Why aren't we concentrating on simply getting a large payload up into space? Isn't it something like $10000 a pound for space shuttle cargo? Utterly rediculous IMHO.
The 'better, faster, cheaper' has concentrated too much on the 'cheaper', or 'what programs will be (ex?)terminated', mainly as all these budget cuts have forced them to. 'Faster', or 'get before the next budget cut) is also stressed a lot, but I think they have not concentrated on 'better', expect in the 'pretty pictures' field. However, I have not seen a radical restructuring that would be a consequence of a new choice on priorities. I feel NASA has lost the initiative and is mainly reacting to outside political pressure.
Considering that the Shuttle is almost 20 years
old, USA should have something better.
The research on better launchers is
extremely expensive, and it will not produce
nice pictures that are important to the average politician (and voter). Given all the NASA
budget cuts we keep on hearing we will not likely
see any significant improvement in American launchers for a long time. I think NASA is also more interested in doing something with the present launchers. If NASA uses all it's money on launcher development, they might notice their budget has been cut to zero when they have the cheaper launchers.
I have heard that the Russians are seriously considering reviving the Buran program. (For the uninformed, Buran is the Russian Space Shuttle that has been tested succesfully in the Soviet times. It has been even in orbit. Now, it is mothballed somewhere in Siberia. One model is
in a park in Moscow) Buran has some improvements
when compared to the Shuttle, most important ones
being: reusable launcher strap-on boosters and
full remote control (a crew can be on board, but
it can also fly unmanned). It has also plenty of smaller improvements, which make it easier to maintain.
Currently, Buran payload is only slightly
larger than what Shuttle can manage, but the
Russians claim that with minor modifications,
they could almost double the payload. If they revive Buran, it has a payload price less than half of what Shuttle has.
If Buran is revived, I hope some people in Washington will notice that a few years ago USA had a 15-year advantage in the launcher race, but has lost it already. The Europeans have Ariane V (which is still getting improved), Russians will probably have Buran soon, and USA is still stuck with the old Shuttle. Now we all three are even, but in a few decades USA will be holding the 2nd or 3rd position.
drop a few dozen/hundred/whatever floaty, bouncy balls all over Mars and kick back and let the data roll in.
That is something I would like to see. Rapid exploration of large parts of the Martian surface, and not only a few small pathces here and there
every two years. Currently we are stuck with the latter.
Cheap and vast numbers are equivalent.
I think the costs of any new space
equipment is mainly research and development. After it is done, you can make dozens of units with a price that is small when compared to the initial costs.
Launch costs are still the biggest problem
of space operations, and this has nothing to
do with that.
-- has the US army something better or have they not realized the potential of it?
I hope it is the latter.
Unless you're an IT guy for some tinpot dictator with a hard-on for the US, I think you meant to type 'former.'
I'm living in a country between NATO and Russia.
I sure hope the balance will not tip too far in US favor before we can join NATO. Russian bases in this country is very high on my 'never
again' list, and the former red army is not too pleased with recent developments (NATO widening, ABM treaty, growing weapons technology gap between US and Russia).
There's no conflict between the scientific method and most religious beliefs; in fact, percentage-wise most scientists believe in a higher being.
Are you sure of the percentage, and what kind of 'scientists' are counted in? I remember seeing
a study on 47 Nobel laureates of chemistry and
physics. 45 considered themselves non-religous,
either atheist or agnostic. Two were christians.
Of these scientists, only less than 5 per cent
believed in a supreme being. I think this is
an issue where selecting an unbiased sample is very important.
Another thing I would like to comment on is that
religious belief does not always contain a belief in a higher being.
Buddhist do not believe in any supreme being,
(Buddha is a teacher, and a human, not a God)
and they are usually considered as a religion.
Or are you claiming Dalai Lama is not religious?
How can you claim someone is lying when we are discussing theories?
By definition: a scientific theory makes predictions that are based on some assuptions. It can be proven false by measuring the effect it predicts and finding discrepancies between observations and theory.
So, a scientific theory can be falsified, for example the Newtonian Gravitation Theory was known to be wrong as it did not predict the orbit of Mercury absolutely correctly.
General relativity could explain the difference,
and thus was considered to be closer to the truth.
However, both do a good job in e.g. predicting the
orbit of the Moon.
Religious theories in general do not provide
predictions or arguments that could be verified or falsified. (Of course there are 'world-will-end-next-sunday' predictions, but who takes them seriously).
How could you verify claims such as: 'If you kill someone, you'll go to hell after you die' or
'Jesus is the Son of God'
Creationists are people who believe strongly
that Bible is the absolute truth of God,
by God and for His People. Some scientific theories have made predictions that are based on assumptions which contradict the Bible, and are thus being seen as an attack against the God.
The creationists are now making what they think is science by producing their own theories that also explain all the observed facts, including the Bible, which they think is the absolute truth.
However, they do not make their own predictions
on results of measurements, they just explain the
existing ones.
