GWB. The Texan accent. The "I'm not stupid!" President of the Universe who really isn't in charge, snarls a lot, and has two heads, each with only part of a brain. Good character!
Spot on. Putting people on the flight vehicles places all the focus on safety, making NASA worry about Murphy's law, rather than hypersonic flight. Reliability takes a lot of experience to learn.
The only other angle is that hypersonic flight makes sonic booms. Sonic booms restricted the Concorde to over-water routes, or at sub-sonic speeds over land. Sonic booms are unacceptible for public transport, but who cares in wartime.
So, DARPA has a way to develop hypersonic flight. Next step would be stealthy hypersonic flight. Next step, reliable stealthy hypersonic flight. Another DARPA success in the works.
Let's all hope that there are places left to fly *to* in 20 years...
So, lemme get this straight. US and European politicians are corrupt, but those in China and India aren't? Hmmm.:-)
Any power hungry politician will come to realize that an insecure OS with back doors is exactly what he wants his constituents using. Makes snooping easier.
I think your term, overly zealous, was very polite. The press release suggested revolutionizing two or three branches of science, conducting experiments that hadn't been tested in 200 years. Gimme a break!
I am extremely skeptical of the explanation of this result. It seems Phys Rev Letters needs better reviewers.
the theory provided to explain the torque on the spheres is no more than an asymptotic analysis. They don't provide this analysis, only the (approximate) result. SO, we are basing all this on the first term in a series.
two of the spheres were suspended by 127 micrometer steel wires, to allow rotation. They were not able to rotate freely, though. They rotated until standstill, restricted by the restoring torque of the wire. We are not told the magnitude of the angular rotation -- only that it increased with wire length, and went away when the potential was zero, reversed when the potential reversed. The restoring torque wasn't measured either.
how could a static electric field provide a rotational force on a perfectly conducting ideal sphere? By classical theory, it shouldn't. The charges will flow in the sphere until the forces are balanced. Just because the spheres are asymmetrically placed doesn't imply the need to rotate. Any residual torque on a single sphere would indicate a non-ideal sphere, non-conducting sphere, or lead to a perpetual motion machine. Some of their spheres had stainless and nickel coatings. Some were carbon. No mention was made of tests/measures of asphericity, distance of center of mass from geometric center, performance in a uniform electric field, or grain boundary alignment.
It would not surprise me to find that the spheres contained imperfections, and that was the entire cause of the observed rotation. I don't expect the sphere to rotate more than 1/2 turn, even on a 360 degree bearing, or we're back to the perpetual motion machine.
Maybe I'll never again see "?" for every non-ASCII character. Now, *that* will be useful.
From their site:
The STIX mission will be fully realized when:
* Fully hinted PostScript Type 1 and OpenType font sets have been created.
* All characters/glyphs have been incorporated into Unicode representation or comparable representation and browsers include program logic to fully utilize the STIX font set in the electronic representation of scholarly scientific documents.
Well *this* not-so-ignorant PhD physicist read enough of the article and code to know that the Fortran code was not the Fortran-77 the poster speaks of, but nice shiny Fortran 90.
In light of the features of Fortran90, like implicit none, do while, modules and derived types, a few of the points the poster makes are at least a decade out of date.
Norton et al. show how to achieve polymorphism in Fortran 90. http://www-hpc.jpl.nasa.gov/PEP/nortonc/RStop watch.pdf
The Fortran 2000 draft has been out for some time http://www.ionet.net/~jwagener/j3/Fortran-20 0x.htm l and it is on its way to voting. http://www.nag.co.uk/sc22wg5/
Slashdot Mirror
GWB. The Texan accent. The "I'm not stupid!" President of the Universe who really isn't in charge, snarls a lot, and has two heads, each with only part of a brain. Good character!
-
So long and thanks for all the fish!!
The next version of Redhat Linux will be code named, "Andy". Because, afterall, MyDoom = Linux.
Close, but wrong distro.
Andy was the boy in Toy Story.
