>Uggh, this fact doesn't seem to be sinking in here on/. >
> NGST is infrared, just like SIRTF.
I know, i didn't deny that. But ditching Hubble sooner or later would still give a gap till NGST (2011), in which there is no prime space based observatory for VIS/near IR. That would be a shame.
> Summary - cancelling Hubble will leave a serious gap in astronomical science for at least 1-2 decades.
You didn't get my point: I didn't say kill Hubble and do nothing, i said kill Hubble and build a cheap replacement.
Although I am probably a bigger space freak than most of you and really like what Hubble did, I can imagine some scenarios that would favor ditching Hubble. Why not skip all future Shuttle missions (skipped anyhow for safety reasons) and possibly also the booster add-on that was discussed recently. Imagine how much you can build with that money using modern technology. Remember, Hubble was designed in the seventies, built in the eighties and then left to rot for some years in a cleanroom. It has one big heavy mirror and was designed to be transported and serviced by the shuttle. Note that a typical shuttle launch costs > 600M$. A remote controlled rocket pack that attaches to Hubble wouldn't be cheap either.
Now think what you could build with that money in todays technology. I would suggest reusing some of the detectors designed for the next service mission. Use a modern light-weight mirror. No options for repear in space, just launch and forget. If it blows up, build another one. Mightbe be really modest in your goals, don't go for a design that is 10 times better than hubble, but try to equal it with a mirror of 1.5 - 2 meter. I don't know the exact number, but i believe SIRTF was built for something between 0.5 and 1B$. I would guess this could be done for less than 1B$ within 3 years to close the gap till NGST is built.
First of all i want to applaud the Japanese culture. The press report seems to originate from the company that made the error: A public statement about the how and why of the error, with apologies and even in english. I wish more companies were like that.
This incident (although caused by a transition TO the metric system) leads us to the question how many more years until we finally get rid of the imperial system. The US standard bureau has a page that describes their effort in the conversion. They quote the metric conversion act of 1975, but i don't know how much has happened since then. How many years do I have to buy US stuff here in Europe that is half metric and half imperial? For god sake, even the UK has switched! Does anybody know a real time-table for the transition??
Obligatory Pulp Fiction quote:
Vincent: And you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris? Jules: They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese? Vincent: No, they got the metric system there, they wouldn't know what the fuck a Quarter Pounder is. Jules: And what'd they call it? Vincent: They call it Royale with Cheese.
If you ever run into a imperial system freak ask him to calculate how many square inch there are in a square mile... without blinking.
Congrats to JPL, i can't wait till the pictures arrive in a few hours. I am now watching the briefing on NasaTV and it seems they landed some 24 miles downrange from bullseye, probably not because of navigation error, but a due to strong winds. This is still ok for the science, which is aimed mainly at a region of some odd minerals that have something to do with water.
Slightly OT from the Opportunity landing, but has anybody seen the amazing picture made by Mars Global Surveyor? They not only can see Spirit itself from orbit, they also located several bounce marks, the parachute, the backshell and the heatshield! I have to look up the resolution again, but judging from this picture they achieve better than 1 meter after some image processing.
These pictures gave me the following idea (assuming Spirit will get healthy soon): Since the plan was to drive to big crater in the top right of the first image anyhow, why not drive to the impact location of the heatshield. Since this came down without a parachute, it should have dug a pretty deep hole. It is thus possible to study a fresh crater that is only 1 month old!
The article claims to talk about the technical details of hypertreading. At first glance, however, it seems more like yet another article in the series "Athlon beats Pentium at Doom by 1/2 frame per second".
If you are really interested in the how and why of hypertreading in suggest you read trough the lecture notes of Computer System Architecture at MIT OpenCourseWare. This gives you enough background to race trough all the articles at Ars Techica et al.
Some years ago I heard a talk by a researcher of our national meteorology bureau. These old ship logs are the oldest available data series that are used to study long scale climate changes. One of the biggest challenges seems to be to 'calibrate' all the measurements that were done over time with different methods. In the past, the temperature measurements were done by trowing a bucket in the water, hoisting it to the deck and sticking a thermometer in it. At some time, however, they changed from using leather buckets to using metal ones, which has an influence on the reading that is taken.