One characteristic of scientific measurements
is that they always contain statistical uncertainties, often referred to as 'error'
or 'accuracy'. However, I have never met a creationist who would give a value on the
accuracy of the facts extracted from the Bible.
For a creationist, the Bible is the word
of absolute truth, meaning that it should be absolutely correct. If it is not, it contains
some inaccuracy, and thus their God, who has dictated it word by word, is imperfect.
It seems that creationists do no longer believe
that Bible is a sufficient base for their life,
as science has shown that some claims of the
Bible are not completely correct.
They produce artificial 'scientific' extensions to the biblical base of their life.
In my opinion, this means that the creationists are trying to explain and extend the absolute truth (or what they think is the absolute truth) with relative truths, that are changing and falsifiable.
I'm not that familiar with christianity, but for a muslim, this would mean 'Shirk', or mixing Allah with something else. Shirk is always punished by eternal damnation, and in an islamic society, it is punished also by death. I think creationists are dangerously close to that.
The Buddhists (including myself) have a nice workaround for the conflict between science
and religion, but that is another story.
If you are interested in that, use google.
Is there nothing these secular humanist scientists think is beyond the reach of mankind?
Do we always have to strive for bigger, better, faster, higher, etc? Do we have so little humility that we always think we can out do our last effort? Would it be so painful to confess to ourselves that we are merely human, and we have our limitations? Any limitations at all?
yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.
The humanity does have limitations,
but I think were are able to move the limits
further when ever we reach them.
Just one example: Scientific calculations became too complex for even the most talented and trained human brain, so we invented the computer.
Lets face it, even with a small payload, like 600 lbs,
The thing itself weighs about 1600 lbs,
so 600 lbs is lots, but with something like
60 lbs could also have quite nasty effects.
that's two reasonably effective gravity bombs
Why gravity bombs? Both Russian and US armies
have 'tactical nukes' with a few kt power, that can be fired with a cannon. A small container of
something (Anthrax? Smallpox? Nerve Gas?) would also be quite effecive.
from an aircraft that is not even made of metal, so practically invisible to radar.
So, you wouldn't even know who did it.
As this is very public research, has the US army
something better or have they not realized the
potential of it?
has NASA's PR department just gotten too used to blurting that out
People are not interested in seeing tax money used in science unless they feel they could benefit from it. So, saying something like this to
people who don't have a clue on science is
Why would you want to conduct experiments at 100,000 ft at 20 MPH?
A few things come to mind.
Chemical analysis of rocket exhausts might be possible, if you put this in the right position.
The solid-fuel stages might leave some dust
particles that give hints to what kind of fuels
are used. This would help in estimating the
ICBM payload capacity.
Low-orbit satellites have orbital velocities of several miles per second, so if you want to have a better look at that Chinese ICBM base,
Helios could be a choice.
Atmospheric research would benefit from this.
You could send up a whole armada of weather stations in the upper atmosphere instead of a
single weather satellite.
Studies of the Earth's magnetic field and it's connection to the solar wind could use measurements right under the auroral oval,
where solar wind hits the upper atmosphere.
Combining these with radar-scattering experiments
would be extremely interesting to geophysicists.
As this thing runs on solar, and is well above
clouds, it only need to stay on the sunny side
of Earth to run forever. Perhaps a medium-sized battery and some smart remote pilot could keep
this up during nighttime, goin only halfway down and climbing back up every morning?
How much credibility do you think it has right now. (Probably about the same as Zimbabwe...)
Zimbabwe (Adolf-style 'democracy') would be rather extreme. I think GWB would not be able to govern in Mugabe style. I think US is somewhere around Russia and Venezuela (semi-democracy with
a 'president' having limited dictatorship).
However, in US there are a lot of things that are
voted about, and not just dictated by the
bureaucracy. In many 'democratic' countries of Western Europe there are very few votes expect the
elections (parliament, president, local).
Four to six million votes were lost due to faulty equipment and other snafus
4-6 million votes lost! This means something like
3 percent (I guess) of the votes. I'm worried about this. Narrow-margin elections might be influenced by any bias in the losing votes, and in some cases, results are not representing the majority of the voters. Technical solutions make a bias in the voting system, making voting and registration easier for the more techical people.
So, people with less techological skills (some racial minorities, the old and the disabled) are having even less say in the vote. The article
points out that complex equipment increases
the failure rate of voting, i.e. the bias, and thus decreases the credibility of US democracy.
Now, if the equipment gets more complicated,
(adding internet voting) does this decrease
the bias or the failure rate? I doubt it. Why do you have to use a machine for voting? The simplest and most
fail-safe voting system I've heard of is almost
completely fail-safe: You use a pen to write
a number inside a circle in the ballot.
Pens and candidate lists are in the polling-booth.
If you make a mistake, you rip the ballot and
return the pieces, and get a new one.
The weak point of this is that in poorer countries the voters do not know how to read/write, but
this shouldn't be a problem in the US.
A machine can't read all ballots if this
is applied, but considering the problems in Florida, machines should not read the vote.
