I have repeatedly gotten emails from a similar group of nutjobs linking to a 40 page paper which "proves" the universe is not powered by fusion but by magnetic fields or some such. Their paper contained I think three equations and a whole lot of hooey.
The story on the front page of slashdot is complete and utter BUNK (yes, I know not THAT big of a surprise). Editors should remove immediately.
Has anyone found their real science paper on the matter? I searched the usual suspects to no avail and I'm getting mildly annoyed that they'd make a press release without also releasing the scientific paper at the same time or earlier....
I don't doubt that they've done it, I'm just curious to find out how they came about it...
What if the NSA pointed one of their old drifting recon birds the wrong way and refocused it a few million light years from here?
I realize the optics aren't set up to do far-field imaging, but maybe it'd be cheaper and quicker than waiting to fix the Hubble?
An intriguing idea. However, I don't think it will work. The focus would not be the major issue though, as the difference in focussing between 500km and 500pc is relatively minor.
I suspect the main issue would be noise. Hubble's CCDs were specifically designed to have the lowest possible noise, whereas in the case of an NSA satellite, they have so much more signal from Earth (>1000x) than from the next dimmest thing in the solar system that the system might not be physically capable of taking the necessary long exposures. However, they might be able to do some sort of astronomy with a series of stacked images, much as is done with web cam astronomy. Anyway, just some thoughts... there are probably other reasons it hasn't been done yet that I haven't thought of yet....
After having to do engineering in the imperial units, I thought when I swithed to a more sciencey field of study and all metric, life would be easy factors of ten. But alas, it is not so. there are in fact two metric systems, MKS and CGS, and they are not different by factors of 10 in units involving electomagnetism. In fact, under the two different systems, the equations of electromagnetism gain or lose constants depending on which system is used. So much for easy powers of ten....
Sorry, by article I meant the journal article, not the press release type article, which I fully admit to not bothering to read.
Also, the hundreds of parsec possibility mentioned are not currently feasible because they depend on the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) which at the moment only exists on paper. It currently is in the early design phase and is not yet funded. Thus, if they try to get telescope time for this SETI project today, they will only be able to detect a signal out to 30pc according to one of the figures in the paper.
If you read the article, the authors show that signals from our current Anti-ballistic missile radar could be detected within a 30 pc radius of the earth using existing and proposed instruments that are designed to probe the epoch of reionization. That's one example they give, but they analyze the chances of detecting any generalized signal based on typical bandwidths and powers we use on earth.
The authors talk about the large number of instruments that are proposed or being built in the 50-300MHz band. That's where FM, tv, some satellite, and some radars lie, so any of those would be fair game for detection under this scheme. Also, they wouldn't be able to "listen in on the signal" with this method, only determine that someone was broadcasting, not what was being broadcast.
Allow me to clarify some things. I've done research in this area, and here is how a pulsar based interplanetary navigation would work.
First, it would not use radio pulsars, because it's ridiculous to have four high gain antennas on a space craft. Rather, it would use the x-ray portion of the spectrum. X-ray detectors don't even require optics. However, with a coded aperture mask and some software, the position of the source the pulse is coming from can be determined.
Second, you are on the right track with the knowing your existing position. Pulsar navigation can only work with differential positions. Essentially, it would provide a correction the existing intertial guidance systems. It has to be differential because we don't actually know the positions of the pulsars in 3-d space. With astronomical objects, we're lucky to get a position within a parsec, much less the centimeters we know GPS satellites to. Unfortunately, differential calculations get hideous because general relativity affects pulsar arrival times differently in different parts of the solar system.
This goes more to the parent post, but the accuracy of the system would be much better than the pulse period, because pulse arrivals, if integrated over time, can be timed to a microsecond or possibly better. It is predicted that the accuracy of the system would be on the order of a few hundred meters.
I'm an astronomy grad student, and I read the executive summary of the real report, and here is what they recommend in the ~2010-2020 time frame for ground based observing:
OPTICAL Reduce/cut off funding for Gemini Observatory commence construction of Giant Segmented Mirror telescope (~30m telescope) and Large Survey Telescope
RADIO Reduce funding for or close completely Arecibo observatory and the VLBA Reduce administrative costs at NRAO and the Green Bank Telescope Start funding construction of Square Kilometer Array
SOLAR Close national solar observatory and divert resources to Advance solar telescope
------------------------ The most alarming to me is Gemini recommendation as those telescopes are first class instruments, and not so much the Arecibo recommendation as Arecibo is of fairly limited use as it can only see a tiny fraction of the sky.
You mean the delay cost of $500,000 or so? That number is suspiciously similar to the cost of the fuel/launch, so my guess is that's what they had to pay to empty the shuttle, then fill it again.
