That's a funny way to justify having something that would save your life.
Sorry, I live with a number of birds and assume everyone is up on peculiarities of avian biochemistry.
Parrots have a much higher metabolic rate than humans. So the CO level that will kill a parrot is far lower than the level that will kill a human. Non-digital readout smoke detectors go off long after all the birds in the house are dead. With the digital ones, at least there's a chance I'll notice the readout before tragedy strikes, or at least figure out sooner why birds are dying. [shudder]
A friend and his wife and children were saved by the death of their parrot. The bird screamed, died, waking the father. He figured things out and got everyone out of the house in time. I think the kids only stayed in the hospital overnight as a precaution.
I should Ask Slashdot - is there a CO detector available or one that I could home-brew (would only be used as a backup - I've seen my soldering joints) that would alarm at a level I set?
(The non-digital readout CO detectors are cheaper, btw.)
How much would a tsunami warning system have cost up to this point? How much are we spending on just helping the survivors? Did you notice the hit the stock market took with this news?
This is one where it would have been cost-effective.
I insure my automobile. I don't ensure my radio controlled car. I can afford to lose the latter, I can't afford the uncompensated loss of the former.
The universe is wild and wooly. It doesn't knock, it doesn't ask politely. It does whatever it wants and the survivors (if there are any) pick up the pieces when its done.
Yep, but it's the smart folks that prepared that are more likely to be survivors.
I've been in some "interesting" situations in my life. I'm still here because I prepared for things the best I could.
Of course, the fact that I advocate preparing for some things that will help with other things has nothing to do with it. Never mind that an asteroid detecton system and the ability to move asteroids also makes us leave our cradle and venture out into space. Never mind that a decent tsunami warning system will also bring technology to poorer nations, enabling them to lift themselves out of poverty.
Never mind that I just bought stock in tsunami detection buoys....
Come on, I'm an altruist, but I'm a smart altruist!
Hey, I live in Western PA. It's almost guaranteed that if it happens, I'll be one of the folks helping clean up afterward.
After working two plane crashes and a bunch of other disaster crap, my brain's had about all it really wants. At least for me, I'll feel really stupid. I could have been home sitting on the couch watching "Law and Order" reruns with the late Jerry Orbach, but no! I've got to drag my tucas to yet another temporary morgue.
Even worse, it's almost guaranteed all the computers in the morgue will still be running Windows NT.
I spend large chunks of my income on things that, God willing, I'll never use.
There's smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors (digital - we've got parrots and need all the warning we can get), life insurance, house insurance, hand gun, car...uh, I've used that in the past year...never mind that one. I get my furnace checked every year. There's lots of stuff I do that are in case a very unlikely event happens.
Come to think of it, between parrots, high power rocketry, and target shooting, my hobbies devote a lot of time to preventing the unlikely. I guess leaving the cockatoo loose unsupervised in the dining room taught me a lesson. You'd be amazed at how quickly that bird managed to take a 3 ft. long strip 2 in. deep out of a mahogany dinette. Yes, the bird's still alive.
I'd point out that, by your logic, you should immediately kill yourself to better the planet. I would, but I've actually pronouced a few people who did that very thing.
I'd contend there's still time to change the road we're on. We don't have to go in for your psychotic comic-book villian death-to-humanity scheme to fix things.
The naming scheme is designed for a computer to work with. The file name itself allows you to locate photographs by rover, camera, time, image processing, and a number of other things that I found boring.
If you go to the web site, you'll find an interface that makes use of those names and allows a human to find photographs based on some of these criteria.
I wonder if the name of each photo is assigned by the Rover itself. It's a simple way of attaching useful information to the photo without having to embed it in the image file itself.
Also, I'm sure that the naming convention seemed like a good idea at the time and alcohol was involved. If you've ever read how the Declaration of Independence was created, you'll realize that it was developed using those two criteria.
To do that you need to push the mean lifetime way beyond the warranty period.
The "90 days" was certainly something they expected - maybe even double that. But they also knew that the Martian winter was coming up and that Mars would go behind the Sun, causing Earth to lose contact with the rovers for a number of days.
I think they were really surprised both rovers made it through the Martian winter. That Opportunity is actually back up to the normal output for the solar panels is a welcome surprise.
Spirit doesn't seem to be doing nearly as well. There's problem with the lubrication of the wheels, the brakes may not be releasing - or the circuit that detects them releasing has gone bad, and the dust accumulation on the solar panels has taken it's toll.
There might be more wrong with the Spirit rover, but even I've been skipping some of the updates on the web site.
No. That's the exact same photo from the MERM web site..
To find the photo, you can use this page to decode the photo name. Danged if I can get the seconds to work out (the 3rd through 11th digits).
