* Posts by mr.K

403 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Nov 2007

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Boffins dump the fluids to build solid state lithium battery

mr.K

Re: Another week...

We are trying to tell you batteries have not improved drastically the last 10-15 years, and while you drag in different very much older battery technologies I fail to see why? Lithium-ion battery technology is twice that old and yes, it has improved, but very slowly and not by much.

It improved some up to 2000 and after that not so much. A little higher energy density per volume, less per weight. After that it has mainly become cheaper. So in 25 years we have not really had any new technology in battery technology, just improvement on the old. And in a way this is also really just that.

Computing power per watt* has increased a lot in this period. Also computing power by volume. This means you can have a smaller device that consumes less power and still have a bigger battery by volume. This is not due to better battery technology.

*Or many other usages of electric power, like lighting.

Crazy Chrysler security hole: USB stick fix incoming for 1.4 million cars

mr.K

Muppets

See title.

Russian billionaire: GET me the ALIENS ON THE PHONE. Do it NOW

mr.K

Waste of money

I fail to see how we have the technology to do this. We are barely able to detect the drop in light coming from a star when a planet pass in front of it. It has to be a huge planet and close to the star and the star has to be small for it to be done. Still next to this blazing inferno of jamming across the entire electromagnetic spectrum we expect to pick up incredible weak radiowaves that isn't even directed at us? This is even before we start to consider the likelyhood that they are close by, that they are in that exact period of their technology evolution that they use radiowaves at this strength (we are more or less past it ourself) if they ever went down that path, that their atmosphere doesn't block it regardless etc etc

There has to be cooler and more promising things to explore in space for that kind of money.

PLUTO: The FINAL FRONTIER – best image yet of remote, icy dwarf planet REVEALED

mr.K

Re: Inverse square law

Yes, it is inverse square law, but also only that. So each time you double the distance to the sun you end up with a quarter of the light, but then you have to go much further out to double the distance again and so on. This means that even though your speed is more or less constant when you are far enough out the light from the sun diminishes slower and slower which again is why we still have contact with the Voyager probes.

So with Pluto at about 40 AU you have about 1/1600 of the light remaining. The sun is quite a lot more brighter than the moon than that. About 400 000 times brighter in fact.

Get READY: Scientists set to make TIME STAND STILL tonight

mr.K

Why in the first place?

Since this is such a rare occurrence and a second is so small, why do we do it? I have yet to hear any reasonable argument for. To get an offset of five minutes we need a millennium. So maybe people are a bit nostalgic (autistic) and need the time to be 12 when the sun is in the south. Guess what, it isn't. Daylight saving time offsets that by an hour, but alright lets look apart from that. The time zones are quite wide and usually expanding into the last one and the next one in some places, so you have up to half an hour offset there as well. But, let us assume you don't use daylight saving time and live exactly on a longitude divisible by 15 then sun still will be in the south at 12 only on four occurrences each year due astronomical time is not sundial time, but mean solar time and the offset called the equation of time is up to 16 minutes.

Can anybody enlighten me as to why we use leap seconds? It seems to me that for it to become an offset greater than what we experience throughout the year anyway we will have to wait over three thousand years. Isn't that something we could leave for that generation?

Pluto plastered in what looks like 1970s orange wallpaper – proof

mr.K

Re: Twice the goodness

You had acoustic couplers! You lucky bastard. In my day we had to do the drumming when father used TCP/IP over bongo drums to download his porn. I took us three days to get a nipple.

Hubble spots Pluto's moons are a chaotic mess of tumbling rock

mr.K

NO PHOTO FOR YOU (yet)

However, I doubt that is a photo, or a photo of Nix.

Malfunctioning Russian supply podule EXPLODES above Pacific

mr.K
Go

@Remy

What a fascinating thing to contemplate. Yes, everything above will go outwards, but I am not sure that it will go off into deep space, not even if you cut it above center of the mass (geo orbit). Essentially you will have an object in orbit where you have removed some of the mass and shifted the center of mass considerably in the non-uniform gravity field, but the velocity is unchanged. This will result in a high elliptic orbit, if it is rigid. I don't think it will be rigid. So you will at least for some time have a large whip spinning and yanking, possibly ripping itself apart, in an highly irregular orbit. Which is fine, not much so far out anyway.

