The parent post in excellent example of Amerocentric ignorance.
they just need to route their packets through Sweden, who by dint of not being an EU member is freely exchanging packets with Russia, and has set up a service to do so.
Sweden is an EU member, but I suppose you could replace that with any non-EU member that has
cable connection to Russia.
No, Sweden is just strongly suggested to stop routing to Russia. No problem
they say, and then route their Russia-bound packets to Estonia, who quite happily sends packets through Byelorussia to Russia.
Most of the East European countries (e.g. Estonia) are negotiating about EU membership, and have
trade agreements etc. with EU. Applicants
have to harmonize their legislation with EU,
so if they do not enforce this, their negotiations
could be stopped. Perhaps a threat of discontinuing the trade agreements could do it, if the country gets stubborn. So, the strong suggestion would be propably listened to. Any goverment not listening to EU will be an ex-goverment, as EU membership has very strong support among leading politicians in almost all East European countries.
In EU-East Europe-relations, you should apply
the Golden Rule:
The one with the gold writes the rules
such a czar should have the government buy pcs and handhelds for the poor, that's what i say. even if 90% are resold/ used to play games/ view porn/ insert your own waste of time, it's the 10% that are used to turn minds that are otherwise wasted on the street into genius that makes all the difference.
Good point, but couldn't this be done by just
giving the still functioning but 'old' computers that are scrapped today to the poor instead.
One of my frieds is working a sysadmin in a company that is dumping dozens of functional computers every week. The only reason this is done is that the computers can not be used with the latest versions of Windows and Office. Now,
the "Czar" should step in and add a Linux Installation CD.
I think this would be a better way of bridging the digital divide
I think this could be used for good. Too sad it won't.
Putting a good database with legislation to the
web. It should also contain information on the
legislation that is in preparation and other
activities of the government agencies. Bills can
be influenced much more when they are in preparation.
This would give the citizens a view about what
the government is up to do. It could make the
bureaucracy more transparent. The government
could not wipe their big mistakes under the carpet. And this is the reason for the
government not to do it.
they should give Senators and
Representatives e-training classes to make them more aware of current issues
I agree with you that the Senators and Representatives should have more clue on
modern technology and science. However, I think
e-classes wont solve that problem. It is lack of
interest that makes them ignorant, not lack of information. They have chosen to give www-related matters a low priority. Maybe we should vote only people with clue.
I think this could be used for good. Too sad it won't.
Putting a good database with legislation to the
web. It should also contain information on the
legislation that is in preparation and other
activities of the government agencies. Bills can
be influenced much more when they are in preparation.
This would give the citizens a view about what
the government is up to do. It could make the
bureaucracy more transparent. The government
could not wipe their big mistakes under the carpet. And this is the reason for the
government not to do it.
they should give Senators and
Representatives e-training classes to make them more aware of current issues
I agree with you that the Senators and Representatives should have more clue on
modern technology and science. However, I think
e-classes wont solve that problem. It is lack of
interest that makes them ignorant, not lack of information. They have chosen to give www-related matters a low priority. Maybe we should vote only people with clue.
Who the * modded this 'overrated'?
'Interesting' would be better.
DISCLAIMER: I am not an expert, but I have
studied some astrophysics.
The event horizon of a black hole is the surface
with an escape velocity equal to the light speed.
We see this as the 'surface' of the black hole.
Rotating black holes have a distorted, non-spherical event horizon that produces
the observed effects (This is called Kerr metrics). The dimensions of the event horizon are a few kilometers, so I can not see how quantum mechanics would be relevant at these distances.
The singularity itself is hidden by the event horizon, so we can not see quantum gravitation effects.
I suppose GRO1655-40 is the 1st rotating black hole detected by Americans. Science is made also
outside USA, and sometimes USA is not the first.
XTE J1748-288 is another system with a rotating black hole. Also GRS1915+105 and
SS433 could be, but I am not sure of this.
(All the four sources are microquasars, and
rotating black holes should be in all of them)
These sources are all in our galaxy.
I am not that interested in extragalactic
stuff, but I think there are also several
active galaxies with known spinning central
black holes.
A good resource for checking 'First ever'
astronomy discoveries: ADS abstract service
I think the magnetometer, plasma analyzer and
particle instrument woould still yield interesting data. Such as density, chemical composition and magnetic field of the solar wind at large distances from the Sun.
