By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor
Neutrinos - some of nature's most elusive sub-atomic particles - do change their properties as they travel through space.
We are much more certain now that we have really shown that solar neutrinos change type
Prof Dave Wark, University of Sussex
New evidence confirms last year's indication that one type of neutrino emerging from the Sun's core does switch to another type en route to the Earth.
This explains the so-called solar neutrino mystery, which has had scientists puzzled for 30 years - why so few of the particles expected to emerge from the nuclear furnace in our star can actually be detected.
The new data mean the reactions put forward by physicists to describe how the Sun works are correct.
The data were obtained from the underground Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) in Canada.
Going underground
Neutrinos are ghostly particles with no electric charge and very little mass. They are known to exist in three types related to three different charged particles - the electron and its lesser-known relatives, the muon and the tau.
Electron-neutrinos are created in the thermonuclear reactions at the solar core. Because these reactions are understood, it has been possible to estimate the number of electron-neutrinos that should emerge from our star.
But it has baffled scientists for decades as to why just a third of this expected number could actually be detected.
Using the underground Sudbury neutrino detector, an international group of researchers has been able to determine that the observed number of electron-neutrinos is only a fraction of the total number emitted from the Sun - clear evidence that the particles change type en route to Earth.
SNO Project Director, Dr Art McDonald, of Queen's University, Canada, said the number of electron-neutrinos detected combined with the numbers of other types picked up at Sudbury gave a total that was consistent with scientists' understanding of the nuclear reactions occurring at the Sun's core.
All types
The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory is a unique neutrino telescope, the size of a 10-storey building, two kilometres underground, down a mine in Ontario.
The SNO detector consists of 1,000 tonnes of ultrapure heavy water, enclosed in a 12-metre-diameter acrylic-plastic vessel, which in turn is surrounded by ultrapure ordinary water in a giant 22-metre-diameter by 34-metre-high cavity.
The observatory detects about one neutrino per hour
Outside the acrylic vessel is a 17-metre-diameter geodesic sphere containing 9,600 light sensors or photomultiplier tubes, which detect tiny flashes of light emitted as neutrinos are stopped or scattered in the heavy water.
At a detection rate of about one neutrino per hour, many days of operation are required to provide sufficient data for a complete analysis.
Because SNO uses "heavy" water - the hydrogen atom in the water molecule has an extra neutron - it is able to detect not only electron-neutrinos through one type of reaction, but also all three known neutrino types through a different reaction.
Very accurate
Dr Andre Hamer, of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, US, said: "In order to make these measurements, we had to restrict the radioactivity in the detector to minute levels and determine the background effects very accurately to show clearly that we are observing neutrinos from the Sun."
The research not only improves our understanding of the Sun but of the elusive neutrinos as well.
The latest results, entirely from the SNO detector, (and which have been submitted to Physical Review Letters) are said to be 99.999% accurate.
Dr MacDonald said: "The SNO team is really excited because these measurements enable neutrino properties such as mass to be specified with much greater certainty for fundamental theories of elementary particles."
Mass differences
This announcement is confirmation of indications released in June 2001 that suggested that it was highly likely that neutrinos changed type on their way from the Sun.
However those conclusions were always tentative because they were based on comparisons of results from SNO with those from a different experiment, the Super-Kamiokande detector in Japan.
Professor Dave Wark, of the University of Sussex and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK, commented: "Whenever a scientific conclusion relies on two experiments, and on the theory connecting them, it is twice as hard to be certain that you understand what is going on.
"We are therefore much more certain now that we have really shown that solar neutrinos change type."
Professor Hamish Robertson of the University of Washington, US, added: "There's absolutely no question the neutrino type changes and now we know quite precisely the mass differences between these particles."
Kazaa Lite is 'spyware free' says creator
By James Middleton [19-04-2002]
Hacked version of file sharing software
Kazaa users can now get hold of a hacked version of the peer-to-peer file sharing software which claims to be spyware free.
Earlier this month Kazaa users discovered that the client software includes what is effectively a Trojan program which connects to another network called Altnet and taps the user's processing power and storage space.
Brilliant Digital Media, the company behind the stealth peer-to-peer software, plans to activate the software on users' machines in the next few weeks and sell the resources to be used for distributed computing.
But recently released Kazaa Lite software is a hacked-up version of the Kazaa client without the third party software or banner adverts.
