Or rather, what can a larger optical telescope find better from Earth that we can't already find on other wavelengths and from other venues (i.e. The Hubble)?
The OWL article answers this question nicely. The short of it is this:
1) Ground is way cheaper. At $1 Billion, the OWL will still be much cheaper than Hubble.
2) Adaptive optics can get you close to diffraction-limited resolution, which makes putting a telescope in space less compelling.
3) Bigger telescopes mean you can see much fainter objects and do lots more science in the same amount of time, saving even more money.
So basically, for the same amount of money as a space telescope you can get a telescope on the ground that sees farther and more clearly.
The real advantage of space telescopes is being able to see light that is absorbed by the atmosphere, and the ability to have huge baselines for interferometers. Both of these advantages should be considered complimentary to ground based telescopes, and not competative.
The technology is nice, but it's really not that new.
True enough. I saw a demo of this technology on a hand-held lcd display at MIT back in 1993. I think it is pretty neat. people are fairly used to nairrow viewing angles on LCDs anyway. I didn't think it was much trouble to hold my head in the 5-10 degree feild of view for the device. Then again, I wasn't doing that for hours on end trying to play a game.
Well, yet again we will probably see another round of 3D-technology pushing to enhance "realism" in a game where you can run full speed carrying hundreds of pounds of weapons and never get tired.
Reading this article, I have to say that this technology sounds similar in almost every respect to FRAM, which has been around for years. In fact, SAMSUNG is probably already out with their 32Mbit FRAM part: http://www.edtn.com/story/chipw ire/OEG19991207S0006
Sometimes I really hate these announcements. It seems like anytime anyone talks about a new technology, they compare it to today's technology as if all the advancements are going to suddenly stop tomorrow. Even if the second sentence is true, Moore's law says we can expect "today's computers" to be eight times faster in five years.
Called PREVAIL,... the technology would... significantly improve the speed at which silicon chips can be processed, researchers said.
I bet What the researchers probably said was "significantly improve processor speed." This is an important point to make because anyone in the semiconductor industry knows that electron lithography is SLOW, like orders of magnitude slower than optical lithography. That is why nobody has ever used it to make commercial chips even though the technology has been around for more than a decade. I would be interested to see some more technical back-up articale that talk about masking and throughput.
- OS2 will take over the OS market - Apple is dead (more than once) - Thin clients will take over business computer - P6 won't carry the Pentium moniker - on-chip X86 emulation on SPARCs and ALPHAs - The days of the beige computer are ending
The guy is a rumor monger and has a penchant for stating the obvious as if it ought to be news to you.
That said, we should take Dvorak's predictions with a truck-load of salt, BUT, Linux advocates would do well to take his observations seriously- Linux support *does* need to get better, as does high-end performance
I am no lover of Micro$oft, and I curse their products regularly. However, there are a few things they are getting better at, and Windose is one of them. I've installed Win98 SE (full blown) on two computers at home:
1) Fresh install on a Celeron 400 with an unusual zenon motherboard with built-in components. Runs fine. In fact, it is my main system which I do everything on, including software developement, and I never turn it off. It stays up for weeks at a time without any system crashes.
2) Upgrade from Win95 OSR2 on a Pentium 166MMX with standard components. This system runs fine as well. In fact, the Win98 install/upgrade went off without a single problem and it cleared up several nagging problems I was having with Win95.
I also happen to use win98 SE on several systems at work. I am quite pleased with the product and I would recommend it to anyone. I especially love the internet gateway feature they've built in. Now I don't need a linux system to get my home network on the internet.
Well, let's look at it this way: Voyager 1, which is a little further away than Pluto these days (about 1/6000th the distance to the nearest star), has a 20 Watt directed beam transmitter aboard. It takes the world's most sensitive radio telescopes working in concert to detect Voyager's extremely feeble signal that finally makes it to Earth.
Here's another problem: These clowns aren't even going to direct the signal to a particular star. They are just letting their transmitter sweep across the sky as the Earth rotates. I guess they hope those ET's are listening at just the right moment to hear the signal.
Well anyway, I'm just wasting my time here, because it is just a huge scam in the end. i hope nobody has sent in they $10.
I am beta-testing the Intel hacked client. Here are some interesting tidbits:
1) My PPro 200 can process a unit with the hacked client in about 7.5 hours (compared to ~23 hrs before).
2) The hacked client is way too unstable for release and it crashes on my NT systems all the time.
I think the SETI@home people are doing a great job. I run web sites and it is hard enough to run one that gets a few hundred hits per day, much less million+ hits/day that the seti site must be getting.
