You never know when such research will pay off. The US and EU is scrapping programs now while China, India and a few others try to get into space, you can bet that a lot of cool research will be coming from that side of the globe in the next 30 years.
Imagine if we could launch a probe now with what we have available. We could cheaply launch 10's of much faster probes with incrementally better sensors for the price of the voyager program (~$3B in today's dollars).
As a side related note, I have heard nothing about New Horizons' after-rendezvous plans other than a possible second Kuiper belt flyby, but I'll bet you a million bucks that they've over-engineered this probe to later provide the kind of science that 1970s' Voyager is doing for us still today.
Maybe bombing yes, but a ground force invasion of Iran won't happen. It's too big and Iran's military is too rich and powerful. If we think the US messed up in Iraq and Afghanistan - I mean, what a mess! - those would be nothing compared to the huge disaster that would result from an invasion of Iran.
Really? Iraq's army was routed in weeks, and Afghanistan (which had a rag-tag army) was routed in a couple months with only a few hundred US operators in country, working with a few thousand indigenous troops belonging to that country's warlords. Iraq and Afghanistan are a mess because the political leaders of the time thought everything would work out fine even if they ignored years of pre-invasion occupation planning.
Iran's army wouldn't stand a chance against the US military and a regional coalition. The fact that you say their military is "too rich and powerful" is nothing in the face of U.S. defense spending. That money doesn't just go into a blackhole of contractor pockets. These programs churn out extremely effective weaponry and force multipliers built with a focus on today's battles and the future, and all of Iran's military might wouldn't be able to contain a multi-national invasion spearheaded by the U.S.
The FBI (or rather, a group of people from it) is investigating a small problem, because it looks like the kind of small problem that can become a big problem later. Perhaps it's now a local water pump in Illinois, but next time it will be a coolant pump at a power plant. Logs from this incident may provide more information about an attack that the "real deal", if this is a practice intrusion.
Given that the investigators knowledgeable about water control systems aren't likely to be the investigators knowledgeable about risk-management accounting, human trafficking, civil rights politics, or the latest tactics for successfully negotiating with irrational group-thinking mobs, I think it's perfectly reasonable that they spend their time doing what they know. The federal officials aren't universally-adaptable masters of all things investigative. Each person has a particular set of skills, so it makes sense that they be split up doing many different things.
No. I want these FBI agents working on a cure for cancer, and I want them on it yesterday!
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I wouldn't say that. GPS uses photons (microwave ones) and modern surveying makes extensive use of lasers.
Did you read the original poster a couple lines up? Because here is what he said:
They also ran photons between the sites to check the time, in addition to GPS and portable atomic clocks.
They used fiber optics. The speed down the link is pretty well determined, as is the length. If it confirms the other measurements, then you know there is either a really serious problem with your physics or your other measurements were reliable. Wouldn't work too well by itself but as a check, it's a good idea.
I searched around, and can't find ANY place that says they used a fiber optic link during the experiment for any purpose like this. It would be silly to the extreme if they drilled a several-hundred-mile-long tunnel using and filled it with fiber optics to check the straight-line distance to the other end, because we have DECADES of experience in getting centimeter and sub-centimeter accuracy using all sort of other methods, whether it's differential GPS or special radio beacons at known geo points. The parent and GGP posts are both wrong. They didn't use any photons to check the distance, instead they used other methods that are known to be reliable.
Ummm, no? They didn't just use GPS clocks, they physically carried atomic clocks from one location to the other. Look up the actual science behind what they did, it's pretty interesting. Oh, and relativistic factors of GPS systems is pretty standard learning in basic science. Maybe there was a compounding effect that they missed... but I doubt it. That article is 100% pure speculation. And it's bullshit, quite frankly. Check out this: Ars article for what the team did. (They also ran photons between the sites to check the time, in addition to GPS and portable atomic clocks.)
Huh? How did they send regular photons through hundreds of miles of solid rock? They don't have the equipment to send and receive ultra-long radio wavelengths that could do this.
The US is not encumbered by the the need to observe international treaties.
1) Yes, they most certainly are, in every practical sense.
2) Judging from this and other posts, you're just short of being a moron.
Agnostic.
I don't know either way.
That's supposed to be what "skeptic" stands for. Being a skeptic is never supposed to be a bad thing. I voted skeptic because I don't know either way, either.
The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse time. -- Merrick Furst
