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Comment Re: You need three to get a direction: (Score 1) 10

Can you clarify your remark, are we talking detectors as in a site or detectors as in beams?These three sites each have two beams, so with good enough time keeping between them only two sites would be needed for determining direction.

In addition, I had the pleasure of talking with the project lead on the Einstein telescope (next gen gravitational wave detector), who mentioned that the nature of gravitational waves is such that the equilateral triangle design of the Einstein telescope can pinpoint the source.

Submission + - Netherlands approves building of new nuclear reactor for medical isotopes

boner writes: The Dutch Government today approved the construction license for the PALLAS reactor, a new nuclear reactor to create medical isotopes. The PALLAS reactor will replace the 60 year old reactor in Petten which produces about one third of all the medical isotopes used globally. Receiving the building permit is a major milestone as highlighted here.

Comment Hyperspecific tasks in a pristine environment (Score 2) 143

Hyperspecific tasks hint at how they prepare the quantum computer for the calculation. Pristine environment hints at all the effort they are making to keep the quantum computer stable enough to complete that task.

How long will it take before we have enough error correction stability that we can load a task on demand into a quantum computer and get a result before that error correction is overwhelmed? It already takes time today to load a stating state into a computer for most calculations, how is a quantum computer different?

Comment Start with the filesystem (Score 4, Interesting) 283

I use ZFS for my user and data directories. Striped, two-way mirror each for the home (7.25T) and data (3.62T) volumes. These are backed-up continuously via Crashplan/Code42 with a small business plan. As a secondary measure I have a backup-server sitting in the garage to which I send a monthly snapshot. The backup-server retains all monthly snapshot, while my primary machine releases them.

With Crashplan I can go back several months and years, depending on the latest change of layout. It is there primarily for peace of mind on the big disasters, and cheaper than S3 for my data volume.

My backup server has triple mirrored stripes to store all the snapshots from all my machines (11T) and my first ZFS snapshot is from 2009.
All my other machines run rsync continuously against a raspberryPi with a JBOD (3.6T) in my utility closet. The raspberryPi syncs with the ZFS data volume once every 24 hours.

Restoring a file is a chore, but not impossible. I did stop with minute and hourly based snapshots. ZFS provides protection against bitrot and other nastiness, I have just recently has a disk die on me, which I easily replaced.

Comment If only they could code it right... (Score 4, Interesting) 43

Microsoft Teams is the only application I have ever had that draws down the battery of my MacBook Pro while connected to the charger, with the fans spinning in overdrive...

Unconnected to the charger I have about an hour of battery-life on Teams on my 2018 MacBook Pro 13". On Zoom I lose 40% of battery per hour...

Comment Re:Clouds (Score 4, Informative) 43

You need math to calculate the position and track of a satellite relative to your location.
Solar wind can heat the upper atmosphere increasing the drag on satellites hence making them decay more. Satellites need to actively manage their positions to deal with this (and other) effects.

Lightning flashes generally are not recorded by light telescopes because the domes are closed, they do interfere with radio astronomy.

Most observatories (radio and visual) are in population sparse areas and/or high/dry mountains.

No liquid nitrogen telescope was ever ruined by a satellite, tons of images were....

And you can't ignore data for half a second when you are exposing a sensor for 800... the image is tainted. Stacking will help but S/N becomes worse.

Comment Re:Zero real astronomers (Score 2) 43

No real astronomer would be anti-satellite, as long as the numbers are within reason.

Since you are asking, I have a MsC in Astronomy, worked with Westerbork and VLA data, sat on a mountain in Chili for three weeks peering at the skies. Currently own three telescopes (14", 3" and 2"), many digital cameras and 2 CCDs.

And I am completely against these huge constellations being put into orbit without any consideration for the impact on science. At least they should take measures to minimize reflection and interference. I don't have many recent pictures of the night sky that are without satellite trails.

Comment Re:Clouds (Score 5, Informative) 43

Telescopes (both radio and visual) have a reasonable field of view (0.1-1.0x moon), plus a long exposure time (seconds to hours). There would be many encounters during each exposure or observation. A single dish radio telescope has a field of view of several moons, it would be practically impossible to 'turn off' the observation. A visual light telescope has a field of view of fractions of the moon, but the high end, liquid nitrogen cooled sensors cannot easily be 'turned off' either, without introducing vibrations that interfere with observations.

Image stacking is used to combine observations of say 800 seconds into one big exposure. Shorter exposures have poor signal to noise, longer exposures get interference from charged particles and satellite tracks. It is not as simple as you suggest. It is not practically possible to use 64000 one second exposures and expect the same detail as from 80 exposures of 800 seconds when peering deep into the universe.

In addition, the math needed to track tens of thousands of satellites, their intersection path with your field of view, requires a lot of compute power and an up to date catalog of their orbits (which change due to solar winds etc...). What you suggest is highly impractical.

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