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Chris Jacob
@komododave: Is there a young Jane Fonda-ish Barbarella for the ocean? I like the ocean idea, and would prefer to have an eye-candy-ish mascot similar to what we've had for space week.
@drowning in denon_Nick: Oh the Aggie jokes, I've never heard anyone make jokes like that [/sarcasm]
I keep having to log back in every minute or two to comment. It's just started recently, and it might just be Safari 4 beta. I'll check my settings to make sure they're all kosher but I might just have to deal with it.
Personally, I think our ignorance is holding us back when it comes to physics.
Maybe I'm just thinking this out too much, but we have some theories about approaching the speed of light that just don't seem right to me...Again, not a physics major, barely passed physics in high school...
However, some things that kind of stood out to me:
1) Time is relative. We measure time by watching a clock and saying, "Ok, this length of time is a minute, or a second, or a nanosecond, etc." Yet not every clock is exact. Even our atomic clocks that we have aren't 100% accurate. Giz just posted about a new atomic clock that will be accurate over a couple thousand years, but eventually it will be out of sync. So, we can't actually measure speeds accurately, can we?
2) Einstein theorized that the closer we get to the speed of light, the more time slows down. Ok...So...If we measure speed by using time to gauge how long it takes us to move a measured distance, and time slows down as we go faster...How are we sure that we're really approaching 186,000 mi/sec? We can't actually measure that if we're moving faster and faster and time keeps getting slower and slower, right?
Sorry, this probably doesn't make any sense to anyone but me, but it just seems that if we have a finite speed for the speed of light, that it would therefore BE possible to go faster than that finite speed somehow...Otherwise, why are we measuring the speed of light to begin with?
@Kakkoister: Our technological advancement's had a pretty healthy rate over the past century. Needless to say that another hundred years will see great improvements on current technology.
This is exactly what attracted me to the Star Trek, and is my favorite show from the first episode of TOS to the last episode of ENT. I think we should now turn our attention to solving all the Earths problems, to make a good foundation for our effort to reach the stars. Once we get to a level where wars, world hunger and selfdestruction are a foggy memory of the past, we will earn our right to travel among stars. You really got my imagination going with this article
@HiltonJahooby: Energy source. Most of our world's problems could be solved with clean, compact, almost limitless source of energy that we can readily use.
Actually, we can go FASTER than light, we just can't go LIGHT SPEED. So we have to figure out how to go past light speed without going through light speed, also known as a quantum leap.
@Con Seannery '09: Illegal in 1 Giz: It just really annoys me when people reduce the quality of the discourse like this. Posting about ridiculous, nonsensical pseudoscience just makes the kinds of things the OP is talking about even harder to achive. And it has no value other than to inflate the ego of the commenter.
Unless this is some sort of sci-fi reference I'm missing or some sort of legitimate science that is way above my head. In which case I apologize.
@Rohan Singh: we can't go the speed of light because there our mass would be infinite. what the OP is talking about is skipping over that point in time to avoid the impossible so that we can travel past the speed of light.
in response to the great con seannery: perhaps a bounce of some sort. if we could harness some that with enough energy we could "bounce" off of we could achieve that instant acceleration at a point beyond the speed of light.
@Rohan Singh: Perhaps he was speaking of tachyons. That is, a hypothetical particle that travels faster than light.
Tardyons are massive particles, including most all particles you've probably heard about. They have real rest masses and are slower than light particles.
luxons are massless particles, such as photons. These have zero rest mass (both real and imaginary). These particles must always move at the speed of light.
Tachyons Are hypothetical have an imaginary rest mass (think imaginary numbers). These particles would travel at speeds faster than the speed of light.
Special Relativity states that nothing that is moving initially slower than the speed of light can be accelerated to exceed the speed of light. This is not strictly speaking the same as the statement that nothing can travel faster than light.
@Hilo: A side note, but just as with my previous mention of Special Relativity, in which slower than light particles cannot be accelerated to exceed the speed of light, no particle that is initially moving initially FASTER than the speed of light can be decelerated to below light speed.
@Con Seannery '09: Illegal in 1 Giz: i always understood a bounce to result in instant acceleration. ie 0, lightspeed +1. nothing in between. i don't know how to work the deflection in there, though.
@Con Seannery '09: Illegal in 1 Giz: Actually, I think the astronauts, competitive by nature (especially that crop), were very aware of the significance of that first step. Armstrong called it for himself.
@frigg: And you know what I just verified? Comments previously at the bottom of page 1 CAN end up getting shifted to page 2. As of this moment, at the top of this page (page 2) there is a comment from Con Seannery. Well, up until a few minutes ago, that same comment had been at the bottom of page 1. I'm guessing, even though there were, of course, no additional original comments inserted ahead of his, his comment must have shifted as more people replied to original comments.
Bottom line: even if your original comment initially posts at/near the bottom of page 2, there is no guarantee it is going to stay there.
@bosskev: I suppose comments are like life itself: no guarantees, and so easily dispatched from page one celebrity to page two obscurity in a snap. *sigh* And people wonder why I spend so much time in deep space. Get me off this rock, indeed!
Gagarin was not the only early space explorer who was grounded after one flight. Scott Carpenter and Deke Slayton made only one spaceflight each.
I remember Gagarin's flight and the world's reaction to it. I was in the fifth grade.
Sometime circa 1983 I was able to ask Scott Carpenter why the USA was still 20 years behind the Soviets in space. He had no idea what I was talking about till I said "Valentina Tereshkova."
Personally we should quadruple NASA's budget. They are the most high tech "company" on almost every level. They create high tech jobs and very high tech material and construction jobs. Their tech trickles down to everything. The use of high end alloys, carbon fiber, manufacturing technologies, nano tech... They usually employee people in every state and inspire the creative people of the future. There is almost no negative. I know it looks like we are wasting money on the surface but it all trickles down and is a better investment to me that say the military or social programs that prop up lazy non-productive people.
