I am not a chemist and I'm sure I'm missing something here, but I don't understand how changing the acidity of the ocean is going to make it capable of absorbing more CO2.
Neither am I and neither do I, but apparently the people behind this article claim that the less acidic water is, the more acid it can form by absorbing CO2. Whether that's true I don't know, but I suppose it could be true. I'm willing to believe them until someone points out it's not true.
If both the lime and CO2 bind with water molecules, isn't adding lime reducing the amount of water molecules that are left to bind with CO2?
I'm not sure, but I suspect there's no serious scarcity of water in the ocean. Mind you, I'm just guessing here.
Been over thirty years since Chem H101, but doesn't that mean a lot of calcium carbonate when/if the carbon dioxide combines with the calcium oxide? (Fishing for someone who actually knows what they are talking about to speak up to confirm/deny.)
I'm not familiar witht he process you're talking about, but what happens naturally in ocean water is that CO2 from the air binds with H2O from the ocean and forms H2CO3, which is acidic. They want to add CaO, which combines with water to Ca(OH)2, which is a base, which means it makes the ocean less acidic.
The less acidic the ocean is, the more CO2 it can absorb from the atmosphere, is what TFA is saying.
This couldn't possibly have any additional side-effects, right?
It remind me of another idea: to add iron particles to the ocean in order to stimulate algae growth, which absorbs quite a lot of CO2.
But what happens then? Do the oceans get clogged with algae? Do fish eat them so we get to make the fishing industry happy at the same time? Do the algae release the CO2 when they die? Or does it sink to the bottom of the ocean, taking the carbon with it?
Lots of possibilities for side effects, lots of things to research.
I'm confused about how seeing the Moon transit Earth is relevant to extrasolar planetary observation. I thought that we were detecting extrasolar planets by tracking the wobble they induce in their star, not by direct observation of light reflected from the planet. If so, then how will dimming of the planet by a transiting moon be observable?
The wobble is the old, established method. We need more methods to find planets, but we also want to know what those planets are like. Signs of water, life, etc. We want to know what clouds, oceans and forests look like from a distance. This video shows us that forests show up very well on IR, and that's interesting.
I thought the cutting edge in astronomy was the idea of a giant space telescope that might directly observe superjovian gas planets, not Earth-like planets.
Sure, but wouldn't you rather be able to observe earth-like planets?
I'll have to try that. Still doesn't excuse NASA for using proprietary formats.
As if.mov isn't bad enough, there are also.wmv links at the bottom.
What if in 20 years these codecs aren't available anymore due to architecture/etc?
Codecs aren't an issue anymore now that we have VLC. As long as still VLC exists in 20 years, we can watch it. But you're absolutely right ofcourse. They should have used an open standard.
The transit of the moon isn't the most important thing in the animation. That you can see the forests on the continents in near-IR is hugely significant.
Yeah, that was impressive. The forests really light up on IR.
Just to clarify, by middle ages I meant what is usually called the early middle ages or the dark ages. That's from approximately 500 AD to 1000 AD.
Of course the dark ages might not have been as dire as it's made out to be but it definitely was a period of slow or negative technological growth.
I don't think that's actually the case. Before 500 AD, Saxons, Franks and all those other Germanic tribes didn't build anything bigger than a farm or a wooden fort. After 1000 AD, they built huge gothic cathedrals. Construction technology definitely advanced during that period. Especially for the Germans, who were not the direct descendants of the Romans of Greeks (who did have impressive construction tech, but still not good enough for a gothic cathedral).
Between 500 and 1000 AD, Charlemagne founded his empire, invented the feudal system, and built lots of great cities. Vikings roamed the seas and travelled further than anyone before them. Metalworking improved, resulting in better armour and weapons.
It may not have been a very civilised age compared to the Greeks or Romans, but technologically, lots of interesting stuff was happening.
I don't disagree that is was a stupid, irresponsible and possibly dangerous thing to say, I'm just pointing out that it's not the same thing as directly tampering with the election results.
The thing that bugs me about the KotOR story line is it implies a very, very lengthy period of technological stagnation.