Without those, you could not detect the heliopause. Heliopause should be a schock where
the solar wind hits the interstellar gas and
magnetic field. If Pioneer makes it past the
heliopause, we have first direct measurements of the properties of interstellar space.
There is also lots of complex plasma physics involved in the heliopause itself.
This will not give any pretty pictures for the general public, but for the more science literate,
this might be more interesting.
Considering that a 10-watt FM transmitter I was playing with barely travelled a couple of km, this just blows my mind. (sure, it should be considered that this was on Earth where there is a lot of radio noise, but still...)
There sure is loads of radio noise on Earth.
A cellphone in the moon would be the one of the brightest extraterrestrial radio sources.
Two good methods used in very long timespans are
K-40/Ar-40 method and Rb-87/Sr-87/Sr-86 metohds.
Both K-40 and Rb-87 have half-lifes of the order
one billion years.
They both work in the same way as C-12/C-14 method.
The constant C-14/C-12 ratio in living plants is caused by cosmic radiation, which produces a constant amount of C-14 in the atmospheric Carbon
Dioxide. Plants use the CO2 and get a constant
C-14/C-12 ratio.
When I pay my taxes, i'd much rather we concentrate on America as a whole first. Only when we've restored the morality of the American people, should we entertain the idea of spending our money on peering into the heavens.
Compared to the money spent on US military, Hubble is peanuts. US already has enough weapons to wipe
out all life on Earth, but it still needs more.
As a by-product, we get about one million tonnes
of toxic waste every year. Can you explain how this restores the morality of the Americans?
If I were American, I would be proud to say
"We made Hubble". I think many Americans are
proud of the fact that their nation has made one
of the most spectacular astronomical facilities
in the world.
"The permanent, more capable archive system-the Space Telescope Data Archive and Distribution Service (ST-DADS)-was installed September 1994. Developed by Loral
and STScI, ST-DADS stores HST data on its optical jukeboxes, provides quick access to data, and distributes those data in the standard astronomical format FITS (Flexible
Image Transport System). ST-DADS is now able to deliver data directly to a user's home computer over the Internet."
They really do love acronyms. (STScI = Space Telescope Science Institute).
To cut it short, the data is on CD-ROM:s in FITS format, and the system is specially designed for this purpose.
And I agree with you that the military gets
research money too easily.
But I think you are comparing apples to oranges:
The Air Force plane was at 20 km where you need a lot more wings than at normal altitudes, so this is a different thing.
I think the Air Force is not interested in making the smallest plane that crosses the Pacific. They need to have some equipment on board, and propably the more the better.
A good spying plane needs
loads of electronics and some cameras to actually
get the information. Remember, the plane that
was on headlines a few days ago had more than 20 people operating the electronics.
Of course these high-altude planes have less equipment, but propably still hundreds of kilos.
The information gathered should be stored on board or send out in short bursts. Civilian planes
can send out at constant bitrate, as they are
not generally afraid of being detected.
All that stuff on board needs electricity, so
it must be either generated on board or
stored at batteries before take-off.
The actual news says: It (the aircraft) was monitored, but not controlled, by ground crews in the US and at Adelaide's RAAF Base Edinburgh, as it followed a pre-programmed route without incident.
As the plane flies at almost 20 km, it allows monitoring countries with less developed
anti-aircraft systems. As the Air Force lets the world know they have this, they propably have already something better under development.
Nice to notice that Yahoo has more details on this than the Air Force site.
In most EU countries, all games should
have a rating. I think there is a EU directive for this, so it should be part of every EU member
country legislation.
In any case, if a kid is playing Quake for hours a day and parents don't know, then it's probably their fault. All they need to do is knock on the kid's bedroom door and see what's up.
My solution is even simpler: the computer is in
the living room, so I just look what's going on.
However, I think the biggest cause of these
massacres is irresponsible firearms policy.
Of the EU members, Greece and Portugal are
not in ESA (Luxemburg does not count). In addition, there are 12 countries
negotiating about EU membership (Hungary, Czech
Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Cyprus, Malta, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania). None of these is not even planning ESA membership. Switzerland and Norway are in ESA, but not in EU.
The major players (UK, Germany, france, Italy)
are the same, but the big difference is:
Administration and funding of ESA and EU are completely separate. Therefore, ESA is much more efficient, it is not politics-driven but science-driven, and scientist hate bureacracy just
as much as politicians love it.
