China Launches Satellite To Explore Dark Side of Moon (reuters.com) 120
China launched a relay satellite early on Monday designed to establish a communication link between earth and a planned lunar probe that will explore the dark side of the moon, the official Xinhua news agency said. From a report: Citing the China National Space Administration, Xinhua said the satellite was launched at 5:28 a.m. (2128 GMT Sunday) on a Long March-4C rocket from the Xichang launch center in the southwest of the country. "The launch is a key step for China to realize its goal of being the first country to send a probe to soft-land on and rove the far side of the moon," Xinhua quoted Zhang Lihua, manager of the relay satellite project, as saying.
"DARK SIDE OF THE MOON" (Score:5, Insightful)
"Dark" side of the moon? In this day and age, seriously?? Even the translation of China's press release correctly refers to it as the FAR side of the moon, which actually gets slightly MORE light than the near side!
Re:"DARK SIDE OF THE MOON" (Score:5, Interesting)
'matter of fact, it's all dark....thump thump....thump thump....thump thump.....
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I don't know I was really drunk at the time.
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"You had to explain why you were mad......even if you were not mad....."
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I think you all are just cruisin' for a bruisin'.
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A fantastic track from one of the few albums in Rock & Roll history better than Dark Side of the Moon.
On a related note, I've got a bike. You can ride it if you like.
On topic, various definitions of 'dark' allow for 'hidden' or 'mysterious,' which would apply here.
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Like darkest Peru, where Paddington Bear comes from.
Re: "DARK SIDE OF THE MOON" (Score:2)
And on another related note I would to tell you a story about a little man, if I can.
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Somebody told me that The Moon was a belief that life had no meaning. That really put that album into perspective.
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If true*, I'd take it as a nod towards how little Hollywood cares for scientific accuracy or at least how dumb the production thought their audience would be.
*Because I only watched the first one when it came out and don't remember a lot about it other than that they had a ton of generic special effects and a hot blonde female scientists say that the alien signal encoding goes beyond their understanding and maybe they
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"There, they will find Pink Floyd"
Nonetheless I wish them a great gig in the sky.
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Dark isn't always a synonym for "dim". On of the definitions of dark (and the version being used) not known or explored because of remoteness [merriam-webster.com]. For instance, did you think that the "deep, dark heart of the jungle" referred to an area we knew was in the shade?
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Mod this up. Using the term "dark" is sloppy, but tenable.
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Re: "DARK SIDE OF THE MOON" (Score:2)
Well played, sir. But welcome to autism central, home of narrow minds, egotism, and the inability to see shades of either meaning or moons.
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Dark isn't always a synonym for "dim". On of the definitions of dark (and the version being used) not known or explored because of remoteness [merriam-webster.com]. For instance, did you think that the "deep, dark heart of the jungle" referred to an area we knew was in the shade?
Are you absolutely sure that references to the jungles of sub-Saharan Africa being "dark" were not references to the skin color of its inhabitants?
Explorer Henry Morton Stanley coined the phrase "Dark Continent" for Africa in his 1878 book Through the Dark Continent which is a chronicle of his journeys through a central Africa, which was already densely populated by Africans and well known to Arab traders. It was not well known to Europeans, but hardly unknown or unexplored generally.
But no one uses that ph
Re:"DARK SIDE OF THE MOON" (Score:4, Informative)
"For instance, did you think that the "deep, dark heart of the jungle" referred to an area we knew was in the shade?"
Well kinda. The Jungle is heavily forested, the further you go in it beyond man influence. There are not having trees knocked down and a lot of growth overhead, so going deep into the Jungle it will get physically dark. The same if you go into a forest. Deep in the forests it gets somewhat dark. Enough for most vegetation shorter then a tree to not get enough light to grow. Hence why there isn't much grass in a forest.
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It was translated in the dark.
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pink floyd, man.
plus, for such awesome intellectuals, such as yourself, it's so much safer to go with simplified terminology that the stupids can understand.
