Pixophir

The step from a/b(c+d) to (a/b)*(c+d) put the necessary brackets and thus steered the result. But that may still not be what the original author, coming from another culture, intended (*). Imagine b(c+d) omitting the operator was meant in a planned manner, as in a function-like notation. Then a/b(c+d) has quite a different meaning. Or if in the original writing the dash spans all that is on its right hand side, like one would write a fraction on paper, then the mess is just an outcome of typing it horizontally on a pc, lost in transcription. Again, I don't argue the result 1 or 9, both are right or wrong without brackets and putting brackets make it clear as shown. But the brackets may be put this or that way. (*) Edit: the intention may be to deliberately create an invalid expression as a riddle. Just want to say that it looks like math but isn't because of missing operators and symbols. Reminds me of which "looks like Latin but isn't".

I plugged it into https://pemdas.info/ and for me it says 9. I typed in 6/2*3 because of the parentheses around 1+2. There is the problem with such things: it says multiplication before division and from left to right and mult and div have the same "power", whatever that is. These rules are contradictory, and over-simplification for pupils in some countries (obviously English speaking because it is an English mnemonic), they are not taught around the world. I have never heard of pemdas before, and I have several books on advanced algebra and calculus on the shelf. Mind you, I don't say 9 is correct, it is not, other devices may show other results, maybe simply because of different language/browser/plugin versions. The result is undefined without parentheses. Edit: Here's an article on exactly that example, and the inconsistency of pemdas (and other such allow me to say opinionated simplifications): https://plus.maths.org/content/pemdas-paradox The link leads to another article pointing to *sigh* facebook. tl, dr: Everybody can argue over the order of operation when it is as undefined as in the above example, or defined ambiguously as in pemdas. But it doesn't help to solve the problem, which is "put parentheses there" and the discussion is ended. :-)

Then it is simply a mistake. One can read it this or that way. Both answers are right or wrong depending how one reads the expression. That makes no sense. It is an invalid expression. If an engineer constructs a building or an aircraft based on such an expression (choosing an outcome based on demography) building or plane have a good chance to crumble or crash. Example programming: A C or C++ compiler has no order of evaluation. It can even do it differently when evaluating the expression multiple times during execution of a program. This is called undefined behaviour and it is a mistake. The programmer must make clear what they mean, with the use of brackets. Example simple operations in math: they follow rules like commutativity, associativity etc. These rules demand grouping an evaluation so that it is unambiguous, otherwise it is a mistake. One must make the expression clear with putting brackets.

It is ambiguous. Must put brackets to make it clear.

That is certainly one of the less intrusive options. The effect is known since long. Actually, phases with high weathering rates in earth history may have contributed to cold phases, even to ice house phases in earth's past climate. The rising of the Himalaya was/is a global cooler actually, and a contributor to earth's ice age conditions. But that is of course far beyond any imaginable technological capability. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-021-00798-x As with all measures taken, yet unknown or even known (eutrophy, acidification, ..) side effects must be determined and quantified as well as the means of production and distribution discussed. Like if done by industrial stone mills driven by thermal power plants and distributed by diesel engines it may offset the cooling effect, or worse. It is also a huge question how the sheer amount of CO2 that is released by human activity, and by positive feedbacks caused by this could be countered, as long as the burning of fossil fuels continues. Those measures are of no use as long as that idiocy continues. tl,dr: Maybe can help, have a sharper look, don't ignore side-effects.

I thought this might be cool: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/20/politics/faberg-egg-russian-oligarch-seized-yacht-justice-department/index.html I heard about a movie team saying it came from Russia with love and is a forgery and they need it on set and they want it back asap ! Edit, no it was Octopussy ... nevermind ... :-)

If that was so, it would be a positive feedback then, making the atmosphere warmer through increased water content by evaporation, not cooling it. The cooling is limited to a surface effect. Quite generally speaking and without taking details into account. How did NASA put it recently ? Water vapour in the atmosphere is a "major player" in climate change. Sounds important. Seriously, it amplifies the effects of ghgs, it is a positive feedback. One has a pretty good understanding of the role of one of the most important ingredients of atmospheric warming, really. Geoengineering is a buzzword. For now, there is no safe geoengineering and the effects of any application may have worse consequences and all levels, including socio-economic (like being an excuse not to cut ghg emissions). Something will have to be done to remove ghgs from the atmosphere, and somebody will surely do something along the lines of geoengineering without waiting for an ok from science, or right away with buying one. To what avail can't be said, things are just not as simple and one dimensional as it is sometimes put. I hope it will be something less intrusive than large scale surface works or spraying the atmosphere. CO2 filtering and storage techniques may be more useful, and probably easier to roll out at large scales. But first and accompanying that, the emissions must stop. It may, though, be too late for up to 3 billion people until 2070.

