To me, the big news is that the NVO (National Virtual Observatory) got funded - $10 million from NSF's ITR program. Their proposal is here. In a nutshell, the point of the NVO is to federate as many sky surveys as they can under one interface, and in one pixel space.
The general point is that astronomy is shifting to data mining rather than eyeballing. The juicy stuff for researchers isn't the raw image data, but the derived data. The system identifies objects automatically and then records a few hundred elements of "derived" data for each object identified. As a result, astronomers can just enter SQL-ish queries to do their research:
"Find all binary systems containing a white dwarf."
"Find all star-like objects that ar X% rare."
"Find objects with characteristics similar to quasars with redshifts between X and Y." etc...
Automated object identification is already a standard part of any sky survey data pipeline. Among other things, this is used by surveys like SDSS to not only find and identify objects, but to tag the ones that are galaxies for later redshift measurement. (That's where the "3D" part comes in - redshifts of galaxies. Measuring radial ditances to closer objects - say stars in our own galaxy - is a pretty involved bootstrapping process where distance is derived from a ladder of indirect indicators.)
As far as grid computing goes, the US NVO (National Virtual Observatory) will implement a grid computing model. The NVO will be a unified portal that will federate about 50 digital sky surveys. It will have a database of billions of objects with hundreds of characteristics each, and rich relational structure spanning those hundreds of dimensions. They'll use grid computing to perform astronomers' queries on those data. That's really the main reason why these sky surveys are being done - to allow astronomers to do their work by data mining. A "map" of the universe will be a byproduct.
Danger's new Hiptop might sorta be what you want. They don't give axact specs on the camera. It's a pretty dope little toy though - "real" web browser, IM, email w/ attachments, phone, PDA, and camera, and its wirelessly networked. It's still not clear when you'll be able to buy one, but if they're smart, they're going to get it out in time to compete with Treo and Nokia's new phone/pda/mp3 player thingy.
Don't know why my reply to this disappeared, but luckily I saved it myself, so here it is again: I think I'll just drop this. We're orders of magnitude apart insofar what we see as good science and engineering. To you good engineering is taking a risky endeavor and decreasing the risk as much as possible (an evolutionary approach.) To me good engineering seeks novel, risk free solutions (a revolutionary approach,) and is willing to be patient until the good solutions come.
As an example, rather than using plutonium to power Cassini's instruments, why not a flywheel based generator? There have been great advances in flywheel technology lately. In low-G and free fall environments, friction isn't a worry, so you'd get pretty decent efficiency. You ought to be able to torque the flywheel back up by catching a little angular momentum during a grav assist, if you make the approach just right.
It scares me to death to hear someone as apparently educated as you (and the others like you on this site) have no concept of long term ecological responsibility. It's enough for you that "you and I are alive right now," so therefore airborne dispersal of granulated heavy metals and radioactive material have no effect. DDT didn't get banned because humans started dropping off like flys in its presence. Lots and lots of major ecological damage was done before anyone started to do anything about it.
It's not about being a hippie or a luddite, it's just about acknowledging that the current dominant paradigm (to use a scary soc. word) of technological advancement has brought us some pretty dark returns. It's time to start learning from history. If we, as scientists (believe it or not, I am, in fact, a physicist - granted I'm a theorist) want to improve the reputation of scientific advancement, we have to start opening our eyes to the real world outside of the lab. Any risk is too much risk when it comes to endangering what little remains of the global ecosystem.
This is bogus. See the other posts in the thread for reasons why. (I.e. If 72 pounds of plutonium dioxide can do us in, then why are we alive after tons of Pu-238 were blasted into the air by above ground nuke testing.)
ummm... i didn't think we were done counting the casualties from nuke testing yet. seems to me that plenty of people are still suffering and dying from it, not that it's being publicly acknowledged. (and, frankly, i just don't get the mentality that it's ok to do a little more of a bad thing we've done a lot of in the past; not exactly what i'd call social evolution.)
Let's clarify this -- the rocket that launched Cassini was a chemically powered vehicle. The probe itself is equipped with chemical rockets, both for the main engine and the thrusters. Pu is not Cassini's "fuel." It is its power and (to a slight extent) heat source. Better? Damn well better NOT be nuclear powered rockets within our atmosphere. My bad, though, shouldn't have started talking about propulsion, when I just meant power source in general.
