As someone who has taught classes at top universities (although not Stanford), I just have to say that the answer to this question is a resounding *yes*! In the time since computers because a thing that "everyone can do" (and not just geeks), users have become significantly less geeky. I'm a scientists and I was shocked at the number of incoming *PhD* students who have close to zero programming experience. I'm a crap programmer, but have the basic skills to hack together what I need. A lot of the students I've taught (as well as grad students who were slightly-younger contemporaries of me) had shockingly little (sometimes no) programming experience.
It's also possible that this galaxy is not totally in the Hubble Flow. In other words, it might be pulled around by other nearby galaxies/galaxy clusters. All galaxies are affected by this to some extent, but with nearby galaxies (like this one), these gravitationally-caused velocities can be significant compared to the Hubble expansion-caused velocities.
The trouble is that these galaxies aren't that far away (despite the article summary says). They're quite a bit further away than the previous measurements of water masers, but you still need to use Type Ia supernovae to actually get to the distances where this discussion gets interesting. The cool thing about the water masers is that they might allow us to get out a bit further without using another "rung" on the distance ladder, but there is no way that they are going to replace the (much, much more distant) Type Ia supernovae.
Yeah. No one really cares about the SBC. Hopefully they'll fix the rest of the ACS channels on their trip up.
The only good news about this most recent failure is that it's relatively easy to replace the electronics; it was designed to be replaced and is mounted on a door on HST that they were planning on opening anyway. The only concern is that the replacement hasn't been used in over 18 years (i.e. since HST went up). But, the general thought is that the replacement of the data handling computer shouldn't necessarily bump any of the planned parts of SM4. I also think that ACS is above STIS on their priority list, so hopefully ACS is still likely to be fixed.
If you'd like to see the whole article, as published in the Astrophysical Journal, you can find it on the astro-ph journal pre-print server. It's not the "official" journal version, but it should be identical to it (and was submitted to the preprint server by the authors).
For those that are interested in this, Jacob Bekenstein (the author of the first relativistic MOND paper ~2 years ago) has a paper on the preprint server today about the possible measurable effects of MOND in the solar system.
There are now techniques that correct for the earth's atmospheric distortion which enable earth-based telescopes to be much better than the Hubble.
Not true! I've seen several people saying this on this forum, and it is false. Particuarly in the visual bands (i.e. B, V, and R), nothing approches Hubble's angular resolution. With no effort, Hubble can give you images with resolution of 0.05 arcseconds. With _a lot_ of work, V-band imaging from the ground can start to approach 0.2 arcseconds, for example (and it's worse for B). But only the best technology can do this at this point, and adaptive optics is _very_ expensive as far as time, and you often sacrifice some throughput as well.
As far as absolute collection of light, the ground-based, big telescopes are going to beat Hubble. However, as far as angular resolution, HST is still king. Adaptive/active optics is starting to pay big rewards in the IR, but it's not able to get anywhere near HST in the visual bands.
The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT, or whatever it's being called this week) is an incredible advancement, but we still need an optical telescope in space to do all of the interesting work that we'd like to do.
He admits to even having considered taking a shredder with him on some trips. "The thought has crossed my mind. I'm a paranoid S.O.B. because I know the tricks that are out there," he says.
You gotta respect a guy who refers to himself as a "paranoid S.O.B."
One of my favorite comments on this whole ID debate was made by the founder of FSMism.
He said (and I'm paraphrasing because I can't get to the site right now) that, regardless if it is correct, ID is not science. Science attempts to explain the universe by making observations and thinking up theories that explain those observations. ID uses what some people believe and looks for evidence that it's correct. There's no way to prove or disprove it since "God did it" can perfectly explain any observation you make. This is the exact opposite of science and teaching it as "science" is irresponsible. Again, I will emphasize even if ID is correct, it is not science.
I think Pluto is only considered a planet because it was grandfathered into the current (confusing and not entirely adhered to) rules on what is and isn't a planet.
I think this is a nice way of putting it. Pluto is pretty much "grandfathered" in. If you were to take the 8 inner planets in one group and the KBO's in another group and ask to which group Pluto belongs, I think that a lot of planetary scientists would say that it's a KBO (I argue this mostly because of its inclination relative to the plane of the Solar System).
However, as the discovering scientists quite rightly point out on their page, the word "planet" has entered the common usage of the English language to include Pluto. Maybe the scientists can't have the term back . . .