If you sever the bit near the Atmosphere I agree that it will fall down and the bit furthest out will burn up before it hits. Something I would love to see and nobody will be able to compute the outcome of. The wire in front should push the air aside, no? So higher speed, so you might get friction heating to air on the sides instead of compression in front. I dunno, as I said, would love to see it.

But what if you cut it further out, lets say 10 000 km up. It would fall down, but it's velocity and altitude of the center of mass would indicate that it should be able to enter an elliptic orbit. However it is tied to the ground, but that bit would burn off some distance into the atmosphere. Which means the burnt off end would dangle into the atmosphere and drag the rest down unless it gets yanked out by the rest of the wire gaining higher speed. Which it would, but then it would probably bounce back and frequently touch the atmosphere. So for days or months the remaining wire would whip one of the ends into the atmosphere burning it off in what I will hope be a spectacular manner.

FROSTY MISTRESS of the Outer System: Pluto yields to probe snapper

mr.K

Re: Billion

Other countries have billion also and use it correctly. Numeration by groups of six is the only thing that makes sense. If you insist on having it mean groups of three then you should skip thousand and let million be ten to the power of three, billion be to the power of six etc.

On the other hand, it wouldn't be the first word (or set of words in this instance) that have lost touch with its origins and that is language I suppose. I just object to the long scale being the odd one out. So I will continue to use it correctly in my language and incorrectly in English :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales

You have to love wikifiddlers sometimes, they make lists and maps so you don't have to.

NASA probe snaps increasingly detailed shots of MOIST DWARF goddess

mr.K

Re: Sub surface ocean? Yeah, right.

Thanks for answering.

As I understand it all the heavier elements are made in supernovas, and this is the only known source for them. This would then mean most of the radioactive elements. There is of course radioactive decay which in a sense make new elements, but the start of these chains of decay has to be made in a supernova. Nearly nothing affects the half life of these elements and all of this material in this solar system was made before it formed. So there should be no difference between the radioactive elements in Ceres as that on Earth. The original amount will of course be different. There are four main decay chains where one is extinct in this solar system (or nearly). Whether it is enough to heat Ceres to any significant degree however I do not know, but I still see no reason why it shouldn't be so.*

About your last factoid. How does that turn out with any anti-freeze thrown into the mix? Salt or ammonia for instance?

*This does not of course mean that there is no such reason. I am a firm believer that my understanding of the science does not have any impact on how it actually is.

mr.K

Re: Sub surface ocean? Yeah, right.

I would like to know how you know that the heating from radioactive decay would be minuscule. On Earth the heat escaping isn't more than 7 TW and it is a lot bigger and the crust is quite thin, I would expect the loss of heat would go a lot slower the thicker the crust is. The Earth being bigger means of course that it also has a lot more heat stored and radioactive material to heat it up. However 7 TW isn't all that much and this is with a planet with core that is molten due to the heat. Also the interior of Ceres would only need to be kept maybe fifty degrees warmer than it's mean surface temperature to keep water with a dash of anti-freeze liquid. So, how do you know the radioactive heating would be minuscule?

Also you can throw in the pressure that affects the freezing point a little.

An alleged 27GB Sony Pictures data dump. 65 PlayStation web servers. One baffling mystery

mr.K

Troll

I like Sony as a manufacturer, mostly. I am not a big consumer of electronics, but I am very very picky. Of the products I have owned or been exposed to via friends or family that I think are made with thought and quality, all are Sony. It really feels like their engineers never brute force themselves around a problem, and while powerful inside their design try hard to tone it down.

Anyway, when it comes to security Sony feels like a troll. Nearly literally, the troll from some fantasy world hired to keep folks out or in. Big, brutish, can crush you with it's finger, but easily fooled and can, in an attempt to catch you, level to the ground whatever it is you were not allowed to enter. Also its literacy on the law is quite low on the count that its literacy is quite low and that it does not really see the benefit in obeying any.

On this count I try my hardest to find any product that isn't Sony when I need something new.

All aboard the Poo Bus! Ding ding, route Number Two departing

mr.K

Re: Calculations seem a bit off.

