The memory makers have been telling us for some time that RDRAM wasn't really all that great. Intel has said RDRAM was necessary to keep their CPUs going as fast as possible. And we haven't really been able to figure out who was telling the truth. Now that the memory makers have to pay more royalties on DDRRAM than DRAM (The royalties on SDRAM as still quite low, if I understand correctly.), it will be interesting to see if they change their tune. My guess is they will.
I think it would be wonderful if everyone could understand all the great mysteries of life, philosophy, science, and religion. I think it's pretty obvious there are a lot of different ideas about what True Christianity and true other religions really are.
In case anyone is interested, I understand Christianity to be a radical religion. I beleive it's about putting others before yourself, challenging societal norms, appreciating your blessings, becoming a blessing to others, and turning the other cheak when attacked.
I wish more people would do those things, in the name of Christianity or any other religion, code, or sense of ethics.
Let's consider a situation where you're being attacked and you can identify where it's coming from and that they are indeed the cause.
Yes, you could attack back. However you probably don't want to continue your attack forever, just for practical reasons. Once you stop, the attacker is probably going to like you even less than when you started. You might stop some dumb script kiddies, but you could have stopped them by blocking their IP. Real hackers will just be egged on more.
Personally, I'm for getting people to leave me alone more than I'm for "justice". The only reason I'd consider retaliating is if they do some attack that I can't stop any other way.
> People have done all sorts of extensive tests for "fifth forces", and so far there has not been any convincing evidence for such a force. So, we > would have to come up with a fifth force that for some reason affects only intergalactic matter, and not the stuff that stars, planets, and > astronomers are made of. Doesn't that seem just a little contrived to you? The situation is not at all analogous to the discovery of the nuclear > forces because evidence for those forces manifested as soon as we were able to make sufficiently precise measurements of plain-old > everyday matter.
People have only looked for a fifth force between normal everyday matter. If some of the dark matter is non-baryonic, then it would be something totally new that we've never tested in our labratories. It's not a matter of where the matter is located but rather what kind of matter it is. e.g. There is no strong force between electrons.
Maybe we now consider protons everyday normal matter, but at the time things that small were new and had never been tested before. Similarly, we have never done any tests on dark matter (presuming it's non-baryonic)
> I haven't had a chance to look over the articles you posted earlier in the discussion. Do any of them even have workable models for a force that > would make dark matter avoid clusters without producing dark clusters? Just coming up with such a beast seems a challenging mathematical > problem in itself.
I would say yes, but you can judge for yourself.
> Anyhow, we could add a new force to describe every new particle, but then we wouldn't have very much confidence in our physical theories. > We might just as well attribute physical phenomena to invisible faeries or something. The point is that whenever you discover a hitherto > unknown phenomenon and you find that it is entirely explainable in terms of previously known physical laws, it's a big win for physics.
I think a phi^4 potential is much preferable to ferries.
> Naturally, when theory and observation conflict, theory must give way, but the fantastic thing about this measurement is that it seems to > indicate that that will not be necessary in this case. I guess what I can't understand is why you don't think this is a Good Thing.
They presented results on a small fraction (~10%) of their data, and that's not just a random 10%, it's certain wavebands. I also feel that the press conference was very misleading. Even the nature paper claims to support a flat universe, but has a plot comparing the power spectrum observed and from a model, but the model is for a \Omega_total=1.1. Basically, I'm bothered by the way they presented their results.
> The other points you make are well-taken, but I don't worry much about factor-of-order-unity discrepancies in a preliminary measurement. > Remember that Hubble's original measurement of H0 made the universe to young to contain the earth's oldest rocks. It all got sorted out with > time, and this will too. As I said earlier, I think the quintessence theories sound promising, since constant, nonzero lambda really doesn't make > any sense theoretically.
I think we've moved past the stage of naming everything we see. I beleive we're now in the precision test stage of cosmology. That means I no longer get excited at seeing a bump in the CMB. Now I want to find agreement between the data and a small set of models. That will take more data.
Sorry, but I'm leaving town today, so this will probably be my last post on the thread.
I guess I don't understand why you beleive you know about all the forces, including those between particles that have never been observed except via their gravitational interactions. For example, before we observed subatomic particles, there was no need for the strong force. (You could argue weak was necessary to explain radioactivity.)
