In some situations you do need that many consoles, and an actual command center. I don't know what the situation is here, but take a look at these pics from FermiLab control rooms. They're laid out nice.
The computers and such are stored in the next room and the rooms below. There are ~ 30 monitors on the walls, plus desks for laptops to plug in. Obviously you aren't doing particle collisions, but it is a really nice setup. Usually a staff of 4, but can support 10 or so if needed.
I think that it is more intended to be used against unexploded bomblets from cluster bombs, such as the ones used to take out runways. There is a "tool" that was used in the gulf war to detonate buried mines. The M60 Armored Vehicle Launched Mine Clearing Line Charge. A tank would fire a long line of explosive out over the mine field, and detonate it when it hits the ground. It would clear a path wide enough to drive tanks through. Obviously not practical for widespread mine clearing. Here are some pics I found:
Google it, it shouldn't be hard to find. I saw a documentary on it once. NOVA I think. It is evidently very very hard to do. Most of the early ones (and the current cheap ones) turn out brown or yellow. They can make good clear ones that are indistinguishable from real ones except that they glow under UV light.
There are a few problems with using neutrinos for communications. First, they are only produced in subatomic interactions involving the weak force, or basically any event in which a lepton decays or one quark turns into another (beta decay and the like). I believe that right now we can only do this in nuclear reactions and high energy particle collisions. You can't aim them in nuclear reactions, and I believe that it takes a pretty big particle accelerator.
Second, neutrinos can pass through anything you throw at them (except for black holes, I would guess). Nearly all neutrinos that enter the earth exit the other side without interacting with a single particle. That means that even if you manage to transmit a neutrino signal, you won't be able to receive it, because they will go right through the receiver. "But how does MINOS detect them?" I think that it just take a whole shitload of steel, puts it in the way of the beam, and once out of a great while, a single neutrino might interact and cause high energy muons (or maybe other particles) to fly out, emitting cherenkov radiation (a flash of light, the light equivalent to a sonic boom).
To brighten up the often dreary working conditions, Minneapolis artist Joseph Giannetti painted a 25- by 60-foot mural in the laboratory. It depicts his interpretation of the project with a blazing sun at the epicenter with rings of scientific symbols and physicists expanding outward.
What kind of sick bastard makes a mural of physicists being blasted out of a sun and then expanding in the vacuum of space? That's disgusting.
I was just at FermiLab last Saturday, and got to hear a physicist friend of mine complain about how all the engineers that design most of the stuff around there use Imperial, and how it confuses the hell out of the foreign scientists trying to build the damn accelerator + detectors. At least one reason to switch to metric (SI) is to make the Tevatron run a little smoother. I'm sure that NASA has seen the same problem, remember that Mars satellite that missed because of a bad unit conversion?
What gets me is people who claim that Imperial is "easier". Whenever someone tells me that, I really feel the need to dish out pain, but this is a civilized country (if you ignore the fact that Bush wants immunity from the war crimes tribunal).
Well yeah, that's true, but that wasn't the question. It was a hypothetical question. "What Would Happen If the Moon Crashed To Earth?" So we are to assume that for whatever reason it will. It's neat to think about. I'd love to see a large scale computer simulation of this, but since it would have little practical value I doubt that it will get done for a very very long time.
I see the point, but I still think that it is fine to base assumptions loosely in my case. Our solar system could be privileged (as your apartment is), but I'd bet (I don't know, of course) that it places us within an order of magnitude of the correct answer.
On a slightly related note, Fermi problems are fun.
Not to nitpick, but is should be noted that the article states that there are probably around 30 billion earth-like planets in our galaxy, not in the whole universe. A significant point, considering that there are around 10 billion large galaxies and 100 billion dwarf galaxies.
Wow, if there are 30 billion in our galaxy, that would make around 300,000,000,000,000,000,000 earth like planets in the known universe. If 1/10th of those are capable of supporting life (a pessimistic view when you consider that at least one out of four in our solar system is capable, not to mention mars and europa), then that's still 30,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets that can support life. If even 1% of those actually have life, and.1% of those have had intelligent life, that's 300,000,000,000,000 planets that have had intelligent life forms in the known universe. Of course, you have to factor in the time spans involved...
On a side note, MS word spell checker recognizes europium, but not europa.
> That's 55 years in a planetary history of 4,600,000,000 years.
