splat

23 ms·

181.
by splat 15y ago
Lensing will make light travel through only a very slightly longer path. At most the difference will only be a few light-weeks. (This is seen in objects which have multiple images. Occasionally you will see one of the images flare up for
182.
by splat 15y ago
That's correct, lensing won't affect the observed redshift. It will, however, affect the observed luminosity of the quasar and make us perceive it to be more luminous than it really is. This would lead us to calculate a larger black hole
183.
by splat 15y ago
It's mostly public. The data used for this discovery was taken from UKIDSS, an IR sky survey (you can get data here: http://surveys.roe.ac.uk:8080/wsa/SQL_form.jsp ) and SDSS, an optical survey (you can get data here: http://www.sdss3.or
184.
by splat 15y ago
Esperanto and French.
185.
by splat 15y ago
I don't see how you can justify upholding laws with lethal force if you don't agree morally with the law. Just because you wear a badge on your chest doesn't mean that you aren't morally responsible for your actions as a human being. If s
186.
by splat 15y ago
What exactly has he conned you out of? He paid his taxes, he contributed to American society. It seems pretty clear that he put in more than he took. Who's losing by having him here?
187.
by splat 15y ago
Here's a question for you. Take two bar magnets. Put one on a table. Hold the other above it. The magnet on the table will be attracted to the one you're holding and will jump up and stick to it. The magnet on the table has just done s
188.
New Tevatron Particle May Be a Mirage(wired.com)
1 points by splat 15y ago|0 comments
189.
by splat 15y ago
I'm curious, does anyone know what fraction of dollars are "hoarded"?
190.
by splat 15y ago
These ideas are reminiscent of the ideas of Andrew Joseph Galambos, who believed that one retained intellectual property rights indefinitely. (Reportedly, he believed that Thomas Paine coined the word "liberty" and put a nickel in a box ev
191.
by splat 15y ago
Andrew Carnegie would respectfully disagree with your first tenant: "Put all of your eggs in one basket -- and watch that basket!"
192.
by splat 15y ago
> Of those articles that don't follow the pattern, the vast majority get stuck in loops. Are there any articles that don't follow the pattern and don't get stuck in loops? The only way I can see that happening is if the article has no
193.
by splat 15y ago
Speaking as a grad student in astronomy, I tried using MATLAB for a little while but it occupied an awkward middle ground for me. It was a bit too high-level for the lower-level things that python is useful for (e.g. grabbing images off of
194.
by splat 15y ago
I was also very surprised that the author didn't mention the urban heat island effect. While some of the temperature increase can be attributed to global warming, some of it might also be showing that Bostan has become more urbanized since
195.
by splat 15y ago
> The OP also argues that the patent could be defeated by a patent review. Yes, but the OP ignores the probability of failure. I'm claiming that even a small probability of failure would be sufficient to deter most businesses from purs
196.
by splat 15y ago
The tacit assumption upon which this argument rests is that the trolls are guaranteed to lose in court (at least after an appeal). While that might be a fair assumption in the most egregious cases, in many circumstances the lower court wil
197.
by splat 15y ago
I think the point of the explanation was to provide some intuition as to where the Exp[- 2 pi i k n / N] in the formula comes from. If it's easier to think of that as a sinusoid then your way of thinking about it is better. If it's easier
198.
by splat 15y ago
Well, you'd still be less than 10,000 light-years away. That's still well within the galaxy.
199.
by splat 15y ago
In some disciplines I could see it being useful. (Astronomy comes to mind, but only because I happen to be an astronomer.) Oftentimes we need an empirical fit to some data and we don't really care why exactly the fit has the form it does.
200.
by splat 15y ago
There's nothing ironic about a skeptic being wrong if he admits his mistake when presented with evidence to the contrary. (Which Penn Jillette did.)
201.
In Defense of Flogging(chronicle.com)
6 points by splat 15y ago|0 comments
202.
by splat 15y ago
I have no idea, but my guess is that they don't know the dates for some books and the system automatically classifies the publication date as "1900" or "1901." If you search the word "quark," you also get a bump at around 1900 even though
203.
by splat 15y ago
Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2426459
204.
by splat 15y ago
>"So [government] spending [in 2010] was $186 billion higher than if we'd stuck to the [2000-2007] trend, and revenue was $681 billion lower. In other words, the giant deficit is mainly the result of the collapse in tax receipts brought
205.
by splat 15y ago
I suppose that this just goes to show that airport security is designed to catch dumb terrorists. No competent terrorist would actively try to draw attention to himself while going through security.
206.
by splat 16y ago
I'm curious if the difference is due more to the food or to the break. Would taking a break without eating have a similar effect?
207.
by splat 16y ago
Or by how much a consumer can get away with buying it for.
208.
by splat 16y ago
A classic flowchart on the hassle of legal immigration: http://reason.org/files/cb299f0134ca8bb75243c69caa92eea7.pdf
209.
by splat 16y ago
That's true, but you also can't, in general, churn out physics or mathematics PhDs from anything that can realistically be called a four-year undergraduate program.
210.
by splat 16y ago
It's a little unrelated, but if you ever need to know the number of seconds in a year, it's pi x 10^7 to within .5%.

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