Certainly seeing the first acoustic peak was comforting. For example, at an IAS get-together today it was generally agreed that it's sharpness almost completely rules out cosmic string models.
However, there's still a lot of work to be done. From what I understand, the combination of the first peak at l=196 rather than 220 and the amplitude ratio of the two peaks seems to require _at least_ one of the following:
- Raising \Omega_b h^2 to violate current nucleosynthesis constraints (either the models or the observation of the deuterium abundance. I think most people would be much more willing to give up the mesaurements than the theory, since the theory is very nice and the measurement is rather difficult (measuring a bumb on the wing of a line))
- Adding a "tilt" to the standard LCDM. (To me this seems rather ad hoc and unmotivated.)
- Replacing \Lambda with a quintesence.
- Saying the data is wrong by more than 2 sigma. Several people seemed concerned about their pointing error and calibration (based on Eta Carinae and the dipole rather than Jupiter). So there might be large systematics than they claim.
Fortunately, other missions will check and improve upon the data.
Yes, a pure hot dark matter making up most of \Omega_{crit} (and probably even \Omega_{matter}, at least for current estimates) is ruled out by large scale structure. However, large scale structure is unlikely to rule out a contribution as small as a massive neutrio might provide.
I don't understand your motivation for feeling that as of yet undiscovered particles are more likely to have short-range potentials with a characteristic scale comperable to that of the other particles we know about.
Sorry, I used standard model in the context of cosmology, not particle physics. Both exist (at least in the minds of physicists) and are almost certainly connected in some way we don't yet fully understand. By standard model I meant something along the lines of CDM possiblely plus a lambda term.
While I'd agree that the standard model of particle physics has demonstrated significant predictive power, I can't think of much significant the standard model of cosmology has predicted. If you meant to imply that the standard cosmological models (CDM or LCDM) have "a lot of useful predictive power", then I'd like to be reminded of what they've predicted.
This is similar to recent proposals of Self-Interacting Dark Matter and Repulsive Dark Matter. If you'd like to see details search for either on http://xxx.lanl.gov/find/astro-ph . If you have trouble, good starting points are the papers by (Spergel and Steinhardt) and Goodman for SIDM and RDM, respectively.
This is a big fad right now and lots of people are working very on it quite rapidly. You'll notice all the papers on astro-ph are from the last several months. We'll see whether this is the big break through dark matter has long needed or whether it's just another wacky idea.
This post is informative and corrects many of the incorrect things people are saying over again and again on this thread. I was going to post my own explanation, but there's not much more to say. If moderators are still around it should be bumped up.
One minor addition. There are lots and lots of very good cosmologists saying very different things about the implications of these results. The message that this confirms everything that may have been drawn from he press conference is very misleading. Yes, the overall picture is verified. However, several of details are in significant disagreement with the most standard of the standard models. It seems everybody has fit their favorite model to the data, but it will take time (and more data) before we really sort out the true implications.
> Anyway, I'm assuming that you're talking about either a) spectrum assignments or b) the optical flares. If a), go complain to the > ITU (and/or boycott it with a vengance). If b), then you'll probably need to create a substantial amount of new international law > before you can do anything about it (again, assuming I'm not missing something, as IANL); feel free to. =)
Both. On a: It's my understanding that Motorola agree to respect the restrictions put forth by the ITU, but then changed it's mind. So I think boycotting Motorola is more appropriate than the ITU. On b: I know there's not much I can do, but boycotting Motorola seemed like at least something.
I (along with many astronomers and others bothered by Iridium's disregard for science) have been boycotting Motorola and Iridium. Should we continue the boycot?
Once the satelites are burned up, they are no longer impeeding science. But it's not like they admitted the error of their ways and have decided to do the ethical and socially responsible thing. I think I will end my boycot on the basis that they are at least destroying them rather than leaving them around as space junk that interfere with optical astronomy and future missions.
All students _should_ be able to get a good education at their local public school. We can dream, and make small steps like http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/ed 012000.htm?iid={compinfo=000120}
I agree that what you say about valedictorian is often true.
