I've had a perfectly fine experience with the AMD 386/40. I ran a linux mail server off one for several years without a single crash. It ran distributed.net clients, and other processor intensive apps 24/7 without a hitch. The only problem I experienced with the machine was from very old hard drives, and a worn out power supply. I've still got the machine (finally retired it after I needed more horsepower) and I'm sure it would fire up just fine if I had some reason to use it.
I really don't know why you had such trouble. The chip itself was identical to the Intel version. Maybe you had a poor quality motherboard?
Perhaps if you had read the article rather than the extremely poor slashdot summary you would have realized that they DID study the distribution. This may surprise you, but the paper is 55 pages long and contains more than a single headline.
I don't have any problem with people finding inspiration for philosophy in their miss-interpretations of science. What I have a problem with is when people try to use their poor understanding of science to justify their philosophical beliefs. That's what's happening here. Many of Einsteins scientific breakthroughs (his work on Bose-Einstein Condensates, and EPR paradox) were made precisely because of "unscientific" philosophical interpretations of quantum theory - "God does not play dice,"
And Einstein was wrong about god playing dice. If people get inspiration for scientific ideas from philosophy, great. But in the end it doesn't matter as science will trump whatever philosophical biases you bring in. There are more questions in life than "how can I predict the result of a given experiment"
Obviously. We deal with these questions every day, and I doubt anyone really thinks science has an answer to everything. Maybe people that don't understand what science is and just view it as a magic question answering machine believe this. Science can't answer questions of values or morality for instance. Is the death penalty OK? Should we have invaded Iraq? Those aren't scientific questions, and thus can't be answered by science.
Most experiments in physics these days require some absurdly expensive equipment and they cannot be verified except by another team of 100 in just one or two other spots around the globe. Some think this is great, but I think it sucks because it makes things elitist.
I think there's some truth to that, especially in physics, but not as much as you're assuming. What you're talking about is "big science" vs little science. It started after WWII and the Manhattan project. The government started to think this "physics thing" must be important if it produced a single weapon that could end a war. Physicists suddenly got huge piles of money given to them by the US government. It was hard to pass up the money so they started looking to building big expensive instruments like the superconducting supercollider (eventually killed), and gravitational wave detectors. I don't think all is lost though. Big Science certainly makes Big Headlines, but if you look at who's won the Nobel prize in physics, it's nowhere near all Big Science guys.
Crackpots win when the 100 or so "good" scientists lock themselves away from the rest of the society and publish in an exclusive journal, separating themselves by a way of needless jargon and fancy words and a profound lack of documentation (just like in many software projects, both proprietary and open).
I just don't think this is happening. I go to the Nobel conference every year and there's highly esteemed scientists their each year talking about what they've discovered at a fairly understandable level. I probbably understand more than most of the audience, but it's all fairly comprehensible. Ira Flatow talks to scientists all the time on Science Friday on NPR, so I don't see anyone locking themselves in ivory towers. Science I think is probbably far more accessible than many other disciplines, like say the humanities. Those are the guys who live in the ivory towers and refuse to come out. And don't get me started about incomprehensible language in the humanities describing everyday things. Those people go out of their way to be elitist.
As far as journals go, they really exist for scientists of the specific discipline, and not for the general public. Any discipline needs a place where the audience is all people from the discipline. No programmer wants to read an article about what an if..then statement means when the subject matter is some new programming language. Opening up journals to crackpots wouldn't kill science, but it would kill the journal. No one wants to waste their time reading crap science, so any scientist interested in the journal articles would simply find a more reputable source of information.
Vast majority of science education, in fact, I'd say ALL, up to the highest undergraduate studies are all about uncritical reading of the "facts" discovered by current science.
I actually agree with that. But I will note that you're talking about science education, not science. You see, if you don't want to face the fact that scientists can be subtly and yet powerfully dogmatic, just as religious officers can be, then you won't get far in your understanding of what's going on within your own mind.