It is as if the technological capacities of all sentient species simultaneously "capped out," and all that was left was to apply the same principles on successively grander scales.
The universe ran out of novelty and room for new discoveries. That kind of makes me sad.
It's a staple of SF. Read Asimov's Foundation, for exmaple. Star Wars never struck me as a universe where lots of new research was being done, and long periods of technological stagnation or even retardation are common in many SF settings.
McCain might also have tried to manipulate elections an old fashioned today by commenting on the probable timing of Obama's arrival in Iraq.
In what kind of nutcase fantasy world do you live that you think a stupid comment from one political candidate about another is on the same level as election fraud?
We already have data on the order of a hundred or more planets around other stars. Even if you ignore that there's somewhere around tens of billions of star systems in the galaxy, we still have information on a lot more than 1 star system.
We have information about a few large individual exoplanets. We do not have information on complete planetary systems. We know nothing about small, distant planets or asteroids around other stars. We know just enough to know that quite a lot of other systems look nothing like ours.
Those models are already good enough.
No they are not. The exoplanets discovered so far have shattered all theories we had about the formation of planetary systems. Ofcourse new models have been formed based on that new data, but they are new and not all that well tested. Mostly because we are not yet able to observe other systems in sufficient detail to test those models.
There will be severe observer bias for decades to come. Most of the planets we will see are extremely large because that is what is easiest to see.
And until we're able to see more than that, we have to accept that our data is woefully incomplete.
I find it ironic that you councel patience yet we must have a definiton of "planet" right now.
We've had a definition of "planet" for over 2000 years now. And during those 2000 years, it's been refined many times. Why should we suddenly abandon the idea of a planet, or stop refining our definition when new discoveries are made?
I already explained this in my original post. The rational is incomplete and only applies to one particular star system.
Why is this a problem? It can only apply to a single system, because that's all we have.
I disagree. We know the basic laws of physics. A computer model doesn't have to be all that good in order to come up with relevant classification criteria.
Well, go ahead then. If you can come up with a better computer model than the current leading astrophysicists, then you've got a bright future in astrophysics ahead of you.
The problem is, while we know the basic laws of physics, we don't know the details well enough to accurately and reliably predict the formation of extra-solar planetary systems. And that's why scientists are going to so much effort to observe them: they expect to learn something from it. Something they don't currently know yet, so they will know more details of physics in order to make a better model of the formation of planetary systems.
No, this isn't about patience. This is about making an elaborate definition that only applies to one star system.
But for the time being, that's all we have: one star system.
The International Astronomical Union could have just as well said "The eight planets are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune." And you know what, they actually did, in a footnote.
And they even provided a rationale for why this is the case. So what's the problem?
To continue, I see no reason we can't have used computer models of planetary system formation to construct prototype classifications for bodies in other star systems. Even regular observation won't be enough to catch all the possible degenerations that can occur.
But neither are computer models. Our computer models aren't good enough, because we have only a single example that's sufficiently detailed. A model of how our solar system formed may not apply to all other systems. That's why this definition can only be about our solar system.
However the argument you were responding to did not appear to make any complaint about having more planets or less planets just the idea of changing the definition being dogmatic.
So accepting the idea that having a consistent definition of planet is a "good thing" scientifically speaking. You have neither justified the necessity of changing the definition nor addressed to the posters argument.
I think I've justified changing the definition by explaining how our knowledge and understanding of the objects we're trying to classify has changed. Just like definitions and classifications in biology change as our understanding of the relations between species grows, our increased understanding of the various objects that make up our solar system also leads to new ways to classify them.
This statement says nothing about planets about other star systems. In particular, it doesn't say that there can't be planets in other star systems. And note that the key distinction between "planet" and "dwarf planet" is an undefined characteristic, "cleared the neighborhoor around its orbit". So we have a definition that is ill-defined, works only for 1 star system out of tens of billions, and makes a distinction based on hard to observe dynamics that would only make sense for a portion of these star systems.