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Slightly in the editor's defense, Reuters did use "dark side" in their title translation.
However, I just checked and many other sources got it right. The editor should have corrected this by finding a better source article. Shame on Slashdot. Double shame on Reuters - they really, really should know better.
Out of curiosity, I just did a quick survey by searching Google news for both "china dark side of the moon" and "china far side of the moon". It appears both that "far side" does win and that most that sa
Re: "DARK SIDE OF THE MOON" (Score:2)
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"Dark" side of the moon? In this day and age, seriously??
This is what has you concerned? Seriously?
How about Space Communists discovering the Space Nazis!! Intergalactic Space War!!!
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"Dark" side of the moon? In this day and age, seriously?? Even the translation of China's press release correctly refers to it as the FAR side of the moon, which actually gets slightly MORE light than the near side!
Dark side of the moon also refers to the far side of the moon because it is dark as to our ability to see it since it is always facing away from us. I may not have read this article, but the ones I have read this is very appropriate because the satellite in question has the purpose of being a relay and communicating with the next probe which will land on the far side of the moon that could otherwise not communicate with Earth.
Re:"DARK SIDE OF THE MOON" (Score:5, Informative)
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Fresh off Trade War Victory (Score:1)
Donald Trump surrendered to China while declaring 'victory' in a trade war today, while promising to assist a Chinese telecom company which was caught spying on Americans.
Congratulations on electing an incompetent traitor, morons.
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Re:Big deal. We launched real people and returned. (Score:4, Informative)
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Point to your analysis and your methodology.
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Dark Side of the Moon?! (Score:1)
Good thing the Chinese actually know that they are going to the Far Side of the Moon.
Too bad the reporter, editor, submitter and msmash don't know anything about the Moon.
Pink Floyd available for $4.97 @Walmart (Score:1)
Why you waste your money China??
Wow, What an expensive way... (Score:2)
To get a copy of the Album... Those crazy Chinese...
I know it would be supporting a capitalist pig organization to buy a copy, but I'm sure a copy of the CD could be obtained for much less than a launch. Just pay for the MP3's (or revive your peer sharing networks and down load it for free)...
There is no dark side of the Moon really (Score:3)
Re:I've got a better idea (Score:4, Interesting)
There is no dark side of Detroit. Matter of fact, it's all dark.
It's Pink Floyd jokes all the way down.
Dark Side of the Moon. Ah wedding memories. (Score:4, Insightful)
My wife and I had our wedding and (self-catered) reception in our home in Dec 1989 -- described as a wedding and cocktail party on the invitations we made. We had (and I still have) a Pioneer PD-M40 6-disc CD player programmed to play the last three discs in rotation, which were George Winston [wikipedia.org]. My grandfather unplugged the equipment during the ceremony and plugged it back in afterward. The player automatically plays the first disc (if present) on power up. The first three discs were Pink Floyd, with the first being Dark Side of the Moon.
Don't know if that was an omen, but we were happily together from the summer of 1985 until Jan 2006, when she died.
Remember Sue... [tumblr.com]
Well thatâ(TM)s sure to piss off the reptilia (Score:1)
Dark Side of the Rainbow (Score:1)
Schrodinger's Cat (Score:2)
Is gonna be pissed off when they get there and it dies from asphyxiation...
Not Transformers (Score:2)
But we won't (Score:2)
It would be sad if dictatorship spread to the other planets. We really should have a containment policy.
Talk to Selena (Score:2)
They should just ask Selena Gomez about it. She saw the dark side of the moon already, to get to some person. No need to send a space probe.
She's also been running through the jungle, running/crying with the wolves, and looked for love in every stranger, just in case you're interested in those aspects as well :-P
As for the far side of the moon (because the moon is tidally locked to our planet and only shows us one side ever), I don't think she knows anything, just like whoever wrote the headline.
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You're the kind of person who, whenever dinosaurs are mentioned, says they aren't extinct because you saw two in a tree this morning.