I wouldn't disagree with this either. The key word phrase here is "CAN be subtly and yet powerfully dogmatic". Obviously there's some scientists clinging to bad theory, bad observation etc. But science as a whole marches on. Science, just like spirituality, if it wants to flourish, it has to inhabit the hearts of common people. It must be unleashed from the labs. That also means scientists need to relinquish their stronghold on dogma. Here a step -- dismantle the whole "journal" institution. Make publishing cheap and accessable to all. De-elitise science. Make science about exploring the mysteries rather than digesting understanding. Instead of understanding, a proper mindset for science is of not-understanding. But mostly when a person picks up a book of physics, they don't think it might be 100% false. They think that it's correct. Highschool students are not taught to question the science books. Undergrads are not taught that either. And that's too bad.
I think what you're talking about is the popular understanding of science, and with that I completely agree. To the public eye science has a terrible presentation. It's presented as a series of facts and not as a process of seperating truth from fiction. As far as eliminating journals and opening up publication, I just don't see that as something that would help science. There's 100 crackpots who practice pseudo-science out their for every actual scientist. Opening up publication to these crackpots would destroy a journal and turn it into an issue of popular science (or worse, one of those crackpot internet sites). Why would any scientist want to read about the "results" of people who aren't actually doing science? Instead of slamming religion you should look at it as your older brother and learn from its faults.
Good religion answers entirely different questions than science does. Science can't answer questions of morality because it simply isn't a scientific question. The biggest faults of religion are when it tries to answer questions about the natural world. Almost every time religion has attempted that it's failed miserably. The point is that if you remove all the faults from religion (at least from a scientific perspective), you get something that doesn't intersect with science. I suppose maybe there's something about passion and motivation that's shared by scientists and religion. But even that can be a hinderance. Science is about not fooling yourself, and that takes discipline.
In any event, science, as we know it, is not a description of the world, it is a human description of human perceptions
Sorry, but this is just postmodernist garbage. I don't know if science is a "description" of the world, but it is an understanding of the world and allows us to predict behaviour. This is independent of human perceptions. e=mc^2 works just the same for a dog, or an electron as it does for us.
Sorry, but in science there is. If you don't like being wrong I suggest you take up a pursuit like philosophy.
The scientific community tends to fall into "I am quite satisfied with my understanding of the universe" crowd.
I don't know where you got this idea, but it's exactly the opposite. Science deals with things that AREN'T understood. Scientists, by definition are people who aren't satisfied with the "explanations" (science is about understanding and predictability, not explanations) of the universe. Maybe you're thinking about religion? When Einstein first came out with his ideas, the scientific community said he was insane. But now look how embedded his name became within the community. Shame the fools don't learn their lesson.
That's just plain not true. Einstein wasn't laughed at and he wasn't thought to be insane, though his theories weren't just blindly accepted either. Science takes time to sort out the the correct theories from the flat out wrong theories. There's no magic device that you throw theories into and they're seperated into true ones and false ones. Dissent is extremely important in science, and the fact that there were skeptics of Einsteins theories is a stength of science, not a weakness.
It's more than just quantum physics. It's science in general. There's a vast and terrible missunderstanding of science on slashdot. Computer knowledge is pretty good. Politics ain't so bad.. science isn't a lot better than the people who read popular science.
Anytime quantum mechanics is brought up among a non-science crowd (sorry, desipte the geekyness of slashdot, the moderation and general comments I see indicate it's a non-science crowd) you wind up getting half-truth mystical garbage like this and this. The more hard to understand it is, the more people will come up with their own, wrong interpretations.
As Richard Feynman pointed out, "why" is a question of philosophy, not science. The question why has no end. Why do electrons repel each other? That no one knows, they just do. I might go so far as to say it can't be known. Most people stop asking why when they get an answer they're familiar with. Science deals with questions of how. How do electrons repel each other? Well, current theory says that photons travel from one electron to another and push them apart.
I thought the same thing. It's pretty cool you can reduce an infinite amount of maps down to just 633. The fact that mathematicans don't like this proof says more about the biases of mathematicians than anything else.
Umm. no. Monopoly IS about market share. From wikipedia:
In economics, a monopoly (from the Greek monos, one + polein, to sell) is defined as a persistent market situation where there is only one provider of a kind of product or service. Monopolies are characterized by a lack of economic competition for the good or service that they provide and a lack of viable substitute goods.