What about their planet's history? It's possible that they haven't been able to travel to other planets for that entire time... more like a couple thousand years? Then the ratio is more realistic. (I just love misleading journalists...)
How do you know that there are any appreciable number of space-faring civilizations that have developed in the past few thousand years. Our sun is probably a second, maybe third or more, generation star. Many billions of years have gone by. After the first few billion, one would expect life to start reaching towards our level of complexity. That makes the chance of near-by systems developing high speed space travel nearly synchronized with our own technological revolution highly unlikely. This isn't like Star Trek where hundreds of civilizations all start developing warp drive around the same time. What you are saying is just as unlikely as the point the article was trying to make. Read Contact, that one is more likely.
Both work by the same (third) law. The turbine does not anything appreciable in the way of propulsion, it just compresses the incoming air so it can burn better and more explosively with the fuel. When the fuel burns with the air in a jet, it flies out of the back way fast, just like a rocket. There is a little fan in the back that powers the turbine in the front with the high speed air from the burning.
Just curious, does anybody know the definition of a rocket? I was just wondering what the difference was between a liquid powered rocket and a jet engine. Is it just that a rocket carries its own oxidizer?
I'm not sure. I think that the air density increases extremely fast as you approach that area, and if you slam into a region of air where you normally go 150 mph going 550 mph, there's going to be a problem. I don't remember exactly what the problem was, but it was something akin to that. Your idea may work.
"Antimatter/matter combustion, in fact, has the highest thrust/weight ratio theoretically possible given current physics."
Given current physics, yes. Just wait a while though, and we'll get Zero Point Energy working. Evidently there may be enough energy in a 1 cm^3 vacuum to boil all the worlds oceans. Much more energy than antimatter, and you don't have to take it with you, as vacuum is rather abundant. I believe that this energy source was featured in 3001: The Final Odyssey.
Actually, that's not as easy as you make it sound. In order to survive such a jump, you first need a drogue chute that keeps you from spinning wildly out of control, and then a multi-stage main chute that opens a little bit at a time. This is because you would be going super-sonic at that altitude, and the shock of going into the lower atmosphere with a fully deployed parachute would snap you and the chute like so much fish. The guy who did the 102,000 ft. jump barely made it, if I remember it correctly. Didn't he have a problem with the drogue?
Forget the major faults in plots, I'm annoyed by some of the visuals. Like in the end of matrix, when they fire off the EMP. EMP is a perfectly viable weapon against robots and the like, so it was a nice touch. However, when they activated it, you saw a ssssslllllllloooowwww shockwave moving out at a few meters per second, as opposed to around 299792458 m/s like it should. And you could SEE a shockwave. Good god, just make a fancy ass flash or something and be done with it.
Could you make a sweet ass heat sink out of this? Think about it, you coat a processor in this stuff and the waste heat is converted into light. Your heat sink would glow rather then just get hot. Then you would have case lighting standard! They could just put it on at the factory.
The list the sizes of the little tungsten rods as "1.2 mm, the rod-to-rod spacing is 4.2 mm". I think they mean 1.2 um and 4.2 um (u = mu), micrometers, not millimeters. They should have someone with an education in science or engineering read over this stuff before they publish.
Just like translated text should be read over by a native speaker. "All your base are belong to us."
Well duh you'll die if there is ONLY nitrogen in the air. But that's not how the article made it sound. It made it sound as if nitrogen was the cause of death. Lack of oxygen would be the cause. VERY different things. Nitrogen was just an innocent bystander.
The article said that "Nguyen Van Set......entered an airlocked storage lab and died from exposure to nitrogen."
Um, isn't nitrogen one of the most inert and least dangerous gases there is, practically a noble gas? Isn't nitrogen used specifically when you DON'T want something bad to happen? Isn't the atmosphere like 70-80% nitrogen?
I always thought it was "De gustibus non disputandum est." At least, that's why my high school philosophy teacher told me back in the day. And that bitch was never wrong... maybe.
Slashdot Mirror
In some situations you do need that many consoles, and an actual command center. I don't know what the situation is here, but take a look at these pics from FermiLab control rooms. They're laid out nice.
CDF control room front
CDF control room front left
CDF control room right
The computers and such are stored in the next room and the rooms below. There are ~ 30 monitors on the walls, plus desks for laptops to plug in. Obviously you aren't doing particle collisions, but it is a really nice setup. Usually a staff of 4, but can support 10 or so if needed.