1 Opportunity
P Pancam
155450047 Number of seconds since Jan 1, 2004 at 11:58::55.816. (works out to Sol 307)
Data product full frame EDR
That sort of stuff. I lost interest at that point.
And no, I've not heard any comments on this picture yet. There are other pictures with frost, but water would be puzzling on the Martian surface at that pressure and temperature.
I'm pretty sure they'd have mentioned a leak in the Opportunity's radiator.
You got it. They couldn't test the entire heat shield at once. Also, performance was based on estimates of how thick the Martian atmosphere was.
There's also a divot where the heat shield bounced. With any luck, it dug into the Martian surface far deeper than Opportunity could dig. This will give them a chance to examine what's underneath the surface layer - they hope.
The rovers are astonishing in what they can do, but a human would dramatically outpace them. What it might take a rover an entire day to do, a human could do in a 30-45 seconds.
Since I assume that they would not know the precise location of the shield
They already knew where the heat shield was. They had a picture from the Mars Orbiter camera that let them know exactly how far away it was. There's actually been several pictures. I forget how long ago they knew, but they've known for some time where it was.
I don't think anyone thought either rover would last this long, so it's only now that they get around to looking at it.
What if there is life on it?... Shouldn't it be quarantined until it is determined that there are no harmful chemical or biological substances associated with it? Or have I been watching too many old B movies?
Too many B movies.
You realize this stuff drops to Earth all the time, don't you? It doesn't get thoroughly sterilized by the heat. If you find a significant-sized meteorite immediately after it hits the Earth, it's cold! The exterior of the metorite ablates, producing a fusion crust on the outside. The inside stays cold. The light you see from meteors as they go across the sky is compressed air that can't get out of the way in time. It's not the meteor burning up or melting.
That's one of the most fascinating things about finding lunar or Martian rocks that have come to Earth as meteorites. If there were anything living on either of those bodies, they probably would have spread to the Earth. For that matter, given a couple whacks the Earth has received, there may be Earth meteorites on the Moon and Mars, and they may have carried Earth life to both places.
There are microscopic forms of life on Earth that would have survived the hundreds of thousands of years in space, along with the vacuum, the freezing cold, and the radiation - especially if they were encapsulated in the rock in question.
We may find life on Mars when we look. It may look exactly like Earth life. Did life start on Mars and get knocked to Earth? Did life start on Earth and get knocked to Mars? Did it start someplace else and wind up on both planets? Or did one of those nice probes the USA and the Soviets sent to Mars wind up infecting Mars with Earthlife?
I keep hoping for strange DNA-analogs and weird biochemistry when we get to Mars, but life there might be a big disappointment. Well, at least as disappointing as life on Mars would be.
Asteroid 2004 YD5 is about 5 meters long. Had you read the article, you'd know this.
A five meter asteroid, should it impact the Earth, would do little damage. Yeah, if it hit someone, that would suck, but the odds of that are small. This is the perfect size to practice on - especially if you're carving it up into parts for recovery.
We need the practice in case we have to do it on a much larger asteroid to prevent it striking the Earth.
The scientific benefit from the pieces of the asteroid would be immense. As a meteorite collector, I know I'd be bidding on chunks of it on eBay just to add to my collection.
The piece of a Mars rock I've got is pathetically small. Having a 10kg rock in the collection would be fun.
So how exactly did we go from a 1 in 37 chance to a 1 in 56000 chance in a few hours?
Spaceguard, using the information that was already available, did a "prediscovery" of the asteroid dating back to March of this year. Because it was from so long ago, it gave them a better "baseline" on which to judge the orbit. With the upgraded data, they were able to eliminate any possibility of danger to the Earth from 2004 MN4.
Space.com has an interesting article about Russell Schweickart (yeah, the former astronaut) and the B612 group. He says that with the right data on the rock (and probably with the right rock - if it's just a loose collection of rubble, things could get interesting - we'd need about 10 years to move 2004 MN4.
How to move it is an interesting question. Most schemes for moving an asteroid focus on vaporizing some of the asteroid to provide thrust. One plan has sunlight focused on the rock. Another suggests using radioactive waste from terrestrial nuclear power plants to heat the rock (note - no radioactives released, at least not if everything goes according to plan). One suggestion was to use a tether to generate electricity to ionize asteroidal material.
I'd like to think that humanity would get it's act together and adjust the asteroid's orbit should it be necessary.
Then again, I'm having an unusually good day today.
The best might be to call the embassy. But who knows if you can get anyone at the embassy, especially after hours.
Freelance warning systems could also be a major problem. Picture the Slashdot user base and pretend you're the 911 equivalent in The Grand Republic of Beachside. See the problem?
