Of course, we could build a fusion pulse rocket right now. Just get a huge bowl, with shock absorbers and a spaceship above it, and explode a few hydrogen bombs underneath.
Actually, this is an old concept known as Daedalus and was invented by the British Interplanetary Society.
As stated in the article, the silica-spheres are self organizing. You only need to give them time (and a CLEAN! environment) and then they will produce perfect crystals (although a small degree of disorder would always be pressent due to thermodynamical reasons).
Actually the earth's magnetic field has changed direction at least a hundred times during the last 400 million years. It was discovered in the 60 and 70'es as the US first produced magnetic maps of the north atlantic (possibly in orer to later be able to tell if a particular magnetic anomaly was a submerged russian submarine). They found long linear magnetic anomalies, which were parallel to the mid atlantic ridge. They found out, that each linear anomaly had a 'twin' on the other side of the ridge, and that the ridge was exactly in the middle of the twins.
It was concluded, that each magnetic anomaly corresponded to a 'magnetic reversal' where the magnetic field had either been parallel to the pressent day field (a magnetic possitive anomaly) or anti-parallel to the pressent field (a magnetic negative anomaly).
For the first time earth based scientists can have samples from Mars that thay can study and analyse in an earth based lab.
The important differece between this and the analysis of the Mars soil by the Mars Pathfinder/Sojuner and earlier Mars missions that made soft landings on Mars is that they did the analysis on Mars, and they could only do a limited mumber and types of analysis.
Having the samples here on earth (and unpoluted by atmospheric reentry as the Mars meteorites found in Antarctica is) allows scientists to do more sofisticated analysis.
This way we will have a much more detailed knowledge of the Martian soil and Rocks than before, and just possible, fossil records of earlier Martian life could be found by microscopy analysis of the returned samples.
Apart from sending geologists and other scientists to Mars this is the best thing to do.
The reason for the lack of observations of planets outside mercurys orbit arround other stars is the method of detection.
All the previously found planets were discovered by doppler shift of the parent star. Unless an object is rather massive (more than 1% of the mass of the star) you would not be able to detect it if it had an orbital radius similar to Jupiter. The task gets easier if the orbit is close to the star, as the pertubations in the stars light repeats at a shorter time interval.
The fission at earth and jupiter's cores is NOT spontaneous decay like you see in a sample of carbon 14 that is left to sit (at least not mostly). It's collision-mediated decay, a slow form of chain reaction like you see in a detonating U235 bomb. That is to say, like nuclear fusion, the fission that occurs in the earth's core is collision mediated.
Sorry to say this, but the radioactive heat liberated within the Earth's core (and within Jupiters core) Is due to random decay of uranium and thorium. Fission does not occour there! The concentration of thorium and uranium within the core is far too low to allow fission to occour. Remember that the earth's core is 90%iron and 10%nickel. These metals are fairly good neutron absorbers, so in order for nuclear reactions other than alpha or beta decay to occour, you would need more than one percent uranium within the core.
Uranium and Thorium is not so abundant within the earths core, as it forms light silicates, and during the earths early life was concentrated in the crust of the earth in the process of differentiation of the earth as a whole.
Well even if you allow for 90 percent of the mass to be lost in the upper atmosphere, you still end up with an explosive eqvivalent of 100 MT divided among a few pieces. Ok you dont end up woth 1000 1MT blasts, perhaps only 10 to 50, but that scattered along a larger area would still be very bad neews.
Well even if ablation or disintegration reduces the energy by a factor of 10 it would not matter much. I don't think it matters if you are hit by a 3 million MT blast or only a 300.000 MT blast..:-)
You niss the point here. It is true that if you set the nuke off at the surface of the asteroid or inside it, then you only get more objects.
The concept of ysing nukes is to set them off at a distance, so the presure wawe and the radiation pushes the asteroid instead of blowing it up. The presure wawe vould push at the same time as the vaporisation of the surface layers of the asteroid would act as a rocket engine and add further thrust.
Setting off a nuke next to the asteroid is just such a method, although not as controlable as you may want, but the energy is suficiently if you do it early enough.
Excatcly, and that's why none of the curent plans for a missile defense or similar system have any chance of doing anything about an incomming asteroid or comet. With current technolyge you would have to do the deflection many months before impact in order for the small change in orbit to do any good.