No, they are not. You have just misunderstood what they are about. They are telling how many people it takes to power the bus, while you look at how many journeys one person can provide fuel for during a year.

The former number makes it easy to compare it to other energy sources and if it can replace them. It is an odd one, but it takes into account the finite supply and you can disregard the size of the population. The latter number can be used to look at how big the supply into the market can be.

Boffins train robots to pull apart LCD screens – without breaking them

mr.K

AI

I am not all that convinced true AI is anywhere close, and I am glad. I do believe though that AI robots will be the next big, like paradigm big, move in technology and that it might not be all that far off. We have had robot assembly for a while now, but robots that we start to see that manages to act outside a confined strictly regulated environment is new.

Resource harvesting, cultivation, waste management, recycling, transport etc can all be automated. Industrialization shifted us from labour intensive to energy intensive. This might actually shift it back to labour intensive ways, but done by robots. Yes, robots do need energy, but there is no reason that they can be cheaper in that regard to run than humans. And it is quite clear that manual labour in many areas is less energy consuming that using industrial tools.

I am not sure though that mankind will benefit from it, but that is another story.

You heard it here first people, now that it is predicted it won't happen.

Win a year’s supply of chocolate (no tech knowledge required)

mr.K
Joke

Re: "Everyone loves chocolate"?

I'll grant you that it is a simplification, but I think generalization is wrong. It is a simplification in the way that by everyone it is implied that they only mean humans. It does sound a little harsh to call you non-human, but I mean no offense by it at all. I am sure that you are a lovely...person(?) and all, but we all know that to be human you have to like chocolate. It is simply a part of the human experience, like music.

Note: Those that suffer from some sort of impairment or illness that prevents them from eating chocolate would still enjoy chocolate if they could and thus are still humans.

Second note: This comment is an attempt at humor, another human trait. Please do not get offended by it's content in a serious way. Do however feel free to get offended in an ironic way.

Zippy one-liners, broken promises: Doctor Who on the Orient Express

mr.K
WTF?

Idealism vs pragmatism

Kind of weird that in the last episode the right choice was the ignore the wish of an entire planet and put them all at great risk on the long shot that some unknown giant space birdie wouldn't go full blown toddler on the nearest gravitational well. All because the right choice on TV is always "doing the right thing", like in the moral dilemmas "Could you kill one guy if it was the only way to save a planet." and if you just say no then it will magically work out anyway.* While in this episode the conclusion is: "Sometimes the choices you have are bad ones, and you still have to choose."

It would have made a little sense if at least this was an argument between Clara and the Doctor, but it isn't, he endorsed her choice on the moon. And anyway, I do not think any characters opinion of reality should affect said reality, but in this world it clearly does. Stick to idealism: It works out. Stick to pragmatism: It works out.

Overall a watchable episode though. I just wish the new doctor had some consistency in this new dark persona of his.

*I am so glad TV-writers are not doctors doing triage.

Doctor Who becomes an illogical, unscientific, silly soap opera in Kill The Moon

mr.K
WTF?

Re: looks like no more Who for me... @SuccessCase

"I nearly got it wrong." she said, NO, you did get it wrong! It was a no brainer. All the humans (on the important continents facing the moon) voted kill it*, and it was the right choice. And I was sighing a relief, will this new version of doctor Who come with a once in a while making the right choice in moral dilemmas. Making the right choice are in very limited supply in the TV and movie world, and it frustrates me deeply. "Stop dragging it out and make the call! It is not a choice because there is only one option!", I scream to my TV**. And then the characters demonstrate to my disbelief that there is a choice after all, and to my surprise (not really anymore) the story that unfolds afterwards is not a story to hammer into us that stupendously bad choice the character made had dire consequences and the moral is don't be stupid. No, it hammers into us that we when presented with these "dilemmas" we should make the "bold" (not bold at all, but rather cowardly) choice, put millions or billions*** at other lives at risk and it will all work out.

Back to my sigh of relief when the lights went out on Earth and I thought I finally would have at least once somebody make the right choice. Then she pushes abort. And there is no chaos and destruction, and there is no being yelled at by this new doctor that is a breath of fresh air of not caring. No, there are bunnies and unicorns, but the doctor gets yelled at a bit.