The principle is trivial thermodynamics, heating causes accelerated chemical reactions. Countries have regulations as to how much a water body can be heated before power plants must reduce waste heat outlet, or even shut down, before such things happen, and there are several transitional zones between oxygen rich freshwater and fully deprived anoxic zones. These things have happened in the past, that's why regulations had to be made. In a rapidly warming world, and with further sinking water tables, the margin is getting narrower and having a negative (or positive :-)) effect on the efficiency of these power plants. Already reactors had to shut down because of difficulties to release waste heat (France again, Meuse comes to my mind). You can plug in "thermal water pollution power plants" into your browser for an overview from Wikipedia to peer-review. It (pollution, be it heat or harmful substances) is, btw., another point that is often swept under the rug when comparing efficiency and land use of different power generation technologies.

That's maybe the only thing that seems to play let's say a minor role, for now. Reasons are old faulty technology, lack of materials, lack of human resources for maintenance, or simply unknown in case of material fatigue and corrosion which seem to make up the majority of cases. Shows pretty perfectly that nuclear power cannot be kept up at reasonable costs and being dependant on it endangers energy supply. For now, most of France's reactors are down amd France receives energy imports, it is unknown when if ever all can be connected again, or if even safety measures must be lifted to do so. Re-nationalization looms over EDF, and France tackles a quicker transition to renewables. Heat waves that are becoming ever more frequent also aren't good for any power plant type that does energy conversion with waste heat and so needs some sort of heat exchange to get rid of waste heat. Warming water bodies too much kills biology and turns them in an anoxic mud. It is all a mess without renewables, they do not have these problems.

Unfortunately, there's nothing to 'like' in a sense of a good, well thought through solution that would have a clear, positive effect on climate change with known side effects. Many of them, like aerosols to reflect sunlight, have known bad side effects (ocean acidification for instance). A lot of work is going on in the area. One would have to show for each proposal what its projected positive effects are, and what the negative side effects could be. Youtube videos are not helpful there. This is very true. Flooding a desert with saltwater to create a stagnant (=bad) water body, assuming it could be done with the help of gravity alone and without blowing more ghg into atmosphere, creates a salt pan unsuitable for land use. It's net effect through raising albedo (clouds) is very low. Saltwater will filtrate into ground water with negative effects on the environment, and human habitability in an already fresh water deprived area. Idk what's known about known aquifers in that area, if they are connected or confined, .... Salt can also be distributed through aeolian transport, negatively affecting land use in the vicinity. Afaik there is no ephemeral highly saline water body that somehow supports stable vegetation (see bitter lake). Iow, they are pretty much dead apart from extremophiles.

An- or suboxic ocean is the last thing we need. There are quite few pockets emerging.

Geoscientist here. There are no 'good' geoengineering options. The only thing that has a lasting effect is stop ghg emissions. 7. is scientist's favourite: Stop burning fossil fuels. Nuke's (or any surface explosion) don't trigger volcanic eruptions. If an eruption is imminent (depending on the type and setting), one maybe can accelerate it by a few hours (Hi, Mr. Spock). But since it is still impossible to time an eruption this is not an option. Totally unclear how to get device anywhere in a position where it is not instantly melted and just, well melts. Not speaking of negative side effects if it explodes over the top of a Stratovolcano, setting everything on fire and bathing the surrounding in radiation while doing just cosmetics on the mountain top. Also, the potential for cooling of the atmosphere by any eruption is very limited (debated) and depends on a lot of things, while the emission of ghg continues. And with the emission of ghg warming will continue once the eruption's effects have ceased (a few years). There's currently no volcanism (edit: or any natural effect!) 'available' that could offset the rate of warming and the loss of space for human habitability that we observe. Edit: nuclear power doesn't help either. Countries who relied on it (like France) are running out of energy (many reasons). Renewable is the logical way, but needs widespread collaboration and efforts. But this leaves my field of expertise.

