NASA Launches Giant Magnifying Glass Into Space

ByronScott writes "Early this morning NASA kicked off Operation LENS, an ambitious plan to concentrate and collect solar power using a giant magnifying glass in outer space. Long speculated to be a rumor, the 7,000,000 ft. wide lens was fabricated over the course of the past three years and launched from Cape Canaveral much to the dismay of almost every scientist in the world. While the first phase went exactly as planned, the plan hit a major snag when the magnifying glass began to work a bit too well, and ended up scorching large regions in the western hemisphere."

LOLOLOLOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Just make it stop. Next headline:

Slashdot Completely Worthless For a Day

Re:

[Yvan256]

Flash? What Flash? All I get is

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Re:

[Intron]

So you would prefer to see: This content requires the HTML5 Player

Great.

Actually, I was wrong. The site today was written by a new script for the Eliza program entirely running in emacs which just puts together random articles. humor.el still isn't working but RMS should have it fixed by late 2013.

Re:

[DJLuc1d]

God forbid anyone have a little fun 1 day out of the year. It's April fools day, Slashdot has been doing this forever, yet somehow people still fail to expect an April fools day joke on April fools, and then whine like it couldn't have been foreseen at every single article. If you really can't handle some people enjoying themselves, get away from /. for the day. Your SCO lawsuit, microsoft-blunder-of-the-week, MAFIAA, and LHC news will be back tomorrow. For today, you just have to take the needle out of you

Re:

[Intron]

God forbid anyone have a little fun 1 day out of the year.

But I am having fun. Seriously, chill out. Grumbling is all part of the plan.

Re:

[MillionthMonkey]

People have been writing posts bitching and whining about these stories for years and years. God forbid we get to call this site useless on one day of the year... eh, never mind.

Re:

[c6gunner]

Don't tell me you're actually looking at the flash. It took all of 5 seconds to disable with Ad-Block. If you're using any kind of filtering software, just block "http://s.fsdn.com/aprilfools/*"

Re:

[Nadaka]

For a day? You must be new here.

Re:

[arielCo]

I don't mind silliness, but please do it smartly.

I still remember the OMGPONIES edition (2007?), when the theme was changed to pink and a few insightful jokes were posted. (Anyone knows how I can find those stories? I can't and I'd really really like to bookmark them)

Re:

[vikstar]

Posted by CmdrTaco on Friday April 02, @06:17

CmdrTaco fails again.

Please Stop

[oldspewey]

Please stop now.

Re:

[AcidPenguin9873]

Please stop posting "Please stop" comments. If you don't like it, stop reading Slashdot for the day.

Re:

[Flea of Pain]

Please stop posting "Please stop posting "Please stop" " comments. If you don't like them don't read the comment section on stupid stories. You know there will be at least one.

Re:Please Stop

[oldspewey]

When the 3-word post "please stop now" gets rated +5 informative, it's time for the /. editors to take note.

Re:

[feepness]

They need to watch the Spongebob episode "Ripped Pants".

Re:

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

When it happens every single year it's time for the whiners to take note.

Re:

[geekoid]

Bullshit.

I have had Chuck Norris jokes mod +5 informative.

Re:

[oneTheory]

Honestly ppl, it's just silly news for a day. The world will still be here in all its boring splendor tomorrow. You won't miss anything important.

Re:

[dominious]

you must be new here. I bet if you look back on the last 5 years on 1st April, you will see the same old comments:)
"Please stop",
"/. worthless for a day",
"see you tomorrow",
"im not coming back",
etc.

Re:Please Stop

[AcidPenguin9873]

Slashdot has been doing stupid April 1 shit for more than 10 years, and hasn't heeded any negative comments about 1) the fact that they do it at all, 2) the style/type/content of the jokes, or 3) the amount/length of time that it goes on. Everyone should be well aware of this by now. If you can't stand it, leave. Or start your own tech/politics site that doesn't do stupid April 1 shit. The editors here obviously don't care about any opinions about April 1 shenanigans, and will continue to do as they please.

Additionally, posting a "Please stop" comment on April 1 is karma whoring. It's a +5 Insightful for what amounts to a first post.

Re:

[Tetsujin]

Additionally, posting a "Please stop" comment on April 1 is karma whoring. It's a +5 Insightful for what amounts to a first post.

Posting anything that people will agree with is karma whoring! So stop playing up to the masses all the time! If your comments aren't constantly being modded "overrated" or "troll" then you're just karma whoring!

Re:

[517714]

Additionally, posting a "Please stop" comment on April 1 is karma whoring. It's a +5 Insightful for what amounts to a first post.

Thanks for the tip!

