The basic physics appears to make sense, as obviously theres more power available from solar energy in orbit. The problem is unfortunately the lifetime of any satellite.
Lubrication (KY Jelly jokes aside!) is essential for any moving part. Without it parts often wear out quickly. This problem is why satellites have a life span. They need to continually fix the orbit and the rotation of the satellite. To achieve this, gyroscopes and fuel burns are required. Once the gyroscopes have eroded away (lubrication has been used up), the satellite will be uncontrollable with respect to its rotation.
The secondary problem is the issue of keeping the satellite in a particular orbit. Fuel is used often to make minor (but essential) corrections to the orbital trajectory. Towards the end of a satellite's lifespan, it's remaining fuel is used to push it into the graveyard beyond geosynchronous orbit.
So this leaves us with a final issue: What happens when the satellite has run out of fuel/lubrication? We dump it into the graveyard orbit like we do with all the others?
Perhaps sophisticated "MagLev" type gyroscopes could remove the lubrication problem. But then we are stuck with the problem of fuel. Solar energy could be used (for a type of photon engine), but how feasible that is I don't know.
Yeah I agree with this. It's hard to imagine how much R&D the US spends on black projects. I'm still quite in awe of the Stealth Fighter which was on the drawing board in the 70s. Surely by now there is something else the money is being spent on? Maybe a nuclear pulse powered aircraft similar to Orion?
Also even if some UFO's are aliens, the reason they might not contact us is that we are too stupid. We're unlikely to go to Mars and try conversing with any bacteria, and even on Earth we don't spend much time trying to talk to earthworms etc. Perhaps with computers in the future, intelligence will be on a completely different scale, something we can't even begin to comprehend, nevermind actually understand in any meaningful way.
Yes, I'm still using a Soundblaster 16 bit PCI card. I like it and it does the job. I've also had 0 problems with it, EVER. Win 98, Win 2k, Win XP Pro have all worked fine with it. All my games like it, and the sounds quality is very good (i use headphones). Maybe they should just re-release all their old boards?
recently did a series of theatre shows where there was a subliminal message theme running throughout.
There's a DVD of it so you can see it for yourself. I didn't think the messages would work, but his audience seems to fall for it. Any ideas how this happened? (He managed to get the audience to pick out a single rare and uncommon word from a collection of newspapers)
In a lot of bands you can't see anything through the atmosphere.
Also if you are looking for chemical signitures (oxygen, methane) etc then you will have problems with the atmosphere again.
Space also gives you 24 hour observation, obviously not possible on the earth during the day. Apart from that you get a free vaccuum which will help in keeping the instrument cool. This is useful for all observations, not just infra red (although it is particularly good for that). Ground based telescopes are more suited to microwave/radio astronomy.
And don't forget about UV, which is impossible to see through the atmosphere (if it wasn't for the atmosphere absorption of UV we'd be having a bad case of sunburn).
I think the question is more about the future of alternate energy sources. How does wave power scale compared to wind power? With windpower you have to keep building large, separate structures. The wave power looks like it can be added to, rather than needing new structures.
Of course solar is also an option, and there are some companies that are claiming to bring solar power costs down to 'cheaper than fossil fuel' levels. That could just be hype, but if you look at how solar has decreased in cost since the 70s, you can extrapolate that in 10 years solar will be cheaper per watt than oil/gas/coal is currently. I'm predicting that in about 2010-2012 we will start reading about large scale installations of solar power that will be entering the energy market to compete directly with traditional energy suppliers.
Why not give Deutsche Telekom a 3 year (or whatever timeframe is suitable) lease where they have exclusive access. As soon as the lease expires, it becomes open to all competitors. This way DT can make a profit and the freeloaders can jump in after a short wait. If they don't want to wait they can build their own networks.
This would be very useful for the power transmission on space elevators. Part of the problem is developing effective lasers to supply the climbers with energy. Last I heard 1KW solid state lasers were good, so this could be a vast improvement.
Of course, it's also possible that the earth has very slightly shifted its orbit too, and that what humans are doing is simply forcing some oscillation that takes place over many thousands of years. I mean forcing as in forced harmonic oscillation.
