I can't tell if you're trolling or not. This entire endeavor was about $50-60 million, about half of which was directly funded by the NSF (tax money). By comparison, just one F-35 fighter jet is about $100 million.
The physics of a collision of 30x stellar mass stars would be very different than for black holes, if only because stars have a (comparatively) large spatial extent, while the black holes are much more compact and, as a result, can get their masses much closer together before they merge. Compact masses getting close together creates 1) very strong gravitational disturbances and 2) very fast orbital speeds. Large stars can't get their masses close enough, and could not orbit each other fast enough, to be detectable by LIGO.
Treaties have to be agreed upon to be of any use. There is no incentive for any country that plans to develop anti-satellite technology in the future to sign on to the treaty. Neither India, Pakistan nor Israel signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty because they intended to or already had developed nuclear weapons and the treaty restricts their ownership to the big 5. They same would happen with this treaty. Any country which had already developed secretly, or planned to develop the technology would just not join the treaty. Sure everyone else could decide to sanction them, but we see how well that has worked in stopping India from developing nukes
So...because it is not 100% effective in its goals, is a reason to do nothing?
Besides, the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty did get South Africa to relinquish its nuclear weapons program. It also provides a framework for the rest of the world to crack down on other countries that may consider developing such weapons, such as North Korea (which ratified, then pulled out). It didn't prevent India and Pakistan. Frankly, we don't know how many more nuclear-capable countries would exist today without the treaty.
Maybe I am a bit naive to even suggest this, but it seems to me that now would be an appropriate time for the nations of the world to enter into a treaty specifically designed to avoid one-or-more jackasses from ruining space access for the entire human race. I would call it the Kessler Avoidance Treaty (KAT).
It is, generally, a set of rules to avoid a tragedy of the (space) commons - a general agreement not to shit all over the near-Earth environment (100 km to, say, 600 km). Among its provisions would be:
* A blanket ban on anti-satellite missiles or other ways of destroying satellites that create debris clouds. This includes not only the deployment of such weapons, but also their development and testing.
* Require whoever launches a rocket to ensure that all orbital-velocity, non-payload masses (e.g., upper stages, payload fairings, etc.) have a built in method to guarantee de-orbiting within, say, three months. (I suppose parking in a higher orbit, like 5000 km, would also be acceptable.)
* Active payloads (i.e., satellites) must have a documented plan for end-of-life that ensures de-orbiting within, say, 1 year after end-of-service.
* A service fee attached to all orbital launches (including those that pass through near-Earth to other orbits, like geosynchronous) to fund the development and eventual deployment of measures to remove debris and other hazards from the near-Earth environment. This could be lasers, satellites that tether to and de-orbit other satellites, and who knows what else. The service fee would be based on rocket gross weight at liftoff (although probably on a logarithmic, rather than linear scale).
* The development of international design standards for satellite manufacturers and launch providers to reduce small fragmentary debris: paint chips, frangible bolts, etc.)
Yup, this will make space launches a bit more expensive: it will slightly lower the payload that a particular rocket can deliver. I call that chump change compared to the catastrophic cost of a full-blown Kessler syndrome, which would wipe out >$100B of already-launched assets, degrade the $Trillions of annual economic activity that utilizes space services, endanger the lives of humans in space, and render access-to-space difficult or impossible for a generation.
There is plenty of precedent for humans creating and enforcing treaties against generally-bad behavior. The treaties banning atmospheric nuclear weapons tests are one good example. The Montreal Protocol for eliminating CFCs is another. These are imperfect measures, certainly, and not universal ratified. But they have gotten most of the major players on the same page, and drastically reduced the harm that could otherwise have happened. It also provides a moral framework for punishing non-ratifiers.
Right now is the best time to implement this kind of treaty. (Well, really, 5-10 years ago.) Humanity is drastically lowering the barriers to accessing space, and so we're on the cusp of a huge surge of launches. We ought to agree upon the rules now before there are 100 new players. At the same time, we are ever-more dependent on using orbiting satellites for all manner of daily activities, and there are untold riches still to be reaped.
I am, however, dreadfully pessimistic about the chances of such a treaty coming about under (present) US leadership. We have the most to gain and the most to lose. It would also be a chance to reassert some global leadership against strategic rivals such as China and Russia. But our present executive demonstrates no particular strategic thinking, and I'm sure this kind of topic and its rational solution aren't on his radar.
