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Space

Happy Birthday Hubble 107

Posted by timothy from the and-many-more dept.
NeoCode writes: "It's been 11 years already and the stats are mind boggling. Hubble is celebrating its 11th birthday and it sent another beautiful image. Stories here (CNN) and here (Space). A lot of these images have been called "space-art". The image bank can be found here."
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Happy Birthday Hubble More

Happy Birthday Hubble

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  • You seem to be very angry with religion. - Don't take it so personally

    That's fine, as long as religion, and the people driven by it, quit trying to tell other people how to run their lives.


    ...phil

  • Only when we've restored the morality of the American people, should we entertain the idea of spending our money on peering into the heavens.

    When somebody talks about "restoring morality", it's usually to a state that they personally have in mind; screw what anybody else thinks.

    Maybe Congress will start to repair the damage that Hubble has done in these eleven years now.

    Damage? What damage has Hubble done? Shown that there's more to the universe than contained in the bible? From where I sit, that's a good thing.


    ...phil

  • What if light slowed down away from the earth?

    What if monkeys flew out of my butt? If you can get away from the earth and test this presumption, that would be one thing.

    As it turns out, this proposal is testable. The speed of light is controlled by two fundamental variables - the permissivity and permittability of free space (I think I've got these names right). These variables control other things as well, such as the binding energy between electrons and the nucleus of an atom. We can measure that binding energy by looking at atomic absorption and emission lines in spectra of far-off stars. Those lines are the same as we see on earth, therefore we conclude that the fundamental variables have the same value there as here, therefore we can conclude the speed of light is the same there as here.

    Therefore we conclude the objection about a varying speed of light is bogus and can be discarded, along with all the predictions it makes.


    ...phil

  • This means that astronomers, from light years away, could tell if a planet had liquid water, oxygen, nitrogen, methane, sulfur, whatever. It is, however, highly unlikely that such a telescope could see lights at night. For one thing, it's not a given that any species would even NEED light

    While they couldn't see light from some alien species. By determining what chemicals make up the atmosphere, and possibly even what proportions those elements are in scientists might be able to determine whether life is present. This is because the atmosphere of a planet with life is dynamically stable. Meaning that if all life disappeared instantly the atmosphere's composition would not stay the same.

    For example the oxygen in our atmosphere without life would disappear by reacting with elements in the earth's crust, if life were not constantly replenshing the oxygen supply. So, a dynamically stable atmospheric composition would indicate the possibility of life.

    Dastardly
  • 48 hours of exposure of one piece of sky; try doing that with a ground based telescope
    Uh, there's no reason you can't do that from the ground. But the result will be less useful because you're fighting much brighter skies and the image will be blurred by the atmosphere ("seeing").

  • Both HST and ground-based "long exposures" are the result of adding shorter numerous shorter exposures. This is necessary because you don't want to fill up your pixels with sky counts, and also because cosmic rays will cause hot spots that you want to eliminate by not including CR-zapped pixels when you add up the short exposures. See the observing log for the Hubble Deep Field [stsci.edu]; the Texp field gives the individual exposure time in seconds. All of the exposures in a given filter (F300W, F450W, F606W, F814W) were then added to give the "long exposure" image. Calibration data (bias and dark frames) were interespersed with the science exposures.

    On a similar note, see the scheduling constraints [stsci.edu] for the various filters.

    We routinely take 1800 second exposures of a field over a span of months or years until we have 8 hours or more of total exposure.

  • Yes, I cited both sky brightness and seeing in my original post as the reasons you do HDF from space. My point was just that long integrations are just as possible from the ground.
  • 6 terabytes worth of info is certainly a lot of shit to store. I wonder whats NASA using for storage, certainly isn't a Netapp.

    Maybe they went dumpster diving near my townhouse and found all those 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 floppies I threw away a couple weeks ago...several wine-crate sized boxes full...

  • While using adaptive optics helps reduce the effects of the atmosphere, it's still not going to completely negate the effects of water vapor, dust and pollution particles.

    Remember, the Next Generation Space Telescope will operate at the same altitude as Hubble--350 to 400 miles off the ground, which eliminates the atmospheric effects from the particles I mentioned above. For example, could you have been able to get those astonishing pictures from the Eagle Nebula from ground-based telescopes? I don't think so. :-) And only Hubble could see the numerous galaxies at a supposedly dark part of the sky that ground-based observers noted.

  • Re:The largest waste of my money (Score:3)

    by RayChuang ( 10181 ) on Wednesday April 25, 2001 @06:52AM (#266921)
    If I could moderate I'd mod you down to troll status. :-)

    The thing about Hubble--epecially since COSTAR was installed--is that it offers extremely sharp pictures you'll never see on a ground-based telescope, even with the new telescopes going up at Mauna Kea in Hawaii and the European Southern Observatory in Chile.

    The reason is simple: no atmospheric interference. Even at the high altitudes of the ground observatories I mentioned, you still have a lot of atmosphere to contend with.

    Why do you think both NASA and ESA are on a fairly fast track to build more powerful space telescopes that will be launched starting late this decade?
  • Let's take the scientific method and attack this problem.

    Assume for the moment that "91 degrees" is right, and the universe was created 6000 years ago. God created the universe with certains laws and principles. This is easily seen by way of experiment in physics, chemistry, any experimental science. Even the Bible mentions things like this.

    So, as rational beings, we have the capability to explore these laws, figure out the rules by which the universe is put together. Isn't this what science is all about?

    So if the Horsehead nebula is really an illusion, how is that illusion produced? What is it that's causing photons to be collected in a certain pattern on the receptors of the Hubble Telescope?

    It's an appropriate question for science to answer, since we can make measurements, compare them with other measurements, etc. The question before us is not the age of the universe, but one of observables, tested through rigorous experiment.

    .....

    Believe it or not, the majority of scientists believe in God. A great number of scientists are Christian as well, and believe in the New Testament of the Bible. I happen to be one of those scientists.

    For me, belief in Jesus and God enhances my exploration of science. In fact, things like the wonders that NASA discovers and publishes merely strengthen my faith.

    -Sean

  • Moderators haven't had their coffee yet?
  • The Hubble is by far the most powerful telescope advance in the history of astronomical observations. And your estimate of "not only did it cost billions of dollars before it was even launched" is just plain wrong. While expensive, it cost no more than the Palomar observatory cost in constant dollars. It's operation costs are very reasonable and any astronomer who has ever seen pictures from it will inform you that it is the best investment we could have made. While Hubble initially did initially have a problem with its focus, it was still working and the array of instruments on board allowed observations to be made continuously.
    The Hubble has been an incredible success, is an exemplar of government sponsored science at reasonable cost.
  • 2005, NASA shows Hubble's last blurry picture, in which an alien wearing a red sweatshirt is approaching the telescope.

    Only moments later, contact with the Hubble is lost...
  • Ever caught a cold? I'll even bet you've had two colds in your life. There ya go, evolution in the works.

    The mutation of viruses is NOT the same as the evolution of complex organisms, like eyes! How can one mutation give you an eye? It can't--thousands upon thousands of mutations are needed, but they cannot happen in one generation, or even in a hundred! Therefore, how can an eye ever evolve?

    Furthermore, there is a difference between mutations in a species and evolution into a distinct species. The latter process has NEVER been observed, and is a "problem" evolutionists have to gloss over to construct the grand edifice of evolutionary theory.

    Until these processes are proven (or even proven possible), we must continute to regard evolution as speculation instead of presenting it as fact in textbooks, in my humble opinion.

  • It's thanks to your f**king religious kind that society it 500 years behind where it should be.

    What kind of society do you want to live in? One completely atheistic and amoral? One without even the residual values of contemporary America?

    blind faith without reason is nothing

    You reject Einstein, who said that science without faith is blind. Moreover, all science is based on faith--faith of measurements and instruments and constant physical laws.

  • Hubble goes to 11.
  • When the Hubble first went into orbit everybody complained about it being a shot lived project yet it kept going, when the lens fiasco was discovered all the negative press that followed didn't derail the hubble project.

