If you look at the technical advances of the first half of the 20th century, there is a common thread. Many (most?) were the direct result of basic science research (antibiotics, pasteurization, lasers, radio, even flight). Furthermore, many benefited from our dramatic increase in knowledge of the physical world. You can look at the list of Nobel prize recipients in physics, etc and thank them for research which directly improved your life.
If you want more advances, call your congressman and tell them that you want increased funding to the NSF, NIH, NIST, DOE, and NASA for basic research. Then sit back ten or twenty years.
Either way, you need to know a few things. First, we probably need to go to Hubble regardless of servicing. The thing is too big to burn up in the atmosphere. Originally, they were going to have a mission just to grab it and bring it down for the Smithsonian. Now, the idea is to put a booster on it so we can de-orbit it safely into an ocean.
Second, the economics just don't add up. Hubble exists. The only cost of servicing is the costs of the mission. Building and launching another telescope is certainly more expensive.
Third, what are we going to do during the gap of no Hubble 1.0 and no Hubble 2.0? With no servicing mission Hubble is done in 2 years. There is no way another telescope could be designed, constructed, tested, and launched in that time.
All of this is common knowledge to the community. So I'll ask again, are you an astronomer?
Woah! I am an astronomer, and I can tell you that every astronomer I rub elbows with is in full support of a Hubble serving mission. Please, tell me the name of one astronomer that is not for fixing Hubble. I can tell you the names of a few hundred that are in support. The list is available from google. Input "astronomy AND (harvard OR caltech OR princeton OR berkeley)"
I think astronomers realize the importance of beauty when trying to get public support. Check out the Hubble Heritage project. The main reason for this project is to take pretty astronomy pictures.
Anyone remember the shirts that would change color with heat? I loved how the armpits would always be one color and the rest of the shirt would be the other.
The rate of expansion IS decreasing, the question is will that be enough to cause the crunsh or not because the rate of decrease (second derivitie of velocity) is decreasing as well.
That's the old (early 90's) model. Before the supernova data, we thought that the universe would be decelerating. However, now we're pretty sure that the universe is accelerating, not decelerating.
However, that doesn't mean that the universe won't decelerate later (or didn't decelerate earlier). There are still a lot of questions as to what the dark energy is and all of the accelerating/decelerating depends on what it is. Google for quintessence. It's beyond my area of expertise.
Regardless of what the dark energy actually is, the universe is accelerating right now.
My guess is that they are talking about the results from MAP. This is a satellite that was looking at the CMB. Unfortunately, this won't tell us one bit about dark energy. What it tells us about is the total matter-energy budget of the universe. But we've known that the universe is "flat" since COBE (the last satellite to look at the CMB).
The basic way at looking at cosmological parameters is this: CMB tells us about the geometry of the universe (Omega_total = Omega_matter + Omega_energy), clustering tells us about the matter content (Omega_matter), and supernovae tell us about the acceleration of the universe (Omega_matter - Omega_energy).
Only supernovae have given us direct evidence that the universe is accelerating.
The plan is for every satellite to eventually have a tether. This is mainly to deorbit all inactive satellites, so they don't clutter space, but also as a means of movement. If you want to check out some good websites, go to Airseds (where I worked last summer). Or for the less intelligently inclined Tethers Unlimited.
I've been running the OGR client on two boxes since last night and I have done 20% of each packet on each machine. Are the packets jsut enormous or is the client just really slow. I would have done about 100-200 RC5 packets on each machine during the same time.
I lived in Holland from the age of 3 to 18 and now live in Ann Arbor. They don't even compare. The best thing to do in Holland is the Star Theatre. Although I love Boston, give Ann Arbor a boost and relocate here.
First of all does VAIO mean anything??? Is it Japanese? I mean how do you even pronounce it? Even worse is that the logo for it doesn't even look like the letters. And Sony can make cool logos, I mean look at PlayStation's (which is a pretty stupid name if you think about it. Kinda like a strip bar).