Monopolies are perfectly legal in the US. What's not legal is unfair competition using that monopoly power.
Our country is pretty far away from Hong Kong (on the Orwellian map), where you get 10 years prison for spitting gum out on the sidewalk.
Perhaps you're thinking about Singapore? They're the country that's famous for banning chewing gum, among other facist laws. I've never heard of harsh punishments for chewing gum in Hong Kong.
It's great that you've had such luck, but there's loads of others that have had had terrible "luck". Some people win the lottery too, but that doesn't mean most people will. The point is that just looking at your own personal experiences is a terrible way to find truth. I'll trust the experiences of the countless people who've not gotten rebates from them over a couple people who have.
The rebate in question is affiliated with Tigerdirect, which anyone who trolls for incredible internet pricing will tell you is notorious for not actually issuing rebates, or when they do it's 6-9 months later. So it's not as if we're talking about a particularly ethical company to begin with.
But on another issue, I find the linked article itself to be a troll. The framework of the question starts out right off that bat as "is this sane or insane privacy". By polarzing the issue into a "sane or insane" we lose perspective on this issue and start fighting for one of the two particular sides the author has chosen. This sounds more like a Crossfire! type discussion than a real look at the issues.
Stepping back from the linked article perspective, I'd like to present a different one. Is not providing all the rebate details upfront a breach of contract? If I advertise a $20 rebate for a product, but fail to disclose that you'll have also have to buy $200 in magazine subscriptions until after you've already bought the product, that's not a valid contract.
My major problem (and I think the original posters major problem) is the lack of upfront details on the rebate. Had they told him you'd have to provide job function, company size, etc before they'd issue the rebate then you can make an informed decision if those specific details are worth the rebate price. When they don't tell you the full details of the contract then I think that's at least an ethical violation, and possibly an invalid contract. If you dig deep enough you can eventually find the form to fill out without first buying the product, but who expects a rebate form to ask anything but where to send the check, and who to make the check out to? I certainly don't.
But as I said previously, tigerdirect isn't exactly well known for holding up their end of the bargain.
Productive.. product. When you're productive you're efficient at producing something. It's not a strange way of extrapolating the word at all, but exactly what the word means. It's also a word constantly used to describe work efficiency as in "increasing productivity", especially when technology is used.
I think a more compelling question would be: Is all this technology making us more productive? Or does it simply facilitate our slacking off with more diversions?
What a strange way to think of life. Is life all about being "productive"? I'd have thought the gadgets are supposed to make our lives better, however you wish to define better. Making it more productive makes it sound as if the only purpose to being alive is work and produce a product. Is that really what you think it's all about?
Other than the cool factor, the article doesn't touch on what good it will do us to study particles older than the sun. Anyone in the know care to elaborate?
Well, I'm not an astronomer, but I can make guesses as to what interstellar dust and comet particles would be usefull for. For one thing by studying the chemical and isotope makeup of the particles you could determine where they came from. That would likely tell you something about comet origins (do they come from our solar system, or from outside it), and maybe something about stellar evolution and, our local group of stars, and probbably a whole lot more I don't know about. Stars make different balances of isotopes and elements based on the type of star and its initial composition of elements. By looking at the composition of these elements in a particle you can tell a lot about the origin of the particles.
Looking at the larger picture for a moment, one of the biggest problems in Astronomy is simply lack of information. Astronomy is widely critisized (and not unjustly so) for its imprecision because of this lack of data. Getting particles from comets and inter-stellar dust could give a boost to many areas of Astronomy.
BTW the cross section of neutrinos interacting with hadrons and leptons is so small that most neutrinos penetrate earth without interaction. Our probes are just not made out of neutrinos.
And if the probe were made out of neutrinos you would have a point. Of course it's not, so I'm sorry to say you just sound like a smartass trying to throw your knowledge around.
