There's been a lot of argument that "close in space *and time*" is precisely the problem. In the cosmically vanishingly small time of a million years ago, we weren't very interesting. If we're still around in a million years, we probably wouldn't want to detectably approach anyone at the level that we're at now. There's also evidence that we're heading towards "going dark" as a result of using more efficient communications so there will be an inner surface to our radio sphere of influence. There may be other things to look for, like the gamma ray signature of antimatter powered interstellar vehicles. We wouldn't see anybody on a ballistic trajectory. I'm rather taken by arguments that suggest that really advanced cultures won't want to be very spread out because of communications latency. See, for instance, this by Cirkovic and Bradbury.
As already mentioned, there is the possibility that we're the first [in our light cone].
Folks who find the original post more interesting than the typical Slashdot discussion that followed might be interested in this recent work: Pressure-temperature Phase Diagram of the Earth
It discusses the possible range of "life as we know it" in the deep lithosphere.
From The Cato Institute: ...David Gump in Space Enterprise estimates that the cost in constant dollars of putting payloads into orbit went from $3,800 per pound under Apollo to $6,000 with the Shuttle. If the market had reduced that cost by, say, 60 percent, putting a pound in orbit today would cost only $1,500. Alex Roland of Duke University estimates that the cost of a Shuttle flight, including development and capital costs, is not the $350 million claimed by NASA but as much as $2 billion. This would mean a cost per pound of about $35,000!
There's a reply still modded at zero that gets it right. Molecule sized objects can move really fast. Here's one reference about nanotubes spinning at 28GHz. That's not due to high velocity, it's just that they don't have very far to move before completing a cycle. A mere one kilometer per hour is 300 million nanometers per second, and that's not very fast. Typical molecular velocities at room temperature at a fair bit higher than 1kph.
Folks in the nanotech crowd have been talking about clockwork computing from the get-go. Gears and rods and the like have a lot of advantages over electronics at molecular scales: atoms much smaller wavelengths than electrons thereby easier to localize. Also, to a first (and second) approximation, covalent bonds don't wear: undesired reactions are the issue, and not much of one in the mechanical phase of matter(*) envisioned by Drexler and company.
Having skimmed the article, I'm a bit unimpressed by the comparison to Babbage. While this looks like neat technology, it's NOT clockwork--it's electronic transistors with mechanical gates, as noted in the parent.
(*) Parts only touching where desired, vacuum elsewhere--remember, we're talking atomic scale here.
The accelerator itself follows an exactly straight line, it traces a
chord. The surface building, which is actually over the accelerator and contains the power systems and microwave generators, follows the curvature of the Earth.
When I visited the place I put my head on the floor and could see it curving out of view.
I'm afraid Roddenberry and Company were a bit late themselves. The term "hyperdrive" was used in Forbidden Planet in 1956. And according to this article, the idea of FTL through "hyperspace" goes back to a John W. Campbell story from 1934.
I wish I had mod points today: +interesting parent.
Reading this and drifting further off topic, it's now clear to me: What Mr. Bush and company need is to get into a good bar fight. I'd pay money to see Condi in a proper cat fight.
I keep thinking, "Who's idea was it to have humans work directly with XML?" It makes Perl look pretty. Back in the day, I thought these languages were supposed to be used by programs, and that tools would exist to marshall these supposedly easy-to-parse markup languages in and out of more-or-less simple data structures, and let us work with them in a somewhat intuitive manner. Instead, we keep typing piles of angle brackets and other shifted special characters by hand.
If this massive gamma-ray burst resulted in a black hole, then how did the light escape enough to reach us here on earth, 13 billion light years away?
Someone or another asks something like this everytime anything related to black holes comes up on Slashdot.
The radiation emitted from black hole related events, such as quasars, gamma ray bursts, and Hawking radiation, for that matter, comes from processes near-sometimes very near, but still OUTSIDE, the event horizon. As long as you're outside the horizon, there are trajectories that escape.
As for,
Also, if a black hole was created at explosion, was this even more massive then we can see, yet the black hole swallowed up a majority of the explosion and what we see, is just a small glimpse of it?
According to the literature on very massive stars, there as mass ranges that results in the star collapsing completely into a black hole such that
no significant amount of matter or radiation gets away at all.
Check out How Massive Single Stars End their Life. Figure 1 is particularly enlightening. It's a pretty math-free article, so I think anyone who's generally interested in this stuff can follow it, maybe with a bit of help from Wikipedia and Science World.
Mining Mars for building material for Moon bases???
Huh??
Sounds good. Go a long way into a relatively deep gravity well to haul up material to schlep back a huge distance to drop into another gravity well that's already full of building material.
I don't think even NASA could dream up something that inefficient.
Ted bloomed a couple of weeks ago while on loan to the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers. Davis sent it there because they could handle more visitors. Unfortunately it didn't open all the way or put on the whole stink show. Apparently it didn't get enough sunlight at strategic times.
The smell was unmistakeably that of a dead rat.
The
spathe had a nice color, eventually taking on the color of flank steak that had been left out too long.
If scads and scads of "ordinary" users are going to use Linux/Unix/WhateverIX on their desktop, they're going to want binaries. Imagine telling a typical Windows user that they had to recompile everything they got an update. Compilation takes time, and often some amount of expertise.
