I'll hazard a guess; if the lava on the Big Island of Hawai'i was looked at from a great height then it too would look smooth. On the other hand, lava from Etna or Mt St Helen's wouldn't. The difference is between basic (Hawai'ia) and acidic (Etna) lava, or perhaps the ammount of water (of course, these two may be highly correlated). On Mars, the lack of plate tectonics means that little surface material (inc. water) is pushed back into the mantle (c.f. Etna) and only 'pure' mantle material errupts (c.f. Hawai'i). Into a thin atmosphere, which allows dissolved gasses to leave more rapidly, the erruption would tend to be quite gentle and lower (Martian) gravity means it can spread over larger areas than on Earth.
Result is wide smooth basalt flows.
(but I only ever did Geology in 1st year undergrad---1A NatSci---so this might be incorrect).
The first AO systems were active by 1974 and used for astronomy (at the US Air Force Starfire range in, umm, New Mexico) before 1980. See papers by J Hardy et al.
A. On terrestrial analogue (this will take some time) which you get through your aerial you can get BBC1, BBC2, ITV (commercial), C4 (pseudo-commercial), and Channel 5 (definately commercial). On terrestrial digital (again, via the aerial), all of the above plus BBC3, BBC4, C-Beebies, BBC News 24, UK History, QVC (shopping) plus others. These are all free to view (i.e. no subs.). On satellite or cable digital, the above (free) plus lots of others (prob. all the American channels within reason). Digital radio is also included for all but analogue.
Q. Is cable TV common + what kind of channels?
A. Yes-ish. Common probably means 5-20%. Similar channels to the US but far fewer commercials and many more movie channels, pay per view etc...
Q. HBO? ESPN?
A. I do not know these. I have watched American TV several times. For extremely short periods of time.
Q. Imagine if the only channel Americans had to watch was PBS?
A. When driving around Hawaii's Big Island, I was very glad that PBS *radio* was available (since the hire car had a radio and cassette player - lofi.)
Q. For every Monty Python's Flying Circus there are countless shows that wouldn't make it past the pilot phase...
A. Yup. Thats why you can instead listen to the fabulous BBC radio instead, even pseudo-timeshifted via the web interface, for free.
Q. Extracting a tax...creates a captive audience...quality of the programming suffers...
A. BBC2, which only recently has attempted popularity, does not suffer from this. Diversity abounds - for example until recently Anglo-Indian culture was only aired on the radio and BBC2. [Note; Indian's/Pakistani's/Bangledeshi's represent approximately 1 million in a population of 60 million]
My own tuppence: American TV is awful. British TV is becoming Americanised, and this is especially true for the commercial channels. For example, Sky One (digital cable or satellite) is essentially American re-runs. Why American TV is awful is its lack of diversity. Not that a lot of European TV is different.
P.S. Anyone else have problems with the realplayer plugin and Mozilla on Mac OS X?
One important advance is the use of 2mm wavelength radiation (as opposed to VLBI which has a maximum of about 2cm). So we've pushed the resolution up by a factor of ten (with admitedly poor baseline coverage) and as a result the hardware has to sample 10x as fast.
The `new' is in the hardware, not the technique. Lets not forget that the first sub-mm (0.3-1.3mm) interferometers are fairly new instruments, indeed they are the `last' wavelength to "discover" interferometry.
As many have pointed out; all the software can do is say 'person x has a file with the string y in it' but it was suggested the software simply needs to download and check the file - the question is, how? I'm sure with a reasonably trained neural net (for each different song) or stats coupled with filtering, a fast machine could do the job but is it worth it? Basically, does this software have much point other than to encourage people to place bait on the Napster 'network'? Anti-spam measured in usenet posts isn't hard, and defeating this software won't be either. On the other hand, I do agree with the principle (and I'm a poor student so could easily be considered one of those who'd benefit from illegal mp3's) that if you've signed up with a certain set of laws (e.g. by living volountarily in the USA/UK/etc..) then you ought to abide by them. "I will not agree with all that you say but I will die for your right to say it" - Voltaire (sort of)
Having been lucky enough to do a literature review on this topic recently (as part of my 3rd year u/g course) I can clear up a couple of issues;
The method used works as follows; when gravitational field of the planet warps the space around it, any light from the star that might otherwise have 'missed' the telescope/eye/pinhole camera (!) would be 'bent' back to the aforementioned instrument.
Hence we do _not_ see the planet, rather the effect of the planet on a star which is how all extrasolar planet detection methods (except one which has failed to date) work.
We have no instruments capable of resolving a planet, but NASA & ESA both havbe projects that in 2020-2060 will be able to do so at IR frequencies. Hence the BBC picture is wrong. All it pointed out was the star.
This method is not repeatable, since it relies on a chance that a background star acts as the source and the planet in orbit around an unseen star all line up for us.
You might think, 'doesn't the planet star lens the background one?' - it does! The additional blip caused by the planet on the light curve is what gives it away.
The typical distance to the background star (usually in the galactic plane) is 100 parsecs, the planet's parent star is usually half this distance for geometric reasons.
Hence it's really far away! We can tell virtually nothing about the planet apart from it's mass (which won't help diffrentiate between tiny gas giants and big terrestrial types).
If anyone want's more info (or even <gasp> a copy of my lit review, written for an intelligent person) then email me. Dosvidania tovarish!
