Actually, you can blame Skype alone. Fring has been able to make Skype calls over any network source on Android for quite a while. I'm not that pleased with the quality of Skype calls over 3g, but that's a network latency issue, not a Skype issue.
At the temperatures that this would run at, most of what you're going to get in the return is sulfides and halides. Extracting anything interesting is going to leave you with a bunch of sulfur and chlorine. It's going to be far more economical and ecological to just pump it back down than to try and extract minerals. But even then there's going to be continual release of hydrogen sulfide, at least, and accumulation of sulfur compounds and salts in solid form.
That's not to say it shouldn't be done. Everything has an environmental cost, and this beats taking the top of a mountain and filling the valleys with the rubble by a long shot.
Sure! I've always been thinking about tackling this problem. With my funding situation, I might have the time now. My assumption have been that if it starts out close enough it will stick around, but there's an issue of what happens when the lunar period hits a resonance with the planetary orbital period. I think it's happened to our moon several times, but I don't know if anyone has simulated it. Will it just get pushed out of resonance a little? Or get kicked into a solar orbit?
Drop me an email...
Last stat I heard for Afghanistan was just a bit under 50%, so I wouldn't be entirely surprised if it was above 50% at this point. We train soldiers to kill. Maybe it's time to put more effort into having them look before they do so. I wonder what the friendly fire stats are for they who shall not be named. Not that they are likely to keep such stats.
It would be interesting to see if the increased use of close air support and helicopter gunships was responsible, if it's an increased "see movement, light 'em up" attitude, or if it's due to forces from multiple commands being deployed in a small area. I'm sure that report exists, but hasn't been leaked yet, AFAIK.
this franchise will never willfully disrespect, intentionally or otherwise, your memory and service.
Yeah and we'll do that by giving in to the people who turned your memory into a political football and are using your death to serve their own purposes. Because we're sure you don't want anyone to know why you died or who you were fighting. I'm sure the most important thing on your mind as you died was "I hope nobody ever feels that freedom includes the freedom to pretend to be the Taliban while playing a game." Now we'll run right out and tell those kids playing war in the street that they can't pretend to be Taliban or Iraqi Republican Guard. How disrespectful of them.
Physics is an attempt to describe the universe based upon mathematical principles and predict how it will change with time. Physics can't put requirements on the universe. For example, there may be no overlying principle that predicts the elementary unit of charge. It may just be an unexplainable property of the universe or maybe it's a random value. If that's true, then there's no "Theory of Everything" because the "Theory of Everything" can't tell you what the charge of an electron would be. It's a pretty obvious statement, but when Stephen Hawking says it, it gets press.
So I'll go one further, and blow your mind like the weed Stephen doesn't have the lung capacity to smoke. There may not be any physical laws at all. Everything that has occurred thus far in the Universe could have been random chance occurring in a way that makes it look like there are physical laws controlling how matter and energy behave. Even better, perhaps there is an infinite number of universes in superposition, but we can only observe the ones in which particles have behaved as if there were physical laws. Every instant an infinite number of those universes go random, instantly destroying an infinite number of copies of each of us. Fortunately an infinite number have followed the incredibly improbable course of behaving as if the universe made sense. Extremely unlikely, damn straight. Impossible, no.
Well, that's what you get when you stray from physics into philosophy. But remember, when Stephen Hawking says "Physicists may never find a Theory of Everything" it's logically equivalent to "Physicists may find a Theory of Everything". That's why politicians invented the word "may".
You'd have a hard time coming up with something that wasn't 100% certain to have a chance of occurring. It's a nonsense statement. He mean he was 100 percent certain there's life there. Then he makes the contradictory statement that he has almost no doubt. The contradictions are his, not mine.
Then his co-author goes on to say that there's life there until someone proves there isn't. We can't even prove there isn't life on the moon or mars.
Life on Earth spent 3.5 billion years doing nothing but making more single celled organisms. Then it rapidly evolved into lots of multicellular forms over the next half billion years. Just based on that (and assuming there is life) I'd give 90% odds on single celled life only and 10% on multicellular life.