It's extremely unlikely that we've managed (or anything else) to shift the Earth's orbit. And even if we did, there's a 50% chance we'd move the Earth further from the Sun.
Also I don't see what the oscillation is. If you are talking about a natural variation in the global temperature, then I guess we know that Ice Ages come and go, but we have less evidence for warming cycles. Personally (and this is a total guess) I think if the Earth gets too warm it triggers an ice age.
However, to really solve this problem we need to be sending probes to Venus and find out what the hell happened there that caused its runaway greenhouse effect. We are focussing too much on Mars and ignoring the planet that is almost identical to us.
Would a quantum computer be able to do seti@home significantly faster? I mean the problem at the moment is raw computing power required to search for interesting signals. So can a QC search faster and if so would we be able to use more sensitive instruments than we currently can (because of the processing time)?
He said he was giving the profits from the next few years (~$3 billion) into ecological research/technology I think.
So I guess sending up people on the most wasteful use of natural resources is a good idea? Currently in the UK there's a lot of argument around the tax exemption airlines get on fuel, which is playing a large part in CO2 emmissions. This sounds like it's going to undo a lot of hardwork if the flights become popular (say 5+ per week). If someone does the maths I'm sure it will work out as many orders of magnitude worse than air travel, and this isn't even going to transport people but be used for leisure.
There are many ways insurgents could get hold of topographical data. The problem is that for satellite information to be useful you need it to accurately portray reality. What's to say that the British Commanders have always planned for out of date images to be taken of their bases? Surely if you know there will be pictures of your bases on the internet (but they will always be 6months+ old) then you will adopt a strategy to take advantage of it.
Mortars are not precision weapons and so any google earth intel would be fairly difficult to use to target a specific small area.
Even in the article it says they have no proof insurgents use Google Earth. Whatever the case, most soldiers seem to be getting killed by IEDs and small arms fire rather than random mortar attacks.
If Google Earth was almost real time, then they'd need to use a combination of age old military tactics... camo nets, fake buildings, underground areas, concrete buildings instead of tents etc
Perhaps you could somehow split the data to a network of computers. If you had 10 computers, could they write the signal to disk in pieces and then recombine them later?
What happens if the slip of paper is white on the other side? Say the brother then flips over the black slip of paper and it's white. Can he then infer that your slip of paper also flipped over instantly?
(I know you got a lot of replies but please answer this!)
I'm not really a windows fan, just a windows user. I use windows simply because it's easy.
It's easy to: 1. Install and use hardware (crappy hardware support) 2. Install and use software (yes it's easier than apt-get install blah blah command command) 3. Setup networking, internet configurations, email etc 4. Change system settings, gfx, etc 5. Find where programs are located. This is what I really hate about linux. In order to properly use a program you have to know where it stores all its crap and how to configure that. In windows all I do is go to "c:\progam files" and yes I don't even need to be case sensitive. 6. Delete programs. Due to point 5 above it's really hard to remove things manually, so you have to rely on the command line or some buggy GUI. 7. Sometimes things in linux stop working and it's impossible to fix unless you are a linux GURU. 8. MS programming tools are easy to use.
Basically if I find something easy, then it won't take me much time. I spent an awful long period of time trying to get Oracle Developer installed on linux but it was impossible as I had the "wrong version". I really DON'T CARE if it's not linux/unix developers fault, all I care about is getting the software to work. The windows install went painlessly and didn't require any user input, running scripts, entering paths etc.
everything in windows is easy, everything in linux is incredibly hard to do. Most people don't have the time to spend on linux and so just use windows as it is probably a lot cheaper (in terms of time) to use.
Britain can expect more storms of similar ferocity to those that wreaked havoc across the country last week, even bringing a tornado to north-west London.
Wasn't there a film about global warming that had tornadoes in cities? I think I'm scared now.
Firstly all established planets (e.g.Pluto) in the Solar System can keep their normal planet status. We can keep the text books as they are because it's straight forward for the public and almost the truth!
