Household insurance usually does something similar, although it's frequently hidden in things like "losing your no claims bonus."
For special case insurance like the Mythbusters have, it wouldn't be at all surprising if their insurance went up. The insurance company will look at this incident, realize what they do is maybe a bit more dangerous than previously assessed, and revise appropriately.
Yes, it is. It wouldn't take very much to improve, but unfortunately their methodology is worse than a high school physics class.
They draw conclusions from single tests (those are called anecdotes). That's fine for things like "can we make a water heater explode?" but it's not okay for "is a car driving with it's windows open more efficient than one with the air conditioner on?"
Galileo know all about rolling marbles down inclined planes LOTS OF TIMES (and that's quite a bit farther back than 110 years). It actually wouldn't take very much for the Mythbusters to introduce the idea of a standard error, and they've come tantalizingly close a few times.
The ability to explain observations is most certainly evidence in favour of a theory, particularly when you're choosing between two theories, one of which explains more observations than the other.
Yeah, sorry, your assessment of my fitness as a scientist doesn't really sting much. Perhaps you'd like try something else? Maybe mom jokes? Speculation about my personal hygiene?
I read it. I'm not sure how it's relevant to my statement. I suppose it's possible that MACHOs could explain the bullet cluster, far field gravity could explain galactic rotation curves and non-baryonic dark matter explains all the other observations like the CMB and galactic cluster behaviour. But you still haven't succeeded in getting rid of non-baryonic dark matter.
But it's pretty cute that you're resorting to personal insults.
That's the way science works. You observe something that doesn't fit and you modify the theory to account for it (or make a new one). It's not "making things up" it's thinking of possibilities. Then you look for evidence to help you decide between those possibilities.
There were lots of different aether models. Various observations ruled out some. The famous Michaelson-Morely experiment ruled out a bunch that predicted the speed of light would be affected by Earth's motion. Of course, we still have the basic concept of the aether - we just call it vacuum or quantum fields today.
Neptune was postulated to explain irregularities in Uranus's orbit. The neutrino was "made up" by Pauli to explain where missing momentum went in certain fusion reactions. Then later we observed them directly... well, sort of. We can't actually see neutrinos, just the things that are produced when they slam into something. Quarks were postulated by Murray Gell-Mann, who insisted for years that they were just mathematical abstractions. Except with modern particle accelerators we can "see" them, just like neutrinos.
Sometimes the theory needs to be modified. A planet was also predicted nearer the sun to explain Mercury's orbit. Those anomalies were eventually explained by general relativity.
In the case of dark matter, modifying the theory (MOND) didn't work. It could explain galaxy rotation curves really well, and galaxy clusters pretty well (but not both at the same time), but fails to explain things about the cosmic microwave background and observations like the bullet cluster. Dark matter works for all of these.
So right now we're in the stage where dark matter is by far the most likely solution but we haven't yet observed the actual particles. People are looking though.
The primary argument against MACHOs is that so much extra baryonic matter doesn't fit into the big bang models and observations of the CMB are also evidence against it.
It's quite possible they don't know what the required mass distribution is. From the sound of it, they didn't actually fit a mass distribution, but rather a gravitational field. Working back to a mass distribution may well be non-trivial.
The point is, non-baryonic dark matter isn't really some magical substance with previously unheard of properties. Neutrinos exhibit all of the required exotic properties.
Cloning is different even in other living mammals. Remember how long it took before something OTHER than Dolly was cloned? Cloning an animal from DNA recovered from preserved material is an entirely different proposition. Otherwise it wouldn't be all that hard, would it?
If you want to admire wasted talent lay off the scientists trying to learn about genetic manipulation which could lead to all sorts of useful things and focus on the truly wasted. A good place to start would be all the talent we devote to trying to sell each other crap.
Nobody is going to release this thing into an ecosystem. It's going to be kept in a zoo and babied as the fabulously expensive pet it is. Even if you did release it, it would just die, if not of starvation, an accident or poaching then of old age with no offspring.
Not sure if it's what you meant, but 40 diverse individuals sounds like about the minimum number to keep a gene pool surviving long term. It wouldn't be particularly diverse.
"If 26% "know of" some activity, it's likely that less than 26% participated in that activity"
If 26% know someone who has engaged in an activity they'd definitely want to keep secret what basis do you have for thinking less than 26% participated in the activity? How many murderers do you know? How many people do you know have committed rape? I don't know any. Does that mean there are no rapists?
Your head unfortunately doesn't have a good handle on space elevators.
A space elevator doesn't HAVE to be right at the equator, although that's the easiest way. The equator doesn't go through central America.