The streaming site had more than 4,000 members, 97 of whom paid a $44.95 monthly fee to access extra features, such as the ability to replay certain live streams. The site had more than 4,000 members, 97 of whom paid a $44.95 monthly fee to access extra features, such as the ability to replay certain live streams.
Replaying the sentence that talks about replaying live streams? I see what you did there.
Apple and others (John Deere, to pick another industry) consistently lobby against right-to-repair laws. I've heard plenty of arguments in favor of RTR, but I've rarely heard a credible argument against.
In the case of John Deere, some of their arguments are based on the fact that their equipment is a motorized vehicle. As such, right-to-repair laws are tantamount to right-to-modify laws. Allowing that opens the door to people tinkering with the engine performance, which could result in worse emissions (but moar powah!). Alternately, in the case of a combine or other farm equipment, safety features could easily be disabled or circumvented by someone, in the name of faster or more efficient operation. The person disabling the safety features may not always be the person actually operating the equipment, so it's not just a "you mod it, you assume the risk" kind of thing.
I don't really buy those arguments, but they do exist.
The easy counterargument is to point out that the above situation has existed in the auto industry for decades, consumers are well served, and the sky has not fallen.
Indeed: the power requirements for supercomputers have been getting crazy, and the forecasts for exascale computing are worse. Interestingly, the power required for the computation isn't all that bad; what really kills you is the power burned in moving data around, and the power required to keep everything cool. The DoE's exascale computing research has a goal of a machine in the early 2020s that only requires 20-30 MW.
Meaning we’re going to have a nuclear reactor in space.
Not necessarily. This beam weapon would probably not have to run for much longer than minutes.* In that case, I think electric batteries would be a much more straightforward way to go - far fewer technical risks.
But speaking more generally, I think it would be a benefit to human space exploration to develop nuclear reactor technology for space. While perhaps not a pre-requisite for colonization on the moon and Mars, a MW-class nuclear reactor would make some things easier.
* Within minutes of the start of the attack, an end point is reached:
1) The threat has been neutralized - you've blown up the incoming missile
2) You have been neutralized - the beam weapon has been taken out by an anti-satellite missile that accompanies the original attach.
3) You've lost the war, in which case further countermeasures aren't going to matter very much
Randy... has pointed out to Avi, in an encrypted e-mail message, that if every particle of matter in the universe could be used to construct one single cosmic supercomputer, and this computer was put to work trying to break a 4096-bit encryption key, it would take longer than the lifespan of the universe.
"Using today's technology," Avi shot back, "that is true. But what about quantum computers? And what if new mathematical techniques are developed that can simplify the factoring of large prime numbers?"
"How long do you want these messages to remain secret?" Randy asked, in his last message before leaving San Francisco. "Five years? Ten years? Twenty-five years?"
After he got to the hotel this afternoon, Randy decrypted and read Avi's answer. It is still hanging in front of his eyes, like the after image of a strobe: I want them to remain secret for as long as men are capable of evil.
I see you used the past tense: "built". Then you would probably agree that, while fossil fuel jumpstarted our technological society to its present state, that is not a justification for its continued use indefinitely (until they run out.) In other words: it's time to move on. Furthermore, while fossil fuels' relative abundance got industrialization rolling at a tremendous pace, it made us complacent and inefficient about how we use energy. Again: we claim to be a smart species, let's wise up and do better.
Now put that rock in a vacuum and tell me how you figure on coupling enough energy though nothing to do this?
One can use a gravitational tug to "couple enough energy through nothing". It's not a panacea, but it is one method that is largely unaffected by the asteroid's internal strength.
The article was filed away in the Science section of the NYTimes. That's appropriate. But I wonder if it would be more appropriate to put it in the Obituaries instead.
I wasn't referring to Obama's Nobel. Where is your reading comprehension? I was referring to his Secretary of Energy - Steven Chu. He received it in physics, which is hardly the type of prize that gets awarded for politics, and he (with two others) received it for serious discoveries in how to trap and cool atoms into exotic states of matter; with freakin' lasers, no less.
Those are called fiducials. They are used to very precisely determine the location, distance, and orientation of an object when pictures of that object are taken. Because of their contrasting colors, the edges of different "wedges" are easy for a human or computer vision system to pick up; the center point is the intersection of those edges, etc. The "ovalness" of the fiducial can be used to determine the angle to the camera.