And you are exactly right, blowing the thing up is worse than doing nothing, as you only get more fragments (although smaller) to rain over a larger area.
The total dicipated energy would still be the same, but instead of one 1000 MT blast you would get 1000 1MT blasts scattered evenly throughout the hemisphere that by chance points towards the asteroid cloud upon impact..
The reason for no lightning at the poles, is thet in order for a cloud to be electrically charged it has to be composed of droplets of liquid water. The current theory about how clouds charge is by colisions of drops in the cloud.
Large drops falls through the cloud and collides with smaller drops going up. These collisions transfer charge from the down-going drops to the up-going drops, and thus a larde charge difference between top and bottom of the cloud develops. The large charge in the bottom of the cloud results in the formation of a 'mirror charge' in the ground beneath it and these charges are responsible for the lightning.
Well you could only use this technique if you use the sonic signals to triangulate from. Unless you have some extremly accurate clocks, then you would not be able to detect any difference in the arrival-time between the different listening stations, if you try to use the electromagnetic signal from the lightning.
Remember, than electromagnetic radiation travels with the speed of light! The time it takes for the electromagnetic signal from a lightning strike 10 km away to travel to the receiver is only 33 micro seconds. if you use the sonic signal, however, you would be able to do the triangulation fairly easily with relatively cheap watches. Your only concern would be that you and your friends should be certain that you measure the arrival time for the same lightning strike.
Yep, you are right (apart form the time-frame as others have pointed out), unless the Sun takes a near direct hit, the andromeda and our galaxy would pass each other without much fuss (at least in our part of it).
Granted, the shapes of the two galaxies would change dramatically, and perhaps the sun would be thrown out of the milkyway, but if that happened, the rest of the solar system vould follow, and the inner solar system would be largely unaffected.
The Oort cloud of snowballs (e.g. comets) would be affected though. So the inner solar system would experince some fancy fireworks in the sky when a lot of comets starts to appear. These comets may collide with earth (big 'BOOM' as on Jupiter a few years ago) but otherwise we (or who may be here at that time) would not notice.
Well it would not be that difficoult to hit the Space Shuttle with something that could destroy it.
Imagine what a hand held SAM would do to it. If i belive correctly, the Stinger has an effective range of 10 km and a top speed of mach 2. Just aim it at the fuel tank or one of the solid boosters.. The Space Shuttle fuel tank and the booster rockets are not that heavily armoured, as they have to be light, and a small hole in either the hydrogen tank or the oxygen tank may be catastrophic. Similarly with the solid boosters. thay are basically slow exploding bombs, as the fuel can detonate.
You only have to hit it before it reaches mach as it would otherwise be albe to outrun any missile as you say. But at the point where it reaches mack one is also at a rather high altitude, so the range problem would be there anyway.
Therefore i think it is a good thing that they has upgraded the security arround the launch. Remember that the terrorists may have russian or US SAM's at their hands for rapid use, and they may be in the US or Europe already.
Competent rocks are rocks like granite or gneiss that does not deform under it's own weight like soil or ice.
When i say does not deform under it's own weight i mean at ordinary pressures and temperatures. Even granite will deform under high stresses and temperatures, and this is the main reason for the creation of mountain ranges like Rocky Mountains.
But some people start thinking Mars or Earth when they hear the word planet, and forget that a planet does not have to have a solid or liquid surface (which most scientise belive are nescesary for life (i.e liquid water)) as opposed to the super critical gasses found on Jupiter and Saturn.
While it is nice to see that the Doppler-shift methods of inferring the existence planets around other stars being verified by an other indirect observation this is not the same as to say that other earth like planets exists out there.
The planets found so far are all in Jupiter's mass-class and all of them are in close orbits around the parent star. This makes it more likely that they are 'dud'-stars in a double star system, where one of the members did not attract enough mass to start thermonuclear reactions.
The techniques used to detect these giant planets in close orbit would at present not be able to detect the earth over interstellar instances. Likely not even Jupiter would be detected. This is good news, as there could be literally thousands of earth like planets within 100 light years, as we would be unable to detect them.
