Today I Learned

[pinball1970]

TIL learned NASA found Voyager 2 again. TODIL (the other day I learned) That they had lost it but I thought I'd wait till they found it again before posting.

 

[DaveC426913]

The Great Carrier Reef; probably mostly dead now due too high water temperatures off Florida.View attachment 330001

I wonder if its harboring any Swordfish or Barracuda...

 

[berkeman]

TIL learned NASA found Voyager 2 again. TODIL (the other day I learned) That they had lost it but I thought I'd wait till they found it again before posting.

Oops...

CNN —

The Voyager mission team at NASA has been able to detect a signal from Voyager 2 after losing contact with the spacecraft, which has been operating for nearly 46 years.

“We enlisted the help of the (Deep Space Network) and Radio Science groups to help to see if we could hear a signal from Voyager 2,” said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager’s project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “This was successful in that we see the ‘heartbeat’ signal from the spacecraft. So, we know the spacecraft is alive and operating. This buoyed our spirits.”

Commands sent to Voyager 2 on July 21 accidentally caused the spacecraft’s antenna to point 2 degrees away from Earth. The miniscule shift means that Voyager 2 can’t receive any commands from mission control or send data back to Earth from its location more than 12.3 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) in interstellar space.

The mission team was pleasantly surprised to be able to detect the spacecraft’s “carrier signal” using the Deep Space Network, an international array of massive radio antennas that allows NASA to communicate with missions across the cosmos.

Each of the three giant dishes are equidistant, meaning that one is always in communication with different spacecraft as Earth rotates. One radio antenna is located at Goldstone near Barstow, California, the second near Madrid, and the third near Canberra, Australia.

Now, the mission team will attempt to send a signal back to the spacecraft.

“We are now generating a new command to attempt to point the spacecraft antenna toward Earth,” Dodd said. “There is a low probability that this will work.”

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/01/world/voyager-2-communication-blackout-scn/index.html

(emphasis mine) That's kind of depressing...

 

[pinball1970]

Oops...https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/01/world/voyager-2-communication-blackout-scn/index.html

(emphasis mine) That's kind of depressing...

Oh..that IS TIL and IS v depressing.

Some PhD student, "what's this dude?"
PhD "Dude! Don't touch that!"
Some PhD student, "Dude don't panic, just the the dish in Oz, see what happens if you change the orientation by a few %."
PhD "That's actual V2, you didn't touch it right?"
Some PhD student, "It's ok, just turned it back. No harm."
PhD "Ok. Except the first command will mean the second command will not be received."
Some PhD, "Dude, of course yeah, I'm learning so much here."

 

[strangerep]

[...]
Some PhD, "Dude, of course yeah, I'm learning so much here."

That reminds me of when I had the task of "supervising" a 3rd yr compsci student over the Dec-Jan univ holidays. He wondered what would happen if he adjusted an aircon dial in our main computer room. He caused an instant precautionary shutdown of our main server -- during a peak usage time. Yeah, he learned that lesson... (sigh)

 

[kyphysics]

 

[DaveC426913]

You know, if I had encountered this on a real test, it is quite possible I'd have gotten it wrong.
Not because I don't know my grammar but because I read through it too fast and interpolated words that weren't there.

 

[NTL2009]

You know, if I had encountered this on a real test, it is quite possible I'd have gotten it wrong.
Not because I don't know my grammar but because I read through it too fast and interpolated words that weren't there. ...

I did the same on first reading, mentally inserting "practicING" where it said "practice", because that is what our mind does when we read - like that famous example of a paragraph with every single word grossly misspelled, yet it is easily read, because the first and last letters are correct (and maybe the right number of letters? I forget). But since I didn't see any error in the first go-around, I took a closer look the second, and caught it, so I do think I would have got it on a test.

Nit -pick (for fun), since"practicING" is longer than "practice", I think you "extrapolated", rather than "interpolated"! :)

Ahhh, here it is - the trick is first/last letters correct, middle letters mixed up, but the right letters:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

 

[gmax137]

Nit -pick (for fun), since"practicING" is longer than "practice", I think you "extrapolated", rather than "interpolated"! :)

or, interpolated the word "to"

They began practice their piano duet
becomes
They began to practice their piano duet

 

[DaveC426913]

I did the same on first reading, mentally inserting "practicING" where it said "practice", because that is what our mind does when we read

Me, I think I assumed the word 'to' before 'practice'.

 

[Jonathan Scott]

I did the same on first reading, mentally inserting "practicING" where it said "practice", because that is what our mind does when we read ...

In UK English, the word "practice" as a verb is already wrong in this context; it should be "practise" (the spelling follows the same scheme as advise/advice). So I considered that one wrong even before I spotted the missing "to"!

 

[gmax137]

TIL:

In UK English, the word "practice" as a verb ... should be "practise" (the spelling follows the same scheme as advise/advice).

I did not know that!