According to the guy this causes one of the biggest uncertainties in todays climate models! They try to compensate this by fudging with the so called bucket correction factor.
Note that resolution gets better with a bigger array size, but gets worse with bigger wavelength (or lower frequency).
Assuming a frequency of 100MHz, the resolution of LoFAr would be equivalent with a (350km * 100e6Hz / 5e14Hz =) 7 cm optical telescope or a 70 cm telescope when operating at 1 GHz. Although not much compared to Hubble or Keck, this would probably give some nice images.
Remember the other famous balloon guy: Steve Fossett (millionaire with to much spare time, first solo balloon flight around the world). He is also playing with gliders these days. A year ago he tried to achieve a new height by soaring a mountain wave (but didn't succeed?). Right now he seems be persuing some other gliding records and building some big boats.
Having done some gliding myself (~50 solo flights, never got my licence though) i think this is really cool.
Which leads us to the root cause of all this funny legislation: funding of political parties. I believe here in the Netherlands it is only allowed to donate as an individual and not as a company.
Of course the parties will complain how to raise their money. Our solution: all parties (and we have more than 2!) that get above the threshold of the last election (say one seat in parlement) get subsidized.
How much more of these stories do you americans need to wake up and demand a change to this practice?
What about the world's fastest SOLAR-electric car? The Nuna II, just won the World Solar Challenge, travelling 3000 kilometers in just 31 hours, averaging around 97 km/h.
They won the last race as debutants, mainly because they got some big money from a power company that allowed them to buy space grade (triple junction?) solar cells. They are coached by Wubbo Ockels, the only dutch astronaut, so ESA is also involved.
I have folding@home running at my desktop and i can hear a slight change in sound pitch/level when i switch it off. (same for doing some heavy calculation with matlab that saturates the processor).
Probably some a fan or motor that runs a little bit faster or slower because the processor drains a little bit more current.
My processor is a normal P3 or 4 so it probably does matter.
Short translation: -Two groups of people: 36 who had previously complained about GSM base stations and 36 who didn't. -Persons where tested with cognitive tests while being subjected to EM field of GSM/UMTS base-station. Fields where relatively low, comparable to a normal daily exposure (I guess in case you live near a base-station, not like when you stick your head in the antenna). -Statistical relevant relations were found between precense of field and 'experienced well-being' and 'results of mental tasks'. -Calculated thermal effects are probably to small to be significant. -Results are not well understood, more research needed.
Complot theory: They probably measured nothing and just want money for a follow up experiment.
The mission log of Scaled Composites says they already did two succesful drop tests with the SpaceShipOne!
The video cameras mounted on the spaceship recorded dramatic views particularly during the unique feather maneuver. Observers in the chase Starship were treated to a closeup bizarre view of the spaceship plunging downward in a rock-stable near vertical feathered descent. First public showings of these videos will be on 26 September at the annual SETP symposium in Los Angeles
I believe it is only the velocities that matter: the reason the spectra shift is because of the Doppler effect (similar to the lowering of sound when a fast car passes by, only now in the optical domain and with some adjustments for relativity)
The long distance the light has traveled does not matter. It just happens that stars that are far away have a high velocity to get that far in the first place.
I have never completely understood those quantum-mechanic courses i had, especially since your intuition always fails you.
Anyhow, my feeling says that your proposal does not work. When you place a detector behind each slit there is no longer any interference between the two slits. What you end up with is a system that measures single photons at two different places (which could give random results, depending on the source but for another reason.)
If i recall correctly you can't see the photons as loose particles, but you have to think in wave-functions, which can tunnel trough two slits at the same time. Blocking one slit with a detector spoils the whole interference thing.
In the older press release they mentioned the entire flight would be very short - something like 30-45 minutes. But with this sort of glide rate (avg sink less than 12fps when moving 150fps?) the possibilities for "space" (subspace? suborbital?) tourism seem much more clear. A 30 minute trip doesn't sound like much fun at all, but if you're in a ship that can glide back to earth over 4 or 5 hours, that opens all sorts of new doors - like transatlantic flight, to name one. Not as many passengers as the Concorde, but an infinitely cooler trip.