The complainers seem to forget the fact that running a scientific experiment requires great control over the parameters. A bunch of barely tested hacked clients are the last thing these guys want.
Slashdot Mirror
I Remember similar comments when Intel first came out with the Pentium 66.
The OWL article answers this question nicely. The short of it is this:
1) Ground is way cheaper. At $1 Billion, the OWL will still be much cheaper than Hubble.
2) Adaptive optics can get you close to diffraction-limited resolution, which makes putting a telescope in space less compelling.
3) Bigger telescopes mean you can see much fainter objects and do lots more science in the same amount of time, saving even more money.
So basically, for the same amount of money as a space telescope you can get a telescope on the ground that sees farther and more clearly.
The real advantage of space telescopes is being able to see light that is absorbed by the atmosphere, and the ability to have huge baselines for interferometers. Both of these advantages should be considered complimentary to ground based telescopes, and not competative.
True enough. I saw a demo of this technology on a hand-held lcd display at MIT back in 1993. I think it is pretty neat. people are fairly used to nairrow viewing angles on LCDs anyway. I didn't think it was much trouble to hold my head in the 5-10 degree feild of view for the device. Then again, I wasn't doing that for hours on end trying to play a game.
Well, yet again we will probably see another round of 3D-technology pushing to enhance "realism" in a game where you can run full speed carrying hundreds of pounds of weapons and never get tired.
Death, where is thy sting?
Reading this article, I have to say that this technology sounds similar in almost every respect to FRAM, which has been around for years. In fact, SAMSUNG is probably already out with their 32Mbit FRAM part:
http://www.edtn.com/story/chipw ire/OEG19991207S0006
Quantum computer is still way way out there.
Called PREVAIL, ... the technology would ... significantly improve the speed at which silicon chips can be processed, researchers said.
I bet What the researchers probably said was "significantly improve processor speed." This is an important point to make because anyone in the semiconductor industry knows that electron lithography is SLOW, like orders of magnitude slower than optical lithography. That is why nobody has ever used it to make commercial chips even though the technology has been around for more than a decade. I would be interested to see some more technical back-up articale that talk about masking and throughput.
Here's a sampler of Dvorak predictions:
- OS2 will take over the OS market
- Apple is dead (more than once)
- Thin clients will take over business computer
- P6 won't carry the Pentium moniker
- on-chip X86 emulation on SPARCs and ALPHAs
- The days of the beige computer are ending
The guy is a rumor monger and has a penchant for stating the obvious as if it ought to be news to you.
That said, we should take Dvorak's predictions with a truck-load of salt, BUT, Linux advocates would do well to take his observations seriously- Linux support *does* need to get better, as does high-end performance
I am no lover of Micro$oft, and I curse their products regularly. However, there are a few things they are getting better at, and Windose is one of them. I've installed Win98 SE (full blown) on two computers at home:
1) Fresh install on a Celeron 400 with an unusual zenon motherboard with built-in components. Runs fine. In fact, it is my main system which I do everything on, including software developement, and I never turn it off. It stays up for weeks at a time without any system crashes.
2) Upgrade from Win95 OSR2 on a Pentium 166MMX with standard components. This system runs fine as well. In fact, the Win98 install/upgrade went off without a single problem and it cleared up several nagging problems I was having with Win95.
I also happen to use win98 SE on several systems at work. I am quite pleased with the product and I would recommend it to anyone. I especially love the internet gateway feature they've built in. Now I don't need a linux system to get my home network on the internet.
That is my 2 bits on win98.
Well, let's look at it this way: Voyager 1, which is a little further away than Pluto these days (about 1/6000th the distance to the nearest star), has a 20 Watt directed beam transmitter aboard. It takes the world's most sensitive radio telescopes working in concert to detect Voyager's extremely feeble signal that finally makes it to Earth.
Here's another problem: These clowns aren't even going to direct the signal to a particular star. They are just letting their transmitter sweep across the sky as the Earth rotates. I guess they hope those ET's are listening at just the right moment to hear the signal.
Well anyway, I'm just wasting my time here, because it is just a huge scam in the end. i hope nobody has sent in they $10.
I am beta-testing the Intel hacked client. Here are some interesting tidbits:
1) My PPro 200 can process a unit with the hacked client in about 7.5 hours (compared to ~23 hrs before).
2) The hacked client is way too unstable for release and it crashes on my NT systems all the time.
I think the SETI@home people are doing a great job. I run web sites and it is hard enough to run one that gets a few hundred hits per day, much less million+ hits/day that the seti site must be getting.
The complainers seem to forget the fact that running a scientific experiment requires great control over the parameters. A bunch of barely tested hacked clients are the last thing these guys want.