You are correct. The Moon's angular size is close enough to the Sun's that some eclipses are annular (the Moon is too far away to cover the Sun). Even during a total eclipse, you can see the bright inner corona (not the photosphere - that's what makes it total).
For lunar eclipses, the Earth will generally completely cover the Sun, inner corona and all. However, refraction through the Earth's atmosphere lights up the Lunar landscape, (i.e., the light of every Sun rise and Sun set going on everywhere on Earth). This light - the depth of the eclipse - has been used to infer global atmospheric conditions over historical time.
Well, I don't see it in the pictures, but the original article does make this clear - one of the two electric fields is done by putting copper electrodes in the water, so a current is flowing and you are correct.
OK, having read the "real" article, the best response is that this may explain the observed effects. The major differences
- the depth of the film is an important parameter, but that isn't known for the original experiments, so they can't compare results to theory in a detailed fashion.
- the theoretical work leads to at most one steady vortex in a container, but the experimental results show both one and two. The two vortex results may, of course, be transient.
- the theoretical results have flow speeds largest at the outer boundary. The experimental results have it increasing towards the center. This may be explainable by other effects, such as surface tension, but it is a discrepancy.
And the article says nothing directly about where the energy is coming from, but, reading it, it must be the electric field.
There is friction, so this requires energy - where does it come from ? My guess is that the electric field is actually lowered, so they are converting E field energy to rotational energy, but that the losses are small enough to make this quasi-static.
I don't see that this is that surprising. The Phoenix landing site was low enough to have the surface pressure above the "triple point" of water, so liquid water is just a matter of having it being warm enough (or having enough salts to depress the freezing point enough).
And by quarrying the fossils in bulk sections, the geomorphic relationship is completely lost.
That is not what I got from the article - "huge chunks of soil from the site have been removed intact and now sit in large wooden crates on the museum's back lot" precisely because "researchers are perhaps even more excited about finding smaller fossils of tree trunks, turtles, snails, clams, millipedes, fish, gophers and even mats of oak leaves. In the early 1900s, the first excavators at La Brea threw out similar items in their haste to find prized animal bones, and crucial information about the period was lost."
So while, yes, they are in a hurry, it seems to me that they are trying hard to preserve the context and stratigraphy and are fully aware of the benefit of such information.
I have been in touch with the Boxee people about sourcing content on Boxee, and they pointed me to their API for Developers and an RSS format.
What's not clear to me why there aren't templates or the equivalent for common video sources such as H.264 or Flash. (I.e., if I am sourcing a standard video stream, why do I even need an API ?
Another appropriate comparison would be UDP with Forward Erasure Protection (FEC), which is a probabilistically guaranteed delivery mechanism (i.e., the data will probably arrive in full, but there is no guarantee, for times when accepting that risk is better than requiring delivery).
So, what, future computers may come with a big sticker :
WARNING : Should not be used in life-critical calculations.
On the other hand, if the errors are really rare and random, and he can make chips 7 times faster at 1/30th the power drain, then you could array 3 such chips at 7 times the speed and 1/10 the power usage, and do your computations by majority vote.
This is how the Poles hacked into the German enigma - careless use of keyboard patterns leading to superposition and a break of the duplicated passwords.
Like any long term change in the structure of society, these things take time and public education. When the DMCA first passed, it received all of the public attention of plans for the next hyperspace bypass being posted on Alpha Centauri. There is no way that that could be repeated. I am not saying we couldn't have another DMCA, but not at least without public notice. Next I expect to see politicians running on anti copyright industry platforms. The gradient here at least points in a sensible direction.
On your larger point, the eternal desire for extra-democratic control has likewise largely shifted from out-right dictatorships to extra-national bureaucracy. This may have reached its high-water mark recently, with the EU Constitution on one hand, and the WTO on the other, and now the balance of power seems to be shifting in other directions.
I am not going to try and prove anything good about ACTA. On the contrary, I assume that any secret treaty is bad and was done for malign purposes, as secrecy is far more often in my experience used for hiding the bad than protecting the good.
Slashdot Mirror
I read it on Slashdot.
You are correct. The Moon's angular size is close enough to the Sun's that some eclipses are annular (the Moon is too far away to cover the Sun). Even during a total eclipse, you can see the bright inner corona (not the photosphere - that's what makes it total).
For lunar eclipses, the Earth will generally completely cover the Sun, inner corona and all. However, refraction through the Earth's atmosphere lights up the Lunar landscape, (i.e., the light of every Sun rise and Sun set going on everywhere on Earth). This light - the depth of the eclipse - has been used to infer global atmospheric conditions over historical time.
Apollo 12 went through a solar eclipse on the way back from the Moon, shortly after leaving Lunar Orbit.
