(1) Unless you have the means to "service" it, it will end up to be a short-lived investiment.
(2) To download raw data gathered with the Hubble, you have to use governmental communication facilities such as TDRS, etc. Check out how expensive its bandwidth usage is.
(3) It will eventually tumble down onto the earth one day. You will be held responsible to bring it down to the safe place (e.g., ocean). To do so you have to possess technology and skill for a controled re-entry.
(4) what the hell would the private entity do with a space telescope?
Astronomers have been fond of calling the Hubble as "the space telescope"...which is a mistake if you think about it. The word "the" implies that there will be only one space telescope at the present time.
If you think about it, it's always better to have a fleet of space telescopes, instead of just one.
I guess we were mentally stuck at the concept of "reusable" space missions (e.g., space shuttle orbiters) and made it difficult to design a mission "on the cheap" with disposable parts. There, we aimed our goals too high. Maybe we should have experimented more wiht cheaper disposable missions and then after that we should've started thinking about more advanced stuffs.
I heard about this new technology a few years ago. I didn't realize it is about to be commercialized...
Anyway, the parent poster's example on Star Wars has it right. Basically the projected holograph at a different angle (or viewed at different angle) shows a different holographic pattern (i.e., from the front, you can see the princess's face. But from behind, her arse).
The different angle of the incident beam generates a different look of interference map, which in turn translated to bits. It doesn't seem too far off that you can hold "Library of Congress" in a tiny data cube between your finger tips...
PS. Do I want it? Sure. I have 1TB data of my own at work. It'd be nice to back them all up at once.
Yeah, and it could be worse. I've been looking around transponder technology used in immobilizer. Even though these companies listed there may use TI chip and others may not, the principal encryption is weak enough to break others in the same manner (I'm deducing that guess based on the fact that there exists a transponder unit that allows reprogram a blank key for many cars with different makes.
I'll just have to wait and see what other Acura owners have to say about this. Maybe it's time to upgrade my alerm system with Viper or something.
Basically if your car with an immobilizer uses the unit from TI, you car is at risk. It's not clear which type will be affected, but the article says Fords, Toyotas and Nissans use this cheapo 30bit encryption key.
If these creationists would try, we'll bring down the word from Pope John Paul II in 1992. Here is an exerpt from Wikipedia [on Galileo Galilei]:
"In 1992, 359 years after the Galileo trial, Pope John Paul II issued an apology, lifting the edict of Inquisition against Galileo: 'Galileo sensed in his scientific research the presence of the Creator who, stirring in the depths of his spirit, stimulated him, anticipating and assisting his intuitions.' After the release of this report, the Pope said further that '... Galileo, a sincere believer, showed himself to be more perceptive in this regard [the relation of scientific and Biblical truths] than the theologians who opposed him.'"
This isn't about the validity of global warming. This is about how science is being discussed by the uninformed masses and what bad influence it has to policy making. Example? The AC's response: "it's the job of the party making the extraordinary claim..." Don't you know that scientists have produced such evidences for everyone to study? Here, have a look at global warming in Wikipedia:
It even discusses the pros and cons of the current global warming study. Read it up and learn.
But the root of the problem is that the common mass generally don't understand science enough to appreciate the evidences presented there. And scientists aren't exactly the best media to disseminate such info in a simpler term, either. So the general audience tends to listen whatever they can comprehend, which generally requires no math or analytical skills. They will approach you only with the common frame of reference...via examples like, "the changes in the Sun correlates with the change in temperature [true, btw]. It must be the reason for global warming, not us! (but safely ignore the fact that careful atmospheric modeling excludes the possiblity that the rate of temperature increase cannot be explained by the current radiative transfer model...but to appreciate the degree of "deviation" between the theory and measurement, you have to be able to evaluate the model, statistics, and measurements....
In any case, this is why a government forms a scientific study group (e.g., NAS) to study difficult topics like weather, etc., and let them inform and advice to its policy makers. Again, that's because not all the general audience can't make out what all those scientists are telling. And for scientists, they have a "real" scientific conference to discuss science by gathering evidence and debating the hell out of them. Some agree and other disagree. That's science. On the other hand, the fake conference gathers the believers of their theory and agree with each other and figure out how to inform their consensus to the policy makers. I leave it to you to decide which group is more worthy of listening; I have chosen the former.
