Posts by Jason Safoutin
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Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
Detecting systems with life
(Message 1130996)
Posted 23 Jul 2011 by  Jason Safoutin
Post: OK, how about this for a proposed mission? Build a probe with whatever is felt to be the correct instruments to do the job of detecting compounda in the atmosphere of a planet that are most likely due to the presence of life and more specifically intelligent life and as soon as it is far enough out aim it at the only planet that we know of that fits the criteria. Then start looking for the unique signature. Then reaim the probe to look at candidate systems that are closest to ours. Why they don't do that is beyond me. Seems NASA is all about sending probes to asteroids, and planets within our solar system, but have little to no interest in sending them outside our system. Makes me wonder if they are afraid of what they might find. Then again, who is to say they haven't already done this and are just not telling us? That is very possible. |
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Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
Detecting systems with life
(Message 1129556)
Posted 19 Jul 2011 by Jason Safoutin
Post: Such a shame that most of the instruments that have the possibility of making such a detection have ceased to operate now. |
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Message boards :
Science (non-SETI) :
Last Ever Shuttle Launch
(Message 1125761)
Posted 8 Jul 2011 by Jason Safoutin
Post: It is still scheduled for tomorrow, Friday 8th July, but the current weather forecast gives it only a 40% chance of liftoff. If it is aborted Sunday looks like the most likely time to go. I wonder what they have to replace the shuttle... |
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Message boards :
Science (non-SETI) :
UFO?
(Message 1125434)
Posted 7 Jul 2011 by Jason Safoutin
Post: As I said , in the context of SETI, we are most interested in :"habitable" planets that can support intelligent life on a level that rivals human intelligence. I posit that the requirements for such life to start and evolve may consist of many finely tuned parameters for which there are few (if any) known candidate planets. Time will tell --I would be pleased to be found wrong in my suppositions. No candidates yet...more so because I think our existence in the universe was overestimated. We are only now beginning to realize just how big space is. It is only a matter of time before we come across such an intelligent species. It may take time, but someday it's bound to happen. I just think we nee to think more out of the box if we are even going to consider bacterial life on planets/moons. Take Saturn's moon Enceladus for example. There could be a whole treasure trove of life there. And it would likely be drastically different than what we have or had on earth. |
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Message boards :
Science (non-SETI) :
UFO?
(Message 1124625)
Posted 4 Jul 2011 by Jason Safoutin
Post: By habitable in the context of SETI I think that we all mean that we could go there now and live without any artificial life support once we could figure out how to get there. I will venture a guess that we won't find a single planet that meets the criteria that this definition implies. Of course, I hope that I am wrong. There probably are a few such planets in the Galaxy but they may be too far away to ever find. Just a hunch--I am eagerly awaiting to see what we can find over the the next few decades. You can't prove a negative but just one example would prove me wrong. There doesn't need to be a planet just like earth for life to exist on it. If bacteria can thrive/live in pools of arsenic infested water, or on the tip of volcanic vents in the ocean depths, then life can exist on planets that are nothing like earth. Life has proven to exist where humans cannot (on earth). So to assume that life is only relevant based on the conditions of earth, I think, is just stupidity. |
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Message boards :
Science (non-SETI) :
UFO londre 6/24/2011
(Message 1124620)
Posted 4 Jul 2011 by Jason Safoutin
Post: Another UFO story that Mainstream Media has picked up. Slow news day...Though an impressive video, and a likely hoax, it amazes me how many people were watching what this cameraman was. Seems like everyone was trying to take pictures. So...given you can see that, where is everyone else who took pictures of this event? |
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Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
ET is found.
(Message 1123376)
Posted 1 Jul 2011 by Jason Safoutin
Post: If we are going to mention insanity or someone being a lunatic...for centuries humans believed our planet was flat, and to this day there are still people who believe it is. That was science at the time that everyone excepted as fact. There were days when Newton and other various scientists were considered lunatics and had to do their work in secret. I am not agreeing or disagreeing with this particular topic: I am merely stating that the "facts" of science, and theories involved with it, change all the time. We know very little about our own home let alone the entire solar system and beyond. We are barely scrapping the surface. That said are aliens reading our minds? controlling our thoughts and so on? If they were, then the only reason for that would be for an invasion. Or we could say it's 'The Matrix' and they already control us. But no...really, I don't think aliens would hold that much of an interest in us if they had that kind of intelligence, then I would believe as a whole that they don't use violence, again assuming they won't invade. They have better things to do. |
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Message boards :
Cafe SETI :
Happy Gay Pride Week!