I think that it is more intended to be used against unexploded bomblets from cluster bombs, such as the ones used to take out runways. There is a "tool" that was used in the gulf war to detonate buried mines. The M60 Armored Vehicle Launched Mine Clearing Line Charge. A tank would fire a long line of explosive out over the mine field, and detonate it when it hits the ground. It would clear a path wide enough to drive tanks through. Obviously not practical for widespread mine clearing. Here are some pics I found:
pic1
pic 2
pic 3
Oh no! I'm deep-linking!
Google it, it shouldn't be hard to find. I saw a documentary on it once. NOVA I think. It is evidently very very hard to do. Most of the early ones (and the current cheap ones) turn out brown or yellow. They can make good clear ones that are indistinguishable from real ones except that they glow under UV light.
There are a few problems with using neutrinos for communications. First, they are only produced in subatomic interactions involving the weak force, or basically any event in which a lepton decays or one quark turns into another (beta decay and the like). I believe that right now we can only do this in nuclear reactions and high energy particle collisions. You can't aim them in nuclear reactions, and I believe that it takes a pretty big particle accelerator.
Second, neutrinos can pass through anything you throw at them (except for black holes, I would guess). Nearly all neutrinos that enter the earth exit the other side without interacting with a single particle. That means that even if you manage to transmit a neutrino signal, you won't be able to receive it, because they will go right through the receiver. "But how does MINOS detect them?" I think that it just take a whole shitload of steel, puts it in the way of the beam, and once out of a great while, a single neutrino might interact and cause high energy muons (or maybe other particles) to fly out, emitting cherenkov radiation (a flash of light, the light equivalent to a sonic boom).
particle physics rocks.
To brighten up the often dreary working conditions, Minneapolis artist Joseph Giannetti painted a 25- by 60-foot mural in the laboratory. It depicts his interpretation of the project with a blazing sun at the epicenter with rings of scientific symbols and physicists expanding outward.
What kind of sick bastard makes a mural of physicists being blasted out of a sun and then expanding in the vacuum of space? That's disgusting.
A Diamond core? That certainly is plausable, but how big of a bread-planet does that require?
On a slightly related note, check out this article from last month.
I was just at FermiLab last Saturday, and got to hear a physicist friend of mine complain about how all the engineers that design most of the stuff around there use Imperial, and how it confuses the hell out of the foreign scientists trying to build the damn accelerator + detectors. At least one reason to switch to metric (SI) is to make the Tevatron run a little smoother. I'm sure that NASA has seen the same problem, remember that Mars satellite that missed because of a bad unit conversion?
What gets me is people who claim that Imperial is "easier". Whenever someone tells me that, I really feel the need to dish out pain, but this is a civilized country (if you ignore the fact that Bush wants immunity from the war crimes tribunal).
Well yeah, that's true, but that wasn't the question. It was a hypothetical question. "What Would Happen If the Moon Crashed To Earth?" So we are to assume that for whatever reason it will. It's neat to think about. I'd love to see a large scale computer simulation of this, but since it would have little practical value I doubt that it will get done for a very very long time.
I see the point, but I still think that it is fine to base assumptions loosely in my case. Our solar system could be privileged (as your apartment is), but I'd bet (I don't know, of course) that it places us within an order of magnitude of the correct answer.
On a slightly related note, Fermi problems are fun.
Not to nitpick, but is should be noted that the article states that there are probably around 30 billion earth-like planets in our galaxy, not in the whole universe. A significant point, considering that there are around 10 billion large galaxies and 100 billion dwarf galaxies.
.1% of those have had intelligent life, that's 300,000,000,000,000 planets that have had intelligent life forms in the known universe. Of course, you have to factor in the time spans involved...
Wow, if there are 30 billion in our galaxy, that would make around 300,000,000,000,000,000,000 earth like planets in the known universe. If 1/10th of those are capable of supporting life (a pessimistic view when you consider that at least one out of four in our solar system is capable, not to mention mars and europa), then that's still 30,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets that can support life. If even 1% of those actually have life, and
On a side note, MS word spell checker recognizes europium, but not europa.
> That's 55 years in a planetary history of 4,600,000,000 years.
What about their planet's history? It's possible that they haven't been able to travel to other planets for that entire time... more like a couple thousand years? Then the ratio is more realistic. (I just love misleading journalists...)
