Quote:

Geomol wrote: Yes, of course. As I program for living, I would like to make some money from it. I was thinking about analysis packages for professional astronomers. Programas to handle all the data you get. Maybe visualizing software. Maybe you have some ideas of programs, you would really like to have? What do prof. astronomers need these days? Maybe I could start with some simple programs that fills a hole!?

First of all - work in Unix/Linux if you want to take
advantage of previous work and see what others have
done. There is a lot of stuff on Windows too, but I can't help
you there, i only work in Linux.

Ok, a full analysis package is perhaps a quite daunting job.
The packages use commonly today, such as Midas or IRAF
have been developed within the science community
(open-source) since the beginning of the computer era.
That said, the tendency is that people write a few lines that
accomplishes what they want and then be done with it.
Both these packages have rather archaic and weird
interfaces and are composed by modules from all over the
place. IRAF is certainly like this, I think Midas is similar. I
supply links below so you can see for yourself what I'm
talking about.

Many programs are still running as Fortran-77 versions.
They simply do what they should and people can't be
bothered to go through the hassle of rewriting them in C and
de-bugging them once again (a program creating erroneous
results in a scintific environement? brrr...) I'm sure there
can be work to be found doing the gruntwork of translating
much of this code-base. Universities and Space agencies is
probably a good place to start in that case, but you'll get a
fair share of competition with thesis workers.

Many of the programs are a veritable nightmare
interface-vise. Have you tried to view and manipulate a
spectrum only by writing commands? I have, and you get
used to it, but only because a program is immensly
powerful, doesn't have to mean it should be terrible to use.
Many old-timers are so used to the way things are no
change will appear in that department anytime soon.
Creating a "wrapper interface" that eases the everyday
operations of the common analysis programs might be an
interesting project (it mustn't change the underlying
functionality of course.) The Synthe-IDL environment could
really use such a touch up if you ask me (IDL is a
commercial image manipulation/general purpose interpreted
scripting/programming language. It's powerful but you can
only have twenty commands in the history buffer and
display and zoom in a spectrum is awkward to say the
least.)

Lastly, there might be one-time opportunities to create a
custom-made program for a special department or
worlkgroup to be used for a project. In the case of
universities, this is probably rather rare though, most is
done in-house. But you never know, right? A company
creating spacecraft components might be a safer bet in that
case.

Well, hope that gives you some ideas. Ask if you have any other questions!

IRAF:
http://iraf.noao.edu/iraf-homepage.html
MIDAS:
http://www.eso.org/projects/esomidas/
IDL:
http://www.rsinc.com/idl/index.asp
http://idlastro.gsfc.nasa.gov/homepage.html
Misc astronomy sofware:
http://www.astroweb.com.ar/software.html

.
SlimJim

[quote]
SlimJim wrote:


Is this a fact? I would be interested in a reference, since
I've never heard this mentioned in the debate.

[quote]

heh, to be honest I only remembered about it while I was typing it out my prior post. IIRC, the footage was shown on the BBC documentary the Planets. It showed the Apollo 17 landing from the Luna 21 rover. Unfortunately, try as I could, I only found one website to support this:

http://neptune.spaceports.com/~helmut/exploration99/precursor/4_4_2_racetrack.html

I'll see if I can dig out anymore. But as you can see from
that site, the Luna 21's predefined route brought it very close to the Apollo 17 landing site, and as a matter of fact filmed it .

BTW, sad about your telescope .

@SlimJim


Thanks alot. I'll look into those links.
I have 15 years of UNIX experience as a developer, so it's not too unfamiliar.

Could you give me an email with your email address, if I got futher questions, please? You can send to NiclasenREMOVE@bigfoot.com
(Remove the REMOVE text in that email address.)

Thanks again!

@Geomol

I sent you a memo.
.
SlimJim

Quote:

[...] It showed the Apollo 17 landing from the Luna 21 rover. Unfortunately, try as I could, I only found one website to support this: http://neptune.spaceports.com/~helmut/exploration99/precursor/4_4_2_racetrack.html I'll see if I can dig out anymore. But as you can see from that site, the Luna 21's predefined route brought it very close to the Apollo 17 landing site, and as a matter of fact filmed it .

Hmm, I don't know what the original Luna 21:s trajectory
was, but that site only discusses a theorethical "rover
race" from one landing site to the other. Hardly convincing
Please see if you remember more, it would be
interesting to know more about this.

Quote:

BTW, sad about your telescope .

Thanks. Perhaps I'll go through it in the future and see if I can fix it up somehow. Sigh.
.
SlimJim

@SlimJim

Sorry I was wrong. The imagery from the Lunokhod 2 mission that I remembered was interspread with footage from the Apollo 17 camera which had been left on the surface after the LEM had left the surface.