If you look at the bottom of this page, you get a very interesting account from the view of the scientists who have done a lot of work on it. The so-called "hacking" sounds much less nefarius than in the article.
The spelling actually has an interesting history. Both were used at one time or another in the US, but I actually think that the Brits have it right here. See Wikipedia.
Unfortunately, he is also predicting that the process will be only available to the wealthy for years after its release.
As always, The Simpsons provides the commentary:
"Well, sure, the Frinkiac-7 looks impressive, don't touch it, but I predict that within 100 years, computers will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them."
Just for the sake of curiosity, what is the value of several human lives in comparison to a robotic system? I'm sure the astronauts would like to know what monetary value you've affixed to them.
Oh, give me a break! If this was what NASA was actually concerned with, they would be abandoning the ISS, altogether. Do you really think that the risk of a single trip to HST is larger than that of the several trips that they are planning on making to the ISS?
I don't mean to imply that the astronauts' lives aren't worth anything, but there is an inherent risk in space travel that NASA seems to accept if it's going to the ISS (or the Moon, or Mars), that is somehow not acceptable when we are going to HST.
True. 1.37 kW/m^2 (NOT 1.47. . . sorry for the mis-type) is the amount that falls on the atmosphere. Regardless, I would think it's impossible to get more energy from the Sun than it puts out, so 1.37 kW/m^2 is going to be an upper limit, no matter where these things are . . .
These are the so-called "diffraction spikes." They come from the light of bright stars diffracting around the telescope's spider. The spider is the system of supports that holds the secondary mirror in place.
Sometimes you do see bleeding from saturated stars, but diffraction around the spider is usually the explanation.
Slashdot Mirror
As someone who has taught classes at top universities (although not Stanford), I just have to say that the answer to this question is a resounding *yes*! In the time since computers because a thing that "everyone can do" (and not just geeks), users have become significantly less geeky. I'm a scientists and I was shocked at the number of incoming *PhD* students who have close to zero programming experience. I'm a crap programmer, but have the basic skills to hack together what I need. A lot of the students I've taught (as well as grad students who were slightly-younger contemporaries of me) had shockingly little (sometimes no) programming experience.
It's also possible that this galaxy is not totally in the Hubble Flow. In other words, it might be pulled around by other nearby galaxies/galaxy clusters. All galaxies are affected by this to some extent, but with nearby galaxies (like this one), these gravitationally-caused velocities can be significant compared to the Hubble expansion-caused velocities.
Is something "bad" going to happen? No. Does it make interpretation of the quantity more confusing? Absolutely.
The trouble is that these galaxies aren't that far away (despite the article summary says). They're quite a bit further away than the previous measurements of water masers, but you still need to use Type Ia supernovae to actually get to the distances where this discussion gets interesting. The cool thing about the water masers is that they might allow us to get out a bit further without using another "rung" on the distance ladder, but there is no way that they are going to replace the (much, much more distant) Type Ia supernovae.
I know what you're saying, but I think you're just confusing it.
The standard way to say this is that the universe is "finite but unbounded," in the same way that the [i]surface[/i] of a sphere is.
Yeah. No one really cares about the SBC. Hopefully they'll fix the rest of the ACS channels on their trip up.
The only good news about this most recent failure is that it's relatively easy to replace the electronics; it was designed to be replaced and is mounted on a door on HST that they were planning on opening anyway. The only concern is that the replacement hasn't been used in over 18 years (i.e. since HST went up). But, the general thought is that the replacement of the data handling computer shouldn't necessarily bump any of the planned parts of SM4. I also think that ACS is above STIS on their priority list, so hopefully ACS is still likely to be fixed.
Damnit! Why can't people leave me alone?!
How would you feel about your weight being published online?
You can find the full article of this at the Astrophysics Preprint server. See here.
If you'd like to see the whole article, as published in the Astrophysical Journal, you can find it on the astro-ph journal pre-print server. It's not the "official" journal version, but it should be identical to it (and was submitted to the preprint server by the authors).
Of course, in the retirement home, there's the additional concern that this person will be mostly deaf, too.
For those that are interested in this, Jacob Bekenstein (the author of the first relativistic MOND paper ~2 years ago) has a paper on the preprint server today about the possible measurable effects of MOND in the solar system.
There are now techniques that correct for the earth's atmospheric distortion which enable earth-based telescopes to be much better than the Hubble.