The same kind of fiducials are placed all over crash tests to track motion and displacement.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't tell if you're trolling or not. This entire endeavor was about $50-60 million, about half of which was directly funded by the NSF (tax money). By comparison, just one F-35 fighter jet is about $100 million.
The physics of a collision of 30x stellar mass stars would be very different than for black holes, if only because stars have a (comparatively) large spatial extent, while the black holes are much more compact and, as a result, can get their masses much closer together before they merge. Compact masses getting close together creates 1) very strong gravitational disturbances and 2) very fast orbital speeds. Large stars can't get their masses close enough, and could not orbit each other fast enough, to be detectable by LIGO.
I'm still waiting for an update/refresh of Papyrus typeface!
How else will James Cameron complete the next 17 Avatar movies?
So...because it is not 100% effective in its goals, is a reason to do nothing?
Besides, the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty did get South Africa to relinquish its nuclear weapons program. It also provides a framework for the rest of the world to crack down on other countries that may consider developing such weapons, such as North Korea (which ratified, then pulled out). It didn't prevent India and Pakistan. Frankly, we don't know how many more nuclear-capable countries would exist today without the treaty.
Maybe I am a bit naive to even suggest this, but it seems to me that now would be an appropriate time for the nations of the world to enter into a treaty specifically designed to avoid one-or-more jackasses from ruining space access for the entire human race. I would call it the Kessler Avoidance Treaty (KAT).
It is, generally, a set of rules to avoid a tragedy of the (space) commons - a general agreement not to shit all over the near-Earth environment (100 km to, say, 600 km). Among its provisions would be:
* A blanket ban on anti-satellite missiles or other ways of destroying satellites that create debris clouds. This includes not only the deployment of such weapons, but also their development and testing.
* Require whoever launches a rocket to ensure that all orbital-velocity, non-payload masses (e.g., upper stages, payload fairings, etc.) have a built in method to guarantee de-orbiting within, say, three months. (I suppose parking in a higher orbit, like 5000 km, would also be acceptable.)
* Active payloads (i.e., satellites) must have a documented plan for end-of-life that ensures de-orbiting within, say, 1 year after end-of-service.
* A service fee attached to all orbital launches (including those that pass through near-Earth to other orbits, like geosynchronous) to fund the development and eventual deployment of measures to remove debris and other hazards from the near-Earth environment. This could be lasers, satellites that tether to and de-orbit other satellites, and who knows what else. The service fee would be based on rocket gross weight at liftoff (although probably on a logarithmic, rather than linear scale).
* The development of international design standards for satellite manufacturers and launch providers to reduce small fragmentary debris: paint chips, frangible bolts, etc.)
Yup, this will make space launches a bit more expensive: it will slightly lower the payload that a particular rocket can deliver. I call that chump change compared to the catastrophic cost of a full-blown Kessler syndrome, which would wipe out >$100B of already-launched assets, degrade the $Trillions of annual economic activity that utilizes space services, endanger the lives of humans in space, and render access-to-space difficult or impossible for a generation.
There is plenty of precedent for humans creating and enforcing treaties against generally-bad behavior. The treaties banning atmospheric nuclear weapons tests are one good example. The Montreal Protocol for eliminating CFCs is another. These are imperfect measures, certainly, and not universal ratified. But they have gotten most of the major players on the same page, and drastically reduced the harm that could otherwise have happened. It also provides a moral framework for punishing non-ratifiers.
Right now is the best time to implement this kind of treaty. (Well, really, 5-10 years ago.) Humanity is drastically lowering the barriers to accessing space, and so we're on the cusp of a huge surge of launches. We ought to agree upon the rules now before there are 100 new players. At the same time, we are ever-more dependent on using orbiting satellites for all manner of daily activities, and there are untold riches still to be reaped.
I am, however, dreadfully pessimistic about the chances of such a treaty coming about under (present) US leadership. We have the most to gain and the most to lose. It would also be a chance to reassert some global leadership against strategic rivals such as China and Russia. But our present executive demonstrates no particular strategic thinking, and I'm sure this kind of topic and its rational solution aren't on his radar.
Dammit! This is why we can't have nice things.
There's a coyote and roadrunner joke here I can't quite pin down.
I dunno, I think we'd all be better if we skipped all this talk of autonomous driving, and instead started teaching road runners how to drive for us. Things always seem to work just fine for the road runner.
Replaying the sentence that talks about replaying live streams? I see what you did there.
I'll do you one better: why is link directly?
