NASA Rover May Contaminate Its Samples of Mars 147
sciencehabit writes "The Curiosity rover will definitely find evidence of an advanced civilization if it lands safely on Mars. That's because rock samples the rover drills are likely to be contaminated with bits of Teflon from the rover's machinery, NASA announced during a press teleconference. The bits of Teflon can then mix with the sample, which will be vaporized for analysis. The problem for the scientists is that Teflon is two-thirds carbon — the same element they are looking for on Mars."
Fortunately, this problem isn't a showstopper: "...there are still mitigation steps to take if SAM's analysis is potentially compromised. Contaminant production appears to be stronger in the drill's percussion mode, when it pounds powerfully and rapidly on Martian rock. So ratcheting the percussion down, or switching over to the more gentle rotary mode, may make the issue more manageable. If that doesn't work, the MSL team could just take the drill out of commission, solely scooping soil instead of also boring into rock. Curiosity could still access the interior of some Martian rocks by rolling over them with its wheels, Grotzinger said. But all in all, he's confident that the team will figure things out in the next month or two."
Two-thirds carbon? (Score:5, Informative)
I think somebody had another English-metric goof when they were doing their stoichiometry.
(CF2)n -> 24% carbon, 76% fluorine by mass, at least by my calculations.
Re:Two-thirds carbon? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually its even worse. I'm assuming they're using a mass spectrometer and you get one C ion for every two F ions. So they got the concept of the ratio correct, but backwards. Well, its just journalism and PR, can't expect much from those folks.
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Nobody even tried this to test it out? They didn't learn from previous missions?
I recall Voyager gathering samples, dumping it into a container, and pouring chemicals on it. Whoa! Carbon, life.
Then someone said, well, no, probably not, there were other explanations.
Why didn't someone say, "Presume the test is positive -- let's shoot holes in it." them iterate proving the test until there are no more holes they can think of.
Is that so hard before you spend billions?
Re:Two-thirds carbon? (Score:5, Informative)
> I recall Voyager...
Viking, and it wasn't looking for carbon, specifically, it was looking for long-chain hydrocarbons. Good link here [wikipedia.org].
Re:Two-thirds carbon? (Score:5, Insightful)
The flip side is spending tens of millions thinking of all the possible ways the test could provide a false positive, designing them out of the test, then sending Viking to Mars and having the test come out negative. Then you get criticized or wasting all that money coming up with a test which would generate a foolproof positive result, forgetting that the result could be negative.
Science is like filling an empty map. If you blindly concentrate all your resources in one area of the map, you could end up knowing a lot about an uninteresting place (like say, the middle of the ocean). But if you use a shotgun strategy and first spend minimal resources in lots of locations, you can see where the interesting parts of the map are and concentrate your resources on exploring those in the future.
Viking was the first Mars lander. By no means was it planned to be the last. They put a simple experiment (along with several others) on board which would provide a quick answer to a "gee I wonder what happens if..." question. If it came back negative, oh well. Since it came back positive, then they could spend millions scrutinizing the result and planning a better test for future landers.
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Viking was the first Mars lander. By no means was it planned to be the last.
Viking was looking for big stuff, not microscopic traces. When Viking landed they still thought Mars might have plant life.
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Yes, but with MS they will get the Mw of the various components. It shouldn't be too hard to correct for - if it's MS.
Teflon (Score:5, Funny)
Well, at least the samples won't get stuck.
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Well, at least the samples won't get stuck.
It's flaking off, so yuh-huh.
Shouldn't be a huge issue (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know how sensitive the detector they are using is, but they should also be able to detect the fluorine molecules (which outnumber the carbon 2 to 1, unlike what TFA claims). I don't imagine they expect to find a lot of fluorine in the rocks on Mars, so the presence of fluorine indicates the sample is contaminated and they should ignore the carbon. If the analysis is really sensitive, they could even correlate the amount of fluorine with the expected amount of carbon (since it should be exactly 2 to 1), allowing the contaminating carbon to be eliminate from the analysis.
This assumes the fluorine can be accurately analyzed, which may be a major issue since it is extremely reactive. I'm not a chemist, though, so I don't know how big an issue that could be.
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correlate the amount of fluorine with the expected amount of carbon (since it should be exactly 2 to 1)
The best news is that commercial teflon is pretty pure stuff inherently. There is some odd acid manufacturing byproduct but I remember it was measured in PPB so there's not much. Probably baked aerospace grade stuff is pretty ridiculously pure so that 2 to 1 ratio will hold quite well.
