One thing that is unclear is that Cassini will turn away its antenna from Huygens 30 minutes after it lands. Does this mean that no further data will be received afterwards? I had the impression that there was a series of surface experiments to be done after landing.
The Huygens probe instruments are primarily designed for measurements during the descent through the atmosphere, along with some measurements at the time of landing and immediately after. The probe batteries are sized for 153 minutes of operation, so there would be no point in listening after the batteries have drained.
according to the government African American and black were synonymous, except for the fact that using the term black is not politically correct or preferred anymore.
I know a fellow who was quite amused on a trip to Africa to see a politically correct American (to whom the terms black and Negro were anathema) struggle to talk about the people there: "These African-Americans . . . uh, African-American Africans . . . uh, African-Africans . . . uh . .."
In their language anything more than 2 is "many", and "many" does not have specific values.
Apparently the words that are translated "one" and "two" in the articles are not specific values either. The word for one can mean "a small number" and the word for two can mean "not many", and are sometimes used for quantities other than one or two, respectively.
Another article about this tribe states that, "Not only that, but adult Piraha apparently can't learn to count or understand the concept of numbers or numerals, even when they asked anthropologists to teach them and have been given basic math lessons for months at a time."
If it wasn't for Casini? After all, who had imagined moons this size before?
Well, yes, Cassini had nothing to do with it. The five newly discovered moons of Neptune are larger than Mars' moons, which were known before space flight. The Galileo probe to Jupiter discovered numerous moons about the size of the ones recently found by the Cassini probe. The moons are being publicly reported now, but they were observed in 2001 to 2003, before Cassini got to Saturn.
Instead of placing telescopes in orbit, we should be putting them on the moon. Low gravity and no atmosphere are a huge plus for building large aperture instruments.
At present, any instruments are manufactured on earth, and it takes a lot more to put anything on the moon than in orbit. So anything we could put on the moon would be a lot smaller and less capable than what we could put in orbit. Maybe someday if we had a moon base and actual manufacturing capability on the moon it could be possible. Arthur C. Clarke's novel Earthight was set in a observatory on the moon.
I really hope NASA will send another rover now that the first ones were such a huge success.
In today's news, there is a description of research into a next generation rover designed to search for life, which will be tested in Chile's Atacama Desert. It is currently designed only to detect DNA-based life as we know it. This may be good enough for Mars, considering the meteorite-carried exchanges of material between Earth and Mars.
Uh yeah, whatever, typical case of pot kettle I'd say (if you consider the post that you replied to a knee-jerk reaction to begin with), unless you could maybe point us at some nice research into the matter.
OK, here is a google link to the report. Anything else you need spoon-fed to you?
I would have thought the salt would lower the freezing point of the water (-1.94 degrees Celsius), and maybe it would more efficient if they can just get deep enough. Where I live, our water supply is drawn from almost 300 kilometers away. Can it be that difficult to draw water from 1000 feet deep?
The lake water doesn't get any colder than 4 C if you go deeper. At 4 C water is as dense as it gets with temperature, so once you get to the 4 C layer it stays that temperature all the way down.
I'd think the difference would not be in the runs of pipe so much as in the heat exchangers. Every building a/c unit will have one to draw the heat from the air into the water. Polyethylene plastic is a poor conductor of heat, and so is unsuitable for the heat exchangers.
Why couldn't you use saltwater in the closed system?
Salt water is more corrosive than fresh water. Much more expensive materials would be needed for the system, which would far outweigh any benefits. Also, any leakage in the heat exchanger would put salt water in the city's drinking water.
My actual point, though, is that we shouldn't be guessing. I hope that someone has been measuring, modelling, and analyzing instead of guessing. It would be nice to know.
Not the easiest thing to find on the site, but the Enwave history page shows that the Environmental Assessment for the Deep Lake Water Cooling project was approved in 1998. I would expect that this study is the basis for the environmental benefits claimed for the project.
What damage it causes in between I do not know, but I do know that it has to be looked at.
I don't know how you can imagine that it hasn't been looked at. The Environmental Assessment was completed and approved in 1998. This technology helps the environment by reducing use of refrigerants, reducing electricity use, and reducing air pollution. The kind of knee-jerk uninformed obstructionism these posts demonstrate harms environmentalism by making it look ridiculous.
you're literally just babbling nonsense to convince yourself that there's nothing to the concept of Transhumanism.
I'm not saying there isn't anything to the concept of transhumanism, just that the folks who get all wrapped up in the concept are pathetic losers who couldn't make it as human beings and somehow think that they will magically make it as transhumans.