Not "for a portion of these star systems", but only for ours. Our technology is not far enough advanced to detect small planets and dwarf planets in other solar systems, or to determine whether they cleared their orbits. We know extremely little at all about planetary systems outside our solar system, and for that reason it's silly and meaningless to classify exoplanets according to the same system we use for our solar system. Once we can observe other systems in more detail, that will undoubtedly change, but for now, I'm afraid you'll have to be patient.
Furthermore, it's not strange at all that scientific classifications change as new discoveries are made.
I agree with the principle of dogma vs. science, but I don't think this is the best example. It doesn't do well for credibility if you keep changing your mind based on unstable definitions and pretend it to be news each time you've tweaked one of them.
It's not "changing your mind", it's discovering new information. The discovery of Pluto was an accident (due to an error in calculation, a much bigger planet was predicted in that location, but it wasn't there), and because Kuiper Belt Objects were unknown at that time, Pluto got planetary status, although it was immediately obvious that it was a very abnormal planet.
Eventually it became clear that Pluto had to be a Kuiper Belt Object. As long as it was the only big one, that wasn't much of a problem, but eventually, astronomers discovered KBOs that were as big as or even bigger than Pluto, and a choice had to be made. Leaving Pluto a planet while denying that status to other large KBOs would be silly and unscientific, so either all large KBOs would become planets, resulting in dozens or hundreds of extra planets in our solar system, most of which would share similar irregular orbits, or accept that KBOs are different from regular planets, and give them their own class. That's what happened. Maybe they should have demoted Pluto earlier, but it was unavoidable, and by the time it happened, it was long overdue.
Not that this wasn't the first time planets had been demoted. In the 19th century, Ceres and a couple of other asteroids were also considered planets, but eventually astronomers decided that since they shared a similar orbit with lots of smaller asteroids, they had to be a different class of objects from the regular planets. Ceres and the others didn't have planetary status for as long as Pluto did, but that was due to Pluto accidentally being discovered way before we technically should be able to do so.
Two years ago, I knew how many "planets" our solar system contained. Then a change was made... then changed again... now another. I do not even know the total any more.
No "change was made", new objects were discovered that should be counted as planet according to the old definition, and we'd eventually end up with hundreds or thousands of planets in our solar system, all but 8 of which would be Kuiper Belt objects.
So in order to keep the number of planets stable and knowable, the definition was changed and KBOs (including Pluto) were demoted to "dwarf planets". So from now on, the number of "true" planets in our solar system is 8 and will never change (barring some immense disaster).
No matter what? Really? What if I come at you with an aluminum baseball bat shouting "I'm gonna kill you, fuck your wife and kill her too!"
Then I think you should not kill me. No matter what.
Look, I know I don't always get what I want, I know that bad things happen, and I know it's technically possible that I may end up in a situation where I have to kill in order to prevent something even worse, but that'll usually be because someone else is already committed to killing someone, which, like I said, is wrong no matter what. It becomes a choice for the lesser of two evils, but that doesn't make it any less evil in itself. It's just that doing nothing in such a situation is even worse.
Except writing a bad game review gets you fired so they're not at all accurate and doesn't give you any idea how it will play on your computer, xbox or TV screen.
Professional reviews are crap for a variety of reasons. It's better to read reviews of actual gamers. Reading a couple of those gives you a much better idea of what's good about a game, what's bad about it, and what's simply wrong with it.
Exactly! It's odd seeing all those developers and publishers blame piracy instead of their own lack of quality and support, not to mention that they invest money in pissing off their remaining paying customers. Some companies (Stardock has often been mentioned here) release PC games without any meaningful copy protection, continue to support their games for years, and their games sell well.
Well enough to make them a lot of profit, anyway. Whenever I hear about huge multi-million dollar budgets for lame, uninspired and bug-ridden games, I'm really not surprised to see publishers losing money.
Slashdot Mirror
Er, fish need oxygen, not C02...
Also true, but not really the point here.
I am not a chemist and I'm sure I'm missing something here, but I don't understand how changing the acidity of the ocean is going to make it capable of absorbing more CO2.