So, make it 'Western Europe' or something like that, not European Union. EU does
not deserve credit for ESA activities.
As in every SETI discussion, we already have
several 'But it takes 100 years to get the reply,
so this is waste of time' posts.
I think the really big thing is not what
the possibly existing ET have to say, but
the mere knowledge that they do exist.
Propably their reply is something like:
This is an important issue. Small changes in the influenza virus kill lots of people.
Now, influenza is a good example of transspecies
disease (pigs, ducks, humans...)
If I remember correctly, cows have a virus very
similar to smallpox, and making also humans sick.
For humans, this is illness is not very dangerous. The viruses were close enough to each other so that having had this virus gave you immunity to smallpox. That's why dairy farmers didn't get smallpox so often.
If this virus combines with chicken pox or some other smallpox-resembling human disease, the result could be really nasty.
I'd really like to hear some microbiologist's opinions on this. To me, it sounds scary.
I'd suggest the Europeans revolt, but they're a disarmed sheeple, and the massacre would be horrible.
\begin{comment}[sorry,offtopic]
The massacre would be horrible indeed, but we
are civilized enough to protest without the guns.
Contrary to common American belief, the European people are armed to the teeth. As always in Europe, this varies a lot throughout the region.
However, in most Central and East European Countries the people go to the army and learn how to useand store these properly, so their kids won't shoot each other at school.(Not that many Columbine-style massacres in Europe)
The people have guns at their homes, but the kids
know that touching them means only trouble with
Dad. We Europeans are generally sheepish enough not to shoot at each other.
A few examples:
1. After WWII, there were loads of weapons
around. These were generally collected by the civilians and hidden in barns and attics.
People were a little upset after Nazi occupation,
so they wanted to have something at hand.
The veterans coming home had often some war memories, which have generally been kept in good order. Most of the old weapons my older relatives have, are still functional. They have everything
from small Mausers to Sniper rifles. The hand grenades were given to police anonymously a few years ago, as they were considered too dangerous to keep. I think my family is not exceptional.
2. In Switzerland, almost everyone who has done
his civil service (I guess this accounts for more than 70% of Swiss men) can have an assault rifle at his home. Many have.
3. Finland has a population of about 5 million.
The estimated number of registered weapons (mainly
shotguns and hunting rifles, they are woodspeople)
is above one million. In addition, the police estimates that there are at least one hundred thousand unregistered weapons in the country.
4. In Albania, the army depots were looted a few years ago. (that's your "European sheeple",
bare-handed civilians attacking garrisons)
In a country of about two million people, the population has now more than 200.000 AK 47:s
The telescope system in New Mexico is VLA (Very Large Array).
VLT (Very Large Telescope) is in Chile, and it is an ESO project. VLT has four eight-meter telescopes
which will be used for interferometry.
Gemini is a project of UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Brazil and Chile, so it
has nothing to do with ESO. UK joined ESO last
year, and Chile is involved in ESO activities,
but none of the other Gemini countries are in ESO.
Gemini will
not be an interferometer. For interferometry, you have to know the distance between the telescopes
to an accuracy smaller than the wavelength used.
Another thing is that you should either combine the beams from both telescopes, or get the phase information of each photon. In radio, it is
possible to get the phase information. In optical,
Keck and VLT can combine the beams. For Gemini,
this would need quite a lot of optical fiber;)
The main goal of Gemini is to have identical state-of-the-art systems for observing both northern and southern sky.
IMHO X-ray astronomy is much more interesting, but
I fear it will take some time before we get the
X-ray interferometer, but I have heard some rumours on it.
I was not thinking about drilling through the water. The idea is to put the laser to the spot where you are drilling. In this case, that would mean the bottom, not surface. So, this problem is solved by living under the sea.
I think the water vapour created when drilling the surface layers would be a larger problem.
This souds very good for drilling at sea. They can just throw the laser overboard (with some cables for I/O and electricity). Now they have to use stiff metal bores. How do waves and storms affect the metal bores used today? I imagine a storm could move the rig dozens of meters to the side, bending the bore. The tubes used to get the oil/gas back up are propable more flexible. So, to me it seems that this allows oil drilling at deep sea. The source of energy for the laser might be a problem, but I'm not sure of this. I couldn't find
anything about how much maintenance this laser bore needs, so that is another potential problem.