Slashdot Mirror
As already mentioned, there is the possibility that we're the first [in our light cone].
Oops. I didn't see an earlier top level post about this article.
Folks who find the original post more interesting than the typical Slashdot discussion that followed might be interested in this recent work: Pressure-temperature Phase Diagram of the Earth
It discusses the possible range of "life as we know it" in the deep lithosphere.
That's an interesting thought that I find pretty believable. I don't suppose you have a reference handy?
I hope they don't follow Australia's censorship model.
(First post!)
Hey! Leave my purple unicorns out of this!
The shuttle is anything but cost effective.
From The Cato Institute:
...David Gump in Space Enterprise estimates that the cost in constant dollars of putting payloads into orbit went from $3,800 per pound under Apollo to $6,000 with the Shuttle. If the market had reduced that cost by, say, 60 percent, putting a pound in orbit today would cost only $1,500. Alex Roland of Duke University estimates that the cost of a Shuttle flight, including development and capital costs, is not the $350 million claimed by NASA but as much as $2 billion. This would mean a cost per pound of about $35,000!
I could rant on...
There's a reply still modded at zero that gets it right. Molecule sized objects can move really fast. Here's one reference about nanotubes spinning at 28GHz. That's not due to high velocity, it's just that they don't have very far to move before completing a cycle. A mere one kilometer per hour is 300 million nanometers per second, and that's not very fast. Typical molecular velocities at room temperature at a fair bit higher than 1kph.
Folks in the nanotech crowd have been talking about clockwork computing from the get-go. Gears and rods and the like have a lot of advantages over electronics at molecular scales: atoms much smaller wavelengths than electrons thereby easier to localize. Also, to a first (and second) approximation, covalent bonds don't wear: undesired reactions are the issue, and not much of one in the mechanical phase of matter(*) envisioned by Drexler and company.
Having skimmed the article, I'm a bit unimpressed by the comparison to Babbage. While this looks like neat technology, it's NOT clockwork--it's electronic transistors with mechanical gates, as noted in the parent.
(*) Parts only touching where desired, vacuum elsewhere--remember, we're talking atomic scale here.
I guess it's no problem running something IT's never heard of instead.
When I visited the place I put my head on the floor and could see it curving out of view.
As much as it's a bad comparison to anything, we don't seem to be doing a very good job of putting men on the moon either.
Using concentrated sunlight to extract oxygen from lunar material is an idea that goes back at least to the 70s.
A Debris Disk Around An Isolated Young Neutron Star
I'm afraid Roddenberry and Company were a bit late themselves. The term "hyperdrive" was used in Forbidden Planet in 1956. And according to this article, the idea of FTL through "hyperspace" goes back to a John W. Campbell story from 1934.
Reading this and drifting further off topic, it's now clear to me: What Mr. Bush and company need is to get into a good bar fight. I'd pay money to see Condi in a proper cat fight.
First rule of business: Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted!
Another rule of thumb I've run into essentially says that, "An employess you can't afford to lose is an employee you can't afford to have."
Move the computers to a colder place.
Also, it seems odd to have the boson part of the chart arranged so that the photon is so visually connected with the quarks.
I keep thinking, "Who's idea was it to have humans work directly with XML?" It makes Perl look pretty. Back in the day, I thought these languages were supposed to be used by programs, and that tools would exist to marshall these supposedly easy-to-parse markup languages in and out of more-or-less simple data structures, and let us work with them in a somewhat intuitive manner. Instead, we keep typing piles of angle brackets and other shifted special characters by hand.
Where are all the toolsmiths?
#endif
(No offense to Perl fans intended)
Someone or another asks something like this everytime anything related to black holes comes up on Slashdot.
The radiation emitted from black hole related events, such as quasars, gamma ray bursts, and Hawking radiation, for that matter, comes from processes near-sometimes very near, but still OUTSIDE, the event horizon. As long as you're outside the horizon, there are trajectories that escape.
As for,
Also, if a black hole was created at explosion, was this even more massive then we can see, yet the black hole swallowed up a majority of the explosion and what we see, is just a small glimpse of it?
According to the literature on very massive stars, there as mass ranges that results in the star collapsing completely into a black hole such that no significant amount of matter or radiation gets away at all.
Check out How Massive Single Stars End their Life. Figure 1 is particularly enlightening. It's a pretty math-free article, so I think anyone who's generally interested in this stuff can follow it, maybe with a bit of help from Wikipedia and Science World.
Huh??
Sounds good. Go a long way into a relatively deep gravity well to haul up material to schlep back a huge distance to drop into another gravity well that's already full of building material.
I don't think even NASA could dream up something that inefficient.
The smell was unmistakeably that of a dead rat.
The spathe had a nice color, eventually taking on the color of flank steak that had been left out too long.
I'm still perturbed (or insert stronger word) that they stopped supporting the PPC.
If scads and scads of "ordinary" users are going to use Linux/Unix/WhateverIX on their desktop, they're going to want binaries. Imagine telling a typical Windows user that they had to recompile everything they got an update. Compilation takes time, and often some amount of expertise.