Posts by Martin Budden

Baffled boffins 'closer' to finding origins of extragalactic COSMIC RAYS

Re: Never mind the physics

Nah - it's too cold. All the water is frozen solid so where would you put the laser-toting sharks?

The sharks have frikkin' lasers, so they keep their own swimming pool melted.

Web showered in golden iPhone 5S vid glory - but is it all a DISTRACTION?

Re: Is Glass too new to copy?

iSaw

China confirms plans for first Moon visit later this year

Re: A new space race?

and pay compensation to the families of innocent Afghans and Iraqis that the military killed in error

What about the ones they kill on purpose?

Revealed: HUNGRY frosty Arctic cleft that could eat 2 Grand Canyons

Re: "kilometres of airborne radar data "

More if your handwriting is really small.

Argh! Make it stop!!! Pop-up ad keeps going forever :-(

I have received an email from ops. "We do have ad policies that prohibit pop-ups and are strict on user-initiated overlays/expandables (and this ad breaks those policies) so I'm attempting to block this particular ad." This is great to hear, thanks very much for the feedback guys. I understand that it's impossible to vet every ad served by the ad provider and that sometimes a pop-up ad might sneak through: the important thing is that you have a sensible policy in place and that you are willing to take action to enforce it. Thanks!

Argh! Make it stop!!! Pop-up ad keeps going forever :-(

You have a big video pop-up advert which hides the Science page. It happens to be for an S4 but that's not an issue. It pops up on mouse-over of the smaller ad, and the cross-to-close is directly over the smaller ad: this means that when I close the big pop-up, the mouse is still over the smaller ad, so it pops up again, over and over, ad infinitum (pun intended). This is VERY ANNOYING. Even when I did manage to get the pop-up closed and gone eventually, the soundtrack was still playing, from nowhere, which was also VERY ANNOYING. I had to close the browser tab completely to make it stop.

It's one thing to maintain a necessary revenue stream, it's another thing to make the site unusable.

NASA's nuclear Mars tank REBELS against human control

speedy autonomous lunar rover

I still want to see a speedy autonomous lunar rover. It will be solar powered, and will drive itself around and around the moon, staying on the sunlit side all the time so it can keep going forever (or at least until some essential moving part wears out).

How fast does it need to be? The moon's circumference is 10,921 km at the equator, and the moon's day is 27.321582 of our Earth days, so that gives a straight-line speed of 16.655 km/h. Let's give it a nice round number and say a steady speed of 20 km/h to allow for course deviations to avoid big craters and mountains. That's not very fast. Way back in 2005 the winner of the DARPA Grand Challenge averaged 30.7 km/h.

The rover can be provided in advance with fairly detailed maps of a preferred route around the moon which avoids all the larger obstacles, so all it needs to do itself is keep an eye out for boulders ahead. It can remember where those boulders are for next time around, and optimise the route. It can then start trying alternate routes. In the event that it gets stuck in a dead end and dusk catches up, it can go into sleep mode and then backtrack the next morning.

3D printed guns are for wimps. Meet NASA's 3D printed ROCKET ENGINE

Re: If they can make components in space

Remember to take a *spare* 3D printer into space with you for when the first 3D printer breaks ;-)

It's 3D printers all the way down!

Boffins' keyboard ELECTROCUTES Facebook addicts

all elephants are grey, except the red ones

I once spent three days searching for elephants (in an area with lots of trees and bushes). I couldn't find them anywhere! The problem was that I was looking for large grey things. Eventually I found them, and they were red, which is why I'd missed them before. Turns out that elephants enjoy coating themselves in mud, and the mud there was red mud. Fail icon is for myself for being so bad at finding the world's largest terrestrial animal.

Pulsars: the GPS beacons of the cosmos

Re: And so, to the stars...

Thankyou :-)

p.s. you should trademark "PlaNet"

Re: Why is my prime meridian wobbling?

"To do the same with pulsars, you need to adjust for the wobble of the earth around the sun and the suns local wobble"

The academics have developed software which uses signals from pulsars to calculate the position of the centre of gravity of the solar system. That point doesn't wobble.

Put the same software in a spacecraft and you get the position of the spacecraft. Yes the spacecraft will wobble due to pull from local planets & a slightly wobbling sun, but the whole point is that we know exactly where the spacecraft is, wobbles and all.

Re: And so, to the stars...

Please continue!