That amount of money is also accounted for in NASA as a "rouding error." In my aerospace classes, they always told us that for cost accounting, fuel is "free."
Underestimating the determination and ingenuity of anyone is a terrible mistake. However, in this case, the terrorists' ingenuity may be at odds with the laws of chemistry. Judging from what I've read through all of the chemists' commentaries in the article and comments, it seems like the liquid based attacks mentioned in the media cannot be carried out regardless of the determination of the terrorists involved.
The article states repeatedly that "This has never been done before" "totally unique" and other such crap. I find fault with the fact that the article fails to mention a blindly obviously similar telescope that is already under construction and claim uniqueness when that is not the case. One survey telescope operating in the north and one in the south would be a very decent combination, but it is foolish for the later one to not acknowledge that it's following on the shoulders of or working in conjunction with a similar telescope. The article writers should have done their homework. (and possible the grant writers as well... I am an astronomy graduate student and surprisingly few astronomers I have talked to have heard of PAN-STARRS outside of the IFA at Hawaii)
This is truly not innovative at all and just copying someone else's idea. PAN-STARRS will accomplish the same thing, already has funding, and is entering the prototype phase. Sure, 1.4 Gigapixels is not as much as 3, but it will be online sooner, accomplish the same goals on a smaller telescope, and will take a week to survey the whole sky instead of three days. So this new telescope is no big deal, especially since it will only about half of the sky visible to PAN-STARRS since this new thingy will be in the very southern hemisphere, rather than Hawaii.
Few people running Linux are thinking, "I would love to buy a Mac if only it were using the x86 architecture."
Actually, there are more than you might think. I was seriously contemplating buying a Mac, until I discovered that a lot of commercial software for linux (in my case, Matlab) will only run on the x86 architecture under linux. Now I can upgrade from Windows+Linux to Mac+Linux without having to worry about buying all new software.
I'm not sure how many other people are in my situation, but it's certainly food for thought.
...the article itself says that the asteroid will most likely not be put on to a collision course.
All it's saying is that it is possible (I would say probable, I have some experience in similar research) that the model might not accurately account for the close approach with the Earth. The solar system is somewhat of a chaotic system when it comes to small bodies flying around through it. A very small change or error in calculation of the orbit of the asteroid can lead to wildly different orbits. One of them might be Earth smacking. Most of them won't.
As with all of these recently discovered "hazards," it's bloody unlikely to happen, but the media likes the headline. Don't panic anytime soon.
I cried out in shock when I read that Eddie won't be singing "You'll never walk alone." It wasn't funny the first time through, because I'd never even heard of the song. But the song is a beautiful melodramatic song, and after hearing it and then rereading, I cracked up when I got that part. It's a nice, slow, melodramatic song and it makes such a hilarious counterpoint to everyone going absolutely ape because of the missiles about to strike them. It's hard to pick up on when reading but a movie would make it work perfectly and then they didn't do it. Phooey. And the rest of his review isn't very optimistic either.
Even more unforgivable is the omission of the Guide's entry on towels....
If by magnification you mean with a lense, by golly it has been done before..... in fact it was even mentioned on slashdot. Fresnel lenses are really useful for totally obliterating innocent inanimate objects.
They actually managed to keep the voices from the original in the remake! I've been trying to find a way to play my original copy for months.... but now, I don't need to.... Congrats to whoever put together this thing.
Third Reich is in the same vein as Axis & Allies. It simulates, with an amazing degree of detail, the second World War in Europe. It's so detailed, it has three entire pages of manual dedicated to the surrender of France! It also takes quite a while to play, so I wouldn't recommend it if you're the impatient sort, but if you can make it through an entire game of axis & allies, you'd probably like it.
Yes encryption would defeat the watermarking scheme... but wouldn't there be something even easier?
Specifically, wouldn't any watermarking be lost in the process of converting from MPAA licensed stuff (i.e. DVDs, stuff shown in the theaters) to the files people download? If there was a digital watermark, I believe it would be erased in the process of encoding the file with Divx, xvid, or [insert favorite video codec here]. If the watermarking were, say, a special frame of movie, it would look different digitally depending on which codec was used, even if it looked the same on the screen.
Granted, I'm not an expert in cryptography/watermarking, so I would love for someone with more knowledge to support or contradict my argument...
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, too angry reading the latter half to look at the first links. The St. Andrew's stuff is legit. The electric stuff is crap
DISCLAIMER: I am an astronomy grad student.
I have repeatedly gotten emails from a similar group of nutjobs linking to a 40 page paper which "proves" the universe is not powered by fusion but by magnetic fields or some such. Their paper contained I think three equations and a whole lot of hooey.