To be able to see earth like planets at earth like distances from their parent star, would require a much more advanced telescope than Hubble. The ideal place for this telescope would be on the far side of the moon, which could shield it from visible as well as infrared light from earth and the sun (50 % of the time). As the moon is also geologically very quiet compared to earth better performance would be achieved. This is further augmented by the lower moon gravity which would make it possible to produce stable telescopes with a mirror-diameter larger than 6 meters, which seems to be the maximum here on earth for one-piece mirrors.
Well enough said about this. Applaud to NASA for doing something worthwhile.
Well you are a bit wrong about this, yes tha outer orbit is much longer than the inner orbit. An other thing you have to include is that it is gravity that keep satelites in orbit, and this scales with the square of the radius or the orbit. This boils down to Keplers third law:
the square of the orbits period are proportional to the cube of the orbits radius (for a circular orbit).
This results in that the outer orbit (which is a geo-stationary orbit) takes 24 hours whereas the inner orbit only takes some 100 minutes (give or takte).
Well it would only be a problem if a large object (like another satelite) came to be in-between. Even laser light diverge at these distances, so you only point the beam at the other satelite. The beam-diameter would be more than 1 meter, and if a small dust-grain was to come in-between, it would be impossible to detect it. Remember, that light do bend arround corners (quantum mechanics; slit experiments) so even if the dust grain vas directly between the laser and the sensor on the other satelite, it would not 'turn off' the beam. You vould only notice (if at all) a small decrease in light intensity.
Besides, i think they would have included some error-recovery system in their data link, this is standard for all data-transmission links (even home networks on ne2000 compliant netcards).
The real feat here is that they could point a narro beam at a mowing target and keep it there (autonomously that is).
The trick could be to use the gradual decrease in beam intensity as you move to the outer portions of the beam, and send this information back to the other satelite to re-adjust. If you used several sensors spaced some distance apart, you could determine the direction the beam has to be moved (Theoretically that is). I do not know if this could be done in real life as i'm no laser specialist or space engineer.
I remember that someone defined 7 different types of intelligence, where the mathematical/logical one tested in mensa-test etc. was only one of them. The others were linguistic, social, mucical and some others i cannot remember at pressent.
If you define intelligence as equal to the mathematically/logically then the IQ is a good measure.
I also do not think that it is a coincidence that Niels Bohr and his son Åge Bohr both
got the Nobel price in physics (the former in 1922, the later in 1975) (check www.nobel.se)
You are absolutely right, but Hawking radiation cannot transfer huge energies over short time. The effect of Hawking radiation is also scales inversely with the mass of the black hole, as the gravitational gradient is steeper near a small black hole than near a big one.
Comparing Hawking radiation and this new magnetically induced energy transfer (if it exsists) is like comparing a candle light to the sun, Both create light but with different effect.
Having discovered this method of energy transfer in the space close to a black hole might also be the key to explaining the huge energy jets observed from the centers of some galaxies (This is also mentioned in the original NASA article).
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, this is an old concept known as Daedalus and was invented by the British Interplanetary Society.
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to mars one day with a hammer.
As stated in the article, the silica-spheres are self organizing. You only need to give them time (and a CLEAN! environment) and then they will produce perfect crystals (although a small degree of disorder would always be pressent due to thermodynamical reasons).
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
Actually the earth's magnetic field has changed direction at least a hundred times during the last 400 million years. It was discovered in the 60 and 70'es as the US first produced magnetic maps of the north atlantic (possibly in orer to later be able to tell if a particular magnetic anomaly was a submerged russian submarine). They found long linear magnetic anomalies, which were parallel to the mid atlantic ridge. They found out, that each linear anomaly had a 'twin' on the other side of the ridge, and that the ridge was exactly in the middle of the twins.
It was concluded, that each magnetic anomaly corresponded to a 'magnetic reversal' where the magnetic field had either been parallel to the pressent day field (a magnetic possitive anomaly) or anti-parallel to the pressent field (a magnetic negative anomaly).
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
This is great news indeed.
For the first time earth based scientists can have samples from Mars that thay can study and analyse in an earth based lab.
The important differece between this and the analysis of the Mars soil by the Mars Pathfinder/Sojuner and earlier Mars missions that made soft landings on Mars is that they did the analysis on Mars, and they could only do a limited mumber and types of analysis.
Having the samples here on earth (and unpoluted by atmospheric reentry as the Mars meteorites found in Antarctica is) allows scientists to do more sofisticated analysis.