Secondly all exo-solar planets or undiscovered Solar System planets should be classified within a category: 1. Dwarfs (think Sedna) 2. Terrestrial (Earth type planets, e.g. Venus, Mars) 3. Giants This divides them up into rough sizes (you can define them as you wish according to physics)
Thirdly the categories are divided into smaller sub categories describing their general properties such as:
Hot/Cold, Lone (in the case of starless planets), Icey/Rocky/Gas, Remnant...
This should be enough to allow for the right information to be used in the right context.
For example, Jupiter could be described as a planet, but an exo planet with the same properties should not be called "just a planet", but a "Cold Gas Giant". Pluto type objects would be classified as "Icey Dwarfs". The exo planets around a Pulsar (first exo planets detected), could be called "Terrestrial Remnants". The properties could be stacked according to whatever context they are used in. A basic course may only call Jupiter class plants Hot or Cold Gas Giants. But astronomers would be able to say something like "Very Short Period Gas Giant", for a Jupiter class planet that is very close to its parent star.
Then again should we leave the definition of planets up to astronomers? They didn't do too well with metals!
Actually from what I remember, they designed the rovers to last only until a sand storm came along and covered the solar cells. They assumed that after the power down during the martian winter, too much sand would be covering the cells to allow the rovers to power up. However, the sand kept getting blown off the solar cells from the weak winds there, and this is really what has kept the rovers going for so long.
(I learnt this info from a tv documentary with one of the engineers)
It's most likely a sign of the struggle the governments are having with monitoring net traffic. There's simply too much traffic for them to store and analyze. Therefore they are attempting to get the analysis to occur at the ISP level, which would actually make things possible for a "catch-all" fishing expedition. I think the analogy is with Google's rejection of providing lists of seach requests.
If the government can get the ISPs to monitor what's happening then it decentralises the work load and makes it more manageable. I'm guessing that we will see more of this strategy in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
The basic physics appears to make sense, as obviously theres more power available from solar energy in orbit. The problem is unfortunately the lifetime of any satellite.
Lubrication (KY Jelly jokes aside!) is essential for any moving part. Without it parts often wear out quickly. This problem is why satellites have a life span. They need to continually fix the orbit and the rotation of the satellite. To achieve this, gyroscopes and fuel burns are required. Once the gyroscopes have eroded away (lubrication has been used up), the satellite will be uncontrollable with respect to its rotation.
The secondary problem is the issue of keeping the satellite in a particular orbit. Fuel is used often to make minor (but essential) corrections to the orbital trajectory. Towards the end of a satellite's lifespan, it's remaining fuel is used to push it into the graveyard beyond geosynchronous orbit.
So this leaves us with a final issue: What happens when the satellite has run out of fuel/lubrication? We dump it into the graveyard orbit like we do with all the others?
Perhaps sophisticated "MagLev" type gyroscopes could remove the lubrication problem. But then we are stuck with the problem of fuel. Solar energy could be used (for a type of photon engine), but how feasible that is I don't know.
Yeah I agree with this. It's hard to imagine how much R&D the US spends on black projects. I'm still quite in awe of the Stealth Fighter which was on the drawing board in the 70s. Surely by now there is something else the money is being spent on? Maybe a nuclear pulse powered aircraft similar to Orion?
Also even if some UFO's are aliens, the reason they might not contact us is that we are too stupid. We're unlikely to go to Mars and try conversing with any bacteria, and even on Earth we don't spend much time trying to talk to earthworms etc. Perhaps with computers in the future, intelligence will be on a completely different scale, something we can't even begin to comprehend, nevermind actually understand in any meaningful way.
Yes, I'm still using a Soundblaster 16 bit PCI card. I like it and it does the job. I've also had 0 problems with it, EVER. Win 98, Win 2k, Win XP Pro have all worked fine with it. All my games like it, and the sounds quality is very good (i use headphones). Maybe they should just re-release all their old boards?
I think Hawking's been stealing from the internet: http://wiki.battlemaster.org/index.php/Light_of_Fo ntan#No_Space
recently did a series of theatre shows where there was a subliminal message theme running throughout.
There's a DVD of it so you can see it for yourself. I didn't think the messages would work, but his audience seems to fall for it. Any ideas how this happened? (He managed to get the audience to pick out a single rare and uncommon word from a collection of newspapers)
In a lot of bands you can't see anything through the atmosphere.