However, every school has a valedictorian. Tons of kids get double 800s on (P)SATs. Yet, only 40 are selected as Westinghouse semifinalists and only ~50 (Americans) are selected for RSI each year. It takes much more (and not necessarily either) to be honored by either of these programs. They had to do something that distinguished them amongst a large group of smart and accomplished young peope. Neither ITS's or RSI's selections are perfect, but both try very hard to look beyond simplistic measures like GPA and test scores. Still there are many deserving students who aren't selected by either. Just because you haven't yet distinguished yourself yet, doesn't mean you're not worthy, but it does mean you are unlikely to be considered by either. However, most of those that are selected are much more than your average 1600 valedictorian.
For some reason the press likes to mention these kinds of things about the students for which it is true. News reporter often doesn't understand or know how to quantify things like working late hours in a lab, amassing tons of background knowledge, and then combining them in a flash of insight. So they write something like you read. Please don't attack the kid.
>My concern was rather the curious implication that the scientific world, in this example at least, seems to have no problems with >the idea that one opportunity, deserved and well exploited, can lead to another, even bigger achievement, which would have been >completely unreachable normally.
Yes, this is generally the way science works. Do you want random people using the Hubble Space Telescope, if they haven't first demonstrated that they know how to plan observations, analyze data, and do good science? Before you are entrusted to make good use of 10 orbits of Hubble Space Telescope time, you make good use of 1. Before you make an observation with Hubble, you will have used a serious ground based research observatory. Before you expect to get observing time on a four meter telescope, you better have done good research with a one meter class telescope. Before you get funding for oyur own research project, you first gain experience working with more experienced scientists, as a post-doc and/or grad student. If you want to get into a good grad school, you better have done well as an undergrad. If you want to get into a good undergraduate school, you'd be well advised to be a good student in high school.
My point is, yes, there are concerns about society becoming increasingly fragmented by wealth leading to knowledge leading to power leading to more wealth. It is unfortunate to see silly corellations such as race and wealth stay entrenched in society.
However, being able to spend your life conducting scientific research is a great privilege, that our society awards to a select few. It only makes sense that before someone uses precious resources such as a research labs, telescopes, or graduate students, that they have distinguished themselves at smaller things.
To whom much is given, much is expected. Some people still manage to suprise us with the fruits of their labor.
> Stashing a secret message in a bunch of a DNA has a good chance of "they wouldn't look there", but if they *did* decide to look in > the bunch of DNA, a message like "JUNE6_INVASION: NORMANDY" probably has different enough statistics from the rest of > the DNA around it that it might stand out.
I'm not a bio expert, but my understanding is that there are large chuncks of our DNA that biologists can't determine any use for and appear to be random. Of course, it may turn out that the biologists just haven't figured it out yet (my bet), but I beleive it is generally accepted that large portions of our DNA are essentially random junk that is no longer serving any purpose.
Thus, as long as the encoded message does not stick out as non-random (relatively easy to do for a small string in a large string of numbers, as she has done), it could fall under the title of steganography.
>(a) the price was awarded to somebody who already had access to nonstandard equipment (giving the price a bit of an elitarian ring)
Yes, and no. She was selected to participate in a summer research program (RSI, see more info in previous post) based on her very impressive motivation and intellect. She made the most of this opprotunity and did some very good research.
So, yes, she did come from the intellectually elite. There may be correlations with other kinds of elitism, but those did not earn her the opprotunity to use fancy equipment. And I can assure you she is a very nice person. She strives to be a good person, just as much as a good scientist.
Actually, she is a very bright and personable young girl. I'm not certain, but I beleive she is from a public high school.
About how she got her hands on such fancy equipment... She was one of several very distinguished juniors who was awarded the opprotunity to participate in the Research Science Institute (RSI), which gives some of the world's extremely gifted young scientists an early opprotunity to work in a real research laboratory. For the past several years, it's been hosted by MIT, but students work in many labs across the Boston area, at universities, hospitals, companies, zoos, etc.. Several RSI students have won top awards in the Intel (formerly Westinghouse) talent search every year for a long time.
That's why the sales taxes are graduated. For example in some states (e.g. MA) unprepared food is not taxed at all, but prepared food is. The logic seems clear to me. If you're strapped for money you'll buy unprepared food. If you're spending money at a restraunt, you can afford to give some to the state. Many clothes were not taxed. Public transportation was subsidized. I'm not sure about housing, since I lived in a dorm and got a flat fee.
It seems to me that if you have no/low sales tax on food, clothing, and shelther, and negative tax for transportation, that's a fair deal for the hard working people. A key benefit of a consumption tax is that you can target people who pay for food service, SUVs, gasoline, computers, jewelry, big back yards, country club memberships, etc.