How do you know that there are any appreciable number of space-faring civilizations that have developed in the past few thousand years. Our sun is probably a second, maybe third or more, generation star. Many billions of years have gone by. After the first few billion, one would expect life to start reaching towards our level of complexity. That makes the chance of near-by systems developing high speed space travel nearly synchronized with our own technological revolution highly unlikely. This isn't like Star Trek where hundreds of civilizations all start developing warp drive around the same time. What you are saying is just as unlikely as the point the article was trying to make. Read Contact, that one is more likely.
Both work by the same (third) law. The turbine does not anything appreciable in the way of propulsion, it just compresses the incoming air so it can burn better and more explosively with the fuel. When the fuel burns with the air in a jet, it flies out of the back way fast, just like a rocket. There is a little fan in the back that powers the turbine in the front with the high speed air from the burning.
Just curious, does anybody know the definition of a rocket? I was just wondering what the difference was between a liquid powered rocket and a jet engine. Is it just that a rocket carries its own oxidizer?
In actual fact rocket engines are 'heat engines' and more efficient than jet engines and routinely achieve 80% efficiency.
I think not. A rocket engine is not a heat engine. And the maximum efficiency of a heat engine is 27%.
Undercarriage costs weight too.
The shuttle already has an undercarriage, as is evidenced by this picture on this site
Why does it have to be liquid water? Last I checked, any H2O was considered water, liquid or not.
I'm not sure. I think that the air density increases extremely fast as you approach that area, and if you slam into a region of air where you normally go 150 mph going 550 mph, there's going to be a problem. I don't remember exactly what the problem was, but it was something akin to that. Your idea may work.
"Antimatter/matter combustion, in fact, has the highest thrust/weight ratio theoretically possible given current physics."
Given current physics, yes. Just wait a while though, and we'll get Zero Point Energy working. Evidently there may be enough energy in a 1 cm^3 vacuum to boil all the worlds oceans. Much more energy than antimatter, and you don't have to take it with you, as vacuum is rather abundant. I believe that this energy source was featured in 3001: The Final Odyssey.
Here's something related, the Casimir Effect.
I'm not sure how strong the stuff is. It would have to be rather strong to contain the vacuum. Here is some indication, it's supporting a brick.
Actually, that's not as easy as you make it sound. In order to survive such a jump, you first need a drogue chute that keeps you from spinning wildly out of control, and then a multi-stage main chute that opens a little bit at a time. This is because you would be going super-sonic at that altitude, and the shock of going into the lower atmosphere with a fully deployed parachute would snap you and the chute like so much fish. The guy who did the 102,000 ft. jump barely made it, if I remember it correctly. Didn't he have a problem with the drogue?
Forget the major faults in plots, I'm annoyed by some of the visuals. Like in the end of matrix, when they fire off the EMP. EMP is a perfectly viable weapon against robots and the like, so it was a nice touch. However, when they activated it, you saw a ssssslllllllloooowwww shockwave moving out at a few meters per second, as opposed to around 299792458 m/s like it should. And you could SEE a shockwave. Good god, just make a fancy ass flash or something and be done with it.
Could you make a sweet ass heat sink out of this? Think about it, you coat a processor in this stuff and the waste heat is converted into light. Your heat sink would glow rather then just get hot. Then you would have case lighting standard! They could just put it on at the factory.
The list the sizes of the little tungsten rods as "1.2 mm, the rod-to-rod spacing is 4.2 mm". I think they mean 1.2 um and 4.2 um (u = mu), micrometers, not millimeters. They should have someone with an education in science or engineering read over this stuff before they publish.
Just like translated text should be read over by a native speaker. "All your base are belong to us."
Well duh you'll die if there is ONLY nitrogen in the air. But that's not how the article made it sound. It made it sound as if nitrogen was the cause of death. Lack of oxygen would be the cause. VERY different things. Nitrogen was just an innocent bystander.
The article said that "Nguyen Van Set... ...entered an airlocked storage lab and died from exposure to nitrogen."
Um, isn't nitrogen one of the most inert and least dangerous gases there is, practically a noble gas? Isn't nitrogen used specifically when you DON'T want something bad to happen? Isn't the atmosphere like 70-80% nitrogen?
Can someone explain?
I always thought it was "De gustibus non disputandum est." At least, that's why my high school philosophy teacher told me back in the day. And that bitch was never wrong... maybe.