How naive can people get? Even I spy on my friends and neighbors this way and have done so for years. Professionals have been doing it for much longer.
The paper already discusses why a microlensing event (that's the name for what you describe) is an unlikely explanation. (You should probably pat yourself on the back for a good try though.)
Star formation models have been worked on for many decades now. This event bears no similarity to anything like that. Honestly, astronomers do occasionally spend a little time thinking about things like star formation.
it shows that humans are simply not designed to comprehend something that can explode with that kind of magnitude
Humans weren't designed, they evolved. And in the last few millennia they've additionally developed a whole bunch of techniques ranging from counting to computer programming that allow them to extend the domain of things they can think about way beyond what humans were thinking about previously. I have no idea how far this will go in the future, but what humans were 'designed' to do is irrelevant to the amazing things that humans are capable of doing today, and a very misleading metaphor to use (assuming you mean it as a metaphor). Maybe you're talking about limitations on what your own brain can do, but don't assume those limitations apply to other people. Dealing with large numbers is something many humans have been very good at for a long time.
What exactly happens when you spill a big barrel of anit-matter in the lab?
For one thing you can expect a vast amount of gamma radiation with a very characteristic signature. There would be little chance of confusing it with anything else. You'd need more than a barrel for it to be visible at a few hundred light years though.
Creationism is unfalsifiable and so is not a scientific theory. The theory of evolution by natural selection, on the other hand, can't make predictions because the outcome is down to luck, making it also unfalsifiable. But the theory of evolution by natural selection is a scientific theory. You could forgive some people for being a little confused.
So you're saying that the only reason you don't ridicule Black, Asian or Jewish people is that they can't help being whatever it is you would otherwise find ridiculous. Thanks for spelling out clearly just how racist you are.
They posted it online. It was a silly humorous thing. A few years later I was trying to get my employer to hire him. They found the poem and started voicing their concerns about hiring someone with serial killer tendencies. After a lot of persuasion I convinced them to hire him. But I learnt from that experience.
> Just as one is programed to help their family first
Where do people get this stuff? Do you think it's just okay to make up pseudo-science and spew it out on/. ? I spend very little time with my family and spend way more time helping other people. I don't see your imaginary program running.
> and is logically obvious based upon the facts of evolutionary biology
It's logically obvious that diseases are bad for you. Yet we suffer from diseases. It's logically obvious that it'd be useful to get fit without doing exercise, but we can't do it. The truth is, *nothing* is logically obvious about evolutionary biology which is why when evolutionary biologists publish their work they make hypotheses and then devise experiments to test them.
> As well, organisms evolved altruism to help themselves
Are you sure you know what 'altruism' means?
> that everyone prefers others of their same race
So how come there are all these white guys who are into Asian women? Do you actually know what the word 'everyone' means?
> would have been mind boggling science fiction in the 1970s.
In which case every science fiction writer in history ought to have been awarded patents for all of their ideas.
> The idea of compressing audio and storing gigabytes of data in your pocket?
Science fiction novels are full of ideas like this. Having the Library of Congress stored in a device that fits on your wrist? Every over pulp science fiction writer had written about it. Being able to summon up any music you want whenever you wanted? Commonplace. There's nothing clever about the idea of a portable solid state music player.
> "What will you ever do that takes 64k of memory?"
Groan. Not that one again. So your friend didn't have much of an imagination. What does that prove? At that point in time people were already making use of computers with hundreds, if not thousands or more of times that much memory.
You make the assumption that somehow criminals would regret what they did if they knew what its impact was. You seem to forget that many people become criminals because they grew up experiencing that impact without being implanted with false memories.
Put your hand on the back of your head. Feel about for the slight lump about an inch up from where your neck meets your head. Push it slightly left and in. A panel should pop open. Push the third DIP switch from the left (from your POV, looking in the mirror) into the second position. That should enable xon/xoff to reality. Unless you're one of the older models.
Yes, but if you think these people set out to visit a specific island several thousand miles away because they knew it was there and managed to get to precisely where they were aiming then you're probably living in some kind of romantic fantasy about what humans are capable of.
> and that scenario is much more likely than some guy just sitting in the water and randomly paddling in a random direction
But that kind of folk knowledge is almost certainly useless over the kinds of distances we're talking about. I suspect the scenario is more like this: from time to time people will get crazy unjustified but brilliant ideas into their heads that they can't let go of, like "I had a dream that there is a new land to be found in exactly that direction and I've been chosen to get there". I suspect that a bit of that, as well as a bit of religious zeal and some highly charismatic personality, allowed a good many navigators to talk their friends and family into long sea journeys, especially if times were hard at home.