However, I would like to hear some opinions from
engineers.
This is a little bit technical, but
you asked for it.
Chandra has two instruments, ACIS (Advanced
Camera for Imaging and Spectroscopy) and HRC
(High Resolution Camera). Almost all results going
to the general public are made with ACIS.
ACIS allows simultanoeus imaging AND spectroscopy.
HRC was intended for really high resolution
spectroscopy OR imaging.
ACIS is working nominally, and the Chandra team
deserves all the credit for this. However, you do not hear that much about HRC. Why is that?
This is well documented: Have a look at the Chandra User Manual . See section 7.8.2.
Quote: The anti-coincidence shield of the HRC-S is not working because of a timing error in the electronics. The error is not correctable. As a result the event rate is very high and
exceeds the total telemetry rate limit.
So, they can not tell particles from X-rays.
The same in plain english: We are detecting more background than our data transfer can handle.
The instrument is f*ked due to a silly electronics design error. We are very sorry, but that is all we can do about it.
Slashdot Mirror
they just need to route their packets through Sweden, who by dint of not being an EU member is freely exchanging packets with Russia, and has set up a service to do so.
Sweden is an EU member, but I suppose you could replace that with any non-EU member that has cable connection to Russia.
No, Sweden is just strongly suggested to stop routing to Russia. No problem they say, and then route their Russia-bound packets to Estonia, who quite happily sends packets through Byelorussia to Russia.
Most of the East European countries (e.g. Estonia) are negotiating about EU membership, and have trade agreements etc. with EU. Applicants have to harmonize their legislation with EU, so if they do not enforce this, their negotiations could be stopped. Perhaps a threat of discontinuing the trade agreements could do it, if the country gets stubborn. So, the strong suggestion would be propably listened to. Any goverment not listening to EU will be an ex-goverment, as EU membership has very strong support among leading politicians in almost all East European countries.
In EU-East Europe-relations, you should apply the Golden Rule:
The one with the gold writes the rules
Good point, but couldn't this be done by just giving the still functioning but 'old' computers that are scrapped today to the poor instead.
One of my frieds is working a sysadmin in a company that is dumping dozens of functional computers every week. The only reason this is done is that the computers can not be used with the latest versions of Windows and Office. Now, the "Czar" should step in and add a Linux Installation CD.
I think this would be a better way of bridging the digital divide
Putting a good database with legislation to the web. It should also contain information on the legislation that is in preparation and other activities of the government agencies. Bills can be influenced much more when they are in preparation.
This would give the citizens a view about what the government is up to do. It could make the bureaucracy more transparent. The government could not wipe their big mistakes under the carpet. And this is the reason for the government not to do it.
they should give Senators and Representatives e-training classes to make them more aware of current issues
I agree with you that the Senators and Representatives should have more clue on modern technology and science. However, I think e-classes wont solve that problem. It is lack of interest that makes them ignorant, not lack of information. They have chosen to give www-related matters a low priority. Maybe we should vote only people with clue.
Putting a good database with legislation to the web. It should also contain information on the legislation that is in preparation and other activities of the government agencies. Bills can be influenced much more when they are in preparation.
This would give the citizens a view about what the government is up to do. It could make the bureaucracy more transparent. The government could not wipe their big mistakes under the carpet. And this is the reason for the government not to do it.
they should give Senators and Representatives e-training classes to make them more aware of current issues
I agree with you that the Senators and Representatives should have more clue on modern technology and science. However, I think e-classes wont solve that problem. It is lack of interest that makes them ignorant, not lack of information. They have chosen to give www-related matters a low priority. Maybe we should vote only people with clue.
'Interesting' would be better.
DISCLAIMER: I am not an expert, but I have studied some astrophysics.
The event horizon of a black hole is the surface with an escape velocity equal to the light speed. We see this as the 'surface' of the black hole. Rotating black holes have a distorted, non-spherical event horizon that produces the observed effects (This is called Kerr metrics). The dimensions of the event horizon are a few kilometers, so I can not see how quantum mechanics would be relevant at these distances.
The singularity itself is hidden by the event horizon, so we can not see quantum gravitation effects.