So, yes, SuccessCase, I do not get it either, but people seem to like this. And I would like to understand why. Does anybody here think it was the right choice she made? Care to explain?

*Well, they turned it off in massive grids, so it might have been a government decision.

**In my head at least.

***And in this instance actually against their will. Why did you ask them Clara? You sure are a rotten person, despicable.

X-Men boffins demo nanomagnets to replace transistors

mr.K

Iron man

Iron Man, is that you? I didn't recognize you with that mask.

Europe prepares to INVADE comet: Rosetta landing site chosen

mr.K

Re: The region lies at the top of the comet

You find the bottom and work your way upwards.

Come on guys, if we pull together we can make even more lame suggestions, I am sure.

'Duck face' selfie in SPAAAACE: Rosetta's snap with bird comet

mr.K

Collision vs other explaination

I have trouble with the theory that it is made up of two bodies that fused together after a collision. While I see that it is possible, after all with such low gravity the two bodies could have collided with a speed as low as their combined escape velocity that isn't more than walking pace, and a slow one at that. Possible doesn't equal to likely in my humble opinion though. Wouldn't it be far more likely with the somewhat random orbits these things have that any rocks that collided would hit at far greater speeds?

Anybody enlightened out there that could tell me what I am missing?

Oh, and well done ESA for letting Rosetta take part in popular culture and take picture for her snapgram media.

mr.K

Re: Tricky landing

It isn't, it would rip itself apart if it was. The rotation period is about 13 hours.

Hawking: Higgs boson in a BIG particle punisher could DESTROY UNIVERSE

mr.K
Mushroom

Tonight at eleven

When we do build it, this will be the news that day (prior to turning it on):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMSHvgaUWc8

Also, would this be a Hrung?

Is there life on Mars? Cloud-gazing Curiosity accused of lacking scientific focus

mr.K

Re: Climate change

I did read it, and I still do not see it as clear cut.* The problem with irony is that it is supposed to clear that you usually means the opposite of what you say. This is usually achieved by ensuring that what you are literally saying is beyond what any reasonable person could mean, and also that the recipients know that the sender is a reasonable person.

I have met quite a few people on the Internet, even here, and also a few face to face that could state exactly what "the Axe" said and mean it. (even without my assumption that the last sentence was just poorly drafted)

Anyhow, I'll let my original post stand to make people at ease and the next time they read some wacko's ramblings** they can just say "meh, it is just irony and I won't be fooled like the mr.K fella"

*I blame it partly on my slight fever and that I am not a native English speaker.¤

**Actual wacko

¤This is just an excuse.

mr.K
Pirate

Re: Climate change

Disclaimer: I am assuming that you are not sarcastic or something, and that you didn't mean you need to adjust the data [...] to match your models, but rather the other way around.

I would argue that there are loads of "proper science" that gather data on a phenomena before they venture out in creating theories and models which they then set up experiments to verify or rule out. Actually I would say that is the normal way to do it. After a "that is odd"-moment spending lots of time setting up theories and models when all you have is a single point of observation is a waste of time and can also be counterproductive. Take Darwin and his trips. Not calling his observation, cataloging and note taking in the field, prior to him forming his theory of evolution, for science makes the term a tad narrow for my use of it at least.

Pirate because Darwin probably had to watch out for those.

You are here => Earth is in 'the suburbs' of an immense heaven

mr.K
Thumb Down

Re: Yeah...

I am sorry, but mocking religious beliefs in commentard section of an article about astronomy is as cheap as it gets. If somebody had dragged their religion into it in the first place, maybe, but nobody did except you.

"A small step for man, a giant leap for mankind." is a cool including statement. He could have said some religious thing, he didn't. He could have made in American only, he didn't. It made us in the rest of the world able to say "We have been too the moon." and brought the world a little closer together.

"I see no god." is belittling and served as nothing else as to make me think less of mankind.

Flurry of solar flare-ups sets off cosmic plasma explosion

mr.K
Happy

Re: Thunderbolts Project and the Electric Universe....

I do not think arguments will have any effect here. So...hug?

