Well, quantitative seeing measurements are usually for the benefits of astronomers, not lay people. You tell us 10 arcseconds, 1 arcecond, or 1/10 arcsecond, and we immediately know the significance of the number (with the complimentary information of the wavelength in question).
In a lot of press releases, you get numbers about what size object could be resolved on the moon, from a mile away, etc., which makes more sense to most laypeople than 20/20 -- which most lay people don't understand anyway. Especially when telescopes blow that away by orders and orders of magnitude.
As a professional astronomer, it drives me NUTS when stories like this make it so hard to figure out what they're really talking about. In this case, what kind of seeing, in arcseconds, is achieved and how often. It took me nearly a minute of poking around to find out, and that was really the point of the story.
I can't tell you how many "news" stories about astronomy I've read that left me scratching my head trying to figure out what they were talking about. This IS better -- the information was in the links -- but come on! If you're not telling a professional anything in the lead-in, what are you really telling anyone else? You might as well just issue press releases willy nilly claiming all sorts of crap without any hard numbers.
E.g., why not lead in with something provocative like, "Less than 1/10 an arcsecond achieved in Antarctica, nearly comparable to the Hubble Space Telescope!"
That's quantitative and still understandable and sensational.
This is off-topic? I mean, after reading the suggestion, I figure that might indeed be an immediate "application." And these business people trying to put together space hotels might need to do research to help sell their product.
Sky-diving offers a very very windy free-fall experience that I can't imagine is really comparable at all. Maybe it's close enough at just under 1/10 the price (locally sky diving costs about $200 in Colorado for a first-time thing).
That's relatively affordable for the uniqueness of the experience. And hey, maybe even more affordable. Since I write science fiction novels with such low-gravity and free-fall environments, I bet I could write this off! Whoo hoo!
Physicists speculate about this, too. This exact scenario is one consequence of some string theories, and physicist John Cramer wrote a novel about 10 years ago called TWISTOR that played on this idea.
There's another physicist, Robert Foot, who believes a particular kind of symmetry can be restored using "mirror matter" that would be just like normal matter, with mirror electrons, photons, etc., but interact just through gravity. He has a popular book on the topic just a couple of years old called SHADOWLANDS I believe.
Yes, we have detected dark matter. I agree that the galactic rotation curves, etc., are indirect "detections" only, but gravitational lensing is pretty damn direct. Light rays from distant objects are being bent by some large, dark, gravitational masses. These masses, particularly in galaxy clusters, have been mapped out and show differences from the the galaxy distribution themselves.
I agree with your other statements at some level, even taking to account the lensing results.
Even with my intentional understatement, I still got a "flamebait" mod. Oh well, teach me to try to avoid distractions from the topic!
I really put factual information very mildly. Scientists and science fiction writers, and I am both, see the Bush administration ignoring science in oh so many ways. It has been documented in numerous places, and if anyone wants to dispute those stories, it still won't change the perception among these groups.
And sure, there are plenty of counterexamples to all sf writers being liberal/leftist, but go to a SFWA meeting and start talking politics and see what happens. My guess is that the field is about 80% liberal -- much like New York City where all the editors and agents live.
I'm unhappy that the immediate reaction from the administration was to first make this an election issue.
The Bush administration decided to on a particular strategy to deal with North Korea, and this is the result. I saw that strategy discussed in both positive and negative ways, but either way, it has left us in the current situation.
Question to Bush/Cheney: What are you going to do about it?
This is a really good point, because quite a lot of the "right-wing" science fiction writers like Heinlein were certainly not socially conservative. Orgies/incest appeared in a lot of Heinlein's books. Someone above made the point about Niven being Libertarian, and that's certainly more consistent with the default right-wing sf writer from the ones who come to mind.
Yes, there are right-wing science fiction writers. The majority do seem to be liberal, however (and this is freshly reinforced after four days of Worldcon in Boston last week).
My favorite, but dark, Sterling story related to this. The summer of 2001, he was ranting to people about how ridiculous a waste of time all the airport screenings were.
These are pretty good writers, with quite a number of awards between them. They're all also experts in science/technology. Have you read any of them? Care to explain why you think they're so bad? Or, barring that, who do you think the best sf writers are today? Preferably living ones.
Locus is primarily read by those in the science fiction community. Their main articles tend to be one-on-one interviews. Who knows? If there is a lot of interest in this article, maybe they will do more in the future. That's my prediction.