Re:

[DMUTPeregrine]

The day they did OMG Ponies was great. All the jokes had a theme (ponies), everything reported on had ponies on it. It was easy to tell what was fake, the site was sparkly pink, and as things got more and more ridiculous through the course of the day it became more and more funny.
The last few years have been far less coherent. They would be better served by posting a few funny joke stories, instead of a deluge of mediocre ones. Brevity being the soul of wit and such. Failing that, come up with a theme. It

Re:Please Stop

[pushing-robot]

stop reading Slashdot for the day.

Ah, I remember when I could do that.

NO, please do not stop

[geekoid]

I like it.

You should just go away.

Re:

[religious freak]

+1

Re:

[Bigjeff5]

Mod parent up!

Re:

[LateArthurDent]

I like it.

You should just go away.

You're not alone. I'm a fan as well.

Talk about having no life. If slashdot doesn't post anything these people like, do they really have that much trouble finding something else to do? At the very least find other sites to visit...for one...fucking...day. The internet is a big place.

Re:Please Stop

[GargamelSpaceman]

April fools joke stories in past years have taken a bit of thought to distinguish from the real ones. When they don't fool anyone, they pretty much suck as April Fools jokes.

West coast scorched?

[mr_flea]

I hope someone sheds some light on this problem.

Re:

[courteaudotbiz]

In fact, light just shredded me.

Re:

[WalksOnDirt]

Scorched means it's still edible. If it was burned we'd have to throw it away.

Wait, did you write coast? Sorry, I read that as toast. Never mind.

Re:

[tomhudson]

Maybe they can use it to get a better look at this story from earlier today: Surprise Results From NASA Mars Satellite Public-Picked Photos [slushdot.com].

Re:

[zero_out]

[jest]I hope it torched the fruits and nuts in California. That place is full of weird people.[/jest] Love the weather though.

Re:

[scottrocket]

No way this is real! It just doesn't seem plausible! call the Mythbusters!

Re:

[Nesman64]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason_(short_story) [wikipedia.org]
Asimov did it first, but we don't have the AI to handle the beam.

In related news...

[rchh]

Humanity is Dead. Here comes the Death-ray.

Hm,

[KDN]

Doesn't this sound like a plot device from a recent James Bond movie?

Re:

[brentrad]

Sounds exactly like part of the plot of the Futurama episode "Crimes of the Hot":

http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/9389/futuramathreadpic.png [imageshack.us]

Started out as a giant mirror in space to deflect the sun's heat, but got flipped around and "somehow" got turned into a magnifying glass and scorched a line in the earth

April Fools Jokes get old..

[rotide]

April Fools Jokes get old when 100% of the stories on your site consist of them. I enjoyed the days of past when you found it fun to try and figure out which stories were jokes. Now every damn story is a "joke". Stops being cute/funny really really fast.

Re:April Fools Jokes get old..

[bastion_xx]

Same burning complaints back in the early 00's and even the 99's. At least now we have tags that shed light on the subject (so to speak).

Tomorrow will a brighter day, especially on the Left Coast.

Re:

[the linux geek]

This is not 1/1000 as bad as the Year of OMGPOnies. Figure approximately 120 stories, all in a horrible pink color scheme and done with a stereotypical valley-girl dialect. About half were ThinkGeek advertisements, and the other half ridiculous april fool stories.

Re:

[Sponge Bath]

Compared to this, I miss the ponies! Maybe next year we can get kitties. Cute, adorable kitties. Meow.

Re:

[Yvan256]

Meow [wikipedia.org] indeed.

Re:

[Jazz-Masta]

The jokes have to be really outlandish, otherwise certain people take them seriously.

Example:

Headline: Apple invents iDead - Apple unveiled today a revolutionary, magically device that kills people.
Result: Obviously a joke, no one will take it seriously.

Headline: Apple invents iEye - Apple today unveiled a revolutionary, magically device that integrates with the optic nerve to restore sight to blind people.
Result: People believe it, Apple stock goes way up. People get rich. Once it is found to be a joke (it

Re:

[Jazz-Masta]

Hmm, I should proof-read my posts more often.

Re:

[hesaigo999ca]

Likewise, I too thought it was cool, when 1 in 5 was a joke, but now, it is way too many, I almost stopped reading /. altogether today because of it....and I really don't like giving up my /.

and another thing...

[Stenchwarrior]

...these goddamn videos are the worst. At least the folks @ /. are having fun, I guess.

Full moon

[Stenchwarrior]

I'm going to go to the roof of my house and Moon NASA.

Goodbye France ...

[homey1337]

... after magnifying glass 2.0 is launched in the fall.

Re:

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Do you even look at whats posted in comments?

Yes. They see their ad-counter spinning like mad $$$$ at twits like you bitching about it.

Re:

[twoallbeefpatties]

You would think people would have figured out how terrible /. was five years ago and moved on to more clever internet sites, like Fark. (Replying to remove a wrong moderation, bleah.)

