Probably more like 200-300 years. The technical obstacles to interstellar flight are enormous. We not only don't know how to do it, we don't know how to get to the point where we know how to do it.
But I think we will. Future technology is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.
It's probably shaped that way because to get it into space you have to fold it up into a shape that will fit into a launch vehicle fairing. A BIG fairing only gives you about a 5 meter diameter, so a lot of folding is required. Some kind of unfolding truss would make sense to me.
What about Aple's investment in manufacturing facilities? Do they build them themselves or contract out?
Profit, by the way, is good. It means that the market judges something as worth doing. As an Apple shareholder, for me Apple profit is very good indeed.
There are plenty of at least 2 of the 4. And there are probably plenty of people who would like to be truthful politicians, but we won't let them, so they do other things.
The same way other aircraft do, and are less vulnerable, een when flying low (and no need to flylow except at takeoff and landing). The little shoulder-fired missiles are heat-seekers, and can be spoofed with flares. What's more, I bet this thing could take a couple of hits and still be able to land safely. That, and a little airfield security and the risk is low. They're not for artillery observation.
Both those things have been done before. Ion propulsion is now fairly mature, and works well for some missions, but has its disadvantages (very low thrust, requires lots of power). Re-entry capsules date back to the 1950s.
You won't find a much more enthusiastic advocate of manned Mars exploration than Steve Squyres, who leads the MER science team. Why? As a field geologist, he knows he could do so much more and explore much more thoroughlly if he were there with his hammer and hand lens.
I get that it's about a megajoule for every centimeter of rain. Convert all of it with perfect efficiency, and that's enough to run your house for a few days, depending on how much heat/AC is required.
Shape your roof like a funnel, and you should be able to do pretty well.
I'm not going to get exercised over this. The number of viruses currently attacking OS X users is zero. It has been zero for a long time. A number of minor vulnerabilities have been patched, but I'm unaware of any evidence that anyone tried to exploit them.
But you didn't make any argument that the research or the articels about it are wrong.
They found a meaningful mutation in genese that affect brain development may have been introduced into the human population only 5800 years ago, which is just about last week in evolutionary terms.
It's not "smart" or "stupid" that evolve, but alleles. Genes mutate, may have some significant phenotypic effect (or may not) and move around in populations. If the mutation "sticks," you've got evolution going on.
My music collection is about 70GB, and I am happy with my 4 GB mini, which realistically holds about 800 tracks (the 1000 tracks applies only to radio-friendly songs, and mine are radio-hostile). Think Smart Playlists.
Fertility (number of live births per woman) is also rapdily declining in the third world, and has dropped dramatically in developed countries like Japan, which now faces a shortage of young people to keep its pensionpans propped up. This is mainly because traditional marriage there is so unattractive for women.
When women are given education, contraception and career options, they delay childbirth and have fewer children. Someone I'm very close to is a perfect example: PhD at 31, first child at 38, second at 41, and that's it. Her mother was also a PhD, but had 4 children. Here in the U.S., first time parents in their mid-late 30s or even 40s are now very common (known from birth certificate data).
I believe the U.S. fertility rate will drop below replacement in the next 20-30 years, and immigration will slow. Then we're going to have a powerful challenge to solve - almost complete elimination of unskilled labor. It's already begun.
Shutting our borders isn't a practical option, and don't see why it's desirable either. It smacks of the War on Drugs.
The one proven way to keep population in check: educate girls.
It's growing, but feritility rates are slowing dramatically. Here, in the U.S., we would be below replacement if it were not for immigrant populations (mostly Hispanic)with higher fertility rates.
In many parts of Europe, fertility is at or below replacement. Declining population is seen as a serious problem.
There were gizmos like this devised for Missile Defense (aka Star Wars). They were remarkably agile little things. The key technology is the thrusters that can be pulses with finesse.
If you have a an explanation - write it up. Become a famous planetary scientist.
Acutally, I happen to know there are some very competent electrodynamicists on the Cassini science team (these folks, for example), and no doubt they'll be involved in vetting hypotheses.
Reading that article carefully makes me extremely skeptical. It seems that the Scotsman's only real sources are the lawyers for the convicted bomber. They had not spoken to the retired police officer or the retired CIA officer and have not even confirmed that they exist.
Projects like SETI at home are basically looking for signals someone is intentionally sending to us, at an "obvious" frequency and with signal structure dumbed down so a less sophisticated civilization (us, with near certainty) could recognize it as such.