    All in all it comes to show that if you stick with an idea you'll reap results out of it, thank you all the people involved with the hubble in a positive way.

  • Creationism doesn't sound so crazy if you bend it
    and twist it until it matches the best that science can currently muster.

    You show me, anywhere, in any culture, at any time
    where there has been any debate as to what a day is (apart from your poop).

    Same goes with ribs.

  • get even better pictures soon...

    You got it! The link in the story doesn't give show all the images (just the latest HH Neb.). There is a complete image collection here [stsci.edu]. Enjoy.

  • The article actually says more than 10 TB of data..

    Lets for fun say 11 TB.. That's 1 TB a year. 1 TB/year = 1024 GB/year = ~2.8 GB/day = ~2878 MB/day = ~120 MB/hour = ~2 MB/min = ~34 KB/sec. Doesn't sound of much does it..? Until you realize that 34 KB/sec is the average data-rate during the last 11 years.. :o)

    Haapy birthday Hubble. And keep those data coming.. :o)
  • There's a process called "interferometry." It is the combining of several smaller telescopes along the exact curvature of a larger one to produce a similar effect to the larger one. Anyone seen Contact? The VLA(where Jodie Foster heard that signal), or Very Large Array, is a series of radio telescopes layed out over almost a mile (I think) in a big peace sign. They can gather the same kind of information that a single, unimaginably more expensive telescope could.

    Interferometry is very neat - I always thought the VLA was bigger than that though - ATNF [csiro.au] is 6km long (in the east west dirn - the north south thack is new and not used yet - awaiting reciever upgrades)
    Problem is, you do actually lose information - all those gaps in baselines, say if there is no basline between 2 scopes with distance x metres, then you are missing a peice of infomation in the fourrier plane - and you have to deconvolve to fix this up - which no one knows whether really works - and under what circumstances it breaks down. It also introduces quite bad side effects for some images - I am dealing with a source now that beams in with a difference flux once imaged, compared to before the fourrier transform - not good.
    Incedentally, on Contact, that alien sound sounds awfully like our helium cryogen pumps :)

    The reason we don't have these large arrays of optical telescopes has to do with the nature of light. Radio waves have such a large wavelength that aligning several telescopes along the exact parabolic curve of a simulated large reflector is not difficult (radio waves can be anywhere from several inches to several hundred feet long).

    The scopes arem't arranged in a parabola - a delay is introduced by a very fast and large computer :), to offset the geometric delay. Here at Usyd [usyd.edu.au], we have a 1 km array in optical which sort of works (not very sensetive yet though - awaiting new detectors and people)

    An optical telescope array presents a much more difficult problem. Light in the visible spectrum has very small wavelengths (less than an inch). Thus, aligning even two telescopes along the proper parabolic curve for interferometry is extraordinarily difficult on earth.

    An inch?!! Less than micrometer! And a micrometer is fairly easy to adjust for - just the sensetivity is very low - you need to collects photons in real time and try to correct for the atmosphere. We dont have the luxury of 22 metre dishes - our siderealstats are only 20 cm wide each.

    The first one is the NGST, or Next Generation Space Telescope. This will have a large solar shield (basically, a large sheet of mylar to reflect heat away from the mirrors). It will have several octagonal mirror surfaces, and will unfold to be about 8 meters across (Hubble is less than 3). It will also have various infrared and microwave cameras built in, so dangerous "upgrade" missions won't be required nearly as much.

    It's going to L2, which means it will never be serviceable - have to get it right the first time. But if it does work, it is in a stable point, so it will last forever (for small values of "ever").

    All in all, though, there is so much left to learn from deep space, it almost makes you cry. I find the whole endeavor rather exciting.

    Hell yeah! I personally am watching out for the Square Km Array , and somewhat hoping it ends up out here in .au, 'cause it will be coming online just about the right time for me to do science on it :).

  • Why become angry at such obvious trolling? Just ignore the culprit and focus on the good stuff. Didn't you learn anything when you were teased in kindergarten? By getting angry, you amuse them. Victims and perpetrators live on eachother.

    Well, over to the more OT stuff. I would say the bible is an old text, and has lots to tell us if we search in it. Unfortunately, people always misunderstand their religion, rich and poor alike. I would say that whoever wrote the bible, probably misunderstood 95% of what went on. But that's okay, hundreds of other cultures have done so as well when they were visited by "dragon-riding gods". It's not like someone was present on every event and could understand and write it down entirely. Especially the old testament. A text clearly not suited to be read literally today.

    Too many people believe in a religion, just because it's convenient, others don't, because it's convenient. Two different choices for exactly the same reasons. I think both are very limiting, and that we should start focusing on why we do what we do and why we say what we say.

    - Steeltoe
  • Just because the colors are not real doesn't mean that what is being looked at doesn't / didn't exist. When you look with your eyes what you are seeing is not really colored ether, it's just reflecting a specific segment of the light spectum, but that doesn't make sight any less fantastic. I'm also sure that the "colorfully innacurate" data isn't what is being used for research data ether, it's just made that way for posters and stuff.
    =\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\ =\=\=\=\
  • Well, they are pretty darn big, and were found almost anywhere. I think they minght grab someone's attention. I think a T-Rex would be kinda interesting and should have been there.
    =\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\ =\=\=\=\
  • Just because we haven't observed it doesn't mean we won't. Please show me evidence that evolution CAN'T be observed.
    =\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\= \=\=\=\=\=\
  • Evolution simply means change.
    =\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\= \=\=\=\=\
  • I pay taxes too. I WANT my money going to projects like this. Let's just pretent that your money went to help "repair" the "damage", and my money went to Hubble.
    =\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\= \=\=\=\=\
  • You could no more prove that the light has been travelling more than 6000 years than you can prove that you weren't created 5 seconds ago complete with all your memories.
    Ummm.. sure I can. Aim a telescope at a light source, when the earth's orbit is at the oposite end do it again. The difference in the angle of the telescope, and the distance between the 2 spots in orbit can be combined to show how far away a light source is. It's called triangulation. Try paying more attention in geometry class, ok?
    =\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\= \=\=\
  • Damn, I forgot how blinding the "faith" is of you religious zealot types. People that can ignore mountains of evidence scare me.
    =\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\= \=\=\
  • I'll definately agree that space is full of fascinating things, and I'm all for the exploration of space, but come on, maybe you should get off of your computer and go outside a little more often. The trees and mountains and rivers and animals are every bit as beautiful and interesting, and they're just a little more accecssible.

    The sad thing about it is, taking money from the space program probably does not benefit the health of the earth very much. Infact, the space program is responsible for much of the knowledge of the earth that we have. A lot of the current ecological buzzwords that people are worrying about are considered 'global issues', and where else can you observe the globe as one big object than from space?

    oh, and on a side note, the CNN page linked about it had a little box with the 'hubble top ten', the first one of which was about hubble's view of Jupiter getting attacked by the shoemaker-levy comet, and it talked about how great a view hubble had. I just had to say that the picture they included with it was absolutely awful. I haven't really done any searching for images, but I hope hubble got a few better than the one that CNN just showed me.

  • Why doesnt the Bible mention the Dinosaurs?
    Maybe because the first bones where found sometimes around 1850 (+/- 50 years ;) and the guy who faked the bible just didnt have enough knowledge ... I'm sure god would have told him about em .. but.... read my sig
  • If all you cared about was image resolution, then sure, AO would be great. But you're neglecting a much more fundamental limitation of graound-based astronomy, which is that the Earth's atmosphere is quite opaque over large regions of wavelength space -- that is, you just can't observe in, say, the far ultraviolet from the ground, because you can't see through the atmosphere.

    Of course, this is an argument for space-based missions generally, not HST specifically. But still, Hubble is a great orbiting platform with unbelievably good pointing (amazing what you can do with a few billion dollars), whose general operational procedures / problems are well understood. Contrast this with a new satellite system, built from the ground up.