Science Fiction Age used to do this sort of roundtable discussion with sf writers, but they've been dead several years now.
These are pretty well-known science fiction writers, at least in the sf community. All have published novels and most have awards of one kind or another. Most of them have very strong science backgrounds. Ken Wharton is a physicist, for example, at San Jose State.
You have to admit, science fiction writers tend to be pro-science (duh) and the Bush administration doesn't have a very good reputation with respect to science.
Science fiction writers do seem to be overwhelmingly liberal. Given the recent news story about brain differences between liberals and conservatives, the liberals having more empathy, this makes some sense. Writers need empathy to write from different character points of view. Just a theory.
SilconEntity -- YOU have the disconnect between your post and reality!
Stephen Gould is a very good science fiction writer, author of books like Jumper, Wildside, and Helm. And others, to the present. His short story, "Peaches for Mad Molly," was very highly regarded about 10-15 years ago.
You might try some simple searches before telling someone that one of their favorite authors doesn't exist!
I thought it was funny to claim that science fiction seldom emphasizes prediction, then mention Asimov's Foundation in the same breath! The novel is based on the notion of psychohistory -- the ability to predict social trends perfectly.
Some science fiction writers use real science rather than pseudo-science, and are real scientists. They also don't try to write bad stories. Writers don't "forget" to try to write a good story -- writers, especially newer writers, are always trying to write the best story they know how.
Now, how do you explain the majority of internet postings being rubbish?
Asimov's circulation figures are dropping as rapidly, or more so, than Analog's. I agree that the story quality is high, and I also agree with those who have said the written word has lost some ground to the internet, video games, and a host of entertainment options that didn't exist in previous decades.
Now, I won't claim that the books written today are the same as books written in previous decades, but I would submit that you consider the possibility that it is you, and your tastes, that have changed more.
Godzilla clearly predicted the price we pay for the misuse of technology.
And how! I wish we could go back to the simpler, less technological days, when giant monsters didn't come out of the ocean to destroy our coastal cities. That's the main reason I took my job in Wyoming.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, quantitative seeing measurements are usually for the benefits of astronomers, not lay people. You tell us 10 arcseconds, 1 arcecond, or 1/10 arcsecond, and we immediately know the significance of the number (with the complimentary information of the wavelength in question).
In a lot of press releases, you get numbers about what size object could be resolved on the moon, from a mile away, etc., which makes more sense to most laypeople than 20/20 -- which most lay people don't understand anyway. Especially when telescopes blow that away by orders and orders of magnitude.
As a professional astronomer, it drives me NUTS when stories like this make it so hard to figure out what they're really talking about. In this case, what kind of seeing, in arcseconds, is achieved and how often. It took me nearly a minute of poking around to find out, and that was really the point of the story.
I can't tell you how many "news" stories about astronomy I've read that left me scratching my head trying to figure out what they were talking about. This IS better -- the information was in the links -- but come on! If you're not telling a professional anything in the lead-in, what are you really telling anyone else? You might as well just issue press releases willy nilly claiming all sorts of crap without any hard numbers.
E.g., why not lead in with something provocative like, "Less than 1/10 an arcsecond achieved in Antarctica, nearly comparable to the Hubble Space Telescope!"
That's quantitative and still understandable and sensational.
This is off-topic? I mean, after reading the suggestion, I figure that might indeed be an immediate "application." And these business people trying to put together space hotels might need to do research to help sell their product.
Sky-diving offers a very very windy free-fall experience that I can't imagine is really comparable at all. Maybe it's close enough at just under 1/10 the price (locally sky diving costs about $200 in Colorado for a first-time thing).
That's relatively affordable for the uniqueness of the experience. And hey, maybe even more affordable. Since I write science fiction novels with such low-gravity and free-fall environments, I bet I could write this off! Whoo hoo!
Physicists speculate about this, too. This exact scenario is one consequence of some string theories, and physicist John Cramer wrote a novel about 10 years ago called TWISTOR that played on this idea.
There's another physicist, Robert Foot, who believes a particular kind of symmetry can be restored using "mirror matter" that would be just like normal matter, with mirror electrons, photons, etc., but interact just through gravity. He has a popular book on the topic just a couple of years old called SHADOWLANDS I believe.
