* Posts by Martin Penny

6 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Aug 2008

New SI prefixes clear the way for quettabytes of storage

Martin Penny

Re: Ronna and ronto

Thank you.

I now have Spitting Image's "The Chicken Song" running through my head.

Room-temperature brown dwarf spied just 9 light-years off

Martin Penny
Boffin

Re: Can anyone enlighten me?

Size, and whether or not hydrogen fusion occurs within it.

Taking some figures from our favourite on-line encyclopaedia, a stellar body needs to have a mass of approximately 8% of that of our Sun for the core pressure and temperature to get high enough for gravity-induced hydrogen fusion to occur; this also tends to "burn" lithium as well.

However, the mass of a sub-stellar body may yet be high enough for other forms of fusion to occur, using "heavy" isotopes of hydrogen - primarily deuterium (hydrogen-2) - and also possibly "burning" lithium, usually when the it is younger and hotter (from gravitation condensation/contraction).

If anyone can correct any mistakes I've made, please do so! :)

BOFH: Lock shock

Martin Penny
Alert

Re: Sad, really

I'm sure that's part of Simon's "Standard Operating Procedure" ...

Holy f**k, Microsoft covers up ‘undesired’ words

Martin Penny
Coat

Verbal Morality?

"You are fined one credit for a violation of the Verbal Morality Statute."

Hmm...

45th Mersenne prime discovered (possibly)

Martin Penny
Coat

Primes?

Erm, sorry to be utterly anal and pedantic, but I'm sure that 15 and 63 aren't prime, being 3*5 and 7*9 (or 7*3*3) repectively?

Mine's the one with the pockect calculator in (guess where?) the pocket.

--Martin

Martin Penny

Primes?

Oopsie - should have read the article a bit more closely first; the it clearly differentiates between "Mersene numbers" and "Mersene primes".

Shuffles away in embarrasement...

--Martin