If you believe that the speed of light is a law of nature that can't be trifled with, then no civilization out there would know of our existence unless they were within (prob. well within) about 100 light years. That really cuts down the available volume of space.
However, Fermi's paradox says that they should have already been here to visit us and have known of our existence before we had RF technology, and possibly even before we were human. If this knowledge of our existence were preserved (even updated), I'm not sure they would sit 100 light years away and beam a radio signal at us to get our attention.
Battery life is only an issue when you travel with it and forget to bring your charger. I just drop it in the dock at night and let it synch and recharge. As for ruggeddness - the Mini is hard to break - I've dropped mine several times with no problems. It also is more than acceptably light weight.
So, it's wait and see as to why Apple is doing this.
The rovers up there now are really only designed to study geology, and have no life detection capability. In the absence of giraffes on the horizon (which in Mars' case we have not got), they could be running over living microbes all the time and never know it.
In a few years there should be rovers on Mars that can do real sample analysis and look for evidence of life.
BTW, Gilbert Levin still thinks his Viking Experiment detected life.
Are kids being taught ID? Not in public schools (except perhaps as an example of cargo cult science) - not anywhere in the U.S. Do we have crappy scientists? Sure, who doesn't? But we also have a lion's share of the world class scientists. That a large proportion of scientific conferences are held in English reflects this.
Certain politicians' willingness to play to them notwithstanding, I think the theocrats re losing.
Sleep is important, and sleep deprivation shuldn;t be encouraged, but as a parent, I can vouch that there are unavoidable situations in which sleep simply isn't possible, and your are still required to be coherent and awake the next day. You will sleep when grandma gets here, but until then, you need help.
There are also obvious military applications. An exercise left to the reader.
That said, this study was done with monkeys. Earlier studies were done with undergraduates and hamsters. So we are a long way from having this drug legally in our hot little hands for human use.
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I don't have any stats to offer, but your estimate seems to me to be about right - probably well less than one in 10 ever cuts metal.
The NASA budget is such a small sliver of federal spending that even if you zeroed it it would have little overall effect.
Projects like this compete with similar projects for funds, not with porkbarrel road projects of Iraq reconstruction.
Probably more like 200-300 years. The technical obstacles to interstellar flight are enormous. We not only don't know how to do it, we don't know how to get to the point where we know how to do it.
But I think we will. Future technology is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.
It's probably shaped that way because to get it into space you have to fold it up into a shape that will fit into a launch vehicle fairing. A BIG fairing only gives you about a 5 meter diameter, so a lot of folding is required. Some kind of unfolding truss would make sense to me.
What about Aple's investment in manufacturing facilities? Do they build them themselves or contract out?
Profit, by the way, is good. It means that the market judges something as worth doing. As an Apple shareholder, for me Apple profit is very good indeed.
Surely Lennon wrote that.
There are plenty of at least 2 of the 4. And there are probably plenty of people who would like to be truthful politicians, but we won't let them, so they do other things.
The same way other aircraft do, and are less vulnerable, een when flying low (and no need to flylow except at takeoff and landing). The little shoulder-fired missiles are heat-seekers, and can be spoofed with flares. What's more, I bet this thing could take a couple of hits and still be able to land safely. That, and a little airfield security and the risk is low. They're not for artillery observation.
Both those things have been done before. Ion propulsion is now fairly mature, and works well for some missions, but has its disadvantages (very low thrust, requires lots of power). Re-entry capsules date back to the 1950s.
You won't find a much more enthusiastic advocate of manned Mars exploration than Steve Squyres, who leads the MER science team. Why? As a field geologist, he knows he could do so much more and explore much more thoroughlly if he were there with his hammer and hand lens.
I get that it's about a megajoule for every centimeter of rain. Convert all of it with perfect efficiency, and that's enough to run your house for a few days, depending on how much heat/AC is required.
Shape your roof like a funnel, and you should be able to do pretty well.
I'm not going to get exercised over this. The number of viruses currently attacking OS X users is zero. It has been zero for a long time. A number of minor vulnerabilities have been patched, but I'm unaware of any evidence that anyone tried to exploit them.
The risk is just too small to merit much effort.
But you didn't make any argument that the research or the articels about it are wrong.
They found a meaningful mutation in genese that affect brain development may have been introduced into the human population only 5800 years ago, which is just about last week in evolutionary terms.
