Ever notice how when you read about this bullshit, it is paid for from Federal funds ? The answer, of course, is simple - local citizens tend to object if too much money is wasted on bullshit toys, the Feds don't really care, the cops like their gadgets and SWAT teams, and the vendors, and their lobbyists, are tickled pink. This practice started in 1968 with the Omnibus Crime Bill; 43 years of the experiment of massive Federal subsidies of local police shows that it is totally value-subtracting and should be stopped.
I suspect a far more interesting value for nuclear weapon ratings would be the effective blast radius, both as an airburst and at ground level. 9 megatons might be something that would wipe out an entire large metropolitan area, or it might be something that would just take out a city center. The difference is significant.
It is more efficient to use a bunch of "small" bombs than one monster one if you want to take out a city. This is described in detail in The Effects of Nuclear Weapons.
Have you ever seen Pantex ? It is rather... large.
It was designed to handle kilotons of chemical explosives at a time, and those just might go boom, so each building is separated by a very wide gap to the next. Even if trick or treat in Amarillo Texas involves hundreds of pounds of dynamite, I doubt the workers would hear it.
Don't consider any school within 800 km of home. (I would relax that some for MIT, but not for RPI.) It's a big planet, get used to moving around on it.
As far as schools are concerned, check out MIT, Rice, Caltech and Ga Tech.
This is the thin leading wedge of tyranny. Everyone involved in the decision making process of this program, starting with Mr. Bill Gibbons, should be fired and banned from Government employment for life, as they have shown themselves as being clearly unworthy of the public trust.
I read something like this and I think, who is funding this guy ? He is an Italian politician, and I have followed enough Italian politics to see no reason to assume he is on the level. That means that child porno is presumably just a cover, but what is it a cover for ? Is some intelligence agency bankrolling this tomfoolery ? Organized crime ?
Why not just put the atoms in a magnetic torus field or a circular track rather than a linear track? Seems they already use magnetic fields to sort out the atoms to get the ones in the correct phase.
You basically don't want to accelerate the atoms if you don't have to, and in a ring they would be constantly accelerating. Gravity is a little different, as it is very smooth and doesn't require contact with structure, magnetic fields, etc.
Well, first, this is a NASA technology demonstration mission for a clock needed by JPL. That means that NASA is going to validate that this clock will work in space, so that JPL can use it where they operate (i.e., deep space, the Moon, Mars and beyond).
Second, yes, the very best modern clocks work differently with and without gravity. This is basically because the atoms used are so cold they are moving at human type velocities, and so gravity can't be ignored. The best terrestrial clocks are the fountains - take very cold atoms, moving at ~ 1 meter per second in a trap and shut off the trap. Some of the atoms (the ones that happen to be moving up) will ballistically go up, and then fall back down. (This is much like tossing your keys up 1 meter or so, and then catching them, except with single atoms.) The gravity is used to collimate the pulse of atoms going up and down, and (with timing the round trip) to select only the ultracold ones coming down. By timing the round trip, you can really select a particular set of velocities - the better constrained the velocity dispersion, the better constrained the clock read out.
NONE of that works in zero-G, and PHARAO (I am more familiar with this clock that the JPL Hg Ion one) is completely re-designed to use fountain-like ideas in a linear beam. I am not sure it would even work on the ground, and it definitely needs zero-g to meet its performance goals.
ESA will get there first, with the Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space(ACES), intended for the ISS in 2013, which should be good to ~ 10**-16 and will include a test of relativity. I believe that this is the JPL clock, which is aiming at 10**-15 stability, and a 2015 launch. (Both are fairly low earth orbits, with the JPL clock intended for an Iridium satellite.)
So, the JPL effort is cool, and I would love to see one flown to Mars or truly deep space, but this is one case where the Europeans are in the lead.
I know a sniper who carries an umbrella (to block IR sensors). I think they can get their hands on aluminum foil. In fact, I think that they could get whatever they think they need.
You know who will get this treatment first and best - the "1%." This will lead pretty directly to some really old CEOs - imagine a 150 year old Rupert Murdoch, still running Fox in 2081, or Steve Ballmer still running Microsoft in 2106
ACTA is not a Treaty. It's an Act. The President would sign it, and it would have the effect of an Executive Order (a future President, for example, could repudiate it). That's why at least one Senator is upset - they all should be. It's an end-run around their authority.
We (or at least certain pieces inside the USG) want to sign this precisely so we can use it to browbeat other countries. We instigated it. We did the end-run around WIPO. We tried to keep it secret. It's our baby through and through.
NASA has basically bet the Mars program on the soon to be launched MSL. If it doesn't work, it will be very hard to keep the teams of researchers intact for the very long gap until the next mission.
I predict that planetary (and lunar) exploration will be internationalized under the ISECG's Global Exploration Roadmap, which is the best thought out plan for space exploration I have seen in a long time.
You can bet on it - this all comes from some sales guy who convinced the school system that they had to do it for some bogus reason. He's got his commission, the school will abandon these after a little while, the taxpayers get gypped, but not in a way that most of them will notice.
Slashdot Mirror
Ever notice how when you read about this bullshit, it is paid for from Federal funds ? The answer, of course, is simple - local citizens tend to object if too much money is wasted on bullshit toys, the Feds don't really care, the cops like their gadgets and SWAT teams, and the vendors, and their lobbyists, are tickled pink. This practice started in 1968 with the Omnibus Crime Bill; 43 years of the experiment of massive Federal subsidies of local police shows that it is totally value-subtracting and should be stopped.
Pantex has been doing this sort of stuff since World War II. I suspect anyone who cares knows about it.