That's kind of like the old saying that according to aerodynamic theory, bumblebees can't fly. If that's your theory, it's a bad one. Obviously if the object is going 24k km/h directly AT the earth it's going to "enter earths gravity". The Earth slows things down quite nicely when things impact it. No braking or even atmosphere required.
which are generally interstellar... not sure why the article feels the need to mention "cometary and interstellar dust" in that case, but:
Actually no on both counts. It's not known if comets are from our solar system, or from the proposed "ort cloud" that's losely bound to our solar system. The interstellar dust is truly interstellar. The mission was to collect both comet dust and interstellar dust. The results of the mission should give evidence for comet origins.
Good question. I'm not sure how they determine which is interstellar, and which is interplanetary. Like another post says it may be on penetration depth into the aerogel. Or perhaps they have some way of stopping the lower speed stuff in some other medium before it reaches the aeorogel.
The dust is interstellar because its origin is outside our solar system. That is it isn't bound gravitationally to our sun. Interstellar dust doesn't just sit around between stars, it moves relative to our solar system. IIRC it moves a lot faster than the local inter-planetary dust of our solar system (around 30 km/sec). Because of this there's interstellar dust blowing through our solar system all the time.
And that's a fair point. The weather is cyclical and isn't static. So it is possible that it isn't caused by humans. Having said that, I don't know whether or not there is damning proof it's being caused by humans. That's because I keep seeing liberals just arguing about whether or not it is happening.
The thing is that it's not just "liberals" arguing about whether or not it's happening. You don't have to trust the liberals, or the coservatives. You just have to trust that the consensus opinion of scientists is a good one. The majority of climate scientists say that humans are influencing global temperatures. Is it "possible" that they're wrong? Of course, that's what science is about. The thing that most people seem to miss is that there's almost never absolute certainty in science and there's always a reasonable amount of doubt among some respected scientists well after there's a mountain of evidence. Some dissent is a good thing and is to be encouraged. To give you an example it wasn't until the early 20th century that atomic theory (that is all the normal stuff we see every day is made of atoms) was conclusively accepted.
The question is, should we really wait another 100 years while everthing is conclusively "proven" beyond a shadow of a doubt? (Meanwhile more CO2 that's hard to get rid of gets released into the atmosphere).
The underlying problem I think is that most people aren't very comfortable with uncertain facts. It's either known, or it's unknown. Any hint of unknown in an area of knowledge shoves it firmly into the unknown category. There is no grey or even off-white.
Slashdot Mirror
I've had a perfectly fine experience with the AMD 386/40. I ran a linux mail server off one for several years without a single crash. It ran distributed.net clients, and other processor intensive apps 24/7 without a hitch. The only problem I experienced with the machine was from very old hard drives, and a worn out power supply. I've still got the machine (finally retired it after I needed more horsepower) and I'm sure it would fire up just fine if I had some reason to use it.
I really don't know why you had such trouble. The chip itself was identical to the Intel version. Maybe you had a poor quality motherboard?
Perhaps if you had read the article rather than the extremely poor slashdot summary you would have realized that they DID study the distribution. This may surprise you, but the paper is 55 pages long and contains more than a single headline.
I don't have any problem with people finding inspiration for philosophy in their miss-interpretations of science. What I have a problem with is when people try to use their poor understanding of science to justify their philosophical beliefs. That's what's happening here.
Many of Einsteins scientific breakthroughs (his work on Bose-Einstein Condensates, and EPR paradox) were made precisely because of "unscientific" philosophical interpretations of quantum theory - "God does not play dice,"
And Einstein was wrong about god playing dice. If people get inspiration for scientific ideas from philosophy, great. But in the end it doesn't matter as science will trump whatever philosophical biases you bring in.
There are more questions in life than "how can I predict the result of a given experiment"
Obviously. We deal with these questions every day, and I doubt anyone really thinks science has an answer to everything. Maybe people that don't understand what science is and just view it as a magic question answering machine believe this. Science can't answer questions of values or morality for instance. Is the death penalty OK? Should we have invaded Iraq? Those aren't scientific questions, and thus can't be answered by science.
Most experiments in physics these days require some absurdly expensive equipment and they cannot be verified except by another team of 100 in just one or two other spots around the globe. Some think this is great, but I think it sucks because it makes things elitist.
