The Random Image Thread (keeping it PG-13 at the worst)

[maurvir]

[snip of children in iron lungs]

This, and similar, pictures should be sent to every anti-vaxxer retard in the country. It might not make them less retarded, but it might give them pause before saying anything else stupid.

You might be surprised by the level of resistance that the anti-vaxxers have towards getting vaccinations. Just an example: there is a movement to have children get "natural" immunity from diseases like pertussis (whooping cough) by essentially (and needlessly) infecting them. Note the naturopathic doctor being written about had her own three children suffering through up to 5 months of pertussis without allowing other doctors to examine them or treat their symptoms or--needless to say--get the younger ones vaccinated when her eldest came home with the disease. Fortunately all of her children survived the ordeal (on the other hand: most US deaths from pertussis--even when fully treated--happens among infants who are usually too young to get vaccinations. The article does not clearly mention the children's ages except that one--the middle one?--was 3-years-old).

You know, normally I'm pretty suspicious of child protective services, but quite frankly, I consider anti-vaxxers to be child abusers - where they realize it or not. Unfortunately, they don't fit the standard model of abusers, and celebritards are counted among them. However, it's largely passive abuse, and if the kids are lucky, they will be able to make their own choices as adults.

However, when I hear about parents knowingly exposing their kids to these diseases, I think the state should step in, take the kids, and possibly throw their moron parents in jail.

[ukimalefu]

[ukimalefu]

The kid just dropped a bottle of some red syrup when trying to make a milkshake. He's fine.

[DukeofNuke]

shop a knife in his hand and call him "Soulcrusher"

[DEyncourt]

[snip of children in iron lungs]

This, and similar, pictures should be sent to every anti-vaxxer retard in the country. It might not make them less retarded, but it might give them pause before saying anything else stupid.

You might be surprised by the level of resistance that the anti-vaxxers have towards getting vaccinations. Just an example: there is a movement to have children get "natural" immunity from diseases like pertussis (whooping cough) by essentially (and needlessly) infecting them. Note the naturopathic doctor being written about had her own three children suffering through up to 5 months of pertussis without allowing other doctors to examine them or treat their symptoms or--needless to say--get the younger ones vaccinated when her eldest came home with the disease. Fortunately all of her children survived the ordeal (on the other hand: most US deaths from pertussis--even when fully treated--happens among infants who are usually too young to get vaccinations. The article does not clearly mention the children's ages except that one--the middle one?--was 3-years-old).

You know, normally I'm pretty suspicious of child protective services, but quite frankly, I consider anti-vaxxers to be child abusers - where they realize it or not. Unfortunately, they don't fit the standard model of abusers, and celebritards are counted among them. However, it's largely passive abuse, and if the kids are lucky, they will be able to make their own choices as adults.

However, when I hear about parents knowingly exposing their kids to these diseases, I think the state should step in, take the kids, and possibly throw their moron parents in jail.

Let me emphasize a point made in the linked article: unlike with some diseases immunity from pertussis does fade with time whether one gets that immunity naturally or via vaccination. In 20-30 years these children will need to get a booster to their immunity. Of course as adults they will have a much lower chance of being fatally afflicted by pertussis (and, maybe, they will be away from their naturopathic doctor mom so they can choose to get a vaccination rather than go through months of pain).

[DEyncourt]

Stacked, a photo-essary by Peter Stewart:



Most are shots pointing straight up in between or inside apartment buildings in Hong Kong.

[ukimalefu]

[ukimalefu]

[DEyncourt]

The article I read had an oblate star being adequate to explain the entire brightness curve. All that's required is a particular viewing angle for Earth.

There are considerable problems with that. We are fairly certain that this star rotates about once per 0.88 Earth days, but if you look at the lower left graph in the first set of graphs here you can see that the counts at the bottom of the graphs--which I believe are in Earth days--indicates that the overall dimming happened over 8-10 days (depending on where you want to start and stop the dimming). So somehow this dimmed region is kept pointing at the Earth while the star itself rotates some 9-12 times. Perhaps this lack of motion could be accounted for by that dimmed region being at or near one of the star's poles which is largely pointing at the Earth, but there is still that problem of 15% of this star's light being removed in somewhat but not completely symmetric curves.

Oh, my notion of a relatively slow-moving black hole in orbit around the star (or, rather, in mutual orbits around each other)? I should have realized that such a slow transit should have had a long, mostly flat bottom to the light curves such as seen here normalized from other Kepler observations. Toss that out along with any orbital explanations because anything in orbit would have to be simultanously large and slow-moving (to account for the overall time that the dip in the lower right left graph took) AND tiny and fast-moving (to account for the lack of any flat bottom for that curve).

So what I suspect is that the phenomenon being observed here is a global one which affects the entire star, which leads me back to my first notion that what we are seeing here is that the star is in a short-lived (meaning lasting only thousands of years compared to an overall lifespan of a couple of billion years) transition phase from being a main-sequence F3 star (which makes it about 50% more massive than our G2 Sun) to blooming out as a red or even yellow giant star. What could be happening is that helium ash at the star's core from the first level fusion is just barely massive enough to start fusion itself, but when the helium fusion starts it heats up the core to the point where it expands to stop that fusion AND to significantly disrupt the hydrogen fusion still happening in the sphere surrounding and within that helium core. Decades later when the light generated by this two types of fusion reaches the surface and shines out it can be dimmed considerably and across the entire star's surface.