I don't know how you get to 4 or 5 hours, but i assume you think that it can glide all the way down from 100 km up. Remember however that at that height there is hardly any air to glide in. You thus fall back like a brick, slow down when you hit the upper atmosphere (+- 20 km) and glide for the last part. This will get you more in the 30-45 min range.
Considering that the two rovers will land on opposite sites of the planet, it is highly unlikely that they will help each other when they get stuck. I guess it was never even considered either.
I think the reason behind sending two rovers is the potential for getting almost twice the science for a very modest investment since you only have to do your R&D once. A rough guess for sending one rover would be ~1B$ and adding a second would only add 200M$.
The largest windtunnel will be fired up for the last time in June for four hours. It will test the parachutes that will land the Mars exploration rovers onto the Red Planet next year.
With both of the Mars rovers practically on the launch pad (one lauches in June, one in July) isn't it a bit late to test the parachutes now? Have they found another last minute metric convertion error??
The possibilities are limitless. Aside from the obvious, imagine the ultimate cellphone - one that charges the battery every time it rings/vibrates, hence promising extended talktimes, and giving operators all the more reasons to get their customers to use their devices. How cool is that?
Sure, hook the vibrating device of your cellphone (vibrator?) to the battery and have this new generator recharge the battery again. With the right settings you could have infinite power supply!!
Slashdot Mirror
>
> NGST is infrared, just like SIRTF.
I know, i didn't deny that. But ditching Hubble sooner or later would still give a gap till NGST (2011), in which there is no prime space based observatory for VIS/near IR. That would be a shame.
> Summary - cancelling Hubble will leave a serious gap in astronomical science for at least 1-2 decades.
You didn't get my point: I didn't say kill Hubble and do nothing, i said kill Hubble and build a cheap replacement.
Now think what you could build with that money in todays technology. I would suggest reusing some of the detectors designed for the next service mission. Use a modern light-weight mirror. No options for repear in space, just launch and forget. If it blows up, build another one. Mightbe be really modest in your goals, don't go for a design that is 10 times better than hubble, but try to equal it with a mirror of 1.5 - 2 meter. I don't know the exact number, but i believe SIRTF was built for something between 0.5 and 1B$. I would guess this could be done for less than 1B$ within 3 years to close the gap till NGST is built.
This incident (although caused by a transition TO the metric system) leads us to the question how many more years until we finally get rid of the imperial system. The US standard bureau has a page that describes their effort in the conversion. They quote the metric conversion act of 1975, but i don't know how much has happened since then. How many years do I have to buy US stuff here in Europe that is half metric and half imperial? For god sake, even the UK has switched! Does anybody know a real time-table for the transition??
Obligatory Pulp Fiction quote:
If you ever run into a imperial system freak ask him to calculate how many square inch there are in a square mile
Slightly OT from the Opportunity landing, but has anybody seen the amazing picture made by Mars Global Surveyor? They not only can see Spirit itself from orbit, they also located several bounce marks, the parachute, the backshell and the heatshield! I have to look up the resolution again, but judging from this picture they achieve better than 1 meter after some image processing.
These pictures gave me the following idea (assuming Spirit will get healthy soon): Since the plan was to drive to big crater in the top right of the first image anyhow, why not drive to the impact location of the heatshield. Since this came down without a parachute, it should have dug a pretty deep hole. It is thus possible to study a fresh crater that is only 1 month old!
If you are really interested in the how and why of hypertreading in suggest you read trough the lecture notes of Computer System Architecture at MIT OpenCourseWare. This gives you enough background to race trough all the articles at Ars Techica et al.
According to the guy this causes one of the biggest uncertainties in todays climate models! They try to compensate this by fudging with the so called bucket correction factor.
Why is that relevant? What are they going to do, recharge their battery powered Humvees?
Although in hate Microsoft like the rest of you, I do believe they have a point: Lindows is an obvious reference to the similar product Windows.
Take a for example a look at the products of Sanex, and the blatant clone Sanicur (same sounding name, same colour scheme).