This assumes the fluorine can be accurately analyzed, which may be a major issue since it is extremely reactive.
Extremely reactive means easily ionizable means its really easy to detect in a mass spectrometer. So thats good news, assuming thats what they're doing.
If they can heat the samples they can play games with the pyrolosis tem
Could Have Been Worse (Score:2)
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Diamond = Carbon, same problem.
recall it and fix it! (Score:2)
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Better yet, how about we send a manned mission to fix the problem? Hey, it worked with Hubble...
One of the strengths of robotics (Score:3, Interesting)
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to minimize the risk of biological contamination
I think we're a bit at cross-purposes. I would much rather maximize the risk of biological contamination. I figure a well developed high tech society on Mars gives us the best chance of doing that.
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It seems odd that you would criticise the robot for contaminating the environment, and then later say that you don't care about contamination
You speak of and conflated a different sort of problem. In the current case, the contamination might render this particular drill useless for its purpose, meaning the sort of experiment it was meant to do may well be delayed till some distant time when another probe comes by this location to drill samples. While biological contamination from humans is a long term problem (a problem we've successfully dealt with here on Earth, I might add) which can be filtered out of the experiments run by the researchers.
But then to the external observer many of the notions in support of reusing the technology of yesteryear (e.g. Horse drawn buggies, mine ponies, gas light, manned space travel) seem anachronistic and self contradictory.
T
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In that sense, it makes sense to ask if robotics is meant to replace humans, then how would it do so?
I lost a paragraph here that noted that the tasks which we did before such as riding a horse-drawn buggy are still done today, just advanced considerably (cars, heavy and automated mining equipment, and electric light). So the question is what replaces the capabilities of humans in such a scheme. It seems to me a bit like deciding to forgo horses prior to the advent of the replacement for the horse. There might be a way to do it, but it seems to me to just be a waste of time.
With any sort of manned space
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A manned mission would be so much more expensive there's no use comparing. For half the price of a manned mission, they could have sent over a few really fucking amazing general-purpose robots that could also troubleshoot the drill. Instead, they sent over a relatively small special purpose instrument, that it sounds like will be able to deal with the situation.
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For half the price of a manned mission, they could have sent over a few really fucking amazing general-purpose robots that could also troubleshoot the drill.
Half the price? That's not much of a cost savings is it?
Instead, they sent over a relatively small special purpose instrument, that it sounds like will be able to deal with the situation.
By not functioning as intended. They might not even use it at all. I found that part quite illuminating.
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Compare that to the type of error that could arise using the human mission - human falls over (as they are wont to do), breaks femur. Compound fracture. How do we recover form this error, given the problem of the human lying in agony on the surface of Mars, bleeding internally and slowly dy
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Since they corrected the error
They didn't. They just went ahead with the mission. There are some compensating strategies and it may well turn out that the mission isn't seriously compromised by this alleged contamination in the first place. But this sort of thing is a huge weakness of the current approach. If they end up losing significant capabilities, they may never conduct the observations, within our lifetimes, for which the instrument was intended.
A manned mission would have far great ability to compensate for such a problem.
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We don't as in the case of the Mars Science Laboratory, design a completely new mission and do everything from scratch.
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Yeah, but this is a robotic mission that gives good results now, compared to a hypothetical manned mission that costs 100X as much this year and every year for the next 50 years, and gives perhaps better results 50 years from now, assuming the crew doesn't die on the way.
We could probably send 10 probes every launch window for a fraction of the cost of a manned mission. Surely they can't all have fatal flaws?
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Yeah, but this is a robotic mission that gives good results now, compared to a hypothetical manned mission that costs 100X as much this year and every year for the next 50 years, and gives perhaps better results 50 years from now, assuming the crew doesn't die on the way.
That's a hypothetically manned mission. I was refering to missions that had people on them not an activity that spends money for 50 years and might have people going to Mars at the end of the period. You know, much like the present day, even to the money spent.
We could probably send 10 probes every launch window for a fraction of the cost of a manned mission. Surely they can't all have fatal flaws?
And what would we do with them that would justify not having a manned presence? People keep forgetting how little we do with probes these days. It only looks like a lot because it's been 40 years since the last manned mission to another body in the So
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Yeah, but this is a robotic mission that gives good results now, compared to a hypothetical manned mission that costs 100X as much this year and every year for the next 50 years, and gives perhaps better results 50 years from now, assuming the crew doesn't die on the way.