EDIT: <sigh> sometimes can't tell my left from my right.

[Kirk]

OK, that is beyond the nuances I'm capable of debating. Tell me you're an astronomer. Also could that level of subtlety be within measurement error?

[maurvir]

[DEyncourt]

OK, that is beyond the nuances I'm capable of debating. Tell me you're an astronomer. Also could that level of subtlety be within measurement error?

No, I am not a professional astronomer but merely a well-learned amateur. I'd characterize my astronomy knowledge as "a foot deep" compared to most people's "an inch deep" (if that) or a pro's "yards deep".

Oh, and in the original post I did mention that the folks running Kepler did check for any instrument errors and found none.

[Kirk]

No instrument errors to me means something else. It means the machine is functioning normally and within its normal operating parameters. That does not mean the inherent variability in the measurement.

[DEyncourt]

Here is how the Bad Astronomer (who I believe has access to the original paper) called it:

The authors of the paper went to some trouble to eliminate obvious causes. It’s not something in the telescope or the processing; the dips are real.

So forgive my limited if perhaps misleading description in my previous post.

[Kirk]

Yeah well, I don't know what the inherent measurement error is. Though perhaps I'm too cautious. They're measuring light dips of 1% on stars.

Also SETI says they don't see any aliens yet after a few days looking at the star.

[Kirk]

[jkahless]

Well, I found the problem.

[TOS]

god has decide there are enough damn ihops in the world he made?

[Warin]

There are never enough IHoPs. At least not until there is one in Kamloops.

[DEyncourt]

Yeah well, I don't know what the inherent measurement error is. Though perhaps I'm too cautious. They're measuring light dips of 1% on stars.

Also SETI says they don't see any aliens yet after a few days looking at the star.

Um, they got readings of a 15% drop (lower left graph) and a 22% drop (lower right graph) in brightness, along with other smaller drops in the range of up to 8% in brightness for this particular star. The upper graph in the first set of graphs was deliberately truncated for brightness in order to show the star's overall weirdness in changes in brightness over a long period of time (almost 5 Earth-years).

And what SETI said was very specific: no discernable traffic in the radio band from that star system. The problem, of course, is that there is no guarantee that anyone else will use the radio band for interplanetary communications. For all we know we might be the exception. Such is the problem of having only one case of technologically-advanced life.

[Kirk]

I know that. I was merely commenting on measurement error which is what we had been talking about. If they can measure a 1% light drop, their accuracy is probably better than that.

[Yori]

[ukimalefu]

Also SETI says they don't see any aliens yet after a few days looking at the star.

What they said is that they didn't find radio frequencies of the expected power in the expected band of frequencies. "Expected", meaning an advanced civilisation should be able to transmit in those.

So... maybe the Dyson sphere is abandoned and no one's there to transmit anything?

OR, there were never any aliens and it's something else.

[ukimalefu]

LEGO TARDIS

[TOS]

[DEyncourt]

I know that. I was merely commenting on measurement error which is what we had been talking about. If they can measure a 1% light drop, their accuracy is probably better than that.

Ah, my apologies again for badly misunderstanding what you wrote.

Of course there is a LOT of raw data that Kepler generated so it is taking a long time for some discoveries to be made. Currently the smallest planet discovered by Kepler is Kepler-37b which is only slightly larger than our Moon (note: an artist's arbitrary renditions for the Kepler-37 planets):



Given that Kepler-37b has a cross-section of only 12 M sq. km--compared to the 15 B sq. km for the approximate cross-section for Jupiter--Kepler researchers are finding planets which can bump a star's light curve down in the range of only 0.0008% (just for completeness: the Sun's cross-section is about 1.5 T sq. km). And after discovering about 1000 confirmed planets there are about 3600 yet-to-be confirmed candidates.

Note: the "a" designation for the Kepler star systems is reserved for the star itself, and the letters do indicate the orbital distance from the star so Kepler-37b is the closest known planet to its star, Kepler-37a.

[ukimalefu]

Convertible Range Rover

[TOS]

very nice lines indeed

pity about range rover's reliability (or lack thereof)

[juice]

That is a sharp looking vehicle.

[Kirk]

I don't like Range Rovers in general, way overpriced. The proportions on that remind me of a mini Cooper.

[Kirk]

[ukimalefu]

[Kirk]

[maurvir]

Can you believe this (is) crap?

[user]

Saw something about that on PBS. The researcher's lab smelled.

[maurvir]

"A monkey, an animal-rights organization, and a primatologist walk into federal court to sue for infringement of the monkey's claimed copyright. What seems like the setup for a punchline is really happening," attorney Andrew Dhuey wrote. He added that "monkey see, monkey sue is not good law..."

[maurvir]

[dv]

Can you believe this (is) crap?

Well, $635 seems steep for a pill full of bacteria. But intestinal bacteria are pretty important.

[maurvir]

Can you believe this (is) crap?

Well, $635 seems steep for a pill full of bacteria. But intestinal bacteria are pretty important.

The $635 is for a full round of 30 pooplets, not just one.

[dv]

Can you believe this (is) crap?

Well, $635 seems steep for a pill full of bacteria. But intestinal bacteria are pretty important.

The $635 is for a full round of 30 pooplets, not just one.

Oh... well damn, that actually sounds almost reasonable.