To me, these uninformed "experts" are true terrorists who are against what's good and civil.
Richard Lindzen is one of very few scientists who disputes the validity of global warming since 1990s. And just because he is from MIT, it doesn't mean that the whole conference is a legit "scientific" conference.
I think that the point is this: the "fake" conference gathers the people who are against the global warming propaganda. On the other hand, the true conference gathers all kinds of people with different views. The best we let them debate against each other. That's what "science" is all about.
Would you care to back up your statement with evidence or proof?
That's the difference between fake and real. The fake media won't be able to produce anything that provokes scientific debate. Philosophical debates are useless (did I just criticize the mass of the/. crowd?). On the other hand, scientists would try to discuss every evidence and proofs with glee (hell, they even try to disagree with each other, only to improve their understanding better).
Every scientific study indicates that the Big Bang had generated light atomic elements (Hydrogen and Helium, etc). But other heavier elements -- the founding block of life and everything we live in -- have been synthesized by stars. We have a pretty good model in nucleosynthesis, really. But little we know HOW these heavier elements are re-distributed throughout interstellar space. This mission will touch upon that topic by exploring the condition where the Sun's wind interacts with the primodial (?) material that surrounds the Solar system.
Cool, indeed. And the principle institute is located in San Antonio, TX. Even if they go over budget, it's gonna be easy to impress the congress or the White House to allocate more money...well, I'm quasi-kidding about that!
This whole new way of creating "life" challenges us in three respects:
(a) Can human kind go beyond religion?
(b) at the same time, can good prevail through its action?
(c) Can human be smart enough to know the difference between good and dumb? (e.g., "what evil good can be")
Do we allow ourselves to expand our vision to explore our own biomolecular structure or let religion prevent us from leaping forward? (and die as a consequence...hey, religion could actually be the end-of-the-world device to insure that human do not advance enough to sustain its civilization...now that would be funny). And then, without help of religion, can we all have good intention while fiddling with the "life" question? And lastly, while our intention being good, can we be all smart enough to make a dumb mistake (bad enough to wipe us out)?
I think we are being challenged now. Or am I making this too dramatic? We'll see about that.
A good post, though it's a little vague for the most of non-science geeks.
Basically, in the relativistic frame, the Newtonian kinetic energy (0.5*mass*velocity^2) is no longer valid. To make "relativistic" correction, it needs to be scaled by the quantity called "gamma", which has the form:
gamma = 1.0/sqrt(1.0-(v/c)^2)
where c = speed of light and v is the motion of an object (here 0.999c). Now the relativistic kinetic energy is scaled by this gamma factor as:
Kinetic Energy = mass * c^2 * (gamma - 1.0).
In this case, v=0.999c, the gamma factor has the value of 22.4. Then for the mass of a Jupiter size planet, the relativistic kinetic energy is about 2e52 erg, which is about 10 supernovae explosion worth of the energy.
Now if you imagine that v=0.9999 (another "9"), then the gamma factor jumps up to 70.7, instead of 22.4. That's what the parent poster meant to say by the "non-linear" term.
We can't get much work done here. At any time a solar flare produces a greater flux of high energy particles in space, we have to shut down spacecrafts til everything is nominal. A series of the recent flare events are shutting down at least one satellite since Jan 16th and now it looks like the blackout will last til 23rd. That's a major blow to the efficiency of the usage (one of NASA's favorite metrics).
The methodology used in that study is to look for a specific type of supernova explosion (called Type Ia) and use it as a measure for distance indicator. Such studies have shown that the Universe is not only expanding but also accelerating in expansion.
In this new topic, the same result is obtained, but with much different methodology being used: detection of density wave at its early stage of evolution in the large scale structure of the Universe. Not that I'm familiar with this latest news. Time to read up some journals...
I guess the common sense has begun to prevail: a degree from Ivy league college does not guarantee a successful hire.