Re:Iridium Flash - lots of questions
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R.I.P. Iridium
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· Score: 2
>Is there an international organization that regulates satellite launch schedules? I'm sure there is, it's too important for there not to be any.
Yes
>If satellites were problems to astronomers, should we be concerned about all the satellite launches that seem to happen all the time?
Well, most satelites are a problem, but Iridium satelites are especially annoying. Something about their design must make them give very strong specular reflections. Sure, we'd like it if satelites were reduced in number, but we'd also like it if the ones that are up weren't as rude as Iridium satelites are.
While many satelites leave a streak across an image, Iridium Flashes can saturate several pixel and ruin an entire exposure, which might have taken hours to take. Astronomers have wised up, and try to schedule around Iridium Flashes and take shorter exposures and add them when possible. However, this means we waste our time that we should be doing scientific research correction for the obnoxousness of Iridium. Also, many observations have had to be retaken, while astronomers were still trying to figure out what was causing the problems.
Re:Harm for Radio Astronomy Even Worse than Flash
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R.I.P. Iridium
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· Score: 3
Sorry, it's HO, not CO. The HO line is a good probe of molecular clouds. Also HO masers provide some of the best observational evidence for a black hole at the center of some galaxy (NGC 4???).
Harm for Radio Astronomy Even Worse than Flash
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R.I.P. Iridium
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· Score: 5
An even bigger problem than the flash is Iridium's invasion on radio astronomy. In particular it interferes with on emission line (CO I beleive), which is important for determing metal abundances and temperatures in gas clouds.
The frequencies were protected by international treaty. Additionally, MOT agreed to respect the critical frequencies when they received nearby frequencies. Later, they went back on their word and ignored the international treaty.
In fairnes to MOT, they have worked with the major radio astronomy facilities to avoid making the frequency completely useless by scheduling windows when they would significanly limit their interference in certain locations. However, they still interfere and it makes scheduling time an even for obnoxious task for astronomers who try to maximize the utility of their observatories.
Even worse, it sets a very bad precedent for a big company to threaten to ruin an important scientific resource, and then "be nice" by being better than originally planned. What if every big company decides to put up a big network of satelites interfering with one frequency range, but agrees to be nice in certain locations at certain times? Not good for science!
I've been a fond user of Mathematica for several years, but a couple of years ago I got to where I could do integrals that Mathematica couldn't. For integrals that require choosing a contour in the complex plane and integrating along brach cuts, it leaves a lot to be desired. Maple is slightly better, but not much and has a bad UI.
Slashdot Mirror
The memory makers have been telling us for some time that RDRAM wasn't really all that great. Intel has said RDRAM was necessary to keep their CPUs going as fast as possible. And we haven't really been able to figure out who was telling the truth. Now that the memory makers have to pay more royalties on DDRRAM than DRAM (The royalties on SDRAM as still quite low, if I understand correctly.), it will be interesting to see if they change their tune. My guess is they will.
For an example of loop unrolling in C++ code, see the Matrix Template Library. Pretty cool.
Maybe I should punt Linux and write my own OS...
Actually, I'm happy with my computer, OS, and most of my apps. Can't say that for all my drivers, or internet connection though.
In case anyone is interested, I understand Christianity to be a radical religion. I beleive it's about putting others before yourself, challenging societal norms, appreciating your blessings, becoming a blessing to others, and turning the other cheak when attacked.
I wish more people would do those things, in the name of Christianity or any other religion, code, or sense of ethics.
BTW- Next time put your name on it.
Let's consider a situation where you're being attacked and you can identify where it's coming from and that they are indeed the cause.
Yes, you could attack back. However you probably don't want to continue your attack forever, just for practical reasons. Once you stop, the attacker is probably going to like you even less than when you started. You might stop some dumb script kiddies, but you could have stopped them by blocking their IP. Real hackers will just be egged on more.
Personally, I'm for getting people to leave me alone more than I'm for "justice". The only reason I'd consider retaliating is if they do some attack that I can't stop any other way.
Call them what you wish, but they all contain a secret message... Check out http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/
BTW- These puzzles were actually solved (by multiple independant groups) in just a few days. Too bad all the old ones aren't still online.
