** The Official Space Flight Thread - The Space Station and Beyond **

[mrk]

Radio 1 reported on it this morning but I lolled because they merely reported on it for a couple of minutes then made a Uranus joke, yet the one direction member about to be a father was given more coverage and at the end of it they told listeners that they could find out more via the R1breakfast feed and so on. Obviously one direction is more important than history unfolding.

 

[MookJong]

Even BBC news last night was a bit sniggering about it all...using phrases like "Space fanatics will be excited".

The media do their best to keep things like this twee rather than something every human on the planet should find interesting and accessible.

 

[NeilF]

^^ Shame... And somehow Jeremy Kyle merits hours of air time a week?

 

[Trig]

The media do their best to keep things like this twee rather than something every human on the planet should find interesting and accessible.

The majority of the planet is quite happy to be part of the me too crowd to look beyond itself to the stars though, sad state of human affairs, chances are by the time the planet takes an interest in space it'll be because we are about to be hit by something large and deadly, by which point it'll be too late..
As for the media, they wont cover space related stuff because it doesn't fit in with whichever agenda they are pushing...

 

[Rroff]

A very low-speed link coupled with enormous file sizes = a very long wait.

I wonder how they actually do it. From a transmission perspective the latency is just too great for any sort of TCP-style error correction through retransmission but they must do it. I wonder if they packetise the data (each with a CRC) and transmit it multiple times (I'm imagining several time-staggered bitstreams) so they can reassemble the single stream of data from complete packets from any of the streams.

That's probably how I would do it based on my understanding of the situation, but I'd be very interested to read how they actually do it!

I believe they use multiple streams as when things have gone wrong, etc. they've been able hijack/repurpose another channel and so on.

The bandwidth on some of the newer probes, etc. is quite decent but offset by the increased amount of data/resolution utilized by sensors and cameras.

 

[Glaucus]

What a day for science yesterday, not only new horizon with Pluto, but LHC announced a new particle that had been theorised for 5 decades. The pentaquark.

Such a shame the world isn't more interested in this stuff, hardly any mention in the normal news channels.

 

[D3K]

Such a shame the world isn't more interested in this stuff, hardly any mention in the normal news channels.

Yeah its a real shame. The sciences in education need a revamp to encourage more interest and imagination. I think the deeper problem is that humans respond better to tangible experiences - molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles, and far away planets aren't tangible - and we need to find a way to relate scientific subject matter to the general masses more effectively.

 

[DRZ]

What a day for science yesterday, not only new horizon with Pluto, but LHC announced a new particle that had been theorised for 5 decades. The pentaquark.

Such a shame the world isn't more interested in this stuff, hardly any mention in the normal news channels.

I think that depends on what you mean as normal - Radio 4 gave quite a bit of coverage and in-depth explanation of the pentaquark discovery. Obviously the R4 audience is a bit different to the Radio 1 audience - but then if you're actually interested in the news, you don't listen to Radio 1 to get it. Same as the BBC really, if you expect the news on BBC 1 to give anything in-depth and difficult to understand any sort of significant coverage then you're simply looking in the wrong place for your news.

 

[Tibbz2]

What a day for science yesterday, not only new horizon with Pluto, but LHC announced a new particle that had been theorised for 5 decades. The pentaquark.

Such a shame the world isn't more interested in this stuff, hardly any mention in the normal news channels.

It's ridiculous, both stories are important enough to warrant top stories and yet I've heard almost nothing about them on any news channel or show, and nothing at all about the LHC discovery outside of science news sites... Sad sad times.

 

[kablooey]

A very low-speed link coupled with enormous file sizes = a very long wait.

1.68kb/s according to Chris Lintott.

 

[Glaucus]

I think that depends on what you mean as normal - Radio 4 gave quite a bit of coverage and in-depth explanation of the pentaquark discovery. Obviously the R4 audience is a bit different to the Radio 1 audience - but then if you're actually interested in the news, you don't listen to Radio 1 to get it. Same as the BBC really, if you expect the news on BBC 1 to give anything in-depth and difficult to understand any sort of significant coverage then you're simply looking in the wrong place for your news.

This is a rubbish excuse. If you look at people in such industries. Nearly all were inspired at a young age by news and TV programs. These news articles absolutely should be in main stream news.
We need to push STEM as hard as America do.

And obviously I don't get my news from such sources, this is where Facebook is so great, I can follow the institutions and get the news directly without massive journalistic errors.

 

[MookJong]

It's ridiculous, both stories are important enough to warrant top stories and yet I've heard almost nothing about them on any news channel or show, and nothing at all about the LHC discovery outside of science news sites... Sad sad times.

In the Metro paper on my daily commute a story about Brad Pitt and his children buying subway sandwiches graced page 3 of the paper while the historic US / Iran nuclear agreement was obviously pushed back to page 5. The front page headline you ask......A mother who had her child snatched by a Primark security guard for breastfeeding in the shop.

The Media have a lot to answer for in warping peoples minds about what is an important topic and what is not.

 

[DRZ]

This is a rubbish excuse. If you look at people in such industries. Nearly all were inspired at a young age by news and TV programs. These news articles absolutely should be in main stream news.
We need to push STEM as hard as America do.

And obviously I don't get my news from such sources, this is where Facebook is so great, I can follow the institutions and get the news directly without massive journalistic errors.

Radio 1 Newsbeat is what, 2-3 minutes long? You couldn't cover even one story in any depth at all let alone multitude of the headlines they rattle through. Their mandate just isn't there to have a longer news segment, nor would there ever be as it isn't that kind of station.

BBC1 is the same - the news there isn't in-depth in any one area, although the coverage is a bit better. This isn't just science topics, this is pretty much anything at all that requires more explanation than the norm.

If you want in-depth (particularly politics), you have to watch Newsnight. Science topics used to have Horizon but I'm not sure that is any good any more. BBC 2 is better than BBC 1, that's just the way it is.

Radio 4 have some good science coverage (Life Scientific, much more in-depth segments in the news and so on).

 

[Glaucus]

It isn't about being in depth.

 

[DRZ]

It isn't about being in depth.

Then what do you want? I heard about both the Pluto flyby AND the LHC pentaquark annoucement on mainstream news - both BBC News (via the app) and BBC Radio 4's news on my drive to work had coverage of both stories.

I don't watch TV much and I rarely if ever listen to Radio 1, but the BBC at least *were* covering *both* of these stories.

You wanted coverage, there was coverage.

 

[Glaucus]

The app, has a science section.
It was barely covered on any news, radio or TV. Many channels didn't mention it at all.

 

[Cosimo]

How time flies. It's been forty years since that historic handshake between Stafford and Leonov:

 

[Spook187]

I see some of Clyde Tombaugh ashes are onboard, i would have loved that is that myself

 

[DRZ]

The app, has a science section.
It was barely covered on any news, radio or TV. Many channels didn't mention it at all.

I didn't listen to all of the radio and TV channels when it was announced, and frankly neither is it likely that you did.

The two news outlets I routinely use did cover both stories though. Others in this thread stated there was TV coverage of it too.

Aside from this, the discoveries aren't actually particularly hugely relevant to daily life or the massive advancement of humankind - we've not discovered Dark Matter or time travel. A discovery that is immediately, obviously and directly relevant to people usually makes worldwide headline news instantly. While these are both very important, they should be viewed with some perspective.

 

[Glaucus]

You mean, except it's things like this that inspire young people into STEM and as such is extremely important for every day life.