I think the collision of the galaxies will mean
that some nearby-passing stars (nearby meaning
less than 1 light-year) might disturb the Oort
cloud, resulting in an increase of comets
migrating to inner Solar System.
Some scientists are speculating on 'Nemesis', a
dwarf star on a very wide orbit (period 30 million years) around the Sun. They claim Nemesis is responsible for the mass extinctions, dropping comets to inner Solar System as it passed through
the Oort cloud.
We're at a very delicate time in the history of our race. If we don't begin to migrate to other planets and other star systems soon, we'll be doomed.
I agree that we should be going ASAP.
However, it is not possible to
colonize the stars before have lots of
experience on colonization in the Solar System.
There's also some propulsion research to be done.
Mars is probably within our reach, but it is
not politically feasible. Even a simple manned mission to Mars would need global cooperation
of all the major space players (USA, EU/ESA, Japan, Canada, Russia, maybe even China) as no-one has the money and political will to do it alone.
I think the cost of a Mars-flight would be
somethink like 1 Trillion US dollars. That
would mean the American share would be of the
order 400 Billion dollars.
I think a permanent lunar base would be feasible.
(I have read some ILEWG publicationts for this,
and recommend them for anyone interested
in lunar exploration. A google search should get you started.) The cost is estimated to be of the order 200 Billion US dollars, so it is
a little more than ISS or NMD. However, there is lots of small-scale developments that could be done with less money. ESA and NASA are doing some small-scale research already. The Moon base could could be financed as a US/EU cooperation.
Maybe Canada and Japan could also join.
Thus the US share would be of the order 100 Billion dollars. So, all we need is the political will that makes the decision:
Forget the NMD, we settle the Moon instead.
Sigh....
I'm sure one day we will turn the Moon to a real spaceport. Launching something from the Moon
to low Earth orbit requires less energy than launching it from Earth. As Moon has no atmosphere, the satellites and spacecrafts could be build easily (no messing with cleanrooms, no out-gassing problems) over there from local raw materials. There's plenty of solar energy available in the Moon, so raw material extraction is possible.
The lack of atmospehere could also allow launching of satellites with coil/railgun like devices powered by solar electricity. This would mean
no cumbersome rockets wasting chemical fuel.
(HCNO elements are not easily available
on the moon, so chemical fuel would be stupid)
We use AppleWorks for word processing but I put Office on their computers because they couldn't read the Microsoft Word attachments they kept getting from the district's central office
This is their official reason for violating
the license. I've had the same problem
(management droids send MS attachments), but
my solution is legal and working:
When I get an e-mail MS attachment, I reply near-instantly:
Sorry, I could not open the file you sent me.
Got an error message 'unknown file format'
or something like that instead. Could you re-send
it, and please use the pdf format this time,
it seems to work better on my system.
Thanks.
Most managers are not computer literate, and
sometimes this would even be a plausible reason
(corrupted file etc.) So, MS Word gets the blame.
Most of the managers send then a pdf.
Sometimes I've had to show them how to make this.
(Repeat after me: Save-as-pdf)
After a few mailings like this, some guys
have actually started sending pdf attachments
instead of 'corrupted' MS-Word docs.
I have a Linux system, so I use pdf2ps and
ghostview. They could use the Acrobat Reader
or something else if they don't want to install Linux. I could of course use StarOffice, but this seems to work just as well.
...the fairly complicated orbit of this star, too complicated for me to describe here...
According to the links, the star is in an highly excentric elliptical orbit. A pretty good image can also be seen on the space.com link you give. This means, the orbit should be similar to long-period comets. Some graphs showing the orbit of the Hale-Bopp comet can be seen here.
There are also some scientist who think the
claimed 30 million year periodicity is not real,
but a result of impact crater data rounded
to nearest round millions of years. You can get the artcile by entering the number 9701104
in the field here.
The paper has been published in an international
refereed astronomical journal, Astronomy and Astrophysics
My personal opinion is that Nemesis is propably not lurking out there, but I think it would
be worthwhile to check it.
Divine retribution seems to be a million years away
I think that in one million year, out tech can
stop the comets that this star might drop from
the Oort cloud. Even with present tech, we get a good early warning. A 'killer comet' would probably be detected at least half a year before the possible impact. I'd be much more worried about the Near-Earth Asteroids - they may remain
undetected until a few weeks before D-day.
Re:Dumb Question from a NON Physicist
on
Universe is Flat
·
· Score: 2
I'm assuming you are talking about the black we see
The 'black body' refers to the spectral distribution of the light energy (Planck's law), not colour of the radiation. For example, the Sun is a rough blackbody at 6000 Kelvin. The microwave background is a blackbody that was originally at a temperature of the order 10000 K, now redshifted to 2.73 K.
how far are we looking back then?
The exact distance depends heavily on the cosmological model used, and there is no
consensus on which model to use. So the values
I give may be different from what you see by
an order of magnitude or even more.