Created by a Russian programmer known only as 'Yuri', the illicit Kazaa Lite was developed as an alternative 'non-misleading' version of the software.
Kazaa Lite has also caught the attention of Sharman Networks, the developer of the original Kazaa software. Sharman said that it will vigorously defend its rights but has not said that it will take legal action against Kazaa Lite.
It would be difficult to block Kazaa Lite clients from accessing the Kazaa network simply because of the openness of the system which lets millions of users log on simultaneously.
KazaaLite.com has reported over 80,000 downloads since the program was released and no interoperability problems with the Kazaa network.
In an FBI van across the street from J0nhhy H4x0r...
*blink* *blink* "Ok, we're getting the data...decoding now..." "Hmm, he keeps accessing this"goatse.cx" page...what the hell is that?" "Pull it up." "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
And to think, the FBI will never bother us again...
I think you all know how this is gonna work out...the second somebody downloads it, its gonna be out on morpheus in about 3 seconds. Webcomics arent really for profit, anyhow. Some of the best comics are free (Penny-arcade, Jerkcity, UserFriendly, etc). I really doubt that this is going to work out very well.
but if AMD switched to its new "MHz doesn't equal performance" naming scheme for its higher end Athlons (where one would assume that the users probably look at benchmarks) why is it sticking with GHz for "mainstream PC" chips (where you would imagine that users are less likely to look at benchmarks)?
Because people who can't afford the higher-end processors usually arent all that knowledgeable about computers and are more likely to believe MHz=performance (this isnt completely true, as i know plenty of people who are geniuses, and still work off a P2 300). Thus, if you are Joe Schlub, you know how to work the start button on windows xp, and you are looking for an upgrade to your old machine, you aren't gonna look at many benchmarks, you're gonna look at 1.3GHz, and think "wow, this is great! im gonna go and buy one!" This is what AMD is banking on, that less knowledeable people will go for the older processors, so they dont get stuck with a bunch of 1.3's as Intel's rolling out the "New 2.8GHz whatever-the-hell-they-plan-to-call-it".
Ok, great. We can get 2Mb/s anywhere in the world. But the transmitter is as large as a suitcase. Too inconvienent, you say? Does anybody remember the first cellular phones? Those things were about the size of a small backpack, and you could only use them in a car. Not do mention the cost. Those things were damned expensive. But now, you can go anywhere that sells wireless phones, and pick up one that fits in the palm of your hand, and pay less than $200 for the privliage. It's the same with the first "laptop" computers, they were about the size of a minitower desktop, and you could only use them if you had a power source to plug into. If you had less than $5000 to spend on a computer, forget about it! But now, you can go to any computer store, and pick up a palm pilot (which has more processing power than the machine my family paid $3000 for back in 1987 had), for a cool $199.98.
I guess the point i'm trying to make is, wait a few years. Given time, technology will shrink and grow less expensive, and thus more avaliable to the common geek.
Thats the real artistry...
on
NY Times on Anime
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Where Western animators struggle to create a convincing illusion of life, Japanese animators are more interested in capturing single expressive gestures, or in evoking a particular mood through the careful use of color.
I think this is the real difference between anime and western animation. While disney spends millions of dollars on computer animation, going for the "almost lifelike" feeling, anime such as "Graveyard of the Fireflies" spends far more time conveying the overall feeling of sadness (and no annoying musical numbers either). I think that anime in general can be far more emotional than western animation will ever be.
if im getting labeled a troll for my sig file, you really should think about why i put that there. im not a troller, i am, however, concerned about how slashdot is quelling the voices of dissention. they dont even seem to care about the valid, ontopic posts (even the oracle related posts were bitchslapped)! i think if more people were to be made aware of this, and an open forum created to deal with this, a true feeling of free speech would be fostered.
Does anybody remember phone slamming? Where a customer's long distance provider was changed with out his/her knowledge or consent? Isnt this the same thing?
After being trapped in AOHell for nearly five years, i have to say that if AOL aquires Red Hat, you may as well kiss it goodbye. AOL has made some of the worst written software in history, their service is a joke, and their tech support is nearly non-existant. Now, i respect the people at Red Hat (i now use Red Hat 7.2), and i think that they make a great product, but if AOL gets ahold of them, they're gonna disappear so fast that it'll make David Copperfield look like an amateur! The people at RH need to get a clue: AOL is only buying them for their name, they have no interest in open souce software, nor do they care about the average computer user (for five years, i dealt with a 19.2kb/s connection on a 59kb/s modem. they blamed faulty installations of the software every single time. of course, everybody else that i knew that used AOL had the same problem).