    Note, also, that great things are still in the cards for Hubble -- eg the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph [colorado.edu], which will be installed onboard in a couple years. So it's not just decades-old technology that has since been superseded by ground-based stuff...

  • It's important to note that the flurry of impressive Hubble images were originally photographed in more than just the spectrum of visible light. Assigning color to some of the signals received has got to be purely subjective.
  • I know that it's important to save the trees and everything else here on Earth, but I'll be damned if space isn't just a whole hell of a lot prettier anyway, and spaceships and aliens a whole hell of a lot more fun. ;^)
    Only a whole hell of a lotta fun until the alien decides to dig your intestines out with a claw and being eating you, bit by tiny bit.

    Yes, the pictures of space are pretty. Y' know what's prettier? A squirrel running up the tree in my backyard with a stick in it's mouth, obviously off to build it's nest. I'll take oxygen, sunshine and fresh water any time over a black void any time.
  • So far, all of the "image bank" references link to the Heritage website. The REAL archive is here [stsci.edu].

    Yeah, it's complex and the images are raw, but you can get any image or dataset collected that is more than a year old. If you are into image processing, it's great fun.

  • Image bank (Score:3)

    by pallotta ( 143747 ) <steinar@@@gmx...net> on Wednesday April 25, 2001 @12:47AM (#266948)
    Actually, the real image bank can be found here [stsci.edu]. It's got a lot of image series neatly lined up. The link in the story only shows the last (Horsehead Nebula) series.
  • Note: Atheism != amorality.
    You do not have to have primitive beliefs in any god in order to have morals. Atheists consider themselves just as moral as anyone else.
    Science is not based on faith. Science is based on logic and observation.
    Religion is all bollocks. All organised religion is based around the desires of the few to control the many. You may as well put "Jedi" as a religion on your census form as it's no more made-up a religion than any other, only newer.
    All you religious trolls should just start ChristDot or some such thing and bugger off there!BR Oh dear. Have I offended your strange primitive beliefs? Well, forgive me!

    Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems
  • The thing is, adaptive optics allow ground-based 'scopes to do many of the things Hubble can do now... but ten years ago, when Hubble went up, they couldn't. So even if Hubble's capabilities were unique for "only" six or seven years, that's still, well, six or seven years.
  • Damn you literate trolls, I would rest so much easier at night if you didn't speak so eloquently.
  • If they know what they're doing it's probably a Clariion (I don't think EMC^2 disk arrays even come smaller than 20 TB). If they're a bunch of linux kiddies, it's probably some IDE RAID with a a pair of Promise cards.
  • The Space article notes:

    "The image has been superimposed on ground-based data acquired by the 35-inch (0.9-meter) telescope at the National Science Foundation's Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, Arizona."

    Still a magnificent picture anyway.
  • And its done all this with a set of corrective lenses. Lets hear it for glasses!

  • I suppose you should check your facts as well... as far as I know the Bible puts no year figure on the time the universe was created.

    Well, back in 16xx, I think it was, Archbishop Ussher added up all the " begat , who lived for years, ..." and was able to announce that the Earth was created at the stroke of noon on Sunday, 21 Oct, 4004 BC. It's all rubbish of course. :)

  • the telescope did not work once there.

    Um, it *did* work, just not as well as promised.

  • CNN waxes romantic (Score:3)

    by dstone ( 191334 ) on Wednesday April 25, 2001 @07:52AM (#266957) Homepage
    "Hubble was launched by the shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990. Two days later, the telescope was on its own, drifting into space, recording cosmic images."

    "On its own, drifting into space, the Hubble space telescope is a reckless, lone rebel without a cause."
  • Since we can never observe the event, it is impossible to prove that man evolved from apes.

    Evolution does not state that man evolved from apes. Instead, it states that man and apes evolved from a common ancestor. It's amazing how many creationists have trouble with this distinction; I wonder how they ever manage to tell their brothers from their fathers.

    Now tell me, are you presenting this strawman version of evolution out of ignorance, or are you deliberately lying?

  • Who said anything about atheism? There are many Christians who accept evolution. Acceptance of evolution != atheism.
  • At the risk of /.ing the site:

    Yet a closer examination reveals that "science" is little more than a separate religion itself.

    Is evolution just another religion? [talkorigins.org]

    Evolution cannot be observed.

    Observed instances of speciation [talkorigins.org]

    What if light slowed down away from the earth?

    Then the universe would be even older than the 15-20 billion years it appears to be.

    Thus the universe's age is in reality not established AT ALL, not that scientists can agree on that either!

    Observation: some scientists think the universe is fifteen billion years old.
    Observation: other scientists think the universe is twenty billion years old.
    shadrax's conclusion: Scientists can't agree on the age of the universe; therefore the universe might actually be six thousand years old.

    I can't help but wonder: when shadrax sees an old man on the street, and can't decide whether the man is closer to seventy or eighty, does shadrax conclude that the man might actually be five?

    Scientists use circular logic. For example, a dinosaur bone might be dated to x million years old. So we've disproved the Bible--or have we? How do biologists know what level of carbon dating is how old? Well, the geologist over there says the rock it was found in is x million years old. So ask the geologist how he knows how old the rock is. Well, of course, fossils just that old happen to be found there, so of course the rock is that old!

    This would be a valid argument if radiometric dating measured only two isotopes. By using isochron methods [talkorigins.org], which require three isotopes, the age of materials can be determined radiometrically without the sort of circular reasoning shadrax describes.

    Not to mention that shadrax is apparently unaware that carbon dating is only good for dates up to tens of thousands of years (carbon dating is only one type of radiometric dating; others are good for much larger ages). Also, carbon dating has been validated [colorado.edu] by non-radiometric methods, such as counting tree rings or ice layers.

    Scientists insist that cave and rock formations must have been formed over millions of years. They have never considered the possible effect of a single catastrophic event, such as the Flood, in creating rock formations like the Grand Canyon.

    Problems with a Global Flood: Producing the Geological Record [talkorigins.org]

  • How can one mutation give you an eye? It can't--thousands upon thousands of mutations are needed, but they cannot happen in one generation, or even in a hundred! Therefore, how can an eye ever evolve?

    Oh, not the old "evolution cannot make something as perfect as an eye" story. It's been chanted by creationists since day one, and debunked over and over again.

    First of all, the human eye is not "the perfect instrument". Compared to other animals eyes, it really sucks - what with the optical nerve making a blindspot in the center of each eye, poor light reception, etc.

    Second, there are species or fossiles of species which have some sort of "eye" in all its evolutionary stages - from a simple cluster of photo-sensitive cells, to fully functional eyes far more advanced than the human one. Just because amoebas didn't wake up one morning with fully evolved eyes, doesn't mean they would not eventually evolve eye-like instruments.

    Please realize:

    • Humans are in no way perfect
    • Humans are not the ultimate goal - we will evolve or be obsoleted
    • Hard to explain != God(tm) did it
    • If you find evolution hard to believe, please sit down and think about what you are asking us non-creationists to believe! If religion wasn't so common, you'd be labeled "insane".
    I'm not saying I alone know the whole truth (as do you and most other religious fanatics), I simply subscribe to the theory that holds most credibility. God is not a credible theory.
  • How do biologists know what level of carbon dating is how old? Well, the geologist over there says the rock it was found in is x million years old. So ask the geologist how he knows how old the rock is. Well, of course, fossils just that old happen to be found there, so of course the rock is that old!

    The short answer is no.

    The slightly longer answer is that you take a bunch of carbon-14, measure how many of those atoms decay in a given time period and from there deduce the half life of carbon 14. Then, observing that most plants have steady ratios of C-14 over C-12 (the stable and most common isotope), one can determine the age of plant remains from their C-14 content.

    Since C-14 has a half life of 5730 years, it is not very difficult to show that some plant samples are older than the proposed 6000 years of earth existence creationists claim.