Did you have any specific untrue "truths" in mind? Conservation of Mass-Energy? Newtonian mechanics? (Which are being used to calculate Cassini's trajectory.)
This is exactly my point. All you're thinking about is your textbook problems. Think REAL WORLD. Want some specific "truths" ? How about things like real statistics on the amount of debris in orbit over the earth, and the accuracy to which the trajectories of every piece are truly modelled. Also, everyone seems so quick to believe the government when the government promises the casing is "explosion proof." How many times are we going to have to hear, "Well, uh, in the tests everything SEEMED fine..." Between the government's history of misinformation and the fact that testing doesn't guarantee jack, I'm sorry if I'm a little skeptical about what I'm feed as truth.
I agree that we should have a better propulsion source, but will not halt all exploration until one is devised. After all, how many new propulsion systems have been brought on-line in the past 30 years?
Sorry, but them's the breaks. I just can't condone strapping a bunch of highly toxic material to a rocket that has, what, about a 1 in 6 failure rate? Please don't tell me that it's OK because only a small part of Florida, or the Pacific Ocean, or whatever would get poisoned in the event of a disaster. No one has any right to make that sacrifice.
Assuming you live in the USA, have you written your congresscritter to support NASA's "Future X" program? No, thanks for the tip. The truth is, I'm not exactly an activist here, just been playing devil's advocate for the sake of discussion. I will look into this, though.
Some of the commments in these threads sound like they come from the same people who lapped it up when the military kept telling us how fanastically Patriots were working in the Gulf War. That was all the anti-anti-war propaganda the government needed to start, these guys picked it up from there, so happy to wave this banner of success in the faces of people who had doubts about the war. Nothing makes people like that feel more secure about themselves then to believe the great machine that they're a happy little cog in runs as well as everybody promised; that real life does work exactly like the sample problems in their textbooks; that there is never any need to step back and wonder what life might look like if a few "truths" were less than true.
Technically, of course, you're right - the chances of a collision with a piece of space junk large enough to cause a signifigant course alteration are very slim. Nonetheless, the chance of a disaster from which our species would not recover exists, and should be addressed. The point of the protests is not to stop scientific progression, but to put a halt to the cheapening of good science by the get-rich-quick mentality that's been seeping in in the latter half of this century. The aim of science, above all, is to improve our lives, not endanger them. Nonetheless, the notion of "acceptable risk" has become common parlance - it does not bother anyone to put money one side of an equation and human lives on the other.
"But the risk is so insignifigant!" you cry. Sure, for now. The problem comes with scalablity. If we let ourselves get used to cheap, brute force crutches like plutonium fueled vehicles, we get stuck with them - they become the standard, not the bonus. So when someone wants to do something that is more innovative and safe, they'll hear "Sorry, that is not economically viable." In the meanwhile, longer missions with larger vehicles are planned: "Shoot boys, guess we'll have to shove some more plutonium in that dad' burned thang. They didn't complain about 75 pounds, how can they complain about 150, it's only 75 more..." Bad scalability is at the source of virtually every environmental problem we have, it's almost the definition of an environmental problem. We're good enough and smart enough to create technologies that leave no footprints, if we just give ourselves the chance.
What do we lose if we wait for a real solution to the propulsion problem - a few years maybe? I can wait a few years in order not to risk the lives of the vast majority of people on this planet who couldn't give a damn about space research. What gives people who like technology the right to constantly risk the lives of those who don't? Sure, we satisfy ourselves with glowing descriptions of how "acceptable" the risks our of our endeavors, but we don't have to flip too many pages of a history book to find case after case of people and ecosystems who got completely screwed by technological endeavors that had nothing to do with them and that will never benefit them.
If wanting real science, not corporate bullshite makes me a hippy, than send me my Freedom Rock record. In the meanwhile, I'll remain slightly annoyed that the people with the plutonium don't seem to mind spreading it around. (I don't know if you noticed it or not, but all the radioactive material we spread around just MIGHT be part of the reason why so many people seem to be getting cancer these days... bah, but what's a few more pounds here and a few more pounds there, right?)