Neither am I and neither do I, but apparently the people behind this article claim that the less acidic water is, the more acid it can form by absorbing CO2. Whether that's true I don't know, but I suppose it could be true. I'm willing to believe them until someone points out it's not true.
If both the lime and CO2 bind with water molecules, isn't adding lime reducing the amount of water molecules that are left to bind with CO2?
I'm not sure, but I suspect there's no serious scarcity of water in the ocean. Mind you, I'm just guessing here.
Gorshin died in 1995. Is there a "curse of the Batman Villian?"
I suspect they all die sooner or later.
What? Oh, sorry. Wrong film.
Asshole! I hadn't seen that one yet!
But what happens when one nation decides this is a great idea while another fervently disagrees? Water doesn't obey boundaries.
That's the same problem we have with global warming in the first place: some nations consider it a problem, others don't.
The best solution is forming international agreements about this sort of thing. Let's hope the politicians listen to the scientists first.
Been over thirty years since Chem H101, but doesn't that mean a lot of calcium carbonate when/if the carbon dioxide combines with the calcium oxide? (Fishing for someone who actually knows what they are talking about to speak up to confirm/deny.)
I'm not familiar witht he process you're talking about, but what happens naturally in ocean water is that CO2 from the air binds with H2O from the ocean and forms H2CO3, which is acidic. They want to add CaO, which combines with water to Ca(OH)2, which is a base, which means it makes the ocean less acidic.
The less acidic the ocean is, the more CO2 it can absorb from the atmosphere, is what TFA is saying.
This couldn't possibly have any additional side-effects, right?
It remind me of another idea: to add iron particles to the ocean in order to stimulate algae growth, which absorbs quite a lot of CO2.
But what happens then? Do the oceans get clogged with algae? Do fish eat them so we get to make the fishing industry happy at the same time? Do the algae release the CO2 when they die? Or does it sink to the bottom of the ocean, taking the carbon with it?
Lots of possibilities for side effects, lots of things to research.
I'm confused about how seeing the Moon transit Earth is relevant to extrasolar planetary observation. I thought that we were detecting extrasolar planets by tracking the wobble they induce in their star, not by direct observation of light reflected from the planet. If so, then how will dimming of the planet by a transiting moon be observable?
The wobble is the old, established method. We need more methods to find planets, but we also want to know what those planets are like. Signs of water, life, etc. We want to know what clouds, oceans and forests look like from a distance. This video shows us that forests show up very well on IR, and that's interesting.
I thought the cutting edge in astronomy was the idea of a giant space telescope that might directly observe superjovian gas planets, not Earth-like planets.
Sure, but wouldn't you rather be able to observe earth-like planets?
I'll have to try that. Still doesn't excuse NASA for using proprietary formats.
As if .mov isn't bad enough, there are also .wmv links at the bottom.
What if in 20 years these codecs aren't available anymore due to architecture/etc?
Codecs aren't an issue anymore now that we have VLC. As long as still VLC exists in 20 years, we can watch it. But you're absolutely right ofcourse. They should have used an open standard.
The transit of the moon isn't the most important thing in the animation. That you can see the forests on the continents in near-IR is hugely significant.
Yeah, that was impressive. The forests really light up on IR.
VLC will play them.
How is this informative? VLC will play anything. Everybody knows that. Right?
Just to clarify, by middle ages I meant what is usually called the early middle ages or the dark ages. That's from approximately 500 AD to 1000 AD.
Of course the dark ages might not have been as dire as it's made out to be but it definitely was a period of slow or negative technological growth.
I don't think that's actually the case. Before 500 AD, Saxons, Franks and all those other Germanic tribes didn't build anything bigger than a farm or a wooden fort. After 1000 AD, they built huge gothic cathedrals. Construction technology definitely advanced during that period. Especially for the Germans, who were not the direct descendants of the Romans of Greeks (who did have impressive construction tech, but still not good enough for a gothic cathedral).
Between 500 and 1000 AD, Charlemagne founded his empire, invented the feudal system, and built lots of great cities. Vikings roamed the seas and travelled further than anyone before them. Metalworking improved, resulting in better armour and weapons.