*huggles*

Major cyber attack hits Norwegian oil industry

mr.K
Headmaster

Re: Nazijonas Snickersmymidget (NSM)

Nasjonal is basically national with a proper spelling, and since we don't split our words into bits and pieces sikkerhetsmyndighet is put together of sikkerhet, which is not far off from security, and myndighet. It is from German mundich and...why do I bother, you lot couldn't even pronounce Eyjafjallajökull when the volcano erupted underneath it.

Brookhaven boffins boggle at baryons

mr.K
Coat

Re: Sounds fascinating...

Connecting this subject to quantum mechanics would be a leap.

Alright, alright, I am going.

Your Bitcoins aren't money – but it is barter, so we'll tax it, ta ... says Australia's taxman

mr.K

Re: The first problem....

But isn't all physical currencies also pretty much untraceable? Actually one of the reasons we still have it around. Digital currencies do make it is easier to scale the amounts up though, I see that, still...

SCORE: Rosetta probe hits orbit of duck-shaped comet

mr.K
Go

Well done

That is all. Just, well done!

Note: I am not sure if the mouse over text on the icon is the right message here, but I like it.

Astounding: We're about to stick a probe in orbit of a COMET

mr.K
Boffin

Re: Why do they never tell you why?

Science mostly. I am kind of tired to have to defend the value of science, but it is such an important issue that I will have to keep doing it. Science that leads directly to a product or benefit is paid for by itself by people buying these products afterwards. However all of todays technology and scientific breakthroughs are a result of science that had no purpose other than the science in itself, and it is too expensive for any company to embark on so we agreed on that we all chip in. Science is about understanding the universe and it's laws. When we constantly expand on that knowledge we pave way for other people to research the final details and make a use of it.

Claiming that all research has to end up with a result we can immediate use is like being a farmer in the stone age refusing to explore beyond the hills around his valley. Because from where he stands it is clear that hills can't be used to grow his crops and thus anything beyond can not possibly be of any use to him.

I would like it is purely due to science, but it is not. It is also about entertainment of sorts. While some people enjoy sport (which is heavily subsidized), I enjoy pictures taken close up from a big rock we discovered in 1969.

mr.K

Re: What is the orbital period of 67P, and can Rosetta's batteries recharge from zero?

My bad, that is what I meant, just the wrong wørds.

mr.K

Re: What is the orbital period of 67P, and can Rosetta's batteries recharge from zero?

The orbital period is quite easily googled and is currently six and a half year. I say currently as this is a comet and their orbits are frequently altered by planets they come to close to, with the gas giants being the usual suspects with their large mass and thus large area of influence. This one had it's orbit changed in 1959 by Jupiter, ten years before it was discovered.

As for if the batteries can be recharged from zero. I have no idea on the battery technology, but lots of batteries break if they are depleted. Which is a problem, you have to leave them with enough charge so any depletion done while left idle won't bring them under a certain threshold. I have not managed to find out if this is a problem with Rosetta, but my guess is that temperature is a bigger problem. Keeping key parts warm while out there in the cold for an extended period can be a problem that they have not seen the benefit in engineering around. Cold is what killed Spirit on Mars in the end.

I recommend NASA Eyes if you want a visual of the orbits:

http://eyes.nasa.gov/download.html

Note: The probes we send out decades ago that is heading out of the solar system is driven by thermonuclear power sources and are kept warm that way.

mr.K

Slightly speculative indeed

Is it even possible for it to burn out completely? ISON passed, or rather it tried, the sun's surface about twice the radius of the sun itself, and even then we had hopes that it could survive. 67p/Spiff-Zogwarg will be at 1.3 AU at its closest. That is one hundred times further out, which if my basic knowledge of astrophysics is correct, means around one ten thousandth of the radiation.

Regardless, I am quite exited over this. They are going to harpoon a comet. Apart from the Apollo 12 rum incident, how often are harpoons launched in space?

NASA tests crazytech flying saucer thruster, could reach Mars in days

mr.K

Re: I love napkin math!

When you turn on your flashlight the batteries releases chemically stored energy. It is believed* that also release of chemical energy results in a loss of mass, but that the amount of mass is so small that we are not able to measure it. I am not sure, but I do not believe that how the energy leaves the flash light matters. Be it via light or thermal conduction to it's surroundings.

