I don't think we know, yet. The system was only in place a day before the earthquake. The fact that it worked is a nice smoke test, but tells us nothing about false positives nor false negatives.
Computational simulations have been involved in aircraft design for decades. However, at some point you still have to verify the simulations with real world tests. I think (as a non-expert) the main reason no aerodynamically novel aircraft have been developed lately is because we have essentially optimised designs, already. To be clear, I am not saying that we can't do better. I am saying that the manufacturing (and other) cost of incremental improvements is large and the benefit is small. For commercial aircraft (as an example only), it is really hard to beat a tube with wings for the lowest cost of moving large numbers of people or volumes of cargo. Military aircraft with specialised roles are a bit more varied, and a lot more expensive to build and fly.
I think there's also a lot of "if we don't change too much, we have a pretty good chance to not face issues getting the aircraft certified", and "if we change the aircraft too much it'll cause issues where airports have to alter their infrastructure" (which is relevant for things like the blended wing research that's popped up recently).
There's a ton of legacy in overall airline/aircraft operations that discourages big changes.
It happens every now and again on here: someone comes up with like a 2% improvement in aerodynamics, and people are unimpressed. Meanwhile airlines are basically scrambling to get it rolled into their next-gen purchases because it's the biggest improvement in costs in a decade.
You cannot possibly know that without knowing the operational lifetime of a plane and it's expected return. An airline doesn't buy a plane planning to break even on the purchase cost, for example.
Setting aside that you pulled that number out of your ass to argue against it, if something produces 400X it's purchase cost over it's operational life time, a 2% improvement takes that to 408X it's purchase cost for only a 2X increase in initial outlay, meaning it pays for itself 4 fold.
But very few innovations have that sort of effect on manufacturing cost to start with.
The sibling comments are good answers. Another factor is the fact that written English goes back a long time. In some cases, pronunciation has drifted over time, but the spelling didn't change. The silent k's in words like knight and knife were not always silent, for example, but you have to go back to old English for them to be pronounced.
But a subsequent project, JCMT–Venus, designed to study the molecular composition of Venus’s atmosphere using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii, offered a possible explanation for these disparate findings. Researchers tracked the phosphine signature over time and found it could only be detected at night, as it was destroyed by sunlight. They also discovered that the amount of gas in Venus’s atmosphere varied over time.
At some point I expect they'll discover that it can't be detected in the presence of skeptics. At least, that's the usual trajectory. I'm all for any sort of planetary science missions, but this seems more faith than logic driven. For example:
“There are no known chemical processes for the production of either ammonia or phosphine, so the only way to know for sure what is responsible for them is to go there.”
This is untrue on multiple levels. There certainly are known chemical processes for producing both, ammonia is fairly common (e.g. huge clouds of it on the gas giants). Plus it still seems likely that what they detected was SO₂[1] which is also quite common and expected; if the problem with your discovery is in the interpretation of the measurement, confirming the measurement doesn't change that.
In any case, I'd lay long odds that "going there" doesn't resolve the issue any more than debating it here has.
Similar concept, I suppose. When I was young, alcohol for consumption at home was generally only available for purchase in government run liquor stores. (This is still the case in some provinces, but no longer true in Alberta.) However, a few licensed premises (bars and restaurants) were permitted to do off-sales and sell alcohol that you were allowed to take with you off the premises.
It's funny how all the comments seem to assume the conclusion is correct. I think it is far more likely that it is exactly $1M (plus or minus a couple of percent margin of error), and that the packing isn't uniform. It seems extremely unlikely to me that they would fuck it up so bad as to have $500k more in the box than claimed.
I also think it’s funny that so many comments assume they would have lax accounting for the extra $500K, or that the artists could have casually asked for another $500K of old bills to use as filler and the request would have been granted.
The Fed is extremely rigorous in tracking these things. It isn’t a couple guys in a room playing casually with millions of dollars. Even the retired bills are thoroughly monitored and tracked through their destruction.
Non uniform in what way? If all the money in the middle is jumbled up and 50% air that's still extremely misleading. And it's not far off the crumpled up newspaper the article threw in as a possibility.
The conclusion that something is off is still right in that case.
Or why does it even actually need to contain 1M anyway, just do your calculation for cube size, then cover the transparent faces. Filling the middle at all, nevermind completely and accurately, just seems pointless.
Goes against the whole premise of "ever wonder what a million dollars looks like?" They could have just created a million dollar bill and hung it on the wall
I mean the math given showing the size for an actual ~$1M cube is substantially smaller is pretty compelling. The author puts forward the explanation that there may be voids in the cube instead of an additional $500k, but that doesn't really address the problem that this isn't the right size for a $1M cube.
The Fed keeps rigorous track of every bill. They have a database with the serial number of every live bill. The money isn't valid until the serial is put into the database, and any time a bank gets a bill, they have to verify the serial number is in the database. And if it's not they have to turn it in for a replacement that is.
20 years ago before there were as many erosions of personal privacy and before I realized how important privacy was, I thought of a similar system to detect counterfeit money.
Scan it and upload the serial to a database. If that serial has been registered somewhere else, before a plane could possibly transport it there, flag both registers to inspect that bill.
If the serial has already been registered as counterfeit, refuse the currency.
If the serial was not issued by the US mint, refuse the currency.
This would have the adverse effect of flagging valid currency too, but this could be worked around. I think it would make counterfeit much harder and have very little technical cost, since reading the denom and serial is trivial.
The thing is that only a tiny amount of all money exists as physical bills. So they can track that all they want, it ain't going to make a dent in the total money supply :p
That’s actually the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, on 14th St. SW, which is indeed worth visiting. They print the paper bills (among other things). The U.S. Mint produces the coins. I think only the Philadelphia Mint still mints coins, but it’s also worth visiting.
Denver also mints coins for circulation (mint mark D) and San Francisco does rarely, but mostly does proof sets (legal tender, but generally kept by collectors). Apparently there’s also a newer mint at West Point which uses a W mint mark and also mints coins for circulation.
When you print money by the trillions, tracking every transaction becomes more important not less. I don't know about the exhibit, it is possible that this is not real money too.
I am too lazy to find a source, but I saw a similar thing a few years ago with an electric mining truck (recover enough energy going downhill loaded to go back uphill unloaded).
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