It may not have been a very civilised age compared to the Greeks or Romans, but technologically, lots of interesting stuff was happening.
I don't disagree that is was a stupid, irresponsible and possibly dangerous thing to say, I'm just pointing out that it's not the same thing as directly tampering with the election results.
The thing that bugs me about the KotOR story line is it implies a very, very lengthy period of technological stagnation.
It is as if the technological capacities of all sentient species simultaneously "capped out," and all that was left was to apply the same principles on successively grander scales.
The universe ran out of novelty and room for new discoveries. That kind of makes me sad.
It's a staple of SF. Read Asimov's Foundation, for exmaple. Star Wars never struck me as a universe where lots of new research was being done, and long periods of technological stagnation or even retardation are common in many SF settings.
McCain might also have tried to manipulate elections an old fashioned today by commenting on the probable timing of Obama's arrival in Iraq.
In what kind of nutcase fantasy world do you live that you think a stupid comment from one political candidate about another is on the same level as election fraud?
We already have data on the order of a hundred or more planets around other stars. Even if you ignore that there's somewhere around tens of billions of star systems in the galaxy, we still have information on a lot more than 1 star system.
We have information about a few large individual exoplanets. We do not have information on complete planetary systems. We know nothing about small, distant planets or asteroids around other stars. We know just enough to know that quite a lot of other systems look nothing like ours.
Those models are already good enough.
No they are not. The exoplanets discovered so far have shattered all theories we had about the formation of planetary systems. Ofcourse new models have been formed based on that new data, but they are new and not all that well tested. Mostly because we are not yet able to observe other systems in sufficient detail to test those models.
There will be severe observer bias for decades to come. Most of the planets we will see are extremely large because that is what is easiest to see.
And until we're able to see more than that, we have to accept that our data is woefully incomplete.
I find it ironic that you councel patience yet we must have a definiton of "planet" right now.
We've had a definition of "planet" for over 2000 years now. And during those 2000 years, it's been refined many times. Why should we suddenly abandon the idea of a planet, or stop refining our definition when new discoveries are made?
I already explained this in my original post. The rational is incomplete and only applies to one particular star system.
Why is this a problem? It can only apply to a single system, because that's all we have.
I disagree. We know the basic laws of physics. A computer model doesn't have to be all that good in order to come up with relevant classification criteria.
Well, go ahead then. If you can come up with a better computer model than the current leading astrophysicists, then you've got a bright future in astrophysics ahead of you.
The problem is, while we know the basic laws of physics, we don't know the details well enough to accurately and reliably predict the formation of extra-solar planetary systems. And that's why scientists are going to so much effort to observe them: they expect to learn something from it. Something they don't currently know yet, so they will know more details of physics in order to make a better model of the formation of planetary systems.
No, this isn't about patience. This is about making an elaborate definition that only applies to one star system.
But for the time being, that's all we have: one star system.
The International Astronomical Union could have just as well said "The eight planets are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune." And you know what, they actually did, in a footnote.
And they even provided a rationale for why this is the case. So what's the problem?
To continue, I see no reason we can't have used computer models of planetary system formation to construct prototype classifications for bodies in other star systems. Even regular observation won't be enough to catch all the possible degenerations that can occur.
But neither are computer models. Our computer models aren't good enough, because we have only a single example that's sufficiently detailed. A model of how our solar system formed may not apply to all other systems. That's why this definition can only be about our solar system.
However the argument you were responding to did not appear to make any complaint about having more planets or less planets just the idea of changing the definition being dogmatic.
So accepting the idea that having a consistent definition of planet is a "good thing" scientifically speaking. You have neither justified the necessity of changing the definition nor addressed to the posters argument.
I think I've justified changing the definition by explaining how our knowledge and understanding of the objects we're trying to classify has changed. Just like definitions and classifications in biology change as our understanding of the relations between species grows, our increased understanding of the various objects that make up our solar system also leads to new ways to classify them.