However, the universe was about 300.000 years
old at that time, and the distance is a few
tens of (American) billions of light-years.
This seems to contrast the age of the Universe,
(how can we see 20 billion light-years away when the light has travelled only 10 billion years?)
but this is were the cosmological model
(Hubble parameter, spacetime curvature etc.) steps in.
IMHO, there is already a
scientific consensus
on both of the things you mention. An overwhelming
majority of the climate scientists is convinced
that we are responsible for the climate change.
I believe that those few who disagree are industry lapdogs.
What we don't have is a
political consensus on reducing the emissions. Scientists are not
listened, especially when the right thing to do would be expensive and unpleasant.
(I think GW Bush has not nominated a science advisor yet. If he has, please inform me.)
If we are getting pedantic, isn't most of the stuff based on solid-state physics (transistors,
Peltier coolers, semiconductor lasers, STJ (superconducting tunnel junction) sensors,
you name it...) quantum applications?
Quantum applications.. are not yet usable, very new, and considerably cooler than the quantum mechanics required to describe them.
SQUIDs (Superconducting QUantum
Interference Device) are really _cool_, as they are used at cryogenic temperatures.
SQUIDs are high-sensitivity (down to Bohr magneton) magnetometers. They are often used when toying with superconducting electronics, as they
are extremely sensitive current sensors that work well in liquid-helium temperatures. I'm
not sure of this, but I think some of the
NMR (nucleomagnetic resonance) imaging devices
use SQUID arrays as read-out electronics.
I think QM is not extremely easy, but you do not
need a M.Sc in Applied Physics to understand
some of the applications. I am a European, so do not know about the quality of the American Universities, but it should be better.
Anyone with marginal physics education can understand how a laser works. It takes
a lot more to build one.
One basic University course in QM (with prerequired Math and std. Physics) should do it,
so any Physics student at my university has
the basics after two years.
I have about that level of training (physics
as a minor in my MSc degree) and I think the 'Quantum Medicine' of that Japanese speaker
was relatively interesting. To get some real
info, you have to do a few google searches.
Re:Dumb Question from a NON Physicist
on
Universe is Flat
·
· Score: 2
and if I look far "back" in time enough, I would eventually see the "big bang" in a single place
Unfortunately, we can not see the big bang,
as the young universe was not transparent.
The microwave background originates from
the time when the universe is about 100 000 years old. In those early days, the universe was filled with hot gas and radiation. The gas was hot enough
to be ionized, so it was very opaque.
As the gas was getting gradually cooler, the electrons got bound with nuclei, forming neutral
atoms and allowing the radiation to pass through.
Now, this radiation has been doppler-shifted to
the 3K blackbody we see. So, we can NOT see beyond the microwave background.
or I have to be able to see it in EVERY direction I look
At the moment of big bang the universe was
point-like, or a singularity (Now I'm assuming this is the exact moment, ignoring all the
stuff about Planck time etc.) I'm no expert
in general relativity, but I think the concept
of 'direction' can not be applied to singularities. The point of time at which
the big bang happened is a point of time when the
three spatial dimensions of the universe did not
exist. No space, no directions.
I hope this clarified things a little. However,
I get the feeling I'm trying to explain a zen koan
to someone.
being farther out in the solar system, it probably doesn't get the protection we do of larger planets to suck in asteroids that might otherwise hit us.
I am no expert in orbit calculations, but this sounds plausible to me. As Titan is on orbit around Saturn, any asteroid that Saturn catches
could be a threat. The atmosphere of Titan
is very thick, so it propably shields the surface
(and base) against small meteorites.
It could be relatively easy to pull oxegen from the atmosphere
The atmosphere of Titan is mainly composed
of nitrogen (more than 99 per cent) and
methane (CH4) so it is not easy to get oxygen from
the atmosphere. However, there should be some
water ice on the surface.
A bigger problem is energy - the temperature
on Titan is around -170 C.
Solar energy is useless. A theoretical maximum at
the distance of Saturn is less than 20W per
a square meter of solar panels, and the atmosphere
is pretty thick. Also, there
is propably not much silicon for making the Solar
panels. In the outer Solar system, almost all
elements heavier than oxygen are pretty rare.
The best solution I can think of is a fusion reactor using deuterium extracted from the atmosphere.
Titan is propably the best source of hydrocarbons
in the Solar System, so I think we will go there
some day. Some asteroids (carbon-condrite-type)
contain also hydrocarbons, but I think Titan
would provide a more steady supply of them.
I agree that the Moon should be colonized first,
but I think Moon has much more potential than just
a testbench for colonization technology.
Moon has no atmosphere. This means, it is a natural cleanroom for spacecraft building.
Secondly, a launch to low-Earth orbit requires much less energy when the starting point is Moon, not Earth. (This may sound a little odd, but you can check the physics.) The energy required is less than 20 per cent of that needed for the modern Earth-based launches.