*or so I have read on the Internet. Consult Stephen Fry if you are to use this information as anything other than trivia.

'Big data' predicts stock movements, boffins claim

mr.K

semantic topics within this corpus

First, I can not take anybody serious that writes sentences like this: “First, we take a large online corpus, Wikipedia, and use a well-known technique from computational linguistics to identify lists of words constituting semantic topics within this corpus,”

Second, this is yet another one of these prediction methods that are based upon on the assumption that history repeats itself. It doesn't. Yes, there are a few somewhat repeating patterns out there, quite a few in fact. But this is a system with a memory and the last outcome will carry with and ensure that you never have the same set of conditions required for the same outcome.

Third, the funny thing about economics is that it is a man made system, but not a fixed system. The rules change constantly, but also the knowledge of the participants (us) which influence how they behave. This leads to the fact that any new method to describe the system will change the system*. Thus if this method actually worked with any certainty then it would seize to do so as soon as people started to believe it can.

*It is required that the description is known to at least one that will change his behaviour due to it. It is not required that description or method actually has any validity whatsoever.

We sent a probe SIX BILLION km to measure temperature of a COMET doing 135,000 km/h

mr.K

Re: Celsius? @cosymart

Would you look at that, I actually didn't know that. Any chance that you native English speakers could switch them around? It would comply with how we write it in Norwegian and I wouldn't have to adapt.

mr.K

Re: Celsius?

Never contemplated the difference before I have now read a little about and I am not making it fit with what you are saying. It seems that they are just two different names for the same scale. Where centigrade is the old one, centigrade, defined by water freezing and boiling and the new one is defined by that, but has moved the reference point to absolute zero in addition. It is however the same scale, just a new better definition technically giving a small difference. But that can also be said for all other units of measurements that change definition from time to time. The meter is still a meter even though we are not considering a platina staff or the distance between the poles and equator the definition anymore.

Further more as of any measurement you can never make them absolute accurate. Thus the unit is never tied up to the tool you are measuring with. I do not need to time light to measure the meter and I do not a constant volume gas thermometer to measure degrees Celsius. I can use any thermometer.

What am I missing?

Facebook goes down, people dial 911

mr.K

Re: Fines

While some people clearly have a too low threshold for calling emergency numbers*, that is not something that holds for everybody. The last thing they want is for people to contemplate over if their issue is serious enough to call for help. Instead they inform the public on occasion or with repeat offenders they have a talk. I think they will go to pretty long lengths to avoid the headline "Called the police for help, got fined".

*We got separate numbers for police, fire and medical.

BEST BATTERY EVER: All lithium, all the time, plus a dash of carbon nano-stuff

mr.K

35 minutes in now, still nothing.

mr.K

The future I believe. Hang on, let me check, brb.

DAYS from end of life as we know it: Boffins tell of solar storm near-miss

mr.K

Re: Taking out meteors

Speculations follow:

If an object is big enough the atmosphere doesn't really affect it much. Most of it will reach Earth regardless. If you break it up into a few pieces the individual pieces would still be so big that they would reach the surface fairly intact. Thus you have you made your problem worse.

If you break it up into a large number pieces where all the pieces are so small that they burn up before impact or at least have a significantly part torn of then you would have lessened then problem.

mr.K

Re: Preparation

I am not sure actually shutting it down would prevent a lot of the damage. The thing is that we are not talking about an EMP, but induction currents in wire. The longer the wire the bigger the current. This will thus not hit small scale electronics, but long wires. Of course any electronics which are attached to a long wire could get fried. So unplugging things could save them. The problem is that taking down the grid doesn't physically taking it down and cutting it up in pieces. So we could end up with frying the power lines themselves.

I do imagine that it is possible to save transformers and generators though by unplugging them from the power lines, if we are able to do that. And that would be a huge gain. Fixing the power lines would be a small job compared to that of winding new transformers and generators for the power plants and distribution.

Note 1: I am not sure about any of this.

Note 2: Except note 1.

mr.K

By not being there.

The STEREO satellites are orbiting the sun at nearly the Earth's orbit. One is a little bit further out, the other is a little bit further in. This means that they are moving away from Earth in either direction. The idea is to be able to see the sun, and then flares, from different angles at the same time giving us a form of 3D view of the flares. So they survived the blast by not being hit by it due to being far away.