> if one were given to random chance, that's a lot of wasted souls in outrigger canoes in watery graves
What's wrong with that as a hypothesis? Think about the time scales involved. It's not hard to imagine a population of several hundred thousand or millions throwing up a number of foolhardy adventurers every generation. Over a couple of thousand years, say, you'd expect a few to hit tiny dots.
It's not that it's not funny. If nobody had ever said it before it might have some humor value. The problem is that the same joke appears in every single story on slashdot, reddit or digg that refers to events prior to 6,000 years ago. I think the word is 'tired'.
Do segmented mirrors also suffer some quality loss due to diffraction effects at the mirror edges? As a mathematician I expect they do, but I don't know how much of an issue it is in real observation.
Re:I have nothing to contribute to this discussion
on
Google Chrome, Day 2
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· Score: 1, Funny
For God's sake people. The guy's absolutely right. Mod me back down!
Re:I have nothing to contribute to this discussion
on
Google Chrome, Day 2
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· Score: 1
So it's my job to entertain you now?
I have nothing to contribute to this discussion
on
Google Chrome, Day 2
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· Score: 4, Funny
But that's not going to stop me posting to slashdot because I'm part of the *me* generation and I think my opinions need to be heard by everyone.
Anyway, I don't know anything about Chrome. Apparently, whatever it is, there isn't a version for my platform, so I'm not going to download it. I know that's just a fact about me, but you all need to hear it. I'm not going to download it, I say. And because the whole universe is based on my experience I can categorically say that this means that Chrome has lost the browser war. So obviously Google have screwed up their strategy royally because if I don't want to download Chrome, why would anyone else?
Apparently it doesn't have adblock. I don't know what adblock is, but from reading the other comments it's obviously the most important part of a browser. How could Google leave it out?
Anyway, I've said my piece. Google are a doomed company. In fact, here's a graph to prove it:
I don't have cable or satellite and the local NBC coverage I saw was terrible. Dominated by just a handful of events like beach volleyball and swimming, not to mention the lame "feelgood" (and probably fictional) pieces on how athletes can be world class while being good parents. In 4 years I hope to watch some of the events in person, but in 8 years time I suppose I'll have to sign up for cable/satellite/superduperwirelessvideondemandofthefuture.
As a UK citizen who moved to the US, I agree that Britons all ought to live overseas for a bit to see that the world doesn't revolve around Britain. But I don't think that this story is a good example of why - this is someone who thinks the world revolves around the very spot they're standing on.
(And as someone who watched the NBC coverage of the Olympics - it's not just the Brits who think that the world revolves around them.)
Slashdot Mirror
"lolwut". I had to look that one up. LOL! And you can ignore this sentence, it's just to pass the time so /. lets me post.
How naive can people get? Even I spy on my friends and neighbors this way and have done so for years. Professionals have been doing it for much longer.
The paper already discusses why a microlensing event (that's the name for what you describe) is an unlikely explanation. (You should probably pat yourself on the back for a good try though.)
Star formation models have been worked on for many decades now. This event bears no similarity to anything like that. Honestly, astronomers do occasionally spend a little time thinking about things like star formation.
Humans weren't designed, they evolved. And in the last few millennia they've additionally developed a whole bunch of techniques ranging from counting to computer programming that allow them to extend the domain of things they can think about way beyond what humans were thinking about previously. I have no idea how far this will go in the future, but what humans were 'designed' to do is irrelevant to the amazing things that humans are capable of doing today, and a very misleading metaphor to use (assuming you mean it as a metaphor). Maybe you're talking about limitations on what your own brain can do, but don't assume those limitations apply to other people. Dealing with large numbers is something many humans have been very good at for a long time.
For one thing you can expect a vast amount of gamma radiation with a very characteristic signature. There would be little chance of confusing it with anything else. You'd need more than a barrel for it to be visible at a few hundred light years though.
Creationism is unfalsifiable and so is not a scientific theory. The theory of evolution by natural selection, on the other hand, can't make predictions because the outcome is down to luck, making it also unfalsifiable. But the theory of evolution by natural selection is a scientific theory. You could forgive some people for being a little confused.
So you're saying that the only reason you don't ridicule Black, Asian or Jewish people is that they can't help being whatever it is you would otherwise find ridiculous. Thanks for spelling out clearly just how racist you are.
They posted it online. It was a silly humorous thing. A few years later I was trying to get my employer to hire him. They found the poem and started voicing their concerns about hiring someone with serial killer tendencies. After a lot of persuasion I convinced them to hire him. But I learnt from that experience.
Where do people get this stuff? Do you think it's just okay to make up pseudo-science and spew it out on /. ? I spend very little time with my family and spend way more time helping other people. I don't see your imaginary program running.