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I'll hazard a guess; if the lava on the Big Island of Hawai'i was looked at from a great height then it too would look smooth. On the other hand, lava from Etna or Mt St Helen's wouldn't. The difference is between basic (Hawai'ia) and acidic (Etna) lava, or perhaps the ammount of water (of course, these two may be highly correlated). On Mars, the lack of plate tectonics means that little surface material (inc. water) is pushed back into the mantle (c.f. Etna) and only 'pure' mantle material errupts (c.f. Hawai'i). Into a thin atmosphere, which allows dissolved gasses to leave more rapidly, the erruption would tend to be quite gentle and lower (Martian) gravity means it can spread over larger areas than on Earth.
Result is wide smooth basalt flows.
(but I only ever did Geology in 1st year undergrad---1A NatSci---so this might be incorrect).
The first AO systems were active by 1974 and used for astronomy (at the US Air Force Starfire range
in, umm, New Mexico) before 1980. See papers by
J Hardy et al.
Answers;
Q. What else is there on the air except the BBC?
A. On terrestrial analogue (this will take some time) which you get through your aerial you can get
BBC1, BBC2, ITV (commercial), C4 (pseudo-commercial), and Channel 5 (definately commercial). On terrestrial digital (again, via the aerial), all of the above plus BBC3, BBC4, C-Beebies, BBC News 24, UK History, QVC (shopping) plus others. These are all free to view (i.e. no subs.). On satellite or cable digital, the above (free) plus lots of others (prob. all the American channels within reason). Digital radio is also included for all but analogue.
Q. Is cable TV common + what kind of channels?
A. Yes-ish. Common probably means 5-20%. Similar channels to the US but far fewer commercials and
many more movie channels, pay per view etc...
Q. HBO? ESPN?
A. I do not know these. I have watched American TV several times. For extremely short periods of time.
Q. Imagine if the only channel Americans had to watch was PBS?
A. When driving around Hawaii's Big Island, I was very glad that PBS *radio* was available (since the hire car had a radio and cassette player - lofi.)
Q. For every Monty Python's Flying Circus there are countless shows that wouldn't make it past the pilot phase...
A. Yup. Thats why you can instead listen to the fabulous BBC radio instead, even pseudo-timeshifted via the web interface, for
free.
Q. Extracting a tax...creates a captive audience...quality of the programming suffers...
A. BBC2, which only recently has attempted popularity, does not suffer from this. Diversity abounds - for example until recently Anglo-Indian culture was only aired on the radio and BBC2. [Note; Indian's/Pakistani's/Bangledeshi's represent approximately 1 million in a population of 60 million]
My own tuppence: American TV is awful. British TV is becoming Americanised, and this is especially true for the commercial channels. For example, Sky One (digital cable or satellite) is essentially American re-runs. Why American TV is awful is its lack of diversity. Not that a lot of European TV is different.
P.S. Anyone else have problems with the realplayer plugin and Mozilla on Mac OS X?
One important advance is the use of 2mm wavelength
radiation (as opposed to VLBI which has a maximum
of about 2cm). So we've pushed the resolution up by
a factor of ten (with admitedly poor baseline coverage) and as a result the hardware has to sample
10x as fast.
The `new' is in the hardware, not the technique. Lets not forget that the first sub-mm (0.3-1.3mm)
interferometers are fairly new instruments, indeed
they are the `last' wavelength to "discover" interferometry.
ali
As many have pointed out; all the software can do is say 'person x has a file with the string y in it' but it was suggested the software simply needs to download and check the file - the question is, how? I'm sure with a reasonably trained neural net (for each different song) or stats coupled with filtering, a fast machine could do the job but is it worth it? Basically, does this software have much point other than to encourage people to place bait on the Napster 'network'? Anti-spam measured in usenet posts isn't hard, and defeating this software won't be either. On the other hand, I do agree with the principle (and I'm a poor student so could easily be considered one of those who'd benefit from illegal mp3's) that if you've signed up with a certain set of laws (e.g. by living volountarily in the USA/UK/etc..) then you ought to abide by them. "I will not agree with all that you say but I will die for your right to say it" - Voltaire (sort of)
The method used works as follows; when gravitational field of the planet warps the space around it, any light from the star that might otherwise have 'missed' the telescope/eye/pinhole camera (!) would be 'bent' back to the aforementioned instrument.
Hence we do _not_ see the planet, rather the effect of the planet on a star which is how all extrasolar planet detection methods (except one which has failed to date) work.
We have no instruments capable of resolving a planet, but NASA & ESA both havbe projects that in 2020-2060 will be able to do so at IR frequencies. Hence the BBC picture is wrong. All it pointed out was the star.
This method is not repeatable, since it relies on a chance that a background star acts as the source and the planet in orbit around an unseen star all line up for us.
You might think, 'doesn't the planet star lens the background one?' - it does! The additional blip caused by the planet on the light curve is what gives it away.
The typical distance to the background star (usually in the galactic plane) is 100 parsecs, the planet's parent star is usually half this distance for geometric reasons.
Hence it's really far away! We can tell virtually nothing about the planet apart from it's mass (which won't help diffrentiate between tiny gas giants and big terrestrial types).
If anyone want's more info (or even <gasp> a copy of my lit review, written for an intelligent person) then email me. Dosvidania tovarish!