Slashdot Mirror
To me, the big news is that the NVO (National Virtual Observatory) got funded - $10 million from NSF's ITR program. Their proposal is here. In a nutshell, the point of the NVO is to federate as many sky surveys as they can under one interface, and in one pixel space.
Not to mention he's co-PI on the National Virtual Observatory project!
The general point is that astronomy is shifting to data mining rather than eyeballing. The juicy stuff for researchers isn't the raw image data, but the derived data. The system identifies objects automatically and then records a few hundred elements of "derived" data for each object identified. As a result, astronomers can just enter SQL-ish queries to do their research:
"Find all binary systems containing a white dwarf."
"Find all star-like objects that ar X% rare."
"Find objects with characteristics similar to quasars with redshifts between X and Y."
etc...
Yep, that's what we're talking about. Their data pipeline is described here.
Automated object identification is already a standard part of any sky survey data pipeline. Among other things, this is used by surveys like SDSS to not only find and identify objects, but to tag the ones that are galaxies for later redshift measurement. (That's where the "3D" part comes in - redshifts of galaxies. Measuring radial ditances to closer objects - say stars in our own galaxy - is a pretty involved bootstrapping process where distance is derived from a ladder of indirect indicators.)
As far as grid computing goes, the US NVO (National Virtual Observatory) will implement a grid computing model. The NVO will be a unified portal that will federate about 50 digital sky surveys. It will have a database of billions of objects with hundreds of characteristics each, and rich relational structure spanning those hundreds of dimensions. They'll use grid computing to perform astronomers' queries on those data. That's really the main reason why these sky surveys are being done - to allow astronomers to do their work by data mining. A "map" of the universe will be a byproduct.
Danger's new Hiptop might sorta be what you want. They don't give axact specs on the camera. It's a pretty dope little toy though - "real" web browser, IM, email w/ attachments, phone, PDA, and camera, and its wirelessly networked. It's still not clear when you'll be able to buy one, but if they're smart, they're going to get it out in time to compete with Treo and Nokia's new phone/pda/mp3 player thingy.
Don't know why my reply to this disappeared, but luckily I saved it myself, so here it is again :
I think I'll just drop this. We're orders of magnitude apart insofar what we see as good science and engineering. To you good engineering is taking a risky endeavor and decreasing the risk as much as possible (an evolutionary approach.) To me good engineering seeks novel, risk free solutions (a revolutionary approach,) and is willing to be patient until the good solutions come.
As an example, rather than using plutonium to power Cassini's instruments, why not a flywheel based generator? There have been great advances in flywheel technology lately. In low-G and free fall environments, friction isn't a worry, so you'd get pretty decent efficiency. You ought to be able to torque the flywheel back up by catching a little angular momentum during a grav assist, if you make the approach just right.
It scares me to death to hear someone as apparently educated as you (and the others like you on this site) have no concept of long term ecological responsibility. It's enough for you that "you and I are alive right now," so therefore airborne dispersal of granulated heavy metals and radioactive material have no effect. DDT didn't get banned because humans started dropping off like flys in its presence. Lots and lots of major ecological damage was done before anyone started to do anything about it.
It's not about being a hippie or a luddite, it's just about acknowledging that the current dominant paradigm (to use a scary soc. word) of technological advancement has brought us some pretty dark returns. It's time to start learning from history. If we, as scientists (believe it or not, I am, in fact, a physicist - granted I'm a theorist) want to improve the reputation of scientific advancement, we have to start opening our eyes to the real world outside of the lab. Any risk is too much risk when it comes to endangering what little remains of the global ecosystem.
This is bogus. See the other posts in the thread for reasons why. (I.e. If 72 pounds of plutonium dioxide can do us in, then why are we alive after tons of Pu-238 were blasted into the air by above ground nuke testing.)
ummm... i didn't think we were done counting the casualties from nuke testing yet. seems to me that plenty of people are still suffering and dying from it, not that it's being publicly acknowledged. (and, frankly, i just don't get the mentality that it's ok to do a little more of a bad thing we've done a lot of in the past; not exactly what i'd call social evolution.)
Let's clarify this -- the rocket that launched Cassini was a chemically powered vehicle. The probe itself is equipped with chemical rockets, both for the main engine and the thrusters. Pu is not Cassini's "fuel." It is its power and (to a slight extent) heat source.