> People have done all sorts of extensive tests for "fifth forces", and so far there has not been any convincing evidence for such a force. So, we
> would have to come up with a fifth force that for some reason affects only intergalactic matter, and not the stuff that stars, planets, and
> astronomers are made of. Doesn't that seem just a little contrived to you? The situation is not at all analogous to the discovery of the nuclear
> forces because evidence for those forces manifested as soon as we were able to make sufficiently precise measurements of plain-old
> everyday matter.
People have only looked for a fifth force between normal everyday matter. If some of the dark matter is non-baryonic, then it would be something totally new that we've never tested in our labratories. It's not a matter of where the matter is located but rather what kind of matter it is. e.g. There is no strong force between electrons.
Maybe we now consider protons everyday normal matter, but at the time things that small were new and had never been tested before. Similarly, we have never done any tests on dark matter (presuming it's non-baryonic)
> I haven't had a chance to look over the articles you posted earlier in the discussion. Do any of them even have workable models for a force that
> would make dark matter avoid clusters without producing dark clusters? Just coming up with such a beast seems a challenging mathematical
> problem in itself.
I would say yes, but you can judge for yourself.
> Anyhow, we could add a new force to describe every new particle, but then we wouldn't have very much confidence in our physical theories.
> We might just as well attribute physical phenomena to invisible faeries or something. The point is that whenever you discover a hitherto
> unknown phenomenon and you find that it is entirely explainable in terms of previously known physical laws, it's a big win for physics.
I think a phi^4 potential is much preferable to ferries.
> Naturally, when theory and observation conflict, theory must give way, but the fantastic thing about this measurement is that it seems to
> indicate that that will not be necessary in this case. I guess what I can't understand is why you don't think this is a Good Thing.
They presented results on a small fraction (~10%) of their data, and that's not just a random 10%, it's certain wavebands. I also feel that the press conference was very misleading. Even the nature paper claims to support a flat universe, but has a plot comparing the power spectrum observed and from a model, but the model is for a \Omega_total=1.1. Basically, I'm bothered by the way they presented their results.
> The other points you make are well-taken, but I don't worry much about factor-of-order-unity discrepancies in a preliminary measurement.
> Remember that Hubble's original measurement of H0 made the universe to young to contain the earth's oldest rocks. It all got sorted out with
> time, and this will too. As I said earlier, I think the quintessence theories sound promising, since constant, nonzero lambda really doesn't make
> any sense theoretically.
I think we've moved past the stage of naming everything we see. I beleive we're now in the precision test stage of cosmology. That means I no longer get excited at seeing a bump in the CMB. Now I want to find agreement between the data and a small set of models. That will take more data.
Sorry, but I'm leaving town today, so this will probably be my last post on the thread.
I guess I don't understand why you beleive you know about all the forces, including those between particles that have never been observed except via their gravitational interactions. For example, before we observed subatomic particles, there was no need for the strong force. (You could argue weak was necessary to explain radioactivity.)
Certainly seeing the first acoustic peak was comforting. For example, at an IAS get-together today it was generally agreed that it's sharpness almost completely rules out cosmic string models.
However, there's still a lot of work to be done. From what I understand, the combination of the first peak at l=196 rather than 220 and the amplitude ratio of the two peaks seems to require _at least_ one of the following:
- Raising \Omega_b h^2 to violate current nucleosynthesis constraints (either the models or the observation of the deuterium abundance. I think most people would be much more willing to give up the mesaurements than the theory, since the theory is very nice and the measurement is rather difficult (measuring a bumb on the wing of a line))
- Adding a "tilt" to the standard LCDM. (To me this seems rather ad hoc and unmotivated.)
- Replacing \Lambda with a quintesence.
- Saying the data is wrong by more than 2 sigma. Several people seemed concerned about their pointing error and calibration (based on Eta Carinae and the dipole rather than Jupiter). So there might be large systematics than they claim.
Fortunately, other missions will check and improve upon the data.
Yes, a pure hot dark matter making up most of \Omega_{crit} (and probably even \Omega_{matter}, at least for current estimates) is ruled out by large scale structure. However, large scale structure is unlikely to rule out a contribution as small as a massive neutrio might provide.
I don't understand your motivation for feeling that as of yet undiscovered particles are more likely to have short-range potentials with a characteristic scale comperable to that of the other particles we know about.