Thirdly, the lack of atmosphere means that
the satellites could be launched by a coilgun-like
device from the lunar surface. So, there would be no need for messy and wasteful chemical rockets
that ruin our atmosphere, especially the ozone layer. The energy for the coilgun would be solar electric power, which is abundant on Moon.
Fourthly, Solar cells can be made from Lunar ilmenite (a realitively abundant mineral), so manufacturing them up there would be relatively easy. This means not much material needs to be
transported to the Moon from here to start
Lunar development.
Finally, in Moon there are no (environ)mental
NIMBY's.
"When I was young, we didn't have any o those
sissy objects and icons. We had only zeroes and ones. My first assignment was a database management program, and I had to use only zeroes."
"You had zeroes? We had to use the letter 'O'."
Seriously speaking, how would the user know what
was the problem he got the answer for?
Maybe they would get 'segmentation fault, zeroes
dumped' on every problem.
A large Japanese company, Sumitomo, claims
here they have also patented these magnets.
They seem to hint there may be even some European patents covering this.
So, the magnets Magnequench claims are covered
by their patents, may just as well be covered by
the Sumitomo patent, and been exported from Japan (or Europe) to USA. Someones going to have a hard time deciding which patent those magnets
are infringing.
Slashdot Mirror
The 'better, faster, cheaper' has concentrated too much on the 'cheaper', or 'what programs will be (ex?)terminated', mainly as all these budget cuts have forced them to. 'Faster', or 'get before the next budget cut) is also stressed a lot, but I think they have not concentrated on 'better', expect in the 'pretty pictures' field. However, I have not seen a radical restructuring that would be a consequence of a new choice on priorities. I feel NASA has lost the initiative and is mainly reacting to outside political pressure.
Considering that the Shuttle is almost 20 years old, USA should have something better. The research on better launchers is extremely expensive, and it will not produce nice pictures that are important to the average politician (and voter). Given all the NASA budget cuts we keep on hearing we will not likely see any significant improvement in American launchers for a long time. I think NASA is also more interested in doing something with the present launchers. If NASA uses all it's money on launcher development, they might notice their budget has been cut to zero when they have the cheaper launchers.
I have heard that the Russians are seriously considering reviving the Buran program. (For the uninformed, Buran is the Russian Space Shuttle that has been tested succesfully in the Soviet times. It has been even in orbit. Now, it is mothballed somewhere in Siberia. One model is in a park in Moscow) Buran has some improvements when compared to the Shuttle, most important ones being: reusable launcher strap-on boosters and full remote control (a crew can be on board, but it can also fly unmanned). It has also plenty of smaller improvements, which make it easier to maintain.
Currently, Buran payload is only slightly larger than what Shuttle can manage, but the Russians claim that with minor modifications, they could almost double the payload. If they revive Buran, it has a payload price less than half of what Shuttle has.
If Buran is revived, I hope some people in Washington will notice that a few years ago USA had a 15-year advantage in the launcher race, but has lost it already. The Europeans have Ariane V (which is still getting improved), Russians will probably have Buran soon, and USA is still stuck with the old Shuttle. Now we all three are even, but in a few decades USA will be holding the 2nd or 3rd position.
That is something I would like to see. Rapid exploration of large parts of the Martian surface, and not only a few small pathces here and there every two years. Currently we are stuck with the latter.
Cheap and vast numbers are equivalent. I think the costs of any new space equipment is mainly research and development. After it is done, you can make dozens of units with a price that is small when compared to the initial costs.
Launch costs are still the biggest problem of space operations, and this has nothing to do with that.
The ball has some advantages when compared to a balloon:
The payload can be much larger, as there is no need to actually make it fly.
Control of the balloon is probably much harder.
I hope it is the latter.
Unless you're an IT guy for some tinpot dictator with a hard-on for the US, I think you meant to type 'former.'
I'm living in a country between NATO and Russia. I sure hope the balance will not tip too far in US favor before we can join NATO. Russian bases in this country is very high on my 'never again' list, and the former red army is not too pleased with recent developments (NATO widening, ABM treaty, growing weapons technology gap between US and Russia).
Are you sure of the percentage, and what kind of 'scientists' are counted in? I remember seeing a study on 47 Nobel laureates of chemistry and physics. 45 considered themselves non-religous, either atheist or agnostic. Two were christians. Of these scientists, only less than 5 per cent believed in a supreme being. I think this is an issue where selecting an unbiased sample is very important.
Another thing I would like to comment on is that religious belief does not always contain a belief in a higher being. Buddhist do not believe in any supreme being, (Buddha is a teacher, and a human, not a God) and they are usually considered as a religion. Or are you claiming Dalai Lama is not religious?
By definition: a scientific theory makes predictions that are based on some assuptions. It can be proven false by measuring the effect it predicts and finding discrepancies between observations and theory. So, a scientific theory can be falsified, for example the Newtonian Gravitation Theory was known to be wrong as it did not predict the orbit of Mercury absolutely correctly. General relativity could explain the difference, and thus was considered to be closer to the truth. However, both do a good job in e.g. predicting the orbit of the Moon.