That's a hypothetically manned mission. I was refering to missions that had people on them not an activity that spends money for 50 years and might have people going to Mars at the end of the period. You know, much like the present day, even to the money spent.
Well, the nature of research is that you have to spend the money BEFORE you find out if you're actually able to achieve the desired result. Good luck finding somebody willing to run a mission to Mars for an X-prize payable only after success.
We could probably send 10 probes every launch window for a fraction of the cost of a manned mission. Surely they can't all have fatal flaws?
And what would we do with them that would justify not having a manned presence? People keep forgetting how little we do with probes these days. It only looks like a lot because it's been 40 years since the last manned mission to another body in the Solar System.
Also, it's worth noting that we're not really sending out a lot of probes. Sure, we're spending a lot of money. But we're just not getting much for the money.
Well, if the science isn't worth it, then don't send the probes either. What would you do with people on mars?
The fact is that going to Mars with robots or people is expensive. Doing it with people is just mind-bogglingly expensive. The only reason it makes sense to
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What would you do with people on mars?
Live there. Duh.
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And what benefit does that provide to anybody? In particular, to those who aren't living there (though it isn't at all clear to me what benefits those living their obtain either).
If I asked the US government to build me a house in the next town over for a few trillion dollars, I suspect I'd have to have a reason better than "so I can live there" if I wanted to gain any traction.
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The only reason it makes sense to send people is if there is some objective to accomplish on Mars where sending people is more cost-effective than sending a probe. I can't really think of any scenario where that is the case.
To elaborate on my previous remark, there's some portion of the population who is in favor of human colonization of space. That inherently requires humans at some point to do. It also requires a lot of knowledge about the environments and resources of the areas that we would attempt to colonize. Hence, there is a deep need for human-oriented space science if this group is to achieve its aims.
Second, these are pretty well known goals. I doubt you've never heard of proposals to colonize Mars. There's a sc
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So, right now I can't see why anybody would want to live on Mars. It is kind of like living in the middle of the Sahara, but less hospitable, and I don't see people signing up to live there on their own dime.
If I did want to colonize mars, landing people there would be the LAST thing I did, and chances are it would be a century or two before getting to that. First give them someplace to live. You might be able to build a base on Mars, but that wouldn't give you anything you wouldn't get cheaper by just b
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It is kind of like living in the middle of the Sahara, but less hospitable, and I don't see people signing up to live there on their own dime.
I don't see you looking for such people either. But having said that, there's quite a few people living in the Sahara. Googling around, I see estimates of a few million (2-4 million) depending in large part on what you consider part of the Sahara. It doesn't have significant population density, but people do live there mostly on their own dime.
If I did want to colonize mars, landing people there would be the LAST thing I did, and chances are it would be a century or two before getting to that.
Why wait so long? The martian environment isn't going to change over that time to make life easier for us. Nor do I think we will develop technologies specific to Mar
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So, I've yet to hear a reason for colonizing Mars in the first place. Doing so is EXTREMELY expensive so it should be a means to an end, and not an end in itself.
About the only real reason I've heard for colonizing Mars is having people living outside the Earth in case something goes wrong with the Earth. However, that has no value at all unless these people can live completely independently of resupply from Earth, and if you want those people to live on Mars then there has to be some reason for them to b
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About the only real reason I've heard for colonizing Mars is having people living outside the Earth in case something goes wrong with the Earth. However, that has no value at all unless these people can live completely independently of resupply from Earth, and if you want those people to live on Mars then there has to be some reason for them to be living there as opposed to someplace else, like in the middle of space.
This is one big reason why Mars is such a popular target for colonization. All the materials needed for Earth life and a technological civilization are present. So they can indeed live independently of Earth in a way that is much more difficult to accomplish on some other locations such as middle of space, the Moon, Venus, most asteroids, etc.
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This is one big reason why Mars is such a popular target for colonization. All the materials needed for Earth life and a technological civilization are present.
Define materials needed for Earth life...
There isn't any O2 in the atmosphere, there isn't much of an atmosphere at all, though they do have dust storms so forget making your shelter out of aluminum foil like you can in space. Sure, there is lots of dirt, though that dirt contains no organic material needed to sustain plant life/etc.
It seems to me that in general the life support requirements on Mars aren't any better than what you'd need in the middle of space. You'd need to meticulously recycle everythi
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Define materials needed for Earth life...
