Is any parachute test really that complicated? I RTFA (really) and it doesn't sound so bad. Can someone explain why this is the most complicated one in 40 years?
" The designs are based on the work of Albert Michelson, co-proponent of luminiferous aether theory, from the 1890s."
It's worth reminding people that, whatever his original views of luminiferous aether, Michelson was one of the great experimentalists of the 19th century and his name is most firmly associated with the experiment that's widely credited with experimentaly destroying the credibility of aether theories.
(It's still possible to come up with aether theories even with the Michelson-Morley results (and the results of hundreds of other people who replicated and refined that result), but it's much more difficult, and the resulting theories end up rather hard to credit.) I assume that the original use of the word "proponent" was a typo).
These are real fusion devices. The last time I judged the national science fair contest, there were not one, but two fusion reactors-- one put together from parts scrounged from junkyards.
There was an article by Tom Ligon in Analog back in September 1998-- it's available on the web if you're interested in more details.
This is pretty cool. I love amateur science.
With that said, note that there is a vast difference between merely demonstrating fusion, and producing usable power by fusion, roughly similar to the gap between the glow of your old radium watch dial, and a nuclear bomb. But if the hobbiests can learn to scale it up... now, that would be cool.
Particles do not have will at all, free or otherwise, so it's silly to say they have "free will."
The argument in the article is clever, but it really says nothing about free will. It's an argument about interpretation of quantum mechanics. In fact, it says that quantum measurements can imply a hidden variable theory if humans do not have the freedom to chose axes arbitrarily. This has little or nothing to do with particles having free will.
Doesn't have much to do with humans having free will, either, since few physicists see any need for hidden variable interpretations of quantum mechanics.
iTunes credits? How ironically appropriate, if people were trying to steal music (not exactly the case, I know), and instead, they're given DRM'd music in return?
Why would that be ironic? The whole point is that the defendants claim that they are not trying to steal music.
(but in any case, iTunes credits seems like an unlikely solution).
Is one of the implications that solar systems could at one point be similar to ours? Gas giants far away with smaller planets towards the sun? And then the gas giants slowly creep towards the sun, wiping out the smaller planets that get in the way?
No.
The migration occurs much earlier in the system's history.
The most important thing that you need to understand is that the large number of "hot jupiters" that have been found have essentially disproven existing theories of solar system formation.
To be more precise, the existence of Hot Jupiters shows that some, but not all, of the features of older models of solar system formation are not correct,
The interesting data is not how many hot Jupiters are found, but how many stars do not have hot Jupiters.
Here's a list of extrasolar planets (last updated in January); and another list. Note the large number of stars that have planets found with mass less than Mj. The converse of that is that those stars do not have planets of mass greater than Mj. The problem, of course, is that negative results are much less published than positive results. However, here is a list of three published papers that listed stars with no planets found (that is, no planets large enough to detect-- which is to say, no hot Jupiters. This list is somewhat out of date, as of 2006.)
So the story is a little incomplete. Some solar systems have hot Jupiters, which in their migration inward disrupt smaller, earthlink planets... but by no means all.
You seem to be criticizing the analysis for failing to debunk arguments that Oberg did not make. The commentary was an analysis of the arguments that Oberg did make; it was not an analysis of arguments that he might have made but didn't. He may indeed have been
aware of these factors because I've discussed them with him,
but he didn't actually mention them in the article.
"found that huge numbers of illegal downloads actually helped the band's popularity and, by extension, concert ticket sales."
Not quite. What the study said was that, regardless of the fact that Radiohead allowed legal downloads for "little or nothing", they got far more illegal downloads than legal ones. Not one word about "concert ticket sales".
It's not at all clear to me that the fact that illegal downloads exceed legal ones even when legal ones cost little or nothing is an example of good news. There's some widespread assumption in the/. community that getting lots of "popularity" from downloads somehow is just as good as getting money, and bands should figure out some way to get money other than selling music anyway, maybe somehow trading in on that "popularity". But it's not at all clear to me that a future in which all that a musician gets from music is popularity, and no money, is a desirable one.
I've said it before and this seems to confirm it - entrepreneurs aren't good at rocket science. They look at government funded space programs, and see the redundancy as waste and the precision as bureaucracy. Then when they try and do space cheaper without these things, there are predictably explosions.
You learn by doing, and that includes learning by failing. Space-X is learning a lot.
Basically, when you try to revolutionize an industry, you have to accept some risk, and that means risk of failures along the way.