But I should stop baiting you; you're just too easy a target with your ego all spread out over transhumanism.
Through this medium, it is hard to tell whether you are someone having fun putting on the persona of believing yourself transhuman, or whether you actually believe it, so I'll take you at face value.
You are deluded if you consider yourself transhuman. Even supposing the technology is coming, it is nowhere near the point where anyone could become transhuman. So you are delusional and thus defective. By your distain of humanity and human ethics, you show yourself antisocial and likely sociopathic. If the technology were to be developed, people would do whatever is necessary to preventyou from using it. If there were transhumans, they would not want you. A human who is delusional and soiciopathic is a poor and dangerous candidate for becoming transhuman. Since you fail at even being a decent human being, no one transhuman or not would want to allow you to become transhuman.
When I was talking about being in orbit, I was including being in orbit around the sun, not just around planets. A solar sail vehicle does not have nearly the thrust to move directly away from the sun. Without having orbital velocity around the sun, it would just fall into the sun regardless of the solar sail. However, the solar sail can shape its orbit, either accelerating it to a higher orbit, or, by pointing the reflection in the direction of the forward motion in its orbit, drop it down into a lower orbit. To escape entirely from the sun's gravity, it gradually shapes its orbit into a narrower ellipse, until it can cross over from an elliptical orbit to a hyperbolic escape orbit.
The thing I'm curious about, and will read up on, is if they think they can tack to manuver within our own solar system. I don't think you can use tacking manuvers in space. You would need a fluid for your vessel to travel in and also need a preferred direction of travel due to the shape of the vessel. Without it I believe the only direction to travel (neglecting gravity wells) would be directly away from the sun.
Tacking with a solar sail is possible, but the physics is different. First of all, you can't neglect gravity wells, because the acceleration due to gravity will be greater than the acceleration from the solar sail. So the solar sail craft will essentially be in orbit, with the sail making changes to the orbit. By tilting the sail to reflect the light toward the forward direction of the orbit, the solar sail slows the craft down, and it drops into a lower orbit.
The problem is that at 1.3kw/m^2 (the power that reaches Earth), you're not going to go very fast
It's much worse than that. Solar sails don't convert the energy of the light, they just receive momentum from the light as it bounces off. The momentum is equal to the energy of the light divided by the speed of light.
As I said, it would be a disaster. Fortunately, anyone who now thinks himself transhuman is merely delusional. I expect that if the time came, no one would let a sociopath like that within miles of the upload/upgrade equipment.
The earliest SF story I know that has something like the singularity is Fritz Lieber's 1962(!) story "The Creature from Cleveland Depths." It begins with the invention of the "tickler," a little device that acts as an electronic appointment book. New models follow at a rapid pace, gaining more functionality and more power over their human owners, until the humans are the zombie slaves of the ticklers. Finally the protagonist points out to them that they don't need the limitations of the human slaves, and the devices, in essence, transcend.
Slashdot Mirror
The Huygens probe instruments are primarily designed for measurements during the descent through the atmosphere, along with some measurements at the time of landing and immediately after. The probe batteries are sized for 153 minutes of operation, so there would be no point in listening after the batteries have drained.
I know a fellow who was quite amused on a trip to Africa to see a politically correct American (to whom the terms black and Negro were anathema) struggle to talk about the people there: "These African-Americans . . . uh, African-American Africans . . . uh, African-Africans . . . uh . . ."
Jokes aside, Aristotle taught that there were two forces, gravity and levity. Levity was the force that made fire and smoke go up.
Apparently the words that are translated "one" and "two" in the articles are not specific values either. The word for one can mean "a small number" and the word for two can mean "not many", and are sometimes used for quantities other than one or two, respectively.
Another story states that while adults in the tribe have difficulty learning to count, the children do not.
Another article about this tribe states that, "Not only that, but adult Piraha apparently can't learn to count or understand the concept of numbers or numerals, even when they asked anthropologists to teach them and have been given basic math lessons for months at a time."
Sorry; you're right, that was rude of me. Sometimes I slide into behavior here that I wouldn't do in any other circumstances.
Well, yes, Cassini had nothing to do with it. The five newly discovered moons of Neptune are larger than Mars' moons, which were known before space flight. The Galileo probe to Jupiter discovered numerous moons about the size of the ones recently found by the Cassini probe. The moons are being publicly reported now, but they were observed in 2001 to 2003, before Cassini got to Saturn.