If you are smart and work hard for good (or evil), your chance of success is greater. If you're not so smart but work harder to compensate for it, then you'd be welcome by the society just as well. If you're not so smart and don't want to work hard at all, then you'd better have lucrative parents or relatives who can support you to move into the field of politics.
By the way, I wouldn't say no one needs Harvard. I've known many Harvard graduates and current students, and they all work extremely hard for their scholarships.
Re:PARENT OVERRATED, MOD DOWN ( "Pop Sci Garbage"
on
BBC on Global Dimming
·
· Score: 1
Why smaller droplets are more reflective the article does not say.
I believe it has to do with the cross-section of a cloud, not really to do with the size of a particle.
Basically you pack a lot of tiny reflectors in a small volume when the density of pollutants is large and each droplet is small. For a larger droplet (with a less number of them), there are greater gaps / spaces in between them, hence easily letting the sunlight to scatter through.
In short, it's the density of particles that affects the degree of reflection. Not the size of each droplet, well, not exactly.
I think I made my statement a bit unclear. What I meant to say was that a corporate sponsorship was nice so as long as there was no bias forcibly applied to the research itself, i.e., a major producer of daily products (e.g., milk) sponsors a research at a university to FIND the positive correlation between good health and consumption of daily products. Or something like that.
There are corporations that may sponsor a research only to find an ideal result for their benefit and publicize loudly as "being found by independent research groups", etc. Although their intention is honest and business-like, this may do some disservice to the society.
If a sponsor is offering a funding with no string attached, we welcome it. Otherwise, we'd better not accepting them.
If a corporate sponsor looks to identify a future employee through their sponsoring researches, I'd think that is fair. But if a corporate looks to identify ideal research outcome through its sponsorship, it's not a good thing for science and engineering.
Slashdot Mirror
No sane person would buy the Hubble.
(1) Unless you have the means to "service" it, it will end up to be a short-lived investiment.
(2) To download raw data gathered with the Hubble, you have to use governmental communication facilities such as TDRS, etc. Check out how expensive its bandwidth usage is.
(3) It will eventually tumble down onto the earth one day. You will be held responsible to bring it down to the safe place (e.g., ocean). To do so you have to possess technology and skill for a controled re-entry.
(4) what the hell would the private entity do with a space telescope?
I could go on and on and on...
Astronomers have been fond of calling the Hubble as "the space telescope"...which is a mistake if you think about it. The word "the" implies that there will be only one space telescope at the present time.
If you think about it, it's always better to have a fleet of space telescopes, instead of just one.
I guess we were mentally stuck at the concept of "reusable" space missions (e.g., space shuttle orbiters) and made it difficult to design a mission "on the cheap" with disposable parts. There, we aimed our goals too high. Maybe we should have experimented more wiht cheaper disposable missions and then after that we should've started thinking about more advanced stuffs.
Hey, I remember talking exactly like that in late 80s.
Except that it was when a "CD-ROM" came about and the data volume was about 4Mb, instead.
[I'm being sarcastic]
I heard about this new technology a few years ago. I didn't realize it is about to be commercialized...
Anyway, the parent poster's example on Star Wars has it right. Basically the projected holograph at a different angle (or viewed at different angle) shows a different holographic pattern (i.e., from the front, you can see the princess's face. But from behind, her arse).
The different angle of the incident beam generates a different look of interference map, which in turn translated to bits. It doesn't seem too far off that you can hold "Library of Congress" in a tiny data cube between your finger tips...
PS. Do I want it? Sure. I have 1TB data of my own at work. It'd be nice to back them all up at once.
...artificial intelligences that can learn by reading and understanding natural language...
OK, but can it learn from mistakes?
Yeah, and it could be worse. I've been looking around transponder technology used in immobilizer. Even though these companies listed there may use TI chip and others may not, the principal encryption is weak enough to break others in the same manner (I'm deducing that guess based on the fact that there exists a transponder unit that allows reprogram a blank key for many cars with different makes.
I'll just have to wait and see what other Acura owners have to say about this. Maybe it's time to upgrade my alerm system with Viper or something.
Basically if your car with an immobilizer uses the unit from TI, you car is at risk. It's not clear which type will be affected, but the article says Fords, Toyotas and Nissans use this cheapo 30bit encryption key.