@Bodie

Aw... too bad. That might have made a nice big hole in
the conspiracy theory otherwise.

Oh well, guess it will solve itself once they start
exploiting the moon in earnest (whenever that might
be).
.
SlimJim

Quote:

The fact that up to half of all suitable stars might have planetary systems is also a boost of the probabilities, even if only a tiny fraction of those planetary bodies even remotely resembled Earth.

The question is: does something has to resemble earth to have life on it? I mean, human beings have adapted themselves to earth, and not the other way around i think. Why would it not be possible that a life form (which may be completely different from what we define as life form, like animals, humans,...) has adapted itself to climates/conditions which have no resemblance at all to earth? Maybe we are a bit narrow minded when it comes to defining life forms, because we will always define them from our own experience?

I believe that one day human beings will build new civilisations on other planets. As you say, i think it's a matter of finding the "cheap" transport. Wasn't there some star from a boysband who wanted to "sponsor" a trip into space not so long ago?

I didn't know that there was an equation to the probability of intelligent life on other planets. But each and every problem can be turned into an equation, i guess. The variables are so hard to determine that this will probably never have any practical meaning?

_________________
A.miga D.emoscene A.rchive

@z5

Quote:

The question is: does something has to resemble earth to have life on it? I mean, human beings have adapted themselves to earth, and not the other way around i think. Why would it not be possible that a life form (which may be completely different from what we define as life form, like animals, humans,...) has adapted itself to climates/conditions which have no resemblance at all to earth? Maybe we are a bit narrow minded when it comes to defining life forms, because we will always define them from our own experience?

Here, "Earth like" means nothing more than
"capable of sustaining liquid water". As it stands,
we cannot imagine a life process that does not use
water. Water is also quite common in the universe,
so the assumption that life would use just the
chemical advantages of water as a base for life
processes is not that far-fetched. Of course you are
right - who knows what nature has in store out
there. Probably things we couldn't even imagine.
But we have to start somewhere. It's so much
guess-work anyway. At any rate, if we want to find
aliens even remotely similar to ourselves (i.e. with
which we might be able to communicate), seaking
those dependant on water, is probably a good start.

Quote:

I didn't know that there was an equation to the probability of intelligent life on other planets. But each and every problem can be turned into an equation, i guess. The variables are so hard to determine that this will probably never have any practical meaning?

No, probably not. But it's fun. And if we at some
point in the future find all the basic equations for
life, it will be interesting to put in the numbers...

There are plenty of webpages devoted to Drake's
equation. Try the numbers yourself:
http://www.seds.org/~rme/drakeeqn.htm

.
SlimJim

I have no real clue about the question your asking but surely dead people keep their mass even after they are dead, it just gets sort of absorbed by the earth when they decompose.

Bringing bones into the equation just makes it more difficult, but think about it, bones take ages to decompose.

I don't know a scientific length of time for bones decomposition, I just know they take must take ages to because of all of the documentarys I've watched on TV where they've dug them up.

_________________
SiG Na TuRe?

@SlimJim

Quote:

SlimJim wrote: @Geomol I sent you a memo. . SlimJim

I haven't received your mail yet. Are you sure, you got my email address correct? I put the word REMOVE in the address to protect from spam, so you have to remove that text first.

Thanks
John.

Quote:

SlimJim wrote: I'll bite. Here goes: "Why should humanity put valuable resources into exploring space?" (I have a very strong opinion and philosophy on this, but what did you expect? I'm interested to hear what others think.) . SlimJim

I think, we're a few, that would like to hear your own opinion and philosophy on this.

I got another topic:

I'm wondering, how long time a trip to the nearest star would take under optimal conditions. And how much energy is needed.

The theoretically best energy source is pure matter/antimatter. The energy from such a mixture can be calculated from Einsteins equation E=mc2.

Now, if we accelerate a spaceship with 1 G for half the trip to the nearest star, then turn the ship around and deaccelerate for the last half part, we will come to a stop, when we reach the star.

The nearest star is 4 1/2 light year away (give or take a few miles).

We also need some matter to throw out behind the spaceship from the energy of the matter/antimatter fuel. The reaction from this will push the ship forward.

And we have to decide on the weight of the spaceship itself. Let's start with a probe of 1 ton (a mini spaceship with instruments, that's all).

The reason for 1 G acceleration is, because I'm thinking of putting people inside the ship at one point.

How do we calculate this?
Also will the speed half way be so high, that we have to take relativistic considerations in the equation?

Over to you.

Quote:

Geomol wrote: @SlimJim Quote: SlimJim wrote: @Geomol I sent you a memo. . SlimJim I haven't received your mail yet. Are you sure, you got my email address correct? I put the word REMOVE in the address to protect from spam, so you have to remove that text first. Thanks John.