It's not "smart" or "stupid" that evolve, but alleles. Genes mutate, may have some significant phenotypic effect (or may not) and move around in populations. If the mutation "sticks," you've got evolution going on.
True. Take a look at Mathilde. This asteroid has two huge craters mde by impacts that would have blown it apart had it not been so porous.
My music collection is about 70GB, and I am happy with my 4 GB mini, which realistically holds about 800 tracks (the 1000 tracks applies only to radio-friendly songs, and mine are radio-hostile). Think Smart Playlists.
Fertility (number of live births per woman) is also rapdily declining in the third world, and has dropped dramatically in developed countries like Japan, which now faces a shortage of young people to keep its pensionpans propped up. This is mainly because traditional marriage there is so unattractive for women.
When women are given education, contraception and career options, they delay childbirth and have fewer children. Someone I'm very close to is a perfect example: PhD at 31, first child at 38, second at 41, and that's it. Her mother was also a PhD, but had 4 children. Here in the U.S., first time parents in their mid-late 30s or even 40s are now very common (known from birth certificate data).
I believe the U.S. fertility rate will drop below replacement in the next 20-30 years, and immigration will slow. Then we're going to have a powerful challenge to solve - almost complete elimination of unskilled labor. It's already begun.
Shutting our borders isn't a practical option, and don't see why it's desirable either. It smacks of the War on Drugs.
The one proven way to keep population in check: educate girls.
It's growing, but feritility rates are slowing dramatically. Here, in the U.S., we would be below replacement if it were not for immigrant populations (mostly Hispanic)with higher fertility rates.
In many parts of Europe, fertility is at or below replacement. Declining population is seen as a serious problem.
There were gizmos like this devised for Missile Defense (aka Star Wars). They were remarkably agile little things. The key technology is the thrusters that can be pulses with finesse.
If you have a an explanation - write it up. Become a famous planetary scientist.
Acutally, I happen to know there are some very competent electrodynamicists on the Cassini science team (these folks, for example), and no doubt they'll be involved in vetting hypotheses.
Reading that article carefully makes me extremely skeptical. It seems that the Scotsman's only real sources are the lawyers for the convicted bomber. They had not spoken to the retired police officer or the retired CIA officer and have not even confirmed that they exist.
Projects like SETI at home are basically looking for signals someone is intentionally sending to us, at an "obvious" frequency and with signal structure dumbed down so a less sophisticated civilization (us, with near certainty) could recognize it as such.
If you believe that the speed of light is a law of nature that can't be trifled with, then no civilization out there would know of our existence unless they were within (prob. well within) about 100 light years. That really cuts down the available volume of space.
However, Fermi's paradox says that they should have already been here to visit us and have known of our existence before we had RF technology, and possibly even before we were human. If this knowledge of our existence were preserved (even updated), I'm not sure they would sit 100 light years away and beam a radio signal at us to get our attention.
And now we're in the realm of Arthur C. Clark...
Battery life is only an issue when you travel with it and forget to bring your charger. I just drop it in the dock at night and let it synch and recharge. As for ruggeddness - the Mini is hard to break - I've dropped mine several times with no problems. It also is more than acceptably light weight.
So, it's wait and see as to why Apple is doing this.
The rovers up there now are really only designed to study geology, and have no life detection capability. In the absence of giraffes on the horizon (which in Mars' case we have not got), they could be running over living microbes all the time and never know it.
In a few years there should be rovers on Mars that can do real sample analysis and look for evidence of life.
BTW, Gilbert Levin still thinks his Viking Experiment detected life.
Are kids being taught ID? Not in public schools (except perhaps as an example of cargo cult science) - not anywhere in the U.S. Do we have crappy scientists? Sure, who doesn't? But we also have a lion's share of the world class scientists. That a large proportion of scientific conferences are held in English reflects this.
Certain politicians' willingness to play to them notwithstanding, I think the theocrats re losing.
Sleep is important, and sleep deprivation shuldn;t be encouraged, but as a parent, I can vouch that there are unavoidable situations in which sleep simply isn't possible, and your are still required to be coherent and awake the next day. You will sleep when grandma gets here, but until then, you need help.
There are also obvious military applications. An exercise left to the reader.
That said, this study was done with monkeys. Earlier studies were done with undergraduates and hamsters. So we are a long way from having this drug legally in our hot little hands for human use.