XTE J1748-288 is another system with a rotating black hole. Also GRS1915+105 and SS433 could be, but I am not sure of this. (All the four sources are microquasars, and rotating black holes should be in all of them) These sources are all in our galaxy.
I am not that interested in extragalactic stuff, but I think there are also several active galaxies with known spinning central black holes.
A good resource for checking 'First ever' astronomy discoveries: ADS abstract service
I think the more amazing thing is that Pioneer has still some functioning instruments.
Without those, you could not detect the heliopause. Heliopause should be a schock where the solar wind hits the interstellar gas and magnetic field. If Pioneer makes it past the heliopause, we have first direct measurements of the properties of interstellar space. There is also lots of complex plasma physics involved in the heliopause itself.
This will not give any pretty pictures for the general public, but for the more science literate, this might be more interesting.
Considering that a 10-watt FM transmitter I was playing with barely travelled a couple of km, this just blows my mind. (sure, it should be considered that this was on Earth where there is a lot of radio noise, but still...) There sure is loads of radio noise on Earth. A cellphone in the moon would be the one of the brightest extraterrestrial radio sources.
Both K-40 and Rb-87 have half-lifes of the order one billion years.
They both work in the same way as C-12/C-14 method.
The constant C-14/C-12 ratio in living plants is caused by cosmic radiation, which produces a constant amount of C-14 in the atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. Plants use the CO2 and get a constant C-14/C-12 ratio.
Compared to the money spent on US military, Hubble is peanuts. US already has enough weapons to wipe out all life on Earth, but it still needs more. As a by-product, we get about one million tonnes of toxic waste every year. Can you explain how this restores the morality of the Americans?
If I were American, I would be proud to say "We made Hubble". I think many Americans are proud of the fact that their nation has made one of the most spectacular astronomical facilities in the world.
The HST Data Archive has a manual. The preface propably answers your question:
"The permanent, more capable archive system-the Space Telescope Data Archive and Distribution Service (ST-DADS)-was installed September 1994. Developed by Loral and STScI, ST-DADS stores HST data on its optical jukeboxes, provides quick access to data, and distributes those data in the standard astronomical format FITS (Flexible Image Transport System). ST-DADS is now able to deliver data directly to a user's home computer over the Internet."
They really do love acronyms. (STScI = Space Telescope Science Institute).
To cut it short, the data is on CD-ROM:s in FITS format, and the system is specially designed for this purpose.
And I agree with you that the military gets research money too easily.
But I think you are comparing apples to oranges:
The Air Force plane was at 20 km where you need a lot more wings than at normal altitudes, so this is a different thing.
I think the Air Force is not interested in making the smallest plane that crosses the Pacific. They need to have some equipment on board, and propably the more the better.
A good spying plane needs loads of electronics and some cameras to actually get the information. Remember, the plane that was on headlines a few days ago had more than 20 people operating the electronics.
Of course these high-altude planes have less equipment, but propably still hundreds of kilos.
The information gathered should be stored on board or send out in short bursts. Civilian planes can send out at constant bitrate, as they are not generally afraid of being detected.
All that stuff on board needs electricity, so it must be either generated on board or stored at batteries before take-off.
As the plane flies at almost 20 km, it allows monitoring countries with less developed anti-aircraft systems. As the Air Force lets the world know they have this, they propably have already something better under development.
Nice to notice that Yahoo has more details on this than the Air Force site.
In any case, if a kid is playing Quake for hours a day and parents don't know, then it's probably their fault. All they need to do is knock on the kid's bedroom door and see what's up.
My solution is even simpler: the computer is in the living room, so I just look what's going on.
However, I think the biggest cause of these massacres is irresponsible firearms policy.
Of the EU members, Greece and Portugal are not in ESA (Luxemburg does not count). In addition, there are 12 countries negotiating about EU membership (Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Cyprus, Malta, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania). None of these is not even planning ESA membership. Switzerland and Norway are in ESA, but not in EU.
The major players (UK, Germany, france, Italy) are the same, but the big difference is: Administration and funding of ESA and EU are completely separate. Therefore, ESA is much more efficient, it is not politics-driven but science-driven, and scientist hate bureacracy just as much as politicians love it.
So, make it 'Western Europe' or something like that, not European Union. EU does not deserve credit for ESA activities.
I think the really big thing is not what the possibly existing ET have to say, but the mere knowledge that they do exist. Propably their reply is something like:
'First Post!'