This way we will have a much more detailed knowledge of the Martian soil and Rocks than before, and just possible, fossil records of earlier Martian life could be found by microscopy analysis of the returned samples.
Apart from sending geologists and other scientists to Mars this is the best thing to do.
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
The reason for the lack of observations of planets outside mercurys orbit arround other stars is the method of detection.
All the previously found planets were discovered by doppler shift of the parent star. Unless an object is rather massive (more than 1% of the mass of the star) you would not be able to detect it if it had an orbital radius similar to Jupiter. The task gets easier if the orbit is close to the star, as the pertubations in the stars light repeats at a shorter time interval.
Yours Yazeran
Plan: to go to Mars one day with a hammer.
The fission at earth and jupiter's cores is NOT spontaneous decay like you see in a sample of carbon 14 that is left to sit (at least not mostly). It's collision-mediated decay, a slow form of chain reaction like you see in a detonating U235 bomb. That is to say, like nuclear fusion, the fission that occurs in the earth's core is collision mediated.
Sorry to say this, but the radioactive heat liberated within the Earth's core (and within Jupiters core) Is due to random decay of uranium and thorium. Fission does not occour there! The concentration of thorium and uranium within the core is far too low to allow fission to occour. Remember that the earth's core is 90%iron and 10%nickel. These metals are fairly good neutron absorbers, so in order for nuclear reactions other than alpha or beta decay to occour, you would need more than one percent uranium within the core.
Uranium and Thorium is not so abundant within the earths core, as it forms light silicates, and during the earths early life was concentrated in the crust of the earth in the process of differentiation of the earth as a whole.
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
Well even if you allow for 90 percent of the mass to be lost in the upper atmosphere, you still end up with an explosive eqvivalent of 100 MT divided among a few pieces. Ok you dont end up woth 1000 1MT blasts, perhaps only 10 to 50, but that scattered along a larger area would still be very bad neews.
Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer
Well even if ablation or disintegration reduces the energy by a factor of 10 it would not matter much. I don't think it matters if you are hit by a 3 million MT blast or only a 300.000 MT blast.. :-)
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
You niss the point here. It is true that if you set the nuke off at the surface of the asteroid or inside it, then you only get more objects.
The concept of ysing nukes is to set them off at a distance, so the presure wawe and the radiation pushes the asteroid instead of blowing it up. The presure wawe vould push at the same time as the vaporisation of the surface layers of the asteroid would act as a rocket engine and add further thrust.
Yours Yaseran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
Setting off a nuke next to the asteroid is just such a method, although not as controlable as you may want, but the energy is suficiently if you do it early enough.
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
Excatcly, and that's why none of the curent plans for a missile defense or similar system have any chance of doing anything about an incomming asteroid or comet. With current technolyge you would have to do the deflection many months before impact in order for the small change in orbit to do any good.
And you are exactly right, blowing the thing up is worse than doing nothing, as you only get more fragments (although smaller) to rain over a larger area.
The total dicipated energy would still be the same, but instead of one 1000 MT blast you would get 1000 1MT blasts scattered evenly throughout the hemisphere that by chance points towards the asteroid cloud upon impact..
Yours Yazeran
Plan: Top go to Mars one day with a hammer
Large drops falls through the cloud and collides with smaller drops going up. These collisions transfer charge from the down-going drops to the up-going drops, and thus a larde charge difference between top and bottom of the cloud develops. The large charge in the bottom of the cloud results in the formation of a 'mirror charge' in the ground beneath it and these charges are responsible for the lightning.
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
Remember, than electromagnetic radiation travels with the speed of light! The time it takes for the electromagnetic signal from a lightning strike 10 km away to travel to the receiver is only 33 micro seconds. if you use the sonic signal, however, you would be able to do the triangulation fairly easily with relatively cheap watches. Your only concern would be that you and your friends should be certain that you measure the arrival time for the same lightning strike.
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
Granted, the shapes of the two galaxies would change dramatically, and perhaps the sun would be thrown out of the milkyway, but if that happened, the rest of the solar system vould follow, and the inner solar system would be largely unaffected.
The Oort cloud of snowballs (e.g. comets) would be affected though. So the inner solar system would experince some fancy fireworks in the sky when a lot of comets starts to appear. These comets may collide with earth (big 'BOOM' as on Jupiter a few years ago) but otherwise we (or who may be here at that time) would not notice.