Islands are perfectly fine. A space elevator doesn't pull on the ground station much. If it did, your ground station would certainly fail before "strong continental plate foundations" were an asset. Actually, an artificial, mobile sea platform may be a good idea because you can move it around to tow the tether a bit if you need it to dodge some space junk.
Space elevators don't go to low earth orbit. They MUST go somewhat past geosynchronous orbit. Geosynch is actually the MIDDLE of the tether unless you weight the space end of it, say by attaching it to an asteroid.
Have you ever seen a bird sitting on a power line? Not that it really matters anyway, you can get some high voltages from voltage differentials in the atmosphere (friction with the wind is probably a negligible contribution) but not much current. If somehow you did manage to get a decent amount of current, you'd use it as a power plant.
The olympics are contentious because there is only one. And even so, we manage to find a place to put them every two years, don't we? A space elevator would probably be built by a group of countries, like CERN or some of the other large projects. Fights over the location would probably be considerably simplified because no large industrial nation would be a suitable host. Instead it would probably end up somewhere like French Guiana where the European Space Agency already has their launch facilities, BTW.
If the tether were to break, most of the lower end would probably burn up in the atmosphere. The rest would land fairly softly. The thing is LIGHT remember.
Given an appropriate material, a space elevator will get built. Various plans put it well within the reach of private enterprise if no governments get around to doing it.
"Why does the author completely ignore the luminosity distribution of the test galaxies."
Just guessing, but perhaps because it doesn't match what's require to explain the rotation curve?
I just skimmed the paper itself, but on a quick reading it sounds like they started with the (interesting) question "can we get the observed rotation curve by arranging other galaxies around our target galaxy, at a long distance?" That was a bit too hard so they simplified it to "can we get the observed rotation curve by creating a varying gravitation field throughout the galaxy that could be caused by a particular arrangement of mass at a long distance."
They then took their model and fit it to the observed rotation curves for a few galaxies. There's no indication that their fitting was in any way constrained by the actual observed distribution of galaxies.
You know, a while ago there was this little problem with nuclear reactions. A very good model supported by lots of observations showed that some momentum was missing in fusion reactions. Some physicist (his name was Pauli) created an entirely new particle that no one had ever (or can ever) seen, felt, or observed to satisfy this one anomaly. And yet, it became accepted throughout physics that these "neutrinos" actually existed.
Just like neutrinos, dark matter WAS postulated to solve a particular problem, but as we looked into it, the concept solved lots of OTHER problems as well. No other theory solves all those problems as well. So just like the neutrino, most of the people with a clue are pretty sure that dark matter is real... we just don't know the details of what exactly it is yet.
In fact, neutrinos have most of the right properties to be dark matter, except that other observations rule them out.
"It is also what you would see if the majority of the dark matter is MACHOs"
No, it's not. In the bullet cluster all the regular, baryonic matter we can see (which is not just stars but also gas and dust) shows a drag effect. By looking at gravitational lensing we know that the majority of the matter actually does NOT show this drag effect. The majority of the matter in the cluster is behaving as if it doesn't interact with anything, except through gravity.
MACHOs definitely do interact through forces other than gravity, and behave just like baryonic matter (because they ARE baryonic matter). You're sitting on one, after all.
Aether was a proposed all-pervasive medium through which electromagnetic waves propagated. Dark matter is not all pervasive. The two concepts are about as distinct as you can get.
So no, the term "dark matter" is not a modern way to say "aether."
People happily watch YouTube clips at pretty close to standard def TV resolution, highly compressed, on their smartphones, choosing to watch what they want.
Now, think what YouTube would be like if it was just a series of channels and you couldn't actually choose individual videos. Not far behind that horror is television.
The display tech isn't broken. The delivery tech (or lack thereof) is. And that's reflected in the waning numbers of TVs in the world.
Yeah right. I'm far less likely to watch (and enjoy) a significant portion of a show I've never seen when I flip to it, probably arriving in the middle and likely getting there just in time to be interrupted by a commercial. I probably won't even know what it is if I've never seen it before, and I'm not likely to go look up a guide and find out.
On the other hand, flicking through shows available for streaming I can see a synapses, start it from the beginning (beginning of the episode AND start with the pilot) and if I do like it the name is right there - I don't have to do anything to find it.
Slashdot Mirror
Household insurance usually does something similar, although it's frequently hidden in things like "losing your no claims bonus."
For special case insurance like the Mythbusters have, it wouldn't be at all surprising if their insurance went up. The insurance company will look at this incident, realize what they do is maybe a bit more dangerous than previously assessed, and revise appropriately.
