Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
NASA

Cassini's Elaborate Orbital Mechanics 116

Posted by kdawson from the tour-engine dept.
jamie found an article at the NY Times about the extreme orbital mechanics gyrations required to extend the Cassini mission at Saturn by seven more years. Here's a graphic of the mission extension, which NASA took two years to arrive at. "The plans are for Cassini to keep working for seven more years, but it currently has only 22 percent of the maneuvering propellant it had when it started. Figuring out how to more than double the duration of the mission with less than a quarter of the fuel is hard. Cassini's orbital mechanics present an astonishingly complex exercise in Keplerian physics and geometry. The enormous array of science objectives and targets — moons, rings, Saturn itself — makes it one of the most complex missions ever flown. ... 'Without Titan,' Mr. Seal [Cassini's mission planning supervisor] said, 'we would go into one orbit around Saturn and be stuck there.' Thus Titan, in the argot of orbital mechanics, is Cassini's 'tour engine.' [T]he final 'reference trajectory' ... now includes 56 passes over Titan, 155 orbits of Saturn in different inclinations, 12 flybys of Enceladus, 5 flybys of other large moons — and final destruction."
Education

Stand and Deliver Teacher Jaime Escalante Dies 389

Posted by timothy from the national-hero dept.
DesScorp writes "Jaime Escalante, the math teacher portrayed in the hit '80s movie Stand and Deliver, has died of cancer at age 79. Escalante is legendary for creating the advanced math 'pipeline' program at Garfield High in East Los Angeles in the '70s and '80s, an area populated mostly by poorer Hispanic families. Escalante's students eventually outpaced even richer schools in advanced placement tests for calculus. Escalante refused to accept excuses from his students or community about why they couldn't succeed, and demanded a standard of excellence from them, defying the notion that poor Hispanic kids just weren't capable of advanced work. While Escalante became a celebrity because of the hit movie about his efforts, jealousy from other teachers ... as well as red tape from teacher's unions and the public school bureaucracy, resulted in Escalante and his hand-picked teachers leaving Garfield. Since his departure, Garfield has never replicated Escalante's success with math students, and Reason Magazine reported on the shameful way in which others tore down what Escalante and his teachers worked so hard to build."
Moon

NASA Estimates 600 Million Metric Tons of Water Ice At Moon's North Pole 271

Posted by Soulskill from the no-sign-of-moon-santa dept.
After analyzing data from a radar device aboard last year's Indian Chandrayaan-1 mission to the Moon, NASA scientists have found what they estimate to be 600 million metric tons of water ice in craters around the Moon's north pole. "Numerous craters near the poles of the Moon have interiors that are in permanent sun shadow. These areas are very cold and water ice is stable there essentially indefinitely. Fresh craters show high degrees of surface roughness (high circular polarization ratio) both inside and outside the crater rim, caused by sharp rocks and block fields that are distributed over the entire crater area. However, Mini-SAR has found craters near the north pole that have high CPR inside, but not outside their rims. This relation suggests that the high CPR is not caused by roughness, but by some material that is restricted within the interiors of these craters. We interpret this relation as consistent with water ice present in these craters. The ice must be relatively pure and at least a couple of meters thick to give this signature."
Science

Beliefs Conform To Cultural Identities 629

Posted by samzenpus from the I-know-what-I-know dept.
DallasMay writes "This article describes an experiment that demonstrates that people don't put as much weight on facts as they do their own belief about how the world is supposed to work. From the article: 'In one experiment, Braman queried subjects about something unfamiliar to them: nanotechnology — new research into tiny, molecule-sized objects that could lead to novel products. "These two groups start to polarize as soon as you start to describe some of the potential benefits and harms," Braman says. The individualists tended to like nanotechnology. The communitarians generally viewed it as dangerous. Both groups made their decisions based on the same information. "It doesn't matter whether you show them negative or positive information, they reject the information that is contrary to what they would like to believe, and they glom onto the positive information," Braman says.'"
PC Games (Games)

Civilization V Announced For This Fall 326

Posted by Soulskill from the more-cow-to-be-cashed dept.
sopssa writes "2K Games announced today that they will be releasing Civilization V in the fall. For the first time in the series, the square tiles will be changed to hexes, which 2K Games says provides 'deeper strategy' and 'more realistic gameplay.' Civilization V will also include a new graphics engine, new combat system including ranged bombardment, multiplayer and good support for the modding community. 'Each new version of Civilization presents exciting challenges for our team. Thankfully, ideas on how to bring new and fun experiences to Civ players never seem to stop flowing. From fully animated leaders and realistic landscapes, new combat tactics, expanded diplomacy and shared mods, we're excited for players to see the new vision our team at Firaxis has brought to the series,' Sid Meier said. In addition to Civilization V, the Facebook-based Civilization Network will also be released during 2010."