Unlike the investigators in this study, I wouldn't be putting chances of life anywhere near 100%. They keep conflating the ability of life to survive in harsh places with the ability of life to arise in harsh places.
What aggravates me is the pronouncement that "it is tidally locked" rather than a "based on what we know it is likely to be tidally locked". Give it a large moon (which they couldn't detect) or a orbital resonance (which they might be able to detect) and suddenly it's not tidally locked. The things we know about this planet are its mass (within a factor of two or so) and its orbital period. And Butler's proclaiming to the Discovery channel that there's life there until someone proves otherwise, like that's the default position. And people wonder why scientists aren't taken seriously by the public. Maybe it's because too many of us can't put out a press release without saying something stupid.
Maybe they think that it doesn't matter because they'll probably be dead before we get the first spectra of this planet. Yell 'Yahtzee!' all you want, but I'm not going to believe it until I can see the dice.
It depends upon what you mean by multiple planets. If you mean a multiple planet like the Earth-Moon system, then no, we would show up as a single planet with the combined mass of the Earth and Moon.
If you mean multiple planets like Neptune and Jupiter, then yes it would detect each separately. What's being detected is the orbital periods, and as long as the periods are sufficiently different they can be detected separately. That's how we know that GL581 has at least 6 planets.
That's a very appropriate point to stop. To paraphrase Clarke: "When a senior scientist tells you something is impossible, they are likely to be wrong. When a senior scientist tells you something is certain, they are likely to be wrong. When a senior scientist tells you something may be possible, they are probably correct."
That assumes that the planet doesn't have a large moon that would counteract the locking effect and that it doesn't have a near orbital period resonance with another planet. Maybe they can rule out the latter, but they can't rule out the former.
Was the wager that we'd find a habitable planet or a planet with unknown properties that is in the right place to maybe be a habitable planet? There is a difference.
First, TFS is wrong. This planet is 3 to 5 times the mass of the Earth, not 30%.
The article also won't tell you what is speculation and what they've actually seen. The planet was detected through radial velocity measurement of the star. That pretty much means the only thing that has been measured is the planetary mass times the sine of the inclination of its orbit relative to the sun-Gl581 line. Hence the large uncertainty.
When they talk about atmospheres they are speculating. There is no way to tell if this planet has an atmosphere, although the large mass helps the case. There's no way to tell if the planet is covered in an 100 mile deep ocean or if it is entirely dry other than by speculating based upon the composition of the host star. With no eclipses and a small planet to star distance it's going to be a while before we know for sure about either.
When they are talking about tidal locking they are also speculating. While the planet would almost certainly be tidally locked to the star if it were the only planet in the system, it could exist in an orbital resonance with another planet that throws off the tidal locking, or it could have a large moon in close orbit, which would also do the job.
I also haven't looked to see which version of the habitable zone definition they are using. I would suspect the run-away greenhouse to ice-line version.
Forgot to mention, I believe that killing someone in a crash while driving drunk in CA is at least voluntary manslaughter, and can end up in the "murder" categories in some cases. I would also support that for texting while driving.
Since it's more dangerous than drunk driving, the punishment should be about the same as drunk driving.
First offense in California: 3-5 years probation, $390 to $1000 fine+court costs of about $1800, 6 month loss of license, traffic school, 48 hours mandatory jail time, installation of an ignition interlock.
Second offense: same, but 2 year loss of license and between 96 hours and 30 days of jail time
Slashdot Mirror
You are correct. Growing more beans would cost money. Selling the same beans twenty five times just makes money without costing anything.
Actually, you can blame Skype alone. Fring has been able to make Skype calls over any network source on Android for quite a while. I'm not that pleased with the quality of Skype calls over 3g, but that's a network latency issue, not a Skype issue.