Thank god I paid more to get an Acura, instead.
That's a good point.
What a non-christian thing to say! Shame on you.
If these creationists would try, we'll bring down the word from Pope John Paul II in 1992. Here is an exerpt from Wikipedia [on Galileo Galilei]:
"In 1992, 359 years after the Galileo trial, Pope John Paul II issued an apology, lifting the edict of Inquisition against Galileo: 'Galileo sensed in his scientific research the presence of the Creator who, stirring in the depths of his spirit, stimulated him, anticipating and assisting his intuitions.' After the release of this report, the Pope said further that '... Galileo, a sincere believer, showed himself to be more perceptive in this regard [the relation of scientific and Biblical truths] than the theologians who opposed him.'"
You misspelled "Christian" as "scientists" there...
Sorry, but science ain't about fuckin' consensus.
If so, whether the Earth revolves around the Sun or vice versa is still up for debate in the U.S.
Silly to respond to AC, but I'll bite.
This isn't about the validity of global warming. This is about how science is being discussed by the uninformed masses and what bad influence it has to policy making. Example? The AC's response: "it's the job of the party making the extraordinary claim..." Don't you know that scientists have produced such evidences for everyone to study? Here, have a look at global warming in Wikipedia:
Global Warming
It even discusses the pros and cons of the current global warming study. Read it up and learn.
But the root of the problem is that the common mass generally don't understand science enough to appreciate the evidences presented there. And scientists aren't exactly the best media to disseminate such info in a simpler term, either. So the general audience tends to listen whatever they can comprehend, which generally requires no math or analytical skills. They will approach you only with the common frame of reference...via examples like, "the changes in the Sun correlates with the change in temperature [true, btw]. It must be the reason for global warming, not us! (but safely ignore the fact that careful atmospheric modeling excludes the possiblity that the rate of temperature increase cannot be explained by the current radiative transfer model...but to appreciate the degree of "deviation" between the theory and measurement, you have to be able to evaluate the model, statistics, and measurements....
In any case, this is why a government forms a scientific study group (e.g., NAS) to study difficult topics like weather, etc., and let them inform and advice to its policy makers. Again, that's because not all the general audience can't make out what all those scientists are telling. And for scientists, they have a "real" scientific conference to discuss science by gathering evidence and debating the hell out of them. Some agree and other disagree. That's science. On the other hand, the fake conference gathers the believers of their theory and agree with each other and figure out how to inform their consensus to the policy makers. I leave it to you to decide which group is more worthy of listening; I have chosen the former.
To me, these uninformed "experts" are true terrorists who are against what's good and civil.
Richard Lindzen is one of very few scientists who disputes the validity of global warming since 1990s. And just because he is from MIT, it doesn't mean that the whole conference is a legit "scientific" conference.
I think that the point is this: the "fake" conference gathers the people who are against the global warming propaganda. On the other hand, the true conference gathers all kinds of people with different views. The best we let them debate against each other. That's what "science" is all about.
Would you care to back up your statement with evidence or proof?
/. crowd?). On the other hand, scientists would try to discuss every evidence and proofs with glee (hell, they even try to disagree with each other, only to improve their understanding better).
That's the difference between fake and real. The fake media won't be able to produce anything that provokes scientific debate. Philosophical debates are useless (did I just criticize the mass of the
A fascinating mission.
Every scientific study indicates that the Big Bang had generated light atomic elements (Hydrogen and Helium, etc). But other heavier elements -- the founding block of life and everything we live in -- have been synthesized by stars. We have a pretty good model in nucleosynthesis, really. But little we know HOW these heavier elements are re-distributed throughout interstellar space. This mission will touch upon that topic by exploring the condition where the Sun's wind interacts with the primodial (?) material that surrounds the Solar system.
Cool, indeed. And the principle institute is located in San Antonio, TX. Even if they go over budget, it's gonna be easy to impress the congress or the White House to allocate more money...well, I'm quasi-kidding about that!
This whole new way of creating "life" challenges us in three respects:
(a) Can human kind go beyond religion?