Re: Maybe Crewman Daniels was shot backwards in time again?

I had to double-check this was not amanfrommars1.

NASA: Full details on our manned ASTEROID SNATCH mission

multiple spacewalks = lots of air?

6 days of tests, I assume this will mean multiple spacewalks (probably 5), and it looks like the capsule needs to be completely refilled with air after every walk, so they will need to take a lot with them.

p.s. DRAMATIC MUSIC!

Rasp Pi skydive: Ballsy Baumgartner best beware Brit bionic Babbage Bear

He's not taking much equipment up.

Just the bear necessities.

Re: I am shocked - SHOCKED

Don't worry, all teddy-surgery is performed by qualified specialists.

Our Vulture 2 spaceplane sprouts sleek pointy beak

Re: You're really taking it to another level here

Escape velocity doesn't only apply to ballistic trajectories. For example, Luna 1 achieved escape velocity way back in 1959, and its multi-stage launch vehicle did not follow a ballistic trajectory.

BILLION-TONNE BELCH emitted from Sun to hit Earth this weekend

Re: EM radiation?

For anyone who is unsure what twanging about involves, I recommend this educational video (SFW).

Workers at world's largest – and most remote – telescope go on strike

Re: Showing my age

Worse: I misread it as beanies, which would be useful at night in chilly Chile. Then the penny dropped.

Re: Most remote?

Nearest town to ALMA: approx 60 - 70 km away.

Altitude of Hubble: 559 km.

Climate change made sea levels fall in 2010 and 2011

Re: "It's a beautiful illustration of how complicated our climate system is," @lost

Only a little bit around the outside runs off towards the sea. Most Aussie rivers run (when they are not dry) toward the middle because Australia is basically bowl-shaped. The lowest point of the bowl, Lake Eyre, is actually below sea level!

Oz sawbones extract fork from old boy's todger: Gents, start your wincing

Re: Canberra - so good they named it once

Canberra - the name means "the hollow between a woman's breasts". I'm not sure if this fact is in any way relevant to either the story or your post, nevertheless I like to mention it as often as possible.

Re: OW!

The poor old fella couldn't find anyone to spoon with.

Space-walker nearly OPENED HELMET to avoid DROWNING

Re: SPOILERS (@ Justin Stringfellow 21st August 2013 09:54)

But what if you never make errors?

That only applies to Jake.

2013 World Solar Challenge racers start the big reveal

Dear Special Projects Bureau,

Are your going to take some better interwebs with you this time? Last time you had mucho troubles connecting while on the middle beach*.

*For those who aren't aware, Australia has only two beaches: the one around the outside and the one in the middle.

Tiny fireball exoplanet completes one year in 8.5 hours

Re: need some sunblock 5000

My good for hours what?

Re: Search for Earth II

Having the Vogon's what explode Earth I? Presumably you meant a fleet of impossibly huge yellow somethings which hang in the air in much the same way that bricks don't, but you weren't clear.

Bloke straps shed to Ford Zephyr and chases it on bike

Great stuff!

A couple of days ago I reached 71.1 km/h while skiing (yes I'm boasting now, what of it?) and that felt bloody fast*, so I'm impressed by this guy's 128km/h.

*of course I did have the wind in my face, not a shed.

Boffins claim Voyager has already left the Solar System

Re: "Clearly we need more research. Let's build some more Voyagers."

One of the NIAC presentations to NASA was an investigation into (IIRC) using solar sails for this and with a Voyager sized payload they reckoned they could get from Earth to where Voyager is in about 10 years, not 35 to 40 years.

I think I can see an issue with using solar sails: beyond the heliopause they become interstellar-medium sails and the probe gets blown back again. Or way off course. Or somewhere.

Re: They expect a customs barrier?

Yup, that is just friggin' sad.

Worse still, you're not even allowed intimate contact with your significant other while cross-border rambling.

NASA: Earth II may be hiding in unexamined data from injured Kepler

"our twin would provide four transits in four years"

Or as little as three years and a day, if you get lucky with the timing of the first transit.

I'm going to assume that the boffins knew that already, as they are most likely much too clever to make a simple fencepost error.

Re: Three wheels

In that case they are lucky to have got it as far up as they did! Last time I saw footage of a Reliant Robin being launched it didn't end up quite as reliant as intended. Skip to 8:07 for the launch.

Vulture 2 spaceplane flies to the 3D printing press

WTF?