I'm still cheering them on. Space-X has changed from a group of charmingly enthusiastic but naive innocents into a team of battle-scarred rocket veterans, and done it the hard way. The space entrepreneuring field has far too many naive innocents that promote paper spaceships, and far too few steely-eyed rocket veterans. While I'm saddened and even horrified that they lost their third rocket, nevertheless, if they can hold their team together and stay focussed despite the stumbles along the way, I'll say, keep at it, Space-X; keep at it!
While we're discussing flames, is there any evidence that the internet will ever increase beyond its current 2400 baud rate?
But to start us off on topic, is there any evidence that the cells will increase beyond their current 10% conversion rate
Sure, just as soon as the internet increases its speed beyond the current 2400 baud rate.
(irony mode off) Where did you get that number? You can buy commercially available solar cells with higher conversion efficiency than that. Clearly you can increase the efficiency, that's not in question. The question is cost-- can you make high efficiency solar cells cheap?
However, note that even the efficiency of the low cost technologies such as Copper Indium diSelenide, in the best lab cells, is well beyond 10%.
First, indium is not actually rare-- it's a byproduct of aluminum production that isn't refined out because the need for indium is not high enough for aluminum producers to bother with.
Second, even CIGS cells only use a trivial amount of indium, and silicon cells use none.
Likewise, cadmium is a very small- (we're talking thicknesses in nanometers here) component of some cell types, but not all.
so i saved a few hundred dollars a year but had to spend 38K ????? what the hell is the point. PV can't ever replace base load power sources.
What you say is PV "can't ever" replace baseload power, but what you mean is this solar installation, installed at this cost level, won't replace baseload power.
Solar panel manufacturing is doubling roughly every 18 months. Prices are going to drop.
There are two press releases that I really really wish I could take a vacation from.
First, announcement of an "earth-like planet" that, when you read the details, isn't actually earthlike.
Second, announcement of a "breakthrough in solar cell technology" that, when you read the details, is a piece of fundamental research that may be interesting in a scientific way but the researchers have never actually produced a working solar cell.
I really want to see one of these fusion processes work. It would make a radical change in our society, by removing any reason for the US government to care what happens in the middle east.
Performance, for those who want performance
on
Linux Needs More Haters
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
Linux seems to be a great system for people who want to burrow into the guts of the OS and make it do exactly what they want it to do. For people who are mostly just interested in using a computer as a tool to do things that are mostly unrelated to computers, it seems most of its flexibility and capability is wasted.
I'd affiliate myself not with the Linux-haters, but with the Linux-indifferent.
How did that old joke go? "It's not true that Linux isn't user-friendly. It's just very selective about who it chooses as friends."
i just saw that video a few days ago and was more fascinated by the ultra-sonic bubble than the prospect of cold fusion.
Yep... but note that the ultrasonic bubble collapse thing-- "sonoluminescence"-- isn't something that Taleyarkhan discovered. It was his claim that sonoluminescence produces fusion that was noteworthy, not the sonoluminescence itself.
The Space Shuttle is a complete failure on almost every level, especially safety.
Yes... and no.
The shuttle had twenty-four sucessful launches in a row before the first loss-of-vehicle accident on the twenty-fifth launch; this is vastly more successful than any other orbital launch vehicle ever built, by any country, in history. Following that it had a hundred successful launches in a row before the second loss. This is, really, quite unprecedented.
Basically, launching into space is dangerous, and new vehicles are dangerous.
It has killed 14 people, much more than Apollo.
What? Apollo lost zero astronauts in the first 14 launches. Shuttle likewise lost zero astronauts in the first 14 launches. Hard to say shuttle is less save than Apollo, since Apollo had vastly fewer launches. That's like saying that the Wright 1908 flyer is less dangerous than a Boeing 747, because only one person was killed in a 1908 flyer crash.
That is also why I think that the people making the decisions in our space programs are idiots.
I am sure they see the need for some sort of backup plan for those people on the space station, yet don't think that it would be easy enough to send up one shuttle, and LEAVE IT THERE IN CASE OF EMERGENCY
The shuttle isn't able to spend long durations on orbit; that wasn't in its design specifications, and there are a lot of modifications that would be needed to give it that capability. Two weeks is about the limit, without modifications.
With that said, it does seem like it would be interesting to do an engineering assessment to see what modifications would in fact be needed... but my uneducated guess would be that it would be quite a lot of changes needed, since you're proposing extending extend duration by orders of magnitude if you want to keep it there for four years.
