Hate to be a spoil-sport, but they got their numbers wrong. Within 30 light-years (a little less than 10 parsecs), there are only about 360 known stars (about 240 star systems). We haven't discovered all systems within 10 parsecs, but current estimates are about 500 stars. That being said, the number of stars that are likely to be inhabited by intelligent, technological civilizations is far far less than that.
Well, I've recently been planning on building a particle accelerator (nothing big, maybe a couple hundred keV). Unfortunately, due to time and money, it will probably get as far as my rail gun. So, my actual project at the moment is just a cloud chamber. I figure I can build it for less than 20 bucks and I can use an old smoke detector to produce the particles to be detected. Maybe I'll build a simple Helmholz coil to deflect those particles too.
The coolest thing I actually FINISHED was a small condensor for a helium refrigerator. I packed as much fine-gauge copper wire into a small copper box that I milled from a solid copper block about 1 cm on a side. It actually had a measurable effect, bringing the temperature down by at least 25%.
Partially it is the state of the schools. At the U, I'm getting mostly A's, do all my homework, etc. But it's hard to be motivated being assigned "busy work" or taking a third year of American History (I'm now minoring in European History so it wasn't history in general). Not to mention the other students being so, so slow at everything and having to go over every point about five times.
...are only a $1 billion market? Come on... I know governments do most of the selling, but really, smuggled weapons have GOT to be more than a lousy billion.
I think I spend less on gas than most people. I've got a fairly fuel efficient car, I commute no more than 10 miles to work (Minneapolis to Saint Paul, believe me, I've tried to find work in Minneapolis) and I try not to drive more than that. Yet, I spend about $120 per month on gas (or about 6% of my income). I could take the bus, but that would double or triple my commute time (from about 20 minutes to nearly an hour) and I'd still be paying over $80 in bus fare per month. 6% doesn't seem like much, but that's about equal to what I spend on groceries. It's about a quarter of what I spend on rent. It's more than all of my utilities combined. A difference of $1 in gas price per gallon amounts to $40 per month, money I could be spending on beer. For all those assholes who drive Escalades 40 miles each way every day, it's their own damned fault. But what can I do? I could move nearer to work, but then I end up driving longer to visit my girlfriend in Minneapolis (and all of my favorite places are in Minneapolis as well). I could take the bus, but the inconvenience and time involved outweigh the meager savings. I could buy a hybrid car, but even with tax breaks, I'm still paying more (and I can't afford a new car). Even doing what I can to reduce what I spend on gas, I'm still spending a significant fraction of my income. And when you take into account the effect of gas prices on commodities like food and goods and services like the bus, it DOES have an effect. So, yeah, unless you're lucky enough to be able to bike or walk to work, and you don't buy anything, gas prices matter.
I took Dr. Kakalios's Solid State Physics course back in my college days. I even managed to stay awake during class (a high honor, as I slept through most of my college courses). I also had the pleasure of working with him indirectly as part of a summer research program. So, if there are any UMN physics students out there, definitely take one of his courses.
You hit the nail right on the head. If, for instance, Pluto had been discovered last year, given all we know about the outer solar system, then Pluto would be classified as a KBO, just like "Xena" and Ixion, etc. The 8 planets are unique, whereas Pluto and Ceres are merely large members of 2 classes of objects. The only reason there is this backlash is sentimentality, pure and simple.
As in society as a whole, Wikipedia is adding checks and balances. Where society has police and the justice system to combat criminals, Wikipedia is using administrators to combat juvenile assholes and manipulative bastards who vandalize pages and add biased/untrue information to entries. Wikipedia was utopian in the past, and that never lasts. Now it's becoming more realistic.
You have a point. I was thinking in terms of frame-up (possibly someone trying to discredit the activists), not in terms of threat (though I can think of more constructive threats that don't involve charges of attempted arson).
It's interesting to note that the LA Times article calls it a crude explosive (which could be anything from firecracker to pipe bomb) while the other article calls it a Molotov Cocktail (which IS crude, but more specific). All that aside, obviously these people (if they did it) are complete and utter morons. One does not light a Molotov Cocktail and place it on a porch. One lights a Molotov Cocktail and throws it through a window (or air vent on a Soviet tank, which was the device's original purpose). The glass container breaks, spraying flammable liquid all over the place which then ignites, burning the place down. THAT is how one firebombs a house correctly.