Better?
Damn well better NOT be nuclear powered rockets within our atmosphere. My bad, though, shouldn't have started talking about propulsion, when I just meant power source in general.
Did you have any specific untrue "truths" in mind? Conservation of Mass-Energy? Newtonian mechanics? (Which are being used to calculate Cassini's trajectory.)
This is exactly my point. All you're thinking about is your textbook problems. Think REAL WORLD. Want some specific "truths" ?
How about things like real statistics on the amount of debris in orbit over the earth, and the accuracy to which the trajectories of every piece are truly modelled. Also, everyone seems so quick to believe the government when the government promises the casing is "explosion proof." How many times are we going to have to hear, "Well, uh, in the tests everything SEEMED fine..." Between the government's history of misinformation and the fact that testing doesn't guarantee jack, I'm sorry if I'm a little skeptical about what I'm feed as truth.
I agree that we should have a better propulsion source, but will not halt all exploration until one is devised. After all, how many new propulsion systems have been brought on-line in the past 30 years?
Sorry, but them's the breaks. I just can't condone strapping a bunch of highly toxic material to a rocket that has, what, about a 1 in 6 failure rate? Please don't tell me that it's OK because only a small part of Florida, or the Pacific Ocean, or whatever would get poisoned in the event of a disaster. No one has any right to make that sacrifice.
Assuming you live in the USA, have you written your congresscritter to support NASA's "Future X" program?
No, thanks for the tip. The truth is, I'm not exactly an activist here, just been playing devil's advocate for the sake of discussion. I will look into this, though.
Some of the commments in these threads sound like they come from the same people who lapped it up when the military kept telling us how fanastically Patriots were working in the Gulf War. That was all the anti-anti-war propaganda the government needed to start, these guys picked it up from there, so happy to wave this banner of success in the faces of people who had doubts about the war. Nothing makes people like that feel more secure about themselves then to believe the great machine that they're a happy little cog in runs as well as everybody promised; that real life does work exactly like the sample problems in their textbooks; that there is never any need to step back and wonder what life might look like if a few "truths" were less than true.
Technically, of course, you're right - the chances of a collision with a piece of space junk large enough to cause a signifigant course alteration are very slim. Nonetheless, the chance of a disaster from which our species would not recover exists, and should be addressed. The point of the protests is not to stop scientific progression, but to put a halt to the cheapening of good science by the get-rich-quick mentality that's been seeping in in the latter half of this century. The aim of science, above all, is to improve our lives, not endanger them. Nonetheless, the notion of "acceptable risk" has become common parlance - it does not bother anyone to put money one side of an equation and human lives on the other.
"But the risk is so insignifigant!" you cry. Sure, for now. The problem comes with scalablity. If we let ourselves get used to cheap, brute force crutches like plutonium fueled vehicles, we get stuck with them - they become the standard, not the bonus. So when someone wants to do something that is more innovative and safe, they'll hear "Sorry, that is not economically viable." In the meanwhile, longer missions with larger vehicles are planned: "Shoot boys, guess we'll have to shove some more plutonium in that dad' burned thang. They didn't complain about 75 pounds, how can they complain about 150, it's only 75 more..." Bad scalability is at the source of virtually every environmental problem we have, it's almost the definition of an environmental problem. We're good enough and smart enough to create technologies that leave no footprints, if we just give ourselves the chance.
What do we lose if we wait for a real solution to the propulsion problem - a few years maybe? I can wait a few years in order not to risk the lives of the vast majority of people on this planet who couldn't give a damn about space research. What gives people who like technology the right to constantly risk the lives of those who don't? Sure, we satisfy ourselves with glowing descriptions of how "acceptable" the risks our of our endeavors, but we don't have to flip too many pages of a history book to find case after case of people and ecosystems who got completely screwed by technological endeavors that had nothing to do with them and that will never benefit them.
If wanting real science, not corporate bullshite makes me a hippy, than send me my Freedom Rock record. In the meanwhile, I'll remain slightly annoyed that the people with the plutonium don't seem to mind spreading it around. (I don't know if you noticed it or not, but all the radioactive material we spread around just MIGHT be part of the reason why so many people seem to be getting cancer these days... bah, but what's a few more pounds here and a few more pounds there, right?)