Religious theories in general do not provide predictions or arguments that could be verified or falsified. (Of course there are 'world-will-end-next-sunday' predictions, but who takes them seriously). How could you verify claims such as: 'If you kill someone, you'll go to hell after you die' or 'Jesus is the Son of God'
Creationists are people who believe strongly that Bible is the absolute truth of God, by God and for His People. Some scientific theories have made predictions that are based on assumptions which contradict the Bible, and are thus being seen as an attack against the God. The creationists are now making what they think is science by producing their own theories that also explain all the observed facts, including the Bible, which they think is the absolute truth. However, they do not make their own predictions on results of measurements, they just explain the existing ones.
One characteristic of scientific measurements is that they always contain statistical uncertainties, often referred to as 'error' or 'accuracy'. However, I have never met a creationist who would give a value on the accuracy of the facts extracted from the Bible.
For a creationist, the Bible is the word of absolute truth, meaning that it should be absolutely correct. If it is not, it contains some inaccuracy, and thus their God, who has dictated it word by word, is imperfect. It seems that creationists do no longer believe that Bible is a sufficient base for their life, as science has shown that some claims of the Bible are not completely correct.
They produce artificial 'scientific' extensions to the biblical base of their life. In my opinion, this means that the creationists are trying to explain and extend the absolute truth (or what they think is the absolute truth) with relative truths, that are changing and falsifiable. I'm not that familiar with christianity, but for a muslim, this would mean 'Shirk', or mixing Allah with something else. Shirk is always punished by eternal damnation, and in an islamic society, it is punished also by death. I think creationists are dangerously close to that.
The Buddhists (including myself) have a nice workaround for the conflict between science and religion, but that is another story. If you are interested in that, use google.
yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. The humanity does have limitations, but I think were are able to move the limits further when ever we reach them.
Just one example: Scientific calculations became too complex for even the most talented and trained human brain, so we invented the computer.
The thing itself weighs about 1600 lbs, so 600 lbs is lots, but with something like 60 lbs could also have quite nasty effects.
that's two reasonably effective gravity bombs
Why gravity bombs? Both Russian and US armies have 'tactical nukes' with a few kt power, that can be fired with a cannon. A small container of something (Anthrax? Smallpox? Nerve Gas?) would also be quite effecive.
from an aircraft that is not even made of metal, so practically invisible to radar.
So, you wouldn't even know who did it. As this is very public research, has the US army something better or have they not realized the potential of it?
I hope it is the latter.
has NASA's PR department just gotten too used to blurting that out
People are not interested in seeing tax money used in science unless they feel they could benefit from it. So, saying something like this to people who don't have a clue on science is
Why would you want to conduct experiments at 100,000 ft at 20 MPH?
A few things come to mind.
Chemical analysis of rocket exhausts might be possible, if you put this in the right position. The solid-fuel stages might leave some dust particles that give hints to what kind of fuels are used. This would help in estimating the ICBM payload capacity.
Low-orbit satellites have orbital velocities of several miles per second, so if you want to have a better look at that Chinese ICBM base, Helios could be a choice.
Atmospheric research would benefit from this. You could send up a whole armada of weather stations in the upper atmosphere instead of a single weather satellite.
Studies of the Earth's magnetic field and it's connection to the solar wind could use measurements right under the auroral oval, where solar wind hits the upper atmosphere. Combining these with radar-scattering experiments would be extremely interesting to geophysicists.
As this thing runs on solar, and is well above clouds, it only need to stay on the sunny side of Earth to run forever. Perhaps a medium-sized battery and some smart remote pilot could keep this up during nighttime, goin only halfway down and climbing back up every morning?
Zimbabwe (Adolf-style 'democracy') would be rather extreme. I think GWB would not be able to govern in Mugabe style. I think US is somewhere around Russia and Venezuela (semi-democracy with a 'president' having limited dictatorship).
However, in US there are a lot of things that are voted about, and not just dictated by the bureaucracy. In many 'democratic' countries of Western Europe there are very few votes expect the elections (parliament, president, local).
4-6 million votes lost! This means something like 3 percent (I guess) of the votes. I'm worried about this. Narrow-margin elections might be influenced by any bias in the losing votes, and in some cases, results are not representing the majority of the voters. Technical solutions make a bias in the voting system, making voting and registration easier for the more techical people. So, people with less techological skills (some racial minorities, the old and the disabled) are having even less say in the vote. The article points out that complex equipment increases the failure rate of voting, i.e. the bias, and thus decreases the credibility of US democracy.
Now, if the equipment gets more complicated, (adding internet voting) does this decrease the bias or the failure rate? I doubt it. Why do you have to use a machine for voting? The simplest and most fail-safe voting system I've heard of is almost completely fail-safe: You use a pen to write a number inside a circle in the ballot. Pens and candidate lists are in the polling-booth. If you make a mistake, you rip the ballot and return the pieces, and get a new one.