At the temperatures that this would run at, most of what you're going to get in the return is sulfides and halides. Extracting anything interesting is going to leave you with a bunch of sulfur and chlorine. It's going to be far more economical and ecological to just pump it back down than to try and extract minerals. But even then there's going to be continual release of hydrogen sulfide, at least, and accumulation of sulfur compounds and salts in solid form.
That's not to say it shouldn't be done. Everything has an environmental cost, and this beats taking the top of a mountain and filling the valleys with the rubble by a long shot.
Eric, is this you?
Shhh! I'm pretty sure of who you are now.
Want to work on a new paper?
Sure! I've always been thinking about tackling this problem. With my funding situation, I might have the time now. My assumption have been that if it starts out close enough it will stick around, but there's an issue of what happens when the lunar period hits a resonance with the planetary orbital period. I think it's happened to our moon several times, but I don't know if anyone has simulated it. Will it just get pushed out of resonance a little? Or get kicked into a solar orbit? Drop me an email...
Last stat I heard for Afghanistan was just a bit under 50%, so I wouldn't be entirely surprised if it was above 50% at this point. We train soldiers to kill. Maybe it's time to put more effort into having them look before they do so. I wonder what the friendly fire stats are for they who shall not be named. Not that they are likely to keep such stats.
It would be interesting to see if the increased use of close air support and helicopter gunships was responsible, if it's an increased "see movement, light 'em up" attitude, or if it's due to forces from multiple commands being deployed in a small area. I'm sure that report exists, but hasn't been leaked yet, AFAIK.
this franchise will never willfully disrespect, intentionally or otherwise, your memory and service.
Yeah and we'll do that by giving in to the people who turned your memory into a political football and are using your death to serve their own purposes. Because we're sure you don't want anyone to know why you died or who you were fighting. I'm sure the most important thing on your mind as you died was "I hope nobody ever feels that freedom includes the freedom to pretend to be the Taliban while playing a game." Now we'll run right out and tell those kids playing war in the street that they can't pretend to be Taliban or Iraqi Republican Guard. How disrespectful of them.
And people still use it?
Physics is an attempt to describe the universe based upon mathematical principles and predict how it will change with time. Physics can't put requirements on the universe. For example, there may be no overlying principle that predicts the elementary unit of charge. It may just be an unexplainable property of the universe or maybe it's a random value. If that's true, then there's no "Theory of Everything" because the "Theory of Everything" can't tell you what the charge of an electron would be. It's a pretty obvious statement, but when Stephen Hawking says it, it gets press.
So I'll go one further, and blow your mind like the weed Stephen doesn't have the lung capacity to smoke. There may not be any physical laws at all. Everything that has occurred thus far in the Universe could have been random chance occurring in a way that makes it look like there are physical laws controlling how matter and energy behave. Even better, perhaps there is an infinite number of universes in superposition, but we can only observe the ones in which particles have behaved as if there were physical laws. Every instant an infinite number of those universes go random, instantly destroying an infinite number of copies of each of us. Fortunately an infinite number have followed the incredibly improbable course of behaving as if the universe made sense. Extremely unlikely, damn straight. Impossible, no.
Well, that's what you get when you stray from physics into philosophy. But remember, when Stephen Hawking says "Physicists may never find a Theory of Everything" it's logically equivalent to "Physicists may find a Theory of Everything". That's why politicians invented the word "may".
You'd have a hard time coming up with something that wasn't 100% certain to have a chance of occurring. It's a nonsense statement. He mean he was 100 percent certain there's life there. Then he makes the contradictory statement that he has almost no doubt. The contradictions are his, not mine.
Then his co-author goes on to say that there's life there until someone proves there isn't. We can't even prove there isn't life on the moon or mars.
Life on Earth spent 3.5 billion years doing nothing but making more single celled organisms. Then it rapidly evolved into lots of multicellular forms over the next half billion years. Just based on that (and assuming there is life) I'd give 90% odds on single celled life only and 10% on multicellular life.
Unlike the investigators in this study, I wouldn't be putting chances of life anywhere near 100%. They keep conflating the ability of life to survive in harsh places with the ability of life to arise in harsh places.