Yes, it is. It wouldn't take very much to improve, but unfortunately their methodology is worse than a high school physics class.
They draw conclusions from single tests (those are called anecdotes). That's fine for things like "can we make a water heater explode?" but it's not okay for "is a car driving with it's windows open more efficient than one with the air conditioner on?"
Galileo know all about rolling marbles down inclined planes LOTS OF TIMES (and that's quite a bit farther back than 110 years). It actually wouldn't take very much for the Mythbusters to introduce the idea of a standard error, and they've come tantalizingly close a few times.
In some professions a degree is a prerequisite. But the degree by itself never makes you a professional.
And honorary degrees don't count for anything. That's why they're usually given in laws or philosophy.
And insurance.
The ability to explain observations is most certainly evidence in favour of a theory, particularly when you're choosing between two theories, one of which explains more observations than the other.
Yeah, sorry, your assessment of my fitness as a scientist doesn't really sting much. Perhaps you'd like try something else? Maybe mom jokes? Speculation about my personal hygiene?
I read it. I'm not sure how it's relevant to my statement. I suppose it's possible that MACHOs could explain the bullet cluster, far field gravity could explain galactic rotation curves and non-baryonic dark matter explains all the other observations like the CMB and galactic cluster behaviour. But you still haven't succeeded in getting rid of non-baryonic dark matter.
But it's pretty cute that you're resorting to personal insults.
That's the way science works. You observe something that doesn't fit and you modify the theory to account for it (or make a new one). It's not "making things up" it's thinking of possibilities. Then you look for evidence to help you decide between those possibilities.
There were lots of different aether models. Various observations ruled out some. The famous Michaelson-Morely experiment ruled out a bunch that predicted the speed of light would be affected by Earth's motion. Of course, we still have the basic concept of the aether - we just call it vacuum or quantum fields today.
Neptune was postulated to explain irregularities in Uranus's orbit. The neutrino was "made up" by Pauli to explain where missing momentum went in certain fusion reactions. Then later we observed them directly... well, sort of. We can't actually see neutrinos, just the things that are produced when they slam into something. Quarks were postulated by Murray Gell-Mann, who insisted for years that they were just mathematical abstractions. Except with modern particle accelerators we can "see" them, just like neutrinos.
Sometimes the theory needs to be modified. A planet was also predicted nearer the sun to explain Mercury's orbit. Those anomalies were eventually explained by general relativity.
In the case of dark matter, modifying the theory (MOND) didn't work. It could explain galaxy rotation curves really well, and galaxy clusters pretty well (but not both at the same time), but fails to explain things about the cosmic microwave background and observations like the bullet cluster. Dark matter works for all of these.
So right now we're in the stage where dark matter is by far the most likely solution but we haven't yet observed the actual particles. People are looking though.
The primary argument against MACHOs is that so much extra baryonic matter doesn't fit into the big bang models and observations of the CMB are also evidence against it.
It's quite possible they don't know what the required mass distribution is. From the sound of it, they didn't actually fit a mass distribution, but rather a gravitational field. Working back to a mass distribution may well be non-trivial.
MOST of the right properties.
The point is, non-baryonic dark matter isn't really some magical substance with previously unheard of properties. Neutrinos exhibit all of the required exotic properties.
Cloning is different even in other living mammals. Remember how long it took before something OTHER than Dolly was cloned? Cloning an animal from DNA recovered from preserved material is an entirely different proposition. Otherwise it wouldn't be all that hard, would it?
If you want to admire wasted talent lay off the scientists trying to learn about genetic manipulation which could lead to all sorts of useful things and focus on the truly wasted. A good place to start would be all the talent we devote to trying to sell each other crap.
Wired likes to do alarmist navel gazing.
Nobody is going to release this thing into an ecosystem. It's going to be kept in a zoo and babied as the fabulously expensive pet it is. Even if you did release it, it would just die, if not of starvation, an accident or poaching then of old age with no offspring.
Or raising a kitten or puppy in a home without other pets. Oh, wait.
Not sure if it's what you meant, but 40 diverse individuals sounds like about the minimum number to keep a gene pool surviving long term. It wouldn't be particularly diverse.
"If 26% "know of" some activity, it's likely that less than 26% participated in that activity"
If 26% know someone who has engaged in an activity they'd definitely want to keep secret what basis do you have for thinking less than 26% participated in the activity? How many murderers do you know? How many people do you know have committed rape? I don't know any. Does that mean there are no rapists?
Your head unfortunately doesn't have a good handle on space elevators.
