On thing is for certain: The people in the video are quite safe from charges of thought crime.

I think we can safely say there was damn little intelligent thought happening there.

You mean Freon as in R-11 or R-12 which increase the ozone hole and were banned? (It's Dupont's trademark. Wonder if they asked first.)

Is the next release gonna be named Thalidomide? Or maybe Dimethyl Mercury?

Oh no! There's a space nutter behind you. Run! Save yourself. I'll try to hold them off.

Take this tinfoil hat. It may keep them from corrupting you telepathically!

"Shimakaze is best fleet girl"

Very nice, but I think I'll vote for Akagi from the anime version.

(Of course, I'm even more of an Arpeggio of Blue Steel fan. Haruna is da bomb. :)

If it shortened all dimensions equally and at the same time everywhere, it would be difficult. But you're looking for a difference in shortening (or lengthening) of one arm of the detector (or the test masses in that arm) relative to the other.

It's a bit waves on the surface of a pond. Sometimes, they expand equally in all directions and form a circular pattern. Sometimes they are different in different directions. This can detect that difference.

Even if the wave is symmetric in all directions, the squeezing/stretching can reach the arms of the detector at different times, just like the points on a circular ripple will reach the short at different times.

Now, of course this is assuming that the waves travel at a certain finite speed (the speed of light as far as we know). If they traveled instantly so the change was everywhere all at once, things would be different.

But, we have pretty solid reasons to believe that they don't travel instantly: That Nobel prize in 1993, I mentioned for example. The amount of energy lost in gravity waves was that of a traveling wave of finite speed, not something that traveled instantly.

True. Its more like neutrino astronomy in that respect. But fewer people know about that (and I couldn't come up with a good car analogy to make it Slashdot compatible. ;) ).

Assuming we detect them, being able to do spectroscopy (frequency measurements) and intensity measurements over extended periods to determine rise and fall times of events should be a powerful tool.

Thanks for pointing it out. My info was a bit old.

Looks like they put components of H2 in storage and are thinking about using it for LIGO-India. I'd heard of the LIGO-India idea, but hadn't known it would use some of Hanford's equipment.

Another detector at a long distance from the others would greatly improve the ability to localize the source. Let's hope they can get it built and not just have it remain a proposal.

There are two more detectors at the Hanford Washington site. A primary one like at Livingston, and a secondary one that's half the length.

Also, there is an European experiment in Italy, called Virgo. It's currently being upgraded to similar sensitivity to the other 3.

When they are all working, it will allow the detection to not only be verified, but the time of the events at each detector will let them triangulate the location the wave originated from.

We're pretty darn sure of gravitational waves, as a Nobel prize was awarded in 1993 for showing that the slowing of a binary pulsar was just the right amount to account for the gravitational waves it would generate.

These detectors will let us do gravitational wave astronomy much like we do with light and radio waves now.

The huge news would be if they get all of them working with their maximum sensitivity and didn't detect anything. That would mean something was very wrong with their assumptions.

In the life sciences, "Pharming" is using genetically engineered animals, like goats, to produce proteins or other substances, (especially those with pharmaceutical applications).

Example: Genetically engineered goats that produce spider silk proteins in their milk that can then be extracted from it.

see: http://www.bbc.com/news/scienc...

(Warning, possible auto-play)

It stems from a very general human response to want those they don't like to die. Even if it means those they love die sooner.

Whenever this subject comes up, there always seem to be comments like: "We can't let this $group-of-bastards escape death!"

That, of course, ignores that $group-of-bastards is usually a small minority compared to the larger number of people who would benefit.

This very argument was made when our now fairly common transplant surgeries were first attempted.

You mean Jagger will "Move like Jagger" again?

(And, I'm having a Freejack flashback. Vacendak wants his new body too.)

Even worse:

Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner in swimsuits, making out.

Now imagine their secret love child.

This is definitely in the "first world problems" class.

You don't expect a rollout to not have minor issues. And that's what this kind of feedback is for. :)