The story on the front page of slashdot is complete and utter BUNK (yes, I know not THAT big of a surprise). Editors should remove immediately.
Excellent! Thanks!
Has anyone found their real science paper on the matter? I searched the usual suspects to no avail and I'm getting mildly annoyed that they'd make a press release without also releasing the scientific paper at the same time or earlier....
I don't doubt that they've done it, I'm just curious to find out how they came about it...
Maybe this is slashdot's April fool's joke?
I mean think about it... it's almost april 1st, the page it links to makes no sense... anyone else smell a prank here?
What if the NSA pointed one of their old drifting recon birds the wrong way and refocused it a few million light years from here?
I realize the optics aren't set up to do far-field imaging, but maybe it'd be cheaper and quicker than waiting to fix the Hubble?
An intriguing idea. However, I don't think it will work. The focus would not be the major issue though, as the difference in focussing between 500km and 500pc is relatively minor.
I suspect the main issue would be noise. Hubble's CCDs were specifically designed to have the lowest possible noise, whereas in the case of an NSA satellite, they have so much more signal from Earth (>1000x) than from the next dimmest thing in the solar system that the system might not be physically capable of taking the necessary long exposures. However, they might be able to do some sort of astronomy with a series of stacked images, much as is done with web cam astronomy. Anyway, just some thoughts... there are probably other reasons it hasn't been done yet that I haven't thought of yet....
After having to do engineering in the imperial units, I thought when I swithed to a more sciencey field of study and all metric, life would be easy factors of ten. But alas, it is not so. there are in fact two metric systems, MKS and CGS, and they are not different by factors of 10 in units involving electomagnetism. In fact, under the two different systems, the equations of electromagnetism gain or lose constants depending on which system is used. So much for easy powers of ten....
Sorry, by article I meant the journal article, not the press release type article, which I fully admit to not bothering to read.
Also, the hundreds of parsec possibility mentioned are not currently feasible because they depend on the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) which at the moment only exists on paper. It currently is in the early design phase and is not yet funded. Thus, if they try to get telescope time for this SETI project today, they will only be able to detect a signal out to 30pc according to one of the figures in the paper.
If you read the article, the authors show that signals from our current Anti-ballistic missile radar could be detected within a 30 pc radius of the earth using existing and proposed instruments that are designed to probe the epoch of reionization. That's one example they give, but they analyze the chances of detecting any generalized signal based on typical bandwidths and powers we use on earth.
The authors talk about the large number of instruments that are proposed or being built in the 50-300MHz band. That's where FM, tv, some satellite, and some radars lie, so any of those would be fair game for detection under this scheme. Also, they wouldn't be able to "listen in on the signal" with this method, only determine that someone was broadcasting, not what was being broadcast.
Have it on Acer Aspire 5672 bought in the USA.
However, IE6 warned me before running the countrol, and I had to specifically unblock it in order to let IE run it.
First, it would not use radio pulsars, because it's ridiculous to have four high gain antennas on a space craft. Rather, it would use the x-ray portion of the spectrum. X-ray detectors don't even require optics. However, with a coded aperture mask and some software, the position of the source the pulse is coming from can be determined.
Second, you are on the right track with the knowing your existing position. Pulsar navigation can only work with differential positions. Essentially, it would provide a correction the existing intertial guidance systems. It has to be differential because we don't actually know the positions of the pulsars in 3-d space. With astronomical objects, we're lucky to get a position within a parsec, much less the centimeters we know GPS satellites to. Unfortunately, differential calculations get hideous because general relativity affects pulsar arrival times differently in different parts of the solar system.
This goes more to the parent post, but the accuracy of the system would be much better than the pulse period, because pulse arrivals, if integrated over time, can be timed to a microsecond or possibly better. It is predicted that the accuracy of the system would be on the order of a few hundred meters.
For more information see this fellow's doctoral dissertation on the subject.
I'm an astronomy grad student, and I read the executive summary of the real report, and here is what they recommend in the ~2010-2020 time frame for ground based observing:
OPTICAL
Reduce/cut off funding for Gemini Observatory
commence construction of Giant Segmented Mirror telescope (~30m telescope) and Large Survey Telescope
RADIO
Reduce funding for or close completely Arecibo observatory and the VLBA
Reduce administrative costs at NRAO and the Green Bank Telescope
Start funding construction of Square Kilometer Array
SOLAR
Close national solar observatory and divert resources to Advance solar telescope
------------------------
The most alarming to me is Gemini recommendation as those telescopes are first class instruments, and not so much the Arecibo recommendation as Arecibo is of fairly limited use as it can only see a tiny fraction of the sky.