@fastm3driver: horrible idea. what we need to do is to make space a more commercial endeavor. kinda like they are doing now with their outsourcing. not everything needs to be in-house because when corporations are asked to innovate due to a project they are on then they can keep the fruits of that labor if something new is discovered. they in-turn make money off of said fruit and the cycle perpetuates. that is exactly why our pharmaceutical industry is always driving for those new drugs. if you just make NASA, a government agency, bigger -- than you are moving in the wrong direction. A lot of the cool things that have come out of space exploration is because of the partnerships with private firms and i believe we just need to do it some more, but on a larger scale.
so yes i agree more money, but not directly at NASA as it is now.
I ashamed that it would be assumed a man would brag about it-maybe for self-focused people whose egos come before all else. But if I cared for someone enough to engage in intimacy with them, I would never brag about it to someone else. It is a private matter and the feelings of the other person would be highest priority to me.
I just have to speak up for men who have sensitivity and care about others. Perhaps we are rare, but I feel ashamed to be associated with the mentality expressed in this article, which generalizes all men to be like this.
05/12/09
Deep sea ocean tech, submarines, deep sea mining, crazy ships....there is so much to explore!!
05/12/09
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For the record, the ocean is a topic we plan to cover this way. Not sure when yet, but yep, on the list.
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I keep having to log back in every minute or two to comment. It's just started recently, and it might just be Safari 4 beta. I'll check my settings to make sure they're all kosher but I might just have to deal with it.
05/12/09
i have the problem with IE. it just takes me to the top of the page when i hit reply sometimes. very annoying.
05/12/09
05/12/09
05/12/09
read your comment history. Go back to bed.
05/10/09
05/10/09
Maybe I'm just thinking this out too much, but we have some theories about approaching the speed of light that just don't seem right to me...Again, not a physics major, barely passed physics in high school...
However, some things that kind of stood out to me:
1) Time is relative. We measure time by watching a clock and saying, "Ok, this length of time is a minute, or a second, or a nanosecond, etc." Yet not every clock is exact. Even our atomic clocks that we have aren't 100% accurate. Giz just posted about a new atomic clock that will be accurate over a couple thousand years, but eventually it will be out of sync. So, we can't actually measure speeds accurately, can we?
2) Einstein theorized that the closer we get to the speed of light, the more time slows down. Ok...So...If we measure speed by using time to gauge how long it takes us to move a measured distance, and time slows down as we go faster...How are we sure that we're really approaching 186,000 mi/sec? We can't actually measure that if we're moving faster and faster and time keeps getting slower and slower, right?
Sorry, this probably doesn't make any sense to anyone but me, but it just seems that if we have a finite speed for the speed of light, that it would therefore BE possible to go faster than that finite speed somehow...Otherwise, why are we measuring the speed of light to begin with?
05/10/09
Once you know "everything", there's no reason to move forward anymore.
05/10/09
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05/10/09
05/12/09
05/10/09
05/10/09
05/10/09
Unless this is some sort of sci-fi reference I'm missing or some sort of legitimate science that is way above my head. In which case I apologize.
05/10/09
in response to the great con seannery: perhaps a bounce of some sort. if we could harness some that with enough energy we could "bounce" off of we could achieve that instant acceleration at a point beyond the speed of light.
05/10/09
when will the next leap . . . be the leap home
05/10/09
Tardyons are massive particles, including most all particles you've probably heard about. They have real rest masses and are slower than light particles.
luxons are massless particles, such as photons. These have zero rest mass (both real and imaginary). These particles must always move at the speed of light.
Tachyons Are hypothetical have an imaginary rest mass (think imaginary numbers). These particles would travel at speeds faster than the speed of light.
Special Relativity states that nothing that is moving initially slower than the speed of light can be accelerated to exceed the speed of light. This is not strictly speaking the same as the statement that nothing can travel faster than light.
05/10/09
05/10/09
05/11/09
05/09/09
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05/09/09
Buzz Aldrin landed the Eagle, and spoke the first words heard from the moon too!
"Contact Light... Okay, Engine Stop"
05/09/09
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05/09/09
(And, uh, no, that is not me in the picture.)
05/09/09
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05/09/09
Bottom line: even if your original comment initially posts at/near the bottom of page 2, there is no guarantee it is going to stay there.
05/09/09
* sigh *
...at/near the bottom of page 1.
05/09/09
@Con Seannery '09: Illegal in 1 Giz: Sir, yes sir!
05/09/09
I remember Gagarin's flight and the world's reaction to it. I was in the fifth grade.
Sometime circa 1983 I was able to ask Scott Carpenter why the USA was still 20 years behind the Soviets in space. He had no idea what I was talking about till I said "Valentina Tereshkova."
05/09/09
A man whose allegiance
Is ruled by expedience.
Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown.
"Ha, Nazi Schmazi," says Wernher von Braun.
Don't say that he's hypocritical,
Say rather that he's apolitical.
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.
--Tom Lehrer
05/09/09
I know it looks like we are wasting money on the surface but it all trickles down and is a better investment to me that say the military or social programs that prop up lazy non-productive people.
05/09/09
so yes i agree more money, but not directly at NASA as it is now.
05/09/09
05/09/09
and why can't it be some other minority astronaut? what the deuce.
05/09/09
05/10/09
05/09/09
I just have to speak up for men who have sensitivity and care about others. Perhaps we are rare, but I feel ashamed to be associated with the mentality expressed in this article, which generalizes all men to be like this.
05/09/09
05/09/09
05/09/09
05/09/09