I think there's some truth to that, especially in physics, but not as much as you're assuming. What you're talking about is "big science" vs little science. It started after WWII and the Manhattan project. The government started to think this "physics thing" must be important if it produced a single weapon that could end a war. Physicists suddenly got huge piles of money given to them by the US government. It was hard to pass up the money so they started looking to building big expensive instruments like the superconducting supercollider (eventually killed), and gravitational wave detectors. I don't think all is lost though. Big Science certainly makes Big Headlines, but if you look at who's won the Nobel prize in physics, it's nowhere near all Big Science guys.
Crackpots win when the 100 or so "good" scientists lock themselves away from the rest of the society and publish in an exclusive journal, separating themselves by a way of needless jargon and fancy words and a profound lack of documentation (just like in many software projects, both proprietary and open).
I just don't think this is happening. I go to the Nobel conference every year and there's highly esteemed scientists their each year talking about what they've discovered at a fairly understandable level. I probbably understand more than most of the audience, but it's all fairly comprehensible. Ira Flatow talks to scientists all the time on Science Friday on NPR, so I don't see anyone locking themselves in ivory towers. Science I think is probbably far more accessible than many other disciplines, like say the humanities. Those are the guys who live in the ivory towers and refuse to come out. And don't get me started about incomprehensible language in the humanities describing everyday things. Those people go out of their way to be elitist.
As far as journals go, they really exist for scientists of the specific discipline, and not for the general public. Any discipline needs a place where the audience is all people from the discipline. No programmer wants to read an article about what an if..then statement means when the subject matter is some new programming language. Opening up journals to crackpots wouldn't kill science, but it would kill the journal. No one wants to waste their time reading crap science, so any scientist interested in the journal articles would simply find a more reputable source of information.
Vast majority of science education, in fact, I'd say ALL, up to the highest undergraduate studies are all about uncritical reading of the "facts" discovered by current science.
I actually agree with that. But I will note that you're talking about science education, not science.
You see, if you don't want to face the fact that scientists can be subtly and yet powerfully dogmatic, just as religious officers can be, then you won't get far in your understanding of what's going on within your own mind.
I wouldn't disagree with this either. The key word phrase here is "CAN be subtly and yet powerfully dogmatic". Obviously there's some scientists clinging to bad theory, bad observation etc. But science as a whole marches on.
Science, just like spirituality, if it wants to flourish, it has to inhabit the hearts of common people. It must be unleashed from the labs. That also means scientists need to relinquish their stronghold on dogma. Here a step -- dismantle the whole "journal" institution. Make publishing cheap and accessable to all. De-elitise science. Make science about exploring the mysteries rather than digesting understanding. Instead of understanding, a proper mindset for science is of not-understanding. But mostly when a person picks up a book of physics, they don't think it might be 100% false. They think that it's correct. Highschool students are not taught to question the science books. Undergrads are not taught that either. And that's too bad.
I think what you're talking about is the popular understanding of science, and with that I completely agree. To the public eye science has a terrible presentation. It's presented as a series of facts and not as a process of seperating truth from fiction. As far as eliminating journals and opening up publication, I just don't see that as something that would help science. There's 100 crackpots who practice pseudo-science out their for every actual scientist. Opening up publication to these crackpots would destroy a journal and turn it into an issue of popular science (or worse, one of those crackpot internet sites). Why would any scientist want to read about the "results" of people who aren't actually doing science?
Instead of slamming religion you should look at it as your older brother and learn from its faults.
Good religion answers entirely different questions than science does. Science can't answer questions of morality because it simply isn't a scientific question. The biggest faults of religion are when it tries to answer questions about the natural world. Almost every time religion has attempted that it's failed miserably. The point is that if you remove all the faults from religion (at least from a scientific perspective), you get something that doesn't intersect with science. I suppose maybe there's something about passion and motivation that's shared by scientists and religion. But even that can be a hinderance. Science is about not fooling yourself, and that takes discipline.
In any event, science, as we know it, is not a description of the world, it is a human description of human perceptions
Sorry, but this is just postmodernist garbage. I don't know if science is a "description" of the world, but it is an understanding of the world and allows us to predict behaviour. This is independent of human perceptions. e=mc^2 works just the same for a dog, or an electron as it does for us.