Climate change even worse than you thought: It causes war and murder

The most violent place I've ever been was located on the equator, and yes it was hot. The most relaxed place I've ever been had snowploughs and frozen lakes.

Of course, this is purely anecdotal and therefore isn't worth the paper you're reading it on ;-)

Boffins use lasers to detect radio waves

Can this be retrofitted to radio telescopes?

IANAAstronomer so I have no idea if this trickery is in any way suitable, I'm just curious.

Google scientists rebel over company's support for 'climate-hoax' Senator

Brave

Regardless on your views about AGW/CC, you have to admire their courage for standing up and saying their piece. Biting the hand that feeds IT!

German guardsmen growing mono-boobs from drilling with Nazi-era rifles

Re: Totally missing the point of this important research.

The More You Rub Them, The Bigger They Get

Works elsewhere, too.

Jokes of no more than 2 lines

Why should you zip your fly when visiting Russia? Chernobyl fallout.

Beam me up? Not in the life of this universe

Why should you zip your fly when visiting Russia? Chernobyl fallout.

Re: Heh heh

That's an upload of my brain fsck'ed then. Got metal in my arm, so no MRIs for me:-(

If we want to make a copy of you, we can chop that arm off first, then make the copy using a mirror image of the other arm :-)

Russian cargo ship drops off spacesuit puncture repair kit at the ISS

Re: Metric

El Reg made a huge song and dance about going SI for everything except aircraft altitude and one other thing (I forget what, but it wasn't ISS cargo). It seems El Reg has forgotten what really was one great leap for commentkind. Shame, Reg, shame.

A drone that can walk home

That's a HUGE pile of cocaine.

Clearly this drone will be sent to Columbia to gather intel for the War On Drugs™.

'Wandering Dago' tuck truck ejected from NY race track

Re: In Australia

Australia seems to be a seriously racist place. I have a friend of Sri Lankan origin whose office nickname in Australia is Apu. The fact that no one bitched about "Wog Boy" is not necessarily a good thing.

You have completely failed to understand the Aussie way. Calling him Apu is a term of endearment: it would be an insult to still be calling him Mr <insert real surname here> after working with him for a long time in the office. Aussies call their best mates things like dickhead and wanker and it's taken as a sign of respect.

Taiwanese boffins monitor mastication with Bluetooth tooth

blue?

Looks kind of beige to me.

NASA gets red-hot shots of Sun in action as IRIS goes online

Re: RE. Re. AC on Unclear power

I genuinely do feel sorry for the solar energy adopters who will shortly find out that their $60,000 array is just as vulnerable to CME induced power surges as the power grid.

Don't feel sorry for me, my panels are insured along with the rest of my house. (p.s. they only cost a small fraction of $60,000)

Plus for added points, the majority of grid tied systems won't work without mains so even if their solar setup weathers the storm intact they will need to wait until the mains comes back up before they can do anything.

So I'm no worse off than those without panels? That's not a problem.

What did the Romans ever do for us? Packet switching...

In countries where traditional telephony was in extensive use, there is always a large infra structure of copper wire between exchanges and subscribers, the so called last mile. The replacement of all that wire would be a daunting and expensive task.

That is exactly what we are doing in Australia: replacing the "last 1.6km" of copper with fibre-to-the-home. It's called the NBN (National Broadband Network). Yes it is expensive (although it could have been done much less expensively if former PM John Howard hadn't privatised Telstra, necessitating buy-back at a huge loss). Yes it is daunting, which might explain why Tony Abbott plans to scrap the whole thing if (when) he wins the upcoming election. But if by some miracle Labor manages to hang on by the skin of its teeth, we will (eventually) get a proper fibre network.

IT Crowd thesp eyes giant hot-air-filled FLYING SCROTUM

You really must get an eyeful of...

The Skywhale

Man who pulled gun during chess game surrenders to robot cop

Re: "filesharing"

At no time in no place has a SWAT team been involved with any activity related to filesharing or copyright issues.

Well, actually, there was this one time... clickety

Hankering for a Nobel Prize? EAT MORE CHOCOLATE

Are they deliberately fishing for an Ig Nobel Prize?

Comet ISON seen eructating 300,000km-long methane and CO2 BELCH

If it was on the ecliptic plane rather than passing over the North Pole, wouldn't that make it hit us? Are you sure that's what you want?

p.s. even the Earth doesn't quite follow the plane of the solar system ;-)