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
Imagine what a hand held SAM would do to it. If i belive correctly, the Stinger has an effective range of 10 km and a top speed of mach 2. Just aim it at the fuel tank or one of the solid boosters.. The Space Shuttle fuel tank and the booster rockets are not that heavily armoured, as they have to be light, and a small hole in either the hydrogen tank or the oxygen tank may be catastrophic. Similarly with the solid boosters. thay are basically slow exploding bombs, as the fuel can detonate.
You only have to hit it before it reaches mach as it would otherwise be albe to outrun any missile as you say. But at the point where it reaches mack one is also at a rather high altitude, so the range problem would be there anyway.
Therefore i think it is a good thing that they has upgraded the security arround the launch. Remember that the terrorists may have russian or US SAM's at their hands for rapid use, and they may be in the US or Europe already.
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer
When i say does not deform under it's own weight i mean at ordinary pressures and temperatures. Even granite will deform under high stresses and temperatures, and this is the main reason for the creation of mountain ranges like Rocky Mountains.
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
But some people start thinking Mars or Earth when they hear the word planet, and forget that a planet does not have to have a solid or liquid surface (which most scientise belive are nescesary for life (i.e liquid water)) as opposed to the super critical gasses found on Jupiter and Saturn.
Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a Hammer.
The planets found so far are all in Jupiter's mass-class and all of them are in close orbits around the parent star. This makes it more likely that they are 'dud'-stars in a double star system, where one of the members did not attract enough mass to start thermonuclear reactions.
The techniques used to detect these giant planets in close orbit would at present not be able to detect the earth over interstellar instances. Likely not even Jupiter would be detected. This is good news, as there could be literally thousands of earth like planets within 100 light years, as we would be unable to detect them.
To be able to see earth like planets at earth like distances from their parent star, would require a much more advanced telescope than Hubble. The ideal place for this telescope would be on the far side of the moon, which could shield it from visible as well as infrared light from earth and the sun (50 % of the time). As the moon is also geologically very quiet compared to earth better performance would be achieved. This is further augmented by the lower moon gravity which would make it possible to produce stable telescopes with a mirror-diameter larger than 6 meters, which seems to be the maximum here on earth for one-piece mirrors.
Well enough said about this. Applaud to NASA for doing something worthwhile.
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
Well you are a bit wrong about this, yes tha outer orbit is much longer than the inner orbit. An other thing you have to include is that it is gravity that keep satelites in orbit, and this scales with the square of the radius or the orbit. This boils down to Keplers third law:
the square of the orbits period are proportional to the cube of the orbits radius (for a circular orbit).
This results in that the outer orbit (which is a geo-stationary orbit) takes 24 hours whereas the inner orbit only takes some 100 minutes (give or takte).
Besides, i think they would have included some error-recovery system in their data link, this is standard for all data-transmission links (even home networks on ne2000 compliant netcards).
The real feat here is that they could point a narro beam at a mowing target and keep it there (autonomously that is).
The trick could be to use the gradual decrease in beam intensity as you move to the outer portions of the beam, and send this information back to the other satelite to re-adjust. If you used several sensors spaced some distance apart, you could determine the direction the beam has to be moved (Theoretically that is). I do not know if this could be done in real life as i'm no laser specialist or space engineer.
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
I remember that someone defined 7 different types of intelligence, where the mathematical/logical one tested in mensa-test etc. was only one of them. The others were linguistic, social, mucical and some others i cannot remember at pressent.
If you define intelligence as equal to the mathematically/logically then the IQ is a good measure.
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
I also do not think that it is a coincidence that Niels Bohr and his son Åge Bohr both
got the Nobel price in physics (the former in 1922, the later in 1975) (check www.nobel.se)
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
Seriously, as the poster above mentioned, IQ=100 is defined as the average inteligence.
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
Comparing Hawking radiation and this new magnetically induced energy transfer (if it exsists) is like comparing a candle light to the sun, Both create light but with different effect.
Having discovered this method of energy transfer in the space close to a black hole might also be the key to explaining the huge energy jets observed from the centers of some galaxies (This is also mentioned in the original NASA article).
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
There should have been some visual red-shift observed at the two sides of the accretion disk.
Having said that, the video does look cool..
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.