There is no such thing as "wrong interpretation"
Sorry, but in science there is. If you don't like being wrong I suggest you take up a pursuit like philosophy.
The scientific community tends to fall into "I am quite satisfied with my understanding of the universe" crowd.
I don't know where you got this idea, but it's exactly the opposite. Science deals with things that AREN'T understood. Scientists, by definition are people who aren't satisfied with the "explanations" (science is about understanding and predictability, not explanations) of the universe. Maybe you're thinking about religion?
When Einstein first came out with his ideas, the scientific community said he was insane. But now look how embedded his name became within the community. Shame the fools don't learn their lesson.
That's just plain not true. Einstein wasn't laughed at and he wasn't thought to be insane, though his theories weren't just blindly accepted either. Science takes time to sort out the the correct theories from the flat out wrong theories. There's no magic device that you throw theories into and they're seperated into true ones and false ones. Dissent is extremely important in science, and the fact that there were skeptics of Einsteins theories is a stength of science, not a weakness.
It's more than just quantum physics. It's science in general. There's a vast and terrible missunderstanding of science on slashdot. Computer knowledge is pretty good. Politics ain't so bad.. science isn't a lot better than the people who read popular science.
Anytime quantum mechanics is brought up among a non-science crowd (sorry, desipte the geekyness of slashdot, the moderation and general comments I see indicate it's a non-science crowd) you wind up getting half-truth mystical garbage like this and this. The more hard to understand it is, the more people will come up with their own, wrong interpretations.
As Richard Feynman pointed out, "why" is a question of philosophy, not science. The question why has no end. Why do electrons repel each other? That no one knows, they just do. I might go so far as to say it can't be known. Most people stop asking why when they get an answer they're familiar with. Science deals with questions of how. How do electrons repel each other? Well, current theory says that photons travel from one electron to another and push them apart.
I thought the same thing. It's pretty cool you can reduce an infinite amount of maps down to just 633. The fact that mathematicans don't like this proof says more about the biases of mathematicians than anything else.
Monopolies are perfectly legal in the US. What's not legal is unfair competition using that monopoly power.
Our country is pretty far away from Hong Kong (on the Orwellian map), where you get 10 years prison for spitting gum out on the sidewalk.
Perhaps you're thinking about Singapore? They're the country that's famous for banning chewing gum, among other facist laws. I've never heard of harsh punishments for chewing gum in Hong Kong.
It's great that you've had such luck, but there's loads of others that have had had terrible "luck". Some people win the lottery too, but that doesn't mean most people will. The point is that just looking at your own personal experiences is a terrible way to find truth. I'll trust the experiences of the countless people who've not gotten rebates from them over a couple people who have.
The rebate in question is affiliated with Tigerdirect, which anyone who trolls for incredible internet pricing will tell you is notorious for not actually issuing rebates, or when they do it's 6-9 months later. So it's not as if we're talking about a particularly ethical company to begin with.
But on another issue, I find the linked article itself to be a troll. The framework of the question starts out right off that bat as "is this sane or insane privacy". By polarzing the issue into a "sane or insane" we lose perspective on this issue and start fighting for one of the two particular sides the author has chosen. This sounds more like a Crossfire! type discussion than a real look at the issues.
Stepping back from the linked article perspective, I'd like to present a different one. Is not providing all the rebate details upfront a breach of contract? If I advertise a $20 rebate for a product, but fail to disclose that you'll have also have to buy $200 in magazine subscriptions until after you've already bought the product, that's not a valid contract.
My major problem (and I think the original posters major problem) is the lack of upfront details on the rebate. Had they told him you'd have to provide job function, company size, etc before they'd issue the rebate then you can make an informed decision if those specific details are worth the rebate price. When they don't tell you the full details of the contract then I think that's at least an ethical violation, and possibly an invalid contract. If you dig deep enough you can eventually find the form to fill out without first buying the product, but who expects a rebate form to ask anything but where to send the check, and who to make the check out to? I certainly don't.
But as I said previously, tigerdirect isn't exactly well known for holding up their end of the bargain.
I think someone needs to understand that dictionaries are references sources, not definitive answers on word definitions.