This statement says nothing about planets about other star systems. In particular, it doesn't say that there can't be planets in other star systems. And note that the key distinction between "planet" and "dwarf planet" is an undefined characteristic, "cleared the neighborhoor around its orbit". So we have a definition that is ill-defined, works only for 1 star system out of tens of billions, and makes a distinction based on hard to observe dynamics that would only make sense for a portion of these star systems.
Not "for a portion of these star systems", but only for ours. Our technology is not far enough advanced to detect small planets and dwarf planets in other solar systems, or to determine whether they cleared their orbits. We know extremely little at all about planetary systems outside our solar system, and for that reason it's silly and meaningless to classify exoplanets according to the same system we use for our solar system. Once we can observe other systems in more detail, that will undoubtedly change, but for now, I'm afraid you'll have to be patient.
Furthermore, it's not strange at all that scientific classifications change as new discoveries are made.
I agree with the principle of dogma vs. science, but I don't think this is the best example. It doesn't do well for credibility if you keep changing your mind based on unstable definitions and pretend it to be news each time you've tweaked one of them.
It's not "changing your mind", it's discovering new information. The discovery of Pluto was an accident (due to an error in calculation, a much bigger planet was predicted in that location, but it wasn't there), and because Kuiper Belt Objects were unknown at that time, Pluto got planetary status, although it was immediately obvious that it was a very abnormal planet.
Eventually it became clear that Pluto had to be a Kuiper Belt Object. As long as it was the only big one, that wasn't much of a problem, but eventually, astronomers discovered KBOs that were as big as or even bigger than Pluto, and a choice had to be made. Leaving Pluto a planet while denying that status to other large KBOs would be silly and unscientific, so either all large KBOs would become planets, resulting in dozens or hundreds of extra planets in our solar system, most of which would share similar irregular orbits, or accept that KBOs are different from regular planets, and give them their own class. That's what happened. Maybe they should have demoted Pluto earlier, but it was unavoidable, and by the time it happened, it was long overdue.
Not that this wasn't the first time planets had been demoted. In the 19th century, Ceres and a couple of other asteroids were also considered planets, but eventually astronomers decided that since they shared a similar orbit with lots of smaller asteroids, they had to be a different class of objects from the regular planets. Ceres and the others didn't have planetary status for as long as Pluto did, but that was due to Pluto accidentally being discovered way before we technically should be able to do so.
Two years ago, I knew how many "planets" our solar system contained. Then a change was made... then changed again... now another. I do not even know the total any more.
No "change was made", new objects were discovered that should be counted as planet according to the old definition, and we'd eventually end up with hundreds or thousands of planets in our solar system, all but 8 of which would be Kuiper Belt objects.
So in order to keep the number of planets stable and knowable, the definition was changed and KBOs (including Pluto) were demoted to "dwarf planets". So from now on, the number of "true" planets in our solar system is 8 and will never change (barring some immense disaster).
No matter what? Really? What if I come at you with an aluminum baseball bat shouting "I'm gonna kill you, fuck your wife and kill her too!"
Then I think you should not kill me. No matter what.
Look, I know I don't always get what I want, I know that bad things happen, and I know it's technically possible that I may end up in a situation where I have to kill in order to prevent something even worse, but that'll usually be because someone else is already committed to killing someone, which, like I said, is wrong no matter what. It becomes a choice for the lesser of two evils, but that doesn't make it any less evil in itself. It's just that doing nothing in such a situation is even worse.
Except writing a bad game review gets you fired so they're not at all accurate and doesn't give you any idea how it will play on your computer, xbox or TV screen.
Professional reviews are crap for a variety of reasons. It's better to read reviews of actual gamers. Reading a couple of those gives you a much better idea of what's good about a game, what's bad about it, and what's simply wrong with it.
Exactly! It's odd seeing all those developers and publishers blame piracy instead of their own lack of quality and support, not to mention that they invest money in pissing off their remaining paying customers. Some companies (Stardock has often been mentioned here) release PC games without any meaningful copy protection, continue to support their games for years, and their games sell well.
Well enough to make them a lot of profit, anyway. Whenever I hear about huge multi-million dollar budgets for lame, uninspired and bug-ridden games, I'm really not surprised to see publishers losing money.