The BBC article was biased, IMHO. There were statements by 4 or 5 people opposed to the decision, but only one by a supporter, which didn't even go into the reasons WHY Pluto was demoted. True, there are details that need to be worked out in the definition, but overall, it's still good. And as for the decision being revisionist, which is worse? Demoting one planet or adding tens to hundreds?
No, not really. But if you compare Pluto to Earth or Jupiter and then compare it to Sedna or "Xena" or the hundreds of KBO's discovered so far, it's obvious that Pluto is more like the the KBOs than the planets. The same was true for Ceres. It became obvious that Ceres was merely the largest of the asteroids and not a true planet, thus it was demoted. Compare any of the planets to anything else nearby. The largest objects near Earth's orbit are many orders of magnitude smaller and the same goes for the other planets. That's what sets a planet apart from a dwarf planet.
The definition of brown dwarf is pretty well... defined. There was no debate over the upper size limit for a planet because the dividing line is the ability to fuse deuterium (heavy hydrogen). This is theorized to be about 13 Jupiter masses. The upper limit for deuterium fusion is about 83 Jupiter masses (8% the mass of the sun), at which point the object can fuse hydrogen and is considered a normal star. So, really, the definition of brown dwarf is not arbitrary at all (being an object between 13 and 83 Jupiter masses).
1. No. The orbits do not overlap if you look at them three dimensionally. As for colliding, that's not going to happen since Pluto is locked in a 3:2 resonance with Neptune, which is very stable. Basically, for every 3 Neptune orbits, Pluto completes 2 orbits. These are stable on timescales of billions of years (which is why Pluto is observable today rather than having collided with Neptune billions of years ago). 2. Yes, it would be interesting (maybe not funny, though) 3. It probably wouldn't have any effect on Earth, not on a human timescale. 4. Seriously, yes, it would be interesting.
I'd like to point out that astronomers were the ones who originally classified Pluto as a "planet". Now, they've realized that it was a mistake (it's smaller than they originally thought and it's merely one of hundreds of similar bodies). Therefore, they DO have the right to reclassify it, based on current scientific knowledge.
"Clearing" basically means that all other bodies within an orbital range are much smaller. There are many asteroids that cross Earth's orbit, but none are larger than a few tens of km. All 8 planets have cleared their orbital zones. The remainder of objects in those oribtal zones are assorted junk (comets, Trojans, NEOs, Centaurs, Atens, etc). Pluto and Ceres do not qualify because there are objects of comparable size in their respective orbital zones.
Seriously, if I have 8 gigs of music on my player, I'm not going to bother listening to the crap that is FM. I know it's probabably something some people would like, but I'd rather save the space/money and get one without an FM tuner.
About a year ago, my company's internet filter started blocking Slashdot. That lasted all of a couple hours. I think some of my co-workers (who managed the company's directory services) complained. Unfortunately, the filter now blocks a couple of my favorite webcomics and Wikipedia (filtered because they are "Personal Pages"). I used to use an anonymizer to get around the filter, but they've blocked that too.
You hit it right on the head. How many times have you seen someone walk into a glass door? I've seen it a few times and it's hilarious. For that matter, I've seen people walk into non-transparent objects (even done it myself). That doesn't mean humans are unintelligent, just unaware of all their surroundings.
And, it's entirely possible that if the Earth survives the Sun's red giant phase, it will ejected from the solar system when the Sun loses even more mass as it turns into a white dwarf.
What I mean is the poster may have started his site as a joke and Taco took it seriously. So now his site is flooded with traffic and he's laughing his ass off because thousands of Slashdotters are taking it seriously too. Maybe it just comes down to the wrong categorization. If there had been the Monty Python foot instead of the spoon, things would be different.
Slashdot Mirror
Hate to be a spoil-sport, but they got their numbers wrong. Within 30 light-years (a little less than 10 parsecs), there are only about 360 known stars (about 240 star systems). We haven't discovered all systems within 10 parsecs, but current estimates are about 500 stars. That being said, the number of stars that are likely to be inhabited by intelligent, technological civilizations is far far less than that.