Slashdot Mirror
Is any parachute test really that complicated? I RTFA (really) and it doesn't sound so bad. Can someone explain why this is the most complicated one in 40 years?
Yes. It's huge.
Hugeness, as it turns out, creates complexity.
Please make the text readable with black on white.
Agree!
There are worse possibilities than white on green, but I wouldn't read those, either.
Barack Obama has selected West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd as his running mate!
Wow. So how come Google news doesn't mention this? no word yet.
" The designs are based on the work of Albert Michelson, co-proponent of luminiferous aether theory, from the 1890s."
It's worth reminding people that, whatever his original views of luminiferous aether, Michelson was one of the great experimentalists of the 19th century and his name is most firmly associated with the experiment that's widely credited with experimentaly destroying the credibility of aether theories.
(It's still possible to come up with aether theories even with the Michelson-Morley results (and the results of hundreds of other people who replicated and refined that result), but it's much more difficult, and the resulting theories end up rather hard to credit.) I assume that the original use of the word "proponent" was a typo).
There was an article by Tom Ligon in Analog back in September 1998-- it's available on the web if you're interested in more details.
This is pretty cool. I love amateur science.
With that said, note that there is a vast difference between merely demonstrating fusion, and producing usable power by fusion, roughly similar to the gap between the glow of your old radium watch dial, and a nuclear bomb. But if the hobbiests can learn to scale it up... now, that would be cool.
The argument in the article is clever, but it really says nothing about free will. It's an argument about interpretation of quantum mechanics. In fact, it says that quantum measurements can imply a hidden variable theory if humans do not have the freedom to chose axes arbitrarily. This has little or nothing to do with particles having free will.
Doesn't have much to do with humans having free will, either, since few physicists see any need for hidden variable interpretations of quantum mechanics.
iTunes credits? How ironically appropriate, if people were trying to steal music (not exactly the case, I know), and instead, they're given DRM'd music in return?
Why would that be ironic? The whole point is that the defendants claim that they are not trying to steal music.
(but in any case, iTunes credits seems like an unlikely solution).
Is one of the implications that solar systems could at one point be similar to ours? Gas giants far away with smaller planets towards the sun? And then the gas giants slowly creep towards the sun, wiping out the smaller planets that get in the way?
No.
The migration occurs much earlier in the system's history.
The most important thing that you need to understand is that the large number of "hot jupiters" that have been found have essentially disproven existing theories of solar system formation.
To be more precise, the existence of Hot Jupiters shows that some, but not all, of the features of older models of solar system formation are not correct,
The interesting data is not how many hot Jupiters are found, but how many stars do not have hot Jupiters.
Here's a list of extrasolar planets (last updated in January); and another list. Note the large number of stars that have planets found with mass less than Mj. The converse of that is that those stars do not have planets of mass greater than Mj. The problem, of course, is that negative results are much less published than positive results. However, here is a list of three published papers that listed stars with no planets found (that is, no planets large enough to detect-- which is to say, no hot Jupiters. This list is somewhat out of date, as of 2006.)
So the story is a little incomplete. Some solar systems have hot Jupiters, which in their migration inward disrupt smaller, earthlink planets... but by no means all.
aware of these factors because I've discussed them with him,
but he didn't actually mention them in the article.
"found that huge numbers of illegal downloads actually helped the band's popularity and, by extension, concert ticket sales."
Not quite. What the study said was that, regardless of the fact that Radiohead allowed legal downloads for "little or nothing", they got far more illegal downloads than legal ones. Not one word about "concert ticket sales".
It's not at all clear to me that the fact that illegal downloads exceed legal ones even when legal ones cost little or nothing is an example of good news. There's some widespread assumption in the /. community that getting lots of "popularity" from downloads somehow is just as good as getting money, and bands should figure out some way to get money other than selling music anyway, maybe somehow trading in on that "popularity". But it's not at all clear to me that a future in which all that a musician gets from music is popularity, and no money, is a desirable one.
Beautiful video, but that's the Falcon second launch video, not the one currently being discussed.
I've said it before and this seems to confirm it - entrepreneurs aren't good at rocket science. They look at government funded space programs, and see the redundancy as waste and the precision as bureaucracy. Then when they try and do space cheaper without these things, there are predictably explosions.
You learn by doing, and that includes learning by failing. Space-X is learning a lot.
Basically, when you try to revolutionize an industry, you have to accept some risk, and that means risk of failures along the way.