    This method cannot be used to date animal parts, let alone dinosaur bones (after a couple of thousand half lives there's remarkably little C-14 left :-). IANAA (I am not an archeologist), so I don't know how these things are dated.
  • What annoys me about the Hubble "money pit" is that it offers no advantages over cheaper, land based telescopes that we have had access to for centuries. I am not saying that being curious about Gods creation is wrong, but we can only see that which God allows us to see. Hubble has not shown us anything new in the eleven years that it has been in orbit. All it has managed to do is suck up tax payers money at a huge rate.

    Says who? Ask any astronomer out there about Hubble, and you will hear enthusiastic stories about the sharpest pictures ever made with a telescope (because there is no turbulent atmosphere there), the wonderful thing that is called the Hubble Deep Field (48 hours of exposure of one piece of sky; try doing that with a ground based telescope), and what a pity it is that it's merely a 2.5 metre telescope instead of a 8 metre one (yes, this comment was actually heard at an astronomical conference some years ago). And of course how everyone is looking forward to the NGST (next generation space telescope), which will have a diameter of 8 metres.

    So please get your facts right before you make a fool of yourself on Slashdot. Not that many people seem to mind...

    All I ask is that you stop and think.

    All I ask is that you heed your own advice.
  • Ah, thanks. I couldn't think of a mechanism that would keep ratios between isotopes constant, but I see that the ratio is assumed to be constant in magma, so the age of a rock can be determined.

    Which goes to show that I should read up in geology.
  • Okay, you're right. Optical astronomy isn't exactly my strong point... But I should have remembered cosmics.

    But doesn't the point still stand that HDF could only be done from outer space? IIRC even the night sky isn't dark enough to see really faint objects. And of course there's seeing to consider...
  • Ah, my dear friend. Where would the world be if we abandoned science? Remember what Einstein was quoted with. "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
  • Evolution cannot be observed. Since we can never observe the event, it is impossible to prove that man evolved from apes. Scientists must accept it on faith.

    Just for shits and giggles, I'd like to point out that the Catholic Church has no stand on the issue, meaning that either theory could be correct and neither side has proven its case.

    Scientists use circular logic. For example, a dinosaur bone might be dated to x million years old. So we've disproved the Bible--or have we? How do biologists know what level of carbon dating is how old? Well, the geologist over there says the rock it was found in is x million years old. So ask the geologist how he knows how old the rock is. Well, of course, fossils just that old happen to be found there, so of course the rock is that old!

    Actually, if a fossil is x years old, the rock cannot be x years old because that would mean the two events happened simultaniously. The rocks are, more than likely, going to be older. And you can tell hold old they are based upon a certain sample of some radioactive material that decomposes at an obserable, constant rate.

    It is easly to close one's mind and reject what is contrary to what someone else says is true. It's more difficult to look at the evidence and make an objective stance. The bible doesn't talk about any planets. Why? Because the fact that Venus is there doesn't impact the prime objective of the books. This objective is, of course, to lead humans to salvation. Remember this when you read it and think that maybe, just *maybe*, the stories shouldn't be taken litterally. (Do you think eating a piece of fruit really got them thrown out of the garden, or was it something else...)

  • Back in 1978, when Perkin Elmer [perkinelmer.com] (PE) was building the Hubble (their aerospace division was sold off to Hughes Aircraft, which is now part of Raytheon), PE was also contracted to build the Large Space Telescope (LST) and Very Large Space Telescope (VLST), with larger and larger mirrors. Special tools were developed at PE for the handling of mirrors and the superstructure, and the original Hubble was basically a prototype or beta/release candidate to fine tune the manufacturing and transport process (like how to move the mirror from Norwalk Connecticut to Kennedy Space Center). NASA canned the rest of the telescopes to allocate additional funds for the Space Shuttle.

    My father was one of the structural engineers who ran simulations in FORTRAN for the Hubble project. He points out that the mirror distortion problem was known to PE, as well as NASA, but that NASA felt it was going to take too long to redesign the mirror frame and rebuild it again.
  • he Bible tells us that the universe was created 6000 years ago. However, these "scientists" who have no doubt never read a book that genuineley tells the truth claim to be able to see light from millions of years ago. This is surely utterly ridiculous, but they keep sending this rubbish to the popular heathen journals, and journalist decide not to check their facts, but instead they should publish.

    They are oblivious to the idea that these bedtime stories are damaging to people and damaging to the one true faith. However, NASA is willing to spend billions on these high tech toys, and nothing at all on discovery of ancient relics.

  • Obviously, God simply created a star several million light years away, saw that it was good, and created a bunch of photons in between Earth and the remote star.

    Its not really that hard if you are a being of infinite power is it? Likewise, you can create disproportinate amounts of different carbon elements in the dinosaur bones that you bury undert the ground. Create a ready made 15 000 000 000 year old universe.

    You could no more prove that the light has been travelling more than 6000 years than you can prove that you weren't created 5 seconds ago complete with all your memories.

  • The light didn't start at the star. It started in the middle of space, 6000 years ago on a direct line between the star and the Earth. The one that hits the earth 6 months later started 6000.5 years ago on a straight line between the Earth's position and the star.

    And our instruments aren't actually accurate to the angle at 6000 lightyears away. After a few light years, astronomers use doppler shift.

  • Thats about what I had when I submitted the article. I had "Hubble turns 11 today" .

  • Many people criticize the Bible because a believer must accept it on faith.

    This isn't true. There's plenty of prophesy in the Bible that can be checked up on. If any of the many attempts to extinguish the Jews had succeeded, the Bible would have been proven to be false. But look at that, there's now a nation, called "Israel", back in the same old place, just as prophesied. self-fullfilling prophesy? Perhaps.

    What you have to take on faith is that God "is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him." Just like you have to take it on faith that people will pay you for goods and services. If you just believe there is a God because your pastor/rabbi/whatever says there is, you have faith in A MAN. People are notorious for being wrong/untrustworthy.

    Evolution cannot be observed.

    This isn't true either. But just because erosion could theoretically have formed Mt. Rushmore doesn't mean that it did.

    As for the universe being created 6000 years ago, "the earth was without form and void." ie, it existed prior to creation. Now it does mention creation of the sun, starts, etc. Imagine the world surrounded by clouds, such as those thrown up by a large meteor impact. Froth the earth's point of view, the sun, moon, and starts do not exist.

    Ok, there's probably flaws in this view, but it doesn't require a "young" universe and it doesn't require long days. Certainly you can all appreciate that having more hypothesis to examine is benefitial. The Bible is a subjective thing, how YOU interpret it is not necessarily how the WRITERS interpreted it. Which do you think is more relevant?

  • NASA is willing to spend billions on these high tech toys, and nothing at all on discovery of ancient relics.

    Yeah, I'd much rather have a shattered old clay pot with some leftover "Jesus" dandruff in it than all of these images of the vastness of creation in all its glory.

    What are they thinking, dabbling in all this stuff, so clearly shallow and frivolously pretty?

    (I can't figure out whether you're joking or serious, but I hope to god you're not serious...)
  • Thank you Hubble.

    And thank you, Slashdot for posting the link to the image archive. It has made my day. It's when I see things like this that I realize how much I miss the "space race" and everything it brought with it.

    I know that it's important to save the trees and everything else here on Earth, but I'll be damned if space isn't just a whole hell of a lot prettier anyway, and spaceships and aliens a whole hell of a lot more fun. ;^)
  • Joke or flamebait, rigth?

  • Ever caught a cold? I'll even bet you've had two colds in your life. There ya go, evolution in the works.

    Now, I'll admit Natural Selection might be more of an easy target for debate (Man from hominid), but as for Evolution, get a box of fruit flies, do nasty stuff to them and in a few generations, you'll have fruit flies that can resist what ever nasty stuff you do to them. That, or they'll go wild and attack you.

    Is science based on faith? Yes, to a degree. But, the subject of the faith is constantly looked at, tweaked and revised. Science admits it doesn't know The Truth, but instead looks for it. Religion says "here's the truth, with a nice bow" and resents anyone looking closer.