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If you look at the technical advances of the first half of the 20th century, there is a common thread. Many (most?) were the direct result of basic science research (antibiotics, pasteurization, lasers, radio, even flight). Furthermore, many benefited from our dramatic increase in knowledge of the physical world. You can look at the list of Nobel prize recipients in physics, etc and thank them for research which directly improved your life.
If you want more advances, call your congressman and tell them that you want increased funding to the NSF, NIH, NIST, DOE, and NASA for basic research. Then sit back ten or twenty years.
Hey Herby, are you an astronomer?
Either way, you need to know a few things. First, we probably need to go to Hubble regardless of servicing. The thing is too big to burn up in the atmosphere. Originally, they were going to have a mission just to grab it and bring it down for the Smithsonian. Now, the idea is to put a booster on it so we can de-orbit it safely into an ocean.
Second, the economics just don't add up. Hubble exists. The only cost of servicing is the costs of the mission. Building and launching another telescope is certainly more expensive.
Third, what are we going to do during the gap of no Hubble 1.0 and no Hubble 2.0? With no servicing mission Hubble is done in 2 years. There is no way another telescope could be designed, constructed, tested, and launched in that time.
All of this is common knowledge to the community. So I'll ask again, are you an astronomer?
Woah! I am an astronomer, and I can tell you that every astronomer I rub elbows with is in full support of a Hubble serving mission. Please, tell me the name of one astronomer that is not for fixing Hubble. I can tell you the names of a few hundred that are in support. The list is available from google. Input "astronomy AND (harvard OR caltech OR princeton OR berkeley)"
I think astronomers realize the importance of beauty when trying to get public support. Check out the Hubble Heritage project. The main reason for this project is to take pretty astronomy pictures.
Anyone remember the shirts that would change color with heat? I loved how the armpits would always be one color and the rest of the shirt would be the other.
The rate of expansion IS decreasing, the question is will that be enough to cause the crunsh or not because the rate of decrease (second derivitie of velocity) is decreasing as well.
That's the old (early 90's) model. Before the supernova data, we thought that the universe would be decelerating. However, now we're pretty sure that the universe is accelerating, not decelerating.
However, that doesn't mean that the universe won't decelerate later (or didn't decelerate earlier). There are still a lot of questions as to what the dark energy is and all of the accelerating/decelerating depends on what it is.
Google for quintessence. It's beyond my area of expertise.
Regardless of what the dark energy actually is, the universe is accelerating right now.
My guess is that they are talking about the results from MAP. This is a satellite that was looking at the CMB. Unfortunately, this won't tell us one bit about dark energy. What it tells us about is the total matter-energy budget of the universe. But we've known that the universe is "flat" since COBE (the last satellite to look at the CMB).
The basic way at looking at cosmological parameters is this: CMB tells us about the geometry of the universe (Omega_total = Omega_matter + Omega_energy), clustering tells us about the matter content (Omega_matter), and supernovae tell us about the acceleration of the universe (Omega_matter - Omega_energy).
Only supernovae have given us direct evidence that the universe is accelerating.
Not mentioned above, but the most exciting announcement for me is built-in bluetooth. No more dongles!
The plan is for every satellite to eventually have a tether. This is mainly to deorbit all inactive satellites, so they don't clutter space, but also as a means of movement. If you want to check out some good websites, go to Airseds (where I worked last summer). Or for the less intelligently inclined Tethers Unlimited.
I've been running the OGR client on two boxes since last night and I have done 20% of each packet on each machine. Are the packets jsut enormous or is the client just really slow. I would have done about 100-200 RC5 packets on each machine during the same time.
I lived in Holland from the age of 3 to 18 and now live in Ann Arbor. They don't even compare. The best thing to do in Holland is the Star Theatre. Although I love Boston, give Ann Arbor a boost and relocate here.
First of all does VAIO mean anything??? Is it Japanese? I mean how do you even pronounce it? Even worse is that the logo for it doesn't even look like the letters. And Sony can make cool logos, I mean look at PlayStation's (which is a pretty stupid name if you think about it. Kinda like a strip bar).
Anyone who is doing the distributed.net project, you can vote for the charity money that will be won to go to Project Gutenberg.