I didn't send an e-mail, but a memo. Check you user menu here on Amigaworld (top left corner once you are logged in). You should have a new message waiting.
.
SlimJim

@ Slim

Quote:

This was interesting. Care to elaborate?

Sure.

I should mention first of all that my comment was somewhat misleading. What I should have said is that ice cap melting does not appear to have any net effect on sea level (except at a local level), and that global variations in sea level are mostly due to thermal expansion.

By taking measurements of temperature changes in the upper 500m or so of sea it is possible to work out the expected sea level increases due to thermal expansion. Once these figures are corrected to allow for tectonic plate movements and other factors they almost exactly match observed sea level rises from satellite measurements. The time period we have measurements for is a bit short (about 40 years) but the data is pretty solid.

Have a look at Church, J A [Science 2001, October 26; 294:840-842] and other articles in the same issue for a reasonable overview.

Ice cap and ice sheet (which are importantly different BTW) melting do not raise global sea levels because they are (apparently) counterbalanced by factors such as decreased displacement, plate tipping and increased surface evaporation. They do, of course cause localized rises in sea level (which are typically larger than the 2-3mm/year mean global increase). Most flooding is due to climatic changes caused by cold currents (such as the slow abolition of the Gulf Stream).

Whilst melting ice is important to those of us living in areas such as western Europe, across the board increases in sea level will be far more serious in the longer term. Whether the contribution of melting ice caps will become more important as temperatures increase remains to be seen.

Now I get it!

Of course, a temperature increase of let's say a few degrees in the upper 500m of all the oceans would mean, that all that water expands a little bit. And of course that effect is a lot bigger than the little water from melted ice.

Thanks for explanation.

Quote:

SlimJim wrote: I'll bite. Here goes: "Why should humanity put valuable resources into exploring space?" (I have a very strong opinion and philosophy on this, but what did you expect? I'm interested to hear what others think.) . SlimJim

Sure they said the same about Captain Cook before he discovered Australia and Colombus before he found America

The_Editor exclaimed:Quote:

Yeah ... Wow .. This is all getting heavy ;;

"There's that word again: heavy! I don't understand - is there something wrong with GRAVITY in the Future?" (Doc Emmett Brown . . . Back to the Future)

_________________
-vortexau, who's A1 XE-G4 remains at half-RAM !
A2000HD (from 1991) 060 64Mb PicassoII with OS3.5 . . . still working.

@MasterOfReality

Interesting reading, although I didn't have time to wade through all of it.

.
SlimJim

Quote:

Geomol wrote: I got another topic: I'm wondering, how long time a trip to the nearest star would take under optimal conditions. And how much energy is needed. The theoretically best energy source is pure matter/antimatter. The energy from such a mixture can be calculated from Einsteins equation E=mc2. Now, if we accelerate a spaceship with 1 G for half the trip to the nearest star, then turn the ship around and deaccelerate for the last half part, we will come to a stop, when we reach the star. The nearest star is 4 1/2 light year away (give or take a few miles). We also need some matter to throw out behind the spaceship from the energy of the matter/antimatter fuel. The reaction from this will push the ship forward. And we have to decide on the weight of the spaceship itself. Let's start with a probe of 1 ton (a mini spaceship with instruments, that's all). The reason for 1 G acceleration is, because I'm thinking of putting people inside the ship at one point. How do we calculate this? Also will the speed half way be so high, that we have to take relativistic considerations in the equation? Over to you.

I don't have time to delve deeper into this right now, but a
1G accelreation is actually very much in these circumstances. If
you could uphold such an acceleration, you would most
certainly reach light speed even before coming halfways to
your goal (and start deaccelerating).

But let's assume we tried to do this (could be fun to move
at light speed, right?). In order to move forward, you have
to throw stuff out in the opposite direction you want
to move. Assuming you could get a very effective rocket
capable of an exhaust velocity of, say, 10000 m/s (the
most effective traditional chemical fuels available today is
Liquid hydrogen + Oxygen, capapble of an exhaust velocity
of about 7500m/s). Then you would then have to eject 1 kilo
of exhaust per second in order to keep up the 1G
acceleration (neglecting the fact that the mass of your
rocket decreases every second, as fuel is used up).
Since, even at this great acceleration, the trip to Proxima
Centauri takes some 4 years (including deacceleration but
blatantly, and erroneously, assuming the light barrier pose
no hinder (!) and that no relativistic stuff comes into play),
and if fuel weights like water, it becomes quite
difficult to build a 1000-kilo probe capable of such a
prolonged acceleration...

That's why, with current technology, it's going to take
centuries to travel to the next star. Gravity has to be
supplied by something else, like rotation.
.
SlimJim