    And, don't block out other religions. I'm assuming you're a Christian or Jewish, but every faith I've heard of has a creation myth. Which one is true? So, since you're saying that scientific arguments fall apart because scientists can't agree on the details, when then, since Christ and Buddha don't see eye-to-eye, I guess we'll toss religion out too.

    Rant, rant, rant.

  • I suppose you should check your facts as well... as far as I know the Bible puts no year figure on the time the universe was created. It does mention the 6 days of creation...

    For God, how long is a day? I think He left that up to us to try to figure out. Go Hubble!



  • Interesting... that was an idea I came up with on my own (see first post to this thread.)

    Although many may say I'm wrong, I don't think that the evolutionism and creationism are mutually exclusive. For something as fundamental as the difference between the big bang and "poof, in 6 days it all just showed up," all that matters is what your definition of a day is. A valid bit of symbolism (assuming that God is all powerful and has control of silly things like days as well as space,) blow every scientific theory against all religion out of the water.

    The Bible is a horribly confining book if taken 100% literally... it's not a scientific text book... but if we all apply those "scientific" minds we value and think about deeper meanings, I think we'll all find more correlations between the Bible and what we find with tools like Hubble in nature than we'd like to believe. In my case (and it looks like a few other peoples' cases too,) I'm glad to see the coorelation! You too can stand on both sides of the fence!

    More food for thought, for those of you who know some basic Bible stories: what exactly is a rib? Can it be a particularly shaped protein? Does the Bible explictly say Adam and Eve are people? Doesn't "let there be light" sound an awful lot like one of the bigger explosions you could think of?



  • Sure. Let's expand this beyond a humancentric view of culture and time, though. If there is a God, why would that god worry about how many times one out of billions of planets rotated during the creation period? It just doesn't matter. The Bible was written for a human perspective, by humans, oh, 2000 years or so ago. "God days" is probably just a nice rounded figure. :)

    As for my other "poop," look at it from the same perspective. There's no bending here, no tricks. It's a matter of perspective. If we are an ultimate creation of God (as the Bible usually implies we are,) wouldn't that God *want* us to explore our reality instead of sit and stagnate? Even the most devout followers of the Bible would agree with that. What good would a 5000 page tome on amino acids and big bangs do us? Where would be the room for growth, the room for self improvement, the room for learn? The best statement that could be put in the Bible to describe the beginning is "let there be light"... now it's up to us, if we're willing, to figure out what kind of light that was, the center of its origin, and how long ago in dorky earth spins that was.

    With fantastic tools and ideas like Hubble, genetic research, and computers we are exploring our reality. This is our best destiny... I say here's to 11 more years of Hubble (and I hope we come up with something that can get even better pictures soon...)

  • Wow, Flamebait if I ever did see it.

    I'm pretty sure if there is a God, he's reveling in the photos Hubble has taken as well, saying, "Neat! Nasa 0wnz, damn glad I made those Human thingies all them years ago."

    So get your head out of your Bible and just appreciate them for what they are, pictures of the vast unknown.....
  • I wonder whats NASA using for storage

    We- STScI, not NASA- are currently migrating the Archive from 12-inch optical media (6GB/platter) to 5.25-inch magneto-optical media (5.2GB/platter, but looking to upgrade to 9.1 next year). In FY02 we want to find a good way of caching the data for distribution on magdisk, to cut down on our reliance on jukeboxes. We're required to keep a permanent version, though, so we'll still write MOs.

    Also, we don't actually store 6TB. For the currently operating instruments (WFPC2 & STIS, but not FOC, which doesn't get used much any more), we don't store the calibrated data; we calibrate it on the fly when it's retrieved. We're just now getting ready to take that back a step: we won't even store the uncalibrated data, just the very raw data from the telescope, before it's broken out into FITS files. This will then be turned into uncalibrated data, calibrated, and the result sent to the user (On-the-fly Reproecssing, OTFR). With OTFR, I think we'll actually be storing somewhere between 1 and 2 TB, including the engineering data. OTFR will also apply to future instruments, like ACS and NICMOS (when the latter gets turned back on).

    Tim Kimball // Archive Systems Analyst II // Space Telescope Science Institute

  • You've got me wrong - I'm a believer in evolution. My "By a single generation, that is true." comment was maybe not phased as well as it could have been. "Its very unlikely that large scale evolution will ever be witness first hand during the lifetime any a single person." is maybe a bit clearly. (and small scale evolution has clearly been proven) But all thats beside the point, which was that now we've gained intelligence [well, some of us!] and the ability to keep records, as long as we're patient we have the opportunity to record evolution in action. (Now, could somebody else mod my post back up? )
  • Evolution cannot be observed. Since we can never observe the event, it is impossible to prove that man evolved from apes. Scientists must accept it on faith.

    However, the by-products and remnants of evolution can be observed, and notably they have been. This is a feeble attempt to make evolution as unobservable, and therefore as unlikely, as creationism. However, because a process cannot be directly observed in action does not mean it is not real. The evidence of a process is another way of observing it. The evidence of the evolutionary process is contained in fossils. The major complaint is that there are not enough of them. "Sample too small" is a subjective judgement. I was looking at some fossils this weekend, in fact. If I am to to take their existence in my hand as a subjective reality, I might as well assume that everything I see and touch is some sort of simulation, and therefore not believe that anything is real -- including the Bible and the words which it contains.

    Science relies on assuming that conditions are identical everywhere throughout the universe. But this is not necessarily true!

    Aside from the obvious absurdity of your argument relativity demands that it is true. Einstein's insistence that there is no special frame of reference was key to the theory of relativity. Relativity has been tested time and time again. To my knowledge no one has been able to make it fail.

    What if light slowed down away from the earth?

    What if monkeys flew out of my butt? If you can get away from the earth and test this presumption, that would be one thing. But you're simply talking nonsense until then. All that aside, assuming that special frames of reference exist is an invitation to an imaginary fantasy land. If the rules the universe appears to abide by can change at any given moment, we may as well not bother trying to learn anything about it at all. However, so far history has proven time and again that science works and produces tangible results. What time/life/labor saving invention can we attribute to the fruits of religious scholars?

    This has been theorized by F. M. Hayes and S. Rhodes among other Creation Scientists, and they have presented preliminary evidence to challenge this assumption.

    Where is their preliminary evidence? What is their reasoning. You are again talking right out of your ass.

    Thus the universe's age is in reality not established AT ALL, not that scientists can agree on that either!

    Boy, talk about a case of missing the point. The universe's age has been revised many times as new evidence has been turned up to change our perception of it. In other words, scientists are changing their models to conform to reality! What a concept! Change your opinion when you're proven wrong! "Creationists" could use a little of that methodology

    Scientists use circular logic.

    The bible is true because you believe its true, becuase the words of the bible are the words of god, because you believe that god wrote the bible, because the bible is true, because . . . Because you are calling the pot black, mr. kettle.

    How do biologists know what level of carbon dating is how old?

    I don't know. Ask the nuclear phsysicst who built the functioning atomic bomb based on the exact same radioactive decay period how he knew that the bomb would explode. Again, there are clear cases where science and technology are doing things for us that would simply not work if the functional premises of those technologies are wrong. What creationists like you want to do is take with one hand the technological fruits of these discoveries while denying with the other the implications behind them. It's not just hypocritical. It's infantile.

    What is clear is that "faith" can stand up to "science" in its present state, and that "science" should not be left to just "Scientists".

    Science is a free game. Anyone may play. The perception that only ivory tower drones make science is one that persons such as yourself seem to enjoy fostering, because it makes 'plain folk' immediately resentful. But that's only because you're painfully ignorant. If you want to play the game of science, and contribute, you have to play by some simple rules. Rule 1 is that you may not argue from authority. Rule 2 is that any statement you make must be subject to verification by anyone who wishes to independently check. Rule 3 is that you will be wrong, and you will be wrong a lot. If you cannot accept the possibility that you may be wrong, you will never be able to play the game. Rule 4 is that as soon as you think you are right, you must immediately begin theorizing as if you are wrong, and test your "right" theory against every available "wrong" theory.