The weak point of this is that in poorer countries the voters do not know how to read/write, but this shouldn't be a problem in the US. A machine can't read all ballots if this is applied, but considering the problems in Florida, machines should not read the vote.
Some scientists are speculating on 'Nemesis', a dwarf star on a very wide orbit (period 30 million years) around the Sun. They claim Nemesis is responsible for the mass extinctions, dropping comets to inner Solar System as it passed through the Oort cloud.
We're at a very delicate time in the history of our race. If we don't begin to migrate to other planets and other star systems soon, we'll be doomed.
I agree that we should be going ASAP. However, it is not possible to colonize the stars before have lots of experience on colonization in the Solar System. There's also some propulsion research to be done.
Mars is probably within our reach, but it is not politically feasible. Even a simple manned mission to Mars would need global cooperation of all the major space players (USA, EU/ESA, Japan, Canada, Russia, maybe even China) as no-one has the money and political will to do it alone. I think the cost of a Mars-flight would be somethink like 1 Trillion US dollars. That would mean the American share would be of the order 400 Billion dollars.
I think a permanent lunar base would be feasible. (I have read some ILEWG publicationts for this, and recommend them for anyone interested in lunar exploration. A google search should get you started.) The cost is estimated to be of the order 200 Billion US dollars, so it is a little more than ISS or NMD. However, there is lots of small-scale developments that could be done with less money. ESA and NASA are doing some small-scale research already. The Moon base could could be financed as a US/EU cooperation. Maybe Canada and Japan could also join. Thus the US share would be of the order 100 Billion dollars. So, all we need is the political will that makes the decision: Forget the NMD, we settle the Moon instead. Sigh....
I'm sure one day we will turn the Moon to a real spaceport. Launching something from the Moon to low Earth orbit requires less energy than launching it from Earth. As Moon has no atmosphere, the satellites and spacecrafts could be build easily (no messing with cleanrooms, no out-gassing problems) over there from local raw materials. There's plenty of solar energy available in the Moon, so raw material extraction is possible.
The lack of atmospehere could also allow launching of satellites with coil/railgun like devices powered by solar electricity. This would mean no cumbersome rockets wasting chemical fuel. (HCNO elements are not easily available on the moon, so chemical fuel would be stupid)
This is their official reason for violating the license. I've had the same problem (management droids send MS attachments), but my solution is legal and working: When I get an e-mail MS attachment, I reply near-instantly:
Sorry, I could not open the file you sent me. Got an error message 'unknown file format' or something like that instead. Could you re-send it, and please use the pdf format this time, it seems to work better on my system.
Thanks.
Most managers are not computer literate, and sometimes this would even be a plausible reason (corrupted file etc.) So, MS Word gets the blame.
Most of the managers send then a pdf. Sometimes I've had to show them how to make this. (Repeat after me: Save-as-pdf) After a few mailings like this, some guys have actually started sending pdf attachments instead of 'corrupted' MS-Word docs.
I have a Linux system, so I use pdf2ps and ghostview. They could use the Acrobat Reader or something else if they don't want to install Linux. I could of course use StarOffice, but this seems to work just as well.
When I was younger, we didn't have any of those (modern gadget)s. We had the (old junk), that was good and lasted forever. Now, the kids can't even...
My Grandpa wasn't a nobelist, so he didn't make it to the news, but that's the only difference I can see.
According to the links, the star is in an highly excentric elliptical orbit. A pretty good image can also be seen on the space.com link you give. This means, the orbit should be similar to long-period comets. Some graphs showing the orbit of the Hale-Bopp comet can be seen here.
There are also some scientist who think the claimed 30 million year periodicity is not real, but a result of impact crater data rounded to nearest round millions of years. You can get the artcile by entering the number 9701104 in the field here. The paper has been published in an international refereed astronomical journal, Astronomy and Astrophysics
My personal opinion is that Nemesis is propably not lurking out there, but I think it would be worthwhile to check it.
Divine retribution seems to be a million years away
I think that in one million year, out tech can stop the comets that this star might drop from the Oort cloud. Even with present tech, we get a good early warning. A 'killer comet' would probably be detected at least half a year before the possible impact. I'd be much more worried about the Near-Earth Asteroids - they may remain undetected until a few weeks before D-day.
The 'black body' refers to the spectral distribution of the light energy (Planck's law), not colour of the radiation. For example, the Sun is a rough blackbody at 6000 Kelvin. The microwave background is a blackbody that was originally at a temperature of the order 10000 K, now redshifted to 2.73 K.
how far are we looking back then?
The exact distance depends heavily on the cosmological model used, and there is no consensus on which model to use. So the values I give may be different from what you see by an order of magnitude or even more. However, the universe was about 300.000 years old at that time, and the distance is a few tens of (American) billions of light-years.
This seems to contrast the age of the Universe, (how can we see 20 billion light-years away when the light has travelled only 10 billion years?) but this is were the cosmological model (Hubble parameter, spacetime curvature etc.) steps in.
