Humor Random Comments Thread

[Notebook]

Thank you for those words Matias, much appreciated. UK benefitted from many events during the Industrial Revolution, technology, materials, education. Not least the Victorian age, when science and engineering were celebrated.
The railways also benefitted from geography, Coal, Iron were all locally available. A small island mostly North/South, not much East/West, so a lot of downhill routes...

 

[jedidia]

If I get the buzz right, this paper suggests that we had to make up dark matter because we treated the universe as a spherical cow in a vacuum, and it's not required if you consider the actual shape of the cow:

https://academic.oup.com/mnrasl/article/537/1/L55/7926647?login=false

It's all completely above my paygrade, obviously, so I can't really recommend or not recommend the paper, other than that I had a gut feeling for quite some time that there must be a more reasonable explanation than "magic invisible pixy dust"...

 

[Linguofreak]

If I get the buzz right, this paper suggests that we had to make up dark matter because we treated the universe as a spherical cow in a vacuum, and it's not required if you consider the actual shape of the cow:

https://academic.oup.com/mnrasl/article/537/1/L55/7926647?login=false

It's all completely above my paygrade, obviously, so I can't really recommend or not recommend the paper, other than that I had a gut feeling for quite some time that there must be a more reasonable explanation than "magic invisible pixy dust"...

OTOH, in the GR/QG literature, many of the things you can do to make gravity deviate from GR (such as introducing a massive graviton) introduce some kind of cosmological constant term (at least in semiclassical approximations, given that QG itself is a magnetically intractable problem at the moment), so it doesn't really require magic pixie dust, just that quantum corrections to GR introduce one of a fairly broad range of features that could cause such an effect.

Also, recall that just the ground state energy of the standard model, in a semi-classical approximation, introduces a cosmological constant that is much larger than putatively observed if we assume that it gravitates.

 

[n72.75]

If I get the buzz right, this paper suggests that we had to make up dark matter because we treated the universe as a spherical cow in a vacuum, and it's not required if you consider the actual shape of the cow:

https://academic.oup.com/mnrasl/article/537/1/L55/7926647?login=false

It's all completely above my paygrade, obviously, so I can't really recommend or not recommend the paper, other than that I had a gut feeling for quite some time that there must be a more reasonable explanation than "magic invisible pixy dust"...

The name "Dark Matter" is a confusing the name, because it sounds like "mysterious dark stuff".

Dark Matter is not some mysterious dark stuff, that is there to balance an equation. It goes a bit deeper.

All "Dark Matter/Energy" is, is: "The solution to the observations".

What we observe, looks exactly like what we'd expect, if there were a bunch of mass that we had no way to observe. But, there is no implication that yet-unobserved mass is the solution. To quote Angela Collier, "Dark Matter is not a Theory". It's a problem.

 

[Matias Saibene]

Stroustrup: How many errors due uninitialized variables you want?
C++: YES!

 

[Matias Saibene]

 

[Matias Saibene]

And today using Valgrind debugger, I stumbled upon this comical error message:

==89687==
==89687==
==89687== More than 1000 different errors detected.  I'm not reporting any more.
==89687== Final error counts will be inaccurate.  Go fix your program!
==89687== Rerun with --error-limit=no to disable this cutoff.  Note
==89687== that errors may occur in your program without prior warning from
==89687== Valgrind, because errors are no longer being displayed.

 

[Fabri91]

Today I went on the Internet, and I found this: I had a vague memory of having a sort of CD Encyclopedia by Rizzoli, an Italian publisher, as a kid, but sadly that CD most likely got thrown out many years ago when tidying up.

But the Internet Archive exists, and there I found this, which is is in Spanish but seemed oddly familiar.

A download and a relatively quick setup of a Windows 2000 VM later, necessary because the installer itself is 16 bits:



The predecessor of Orbiter:


And of KSP:

 

[Matias Saibene]

Today I went on the Internet, and I found this: I had a vague memory of having a sort of CD Encyclopedia by Rizzoli, an Italian publisher, as a kid, but sadly that CD most likely got thrown out many years ago when tidying up.

But the Internet Archive exists, and there I found this, which is is in Spanish but seemed oddly familiar.

A download and a relatively quick setup of a Windows 2000 VM later, necessary because the installer itself is 16 bits:
View attachment 41747View attachment 41748
View attachment 41749

The predecessor of Orbiter:
View attachment 41750

And of KSP:
View attachment 41751View attachment 41752

It reminds me of Encarta 99 Encyclopedia.

 

[MaxBuzz]

"ЭнтероМикс" - Cancer drug tested

Вакцинотерапия - ФГБУ «НМИЦ радиологии» Минздрава России

Вакцинотерапия - Развитие отечественных технологий в борьбе с онкологическими заболеваниями – это наш стратегический приоритет. И работа над созданием лекарственных ФГБУ «НМИЦ радиологии» Минздрава России

new.nmicr.ru

Russia has free medicine, so it will be given to patients for free

 

[jedidia]

Is there some kind of official shorthand for "time until main engine burn"? Kind of like we have "L minus" for launch. An acronym for just the event without explicitly referring to time would be fine too, like an opposite of MECO?

 

[Urwumpe]

Is there some kind of official shorthand for "time until main engine burn"? Kind of like we have "L minus" for launch. An acronym for just the event without explicitly referring to time would be fine too, like an opposite of MECO?

Depends on the spacecraft. The Space Shuttle used "TIG" as "Time of ignition" for maneuvers, that should be generic enough for you, don't you agree?

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Is there some kind of official shorthand for "time until main engine burn"? Kind of like we have "L minus" for launch. An acronym for just the event without explicitly referring to time would be fine too, like an opposite of MECO?

In Apollo I think they just determined MET for the various burns, given TLAs like TLI, LOI, TEI, etc..

 

[Urwumpe]

In Apollo I think they just determined MET for the various burns, given TLAs like TLI, LOI, TEI, etc..

Small nitpicking: Apollo still used GET, not yet MET. About one second difference, otherwise similar

 

[jedidia]

Depends on the spacecraft. The Space Shuttle used "TIG" as "Time of ignition" for maneuvers, that should be generic enough for you, don't you agree?

Hmmm, yes, that might work. I just need something short with some flavour as a table column heading (it's got a tooltip, so understanding will hopefully not be a problem). TIG would vibe nicely with the TOF column right next to it... (Time of Flight).

 

[DaveS]

Is there some kind of official shorthand for "time until main engine burn"? Kind of like we have "L minus" for launch. An acronym for just the event without explicitly referring to time would be fine too, like an opposite of MECO?

NASA uses the term T_GO for Time to Go, at least during the burns.

 

[DaveS]

NASA uses the term T_GO for Time to Go, at least during the burns.

During ascent, the term TMECO was used but that was not a countdown timer but rather an indicator of when guidance predicted MECO would be at. It being stable for the first few seconds of second stage ascent indicated that the guidance had converged on a solution and was good to the crew and there was no need to take manual control and fly the ascent according to the cue cards.

 

[steph]

It's aliiive. Now I'll have to decide between floppy disk and casettes for Orbiter. I guess it depends on the number of truckloads

 

[Urwumpe]

It's aliiive. Now I'll have to decide between floppy disk and casettes for Orbiter. I guess it depends on the number of truckloads

Use no textures and things might actually fit on a single 5.25"..... but where can you buy 5.25" today? Even the USAF does no longer use 8" anymore....

 

[Arvil]

Might try early versions of Orbiter, available in the repository back to 2001.