This may be one of those things where, come Monday morning, The Powers That Be need to sit down and set up an official warning system.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't find the numbers on Astrobiology Magazinea,/a>'s site (I swear content disappears from there), but the numbers work out that the impact might not destroy living organisms. Yes, Earth has a deeper gravity well, but there may have been severe-enough impacts at the right angle to launch Earth material on trajectories that would eventually lead to Mars.
Sorry, I live with a number of birds and assume everyone is up on peculiarities of avian biochemistry.
Parrots have a much higher metabolic rate than humans. So the CO level that will kill a parrot is far lower than the level that will kill a human. Non-digital readout smoke detectors go off long after all the birds in the house are dead. With the digital ones, at least there's a chance I'll notice the readout before tragedy strikes, or at least figure out sooner why birds are dying. [shudder]
A friend and his wife and children were saved by the death of their parrot. The bird screamed, died, waking the father. He figured things out and got everyone out of the house in time. I think the kids only stayed in the hospital overnight as a precaution.
I should Ask Slashdot - is there a CO detector available or one that I could home-brew (would only be used as a backup - I've seen my soldering joints) that would alarm at a level I set?
(The non-digital readout CO detectors are cheaper, btw.)
Phleg - psst!
You missed something! Try reading it again. It happens....
This is one where it would have been cost-effective.
I insure my automobile. I don't ensure my radio controlled car. I can afford to lose the latter, I can't afford the uncompensated loss of the former.
Yep, but it's the smart folks that prepared that are more likely to be survivors.
I've been in some "interesting" situations in my life. I'm still here because I prepared for things the best I could.
Of course, the fact that I advocate preparing for some things that will help with other things has nothing to do with it. Never mind that an asteroid detecton system and the ability to move asteroids also makes us leave our cradle and venture out into space. Never mind that a decent tsunami warning system will also bring technology to poorer nations, enabling them to lift themselves out of poverty.
Never mind that I just bought stock in tsunami detection buoys....
Come on, I'm an altruist, but I'm a smart altruist!
After working two plane crashes and a bunch of other disaster crap, my brain's had about all it really wants. At least for me, I'll feel really stupid. I could have been home sitting on the couch watching "Law and Order" reruns with the late Jerry Orbach, but no! I've got to drag my tucas to yet another temporary morgue.
Even worse, it's almost guaranteed all the computers in the morgue will still be running Windows NT.
I spend large chunks of my income on things that, God willing, I'll never use.
There's smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors (digital - we've got parrots and need all the warning we can get), life insurance, house insurance, hand gun, car...uh, I've used that in the past year...never mind that one. I get my furnace checked every year. There's lots of stuff I do that are in case a very unlikely event happens.
Come to think of it, between parrots, high power rocketry, and target shooting, my hobbies devote a lot of time to preventing the unlikely. I guess leaving the cockatoo loose unsupervised in the dining room taught me a lesson. You'd be amazed at how quickly that bird managed to take a 3 ft. long strip 2 in. deep out of a mahogany dinette. Yes, the bird's still alive.
It was a near thing, though....
I'd point out that, by your logic, you should immediately kill yourself to better the planet. I would, but I've actually pronouced a few people who did that very thing.
I'd contend there's still time to change the road we're on. We don't have to go in for your psychotic comic-book villian death-to-humanity scheme to fix things.
And I'm a pessimist....
If this were an audio blog, you'd here a "sizzle" in the background.
It's pretty clear that TPTB did a poor job of preparing for this one. Of course, you'd expect someone like Clarke to be ahead of the curve.
Because everyone decided to not worry about an Indian Ocean tsunami. "It's unlikely to happen anywhere other than the Pacific Ring of Fire" they said.
Now we do the intelligent thing, which is learn from past mistakes. With a watch system like the one for the Pacific, we can mitigate the disaster.
Wouldn't we all feel real stupid if we decided to do nothing and an Atlantic tsunami hit?
The naming scheme is designed for a computer to work with. The file name itself allows you to locate photographs by rover, camera, time, image processing, and a number of other things that I found boring. If you go to the web site, you'll find an interface that makes use of those names and allows a human to find photographs based on some of these criteria. I wonder if the name of each photo is assigned by the Rover itself. It's a simple way of attaching useful information to the photo without having to embed it in the image file itself. Also, I'm sure that the naming convention seemed like a good idea at the time and alcohol was involved. If you've ever read how the Declaration of Independence was created, you'll realize that it was developed using those two criteria.
Cool illusion, though, and a good example of why just pulling up photos might give someone the wrong idea.
The "90 days" was certainly something they expected - maybe even double that. But they also knew that the Martian winter was coming up and that Mars would go behind the Sun, causing Earth to lose contact with the rovers for a number of days.