In the case of John Deere, some of their arguments are based on the fact that their equipment is a motorized vehicle. As such, right-to-repair laws are tantamount to right-to-modify laws. Allowing that opens the door to people tinkering with the engine performance, which could result in worse emissions (but moar powah!). Alternately, in the case of a combine or other farm equipment, safety features could easily be disabled or circumvented by someone, in the name of faster or more efficient operation. The person disabling the safety features may not always be the person actually operating the equipment, so it's not just a "you mod it, you assume the risk" kind of thing.
I don't really buy those arguments, but they do exist.
The easy counterargument is to point out that the above situation has existed in the auto industry for decades, consumers are well served, and the sky has not fallen.
I'll do you one better and link directly to a PDF on arXiv.
Indeed: the power requirements for supercomputers have been getting crazy, and the forecasts for exascale computing are worse. Interestingly, the power required for the computation isn't all that bad; what really kills you is the power burned in moving data around, and the power required to keep everything cool. The DoE's exascale computing research has a goal of a machine in the early 2020s that only requires 20-30 MW.
It is a few years old, but IEEE Spectrum provided a good overview of the challenges of exascale computing. Power is a big one, as described in this Spectrum article. Other problems include cosmic rays, dirty power, and bad solder, as described here.
Not necessarily. This beam weapon would probably not have to run for much longer than minutes.* In that case, I think electric batteries would be a much more straightforward way to go - far fewer technical risks.
But speaking more generally, I think it would be a benefit to human space exploration to develop nuclear reactor technology for space. While perhaps not a pre-requisite for colonization on the moon and Mars, a MW-class nuclear reactor would make some things easier.
* Within minutes of the start of the attack, an end point is reached:
1) The threat has been neutralized - you've blown up the incoming missile
2) You have been neutralized - the beam weapon has been taken out by an anti-satellite missile that accompanies the original attach.
3) You've lost the war, in which case further countermeasures aren't going to matter very much
Well, shit, I need to recalculate my horoscope again.
To quote from Cryptonomicon:
... has pointed out to Avi, in an encrypted e-mail message, that if every particle of matter in the universe could be used to construct one single cosmic supercomputer, and this computer was put to work trying to break a 4096-bit encryption key, it would take longer than the lifespan of the universe.
Randy
"Using today's technology," Avi shot back, "that is true. But what about quantum computers? And what if new mathematical techniques are developed that can simplify the factoring of large prime numbers?"
"How long do you want these messages to remain secret?" Randy asked, in his last message before leaving San Francisco. "Five years? Ten years? Twenty-five years?"
After he got to the hotel this afternoon, Randy decrypted and read Avi's answer. It is still hanging in front of his eyes, like the after image of a strobe:
I want them to remain secret for as long as men are capable of evil.
I see you used the past tense: "built". Then you would probably agree that, while fossil fuel jumpstarted our technological society to its present state, that is not a justification for its continued use indefinitely (until they run out.) In other words: it's time to move on. Furthermore, while fossil fuels' relative abundance got industrialization rolling at a tremendous pace, it made us complacent and inefficient about how we use energy. Again: we claim to be a smart species, let's wise up and do better.
One can use a gravitational tug to "couple enough energy through nothing". It's not a panacea, but it is one method that is largely unaffected by the asteroid's internal strength.
I prefer this one of Claude Paillard hand-making triode tubes.
There's also this longer video of making nixie tubes.
The first few times I read that it looked like "Smart Cat Smelter". Need more coffee.
The article was filed away in the Science section of the NYTimes. That's appropriate. But I wonder if it would be more appropriate to put it in the Obituaries instead.
xkcd already has a new comic in remembrance of Opportunity.
This new one makes me smile wistfully, rather than wanting to cry.
No, no: you need to deliver it with more drama. Like this.
I wasn't referring to Obama's Nobel. Where is your reading comprehension? I was referring to his Secretary of Energy - Steven Chu. He received it in physics, which is hardly the type of prize that gets awarded for politics, and he (with two others) received it for serious discoveries in how to trap and cool atoms into exotic states of matter; with freakin' lasers, no less.
Those are called fiducials. They are used to very precisely determine the location, distance, and orientation of an object when pictures of that object are taken. Because of their contrasting colors, the edges of different "wedges" are easy for a human or computer vision system to pick up; the center point is the intersection of those edges, etc. The "ovalness" of the fiducial can be used to determine the angle to the camera.
The same kind of fiducials are placed all over crash tests to track motion and displacement.