Well, I don't see it in the pictures, but the original article does make this clear - one of the two electric fields is done by putting copper electrodes in the water, so a current is flowing and you are correct.
OK, having read the "real" article, the best response is that this may explain the observed effects. The major differences
- the depth of the film is an important parameter, but that isn't known for the original experiments, so they can't compare results to theory in a detailed fashion.
- the theoretical work leads to at most one steady vortex in a container, but the experimental results show both one and two. The two vortex results may, of course, be transient.
- the theoretical results have flow speeds largest at the outer boundary. The experimental results have it increasing towards the center. This may be explainable by other effects, such as surface tension, but it is a discrepancy.
And the article says nothing directly about where the energy is coming from, but, reading it, it must be the electric field.
There is friction, so this requires energy - where does it come from ? My guess is that the electric field is actually lowered, so they are converting E field energy to rotational energy, but that the losses are small enough to make this quasi-static.
Now off to RTFA.
Thinking about it, if any parts of the Phoenix surface were heated above 0 C, liquid water condensation would have almost certainly formed there.
The lander did have heaters...
I don't see that this is that surprising. The Phoenix landing site was low enough to have the surface pressure above the "triple point" of water, so liquid water is just a matter of having it being warm enough (or having enough salts to depress the freezing point enough).
TFA quotes Adobe's fine print (some of it anyway) in which Adobe specifically states "desktop computers".
Un huh. That says a lot, considering most of the people I know no longer use desktop computers to access the Internet.
And by quarrying the fossils in bulk sections, the geomorphic relationship is completely lost.
That is not what I got from the article - "huge chunks of soil from the site have been removed intact and now sit in large wooden crates on the museum's back lot" precisely because "researchers are perhaps even more excited about finding smaller fossils of tree trunks, turtles, snails, clams, millipedes, fish, gophers and even mats of oak leaves. In the early 1900s, the first excavators at La Brea threw out similar items in their haste to find prized animal bones, and crucial information about the period was lost."
So while, yes, they are in a hurry, it seems to me that they are trying hard to preserve the context and stratigraphy and are fully aware of the benefit of such information.
I don't see why this is so surprising a location - it is just down the street (Wilshire) from the La Brea tar pits.
Ideally this would bankrupt the company
That, IMHO, should be required in this case, not a possible side effect.
From my (limited) understanding, people like this tend not to do well inside. They are too likely to meet with prior acquaintances who bear grudges.
Mod the parent up - this is the real cause of the problem.
bgp maxas-limit 75
would stop this on most routers.
I have been in touch with the Boxee people about sourcing content on Boxee, and they pointed me to their API for Developers and an RSS format.
What's not clear to me why there aren't templates or the equivalent for common video sources such as H.264 or Flash. (I.e., if I am sourcing a standard video stream, why do I even need an API ?
Is that layer that expensive performance-wise ?
That was the bet IBM and others made with RISC. It still seems like the way to go, but Intel and CISC is still here...
Don't ARMs also run BSD ? It would seem that Apple might have a solution for their laptops, if they decided to go that way.
The cold winter in 1709 was towards the tail-end of the "Maunder Minimum" in sunspots and solar activity. Given that sunspot numbers are again unusually low, maybe it will happen again.
Another appropriate comparison would be UDP with Forward Erasure Protection (FEC), which is a probabilistically guaranteed delivery mechanism (i.e., the data will probably arrive in full, but there is no guarantee, for times when accepting that risk is better than requiring delivery).
So, what, future computers may come with a big sticker :
WARNING : Should not be used in life-critical calculations.
On the other hand, if the errors are really rare and random, and he can make chips 7 times faster at 1/30th the power drain, then you could array 3 such chips at 7 times the speed and 1/10 the power usage, and do your computations by majority vote.
Does this message thread constitute an "access control circumvention device" under the DMCA?
Yes. The police will arrive at your place shortly.
This is how the Poles hacked into the German enigma - careless use of keyboard patterns leading to superposition and a break of the duplicated passwords.
Like any long term change in the structure of society, these things take time and public education. When the DMCA first passed, it received all of the public attention of plans for the next hyperspace bypass being posted on Alpha Centauri. There is no way that that could be repeated. I am not saying we couldn't have another DMCA, but not at least without public notice. Next I expect to see politicians running on anti copyright industry platforms. The gradient here at least points in a sensible direction.
On your larger point, the eternal desire for extra-democratic control has likewise largely shifted from out-right dictatorships to extra-national bureaucracy. This may have reached its high-water mark recently, with the EU Constitution on one hand, and the WTO on the other, and now the balance of power seems to be shifting in other directions.
I am not going to try and prove anything good about ACTA. On the contrary, I assume that any secret treaty is bad and was done for malign purposes, as secrecy is far more often in my experience used for hiding the bad than protecting the good.
No, of course not. The people doing the taking are the same ones writing the treaties.