tommy_teardrop - Slashdot User

Comment Interesting, but not surprising (Score 5, Informative) 33

by tommy_teardrop on Friday November 27, 2009 @08:56PM (#30251388) Attached to: Cassini Captures Saturn's Northern Lights

ISS videos of the visible aurora have been doing the rounds internally at Cassini for a few months now, and they really are spectacular, but a height of 1200km is hardly a surprise new value, given that it falls in the exact range expected when compared with observations of the UV aurora made by the Hubble Space Telescope:

Altitude of Saturn's aurora and its implications for the characteristic energy of precipitated electrons

Irrelevant Scientific Research Honored 93

Posted by samzenpus on Friday October 03, 2008 @03:54PM from the wierd-science dept.

More than 1,000 people attended this year's Ig Nobel awards, a light-hearted alternative to the Nobel Prizes. Scientists who unlocked the inner secrets of dog fleas, crisps and tangled string swept the show. Handing out awards was William Lipscomb, the 1976 Nobel laureate for chemistry, also doubling Thursday, at the age of 89, as the hero in the "Win-a-Date-With-a-Nobel-Laureate Contest." The prize itself is a plaque that reads, "This Ig Nobel Prize is awarded in the year 2008 to an Ig Nobel Prize Winner, in recognition of the Ig Nobel Prize Winners' Ig Nobel Prize winning achievement." At last I can submit my paper, "Everything is Really Wet, Even Dry Stuff." for peer review.

Comment Re:My question is (Score 2, Interesting) 1275

by tommy_teardrop on Wednesday August 20, 2008 @11:05AM (#24674091) Attached to: Hacker Uncovers Chinese Olympic Fraud

Is it a world-level scandal? Really? Because I, in the UK, had no idea, so I looked on the BBC website and there's no mention of it, even on the gymnastics page - so I searched for He Kexin and again the BBC site says nothing.

Given that we're a neutral country here, in that winning a bronze in gymnastics was big news for us, this suggests that it's not really a huge worldwide scandal, rather annoyance from the countries who could have won.

Maybe China are in the wrong, but it hasn't yet, as some here are suggesting, dragged the name of the IOC through the mud - and it certainly isn't as big a news story as those athletes who have positive drug tests.

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