Well, I've recently been planning on building a particle accelerator (nothing big, maybe a couple hundred keV). Unfortunately, due to time and money, it will probably get as far as my rail gun. So, my actual project at the moment is just a cloud chamber. I figure I can build it for less than 20 bucks and I can use an old smoke detector to produce the particles to be detected. Maybe I'll build a simple Helmholz coil to deflect those particles too.
The coolest thing I actually FINISHED was a small condensor for a helium refrigerator. I packed as much fine-gauge copper wire into a small copper box that I milled from a solid copper block about 1 cm on a side. It actually had a measurable effect, bringing the temperature down by at least 25%.
Partially it is the state of the schools. At the U, I'm getting mostly A's, do all my homework, etc. But it's hard to be motivated being assigned "busy work" or taking a third year of American History (I'm now minoring in European History so it wasn't history in general). Not to mention the other students being so, so slow at everything and having to go over every point about five times.
So using large words would be out as well . . . since that limits who may understand in a different fashion.
...are only a $1 billion market? Come on... I know governments do most of the selling, but really, smuggled weapons have GOT to be more than a lousy billion.
What the fuck? This article is a dupe of an article posted in June:
/ 17/1845248
/ 01/1831256
0 1/1724225
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09
As was this one, a dupe of a story posted in 2003:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10
As is this one, a dupe of a story from last fucking year.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/
Interesting stuff? Maybe. News? Hell no, not if it's been posted before.
I think I spend less on gas than most people. I've got a fairly fuel efficient car, I commute no more than 10 miles to work (Minneapolis to Saint Paul, believe me, I've tried to find work in Minneapolis) and I try not to drive more than that. Yet, I spend about $120 per month on gas (or about 6% of my income). I could take the bus, but that would double or triple my commute time (from about 20 minutes to nearly an hour) and I'd still be paying over $80 in bus fare per month. 6% doesn't seem like much, but that's about equal to what I spend on groceries. It's about a quarter of what I spend on rent. It's more than all of my utilities combined. A difference of $1 in gas price per gallon amounts to $40 per month, money I could be spending on beer. For all those assholes who drive Escalades 40 miles each way every day, it's their own damned fault. But what can I do? I could move nearer to work, but then I end up driving longer to visit my girlfriend in Minneapolis (and all of my favorite places are in Minneapolis as well). I could take the bus, but the inconvenience and time involved outweigh the meager savings. I could buy a hybrid car, but even with tax breaks, I'm still paying more (and I can't afford a new car). Even doing what I can to reduce what I spend on gas, I'm still spending a significant fraction of my income. And when you take into account the effect of gas prices on commodities like food and goods and services like the bus, it DOES have an effect. So, yeah, unless you're lucky enough to be able to bike or walk to work, and you don't buy anything, gas prices matter.
I took Dr. Kakalios's Solid State Physics course back in my college days. I even managed to stay awake during class (a high honor, as I slept through most of my college courses). I also had the pleasure of working with him indirectly as part of a summer research program. So, if there are any UMN physics students out there, definitely take one of his courses.
You hit the nail right on the head. If, for instance, Pluto had been discovered last year, given all we know about the outer solar system, then Pluto would be classified as a KBO, just like "Xena" and Ixion, etc. The 8 planets are unique, whereas Pluto and Ceres are merely large members of 2 classes of objects. The only reason there is this backlash is sentimentality, pure and simple.
As in society as a whole, Wikipedia is adding checks and balances. Where society has police and the justice system to combat criminals, Wikipedia is using administrators to combat juvenile assholes and manipulative bastards who vandalize pages and add biased/untrue information to entries. Wikipedia was utopian in the past, and that never lasts. Now it's becoming more realistic.
Does this mean I can use it to strip the DRM from pr0n I've downloaded?
You have a point. I was thinking in terms of frame-up (possibly someone trying to discredit the activists), not in terms of threat (though I can think of more constructive threats that don't involve charges of attempted arson).