I think they were really surprised both rovers made it through the Martian winter. That Opportunity is actually back up to the normal output for the solar panels is a welcome surprise.
Spirit doesn't seem to be doing nearly as well. There's problem with the lubrication of the wheels, the brakes may not be releasing - or the circuit that detects them releasing has gone bad, and the dust accumulation on the solar panels has taken it's toll.
There might be more wrong with the Spirit rover, but even I've been skipping some of the updates on the web site.
Quite possible, but it still bizarre looking. A human could have examined the area more closely. Alas, one of the problems with robots.
At least so far....
We busted our asses to save yours!
- 1 Opportunity
- P Pancam
- 155450047 Number of seconds since Jan 1, 2004 at 11:58::55.816. (works out to Sol 307)
- Data product full frame EDR
That sort of stuff. I lost interest at that point.And no, I've not heard any comments on this picture yet. There are other pictures with frost, but water would be puzzling on the Martian surface at that pressure and temperature.
I'm pretty sure they'd have mentioned a leak in the Opportunity's radiator.
.... .. .... ..
There's also a divot where the heat shield bounced. With any luck, it dug into the Martian surface far deeper than Opportunity could dig. This will give them a chance to examine what's underneath the surface layer - they hope.
Not at all.
The rovers are astonishing in what they can do, but a human would dramatically outpace them. What it might take a rover an entire day to do, a human could do in a 30-45 seconds.
They already knew where the heat shield was. They had a picture from the Mars Orbiter camera that let them know exactly how far away it was. There's actually been several pictures. I forget how long ago they knew, but they've known for some time where it was.
I don't think anyone thought either rover would last this long, so it's only now that they get around to looking at it.
Too many B movies.
You realize this stuff drops to Earth all the time, don't you? It doesn't get thoroughly sterilized by the heat. If you find a significant-sized meteorite immediately after it hits the Earth, it's cold! The exterior of the metorite ablates, producing a fusion crust on the outside. The inside stays cold. The light you see from meteors as they go across the sky is compressed air that can't get out of the way in time. It's not the meteor burning up or melting.
That's one of the most fascinating things about finding lunar or Martian rocks that have come to Earth as meteorites. If there were anything living on either of those bodies, they probably would have spread to the Earth. For that matter, given a couple whacks the Earth has received, there may be Earth meteorites on the Moon and Mars, and they may have carried Earth life to both places.
There are microscopic forms of life on Earth that would have survived the hundreds of thousands of years in space, along with the vacuum, the freezing cold, and the radiation - especially if they were encapsulated in the rock in question.
We may find life on Mars when we look. It may look exactly like Earth life. Did life start on Mars and get knocked to Earth? Did life start on Earth and get knocked to Mars? Did it start someplace else and wind up on both planets? Or did one of those nice probes the USA and the Soviets sent to Mars wind up infecting Mars with Earthlife?
I keep hoping for strange DNA-analogs and weird biochemistry when we get to Mars, but life there might be a big disappointment. Well, at least as disappointing as life on Mars would be.
A five meter asteroid, should it impact the Earth, would do little damage. Yeah, if it hit someone, that would suck, but the odds of that are small. This is the perfect size to practice on - especially if you're carving it up into parts for recovery.
We need the practice in case we have to do it on a much larger asteroid to prevent it striking the Earth.
The scientific benefit from the pieces of the asteroid would be immense. As a meteorite collector, I know I'd be bidding on chunks of it on eBay just to add to my collection.
The piece of a Mars rock I've got is pathetically small. Having a 10kg rock in the collection would be fun.
Spaceguard, using the information that was already available, did a "prediscovery" of the asteroid dating back to March of this year. Because it was from so long ago, it gave them a better "baseline" on which to judge the orbit. With the upgraded data, they were able to eliminate any possibility of danger to the Earth from 2004 MN4.
How to move it is an interesting question. Most schemes for moving an asteroid focus on vaporizing some of the asteroid to provide thrust. One plan has sunlight focused on the rock. Another suggests using radioactive waste from terrestrial nuclear power plants to heat the rock (note - no radioactives released, at least not if everything goes according to plan). One suggestion was to use a tether to generate electricity to ionize asteroidal material.
I'd like to think that humanity would get it's act together and adjust the asteroid's orbit should it be necessary.
Then again, I'm having an unusually good day today.
The best might be to call the embassy. But who knows if you can get anyone at the embassy, especially after hours.
Freelance warning systems could also be a major problem. Picture the Slashdot user base and pretend you're the 911 equivalent in The Grand Republic of Beachside. See the problem?
This may be one of those things where, come Monday morning, The Powers That Be need to sit down and set up an official warning system.
Third paragraph of the parent article - the second "earthquake" should be "tsunami."
Sigh.