I'm still cheering them on. Space-X has changed from a group of charmingly enthusiastic but naive innocents into a team of battle-scarred rocket veterans, and done it the hard way. The space entrepreneuring field has far too many naive innocents that promote paper spaceships, and far too few steely-eyed rocket veterans. While I'm saddened and even horrified that they lost their third rocket, nevertheless, if they can hold their team together and stay focussed despite the stumbles along the way, I'll say, keep at it, Space-X; keep at it!
Sounds like a marketting strategy to me!
Queue the flamewar in 3...2....1....
While we're discussing flames, is there any evidence that the internet will ever increase beyond its current 2400 baud rate?
But to start us off on topic, is there any evidence that the cells will increase beyond their current 10% conversion rate
Sure, just as soon as the internet increases its speed beyond the current 2400 baud rate.
(irony mode off) Where did you get that number? You can buy commercially available solar cells with higher conversion efficiency than that. Clearly you can increase the efficiency, that's not in question. The question is cost-- can you make high efficiency solar cells cheap?
However, note that even the efficiency of the low cost technologies such as Copper Indium diSelenide, in the best lab cells, is well beyond 10%.
In other words, yes, them is flame words.
what about when world supplies of indium run low?
First, indium is not actually rare-- it's a byproduct of aluminum production that isn't refined out because the need for indium is not high enough for aluminum producers to bother with.
Second, even CIGS cells only use a trivial amount of indium, and silicon cells use none.
Likewise, cadmium is a very small- (we're talking thicknesses in nanometers here) component of some cell types, but not all.
so i saved a few hundred dollars a year but had to spend 38K ????? what the hell is the point. PV can't ever replace base load power sources.
What you say is PV "can't ever" replace baseload power, but what you mean is this solar installation, installed at this cost level, won't replace baseload power.
Solar panel manufacturing is doubling roughly every 18 months. Prices are going to drop.
There are two press releases that I really really wish I could take a vacation from. First, announcement of an "earth-like planet" that, when you read the details, isn't actually earthlike. Second, announcement of a "breakthrough in solar cell technology" that, when you read the details, is a piece of fundamental research that may be interesting in a scientific way but the researchers have never actually produced a working solar cell.
I really want to see one of these fusion processes work. It would make a radical change in our society, by removing any reason for the US government to care what happens in the middle east.
Unfortunately, wanting something doesn't make it real
I'd affiliate myself not with the Linux-haters, but with the Linux-indifferent.
How did that old joke go? "It's not true that Linux isn't user-friendly. It's just very selective about who it chooses as friends."
i just saw that video a few days ago and was more fascinated by the ultra-sonic bubble than the prospect of cold fusion.
Yep... but note that the ultrasonic bubble collapse thing-- "sonoluminescence"-- isn't something that Taleyarkhan discovered. It was his claim that sonoluminescence produces fusion that was noteworthy, not the sonoluminescence itself.
The actual material quoted bears almost no resembalance at all to the hysteria in the blog.
Can't anybody bother to verify facts before reposting blog ravings of nuts onto /.?
The Space Shuttle is a complete failure on almost every level, especially safety.
Yes... and no.
The shuttle had twenty-four sucessful launches in a row before the first loss-of-vehicle accident on the twenty-fifth launch; this is vastly more successful than any other orbital launch vehicle ever built, by any country, in history. Following that it had a hundred successful launches in a row before the second loss. This is, really, quite unprecedented.
Basically, launching into space is dangerous, and new vehicles are dangerous.
It has killed 14 people, much more than Apollo.
What? Apollo lost zero astronauts in the first 14 launches. Shuttle likewise lost zero astronauts in the first 14 launches. Hard to say shuttle is less save than Apollo, since Apollo had vastly fewer launches. That's like saying that the Wright 1908 flyer is less dangerous than a Boeing 747, because only one person was killed in a 1908 flyer crash.
That is also why I think that the people making the decisions in our space programs are idiots. I am sure they see the need for some sort of backup plan for those people on the space station, yet don't think that it would be easy enough to send up one shuttle, and LEAVE IT THERE IN CASE OF EMERGENCY
The shuttle isn't able to spend long durations on orbit; that wasn't in its design specifications, and there are a lot of modifications that would be needed to give it that capability. Two weeks is about the limit, without modifications.
With that said, it does seem like it would be interesting to do an engineering assessment to see what modifications would in fact be needed... but my uneducated guess would be that it would be quite a lot of changes needed, since you're proposing extending extend duration by orders of magnitude if you want to keep it there for four years.