Sorry, I used standard model in the context of cosmology, not particle physics. Both exist (at least in the minds of physicists) and are almost certainly connected in some way we don't yet fully understand. By standard model I meant something along the lines of CDM possiblely plus a lambda term.
While I'd agree that the standard model of particle physics has demonstrated significant predictive power, I can't think of much significant the standard model of cosmology has predicted. If you meant to imply that the standard cosmological models (CDM or LCDM) have "a lot of useful predictive power", then I'd like to be reminded of what they've predicted.
This is similar to recent proposals of Self-Interacting Dark Matter and Repulsive Dark Matter. If you'd like to see details search for either on http://xxx.lanl.gov/find/astro-ph . If you have trouble, good starting points are the papers by (Spergel and Steinhardt) and Goodman for SIDM and RDM, respectively.
This is a big fad right now and lots of people are working very on it quite rapidly. You'll notice all the papers on astro-ph are from the last several months. We'll see whether this is the big break through dark matter has long needed or whether it's just another wacky idea.
This post is informative and corrects many of the incorrect things people are saying over again and again on this thread. I was going to post my own explanation, but there's not much more to say. If moderators are still around it should be bumped up.
One minor addition. There are lots and lots of very good cosmologists saying very different things about the implications of these results. The message that this confirms everything that may have been drawn from he press conference is very misleading. Yes, the overall picture is verified. However, several of details are in significant disagreement with the most standard of the standard models. It seems everybody has fit their favorite model to the data, but it will take time (and more data) before we really sort out the true implications.
> Anyway, I'm assuming that you're talking about either a) spectrum assignments or b) the optical flares. If a), go complain to the
> ITU (and/or boycott it with a vengance). If b), then you'll probably need to create a substantial amount of new international law
> before you can do anything about it (again, assuming I'm not missing something, as IANL); feel free to. =)
Both. On a: It's my understanding that Motorola agree to respect the restrictions put forth by the ITU, but then changed it's mind. So I think boycotting Motorola is more appropriate than the ITU. On b: I know there's not much I can do, but boycotting Motorola seemed like at least something.
I (along with many astronomers and others bothered by Iridium's disregard for science) have been boycotting Motorola and Iridium. Should we continue the boycot?
Once the satelites are burned up, they are no longer impeeding science. But it's not like they admitted the error of their ways and have decided to do the ethical and socially responsible thing. I think I will end my boycot on the basis that they are at least destroying them rather than leaving them around as space junk that interfere with optical astronomy and future missions.
All students _should_ be able to get a good education at their local public school. We can dream, and make small steps like http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/ed 012000.htm?iid={compinfo=000120}
I agree that what you say about valedictorian is often true.
However, every school has a valedictorian. Tons of kids get double 800s on (P)SATs. Yet, only 40 are selected as Westinghouse semifinalists and only ~50 (Americans) are selected for RSI each year. It takes much more (and not necessarily either) to be honored by either of these programs. They had to do something that distinguished them amongst a large group of smart and accomplished young peope. Neither ITS's or RSI's selections are perfect, but both try very hard to look beyond simplistic measures like GPA and test scores. Still there are many deserving students who aren't selected by either. Just because you haven't yet distinguished yourself yet, doesn't mean you're not worthy, but it does mean you are unlikely to be considered by either. However, most of those that are selected are much more than your average 1600 valedictorian.
For some reason the press likes to mention these kinds of things about the students for which it is true. News reporter often doesn't understand or know how to quantify things like working late hours in a lab, amassing tons of background knowledge, and then combining them in a flash of insight. So they write something like you read. Please don't attack the kid.
Try sending them email. For the RSI students, just finger lastname@mit.edu and you'll probably be able to fine them.
>the idea that one opportunity, deserved and well exploited, can lead to another, even bigger achievement, which would have been
>completely unreachable normally.
Yes, this is generally the way science works. Do you want random people using the Hubble Space Telescope, if they haven't first demonstrated that they know how to plan observations, analyze data, and do good science? Before you are entrusted to make good use of 10 orbits of Hubble Space Telescope time, you make good use of 1. Before you make an observation with Hubble, you will have used a serious ground based research observatory. Before you expect to get observing time on a four meter telescope, you better have done good research with a one meter class telescope. Before you get funding for oyur own research project, you first gain experience working with more experienced scientists, as a post-doc and/or grad student. If you want to get into a good grad school, you better have done well as an undergrad. If you want to get into a good undergraduate school, you'd be well advised to be a good student in high school.