At present, any instruments are manufactured on earth, and it takes a lot more to put anything on the moon than in orbit. So anything we could put on the moon would be a lot smaller and less capable than what we could put in orbit. Maybe someday if we had a moon base and actual manufacturing capability on the moon it could be possible. Arthur C. Clarke's novel Earthight was set in a observatory on the moon.
In today's news, there is a description of research into a next generation rover designed to search for life, which will be tested in Chile's Atacama Desert. It is currently designed only to detect DNA-based life as we know it. This may be good enough for Mars, considering the meteorite-carried exchanges of material between Earth and Mars.
OK, here is a google link to the report. Anything else you need spoon-fed to you?
The lake water doesn't get any colder than 4 C if you go deeper. At 4 C water is as dense as it gets with temperature, so once you get to the 4 C layer it stays that temperature all the way down.
I'd think the difference would not be in the runs of pipe so much as in the heat exchangers. Every building a/c unit will have one to draw the heat from the air into the water. Polyethylene plastic is a poor conductor of heat, and so is unsuitable for the heat exchangers.
Salt water is more corrosive than fresh water. Much more expensive materials would be needed for the system, which would far outweigh any benefits. Also, any leakage in the heat exchanger would put salt water in the city's drinking water.
Not the easiest thing to find on the site, but the Enwave history page shows that the Environmental Assessment for the Deep Lake Water Cooling project was approved in 1998. I would expect that this study is the basis for the environmental benefits claimed for the project.
I don't know how you can imagine that it hasn't been looked at. The Environmental Assessment was completed and approved in 1998. This technology helps the environment by reducing use of refrigerants, reducing electricity use, and reducing air pollution. The kind of knee-jerk uninformed obstructionism these posts demonstrate harms environmentalism by making it look ridiculous.
"The Feeling of Power" Isaac Asimov, 1957
I'm not saying there isn't anything to the concept of transhumanism, just that the folks who get all wrapped up in the concept are pathetic losers who couldn't make it as human beings and somehow think that they will magically make it as transhumans.
But I should stop baiting you; you're just too easy a target with your ego all spread out over transhumanism.
The 15m figure is the length of one of eight triangular vanes that make up the sail. According to the FAQ the total area is 600 square meters.
You are deluded if you consider yourself transhuman. Even supposing the technology is coming, it is nowhere near the point where anyone could become transhuman. So you are delusional and thus defective. By your distain of humanity and human ethics, you show yourself antisocial and likely sociopathic. If the technology were to be developed, people would do whatever is necessary to preventyou from using it. If there were transhumans, they would not want you. A human who is delusional and soiciopathic is a poor and dangerous candidate for becoming transhuman. Since you fail at even being a decent human being, no one transhuman or not would want to allow you to become transhuman.
When I was talking about being in orbit, I was including being in orbit around the sun, not just around planets. A solar sail vehicle does not have nearly the thrust to move directly away from the sun. Without having orbital velocity around the sun, it would just fall into the sun regardless of the solar sail. However, the solar sail can shape its orbit, either accelerating it to a higher orbit, or, by pointing the reflection in the direction of the forward motion in its orbit, drop it down into a lower orbit. To escape entirely from the sun's gravity, it gradually shapes its orbit into a narrower ellipse, until it can cross over from an elliptical orbit to a hyperbolic escape orbit.
Tacking with a solar sail is possible, but the physics is different. First of all, you can't neglect gravity wells, because the acceleration due to gravity will be greater than the acceleration from the solar sail. So the solar sail craft will essentially be in orbit, with the sail making changes to the orbit. By tilting the sail to reflect the light toward the forward direction of the orbit, the solar sail slows the craft down, and it drops into a lower orbit.
It's much worse than that. Solar sails don't convert the energy of the light, they just receive momentum from the light as it bounces off. The momentum is equal to the energy of the light divided by the speed of light.
If they CAN weed him out.
Who says he'll let them?
Especially if he's already Transhuman.
As I said, it would be a disaster. Fortunately, anyone who now thinks himself transhuman is merely delusional. I expect that if the time came, no one would let a sociopath like that within miles of the upload/upgrade equipment.
The earliest SF story I know that has something like the singularity is Fritz Lieber's 1962(!) story "The Creature from Cleveland Depths." It begins with the invention of the "tickler," a little device that acts as an electronic appointment book. New models follow at a rapid pace, gaining more functionality and more power over their human owners, until the humans are the zombie slaves of the ticklers. Finally the protagonist points out to them that they don't need the limitations of the human slaves, and the devices, in essence, transcend.