Comment The new V just doesn't cut it (yet!) (Score 1) 708

by TrevorB (#30035830) Attached to: Sci-Fi Shows and Movies Should Stop...

I'm sorely disappoint with the V remake. Perhaps it will improve over the next several episodes, but I'm not hopeful.

Yes, the original V was cheesy and unplausible, V: The Final Conflict had the worst Deus Ex Machina ending of all time, and the TV series sucked. However the original 2 part series had a wonderful charm that's been lacking in many new shows. The worst part is the new V removes many of the great elements in the original.

SPOILERS AHEAD

The worst problem with the new V is the removal of the scientists. Scientists are the protagonists of the 1980's V, quickly villainized and hunted down by their own people. They also save the day and drive the visitors away from Earth. Yes, it's a hamfisted analogy to what Germany did to the Jews in the 1930's, but it worked so well. In the new series so far, other than being obsessive about their image, hiding the fact that they're lizards, and recruiting youth into groups (not implicitly a bad thing in and of itself), what are the visitors really doing wrong?

The new V attempts to take the line and play analogies to the crap humanity has had to deal with in the past 10 years. The original V plays analogies to what humanity had to deal with in the 1930's. As bad as you dislike terrorism and human turmoil, and how bad things have been over the last 10 years, they don't hold a damned candle to how awful things were in the 1930's. It doesn't make as compelling a story.

And finally, (and this may be due to a rushed plot) the new V gives too much hope too early. In the old V the existence of a fifth column wasn't revealed until well after the viewers hope had been totally drained, and it became obvious that simple resistance was futile. In the new V everything is pre-packaged.. you know (or at least you think you do) how things are going to turn out.

I've not totally given up hope. I was a massive BSG 2.0 skeptic until I watched the pilot, and I was hooked until the end. It is possible to re-imagine a sci-fi series to tackle the issues of the day. This new V just isn't compelling enough for me yet.
Music

Carl Sagan Sings 183

Posted by kdawson from the billions-and dept.
gijoel writes "Someone with too much time on their hands and access to Auto-Tune has taken clips from Carl Sagan's Cosmos series to make this fantastic song. Watch for the Stephen Hawking cameo."
Encryption

Alan Turing Gets an Apology From Prime Minister Brown 576

Posted by timothy from the mitigation-is-tricky-50-years-later dept.
99luftballon writes "The British government has officially apologized for the treatment of Alan Turing in the post war era. An online petition got more than enough signatures to force an official statement and Prime Minister Gordon Brown has issued a lengthy apology. 'Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better.'"
Space

Kepler Mission Could Detect Exomoons 64

Posted by Soulskill from the that's-no-exomoon-hurrrr dept.
Lord Northern writes "According to several news sources, NASA's Kepler mission is said to be able to detect habitable moons orbiting planets in other star systems. Kepler is a space telescope designed to detect exoplanets. Its mission will have it orbiting the Sun for 3.5 years, after which we'll be able to tell if any of our neighboring stars actually have planetary systems around them. However, apparently we will be able to detect not only exoplanets, but also exomoons orbiting those exoplanets. The Kepler team came to that conclusion after running a computer simulation which found that the telescope was sensitive enough to detect the gravitational pull of an orbiting moon (PDF). This means that the data expected by the end of the mission is going to be very rich, and it is said that moons as small as 0.2 times the mass of earth could be detected. Further details about the Kepler mission are available from NASA."
Government

Alan Turing Apology Campaign Grows 653

Posted by CmdrTaco from the he-only-invented-modern-computer-science dept.
chrb writes "Several British news sources have recently reported on the growing campaign that calls for an apology to Alan Turing for his persecution by the British government. The petition to the Prime Minister was started by John Graham-Cumming, who has also written to the Queen requesting a Knighthood for Turing, but admits that a pardon is 'unlikely,' saying, 'The most important thing to me is that people hear about Alan Turing and realize his incredible impact on the modern world, and how terrible the impact of prejudice was on him.'"

Comment Re:Purpose (Score 3, Interesting) 252

by TrevorB (#29230053) Attached to: Slackware 13.0 Released

I loved Slackware for many years, from 1995 to 2008, when I had 4 Slack machines in the house. However, it was the upgrading itself that finally turned me. I found it nigh impossible to actually "upgrade" a pre-existing configured system in use without critically damaging libraries and needing to reinstall from scratch, and worse, reconfigure and fiddle for about 10 hours to get everything working again the way I liked it. In my 20s I had that kind of energy and enthusiasm. Not any longer.

Yes, I have switched to Ubuntu/Mythbuntu, but have brought all my Slackware knowledge with me. Debian package management is divine. The switch has turned out to be the best of both worlds, Ubuntu's polish with my Slackware config skills, with the result of a brilliantly tuned machine that's nigh hassle free.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Gotcha, you snot-necked weenies!" -- Post Bros. Comics

Close