All the elements that animal or plant life uses.
There isn't any O2 in the atmosphere, there isn't much of an atmosphere at all, though they do have dust storms so forget making your shelter out of aluminum foil like you can in space. Sure, there is lots of dirt, though that dirt contains no organic material needed to sustain plant life/etc.
The atmosphere has CO2 and nitrogen which we can readily turn into plants and oxygen (there's your organic materials). There is some quantity of water and carbon dioxide underground. And we can make that shelter out of dirt or metals such as aluminum and steel which we can mine from either the dirt or meteorites (which are very plentiful on Mars).
It seems to me that in general the life support requirements on Mars aren't any better than what you'd need in the middle of space. You'd need to meticulously recycle everything, as there would be no renewal except from Earth resupply (which won't be available if the Earth is wiped out or whatever the doomsday scenario is - and for the biggest doomsday scenario of all (nuclear war) I'd rather be on the Earth where at least I can try to live in a cave than on a fragile space colony whose exact coordinates are well known to those firing the missiles).
Life support requirements aren't different on Earth either. We still need the same things here that we'd need on Ma
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The atmosphere has CO2 and nitrogen which we can readily turn into plants and oxygen (there's your organic materials). There is some quantity of water and carbon dioxide underground. And we can make that shelter out of dirt or metals such as aluminum and steel which we can mine from either the dirt or meteorites (which are very plentiful on Mars).
Ah, so we just need to reduce CO2 and fix N2. If we could do that artificially for any practical amount of money we'd have fixed global warming and would be growing crops in the Sahara.
The only practical way to do those things right now is via plants/algae/etc. And, if you could get those to grow on Mars then all you need to do is seed the planet with them and it would basically terraform itself. If you could do that then it would be a place worth living on (well, assuming you could do something about th
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If we could do that artificially for any practical amount of money we'd have fixed global warming and would be growing crops in the Sahara.
And we do. That is, our approach to global warming is IMHO near optimal (it is as fixed as we desire it to be) and we do grow crops in the Sahara.
My point was that the life support / engineering requirements are the same or even less in space than on Mars. So, why live on Mars as opposed to space? Mind you, I don't see the point in living in space either until we are far more advanced.
And my point was that the life support/engineering requirements are no different than they would be on Earth. Laws of physics don't change as you go from Earth to space.
Ah, you want to live on Mars, that place where anybody can stake a claim and be magically free from all the politics that happen on Earth. Never mind that you'd need one of those pesky governments to build your colony in the first place - I'm sure they'll be happy to let the colonists just do whatever they want to free of interference after spending a few trillion dollars putting them there. And, if you somehow strike out and build your own little hut in the middle of the dirt, I'm sure nobody will show up with a gun and try to take it from you.
You'd get further moving to Rhode Island and voting in Libertarians or something. If you want to be free of government interference the last thing you want to be doing is asking for a few trillion dollars in Federal funding to build a colony on Mars.
And why do you think it would cost that much or that a government would be needed? We aren't exactly standing still in technology development or manufacture capability here.
Instead, I'd wager th
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And my point was that the life support/engineering requirements are no different than they would be on Earth. Laws of physics don't change as you go from Earth to space.
Sure, but the environmental conditions are different.
A rat can engineer suitable living conditions on Earth. I'd like to see one design a habitat for living on Mars. The required conditions are no different, but the lack of 1atm of 20% O2 everywhere, and water falling from the sky, and stuff you can eat literally lying all over the place sure is different.
In any case, if you're looking to privately fund a mission to Mars don't let me discourage you. As long as you're not asking me to pay for it and my el
Spare drill? (Score:2)
So some people have said they have a duplicate drill here on earth. Can't they at least roughly simulate the same work that the Mars one is going to do, and see how much contamination happens, then compensate in the results? Totally out of my field, so I have no idea.
Re:really? (Score:5, Informative)
It sounds like the teflon is from rings higher up in the assembly. It's not like they covered the bit in teflon and later did a full-on Picard facepalm.
They seem optimistic that they'll be able to work around it. I guess these lessons come with the territory when operating hugely complex projects to other friggin planets.
Re:really? (Score:4, Informative)
did you even read TFA ?
Lab testing of a backup version of the drill uncovered the contamination problem shortly before launch of the rover and its drill last November, according to Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland
They launched anyway knowing the drill bit was contaminated. if thats not a facepalm i dont know what is.
