Recent content by GreatBigBore

Wow. Wow. Thanks so much. These are...just...wow.

Thanks for ruining my day when all I did was ask a simple question. If I'd wanted a scolding I would have just called my mother.

From http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/news/lro-20100426.html" article on the NASA site: Using information provided by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) instrument teams, researchers at the University of California San Diego successfully pinpointed the location of a long lost...

No, you are assuming. My expectations are based on the admittedly naive observation that we do know where the other mirrors are and where the other Lunokhod vessel is. I am simply curious as to why we know where those are but we did not know where #1 was for so long. You are assuming that I...

I can accept "die" without hesitation. What I am trying to get at is not "die" but "disappear". What went wrong that had us looking for it miles away from where it really turned out to be? My understanding is that there was a piece of equipment, a special kind of directional mirror, attached...

If it was completely lost and silent for 40 years, then something went wrong. Surely the Russians didn't intend for it to work for a while and then disappear. It seems that you aren't reading very carefully. I very clearly said that I'm NOT, that is, NOT talking about the exact location. I am...

I'm not talking about the precise location. This thing has been utterly lost and silent for 40 years. Also, the researchers who found it realized that they were looking in the wrong place, being off by miles. Further, plenty of other robots don't get lost. I'm trying to figure out what went...

At long last, Lunokhod 1 has finally been http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/04/space-detectives-lasers-pinpoint-soviet-reflector-lost-on-moon-40-years-ago-.html" . But why was it lost in the first place?

I heard that the recent Chile earthquake moved Earth's axis by 8cm or so. Could the Chicxulub asteroid (or the even bigger, Antarctic one I just http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/03/did-the-planets-most-massive-asteroid-impact-ever-occur-in-antarctica-nasa-gravity-maps-point-to-yes.html"...

Yes, absolutely. I would not have asked the question if I didn't think that it could be answered. I disagree. Curious people ask this sort of question all the time. Why do two ball-bearings of differing weights fall at the same speed, but a feather weighing the same as a ball-bearing, or even...

Thanks for the input, but I have to say, this is a contemptible sentiment. I heartily disagree with you. The very essence of discovery, for me, is learning why. Everything else, as it has been said, is stamp collecting.

Why is it that nothing mouse-sized has horns/antlers/tusks/etc? It seems that horn-oids(?) are restricted to grazers; I can see why predators wouldn't ever evolve horn-things. But why don't grazing birds and grazing fish get horn-things? Why would horn-things be restricted to such a small...

About the million light-years thing, please note my final question and infer from that how much I probably know about cosmology. My main point was just a guess that the universe was small enough that light from the CMB would have crossed all the way from one end of the universe to the other by...

Seems like the universe was opaque for 380k years, and then suddenly nuclei capture electrons and there's an almighty flash, in all directions. By this time the universe is what, a million light-years in diameter, or less? Seems like the light from the last scattering surface would have gone by...

Two-slit experiment and "The Truth" I've heard the two-slit experiment described over and over, but there's still something about it that seems unclear to me. When experimenters fire the first, single particle toward the screen, they don't get an interference pattern, do they? The...