(Message 1121883)
Posted 27 Jun 2011 by Jason Safoutin
Post: Best wishes to all in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community! BUMP :D and RE |
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Message boards :
Science (non-SETI) :
A thought about space travel
(Message 1121689)
Posted 26 Jun 2011 by Jason Safoutin
Post: But unless there is a way around the speed of light even communicating with any of them would have such a delay involved that two way communication would be of little value other than knowing they are there. We send out signals every second of everyday with every TV broadcast, radio show, when we talk on cell phones or walkie talkies. Granted they aren't beamed into space so aliens to intercept, but they do go into space. The signal(s), like all signals, weakens and degrades over time. In terms of us or aliens sending a message, unless A signal is in constant transmission 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in specific directions, we will one receive bursts of a signal. You also have to account for other interference and so on. If any aliens are as intelligent as we are, or not so much, or even maybe smarter, I wouldn't see why some of them wouldn't be listening if they have the capability to do so, or travel at warp speed, light speed or whatever fancy name you want to give it. Time is of the essence. We as humans must be patient and not lose the hopes of finding something. If we do, even for a second, then that one second could be the key that we have been looking for. |
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Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
Is THIS A Kepler Work Unit?
(Message 1121687)
Posted 26 Jun 2011 by Jason Safoutin
Post: Wouldn't it be so awesome if what we do to those WUs that we actually find something? Not necessarily aliens, but a planet with some form of life? Maybe we won't find anything, but this is the closest the public has gotten to data like this. I remember when PlanetQuest was going to be a big deal. Considering the time they have been taking to get off the ground at all, we need to consider ourselves very lucky to be able to do this. |
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Message boards :
Cafe SETI :
Barny Frank, Ron Paul: legalize Pot
(Message 1120731)
Posted 24 Jun 2011 by Jason Safoutin
Post: I am all for legalizing pot. The societal hit from pot smokers is nothing compared to the damaging effects of alcohol. ...and car accidents, and pain killer addictions.... and so on. I always liked this bit: No animals were harmed during this study:....Simply stated, researchers have been unable to give animals enough marijuana to induce death. Man I would have liked to see the munchies those rats got. They probably got the 'good stuff' too. At present it is estimated that marijuana's LD-50 is around 1:20,000 or 1:40,000. In layman terms this means that in order to induce death a marijuana smoker would have to consume 20,000 to 40,000 times as much marijuana as is contained in one marijuana cigarette. NIDA-supplied marijuana cigarettes weigh approximately .9 grams. A smoker would theoretically have to consume nearly 1,500 pounds of marijuana within about fifteen minutes to induce a lethal response. |
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Message boards :
Cafe SETI :
Barny Frank, Ron Paul: legalize Pot
(Message 1120727)
Posted 24 Jun 2011 by Jason Safoutin
Post: Ron Paul, Barney Frank Introduce Bill That Would End Pot Prohibition Reps. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Barney Frank (D-MA) introduced a bipartisan bill today that would remove the federal prohibition on marijuana. The bill would instead let states legalize, regulate and tax marijuana. Politico says the legislation is modeled after the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, which repealed the federal prohibition on alcohol and handed that responsibility to the states. The AP reports that Frank said "he's not advocating marijuana use, but believes that criminal prosecution is a waste of resources and an intrusion on personal freedom." I will agree with Frank on this one. I want to hear some other thoughts on this. |
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Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
Saturn moon Enceladus may have salty ocean
(Message 1120695)
Posted 24 Jun 2011 by Jason Safoutin
Post: This discovery is a major one. This could mean that there is life on this moon! Maybe not intelligent life, but the odds of life other than on Earth, existing in our solar system, have just gotten lower. Oh I couldn't agree more. I am just eager to see what is actually down there. I can imagine an entire ecosystem of creatures. It would be amazing to find something to the level of mammals. The probability is high too. Organic material was also found in samples taken from the geysers: Cassini Tastes Organic Material at Saturn's Geyser Moon 2008: NASA's Cassini spacecraft tasted and sampled a surprising organic brew erupting in geyser-like fashion from Saturn's moon Enceladus during a close flyby on March 12. Scientists are amazed that this tiny moon is so active, "hot" and brimming with water vapor and organic chemicals. It goes on to mention stuff about comets, though we have yet to actually see a comet or sample one that is made of ice or snow etc. The Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer saw a much higher density of volatile gases, water vapor, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, as well as organic materials, some 20 times denser than expected. This dramatic increase in density was evident as the spacecraft flew over the area of the plumes. |
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Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
Is THIS A Kepler Work Unit?