It is a gigantic bubble, I am sure.

Well yeah, but from a player/user viewpoint things have changed with the underlying engine from now on possibly carrying unwanted software and connections with it. I doubt the Kerbals saw this coming in 2020. My thoughts then about KSP were pretty basal: "How can they possibly know that they are going to release in 2 years ?". Turned out they didn't :-) Guys, don't get me wrong. I love this game (wouldn't be here) even if I don't currently play because I've done everything except returning from Tylo (yes, I am Dres-aware :-)) years ago. And I am looking forward to the new version. I don't influence nobody, I thought the info is important just as the public discussions show. It will influence my decision, for sure.

I hope the studios have their choices on this, but that's less than clear. What repels me is the divisiveness of that CEO, trying to part the devs into those who submit and obscenely insulting those who just want to make games. This two-partition of a complex world has sadly become a common trend in certain circles, also in other areas. Didn't some NPC once call that Sith thinking :-) ? Well, it is. The world is much more colourful than just monetization, and there are other methods to finance a team.

I doubt that the current KSP dev team has anything to comment on this at this stage. They are doing the game, and this probably is beyond their decision anyway. I don't even know if Unity developers can choose to embed an adware functionality into their games or not, or if this is an engine functionality for Unity to squeeze out money with popping up an add for aiming water right before docking or some such :-) There is such a wide variety of possible implications of extending ad-/spy-/whatever-ware to every aspects of game development and gaming. Certainly quite a few people with the right mindset are having dollars in their eyes now. Now, a few days later and after some reactions, one can search what "Unity CEO Says Devs Who Don’t Want to Bake Monetization in Their Game" to get an image of the mindset. It is repellent to honest developers who want to make good games. This will not make games better, interesting, fresh, challenging, as devs may even decide to just make a cheap stupid shooters or the likes as a transport layer for ads. Already some otherwise unsuccessful game developers in forums seem to think along these lines, but atm this is unclear. It is all about squeezing money at the cost of a general dumbing down. In the end it may be at the individual gamer to decide based on available information. Installing a Unity game from now on bears the danger of catching a large range of gaming-unrelated ware. Maybe we'll have the a distinction between "Unity games" and "games" in the future, who knows ...

Theoretically hypothetically and ignoring all counter indications, such an arrangement would allow for a ludicrous angular resolution. Other things of a class "super telescope" could be for instance a lake of a reflective fluid in a crater of the moon. But with current tech it is imaginable, but impractical. An interferometer can fake the resolution of a huge aperture, but it doesn't have more light collecting capabilities than the surface of the participating telescopes. The amount of data can be huge. I remember one of the guys of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) saying something like "nothing beats the bandwidth of a jet full of hard disks", and papers that were written about how to synchronize (that means synchronize time differences in a sub-frequency resolution of the observed wavelengths) the data gathered by the different sites of the VLB. Also, the semi-stable L-points tend to attract material, stuff that comes, stays a while, and goes. There is a high chance of collisions there. An artificial satellite must do station keeping. So their lifetime is limited by fuel, which certainly has financial implications. There's certainly much more to think about. tl,dr: one day, maybe, speculatively, after a space maid has cleaned up ... oh wait, vacuum in a vacuum ? Hmm ... :-) Edit: I mean, it took 30 years from earliest planning to launch to make one(1) JWST. Certainly the knowledge gained could partially be re-used and adapted. And what was gathered when doing the also multi-decadal and still developing EHT as a world spanning VLB could help judge the feasibility of such a project. But I would expect "Interferometry in the Lagrange Points" to be a multi-generation project, still.