Cave pits, ideal for human bases, FOUND ON MOON

mr.K

Download directly to Earth

Since the moon is tidal locked* to Earth and the maria are all on the side facing Earth, maybe we can just pick one that has line of sight from the bottom to earth?

Spinning SPACE DUCK is comet-chasing Rosetta probe's PREY

mr.K
Black Helicopters

Re: the Age of Miracles & Wonders

I have never understood the claim that we don't have flying cars. We have had them for years. They are called helicopters.

ALIEN BODY FOUND ON MARS: Curiosity rover snaps extraterrestrial

mr.K

Re: Don't mean to be a cynic but...

I am pretty sure Mars' current geology rules that out.

NASA: ALIENS and NEW EARTHS will be ours inside 20 years

mr.K

Re: probability...@technicalBen

First of all you are confusing statistics with mathematics. In mathematics we operate with certainties and there you are quite correct that all that we can know with a sample size of one is that all we actual know is that there is at least one thing to sample and at least one of the entire population has the traits of that sample.

But you see, that is where you have effectively argued that all sampling is meaningless. If there are a thousand black sheep on the field in Scotland all you know is that there is at least one field in Scotland, it has one thousand sheep and they are black on at least one of their sides. And so on. When you operate with certainties you will never know before you have sampled the entire population.

In statistics however you will try to quantify the different uncertainties. In science we can then use this to set certain thresholds to circumvent the problem that you often can only disprove certain things and never prove them. Basically all that we can know is that we are*, which makes it very hard to build a scientific foundation on.

Back to our sampling. I have never claimed and will never claim that if you take one sample that whatever qualities that has is the only one present in the population. To claim that I did by arguing against it is quite frankly something you should consider yourself too good for. What I am saying is that it is highly unlikely that you have found a unique entity in the population**. And this is what I mean with resolution. The bigger the sampling size the better resolution you get on the picture it casts on the entire population.

*Cognito ergo sum

**With regards to certain attributes. All humans are unique when you come down to it, and thus by selecting any individual out of the entire population you will never find any one equal. But that is not what you are after when you look at groups. You have to look at traits that are similar. Like how many legs, skin colour, reads the Register and so on.

mr.K

Re: Helium

Yes, helium are something we kind of jettison into space. Our current usage liberate it prematurely from the crust and in a greater rate than it is replenished. So throw it in with my other exceptions. Still, I think a nearby gas giant is a better place to go than invade Earth to take over natural gas reserves (which is where most of our helium comes from I believe).

mr.K

Re: probability...

Others mention the Drake equation as a reply here, but all that really does is to replace one unknown as a product of unknowns. I am not saying it doesn't have a value, but it's value is with establishing what we need to figure out in order to estimate a number.

However when it comes to answering this question we are left with one observation. There is life on one planet. The question "Are we alone?" actually becomes what are the chance that this one planet we have observed is the only one with life? If you are a visitor in our universe and you pick out one planet from one planetary system from one galaxy and that planet has life, then you can out of a sample size of one say that life is very common. In contradiction to what quite a few people believe in statistics a sample size of one will reveal quite a lot about what you have sampled. The resolution is just quite bad. However, we are not a visitor that pick out a random planet. So that is completely negated by the fact that the one planet we are observing is the one we are on and that the only reason we are observing it is because it has life in the first place.

So we are back at square one. Or not quite. We can look at the probabilities of probabilities. Since we know nothing how probable the different probabilities we have to regard them as random. What is the likelihood of a probability that produces one and just one planet with life at a given point? Well, we are still in the unknown here, but I find it extremely unlikely. To put it another way. Of all the results of the Drake equation the numbers of results that is not one is much much bigger than the results that is one. (The probability of the probability of each of those is not equal, for instance zero is probable bigger than the rest, but you get the idea.)

There is one problem though is that we are assuming one universe here. In a multiverse with infinite outcomes you suddenly make all the probabilities that is near zero valid again since all you need is for one of those universes to produce one instance of life at one point in time.

No, what we need to figure out how life started in the first place. Then we can establish how unlikely that was to happen when the conditions were right.

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