What aggravates me is the pronouncement that "it is tidally locked" rather than a "based on what we know it is likely to be tidally locked". Give it a large moon (which they couldn't detect) or a orbital resonance (which they might be able to detect) and suddenly it's not tidally locked. The things we know about this planet are its mass (within a factor of two or so) and its orbital period. And Butler's proclaiming to the Discovery channel that there's life there until someone proves otherwise, like that's the default position. And people wonder why scientists aren't taken seriously by the public. Maybe it's because too many of us can't put out a press release without saying something stupid.
Maybe they think that it doesn't matter because they'll probably be dead before we get the first spectra of this planet. Yell 'Yahtzee!' all you want, but I'm not going to believe it until I can see the dice.
It depends upon what you mean by multiple planets. If you mean a multiple planet like the Earth-Moon system, then no, we would show up as a single planet with the combined mass of the Earth and Moon.
If you mean multiple planets like Neptune and Jupiter, then yes it would detect each separately. What's being detected is the orbital periods, and as long as the periods are sufficiently different they can be detected separately. That's how we know that GL581 has at least 6 planets.
This is where I stopped reading:
That's a very appropriate point to stop. To paraphrase Clarke: "When a senior scientist tells you something is impossible, they are likely to be wrong. When a senior scientist tells you something is certain, they are likely to be wrong. When a senior scientist tells you something may be possible, they are probably correct."
Kepler uses eclipses, the depth of which is not strongly dependent on distance. This planet doesn't eclipse the star at all.
That assumes that the planet doesn't have a large moon that would counteract the locking effect and that it doesn't have a near orbital period resonance with another planet. Maybe they can rule out the latter, but they can't rule out the former.
I get how they can discover planets by the stars wobble or transitting the star, but how can they tell the planets rate of spin?
They can't. They are speculating based upon assumptions that may or may not be valid.
Was the wager that we'd find a habitable planet or a planet with unknown properties that is in the right place to maybe be a habitable planet? There is a difference.
First, TFS is wrong. This planet is 3 to 5 times the mass of the Earth, not 30%.
The article also won't tell you what is speculation and what they've actually seen. The planet was detected through radial velocity measurement of the star. That pretty much means the only thing that has been measured is the planetary mass times the sine of the inclination of its orbit relative to the sun-Gl581 line. Hence the large uncertainty.
When they talk about atmospheres they are speculating. There is no way to tell if this planet has an atmosphere, although the large mass helps the case. There's no way to tell if the planet is covered in an 100 mile deep ocean or if it is entirely dry other than by speculating based upon the composition of the host star. With no eclipses and a small planet to star distance it's going to be a while before we know for sure about either.
When they are talking about tidal locking they are also speculating. While the planet would almost certainly be tidally locked to the star if it were the only planet in the system, it could exist in an orbital resonance with another planet that throws off the tidal locking, or it could have a large moon in close orbit, which would also do the job.
I also haven't looked to see which version of the habitable zone definition they are using. I would suspect the run-away greenhouse to ice-line version.
I find it quite useful to communicate with people without forcing them to interrupt what they're doing.
Like driving?
Forgot to mention, I believe that killing someone in a crash while driving drunk in CA is at least voluntary manslaughter, and can end up in the "murder" categories in some cases. I would also support that for texting while driving.
Since it's more dangerous than drunk driving, the punishment should be about the same as drunk driving.
First offense in California: 3-5 years probation, $390 to $1000 fine+court costs of about $1800, 6 month loss of license, traffic school, 48 hours mandatory jail time, installation of an ignition interlock.
Second offense: same, but 2 year loss of license and between 96 hours and 30 days of jail time
Sounds fair and reasonable to me.
Pardon me, I need to go make Facebook profiles for a bunch of my enemies.
Or contraction challenged for that matter.
Being convicted of a felony does not cost you the right to vote in some states.
Given the current state of the political process in the USA, I not sure that would make things any worse than they are.