I can't keep giving out clues here folks!!!
Oppositition spellelled thithis wayayay
inin the tititle...
sighigh.
Spot on. Putting people on the flight vehicles places all the focus on safety, making NASA worry about Murphy's law, rather than hypersonic flight.
Reliability takes a lot of experience to learn.
The only other angle is that hypersonic flight makes sonic booms. Sonic booms restricted the Concorde to over-water routes, or at sub-sonic speeds over land. Sonic booms are unacceptible for public transport, but who cares in wartime.
So, DARPA has a way to develop hypersonic flight.
Next step would be stealthy hypersonic flight.
Next step, reliable stealthy hypersonic flight.
Another DARPA success in the works.
Let's all hope that there are places left to fly *to* in 20 years...
So, lemme get this straight. US and European :-)
politicians are corrupt, but those in China and
India aren't? Hmmm.
Any power hungry politician will come to realize
that an insecure OS with back doors is exactly
what he wants his constituents using. Makes
snooping easier.
The press release suggested revolutionizing two or three branches of science, conducting experiments that hadn't been tested in 200 years. Gimme a break!
I am extremely skeptical of the explanation of this result.
It seems Phys Rev Letters needs better reviewers.
the theory provided to explain the torque on the spheres is no more than an asymptotic analysis. They don't provide this analysis, only the (approximate) result. SO, we are basing all this on the first term in a series.
two of the spheres were suspended by 127 micrometer steel wires, to allow rotation. They were not able to rotate freely, though. They rotated until standstill, restricted by the restoring torque of the wire. We are not told the magnitude of the angular rotation -- only that it increased with wire length, and went away when the potential was zero, reversed when the potential reversed. The restoring torque wasn't measured either.
how could a static electric field provide a rotational force on a perfectly conducting ideal sphere? By classical theory, it shouldn't. The charges will flow in the sphere until the forces are balanced. Just because the spheres are asymmetrically placed doesn't imply the need to rotate. Any residual torque on a single sphere would indicate a non-ideal sphere, non-conducting sphere, or lead to a perpetual motion machine. Some of their spheres had stainless and nickel coatings. Some were carbon. No mention was made of tests/measures of asphericity, distance of center of mass from geometric center, performance in a uniform electric field, or grain boundary alignment.
It would not surprise me to find that the spheres contained imperfections, and that was the entire cause of the observed rotation. I don't expect the sphere to rotate more than 1/2 turn, even on a 360 degree bearing, or we're back to the perpetual motion machine.
Overly zealous indeed.
If someone can figure out how to factor prime numbers,
Wait a second, please. I don't think you meant to say that!
factors(n) = {n,1}
Methyl bromide is certainly a nasty chemical,
but please keep the ozone OUT of my environment.
Ozone is great in the upper atmosphere, but
it is both corrosive and toxic. Of course
it kills the little bugs!
Have you heard about STIX?
The STIX fonts are going to cover all of Unicode.
Maybe I'll never again see "?" for every non-ASCII character. Now, *that* will be useful.
From their site:
The STIX mission will be fully realized when:
* Fully hinted PostScript Type 1 and OpenType font sets have been created.
* All characters/glyphs have been incorporated into Unicode representation or comparable representation and browsers include program logic to fully utilize the STIX font set in the electronic representation of scholarly scientific documents.
>
p watch .pdf
0 0x.htm l
Sheesh.
Well *this* not-so-ignorant PhD physicist read enough of the article and code to know that the Fortran code was not the Fortran-77 the poster speaks of, but nice shiny Fortran 90.
In light of the features of Fortran90, like
implicit none, do while, modules and derived types, a few of the points the poster makes are at least a decade out of date.
Norton et al. show how to achieve polymorphism in Fortran 90.
http://www-hpc.jpl.nasa.gov/PEP/nortonc/RSto
The Fortran 2000 draft has been out for some time
http://www.ionet.net/~jwagener/j3/Fortran-2
and it is on its way to voting.
http://www.nag.co.uk/sc22wg5/