(b) at the same time, can good prevail through its action?
(c) Can human be smart enough to know the difference between good and dumb? (e.g., "what evil good can be")
Do we allow ourselves to expand our vision to explore our own biomolecular structure or let religion prevent us from leaping forward? (and die as a consequence...hey, religion could actually be the end-of-the-world device to insure that human do not advance enough to sustain its civilization...now that would be funny). And then, without help of religion, can we all have good intention while fiddling with the "life" question? And lastly, while our intention being good, can we be all smart enough to make a dumb mistake (bad enough to wipe us out)?
I think we are being challenged now. Or am I making this too dramatic? We'll see about that.
It was up on www.fark.com in the last week or so.
A good post, though it's a little vague for the most of non-science geeks.
Basically, in the relativistic frame, the Newtonian kinetic energy (0.5*mass*velocity^2) is no longer valid. To make "relativistic" correction, it needs to be scaled by the quantity called "gamma", which has the form:
gamma = 1.0/sqrt(1.0-(v/c)^2)
where c = speed of light and v is the motion of an object (here 0.999c). Now the relativistic kinetic energy is scaled by this gamma factor as:
Kinetic Energy = mass * c^2 * (gamma - 1.0).
In this case, v=0.999c, the gamma factor has the value of 22.4. Then for the mass of a Jupiter size planet, the relativistic kinetic energy is about 2e52 erg, which is about 10 supernovae explosion worth of the energy.
Now if you imagine that v=0.9999 (another "9"), then the gamma factor jumps up to 70.7, instead of 22.4. That's what the parent poster meant to say by the "non-linear" term.
The more you know, the better off you are.
Damn it, the Sun.
We can't get much work done here. At any time a solar flare produces a greater flux of high energy particles in space, we have to shut down spacecrafts til everything is nominal. A series of the recent flare events are shutting down at least one satellite since Jan 16th and now it looks like the blackout will last til 23rd. That's a major blow to the efficiency of the usage (one of NASA's favorite metrics).
The methodology used in that study is to look for a specific type of supernova explosion (called Type Ia) and use it as a measure for distance indicator. Such studies have shown that the Universe is not only expanding but also accelerating in expansion.
In this new topic, the same result is obtained, but with much different methodology being used: detection of density wave at its early stage of evolution in the large scale structure of the Universe. Not that I'm familiar with this latest news. Time to read up some journals...
I guess the common sense has begun to prevail: a degree from Ivy league college does not guarantee a successful hire.
If you are smart and work hard for good (or evil), your chance of success is greater. If you're not so smart but work harder to compensate for it, then you'd be welcome by the society just as well. If you're not so smart and don't want to work hard at all, then you'd better have lucrative parents or relatives who can support you to move into the field of politics.
By the way, I wouldn't say no one needs Harvard. I've known many Harvard graduates and current students, and they all work extremely hard for their scholarships.
Why smaller droplets are more reflective the article does not say.
I believe it has to do with the cross-section of a cloud, not really to do with the size of a particle.
Basically you pack a lot of tiny reflectors in a small volume when the density of pollutants is large and each droplet is small. For a larger droplet (with a less number of them), there are greater gaps / spaces in between them, hence easily letting the sunlight to scatter through.
In short, it's the density of particles that affects the degree of reflection. Not the size of each droplet, well, not exactly.
I think I made my statement a bit unclear. What I meant to say was that a corporate sponsorship was nice so as long as there was no bias forcibly applied to the research itself, i.e., a major producer of daily products (e.g., milk) sponsors a research at a university to FIND the positive correlation between good health and consumption of daily products. Or something like that.
There are corporations that may sponsor a research only to find an ideal result for their benefit and publicize loudly as "being found by independent research groups", etc. Although their intention is honest and business-like, this may do some disservice to the society.
Sorry, no time to clear my thought right now.
If a sponsor is offering a funding with no string attached, we welcome it. Otherwise, we'd better not accepting them.
If a corporate sponsor looks to identify a future employee through their sponsoring researches, I'd think that is fair. But if a corporate looks to identify ideal research outcome through its sponsorship, it's not a good thing for science and engineering.