A space elevator doesn't HAVE to be right at the equator, although that's the easiest way. The equator doesn't go through central America.
Islands are perfectly fine. A space elevator doesn't pull on the ground station much. If it did, your ground station would certainly fail before "strong continental plate foundations" were an asset. Actually, an artificial, mobile sea platform may be a good idea because you can move it around to tow the tether a bit if you need it to dodge some space junk.
Space elevators don't go to low earth orbit. They MUST go somewhat past geosynchronous orbit. Geosynch is actually the MIDDLE of the tether unless you weight the space end of it, say by attaching it to an asteroid.
Have you ever seen a bird sitting on a power line? Not that it really matters anyway, you can get some high voltages from voltage differentials in the atmosphere (friction with the wind is probably a negligible contribution) but not much current. If somehow you did manage to get a decent amount of current, you'd use it as a power plant.
The olympics are contentious because there is only one. And even so, we manage to find a place to put them every two years, don't we? A space elevator would probably be built by a group of countries, like CERN or some of the other large projects. Fights over the location would probably be considerably simplified because no large industrial nation would be a suitable host. Instead it would probably end up somewhere like French Guiana where the European Space Agency already has their launch facilities, BTW.
If the tether were to break, most of the lower end would probably burn up in the atmosphere. The rest would land fairly softly. The thing is LIGHT remember.
Given an appropriate material, a space elevator will get built. Various plans put it well within the reach of private enterprise if no governments get around to doing it.
"Why does the author completely ignore the luminosity distribution of the test galaxies."
Just guessing, but perhaps because it doesn't match what's require to explain the rotation curve?
I just skimmed the paper itself, but on a quick reading it sounds like they started with the (interesting) question "can we get the observed rotation curve by arranging other galaxies around our target galaxy, at a long distance?" That was a bit too hard so they simplified it to "can we get the observed rotation curve by creating a varying gravitation field throughout the galaxy that could be caused by a particular arrangement of mass at a long distance."
They then took their model and fit it to the observed rotation curves for a few galaxies. There's no indication that their fitting was in any way constrained by the actual observed distribution of galaxies.
You know, a while ago there was this little problem with nuclear reactions. A very good model supported by lots of observations showed that some momentum was missing in fusion reactions. Some physicist (his name was Pauli) created an entirely new particle that no one had ever (or can ever) seen, felt, or observed to satisfy this one anomaly. And yet, it became accepted throughout physics that these "neutrinos" actually existed.
Just like neutrinos, dark matter WAS postulated to solve a particular problem, but as we looked into it, the concept solved lots of OTHER problems as well. No other theory solves all those problems as well. So just like the neutrino, most of the people with a clue are pretty sure that dark matter is real... we just don't know the details of what exactly it is yet.
In fact, neutrinos have most of the right properties to be dark matter, except that other observations rule them out.
"It is also what you would see if the majority of the dark matter is MACHOs"
No, it's not. In the bullet cluster all the regular, baryonic matter we can see (which is not just stars but also gas and dust) shows a drag effect. By looking at gravitational lensing we know that the majority of the matter actually does NOT show this drag effect. The majority of the matter in the cluster is behaving as if it doesn't interact with anything, except through gravity.
MACHOs definitely do interact through forces other than gravity, and behave just like baryonic matter (because they ARE baryonic matter). You're sitting on one, after all.
Aether was a proposed all-pervasive medium through which electromagnetic waves propagated. Dark matter is not all pervasive. The two concepts are about as distinct as you can get.
So no, the term "dark matter" is not a modern way to say "aether."
That's even further from your statement that 3 out of 4 were trustworthy. Unless you mean "didn't rat out their colleagues" when you say trustworthy.
Before Discovery Civ showed crap, it was a fantastic channel. I still remember "Connections." Even the biblical shows were archaeology.
People happily watch YouTube clips at pretty close to standard def TV resolution, highly compressed, on their smartphones, choosing to watch what they want.
Now, think what YouTube would be like if it was just a series of channels and you couldn't actually choose individual videos. Not far behind that horror is television.
The display tech isn't broken. The delivery tech (or lack thereof) is. And that's reflected in the waning numbers of TVs in the world.
Yeah right. I'm far less likely to watch (and enjoy) a significant portion of a show I've never seen when I flip to it, probably arriving in the middle and likely getting there just in time to be interrupted by a commercial. I probably won't even know what it is if I've never seen it before, and I'm not likely to go look up a guide and find out.
On the other hand, flicking through shows available for streaming I can see a synapses, start it from the beginning (beginning of the episode AND start with the pilot) and if I do like it the name is right there - I don't have to do anything to find it.