    Faith can pass none of these tests. Faith is assumption of rightness, oblivious to opposing viewpoints, vehemently denying the potential of error, vigorously avoiding verification. Faith proves nothing and reveals nothing -- except the depth or lack thereof of the intellect of the faithful. You will learn nothing worth learning about the universe with faith. You may learn much that is useful about yourself, but there is no guarantee.


    Is it my imagination, or is /. being heavily trolled by religious wackos these days?

  • C'mon! I dare you! Touch my monkey!!!!! Touuuch it!!!
  • I don't think that the evolutionism and creationism are mutually exclusive.

    Trust me, they are. One is a theory. It postulates testable conditions. The other explicitly avoids being tested or questioned.

    For something as fundamental as the difference between the big bang and "poof, in 6 days it all just showed up," all that matters is what your definition of a day is

    The expansion of the universe is demonstrable fact. It's happening right now. Anyone with a spectrometer and a telescope can check it out. The '6 days' of creation theory doesn't posit a lot of testable consequences, on the other hand.

    A valid bit of symbolism (assuming that God is all powerful and has control of silly things like days as well as space,) blow every scientific theory against all religion out of the water.

    Indeed. First demonstrate a reason for God. I don't even ask theists to prove that God exists. I know it's impossible. It's more important to me to see them fumble to prove that the universe needs a God to exist. Because if it doesn't (and so far, it doesn't), then the whickering blades of Occam's razor triumph once again.

    but if we all apply those "scientific" minds we value and think about deeper meanings, I think we'll all find more correlations between the Bible and what we find with tools like Hubble in nature than we'd like to believe.

    If you are willing to completely ditch your standards of what "evidence" is and what constitutes a fact, and accept correlations and coincidences in more or less a state of whimsy, I guess you could get away with that. But it's a lot of work, it's entirely subjective, and reveals nothing. Simpler just to cut the God theory loose and forget about it.

    what exactly is a rib?

    It's a bone that depends off the sternum. Screwing with semantics is again subjective and will get you nowhere except lost.

    Does the Bible explictly say Adam and Eve are people?

    Does it say they are hermit crabs? If you are willing to abandon objective reality, anything could be true. So what?

    Doesn't "let there be light" sound an awful lot like one of the bigger explosions you could think of?

    If you can't be bothered to put any more thought into your assertion than this, tell me why then I should believe it. This isn't just misguided thinking: it's sloppy and lazy. You haven't bothered to probe your fundamental assertions beyond the 1cm depth. How do you expect to convince a hardened skeptic who's spent years looking through eyepieces, and river beds, for the reality? The real world is often stranger than we can imagine. But it's there 24 hours, 7 days a week, ready to be examined. Those who take the trouble to do so make real advances. Those who surround themselves with fairy tales get what they are looking for -- nothing. In the end your view of the universe is irrelevant because it doesn't conclude anything of substance. God may or may not exist. People in the bible may or may not be real. For crying out loud you sound like Majikthise and Vroomfondel from The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

  • A day as defined as one rotation of the earth is, really, pretty short. If each planet defines its own day from one rotation.. you can draw your own conclusions from there.

    Such as?

    The Big Bang has not happened and yet ALL Big Bangs are happening NOW.

    That must make a lot of noise.

    As for the existance of God - Yup. Call -it- what you will . . . Pretty much all the same.

    The supernatural beings you mention all share one notable attribute: their existence is beyond our ability to test. As for Science, I don't ever confuse it with God.

    Lets reduce everything we know to the simplest common item: Atoms. Lets reduce that down the the simplest: Hydrogen- The smallest atom/thing that we currently can identify. One Proton, One Electron. Proportionatly, the distance from that proton the the ever spinning and whirling electron is greater than that of the Earth to the Sun. So lets look at that electron.. Ah, hell... we can't. Why? Because it is constantly shimming in and out of existance: "Blinking" if you will. Just as we have movies that move at 48 frames per second (too fast for the human eye to see) we have the entire Universe constantly "winking" in and out of existance Millions of times per second.

    What exactly is this meant to demonstrate? Electrons are routinely recorded in the cloud chambers of particle accelerators. If the universe is winking in and out of existence too fast for anyone to see, then what difference does that make vs. a universe that is always there? A difference that makes no difference is no difference.

    My point: Everything you think you know is wrong.

    Your point is really quite obscure. If I were to gather anything at all from your argument, it's that haven't spent more than a few cursory minutes actually researching your subject matter, and quite a lot of time reading corny science fiction from the '50's. You might pick up some Asimov or Clifford Simak novels -- or better yet, pick up some of Asimov's very well researched and factual tomes about practically every facet of science in existence. He's an excellent writer and presents the fundamental concepts of science in an easy to read, chatty fashion that still is highly organized and informative.

  • and if they really are illusions they are some of the most impressively beautiful ones I've seen! :)

    You can buy a $500 telescope and look at them yourself. Or attend a local star party. Ground-based amateur instruments aren't as clear, but you'd be surprised what a good 20" Dobsonian will reveal.

  • I would salute you for knowing about the bible, but I wont.

    Its nice to know your enemy, this time it being a christian troll (you).

    So here I say:
    The bible doesnt mean anything.

    It doesnt even provide means for a good society.
    ITs full of homophobic, racist, sexist crap.

    It unlike science, breed idiots.

    Thanks to science we should be rid of people like you in the near future.

    That and real education should remove some more people from "the faith". Hubble is a great acheavment by man.

    These scientists not only have been reading books they have gotten to the point where they write their own (imagine that).

    These storys are not damaging to anyone except people that have zero grasp on reality.

    Nasa isnt about descovering ancient relics. Why would they fund something like that?
    And what was it about graven images? what do you expect to find at a dig site? I mean its faith! IF you have facts you dont have faith.
    If I had slept in the past week I would be able to take you down in an argument, but whats the point? IT wont stop you from being a fucking idiot. Hence your stupid enough to bring this crap here. Fuck you and your kind!


    Are you on the Sfglj [sfgoth.com] (SF-Goth EMail Junkies List) ?
  • Heres some evoloution that can be observed:

    The church and the bible are changing with the times lest they die out.

    This would be macro evoloution in a social arena.




    Are you on the Sfglj [sfgoth.com] (SF-Goth EMail Junkies List) ?
  • I dearly hope so.
  • You're just afraid that science one day will prove all religions wrong. I personally look forward to the day!
  • First it's more like 5700 years (more or less depends on which rabbi you ask).

    I'm of the opinion that Time is something made up by -us- to keep things from happening all at once. A day as defined as one rotation of the earth is, really, pretty short. If each planet defines its own day from one rotation.. you can draw your own conclusions from there. Time and Space is happening. It is expanding and contracting all at the same time - NOW. The Big Bang has not happened and yet ALL Big Bangs are happening NOW.

    As for the existance of God - Yup. Call -it- what you will: Jehova, Science, Shiva, Ishtar, JHVH-1. Pretty much all the same. Different ways of looking at the same thing. Lets reduce everything we know to the simplest common item: Atoms. Lets reduce that down the the simplest: Hydrogen- The smallest atom/thing that we currently can identify. One Proton, One Electron. Proportionatly, the distance from that proton the the ever spinning and whirling electron is greater than that of the Earth to the Sun. So lets look at that electron.. Ah, hell... we can't. Why? Because it is constantly shimming in and out of existance: "Blinking" if you will. Just as we have movies that move at 48 frames per second (too fast for the human eye to see) we have the entire Universe constantly "winking" in and out of existance Millions of times per second.. My point: Everything you think you know is wrong.

  • Ummm Ok - the word of a few ignorant peasants 2000 odd years ago is clearly worth more than today's scientific body of knowledge.

    It's thanks to your f**king religious kind that society it 500 years behind where it should be.