Re:really? (Score:4, Informative)
They launched anyway knowing the drill bit was contaminated. if thats not a facepalm i dont know what is.
The alternative would probably have been a multi-year delay for the next launch window.
Re:really? (Score:5, Informative)
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And the mision had already suffered a 2 year delay to fix other problems. You don't just end up with hardware that's been sitting on the shelf a long time, you have a marching army of people that you have to pay to maintain for those 2 years. You can reduce the headcount, but you still have to keep quite a few key people around-- if you let them go work on other projects you can't easily get them back.
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Yes. I read the article. It says it's from seals in the assembly and they seem confident they can work around it.
I think they're probably the best qualified people to decide if they should halt a gajillion dollar project or if they think they can work around the problem.
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They launched anyway ... if thats not a facepalm i dont know what is
a) There's things called "launch windows" which only come around every few years.
b) If they wait for 100% perfection the thing will never take off. Ever.
Re:really? (Score:5, Informative)
The MSL uses an RTG power source. The problem with RTGs is that you can't turn them off, they start to run down as soon as they are built. MSL already missed a launch window due to delays and so was 2.5 years behind. Another delay would use up 5 years of the expected 10 years of RTG life.
Sometimes external factors force your hand.
Re:How'd they catch it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Right now, the rover is in *space*. I can definitely understand catching this problem in simulations or in on-Earth tests, or catching it belatedly when they finally get to Mars and wonder why all the rocks contain fluorine, but in space? Only thing I can think of is "someone re-ran some simulations and noticed they messed up", which doesn't seem very probable (unless the engineers had been suspecting this since before launch, and only now have sufficient "proof").
Then again, I'm not a rocket scientist, so I probably missed something.
They probably have an identical unit to mess with locally in case of electrics problems. If something goes wrong in space it is extremely helpful to have a physical replica you can actually put your hands on and experiment with to find the best fix.
Re:How'd they catch it? (Score:4, Informative)
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"First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?" - S.R. Hadden in Contact
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Oooh, I loved that man... and that moment.
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Almost all of the cost is in R&D, physical production is probably a rounding error on a typical NASA project.
Not really R&D so much as test, qualification, and documentation. Everything gets tested (generally test units that don't fly) to show that it will do what it's supposed to in the environment that it's supposed to for as long as it's supposed to. It's lots of environmental and life testing, plus redesign and retest when things fail. And because you're building only one, or maybe 2, you don't get to spread those costs over a hundred thousand or a few million units like you do with a car or an iphone.
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True, but the assembly-line concept still exists. If you are building or testing or whatevering a part, chances are that before you got it right you had to make 10 of them anyway, and so making a few extra is just a tiny marginal cost.
Maybe if you're talking about telescope mirrors it is a different situation (months to years of effort on a single piece). However, if you give me any assembly job to do then having me do each step twice instead of once is a pretty small cost in the big scheme of things.
Re:How'd they catch it? (Score:4, Informative)
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So what's the purpose of the FS after launch?
Re:How?? (Score:5, Funny)
Can't they find a nice abrasive rock to grind on till the Teflon wears off?
The Fix (Score:2)
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The Teflon is not on the drill bit; it rubs off of sealing rings in the main drill assembly. I know it's tough for you to believe, but the people who send robotic probes to other planets are, by and large, not idiots.
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if that does NOT make them idiots i dont know what does.
Would you want to be the manager who had to tell everyone that the mission will be delayed three years because of possible contamination in one experiment?
Or do you launch anyway and live with 95% of the science returns while looking for a workaround for this problem?
Scheduling (Score:2)
Think of how much you can shrink the schedule by testing the equipment and analyzing the test results while the device is on its way.
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From TFA:
"Teflon is rubbed off those seals into the material," said Pete Theisinger, MSL project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. "It then becomes part of the sample."
I don't see any mention of the bits, but I suppose "seals" could be code for "bits."
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There's nothing poisonous about eating Teflon, only when you breathe in the fumes. (Just like the diacetyl used in popcorn.)
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Perhaps not poisonous, per se, but to hell with my eggs looking like I sprinkled bits of burned tinfoil all over them. I'm so over that.
I remember the guy who died because of his addiction to smelling microwaved popcorn at a constant.
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Well he didn't die..... they diacetyl just damaged his lungs so he had trouble breathing. Same thing happened to several Orville Redenbacher employees.