> and is logically obvious based upon the facts of evolutionary biology
It's logically obvious that diseases are bad for you. Yet we suffer from diseases. It's logically obvious that it'd be useful to get fit without doing exercise, but we can't do it. The truth is, *nothing* is logically obvious about evolutionary biology which is why when evolutionary biologists publish their work they make hypotheses and then devise experiments to test them.
> As well, organisms evolved altruism to help themselves
Are you sure you know what 'altruism' means?
> that everyone prefers others of their same race
So how come there are all these white guys who are into Asian women? Do you actually know what the word 'everyone' means?
I have never read such drivel in my life.
In which case every science fiction writer in history ought to have been awarded patents for all of their ideas.
> The idea of compressing audio and storing gigabytes of data in your pocket?
Science fiction novels are full of ideas like this. Having the Library of Congress stored in a device that fits on your wrist? Every over pulp science fiction writer had written about it. Being able to summon up any music you want whenever you wanted? Commonplace. There's nothing clever about the idea of a portable solid state music player.
> "What will you ever do that takes 64k of memory?"
Groan. Not that one again. So your friend didn't have much of an imagination. What does that prove? At that point in time people were already making use of computers with hundreds, if not thousands or more of times that much memory.
Remember folks, it's spelled p-u-f-f-e-r-y but it's pronounced "lying your ass off".
You make the assumption that somehow criminals would regret what they did if they knew what its impact was. You seem to forget that many people become criminals because they grew up experiencing that impact without being implanted with false memories.
Put your hand on the back of your head. Feel about for the slight lump about an inch up from where your neck meets your head. Push it slightly left and in. A panel should pop open. Push the third DIP switch from the left (from your POV, looking in the mirror) into the second position. That should enable xon/xoff to reality. Unless you're one of the older models.
Yes, but if you think these people set out to visit a specific island several thousand miles away because they knew it was there and managed to get to precisely where they were aiming then you're probably living in some kind of romantic fantasy about what humans are capable of.
But that kind of folk knowledge is almost certainly useless over the kinds of distances we're talking about. I suspect the scenario is more like this: from time to time people will get crazy unjustified but brilliant ideas into their heads that they can't let go of, like "I had a dream that there is a new land to be found in exactly that direction and I've been chosen to get there". I suspect that a bit of that, as well as a bit of religious zeal and some highly charismatic personality, allowed a good many navigators to talk their friends and family into long sea journeys, especially if times were hard at home.
What's wrong with that as a hypothesis? Think about the time scales involved. It's not hard to imagine a population of several hundred thousand or millions throwing up a number of foolhardy adventurers every generation. Over a couple of thousand years, say, you'd expect a few to hit tiny dots.
It's not that it's not funny. If nobody had ever said it before it might have some humor value. The problem is that the same joke appears in every single story on slashdot, reddit or digg that refers to events prior to 6,000 years ago. I think the word is 'tired'.
You need to read more carefully. They *had* a hand. And it was just one.
It's good BTW.
And if you're trying to cover all the media, don't miss the game which was partly penned by the man himself.
Do segmented mirrors also suffer some quality loss due to diffraction effects at the mirror edges? As a mathematician I expect they do, but I don't know how much of an issue it is in real observation.
For God's sake people. The guy's absolutely right. Mod me back down!
So it's my job to entertain you now?
Anyway, I don't know anything about Chrome. Apparently, whatever it is, there isn't a version for my platform, so I'm not going to download it. I know that's just a fact about me, but you all need to hear it. I'm not going to download it, I say. And because the whole universe is based on my experience I can categorically say that this means that Chrome has lost the browser war. So obviously Google have screwed up their strategy royally because if I don't want to download Chrome, why would anyone else?
Apparently it doesn't have adblock. I don't know what adblock is, but from reading the other comments it's obviously the most important part of a browser. How could Google leave it out?
Anyway, I've said my piece. Google are a doomed company. In fact, here's a graph to prove it:
You can't argue with statistics!
I don't have cable or satellite and the local NBC coverage I saw was terrible. Dominated by just a handful of events like beach volleyball and swimming, not to mention the lame "feelgood" (and probably fictional) pieces on how athletes can be world class while being good parents. In 4 years I hope to watch some of the events in person, but in 8 years time I suppose I'll have to sign up for cable/satellite/superduperwirelessvideondemandofthefuture.
As a UK citizen who moved to the US, I agree that Britons all ought to live overseas for a bit to see that the world doesn't revolve around Britain. But I don't think that this story is a good example of why - this is someone who thinks the world revolves around the very spot they're standing on. (And as someone who watched the NBC coverage of the Olympics - it's not just the Brits who think that the world revolves around them.)