Unity Game Engine and IronSource announce >4b$ merger. https://blog.unity.com/news/welcome-ironsource The thing to think about, since IronSource specializes in online monetization and adware, and shady doings close if not over the border to malware, that one may want (or not) to look very thoroughly before installing any Unity based game, independently of how good it may be. If there's the slightest suspicion (and currently there is), I personally and sadly won't install KSP or KSP2 any more. Just because gaming is gaming and I pay already with money to rent a game for a time. Commentary on PC Gamer: https://www.pcgamer.com/unity-is-merging-with-a-company-who-made-a-malware-installer/ Other voices: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/07/unity-to-merge-with-ironsource-with-a-buzzword-salad-press-release/ https://www.gamedeveloper.com/culture/why-is-unity-s-merger-with-ironsource-angering-developers Unity stocks didn't react well, for now: https://investors.unity.com/stock-information/default.aspx

Hehe :-) The outcome would be interesting, given that image resolution is not really an obvious, trivial thing. Hint: it is not the optical resolution of the telescope for a given wavelength/focal length/aperture aka diffraction limit. And it is certainly not 'better' than that. Edit, but I think @sevenperforce's main argument was that JWST could take much better defined images with its instrumentation. The good thing is, also because of the exceptional delivery by the Ariane, the observatory has a much longer lifetime to do things(tm). I'm glad :-)

Misunderstanding, no shifting, no RGB. Has nothing to with mapping of colours, which is just agreement. I reacted to "false colours", because there is no "false". For visualization, certain bands were mapped to colours. I don't know which ones (edit: but pls see link below), maybe they tell us or I have overheard because I didn't watch all the videos. Btw., Hydrogen alpha, often mapped to red, actually looks red to human eye. One can actually see a slightly pink tint in the Orion Nebula, for instance. Plays no role here because too short wavelength (650nano-m) for JWST, just mention it for clarification. The principle is, the filters only let certain wavelengths pass. That window for one filter can be wide (broad) or narrow, with pretty steep edges with these type of filters. These wavelengths, cleverly chosen, correspond directly to spectral properties, (e.g. excitement states of elements) of the observed matter. That's what they are for. That's how one identifies areas where young stars form, or dust clouds excited by the radiation of stars behind them, etc pp. There are broad- and narrow-band filters, combined they offer a wide range of well defined observations in pre-defined wavelengths. Each image, taken with one filter, is monochrome. It will be mapped to colour, for visualization, and the colour channels then combined to a nice colourful show-off. Pop science link, sounds reasonable: https://www.inverse.com/innovation/how-does-nasa-process-jwst-images they say. This may be just for the press images, later on people with observation time will choose their own wavelengths and combinations and do their own evaluation.

I think there may be a misunderstanding about what "science" is, and such things as engineering or exploration, which strictly spoken are different things though they work hand in hand. If you're actually serious about this and you're feeling at a very early state of learning things, then I would suggest to search "gamification", there was a time when even serious people thought a game like approach would help. I don't know, I personally think that gamification is just piffle, procrastination, an excuse not to actually learn. Anyway, whatever science you pick, social, cultural, natural, applied, whatever, you need math. Math is the language of science and everything that depends on it.

Well one could say provocatively in a very general way that Chicago are as much classic rock as ... Abba for instance. :rockout Mumbling about the yanking supply chains. Have to build a new house because natural disaster (we're getting more every day), the insurance money reflected roughly the value of the old place, but I only get half of it today for the money.

The channels are chosen on purpose. They actually reflect physical properties of the observed area.

MIRI has several operational modes that include spectroscopy, photometry and filtering. See https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-mid-infrared-instrument Colours can be achieved by various methods, in the end it is assigning colours to wavelengths and thus creating a palette. Technically, it goes down to rotating filters for certain wavelengths (colours) in the way and take a monochromatic raw image, rotate, repeat. Each image is assigned a colour channel and the stack combined. There's of course more to it for such an outstanding quality. https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-mid-infrared-instrument/miri-instrumentation/miri-filters-and-dispersers Though the principle is simple (hobby astronomers do it the same way), every aspect of this observatory is a masterpiece in engineering. Edit: A few years ago there were hobby astronomers here on the forum. Even recall a guy who ground his own mirrors. If the raw images are there for download one can try one's own for example with a software like PixInsight, but needs a little basic astronomy knowledge.

Hope that's not a double post: https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages Link where the first images will be shown on the 12th of July (tomorrow) at 14:30 UTC. Feeling a bit tense :-)