In other words, a fucking grade-A class-1 shitcock assburger.
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It's also called the "dark side" with "dark" meaning "unseen from earth" you autistic dipshit.
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Yes, let's invent meaning. By "autistic dipshit" meaning "you brilliant human", right? You're a brilliant human too :) High five bro.
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that 'dark side' phrase has been around for couple centuries at least, you can find it in Jules Verne's work
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you can find it in Jules Verne's work
Citation needed. Google* isn't giving me anything but a crated named Jules Verne [wikipedia.org] which happens to be on the far side.
As for the usage, all I find is that it started as a mistake and now there are people defending it usage (and the usage has even been extended to mean "outside of communications range"). Hey, it entered tradition, we must preserve the mistake now and forever...
*I'm sure you'll make fun of me for using Google and Wikipedia instead one of those modern solutions called a "library", so I'm fine i
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"Yes, startling is the word for it," observed Barbican, replying to a remark of Ardan's; "and still more so when we reflect that not only are both lunar hemispheres deprived, by turns, of sun light for nearly 15 days, but that also the particular hemisphere over which we are at this moment floating is all that long night completely deprived of earth-light. In other words, it is only one side of the Moon's disc that ever receives any light from the Earth. From nearly every portion of one side of the Moon, th
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The characters actually are on the far side when it's facing away from the Sun, so it's bloody dark at that time. Barbican very clearly uses the words "the side of the Moon which is always turned away from our globe" just before talking about "the dark side of the Moon", followed by his preference for the "illuminated side". At the time of the conversation the far side and the dark side are identical, so this makes sense. If they still call the far side the dark side 15 days later, then that would support y
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No, the characters are on the side never seen from earth, and talking about how the hypothetical residents there would react if they saw earth
You might be interested to know that for centuries "dark" also meant "hidden' or "unknown"
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The far side is the side never seen from the Earth... And it also happens to be dark at the time of the narrative.
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Yes, and it's also been called "the dark side", dark as in unknown. Language is defined by use.
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Alice and Bob decide to meet on the dark side of the Moon.
Alice: "Hey mate, I'm here. Where are you?"
Bob: "I'm here too. Where are you?"
Alice: "I have the Earth above my head"
Bob: "What are you on about? There's no Earth here, and the Sun is burning my retinas!"
You might be able to tell that I don't agree with the usage you are advocating.
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Alice and Bob decide to meet on the dark side of the Moon.
Alice: "Hey mate, I'm here. Where are you?"
Bob: "I'm here too. Where are you?"
Alice: "I have the Earth above my head"
Bob: "What are you on about? There's no Earth here, and the Sun is burning my retinas!"
You might be able to tell that I don't agree with the usage you are advocating.
(I replied to myself accidentally, and I wouldn't want you to miss it)
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And people that practice the "dark arts" turn the light off?
That usage have been common for centuries; in other news, the word "jack" has 34 meanings. Jack jacked while jacking his car with the other hand, his jacked earphone jack only playing sound to one ear.
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...and too lazy to consult a dictionary for standard meanings of a word. 'Dark' has EIGHT meanings, including "closed to the public", "showing evil traits", "not known or explored", "possessing depth and richness", etc.
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And people that practice the "dark arts" turn the light off?
Let's imagine Bob and Alice's dialogue using 'dark arts'.
Bob: Hey, let's practice the dark arts tonight. My place.
Now Bob could mean "let's summon Satan and debate the dark side of the Moon", or some innuendo that Alice knows about beforehand. Chance of confusion and crashing a lunar lander in the wrong place: minimal.
If usage causes confusion, it needs to go. I'm advocating that "dark side of the moon" shouldn't mean "the side unseen from the Earth" unless it happens to be unlit at the time as well. The Ju
Mysterious as (Score:2)
The dark side of the moooooon!
Question (Score:2)
Are they calling the satellite Mulan?
Dark side... (Score:3)
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death