'All your planet is belong to us'
'Goat secx'
If I remember correctly, cows have a virus very similar to smallpox, and making also humans sick. For humans, this is illness is not very dangerous. The viruses were close enough to each other so that having had this virus gave you immunity to smallpox. That's why dairy farmers didn't get smallpox so often.
If this virus combines with chicken pox or some other smallpox-resembling human disease, the result could be really nasty.
I'd really like to hear some microbiologist's opinions on this. To me, it sounds scary.
\begin{comment}[sorry,offtopic] The massacre would be horrible indeed, but we are civilized enough to protest without the guns.
Contrary to common American belief, the European people are armed to the teeth. As always in Europe, this varies a lot throughout the region. However, in most Central and East European Countries the people go to the army and learn how to useand store these properly, so their kids won't shoot each other at school.(Not that many Columbine-style massacres in Europe)
The people have guns at their homes, but the kids know that touching them means only trouble with Dad. We Europeans are generally sheepish enough not to shoot at each other.
A few examples:
1. After WWII, there were loads of weapons around. These were generally collected by the civilians and hidden in barns and attics. People were a little upset after Nazi occupation, so they wanted to have something at hand. The veterans coming home had often some war memories, which have generally been kept in good order. Most of the old weapons my older relatives have, are still functional. They have everything from small Mausers to Sniper rifles. The hand grenades were given to police anonymously a few years ago, as they were considered too dangerous to keep. I think my family is not exceptional.
2. In Switzerland, almost everyone who has done his civil service (I guess this accounts for more than 70% of Swiss men) can have an assault rifle at his home. Many have.
3. Finland has a population of about 5 million. The estimated number of registered weapons (mainly shotguns and hunting rifles, they are woodspeople) is above one million. In addition, the police estimates that there are at least one hundred thousand unregistered weapons in the country.
4. In Albania, the army depots were looted a few years ago. (that's your "European sheeple", bare-handed civilians attacking garrisons) In a country of about two million people, the population has now more than 200.000 AK 47:s
\end{comment}
can be found here, at xxx.lanl.gov, which means it is free, and quite fast to download. (No banner ads or other bs)
Well, one could get a lot closer. Currently, the Finns are holding the world record, and are below one billionth of a Kelvin.
Gemini will not be an interferometer. For interferometry, you have to know the distance between the telescopes to an accuracy smaller than the wavelength used. Another thing is that you should either combine the beams from both telescopes, or get the phase information of each photon. In radio, it is possible to get the phase information. In optical, Keck and VLT can combine the beams. For Gemini, this would need quite a lot of optical fiber ;)
The main goal of Gemini is to have identical state-of-the-art systems for observing both northern and southern sky.
IMHO X-ray astronomy is much more interesting, but I fear it will take some time before we get the X-ray interferometer, but I have heard some rumours on it.
I think the water vapour created when drilling the surface layers would be a larger problem.
This souds very good for drilling at sea. They can just throw the laser overboard (with some cables for I/O and electricity). Now they have to use stiff metal bores. How do waves and storms affect the metal bores used today? I imagine a storm could move the rig dozens of meters to the side, bending the bore. The tubes used to get the oil/gas back up are propable more flexible. So, to me it seems that this allows oil drilling at deep sea. The source of energy for the laser might be a problem, but I'm not sure of this. I couldn't find anything about how much maintenance this laser bore needs, so that is another potential problem.
However, I would like to hear some opinions from engineers.
Chandra has two instruments, ACIS (Advanced Camera for Imaging and Spectroscopy) and HRC (High Resolution Camera). Almost all results going to the general public are made with ACIS. ACIS allows simultanoeus imaging AND spectroscopy. HRC was intended for really high resolution spectroscopy OR imaging.
ACIS is working nominally, and the Chandra team deserves all the credit for this. However, you do not hear that much about HRC. Why is that?
This is well documented: Have a look at the Chandra User Manual . See section 7.8.2.
Quote: The anti-coincidence shield of the HRC-S is not working because of a timing error in the electronics. The error is not correctable. As a result the event rate is very high and exceeds the total telemetry rate limit. So, they can not tell particles from X-rays.
The same in plain english: We are detecting more background than our data transfer can handle. The instrument is f*ked due to a silly electronics design error. We are very sorry, but that is all we can do about it.