Not true! I've seen several people saying this on this forum, and it is false. Particuarly in the visual bands (i.e. B, V, and R), nothing approches Hubble's angular resolution. With no effort, Hubble can give you images with resolution of 0.05 arcseconds. With _a lot_ of work, V-band imaging from the ground can start to approach 0.2 arcseconds, for example (and it's worse for B). But only the best technology can do this at this point, and adaptive optics is _very_ expensive as far as time, and you often sacrifice some throughput as well.
As far as absolute collection of light, the ground-based, big telescopes are going to beat Hubble. However, as far as angular resolution, HST is still king. Adaptive/active optics is starting to pay big rewards in the IR, but it's not able to get anywhere near HST in the visual bands.
The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT, or whatever it's being called this week) is an incredible advancement, but we still need an optical telescope in space to do all of the interesting work that we'd like to do.
I LOVE the guy's comment at the very end:
He admits to even having considered taking a shredder with him on some trips. "The thought has crossed my mind. I'm a paranoid S.O.B. because I know the tricks that are out there," he says.
You gotta respect a guy who refers to himself as a "paranoid S.O.B."
One of my favorite comments on this whole ID debate was made by the founder of FSMism.
He said (and I'm paraphrasing because I can't get to the site right now) that, regardless if it is correct, ID is not science. Science attempts to explain the universe by making observations and thinking up theories that explain those observations. ID uses what some people believe and looks for evidence that it's correct. There's no way to prove or disprove it since "God did it" can perfectly explain any observation you make. This is the exact opposite of science and teaching it as "science" is irresponsible. Again, I will emphasize even if ID is correct, it is not science.
I think Pluto is only considered a planet because it was grandfathered into the current (confusing and not entirely adhered to) rules on what is and isn't a planet.
I think this is a nice way of putting it. Pluto is pretty much "grandfathered" in. If you were to take the 8 inner planets in one group and the KBO's in another group and ask to which group Pluto belongs, I think that a lot of planetary scientists would say that it's a KBO (I argue this mostly because of its inclination relative to the plane of the Solar System).
However, as the discovering scientists quite rightly point out on their page, the word "planet" has entered the common usage of the English language to include Pluto. Maybe the scientists can't have the term back . . .
If you look at the bottom of this page, you get a very interesting account from the view of the scientists who have done a lot of work on it. The so-called "hacking" sounds much less nefarius than in the article.
Wait! Wait! Wait!
I have a piece of news, too. I want to tell everyone about "teh internet" and the best way I know how to search on it.
The spelling actually has an interesting history. Both were used at one time or another in the US, but I actually think that the Brits have it right here. See Wikipedia.
Not that I'm going to start using "aluminium".
Unfortunately, he is also predicting that the process will be only available to the wealthy for years after its release.
As always, The Simpsons provides the commentary:
"Well, sure, the Frinkiac-7 looks impressive, don't touch it, but I predict that within 100 years, computers will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them."
Just for the sake of curiosity, what is the value of several human lives in comparison to a robotic system? I'm sure the astronauts would like to know what monetary value you've affixed to them.
Oh, give me a break! If this was what NASA was actually concerned with, they would be abandoning the ISS, altogether. Do you really think that the risk of a single trip to HST is larger than that of the several trips that they are planning on making to the ISS?
I don't mean to imply that the astronauts' lives aren't worth anything, but there is an inherent risk in space travel that NASA seems to accept if it's going to the ISS (or the Moon, or Mars), that is somehow not acceptable when we are going to HST.
Correction: NICMOS could go as long as 2.5 microns. It hasn't been working for ~6 months now. And, if SM4 never goes up, it won't work again.
True. 1.37 kW/m^2 (NOT 1.47. . . sorry for the mis-type) is the amount that falls on the atmosphere. Regardless, I would think it's impossible to get more energy from the Sun than it puts out, so 1.37 kW/m^2 is going to be an upper limit, no matter where these things are . . .
Hmm. . . Good point. . . It says here that it's 1.47 kW/m^2 . . .
.
The only thing I could think of is that it's maybe one of those numbers is per Hz, or something. .
Anyone else know?
These are the so-called "diffraction spikes." They come from the light of bright stars diffracting around the telescope's spider. The spider is the system of supports that holds the secondary mirror in place.
Sometimes you do see bleeding from saturated stars, but diffraction around the spider is usually the explanation.