    Where exactly do you thing the light which is hitting hubble actually comes from? Or are you going to use the "God works in mysterious ways" statement which basically says "I'm too stupid to realise that blind faith without reason is nothing by itself and that if the evidence does not match the theory it is a bad theory"?

  • Higher quality, higher res pics available (Score:3)

    by Joe Hardy (_yoda) ( 252679 ) on Wednesday April 25, 2001 @01:36AM (#266995)

    If you want to have a look at the same pic at *much* higher resolutions than the linked site offers, check out NOAO's great image gallery here [noao.edu].

    The rest of the gallery is worth looking at as well.

  • I must say that the images that Hubble has given us are priceless. I don't think that NASA ever spent money on anything else that was worth what Hubble has given us.

    Regardless of what the Bible says (see above post) the images show us what is really out there. When I first saw pictures from millions of years ago and how spectacular they were I couldn't believe it.

    I'd give up the space station for Hubble any day.
  • First it's more like 5700 years (more or less depends on which rabbi you ask).
    Second; I saw a Rabbi on TV once talking about a book he wrote. The book was about creation and 6 days vs billions of years. The rabbi has also formed a theorem about how we (as people) aren't looking at time the right way.
    Most people agree that the story of creation in the Bible is right in effect of timeline. But I'm sure every slashdotter says 6 days is wrong, Big Bang blah blah...
    Lets say the universe is still expanding. Every time the universe doubles in size (which takes twice as long each time) it's one day. So what God would have seen is the universe doubled in size and he called it a day. And in these millions of years or what ever we see was just one day to him.
    And actually if you looked at the figures it would make sense because the timelines lined up. On one day (millions to years to us) all these things really did happen.
    I wish I knew the figures or could point you to the book cause it was quite intra-sting. The coolest thing is that he says the 7th day (the sabbath) is still yet to come.
    I would love to own the book so if anyone has a freakin' clue what I'm talking about send me an e-mail.

    And remember time is relative to the observer.
  • Who said we wern't interested in space?

    I love hubble if you find my other post you'll see I posted that too.

  • I knew all the god hating slashdotters would attack my post. But it wasn't posted for you to attack, it was for the higher minded people to actually look at the facts and compare them to the bible story.

    Sure it's easy to say that God doesn't exist because there is no evidence of him/her. But there are particles that people postulate about all day long when there is no evidence to back them up. (except 'stories' of math and what not-which is twisted usually to support the 'facts' they want.). Science isn't always right either. Look into the history of quantum physics, as I have and you'll know the perceptions of what is right changes all the time.

    Also poeple here posted that the bible can be twisted and turned to make it fit the facts, but there has been SCIENTIFIC reasearch into the timeline of events described in Genesis, and the reasearch supports it.

    Gen1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Big Bang)
    1:2 The earth was a vast waste, darkness covered the deep, and the spirit of God hovered over the surface of water (In the early days of the earth - it was in fact covered in darkness. It's scientific fact)
    1:3 God said: 'Let there be light' and there was light.
    1:4 And God saw the light was good, and he separated light from darkness.(In primeval times there was a great seperation of light and dark as skies began to clear)
    1:5 He called the light day, and the darkness night. So evening came, and morning came; it was the first day. (This would explain the 6 days theory of creation - billions of 'earth years' have taken place, but only now could an observer on earth distinguish between day and night)
    [[[Foot notes in the Oxford Study Bible say the Order evolves!! from chaos from divine command and creation became from materials not at hand. Which would 100% fit with the big bang because there were no materials. This is the standard belief about the creation.]]]

    Basically, it goes on to say: God seperates the vaults between the earth and space, reinforcing the known fact of seperation between the atmosphere and space. Which by the way didn't always exist.Then the earth cleared, in spots of the water - see above. Plants, then all the rest.

    If anyone actually read a real bible (not one translated for their own purposes) they would see this chain of events and then go read a book, like "Shadows of forgotten ancestors" and see the connection.

  • Orbited Earth 60,000 times

    Traveled more than 1.6 billion miles (2.6 billion km)

    Made more than 400,000 exposures

    Observed 15,000 astronomical targets

    Downloaded more than 6 terabytes of data

    6 terabytes worth of info is certainly a lot of shit to store. I wonder whats NASA using for storage, certainly isn't a Netapp. Clariion? S'more than my whole company.

    Happy Birthday telescope thingy.

    "Neither in French nor in English nor in Mexican." George W. Bush declining to answer reporters' questions at the Summit of the Americas, Quebec City, Canada, April 21, 2001

    Lone Gunman [antioffline.com]

  • We all know the Hubble it frequently turned
    around to fry people.
    Sun + telescope + person = crispy person
    Or maybe it's a Reagan-Era Star Wars Leftover.
    -humph-
    pid0
  • I wonder whats NASA using for storage

    The HST Data Archive [stsci.edu] has a manual [stsci.edu]. The preface propably answers your question:

    "The permanent, more capable archive system-the Space Telescope Data Archive and Distribution Service (ST-DADS)-was installed September 1994. Developed by Loral and STScI, ST-DADS stores HST data on its optical jukeboxes, provides quick access to data, and distributes those data in the standard astronomical format FITS (Flexible Image Transport System). ST-DADS is now able to deliver data directly to a user's home computer over the Internet."

    They really do love acronyms. (STScI = Space Telescope Science Institute).

    To cut it short, the data is on CD-ROM:s in FITS format, and the system is specially designed for this purpose.

  • When I pay my taxes, i'd much rather we concentrate on America as a whole first. Only when we've restored the morality of the American people, should we entertain the idea of spending our money on peering into the heavens.

    Compared to the money spent on US military, Hubble is peanuts. US already has enough weapons to wipe out all life on Earth, but it still needs more. As a by-product, we get about one million tonnes of toxic waste every year. Can you explain how this restores the morality of the Americans?

    If I were American, I would be proud to say "We made Hubble". I think many Americans are proud of the fact that their nation has made one of the most spectacular astronomical facilities in the world.

  • Two good methods used in very long timespans are K-40/Ar-40 method and Rb-87/Sr-87/Sr-86 metohds.

    Both K-40 and Rb-87 have half-lifes of the order one billion years.

    They both work in the same way as C-12/C-14 method.

    The constant C-14/C-12 ratio in living plants is caused by cosmic radiation, which produces a constant amount of C-14 in the atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. Plants use the CO2 and get a constant C-14/C-12 ratio.

  • Religion is based on faith. Science is based on *trust*. There's a big difference.

    With science, we know there's the scientific method, peer review, etc. We know that the scientific method has led to concrete manifestations: cars, nuclear power, electricity, medicine. We trust that these same principals are being applied to domains we don't know about or cannot directly see... so we may understand how an electric circuit work, but trust the scientist who's specialty is life sciences.

    We also trust that all possible considerations all considered... there's vigorous debate on various hypothesis, all possible explanations are consdered, and whatever explanations survives the debate is considered the most likely to be true... until more evidence is considered and weighed against the hypothesis.

    Hence your statement like "They have never considered the possible effect of a single catastrophic event, such as the Flood, in creating rock formations like the Grand Canyon" is false. Of course they have (for instance, I saw something the other day about how a single catastrophic flood may have formed the Dead Sea, and it could be the flood described in the Bible, as it was big enough the appear to be the whole world to the people in the area), but the evidence points to the millions of years explanation for formation of geologic features like the Grand Canyon.

    Faith, on the other hand, generally doesn't have evidence or factual challenges: instead of "believe this because it's based on the same principals that have given us other scientific explanations which are verified" it says "believe this because I believe it, your ancestor's believe it, and it's true." And instead of the evidence driving the explanations, the evidence is twisted to fit the explanations.
    --
    Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

  • >You need to build a bigger scope on the ground to get the same amount of light, due to atmospheric lossage. Admittedly it's relatively easy to build big scopes on the ground

    big scopes now, with the help of AO, also allow to get more precise photographs

    >Hubble can look at (almost) any target at any time, 24 hours a day, and it never rains up there. This means that in sheer amount of observing done, it needs to be compared to at least 3 telescopes, not just one.