I would guess that Sanex would be more than happy to sue the other company into oblivion, but they are apparently not able to do so.
Assuming a frequency of 100MHz, the resolution of LoFAr would be equivalent with a (350km * 100e6Hz / 5e14Hz =) 7 cm optical telescope or a 70 cm telescope when operating at 1 GHz. Although not much compared to Hubble or Keck, this would probably give some nice images.
Remember the other famous balloon guy: Steve Fossett (millionaire with to much spare time, first solo balloon flight around the world). He is also playing with gliders these days. A year ago he tried to achieve a new height by soaring a mountain wave (but didn't succeed?). Right now he seems be persuing some other gliding records and building some big boats.
Having done some gliding myself (~50 solo flights, never got my licence though) i think this is really cool.
Which leads us to the root cause of all this funny legislation: funding of political parties. I believe here in the Netherlands it is only allowed to donate as an individual and not as a company.
Of course the parties will complain how to raise their money. Our solution: all parties (and we have more than 2!) that get above the threshold of the last election (say one seat in parlement) get subsidized.
How much more of these stories do you americans need to wake up and demand a change to this practice?
This looks very similar to a story one year ago. Seems that they did it in two weeks this time, instead of in 3 years.
Interesting tidbit: they list Dick Rutan as their test pilot, who happens to be a brother of Burt.
It's solar panels generate some 2200 W or, for the metrically impaired, 3 horsepower as compared to the 200 hp in the Forbes article.
What about the world's fastest SOLAR-electric car?
The Nuna II, just won the World Solar Challenge, travelling 3000 kilometers in just 31 hours, averaging around 97 km/h.
Although i am not involved in any way, i'm still proud that the last race was won by my university, Delft University of Technolgy (the Netherlands).
Have a look at the page of the team here.
They won the last race as debutants, mainly because they got some big money from a power company that allowed them to buy space grade (triple junction?) solar cells. They are coached by Wubbo Ockels, the only dutch astronaut, so ESA is also involved.
I have folding@home running at my desktop and i can hear a slight change in sound pitch/level when i switch it off. (same for doing some heavy calculation with matlab that saturates the processor).
Probably some a fan or motor that runs a little bit faster or slower because the processor drains a little bit more current.
My processor is a normal P3 or 4 so it probably does matter.
Short translation:
-Two groups of people: 36 who had previously complained about GSM base stations and 36 who didn't.
-Persons where tested with cognitive tests while being subjected to EM field of GSM/UMTS base-station. Fields where relatively low, comparable to a normal daily exposure (I guess in case you live near a base-station, not like when you stick your head in the antenna).
-Statistical relevant relations were found between precense of field and 'experienced well-being' and 'results of mental tasks'.
-Calculated thermal effects are probably to small to be significant.
-Results are not well understood, more research needed.
Complot theory:
They probably measured nothing and just want money for a follow up experiment.
I believe it is only the velocities that matter: the reason the spectra shift is because of the Doppler effect (similar to the lowering of sound when a fast car passes by, only now in the optical domain and with some adjustments for relativity)
The long distance the light has traveled does not matter. It just happens that stars that are far away have a high velocity to get that far in the first place.
I have never completely understood those quantum-mechanic courses i had, especially since your intuition always fails you.
Anyhow, my feeling says that your proposal does not work. When you place a detector behind each slit there is no longer any interference between the two slits. What you end up with is a system that measures single photons at two different places (which could give random results, depending on the source but for another reason.)
If i recall correctly you can't see the photons as loose particles, but you have to think in wave-functions, which can tunnel trough two slits at the same time. Blocking one slit with a detector spoils the whole interference thing.
I don't know how you get to 4 or 5 hours, but i assume you think that it can glide all the way down from 100 km up. Remember however that at that height there is hardly any air to glide in. You thus fall back like a brick, slow down when you hit the upper atmosphere (+- 20 km) and glide for the last part. This will get you more in the 30-45 min range.
I think the reason behind sending two rovers is the potential for getting almost twice the science for a very modest investment since you only have to do your R&D once. A rough guess for sending one rover would be ~1B$ and adding a second would only add 200M$.