Also if you are looking for chemical signitures (oxygen, methane) etc then you will have problems with the atmosphere again.
Space also gives you 24 hour observation, obviously not possible on the earth during the day. Apart from that you get a free vaccuum which will help in keeping the instrument cool. This is useful for all observations, not just infra red (although it is particularly good for that). Ground based telescopes are more suited to microwave/radio astronomy.
And don't forget about UV, which is impossible to see through the atmosphere (if it wasn't for the atmosphere absorption of UV we'd be having a bad case of sunburn).
I think the question is more about the future of alternate energy sources. How does wave power scale compared to wind power? With windpower you have to keep building large, separate structures. The wave power looks like it can be added to, rather than needing new structures.
Of course solar is also an option, and there are some companies that are claiming to bring solar power costs down to 'cheaper than fossil fuel' levels. That could just be hype, but if you look at how solar has decreased in cost since the 70s, you can extrapolate that in 10 years solar will be cheaper per watt than oil/gas/coal is currently. I'm predicting that in about 2010-2012 we will start reading about large scale installations of solar power that will be entering the energy market to compete directly with traditional energy suppliers.
Why not give Deutsche Telekom a 3 year (or whatever timeframe is suitable) lease where they have exclusive access. As soon as the lease expires, it becomes open to all competitors. This way DT can make a profit and the freeloaders can jump in after a short wait. If they don't want to wait they can build their own networks.
This would be very useful for the power transmission on space elevators. Part of the problem is developing effective lasers to supply the climbers with energy. Last I heard 1KW solid state lasers were good, so this could be a vast improvement.
Of course, it's also possible that the earth has very slightly shifted its orbit too, and that what humans are doing is simply forcing some oscillation that takes place over many thousands of years. I mean forcing as in forced harmonic oscillation.
It's extremely unlikely that we've managed (or anything else) to shift the Earth's orbit. And even if we did, there's a 50% chance we'd move the Earth further from the Sun.
Also I don't see what the oscillation is. If you are talking about a natural variation in the global temperature, then I guess we know that Ice Ages come and go, but we have less evidence for warming cycles. Personally (and this is a total guess) I think if the Earth gets too warm it triggers an ice age.
However, to really solve this problem we need to be sending probes to Venus and find out what the hell happened there that caused its runaway greenhouse effect. We are focussing too much on Mars and ignoring the planet that is almost identical to us.
Just to nitpick, but Galileo Galilei wasn't the first nor the only one to describe heliocentrism - Nicolas Copernic was the forethinker of that system
Actually it was this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos
Would a quantum computer be able to do seti@home significantly faster? I mean the problem at the moment is raw computing power required to search for interesting signals. So can a QC search faster and if so would we be able to use more sensitive instruments than we currently can (because of the processing time)?
He said he was giving the profits from the next few years (~$3 billion) into ecological research/technology I think.
So I guess sending up people on the most wasteful use of natural resources is a good idea? Currently in the UK there's a lot of argument around the tax exemption airlines get on fuel, which is playing a large part in CO2 emmissions. This sounds like it's going to undo a lot of hardwork if the flights become popular (say 5+ per week). If someone does the maths I'm sure it will work out as many orders of magnitude worse than air travel, and this isn't even going to transport people but be used for leisure.
There are many ways insurgents could get hold of topographical data. The problem is that for satellite information to be useful you need it to accurately portray reality. What's to say that the British Commanders have always planned for out of date images to be taken of their bases? Surely if you know there will be pictures of your bases on the internet (but they will always be 6months+ old) then you will adopt a strategy to take advantage of it.
Mortars are not precision weapons and so any google earth intel would be fairly difficult to use to target a specific small area.
Even in the article it says they have no proof insurgents use Google Earth. Whatever the case, most soldiers seem to be getting killed by IEDs and small arms fire rather than random mortar attacks.
If Google Earth was almost real time, then they'd need to use a combination of age old military tactics... camo nets, fake buildings, underground areas, concrete buildings instead of tents etc
Perhaps you could somehow split the data to a network of computers. If you had 10 computers, could they write the signal to disk in pieces and then recombine them later?