Red Hat is seen as the foremost distributer of linux. if this deal were to go through, I would be truly worried about the future of open source software.
Slashdot Mirror
Experiment confirms Sun theories
The SNO was constructed to solve a mystery
By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor
Neutrinos - some of nature's most elusive sub-atomic particles - do change their properties as they travel through space.
We are much more certain now that we have really shown that solar neutrinos change type
Prof Dave Wark, University of Sussex New evidence confirms last year's indication that one type of neutrino emerging from the Sun's core does switch to another type en route to the Earth.
This explains the so-called solar neutrino mystery, which has had scientists puzzled for 30 years - why so few of the particles expected to emerge from the nuclear furnace in our star can actually be detected.
The new data mean the reactions put forward by physicists to describe how the Sun works are correct.
The data were obtained from the underground Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) in Canada.
Going underground
Neutrinos are ghostly particles with no electric charge and very little mass. They are known to exist in three types related to three different charged particles - the electron and its lesser-known relatives, the muon and the tau.
Electron-neutrinos are created in the thermonuclear reactions at the solar core. Because these reactions are understood, it has been possible to estimate the number of electron-neutrinos that should emerge from our star.
But it has baffled scientists for decades as to why just a third of this expected number could actually be detected.
Using the underground Sudbury neutrino detector, an international group of researchers has been able to determine that the observed number of electron-neutrinos is only a fraction of the total number emitted from the Sun - clear evidence that the particles change type en route to Earth.
SNO Project Director, Dr Art McDonald, of Queen's University, Canada, said the number of electron-neutrinos detected combined with the numbers of other types picked up at Sudbury gave a total that was consistent with scientists' understanding of the nuclear reactions occurring at the Sun's core.
All types
The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory is a unique neutrino telescope, the size of a 10-storey building, two kilometres underground, down a mine in Ontario.
The SNO detector consists of 1,000 tonnes of ultrapure heavy water, enclosed in a 12-metre-diameter acrylic-plastic vessel, which in turn is surrounded by ultrapure ordinary water in a giant 22-metre-diameter by 34-metre-high cavity.
The observatory detects about one neutrino per hour
Outside the acrylic vessel is a 17-metre-diameter geodesic sphere containing 9,600 light sensors or photomultiplier tubes, which detect tiny flashes of light emitted as neutrinos are stopped or scattered in the heavy water.
At a detection rate of about one neutrino per hour, many days of operation are required to provide sufficient data for a complete analysis.
Because SNO uses "heavy" water - the hydrogen atom in the water molecule has an extra neutron - it is able to detect not only electron-neutrinos through one type of reaction, but also all three known neutrino types through a different reaction.
Very accurate
Dr Andre Hamer, of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, US, said: "In order to make these measurements, we had to restrict the radioactivity in the detector to minute levels and determine the background effects very accurately to show clearly that we are observing neutrinos from the Sun."
The research not only improves our understanding of the Sun but of the elusive neutrinos as well.
The latest results, entirely from the SNO detector, (and which have been submitted to Physical Review Letters) are said to be 99.999% accurate.
Dr MacDonald said: "The SNO team is really excited because these measurements enable neutrino properties such as mass to be specified with much greater certainty for fundamental theories of elementary particles."
Mass differences
This announcement is confirmation of indications released in June 2001 that suggested that it was highly likely that neutrinos changed type on their way from the Sun.
However those conclusions were always tentative because they were based on comparisons of results from SNO with those from a different experiment, the Super-Kamiokande detector in Japan.
Professor Dave Wark, of the University of Sussex and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK, commented: "Whenever a scientific conclusion relies on two experiments, and on the theory connecting them, it is twice as hard to be certain that you understand what is going on.
"We are therefore much more certain now that we have really shown that solar neutrinos change type."
Professor Hamish Robertson of the University of Washington, US, added: "There's absolutely no question the neutrino type changes and now we know quite precisely the mass differences between these particles."
