But AFAIK nobody really believes you'll find readable DNA in there. It just doesn't last more than a couple of million years no matter how carefully you preserve it.
I don't remember which source it was, but I remember they did claim to have (partially) sequenced it, and found that it's nearest living relative was chickens.
EDIT: Reading on I see that if stored at cold temperatures it can last a lot longer.
Yes, though it seems they need to be stable, constant temperatures too. The Denisovans (human related species, ancestors of some of us) are known entirely from 41,000 year old DNA from a cave in Siberia, and the sequence recovered is basically the full genome - as good as for living humans and a lot better than any found for Neanderthals so far.
Honestly, if you're worried about your image the citation to slate isn't the one I would have disclaimed.
That's quite some editorial comment at the end of the crev.info piece:
"""
These claims should be remembered if ancient DNA older than that is confirmed in future finds[...] if intact DNA is found in a dinosaur or other fossil older than the upper limit they just stated, it could have the effect of falsifying the evolutionary timescale. Since evolutionists are such staunch believers, though, most likely the reaction will be, “Well, what do you know; DNA can survive for 65 million years.” [...]
The rest of us should remember what they said beforehand about DNA’s upper limit age, and not let them get away with it.
"""
Now we know -- if you've had result A for hundreds of years, and result B for singles of years, then evidence suggesting that the two conflict clearly supports result B.
EDIT: link to http://crev.info/2013/07/longevity-of-dna-estimated/ (and vacillation about the propriety of citing to slate) was removed even before I posted this reply. It seems to be a nice, on-topic summary of current knowledge on the longevity of DNA, but wow, the editorializing. :/
I really should have taken a second look at what I was citing! I removed that before I saw your comment. For some reason I thought I'd cited some interesting genetics blog. I read the paragraph. Yep. Took a quick look around — looks science-y.
Oops. Bah. My shame. I spat my coffee out when I read the whole article.
On a related note, I really wish HN had a preview feature. I often end up posting & then editing because 1) no preview 2) sessions timing out.
America and the rest of the world have to take opposite sides on things: We like football, they like soccer. We like CDMA, they like GSM. We like iPhone, they like Android.
> "I'm a little biased, but I think the taxpayers saw very good value from this mission,"
I'd say that was biased. I personally would have rather $267 million be spent on something more permanent and practical. How about spending it on our Earth-based telecopes?
All the primary missions were completed by 2010, so you got your money's worth. And 267 million is nothing for a mission with that level of complexity, for comparison, producing GTAV was between $200 and $250 million!!!
Because pretty much everything that was possible to discover with earth based telescopes has been discovered. Sure, you can always do "science" with earth-based telescopes - reconfirming existing theories, making sure theoretical data matches up to real observed data, but there's a limit to how much "discovery" can actually be done.
Extra-planetary experiments like the deep impact mission allow scientists a glimpse at new experimental data that can confirm theories that there is no other way to confirm. Sure, you can observe a comet's tail to figure out its surface composition - but that has limited resolution and many elements simply can't be detected that way. This isn't even taking into consideration all the sub-surface elements that would be utterly impossible to detect from observation alone.
In essence, even if the Deep Impact mission mostly failed and scientists only gathered a limited amount of data, it is still very much worth its value when the alternative of building permanent terrestrial telescopes does nothing more than confirm data that has been confirmed countless times in the past.
> even if the Deep Impact mission mostly failed and scientists only gathered a limited amount of data
I don't think you meant it that way, but I'd like to clarify that Deep Impact's mission most definitely did not fail. The spacecraft survived for eight years after it completed its primary objectives in 2005.
"Because pretty much everything that was possible to discover with earth based telescopes has been discovered."
That's outright wrong.
Is the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope there just to look pretty and reconfirm existing theories? Why build the Giant Magellan Telescope when apparently there's no more discoveries to make? Or the European Extremely Large Telescope? The Thirty Meter Telescope?
Considering that Earth based telescopes have never been in a better position and are improving at an incredible rate from one decade to the next I find it hard to believe that money spent on a unique and unprecedented scientific endeavor would have been better spent on Earth-based telescopes.
The simple fact that Hubble was launched twenty years ago should give you some clues as to why we aren't doing that. Even twenty years ago, land-based telescopes were already too limited.
Hubble was started and launched before adaptive optics. That's revolutionized ground-based telescopes. The newest generation of extremely large telescopes, like the Giant Magellan Telescope, will have better angular resolution of Hubble, in visible light.
Of course, the relevant comparison should be to the James Webb Space Telescope, but it's estimated cost of $9 billion is rather a lot higher than the $800 million for the GMT.
I'm emphatically not saying that we shouldn't have space telescopes. There's no way to have a ground-based X-ray telescope, as an obvious example.
I'm only pointing out that the evidence is that land-based telescopes are not, broadly speaking, "too limited" to do new science.
Smart comment. Adaptive optics have rearranged the fundamental drivers for visible-light astronomy.
And a lot of physics experts who were working on high-resolution space-based telescopes, telescopes that are in many cases are now replaceable by ground telescopes, have paid a heavy price for this fact. Technology can be a tough field sometimes.
If you want to see what is likely to be built in the next decade, you can start at:
"What's likely" is, sadly, optimistic. I see that LISA's isn't likely to be built by the 2020s.
Reviewing the list of other space telescopes, WFIRST is now WFIRST-AFTA, with a change to use a second-hand NAO telescope.
NuSTAR and IRIS are two launched Small Explorer missions since 2010. (Oddly, they used an artist's concept of WISE to highlight the concept. Odd, because WISE was launched in 2009, so a 2010 publication should not have needed a concept image.) I haven't figured out what the new missions are/might be, but I didn't look too hard.
The International X-Ray Observatory has had a "reboot", to ATHENA (Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics). NASA withdrew from IXO.
Awesome! I've dreamed of adaptive optics (not specifically, just how it might be achieved), I didn't realize they already existed. Thanks for the information.
Not that I've seen. They went from the "the Columbine kids played Doom which is why they killed those people" more recently to "Guns kill people; We must get rid of guns", but even that is no longer in the news. The latest in the news is that conservatives want to shutdown the government and make poor people die without health care. But nothing about games.
If they want bad publicity to help sell it, they'll need to have something like beastiality with a donkey hidden deep in the game somewhere.
While I agree with some of what you are saying and I don't join in hipster hate, I think this is the main thing:
Any self-righteous style that tries to come off as cool and aloof that seem ridiculous to others is going to be made fun of. It doesn't matter what it is. Portlandia makes fun of hipsters. Zoolander made fun of high fashion.
Be yourself first and foremost: type on an old typewriter in the park, wear RPGs even though you were never formerly in the military, drink double Doppios from non-chain coffee shops, and break up with a girl because she said PETA stood for People Eating Tasty Animals. But being made fun of comes with that game.