 

[pinball1970]

That reminds me of when I had the task of "supervising" a 3rd yr compsci student over the Dec-Jan univ holidays. He wondered what would happen if he adjusted an aircon dial in our main computer room. He caused an instant precautionary shutdown of our main server -- during a peak usage time. Yeah, he learned that lesson... (sigh)

My previous company was pretty good in terms of student placement and summer jobs. We got a lot of foreign students too.
Great fun trying to learn the languages.
From memory no real gaffs, they were smart kids.
Also from memory I got absolutely nowhere with Portuguese.

 

[DaveC426913]

(the spelling follows the same scheme as advise/advice).

Does the pronunciation follow the same scheme?

English people: "Just going into my dental office to practiss my practizz."

 

[Jonathan Scott]

Does the pronunciation follow the same scheme?

No, "practice" and "practise" in UK (and Australian) English usually sound the same. And even though the verb form is "practise", it is very common for people to get it wrong, which is why the "advise/advice" hint is very useful. As an amateur musician, I'm very familiar with the word in both forms.

 

[DrGreg]

In UK English, the word "practice" as a verb ... should be "practise" (the spelling follows the same scheme as advise/advice).

Also license/licence.

 

[Borg]

Reminds me of this one.

Paris
in the
the spring

 

[pinball1970]

Reminds me of this one.

Paris
in the
the spring

Yeah and it got me again

 

[BillTre]

This year is a hot one.

 

[pinball1970]

This year is a hot one.
View attachment 330129

Could be nothing to do with people though Bill. Natural cycle. Our contribution could be minimal, negligible.
Options are.
Do nothing.
Do something I would add "just in case."

 

[pinball1970]

Could be nothing to do with people though Bill. Natural cycle. Our contribution could be minimal, negligible.
Options are.
Do nothing.
Do something I would add "just in case."

I was being a little bit sarcastic. Edit. A lot actually

 

[berkeman]

I was being a little bit sarcastic. Edit. A lot actually

We've been plotting your sarcasm over the years, and this year it is off the charts...

 

[pinball1970]

Oops...https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/01/world/voyager-2-communication-blackout-scn/index.html

(emphasis mine) That's kind of depressing...

Looks okay again

https://phys.org/news/2023-08-nasa-voyager-interstellar-shout.html

 

[pinball1970]

RIL (recently I learned) That there are some very complimentary views of pf on another science forum (Greg, it was a one time thing, it meant nothing plus I had been drinking heavily)
I'm on Facebook because of music announcements but don't participate in chat, not on twitter (is that just "X" now?) but I use YT a lot and encounter the discussion that goes with it.
This site is not a horror show in that way and some of the posters seem decent and well informed but there are elements of that in there.
Anyway the summary of pf summed up the pf mission I think. "Real" science discussed experts, no bs, ( paraphrasing)

 

[Tom.G]

Hmm... Sounds like we've got 'em all fooled.

(sorry, just couldn't resist)

 

[pinball1970]

Does the pronunciation follow the same scheme?

English people: "Just going into my dental office to practiss my practizz."

Practice is the same in UK, Advise is like "eyes" ending and advice is more like "ice" ending.

 

[jack action]

Tree in Pakistan remains ‘under arrest’ for 120 years​

[...]

Despite the fact that Pakistan gained its independence from British colonial rule in 1947, a board on the tree still reads: " I am under arrest. One evening a British officer heavily drunk thought that I was moving from my original location and ordered mess sergeant to arrest me since then I am under arrest."

[...]

Abu Zar Khan Afridi, a journalist from the area, said the tree "shows the oppression of British rule in the subcontinent and just imagine if a British officer could put a tree in chain then how were treating the locals of that era?"

 

[pinball1970]

I keep an open mind. Do we really know what that tree was up to?

 

[fresh_42]

I keep an open mind. Do we really know what that tree was up to?

Just kids, you know?

 

[Ibix]

I keep an open mind. Do we really know what that tree was up to?

Looks shady to me.

 

[mathwonk]

After reading the interesting post #16 of Perok that Muhammad Ali never served jail time and was freed by SCOTUS on appeal for draft evasion, I learned further today, that the court actually voted 5-3 to send him to jail, but reversed itself 8-0 after a clerk pointed out that DOJ had withheld from his draft board reliable testimony supporting his religious sincerity.
https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2017/09/08/muhammad-ali-supreme-court-vietnam-war

 

[Rive]

TIL that those fizzy/effervescent tablets often has some really dramatic sodium content

My blood pressure went haywire for a period parallel with the 30+ days this summer (without any apparent medical reason, and that was a medical conclusion: no worries) and finally found the likely culprit - 4-5 of those tablets a day that time

Selling them as sweet, refreshing vitamin supplements is quite a killing

 

[BWV]

Ex-London, the UK is poorer than Mississippi

 

[pinball1970]

Ex-London, the UK is poorer than Mississippi

View attachment 330388

That's a downer. Not the way we would like Manchester to be on the map.

 

[pinball1970]

TIL. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/998339