Thank you very much for that. I've wondered about that for a long time and now can put it to rest :]
The only drawback is that you have to aim the laser at something, whereas microwave/radio can emit in all directions.
What happens if the slip of paper is white on the other side? Say the brother then flips over the black slip of paper and it's white. Can he then infer that your slip of paper also flipped over instantly?
(I know you got a lot of replies but please answer this!)
I'm not really a windows fan, just a windows user. I use windows simply because it's easy.
It's easy to:
1. Install and use hardware (crappy hardware support)
2. Install and use software (yes it's easier than apt-get install blah blah command command)
3. Setup networking, internet configurations, email etc
4. Change system settings, gfx, etc
5. Find where programs are located. This is what I really hate about linux. In order to properly use a program you have to know where it stores all its crap and how to configure that. In windows all I do is go to "c:\progam files" and yes I don't even need to be case sensitive.
6. Delete programs. Due to point 5 above it's really hard to remove things manually, so you have to rely on the command line or some buggy GUI.
7. Sometimes things in linux stop working and it's impossible to fix unless you are a linux GURU.
8. MS programming tools are easy to use.
Basically if I find something easy, then it won't take me much time. I spent an awful long period of time trying to get Oracle Developer installed on linux but it was impossible as I had the "wrong version". I really DON'T CARE if it's not linux/unix developers fault, all I care about is getting the software to work. The windows install went painlessly and didn't require any user input, running scripts, entering paths etc.
everything in windows is easy, everything in linux is incredibly hard to do. Most people don't have the time to spend on linux and so just use windows as it is probably a lot cheaper (in terms of time) to use.
Britain can expect more storms of similar ferocity to those that wreaked havoc across the country last week, even bringing a tornado to north-west London.
Wasn't there a film about global warming that had tornadoes in cities? I think I'm scared now.
Yes maybe this has come up but here it is:
...
Firstly all established planets (e.g.Pluto) in the Solar System can keep their normal planet status. We can keep the text books as they are because it's straight forward for the public and almost the truth!
Secondly all exo-solar planets or undiscovered Solar System planets should be classified within a category:
1. Dwarfs (think Sedna)
2. Terrestrial (Earth type planets, e.g. Venus, Mars)
3. Giants
This divides them up into rough sizes (you can define them as you wish according to physics)
Thirdly the categories are divided into smaller sub categories describing their general properties such as:
Hot/Cold, Lone (in the case of starless planets), Icey/Rocky/Gas, Remnant
This should be enough to allow for the right information to be used in the right context.
For example, Jupiter could be described as a planet, but an exo planet with the same properties should not be called "just a planet", but a "Cold Gas Giant". Pluto type objects would be classified as "Icey Dwarfs". The exo planets around a Pulsar (first exo planets detected), could be called "Terrestrial Remnants". The properties could be stacked according to whatever context they are used in. A basic course may only call Jupiter class plants Hot or Cold Gas Giants. But astronomers would be able to say something like "Very Short Period Gas Giant", for a Jupiter class planet that is very close to its parent star.
Then again should we leave the definition of planets up to astronomers? They didn't do too well with metals!
Actually from what I remember, they designed the rovers to last only until a sand storm came along and covered the solar cells. They assumed that after the power down during the martian winter, too much sand would be covering the cells to allow the rovers to power up. However, the sand kept getting blown off the solar cells from the weak winds there, and this is really what has kept the rovers going for so long.
(I learnt this info from a tv documentary with one of the engineers)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elerium-115
Seems far more useful
There's probably trillions of planets given that there are ~3x10^11 stars in the Galaxy.
It's most likely a sign of the struggle the governments are having with monitoring net traffic. There's simply too much traffic for them to store and analyze. Therefore they are attempting to get the analysis to occur at the ISP level, which would actually make things possible for a "catch-all" fishing expedition. I think the analogy is with Google's rejection of providing lists of seach requests.
If the government can get the ISPs to monitor what's happening then it decentralises the work load and makes it more manageable. I'm guessing that we will see more of this strategy in the future.