Yes, we have detected dark matter. I agree that the galactic rotation curves, etc., are indirect "detections" only, but gravitational lensing is pretty damn direct. Light rays from distant objects are being bent by some large, dark, gravitational masses. These masses, particularly in galaxy clusters, have been mapped out and show differences from the the galaxy distribution themselves.
I agree with your other statements at some level, even taking to account the lensing results.
Even with my intentional understatement, I still got a "flamebait" mod. Oh well, teach me to try to avoid distractions from the topic!
I really put factual information very mildly. Scientists and science fiction writers, and I am both, see the Bush administration ignoring science in oh so many ways. It has been documented in numerous places, and if anyone wants to dispute those stories, it still won't change the perception among these groups.
And sure, there are plenty of counterexamples to all sf writers being liberal/leftist, but go to a SFWA meeting and start talking politics and see what happens. My guess is that the field is about 80% liberal -- much like New York City where all the editors and agents live.
Invade with what?
Last I heard, we were pulling forces OUT of South Korea.
I'm unhappy that the immediate reaction from the administration was to first make this an election issue.
/Hope the parent isn't a troll!
The Bush administration decided to on a particular strategy to deal with North Korea, and this is the result. I saw that strategy discussed in both positive and negative ways, but either way, it has left us in the current situation.
Question to Bush/Cheney: What are you going to do about it?
This is a really good point, because quite a lot of the "right-wing" science fiction writers like Heinlein were certainly not socially conservative. Orgies/incest appeared in a lot of Heinlein's books. Someone above made the point about Niven being Libertarian, and that's certainly more consistent with the default right-wing sf writer from the ones who come to mind.
Yes, there are right-wing science fiction writers. The majority do seem to be liberal, however (and this is freshly reinforced after four days of Worldcon in Boston last week).
My favorite, but dark, Sterling story related to this. The summer of 2001, he was ranting to people about how ridiculous a waste of time all the airport screenings were.
These are pretty good writers, with quite a number of awards between them. They're all also experts in science/technology. Have you read any of them? Care to explain why you think they're so bad? Or, barring that, who do you think the best sf writers are today? Preferably living ones.
Locus is primarily read by those in the science fiction community. Their main articles tend to be one-on-one interviews. Who knows? If there is a lot of interest in this article, maybe they will do more in the future. That's my prediction.
Science Fiction Age used to do this sort of roundtable discussion with sf writers, but they've been dead several years now.
Will there be flying cars???
These are pretty well-known science fiction writers, at least in the sf community. All have published novels and most have awards of one kind or another. Most of them have very strong science backgrounds. Ken Wharton is a physicist, for example, at San Jose State.
You have to admit, science fiction writers tend to be pro-science (duh) and the Bush administration doesn't have a very good reputation with respect to science.
Science fiction writers do seem to be overwhelmingly liberal. Given the recent news story about brain differences between liberals and conservatives, the liberals having more empathy, this makes some sense. Writers need empathy to write from different character points of view. Just a theory.
SilconEntity -- YOU have the disconnect between your post and reality!
Stephen Gould is a very good science fiction writer, author of books like Jumper, Wildside, and Helm. And others, to the present. His short story, "Peaches for Mad Molly," was very highly regarded about 10-15 years ago.
You might try some simple searches before telling someone that one of their favorite authors doesn't exist!
I thought it was funny to claim that science fiction seldom emphasizes prediction, then mention Asimov's Foundation in the same breath! The novel is based on the notion of psychohistory -- the ability to predict social trends perfectly.
There are a number of books along these lines, but this post in particular reminded me of Syne Mitchell's second book, Technogenesis.
Some science fiction writers use real science rather than pseudo-science, and are real scientists. They also don't try to write bad stories. Writers don't "forget" to try to write a good story -- writers, especially newer writers, are always trying to write the best story they know how.
Now, how do you explain the majority of internet postings being rubbish?
Asimov's circulation figures are dropping as rapidly, or more so, than Analog's. I agree that the story quality is high, and I also agree with those who have said the written word has lost some ground to the internet, video games, and a host of entertainment options that didn't exist in previous decades.
Now, I won't claim that the books written today are the same as books written in previous decades, but I would submit that you consider the possibility that it is you, and your tastes, that have changed more.
Godzilla clearly predicted the price we pay for the misuse of technology.
And how! I wish we could go back to the simpler, less technological days, when giant monsters didn't come out of the ocean to destroy our coastal cities. That's the main reason I took my job in Wyoming.