IMHO, there is already a scientific consensus on both of the things you mention. An overwhelming majority of the climate scientists is convinced that we are responsible for the climate change. I believe that those few who disagree are industry lapdogs.
What we don't have is a political consensus on reducing the emissions. Scientists are not listened, especially when the right thing to do would be expensive and unpleasant. (I think GW Bush has not nominated a science advisor yet. If he has, please inform me.)
If we are getting pedantic, isn't most of the stuff based on solid-state physics (transistors, Peltier coolers, semiconductor lasers, STJ (superconducting tunnel junction) sensors, you name it...) quantum applications?
Quantum applications .. are not yet usable, very new, and considerably cooler than the quantum mechanics required to describe them.
SQUIDs (Superconducting QUantum Interference Device) are really _cool_, as they are used at cryogenic temperatures.
SQUIDs are high-sensitivity (down to Bohr magneton) magnetometers. They are often used when toying with superconducting electronics, as they are extremely sensitive current sensors that work well in liquid-helium temperatures. I'm not sure of this, but I think some of the NMR (nucleomagnetic resonance) imaging devices use SQUID arrays as read-out electronics.
Anyone with marginal physics education can understand how a laser works. It takes a lot more to build one.
One basic University course in QM (with prerequired Math and std. Physics) should do it, so any Physics student at my university has the basics after two years.
I have about that level of training (physics as a minor in my MSc degree) and I think the 'Quantum Medicine' of that Japanese speaker was relatively interesting. To get some real info, you have to do a few google searches.
Unfortunately, we can not see the big bang, as the young universe was not transparent.
The microwave background originates from the time when the universe is about 100 000 years old. In those early days, the universe was filled with hot gas and radiation. The gas was hot enough to be ionized, so it was very opaque. As the gas was getting gradually cooler, the electrons got bound with nuclei, forming neutral atoms and allowing the radiation to pass through. Now, this radiation has been doppler-shifted to the 3K blackbody we see. So, we can NOT see beyond the microwave background.
or I have to be able to see it in EVERY direction I look
At the moment of big bang the universe was point-like, or a singularity (Now I'm assuming this is the exact moment, ignoring all the stuff about Planck time etc.) I'm no expert in general relativity, but I think the concept of 'direction' can not be applied to singularities. The point of time at which the big bang happened is a point of time when the three spatial dimensions of the universe did not exist. No space, no directions.
I hope this clarified things a little. However, I get the feeling I'm trying to explain a zen koan to someone.
I am no expert in orbit calculations, but this sounds plausible to me. As Titan is on orbit around Saturn, any asteroid that Saturn catches could be a threat. The atmosphere of Titan is very thick, so it propably shields the surface (and base) against small meteorites.
It could be relatively easy to pull oxegen from the atmosphere
The atmosphere of Titan is mainly composed of nitrogen (more than 99 per cent) and methane (CH4) so it is not easy to get oxygen from the atmosphere. However, there should be some water ice on the surface.
A bigger problem is energy - the temperature on Titan is around -170 C. Solar energy is useless. A theoretical maximum at the distance of Saturn is less than 20W per a square meter of solar panels, and the atmosphere is pretty thick. Also, there is propably not much silicon for making the Solar panels. In the outer Solar system, almost all elements heavier than oxygen are pretty rare.
The best solution I can think of is a fusion reactor using deuterium extracted from the atmosphere.
Titan is propably the best source of hydrocarbons in the Solar System, so I think we will go there some day. Some asteroids (carbon-condrite-type) contain also hydrocarbons, but I think Titan would provide a more steady supply of them.
Moon has no atmosphere. This means, it is a natural cleanroom for spacecraft building.
Secondly, a launch to low-Earth orbit requires much less energy when the starting point is Moon, not Earth. (This may sound a little odd, but you can check the physics.) The energy required is less than 20 per cent of that needed for the modern Earth-based launches.
Thirdly, the lack of atmosphere means that the satellites could be launched by a coilgun-like device from the lunar surface. So, there would be no need for messy and wasteful chemical rockets that ruin our atmosphere, especially the ozone layer. The energy for the coilgun would be solar electric power, which is abundant on Moon.
Fourthly, Solar cells can be made from Lunar ilmenite (a realitively abundant mineral), so manufacturing them up there would be relatively easy. This means not much material needs to be transported to the Moon from here to start Lunar development.
Finally, in Moon there are no (environ)mental NIMBY's.
To cut it short, Moon is a natural spaceport.
"When I was young, we didn't have any o those sissy objects and icons. We had only zeroes and ones. My first assignment was a database management program, and I had to use only zeroes."
"You had zeroes? We had to use the letter 'O'."
Seriously speaking, how would the user know what was the problem he got the answer for? Maybe they would get 'segmentation fault, zeroes dumped' on every problem.
So, the magnets Magnequench claims are covered by their patents, may just as well be covered by the Sumitomo patent, and been exported from Japan (or Europe) to USA. Someones going to have a hard time deciding which patent those magnets are infringing.