You mean the delay cost of $500,000 or so? That number is suspiciously similar to the cost of the fuel/launch, so my guess is that's what they had to pay to empty the shuttle, then fill it again. That amount of money is also accounted for in NASA as a "rouding error." In my aerospace classes, they always told us that for cost accounting, fuel is "free."
Underestimating the determination and ingenuity of anyone is a terrible mistake. However, in this case, the terrorists' ingenuity may be at odds with the laws of chemistry. Judging from what I've read through all of the chemists' commentaries in the article and comments, it seems like the liquid based attacks mentioned in the media cannot be carried out regardless of the determination of the terrorists involved.
The article states repeatedly that "This has never been done before" "totally unique" and other such crap. I find fault with the fact that the article fails to mention a blindly obviously similar telescope that is already under construction and claim uniqueness when that is not the case. One survey telescope operating in the north and one in the south would be a very decent combination, but it is foolish for the later one to not acknowledge that it's following on the shoulders of or working in conjunction with a similar telescope. The article writers should have done their homework. (and possible the grant writers as well... I am an astronomy graduate student and surprisingly few astronomers I have talked to have heard of PAN-STARRS outside of the IFA at Hawaii)
This is truly not innovative at all and just copying someone else's idea. PAN-STARRS will accomplish the same thing, already has funding, and is entering the prototype phase. Sure, 1.4 Gigapixels is not as much as 3, but it will be online sooner, accomplish the same goals on a smaller telescope, and will take a week to survey the whole sky instead of three days. So this new telescope is no big deal, especially since it will only about half of the sky visible to PAN-STARRS since this new thingy will be in the very southern hemisphere, rather than Hawaii.
Few people running Linux are thinking, "I would love to buy a Mac if only it were using the x86 architecture."
Actually, there are more than you might think. I was seriously contemplating buying a Mac, until I discovered that a lot of commercial software for linux (in my case, Matlab) will only run on the x86 architecture under linux. Now I can upgrade from Windows+Linux to Mac+Linux without having to worry about buying all new software.
I'm not sure how many other people are in my situation, but it's certainly food for thought.
...is the number of slashdot users who make spelling errors trying to use the fake words in an attempt at a humorous sentence.
Isn't turkish delight the same stuff that's on the inside of jelly beans?
...the article itself says that the asteroid will most likely not be put on to a collision course.
All it's saying is that it is possible (I would say probable, I have some experience in similar research) that the model might not accurately account for the close approach with the Earth. The solar system is somewhat of a chaotic system when it comes to small bodies flying around through it. A very small change or error in calculation of the orbit of the asteroid can lead to wildly different orbits. One of them might be Earth smacking. Most of them won't.
As with all of these recently discovered "hazards," it's bloody unlikely to happen, but the media likes the headline. Don't panic anytime soon.
I cried out in shock when I read that Eddie won't be singing "You'll never walk alone." It wasn't funny the first time through, because I'd never even heard of the song. But the song is a beautiful melodramatic song, and after hearing it and then rereading, I cracked up when I got that part. It's a nice, slow, melodramatic song and it makes such a hilarious counterpoint to everyone going absolutely ape because of the missiles about to strike them. It's hard to pick up on when reading but a movie would make it work perfectly and then they didn't do it. Phooey. And the rest of his review isn't very optimistic either.
Even more unforgivable is the omission of the Guide's entry on towels....
If by magnification you mean with a lense, by golly it has been done before..... in fact it was even mentioned on slashdot. Fresnel lenses are really useful for totally obliterating innocent inanimate objects.
"You're about to suck void, buddy."
They actually managed to keep the voices from the original in the remake! I've been trying to find a way to play my original copy for months.... but now, I don't need to.... Congrats to whoever put together this thing.
Third Reich is in the same vein as Axis & Allies. It simulates, with an amazing degree of detail, the second World War in Europe. It's so detailed, it has three entire pages of manual dedicated to the surrender of France! It also takes quite a while to play, so I wouldn't recommend it if you're the impatient sort, but if you can make it through an entire game of axis & allies, you'd probably like it.
Yes encryption would defeat the watermarking scheme... but wouldn't there be something even easier?
Specifically, wouldn't any watermarking be lost in the process of converting from MPAA licensed stuff (i.e. DVDs, stuff shown in the theaters) to the files people download? If there was a digital watermark, I believe it would be erased in the process of encoding the file with Divx, xvid, or [insert favorite video codec here]. If the watermarking were, say, a special frame of movie, it would look different digitally depending on which codec was used, even if it looked the same on the screen.
Granted, I'm not an expert in cryptography/watermarking, so I would love for someone with more knowledge to support or contradict my argument...