Kazaa Lite is 'spyware free' says creator
By James Middleton [19-04-2002]
Hacked version of file sharing software Kazaa users can now get hold of a hacked version of the peer-to-peer file sharing software which claims to be spyware free.
Earlier this month Kazaa users discovered that the client software includes what is effectively a Trojan program which connects to another network called Altnet and taps the user's processing power and storage space.
Brilliant Digital Media, the company behind the stealth peer-to-peer software, plans to activate the software on users' machines in the next few weeks and sell the resources to be used for distributed computing.
But recently released Kazaa Lite software is a hacked-up version of the Kazaa client without the third party software or banner adverts.
Created by a Russian programmer known only as 'Yuri', the illicit Kazaa Lite was developed as an alternative 'non-misleading' version of the software.
Kazaa Lite has also caught the attention of Sharman Networks, the developer of the original Kazaa software. Sharman said that it will vigorously defend its rights but has not said that it will take legal action against Kazaa Lite.
It would be difficult to block Kazaa Lite clients from accessing the Kazaa network simply because of the openness of the system which lets millions of users log on simultaneously.
KazaaLite.com has reported over 80,000 downloads since the program was released and no interoperability problems with the Kazaa network.
More info can be found at Kazaalite.com.
In an FBI van across the street from J0nhhy H4x0r...
*blink* *blink* "Ok, we're getting the data...decoding now..."
"Hmm, he keeps accessing this"goatse.cx" page...what the hell is that?"
"Pull it up."
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
And to think, the FBI will never bother us again...
if i had mod points, you'd be 2, Funny
i believe this was already posted a few weeks ago.
Because people who can't afford the higher-end processors usually arent all that knowledgeable about computers and are more likely to believe MHz=performance (this isnt completely true, as i know plenty of people who are geniuses, and still work off a P2 300).
Thus, if you are Joe Schlub, you know how to work the start button on windows xp, and you are looking for an upgrade to your old machine, you aren't gonna look at many benchmarks, you're gonna look at 1.3GHz, and think "wow, this is great! im gonna go and buy one!"
This is what AMD is banking on, that less knowledeable people will go for the older processors, so they dont get stuck with a bunch of 1.3's as Intel's rolling out the "New 2.8GHz whatever-the-hell-they-plan-to-call-it".
Ok, great. We can get 2Mb/s anywhere in the world. But the transmitter is as large as a suitcase. Too inconvienent, you say? Does anybody remember the first cellular phones? Those things were about the size of a small backpack, and you could only use them in a car. Not do mention the cost. Those things were damned expensive. But now, you can go anywhere that sells wireless phones, and pick up one that fits in the palm of your hand, and pay less than $200 for the privliage.
It's the same with the first "laptop" computers, they were about the size of a minitower desktop, and you could only use them if you had a power source to plug into. If you had less than $5000 to spend on a computer, forget about it! But now, you can go to any computer store, and pick up a palm pilot (which has more processing power than the machine my family paid $3000 for back in 1987 had), for a cool $199.98.
I guess the point i'm trying to make is, wait a few years. Given time, technology will shrink and grow less expensive, and thus more avaliable to the common geek.
Where Western animators struggle to create a convincing illusion of life, Japanese animators are more interested in capturing single expressive gestures, or in evoking a particular mood through the careful use of color.
I think this is the real difference between anime and western animation. While disney spends millions of dollars on computer animation, going for the "almost lifelike" feeling, anime such as "Graveyard of the Fireflies" spends far more time conveying the overall feeling of sadness (and no annoying musical numbers either).
I think that anime in general can be far more emotional than western animation will ever be.
After being trapped in AOHell for nearly five years, i have to say that if AOL aquires Red Hat, you may as well kiss it goodbye. AOL has made some of the worst written software in history, their service is a joke, and their tech support is nearly non-existant. Now, i respect the people at Red Hat (i now use Red Hat 7.2), and i think that they make a great product, but if AOL gets ahold of them, they're gonna disappear so fast that it'll make David Copperfield look like an amateur!
The people at RH need to get a clue: AOL is only buying them for their name, they have no interest in open souce software, nor do they care about the average computer user (for five years, i dealt with a 19.2kb/s connection on a 59kb/s modem. they blamed faulty installations of the software every single time. of course, everybody else that i knew that used AOL had the same problem).
Red Hat is seen as the foremost distributer of linux. if this deal were to go through, I would be truly worried about the future of open source software.