Productive.. product. When you're productive you're efficient at producing something. It's not a strange way of extrapolating the word at all, but exactly what the word means. It's also a word constantly used to describe work efficiency as in "increasing productivity", especially when technology is used.
I think a more compelling question would be: Is all this technology making us more productive? Or does it simply facilitate our slacking off with more diversions?
What a strange way to think of life. Is life all about being "productive"? I'd have thought the gadgets are supposed to make our lives better, however you wish to define better. Making it more productive makes it sound as if the only purpose to being alive is work and produce a product. Is that really what you think it's all about?
Other than the cool factor, the article doesn't touch on what good it will do us to study particles older than the sun. Anyone in the know care to elaborate?
Well, I'm not an astronomer, but I can make guesses as to what interstellar dust and comet particles would be usefull for. For one thing by studying the chemical and isotope makeup of the particles you could determine where they came from. That would likely tell you something about comet origins (do they come from our solar system, or from outside it), and maybe something about stellar evolution and, our local group of stars, and probbably a whole lot more I don't know about. Stars make different balances of isotopes and elements based on the type of star and its initial composition of elements. By looking at the composition of these elements in a particle you can tell a lot about the origin of the particles.
Looking at the larger picture for a moment, one of the biggest problems in Astronomy is simply lack of information. Astronomy is widely critisized (and not unjustly so) for its imprecision because of this lack of data. Getting particles from comets and inter-stellar dust could give a boost to many areas of Astronomy.
BTW the cross section of neutrinos interacting with hadrons and leptons is so small that most neutrinos penetrate earth without interaction. Our probes are just not made out of neutrinos.
And if the probe were made out of neutrinos you would have a point. Of course it's not, so I'm sorry to say you just sound like a smartass trying to throw your knowledge around.
That's kind of like the old saying that according to aerodynamic theory, bumblebees can't fly. If that's your theory, it's a bad one. Obviously if the object is going 24k km/h directly AT the earth it's going to "enter earths gravity". The Earth slows things down quite nicely when things impact it. No braking or even atmosphere required.
which are generally interstellar... not sure why the article feels the need to mention "cometary and interstellar dust" in that case, but:
Actually no on both counts. It's not known if comets are from our solar system, or from the proposed "ort cloud" that's losely bound to our solar system. The interstellar dust is truly interstellar. The mission was to collect both comet dust and interstellar dust. The results of the mission should give evidence for comet origins.
Good question. I'm not sure how they determine which is interstellar, and which is interplanetary. Like another post says it may be on penetration depth into the aerogel. Or perhaps they have some way of stopping the lower speed stuff in some other medium before it reaches the aeorogel.
The dust is interstellar because its origin is outside our solar system. That is it isn't bound gravitationally to our sun. Interstellar dust doesn't just sit around between stars, it moves relative to our solar system. IIRC it moves a lot faster than the local inter-planetary dust of our solar system (around 30 km/sec). Because of this there's interstellar dust blowing through our solar system all the time.
And that's a fair point. The weather is cyclical and isn't static. So it is possible that it isn't caused by humans. Having said that, I don't know whether or not there is damning proof it's being caused by humans. That's because I keep seeing liberals just arguing about whether or not it is happening.
The thing is that it's not just "liberals" arguing about whether or not it's happening. You don't have to trust the liberals, or the coservatives. You just have to trust that the consensus opinion of scientists is a good one. The majority of climate scientists say that humans are influencing global temperatures. Is it "possible" that they're wrong? Of course, that's what science is about. The thing that most people seem to miss is that there's almost never absolute certainty in science and there's always a reasonable amount of doubt among some respected scientists well after there's a mountain of evidence. Some dissent is a good thing and is to be encouraged. To give you an example it wasn't until the early 20th century that atomic theory (that is all the normal stuff we see every day is made of atoms) was conclusively accepted.
The question is, should we really wait another 100 years while everthing is conclusively "proven" beyond a shadow of a doubt? (Meanwhile more CO2 that's hard to get rid of gets released into the atmosphere).
The underlying problem I think is that most people aren't very comfortable with uncertain facts. It's either known, or it's unknown. Any hint of unknown in an area of knowledge shoves it firmly into the unknown category. There is no grey or even off-white.