It's interesting to note that the LA Times article calls it a crude explosive (which could be anything from firecracker to pipe bomb) while the other article calls it a Molotov Cocktail (which IS crude, but more specific). All that aside, obviously these people (if they did it) are complete and utter morons. One does not light a Molotov Cocktail and place it on a porch. One lights a Molotov Cocktail and throws it through a window (or air vent on a Soviet tank, which was the device's original purpose). The glass container breaks, spraying flammable liquid all over the place which then ignites, burning the place down. THAT is how one firebombs a house correctly.
The BBC article was biased, IMHO. There were statements by 4 or 5 people opposed to the decision, but only one by a supporter, which didn't even go into the reasons WHY Pluto was demoted. True, there are details that need to be worked out in the definition, but overall, it's still good. And as for the decision being revisionist, which is worse? Demoting one planet or adding tens to hundreds?
No, not really. But if you compare Pluto to Earth or Jupiter and then compare it to Sedna or "Xena" or the hundreds of KBO's discovered so far, it's obvious that Pluto is more like the the KBOs than the planets. The same was true for Ceres. It became obvious that Ceres was merely the largest of the asteroids and not a true planet, thus it was demoted. Compare any of the planets to anything else nearby. The largest objects near Earth's orbit are many orders of magnitude smaller and the same goes for the other planets. That's what sets a planet apart from a dwarf planet.
The definition of brown dwarf is pretty well... defined. There was no debate over the upper size limit for a planet because the dividing line is the ability to fuse deuterium (heavy hydrogen). This is theorized to be about 13 Jupiter masses. The upper limit for deuterium fusion is about 83 Jupiter masses (8% the mass of the sun), at which point the object can fuse hydrogen and is considered a normal star. So, really, the definition of brown dwarf is not arbitrary at all (being an object between 13 and 83 Jupiter masses).
1. No. The orbits do not overlap if you look at them three dimensionally. As for colliding, that's not going to happen since Pluto is locked in a 3:2 resonance with Neptune, which is very stable. Basically, for every 3 Neptune orbits, Pluto completes 2 orbits. These are stable on timescales of billions of years (which is why Pluto is observable today rather than having collided with Neptune billions of years ago).
2. Yes, it would be interesting (maybe not funny, though)
3. It probably wouldn't have any effect on Earth, not on a human timescale.
4. Seriously, yes, it would be interesting.
I'd like to point out that astronomers were the ones who originally classified Pluto as a "planet". Now, they've realized that it was a mistake (it's smaller than they originally thought and it's merely one of hundreds of similar bodies). Therefore, they DO have the right to reclassify it, based on current scientific knowledge.
"Clearing" basically means that all other bodies within an orbital range are much smaller. There are many asteroids that cross Earth's orbit, but none are larger than a few tens of km. All 8 planets have cleared their orbital zones. The remainder of objects in those oribtal zones are assorted junk (comets, Trojans, NEOs, Centaurs, Atens, etc). Pluto and Ceres do not qualify because there are objects of comparable size in their respective orbital zones.
Seriously, if I have 8 gigs of music on my player, I'm not going to bother listening to the crap that is FM. I know it's probabably something some people would like, but I'd rather save the space/money and get one without an FM tuner.
About a year ago, my company's internet filter started blocking Slashdot. That lasted all of a couple hours. I think some of my co-workers (who managed the company's directory services) complained. Unfortunately, the filter now blocks a couple of my favorite webcomics and Wikipedia (filtered because they are "Personal Pages"). I used to use an anonymizer to get around the filter, but they've blocked that too.
Yeah, friendly and intelligent on rye bread.
You hit it right on the head. How many times have you seen someone walk into a glass door? I've seen it a few times and it's hilarious. For that matter, I've seen people walk into non-transparent objects (even done it myself). That doesn't mean humans are unintelligent, just unaware of all their surroundings.
And, it's entirely possible that if the Earth survives the Sun's red giant phase, it will ejected from the solar system when the Sun loses even more mass as it turns into a white dwarf.
What I mean is the poster may have started his site as a joke and Taco took it seriously. So now his site is flooded with traffic and he's laughing his ass off because thousands of Slashdotters are taking it seriously too.
Maybe it just comes down to the wrong categorization. If there had been the Monty Python foot instead of the spoon, things would be different.