The B41 was 25 megatons and the largest bomb we deployed.
While it may be the largest weapon deployed...
You be wanting the B41, at 25 megatons.
I suspect a far more interesting value for nuclear weapon ratings would be the effective blast radius, both as an airburst and at ground level. 9 megatons might be something that would wipe out an entire large metropolitan area, or it might be something that would just take out a city center. The difference is significant.
It is more efficient to use a bunch of "small" bombs than one monster one if you want to take out a city. This is described in detail in The Effects of Nuclear Weapons.
Have you ever seen Pantex ? It is rather... large.
It was designed to handle kilotons of chemical explosives at a time, and those just might go boom, so each building is separated by a very wide gap to the next. Even if trick or treat in Amarillo Texas involves hundreds of pounds of dynamite, I doubt the workers would hear it.
Don't consider any school within 800 km of home. (I would relax that some for MIT, but not for RPI.) It's a big planet, get used to moving around on it.
As far as schools are concerned, check out MIT, Rice, Caltech and Ga Tech.
It's not direct democracy (Switzerland has that, and people actually vote on things like immigration policy), but it's not a bad idea.
I wish that Obama had the guts to implement a few of the top ones.
This is the thin leading wedge of tyranny. Everyone involved in the decision making process of this program, starting with Mr. Bill Gibbons, should be fired and banned from Government employment for life, as they have shown themselves as being clearly unworthy of the public trust.
You are of course quite correct. But, ACES will still fly before DSAC does, which is something.
I read something like this and I think, who is funding this guy ? He is an Italian politician, and I have followed enough Italian politics to see no reason to assume he is on the level. That means that child porno is presumably just a cover, but what is it a cover for ? Is some intelligence agency bankrolling this tomfoolery ? Organized crime ?
Why not just put the atoms in a magnetic torus field or a circular track rather than a linear track? Seems they already use magnetic fields to sort out the atoms to get the ones in the correct phase.
You basically don't want to accelerate the atoms if you don't have to, and in a ring they would be constantly accelerating. Gravity is a little different, as it is very smooth and doesn't require contact with structure, magnetic fields, etc.
Well, first, this is a NASA technology demonstration mission for a clock needed by JPL. That means that NASA is going to validate that this clock will work in space, so that JPL can use it where they operate (i.e., deep space, the Moon, Mars and beyond).
Second, yes, the very best modern clocks work differently with and without gravity. This is basically because the atoms used are so cold they are moving at human type velocities, and so gravity can't be ignored. The best terrestrial clocks are the fountains - take very cold atoms, moving at ~ 1 meter per second in a trap and shut off the trap. Some of the atoms (the ones that happen to be moving up) will ballistically go up, and then fall back down. (This is much like tossing your keys up 1 meter or so, and then catching them, except with single atoms.) The gravity is used to collimate the pulse of atoms going up and down, and (with timing the round trip) to select only the ultracold ones coming down. By timing the round trip, you can really select a particular set of velocities - the better constrained the velocity dispersion, the better constrained the clock read out.
NONE of that works in zero-G, and PHARAO (I am more familiar with this clock that the JPL Hg Ion one) is completely re-designed to use fountain-like ideas in a linear beam. I am not sure it would even work on the ground, and it definitely needs zero-g to meet its performance goals.
Pharao is one component of ACES (see above).
ESA will get there first, with the Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space (ACES), intended for the ISS in 2013, which should be good to ~ 10**-16 and will include a test of relativity. I believe that this is the JPL clock, which is aiming at 10**-15 stability, and a 2015 launch. (Both are fairly low earth orbits, with the JPL clock intended for an Iridium satellite.)
So, the JPL effort is cool, and I would love to see one flown to Mars or truly deep space, but this is one case where the Europeans are in the lead.
I know a sniper who carries an umbrella (to block IR sensors). I think they can get their hands on aluminum foil. In fact, I think that they could get whatever they think they need.
Crinkle it up.
In the future, I guess snipers will have to carry a $ 5 roll of aluminum foil, to block the multimillion dollar real time radar.
Is this a real hologram ? I doubt it, from the looks of it. Does anyone know the technology actually employed ?
By the way, I believe that the 3-D term for a pixel is a Voxel. I have never heard of a hogel before.
You know who will get this treatment first and best - the "1%." This will lead pretty directly to some really old CEOs - imagine a 150 year old Rupert Murdoch, still running Fox in 2081, or Steve Ballmer still running Microsoft in 2106
ACTA is not a Treaty. It's an Act. The President would sign it, and it would have the effect of an Executive Order (a future President, for example, could repudiate it). That's why at least one Senator is upset - they all should be. It's an end-run around their authority.
We (or at least certain pieces inside the USG) want to sign this precisely so we can use it to browbeat other countries. We instigated it. We did the end-run around WIPO. We tried to keep it secret. It's our baby through and through.
NASA has basically bet the Mars program on the soon to be launched MSL. If it doesn't work, it will be very hard to keep the teams of researchers intact for the very long gap until the next mission.
I predict that planetary (and lunar) exploration will be internationalized under the ISECG's Global Exploration Roadmap, which is the best thought out plan for space exploration I have seen in a long time.
You can bet on it - this all comes from some sales guy who convinced the school system that they had to do it for some bogus reason. He's got his commission, the school will abandon these after a little while, the taxpayers get gypped, but not in a way that most of them will notice.
This is the story of most modern government...
It's a lawsuit.
Those who really know are not going to be able to say.
You can't tell from a patent application, either way, as you tend to add on any conceivable use.