(Message 1120553)
Posted 23 Jun 2011 by Jason Safoutin
Post: Also I thought the screensaver (graphics) would be considerably different? There was a thread somewhere about that...though I will have to search for the thread. I believe it was a question I asked before. EDIT: Found it: Green Bank Telescope observations to start Saturday. |
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Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
Saturn moon Enceladus may have salty ocean
(Message 1120386)
Posted 23 Jun 2011 by Jason Safoutin
Post: This discovery is a major one. This could mean that there is life on this moon! Maybe not intelligent life, but the odds of life other than on Earth, existing in our solar system, have just gotten lower. Even if there is no life there, it increases the chances again for more planets outside our solar system to contain life or vast oceans of water. NASA Cassini Spacecraft Captures Ocean-Like Spray At Saturn Moon WASHINGTON -- NASA's Cassini spacecraft has discovered the best evidence yet for a large-scale saltwater reservoir beneath the icy crust of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The data came from the spacecraft's direct analysis of salt-rich ice grains close to the jets ejected from the moon. Data from Cassini's cosmic dust analyzer show the grains expelled from fissures, known as tiger stripes, are relatively small and usually low in salt far away from the moon. But closer to the moon's surface, Cassini found that relatively large grains rich with sodium and potassium dominate the plumes. The salt-rich particles have an "ocean-like" composition and indicate that most, if not all, of the expelled ice and water vapor comes from the evaporation of liquid salt-water. The findings appear in this week's issue of the journal Nature. "There currently is no plausible way to produce a steady outflow of salt-rich grains from solid ice across all the tiger stripes other than salt water under Enceladus's icy surface," said Frank Postberg, a Cassini team scientist at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and the lead author on the paper. When water freezes, the salt is squeezed out, leaving pure water ice behind. If the plumes emanated from ice, they should have very little salt in them. |
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Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
Star Found Shooting Water "Bullets"
(Message 1118446)
Posted 18 Jun 2011 by Jason Safoutin
Post: Two things bother me about this story. Where is a star going to get the oxygen to form water? I thought Comets were not snow and ice? At least any of the ones they have taken samples from have shown that they are not made of any of those things.From what I read its not liquid water until after it is ejected from the star and cooled to the point where it condenses as it slows down. After tracing the paths of these atoms, the team concluded that water forms on the star, where temperatures are a few thousand degrees Celsius. But once the droplets enter the outward-spewing jets of gas, 180,000-degree-Fahrenheit (100,000-degree-Celsius) temperatures blast the water back into gaseous form. Once the hot gases hit the much cooler surrounding material—at about 5,000 times the distance from the sun to Earth—they decelerate, creating a shock front where the gases cool down rapidly, condense, and reform as water, Kristensen said. Also: It's not until the water vapor is far from the star that it returns to a liquid state. At that point the water is moving at about 80 times the speed of a bullet fired from a pistol, or about 124,000 miles per hour, writes National Geographic. As Lars Kristensen, lead author of the study -- which has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics -- points out, that's "about 80 times faster than bullets flying out of a machine gun." |
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Message boards :
Cafe SETI :
You aren't going to believe This
(Message 1118184)
Posted 17 Jun 2011 by Jason Safoutin
Post: I work with an elderly woman at a local convenience store. She is in her late 70s. She busts her a$$ every time she works. She may not be able to put a beer order away on her own, or do an overnight truckload of totes, but she will clean and scrub and do a lot of other things that me, a 30 year old man can easily take care of. Over ten years ago I worked at McDonald's and worked with several disabled individuals and special need adults and so on. Sometimes they work a lot harder than the average person these days. I definitely would at least look into filing a report or at least call someone. A good place to start would be the ACLU and maybe even the state labor authority. Even if you didn't get it recorded, they can send in what I like to call "secret shoppers" and bust people for doing exactly what happened to you. It's a shame to see what this world has come to. And in America too for christ sakes! But on a side note: You could go viral on YouTube with your own sting ;) |
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Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
Star Found Shooting Water "Bullets"
(Message 1118180)
Posted 17 Jun 2011 by Jason Safoutin
Post: Star Found Shooting Water "Bullets" This is an incredible story. This could mean many things for how life formed on Earth. Imagine all the other planets throughout space that would be bombarded with these water droplets. This could mean an infinite number of planets that have life on it. "Seven hundred and fifty light-years from Earth, a young, sunlike star has been found with jets that blast epic quantities of water into interstellar space, shooting out droplets that move faster than a speeding bullet. The discovery suggests that protostars may be seeding the universe with water. These stellar embryos shoot jets of material from their north and south poles as their growth is fed by infalling dust that circles the bodies in vast disks. "If we picture these jets as giant hoses and the water droplets as bullets, the amount shooting out equals a hundred million times the water flowing through the Amazon River every second," said Lars Kristensen, a postdoctoral astronomer at Leiden University in the Netherlands." |
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Message boards :
Number crunching :
What's going on??
(Message 1118072)
Posted 16 Jun 2011 by Jason Safoutin
Post: Also...mind you guys that it is still technically part of the supposed 3 day outage :P |
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Message boards :
Number crunching :
What's going on??
(Message 1118060)
Posted 16 Jun 2011 by Jason Safoutin
Post: Not able to report, or upload. Not only is the server status page dead, the cricket graph is dead also: http://fragment1.berkeley.edu/newcricket/grapher.cgi?target=/router-interfaces/inr-250/gigabitethernet2_3&ranges=d%3Aw&view=Octets EDIT: Cricket graph not dead, but slow to update. |
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