    Hubble is in space, right. it is also only at an altitude of only 200 kms (or a bit more, I don't know)... so half of its sky is still blocked by the earth. so though it does observe 24 hours a day, it can only look at half the sky at once ; and since it orbites in less than 3hours, the exposure length is much more limited than in the space. And it never rains in northern Chile too, practically (once every 10 years does not count...)

    >Good sites for ground telescopes are in increasingly short supply, as cities spread around the world. Many,for instance, now take sites in the Chilean Andes that are about as hard to get to, and work from, as any place on Earth. That ends up costing quite a bit, too.

    Most astronomers who use these don't need to be there.

    >While, tragically, launch prices are not coming down much yet, we can at least imagine that eventually they will, and space telescopes will be cheaper.

    The price of energy does not seem to be decreasing at the moment, so the "eventually" might be far away. OTOH, PR is much easier to do with Hubble than with the ESO and fundings are accordingly higher.

  • Well, Hubble is a great project that brings us nice images of the space and etc..., but it is now outdated technology. with the advent of adaptive optics [gemini.edu] It is now easy to get images as neat as those photographied by Hubble, and even better, from the earth.

    The advantages being that since it is based on the ground, it is much, much cheaper. No need to send Shuttles in the space or on the moon... Of course it is less spectacular, but it is better for Science. It is currently being installed on the European Space observatory at least.

    So Hubble is quite old enough... This technology supresses the effect of the atmosphere by mesuring the noise it produces and cancelling it. It is explained on the link...
  • But I still can't find my car keys. There is something wrong here.

  • Re:Is Hubble So useful? Adaptive optics is cheaper (Score:4)

    by pavonis ( 415389 ) on Wednesday April 25, 2001 @05:16AM (#267014)

    Well, AO in optical wavelengths is still an immature technology, in the sense that every rigup is rather unique and experimental. It's only become really usable at all in the last year or so. And it's quite expensive too, though admittedly less so than Hubble.

    It's a wonderful use of technology, and a terrific example of wholly separate fields of science aiding each other; but it's not the endall to telescopes, either. Space scopes have a number of advantages over even the best ground-based telescopes, like ESO and Keck-

    • You need to build a bigger scope on the ground to get the same amount of light, due to atmospheric lossage. Admittedly it's relatively easy to build big scopes on the ground.
    • Hubble can look at (almost) any target at any time, 24 hours a day, and it never rains up there. This means that in sheer amount of observing done, it needs to be compared to at least 3 telescopes, not just one.
    • Good sites for ground telescopes are in increasingly short supply, as cities spread around the world. Many, for instance, now take sites in the Chilean Andes that are about as hard to get to, and work from, as any place on Earth. That ends up costing quite a bit, too.
    • No ground-based scope can ever take an exposure lasting more than maybe eight hours. The Deep Field would be impossible to ever do on Earth. And the effectiveness of AO declines the longer your exposure, of course.
    • While, tragically, launch prices are not coming down much yet, we can at least imagine that eventually they will, and space telescopes will be cheaper.
    • It would be very hard, maybe impossible, to do long-baseline optical interferometry on Earth, because of things like ground tremors. It may be possible to use baselines miles long in space. This would utterly change the face of astronomy. The first test will be NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder, sometime this decade. For optical interferometry, see Keck's web site- here. [nasa.gov]
    • Hubble's successor, the NGST, will actually be a near-infrared telescope. Light from very distant objects is red-shifted all the way into the infrared, so NGST will be optimized for this kind of large-scale, cosomological research. This is hard to do from the ground, as the atmosphere is a tremendous source of infrared noise even at night in cold places.

    So while AO is extremely valuable, I don't think any astronomer is prepared to say "Okay, let's ditch the space telescopes now." And if you can launch them working right the first time, and don't have to foot the bill for shuttle repair missions, they are not so expensive as most folks here seem to think.

  • Re:the future of our eyes (Score:3)

    by Spagornasm ( 444846 ) on Wednesday April 25, 2001 @06:48AM (#267016) Homepage
    There's a process called "interferometry." It is the combining of several smaller telescopes along the exact curvature of a larger one to produce a similar effect to the larger one. Anyone seen Contact? The VLA(where Jodie Foster heard that signal), or Very Large Array, is a series of radio telescopes layed out over almost a mile (I think) in a big peace sign. They can gather the same kind of information that a single, unimaginably more expensive telescope could.

    The reason we don't have these large arrays of optical telescopes has to do with the nature of light. Radio waves have such a large wavelength that aligning several telescopes along the exact parabolic curve of a simulated large reflector is not difficult (radio waves can be anywhere from several inches to several hundred feet long).

    An optical telescope array presents a much more difficult problem. Light in the visible spectrum has very small wavelengths (less than an inch). Thus, aligning even two telescopes along the proper parabolic curve for interferometry is extraordinarily difficult on earth. People are trying this with the twin 10 meter Keck telescopes in Hawaii, though, and have met with some success. The easiest place for interferometry, though, is space.

    There are actually plans in NASA (I don't know if Daniel Goldin has cancelled this yet) for a few new space telescopes.

    The first one is the NGST, or Next Generation Space Telescope. This will have a large solar shield (basically, a large sheet of mylar to reflect heat away from the mirrors). It will have several octagonal mirror surfaces, and will unfold to be about 8 meters across (Hubble is less than 3). It will also have various infrared and microwave cameras built in, so dangerous "upgrade" missions won't be required nearly as much.

    A more long-term telescope project is under way to actually image earth-sized planets. The first will be a series of two or three small telescopes orbiting between Earth and Mars. These will be testing laser tracking and micro-rocket stability systems, and will atempt to keep the telescopes perfectly aligned down to the micrometer.

    If this is successful, then a few years later a couple of telescopes the size of NGST (this is into the 2010's) will be launched and aligned in a similar manner beyond Jupiter (the plan is to spread them over about 300 meters. Imagine that - a 300 meter wide telescope, in space, without any of the distortions our atmosphere provides!). This will allow them not only an unprecedented clarity (one of the main reasons Hubble can take such amazing pictures), but also size (it could theoretically see back to half a million years after the Big Bang), and it could, of course, resolve a visual image of an earth-like planet.

    Such a telescope could take the spectra of such planets. A spectrum is the rainbow you see when white light is shone through a prism. When light bounced off a certain substance is analyzed, there are dark bars present, that can tell a scientist precisely what elements (and how much of each) are present. Sometimes, in labs, scientists will burn a chunk of material with a laser, and record that (it's much brighter), but astronomers can do it with telescopes. This means that astronomers, from light years away, could tell if a planet had liquid water, oxygen, nitrogen, methane, sulfur, whatever. It is, however, highly unlikely that such a telescope could see lights at night. For one thing, it's not a given that any species would even NEED light (or that if we could detect civilization from so far away, why wouldn't we also be recieving radio or maser signals from them?). For another, just when it would be possible to see the dark side of that planet would be when it is silhouetted against its sun (imagine trying to read the date off of a dime a thousand miles away when it's held in front of a 4D flashlight).

    Even further down the road (like approaching 2100) is the idea of a gravity telescope. These would be several dozen AU away (an AU, or Astronomical Unit, is the average distance from Earth to the sun, or 93,000,000 miles). These telescopes would take advantage of the fact that gravity bends light (if you ever look at some of the deep space images that the large telescopes have taken, you can see large arcs, and what look like misplaced images. These are the images of galaxies that have been bent, distorted, or magnified by either another galaxy or galaxy cluster between it and us). These gravity telescopes would be placed exactly where the gravity of the sun focuses light to a point, and thus be able to see simply unbelievable amounts of the universe. Even one of these, sweeping through a tiny arc of its several hundred year orbit, would quickly amass more information than NASA is currently capable of storing.

    All in all, though, there is so much left to learn from deep space, it almost makes you cry. I find the whole endeavor rather exciting.

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