Re:

[KahabutDieDrake]

This is the way of it now. It's been going this direction for years now. deal with it.

Re:

[NeutronCowboy]

And yet, you post the same drivel multiple times in each story. Is your life so empty that you cannot stop reading Slashdot, even if you find it so dumb as to inflict physical pain on you?

Why don't editors have limits to the number of

[BitZtream]

posts they can make in one day?

I get cut off at some point for too much posting, why the fuck don't you bastards cut yourselves off for being retarded too?

A good Aperil Fools piece...

[Anonymous Coward]

...should have a surface vaneer of plausibility. This doesn't.

Re:

[Flea of Pain]

No kidding, as soon as I heard the line "NASA kicked off Operation..." I knew it had to be a joke.

In the operator's defense

[Locke2005]

They did say "From here those guys are so small, they look like ants!"

Re:

[BJ_Covert_Action]

To which Charles Bolden responded, "They are ants boys, the ARE ants!"

And he proceeded to laugh maniacally.

Re:

[robot256]

That just shows how huge the magnifying glass was.

Re:

[zero_out]

At least some of the jokes made me groan in pain as they hurt my funny bone. This one is just so... mundane, and unclever. I just sighed at the stupidity of it.

Repetitive strain injury

[janwedekind]

My brain is getting repetitive strain injury from all this April fool jokes. If the next news is about the Ubuntu security update setting up a bot-net, I might just ignore it.

ZOMG Pwnies!

[Torodung]

OMG! The roulette! ZOMG. Too damned funny.

It's nice to know

[geekoid]

that NASA is finally going to defend us from a future of giant ant overlords.

I'm loving the 4/1 stuff, keep it comin'

I, for one

[sconeu]

Welcome our new insect-overlord-destroying overlords.

Seriously, something along the lines of your comment was the first thing I thought of when I saw the story.

Not sure what that makes me, but what the hell...

Ah, it's a joke.

[jackpot777]

I get it. I get jokes.

Re:

[robot256]

Yeah, seriously, who forgot to add the "ihateaprilfools" tag?

More please

[geekoid]

Keep it comin'

Enough!

[Beelzebud]

When the entire site is nothing but "pranks", it sort of defeats the whole purpose of the day. Cya tomorrow slashdot.

Oh cmon

[Krakadoom]

This would have been a lot funnier if it was even remotely realistic. How much would a 7.000.000 ft glass lens weigh anyway? Good luck getting a rocket big enough.

Dr. Bunsen Honeydew?

[Dahamma]

At least it's good to see Dr. Honeydew found a new job after the Muppet Show was cancelled...

I would like to magnify...

[Neanderthal Ninny]

Beware ET, "Somebody's watching meeee!'

Ambassador Varg would like a word...

[jeko]

The Canim community frowns upon your shenanigans.

So obvious!

[SadieJane]

Just from the headline, I knew it was prank. And that was before I remembered today is April Fool Day. What is really funny about attempting to trick people? So they might look stupid .... and that would make you look smart? To whom?

7000,000 ft lens

[physburn]

Wow. Thats a big contact lens, imagine the size of the eye.

Dammit!!!

[IMustBeNuts]

It's April 2nd here, you insensitive clods!

Move it to L1

[valderost]

The magnifying glass is scorching only the Western Hemisphere because it's been placed in a geosynchronous orbit. NASA is rumored to be preparing to reposition it to LaGrangian Point L1 to provide a greater degree of stability, provided that they can account for positional oscillation resulting from the moon revolving around the Earth. Meanwhile, the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum is preparing to return the Hubble Space Telescope's COSTAR lens to NASA for refurbishing and redeployment to corr

I call bullshit!

[Alex Belits]

The article claims that the lens scorched areas in Western hemisphere while the picture shows it burning things in Eastern hemisphere (though still pretty close to the Greenwich meridian).

I'm sooo lucky!

[chewthreetimes]

Good thing I couldn't get online for too long yesterday, and thus missed reading the Slashdot stories. I can read those now instead of the useless unfunny overdone crap we're getting today.

The really sad part

[Subsound90]

I know it's an April Fools prank, but the lady down the street thinks this has already happened to the World Trade Center! She has been posting flyers for about 2 years now. She also thinks my dog (black lab) is a member of the CIA in disguise keeping an eye on her. Oh man, I am laughing so hard just thinking about it again.

Posted on April 2, must be true

[tdwebste]

Fact

Great!!

[redlabbey]

I hope this will help to unravel the mysery of universe. http://www.articlesbase.com/shopping-articles/get-exclusive-shoebuy-coupon-codes-amp-shoebuy-promotional-codes-2086623.html [articlesbase.com]