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Wow, you got a really shitty pan. Next time, spend a few extra bucks and get the good stuff on cookware. It really is worth it, especially if you cook a lot.
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You're not supposed to use metal utensils on Teflon. I have plenty of 5 year old pans that don't have any Teflon coming off. Once that starts happening, though, it's time to replace them.
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Yes, get rid of your teflon cookware because people are just dying left and right from this product that everyone has been using for the last 50 years.~
While you are at it you may want to move to soaps that don't use sodium lauryl sulfate since that kills even more people than teflon does. ~
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Whoa, Mr. Serious McSnarky! Calm yourself, I was just enjoying going on an OT rant.
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Sorry, I have ran into too many people who believe those things without knowing the science behind it.
http://lisa.drbronner.com/?p=197 [drbronner.com]
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I've always thought it wasn't good for you either way, but thanks to you and others on slashdot, maybe I'll save some money and grow accustomed to the teflon flavor.
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Just buy good quality cookware, and if you are actually worried then get some with the new titanium ceramic coatings, they work better and aren't as fragile.
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Teflon is not poisoning you.
You are eating the flakes and they are going out with the rest of the solid waste. Teflon is not digestible.
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Cant be necessarily GOOD for me, though. Serious, it looks like I cracked a shitton of fresh pepper on my eggs every time I use the thing. Pretty soon, I will be unstickable.
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Cant be necessarily GOOD for me, though. Serious, it looks like I cracked a shitton of fresh pepper on my eggs every time I use the thing. Pretty soon, I will be unstickable.
Depends on your definition of good. The lack of friction is unchanged. Its not staying in your body unless you have something really weird going on. I've occasionally wondered if gelatin capsules of powdered teflon would make a good medical stool softener. My guess is yes, but the conventional treatment material is much cheaper. Some idiot would probably find a way to contaminate the powder by embedding anaerobic bacteria in it, or it would psuedo-creep-sinter in the capsules making a little pellet ins
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It is not good nor bad, it is just is non-nutritive. It can indeed look terrible, but it is not harming you.
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They have found the the flourocarbons in people blood and fat. Regardless of whether this is good or bad I would rather use stainless and a little butter.
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You can find all kinds of stuff at levels that don't matter.
I would suggest cast iron before stainless for eggs. I like stainless for general fry purposes though. I just like stuff that lasts, which teflon pans never do.
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Eggs can be a little tricky in stainless, generally I use medium heat and let the butter melt, drive off the water and turn brown before I put the eggs in.
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I'm lending Obama my pan. I liked the guy, but he needs all the help he can get at this point.
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My mom got me a good pan, but it's too small to make a substantial omelet. I can't remember the material used in it.
Can you believe my original comment got up to a score of 4, Informative? It got downgraded to 3, and I'm kinda glad for that. I'm not being informative in the slightest.
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Invest in a good cast iron skillet, at least 12", and take good care of it. It will take good care of you for the rest of your life. If you're lucky, you can find a cheap one at a garage sale. Otherwise one from Lodge will do just fine. Some things just haven't been improved on.
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Just put a steel brush attachment on your electric drill, the teflon will come off eaily. As will burned-on food.
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Or just heat it to red-hot and wait till it stops smoking.
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Never mind the 720p part. phah!
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>>>720p video
That's it? 1080i doesn't require any extra bandwidth but gives 2.2 times the resolution. (Or they could do 1080p at half the framerate.) TRIVIA: The scientists at NASA were able to rewrite Voyager's software, and use digital compression, to increase its photo resolution 3x more than originally designed.
Re: (Score:2)
720p at 30fps provides a higher resolution than 1080i. 1080i at 60 fields per second and only 540 pixels tall, provides only 3/4 the vertical resolution at twice the temporal resolution. On the other hand, they may be using 720p at 60fps. 1080i doesn't even make sense when you're talking about a camera taking WHOLE pictures.
Re: (Score:3)
What I would like to know is: what does it sound like on the surface of Mars?
oh dear, now look what you've made me do... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Since the journalists Fd up everything else in the story, next we'll probably hear its actually kapton tape not teflon. That would really suck because kapton is made out of C N and O just like life and has no handy marker like being 2/3 F. Now that would be a real whoops.
The thing I don't get about the whole story is anyone doing anything with teflon knows it slowly deteriorates. So the first sample has 1 ppb carbon, the second 1.0001, the third 1.0002, fourth 1.0003 you know something is steadily fallin
Re: (Score:2)