post about BeOS giving NT a run for the money. R5 might just turn out to be a decent server OS.
..and I ended up doing the SAME THING with QB on my parent's 386. It was great fun! that damn article got me thoroughly involved with fractals and chaos for most of my high school career. I later ended up building the 'syncronized chaos generators' project in a latter issue of Sci Am. ah yes. them was the days.
#begin recollection of silly fun projects
At the same point in time, a friend of mine was working on a crude (_CRUDE_) first person shooter called "Revenge of the Lagomorphs". You basically stood in 1 place while ascii rabbits came at you from all directions. The weapon of choice was a GAU-8 which shot a stream of uranium '.'s, IIRC.
I also did a planetary gravity simulator in 9th or 10th grade. It was fun to watch but i got tired of plain old gravity and added multiple planets, moons, and even took a shot at relativity (it only succeeded in making everything run slooowww).
other projects you might try--
+create your own ascii-art gui on an ancient computer
+emulate cryptography machines
+simulate plate tectonics
+make MUSIC!!
BeOS is a really nifty operating system for a number of reasons (this is just my lameass opinion, of course)
- developing BeOS applications is painless... even _enjoyable_
- BeOS, although not free, is quite cheap at around US$40
- Be people are enthusiastic, cool, and not broken into factions
- POSIX compliant. Most unix apps only require a recompile to run under BeOS.
- It's super-configurable, yet Mom can still figure out how to play Mah Jongg.
- BeOS does SMP better than Linux could ever hope to
- Networking is getting tweaked and written into the kernel for R5. with hot networking BeOS would make the ideal server. Yes, BeOS runs Apache just fine.
- Multiuser might be coming with R5 too.
Yeah, I think Be is great. But it's not the One True OS. There is no such thing. Go use whatever the hell you want.and looking ahead at what the future may bring....
Oh-no! I maybe log into the New York times once per month to read the occasional article and I never liked the idea of signing up for the free account.
As many slashdotters probably remember, the default free log/pass was cypherpunks/cypherpunks.
Can you tell it's been awhile since I tried to log in? heh.
Absolutely correct. At this point nobody's sure if the problem is one-of-a-kind or if it affects all of the orbiters. A valve somewhere in the OMS was leaking, IIRC. NASA will most likely inspect the equivalent valves on all of the other orbiters to see what the real situation is.
Not to worry, however, because now that the Pizza Hut flight carrying the SM (service module) has been postponed, all of the subsequent missions will slip as well.
Before the slip the next scheduled mission after the Servce Module was STS-101 (Atlantis) carrying the spacehab cargo module (the hab) in December 1999.
Ever since the last Mir crew have returned to Earth there have been ZERO people in space. This is the first time no people have been in space for over 10 years. I think it's quite safe to say that there won't be any ISS flights until 2000 (or should that be Y.D.A.U.?)
My apologies for quoting the incorrect 2.5 million number. It wasn't Hemos' fault.
OK, who remembers the episode(s) of The Tick where Chairface Chippendale tries to burn "CHAIRFACE" on the moon with an enormous laser, but only gets as far as "CHA"??
But seriously, I honestly don't have a problem with Pizza Hut's advertising. After all, national governments put their logos and symbols on rockets all the time. The Russian Space Agency is really strapped for cash needs all the help they can get. Kudos to Pizza Hut for the donation!
As the department of energy euphemistically likes to call such things, a criticality excursion often results in a flash of light and a sensation of warmth.
The blue glow is called the Heaviside effect, IIRC. It happens because there's a shitload of ionizing radiation in a small area causing nearby matter to glow.
The Trinity Atomic Web Site at enviroweb.org lists a scary-big table of past US accidents and has a nice index of criticality accidents.
The people living near the Japanese plant probably have little to fear. Workers and rescuers who got too close to the tank as it was fissioning, however, could be in a world of hurt. Radiation affects the body's ability to generate new cells and repair existing ones. Immedeately after a fatal dose the victim may feel nauseous and disoriented, but soon 'recovers'. Several days later the white blood cell count drops to zero and the GI tract's lining begins to disolve and sluff off. It's a horrible agonizing way to die. I really, really, really hope that no one took a heavy dose.
Well, Richard Feynman was involved in the investigation after the Challenger disaster. Someone who knew him as a friend asked for his opinion---which spiralled into Feynman sort of joining the investigation and uncovering some key evidence.
I couldn't say for sure what "six lines" means. Maybe the seven separate segments that form the SRB? Beleive it or not, here I am at NASA and we haven't even got a picture of an SRB handy. The irony!
quickie definitions for the acronym impaired--
SRB = solid rocket booster
STS = space transportation system (the shuttle)
Offtopic: Saw a diagram the other day with an object labelled `RMS handle'. No, don't get your hopes up that's Stallman's going into space. It only meant `remote manipulator system';)
This would probably be a good place to disclaim my opinions as my own and not those of any employers or agencies. Blah.
I wasn't thinking straight. If there was enough matter to affect the probes we'd be able to detect its effects on the planets. Crazy theory.
Come to think of it, 27000 miles per hour is not all that fast. That's only a few kfps more than the top speed that the Apollo astronauts travelled at during their lunar transfer.
In order to get all the way out to Jupier, Saturn, etc, the probes must have started out MUCH faster. A tiny relativistic error could throw off NASA's calcuations by a whole lot.
It depends on how they're calculating distance to the probes. Suppose the probes are sending beeps that are known to be 1 second apart. Compare the measured time between beeps and you can find the probe's _speed_. To get the actual distance, you'd probably have to ping it and wait for it to respond while measuring the time it took.
Another possible way that you might determine speed and distance could be for the probe to send precise time from an onboard atomic clock. The clock would measure different time than on earth due to relativisitic speeds; the total difference
between earth time and space probe time would be a history of the probe's entire journey. It's pretty complicated. You'd have to know how far away the probe was in order to figure out how much of the time difference was due to distance and how much was due to time dilation.
One of the discrepancies that drives the dark matter theories is that the universe appears to contain much more mass than we can see. Dark matter is just a theoretical substance that has not been proven to exist; many people would say that it's a fake thing made up to explain weird phenomena (like the ether theory 100 years ago).
Now we've got additional symptoms of the universe being more massive than it ought to be. The probes are slowing down faster than expected, as if there was 'dark matter' collected near the sun.
From these *observations* I propose 2 hypotheses---
1. If dark matter is real, it must be concentrated more densely near the sun and less densely farther away. Otherwise the distribution of dark matter would not slow the probes. This makes sense because dark matter, being massive and subject to normal physical laws, would tend to collect near stars and other massive objects. In any case, why heck can't we see it?
2. Like 'ether', dark matter is not real at all. There is an unkown phenomena manifesting itself here. If so, the unknown force(s) could very well be the same ones that caused the observations that led people to propose dark matter in the first place.
How would _you_ solve the Dirac Equation?
I'm guessing it ran embedded software on double- or triple-redundant systems connected with good old 1970-era MIL-STD-1553 busses. Whatever it was would have to be radiation hardened.
In the spirit of 'lighter-cheaper-faster' I wouldn't be surprised if NASA already has a standardized hardware layout for all these next generation mini-probes.
The 1553 bus is _everywhere_ in space. It's even going to be on the ISS. Fortunately the crew will have a wireless LAN and IBM Thinkpad 760's (with Solaris & Win95) as well.