My point is, yes, there are concerns about society becoming increasingly fragmented by wealth leading to knowledge leading to power leading to more wealth. It is unfortunate to see silly corellations such as race and wealth stay entrenched in society.
However, being able to spend your life conducting scientific research is a great privilege, that our society awards to a select few. It only makes sense that before someone uses precious resources such as a research labs, telescopes, or graduate students, that they have distinguished themselves at smaller things.
To whom much is given, much is expected. Some people still manage to suprise us with the fruits of their labor.
> the bunch of DNA, a message like "JUNE6_INVASION: NORMANDY" probably has different enough statistics from the rest of
> the DNA around it that it might stand out.
I'm not a bio expert, but my understanding is that there are large chuncks of our DNA that biologists can't determine any use for and appear to be random. Of course, it may turn out that the biologists just haven't figured it out yet (my bet), but I beleive it is generally accepted that large portions of our DNA are essentially random junk that is no longer serving any purpose.
Thus, as long as the encoded message does not stick out as non-random (relatively easy to do for a small string in a large string of numbers, as she has done), it could fall under the title of steganography.
Yes, and no. She was selected to participate in a summer research program (RSI, see more info in previous post) based on her very impressive motivation and intellect. She made the most of this opprotunity and did some very good research.
So, yes, she did come from the intellectually elite. There may be correlations with other kinds of elitism, but those did not earn her the opprotunity to use fancy equipment. And I can assure you she is a very nice person. She strives to be a good person, just as much as a good scientist.
About how she got her hands on such fancy equipment... She was one of several very distinguished juniors who was awarded the opprotunity to participate in the Research Science Institute (RSI), which gives some of the world's extremely gifted young scientists an early opprotunity to work in a real research laboratory. For the past several years, it's been hosted by MIT, but students work in many labs across the Boston area, at universities, hospitals, companies, zoos, etc.. Several RSI students have won top awards in the Intel (formerly Westinghouse) talent search every year for a long time.
It seems to me that if you have no/low sales tax on food, clothing, and shelther, and negative tax for transportation, that's a fair deal for the hard working people. A key benefit of a consumption tax is that you can target people who pay for food service, SUVs, gasoline, computers, jewelry, big back yards, country club memberships, etc.
>Is there an international organization that regulates satellite launch schedules? I'm sure there is, it's too important for there not to be any.
Yes
>If satellites were problems to astronomers, should we be concerned about all the satellite launches that seem to happen all the time?
Well, most satelites are a problem, but Iridium satelites are especially annoying. Something about their design must make them give very strong specular reflections. Sure, we'd like it if satelites were reduced in number, but we'd also like it if the ones that are up weren't as rude as Iridium satelites are.
While many satelites leave a streak across an image, Iridium Flashes can saturate several pixel and ruin an entire exposure, which might have taken hours to take. Astronomers have wised up, and try to schedule around Iridium Flashes and take shorter exposures and add them when possible. However, this means we waste our time that we should be doing scientific research correction for the obnoxousness of Iridium. Also, many observations have had to be retaken, while astronomers were still trying to figure out what was causing the problems.
Sorry, it's HO, not CO. The HO line is a good probe of molecular clouds. Also HO masers provide some of the best observational evidence for a black hole at the center of some galaxy (NGC 4???).
The frequencies were protected by international treaty. Additionally, MOT agreed to respect the critical frequencies when they received nearby frequencies. Later, they went back on their word and ignored the international treaty.
In fairnes to MOT, they have worked with the major radio astronomy facilities to avoid making the frequency completely useless by scheduling windows when they would significanly limit their interference in certain locations. However, they still interfere and it makes scheduling time an even for obnoxious task for astronomers who try to maximize the utility of their observatories.
Even worse, it sets a very bad precedent for a big company to threaten to ruin an important scientific resource, and then "be nice" by being better than originally planned. What if every big company decides to put up a big network of satelites interfering with one frequency range, but agrees to be nice in certain locations at certain times? Not good for science!
I've been a fond user of Mathematica for several years, but a couple of years ago I got to where I could do integrals that Mathematica couldn't. For integrals that require choosing a contour in the complex plane and integrating along brach cuts, it leaves a lot to be desired. Maple is slightly better, but not much and has a bad UI.