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EUROPEAN SPACE PROBE Philae woke up overnight, after nearly seven months in hibernation as it hurtled towards the Sun on the back of a comet, mission control has confirmed.
The tiny robot lab may be ready to resume science work, adding a fresh chapter to its extraordinary voyage, excited officials said.
“Hello Earth! Can you hear me?” the washing machine-sized lander tweeted under the hashtag #WakeUpPhilae.
The operations centre in Madrid “got a two-minute… successful communication” last night, mission manager Patrick Martin told AFP.
“This was sufficient to confirm that Philae is healthy and that its sub-systems are okay in terms of energy and temperature for ongoing communication with Rosetta,” he said, referring to the lander’s mothership, orbiting Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
The mission seeks to unlock the long-held secrets of comets – primordial clusters of ice and dust that scientists believe may reveal how the Solar System was formed.
The 100-kilo robot lab touched down on “67P” on November 12 after an epic 10-year trek piggybacking on Rosetta.
But instead of harpooning itself onto the dusty iceball’s surface, Philae bounced several times before settling at an angle in a dark ditch.
It had enough stored battery power for about 60 hours of experiments, enabling it to send home reams of data before going into standby mode on November 15.
As “67P” drew closer to the Sun, scientists hoped better light would recharge Philae’s batteries enough for it to reboot, then make contact, and ultimately carry out a new series of experiments.
After two failed bids to make contact in March and April, a new attempt was launched in May.
“We were surprised, yes, because we didn’t expect it at all last night, on a weekend — it’s really exciting,” Martin said.
An ESA statement said Philae communicated with its ground team for 85 seconds, and preliminary analysis of the data showed it must also have been awake earlier but unable to make contact.
According to Martin, the lander’s temperature was about minus 36 degrees Celsius and its energy at 24 watts — both higher than the minus 45 C and 19 watts required to operate.
“Philae is doing very well,” said Stephan Ulamec, Philae project manager with the German space agency DLR.
The lander is ready for operations.
Martin was more cautious, saying: “We have already lined up more communication windows which hopefully will see a repeat of this successful communication.
If we get a stable communications pattern we should be able within a week or so to think about operating the instruments on board the lander.
The comet and its precious cargo are 215 million km from the Sun and 305 million km from Earth, racing at a speed of 31.24 km a second, according to ESA’s website.
Rosetta and Philae have travelled an accumulated distance of 6.9 billion km.
By August 13 the comet will reach its closest point to the Sun, or perihelion, before veering off again into the deeper reaches of space.
There are still more than 8,000 data packets in Philae’s mass memory to be analysed, according to ESA.
Philae’s operators hope that the new data will allow them to pinpoint the lab’s exact location on the comet, which has so far been narrowed to an area of about 100-200 metres.
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Well they can raise the minimum wage by 10 cent but so will the cost of everything. Business always wins.
A business has to win or it will no longer remain a business. However, can’t be this be tied to inflation?
That’s not how it works Jimmy. Private firms are quantity adjusters if they have spare output capacity. This means that in order to maintain market share, they will increase output (and employment) to meet the increased demand which occurs when workers have more money in their pockets. Only if demand increases beyond the output capacity of the economy will firms increase prices. We are nowhere close to this point with the economy operating well below peak capacity with mass unemployment and underemployment. There is no link between increasing the minimum wage and increasing inflation.
Everyone should be paid whatever they want.
Right Wally?
Everyone except you Collie.
Well I wouldn’t say there would be inflation all over. But any business that has to pay out that bit extra will have to cut costs and generally the easiest way to do it is to raise the price for consumers. The inflation can broaden tho when other markets catch on to the idea that there’s more money flowing around in consumers pockets. As you should already know businessmen are psychopaths.
My payment is solely based on how much I work. Not how much I or others feel I’m entitled to.
Crazy concept for AAA I know.
Gone passed caring anymore,
What? Business men are psychopaths? All business men? Heard it all now.
No Jimmy. As explained, increasing the amount of money in circulation through increasing worker’s pay does not cause inflation unless there is a shortage of goods & services to purchase with the additional money. And there is no shortage of virtually any real goods and services in the modern economy with the exception of property. (another catastrophic failure of the free market for the majority)
Paying all workers a decent wage is in the interests of the vast majority. Business in general wants its customers to have as much money in their pockets as possible to purchase their products and services and generate revenue and profit. In contrast, each individual firm wants to pay their workers as little as possible to reduce costs in order to maximize profit. In the macro economy, the workers ARE the customers and this glaring contradiction is lost on the slavering neo liberals eternally demanding wage cuts and ‘flexibility’ in the labour market.
It’s always aggregate demand and spending through the whole economy that ultimately creates and maintains jobs. Someone’s spending is always someone else’s job and income as the macro economy is circular. It is the aggregate spending of everyone in the economy, public, private, individuals and businesses that maintains and creates employment. We have seen the result of slashed government and private sector spending over the past 8 years of Austerity reflected in our massive dole queues, planes full of emigrants and mounting social problems such as the homelessness crisis.
Peadar do not give up. My Granny use to say if a politician knocks on your door remember why they are knocking. They are calling to your door to tell you how wonderful you are. As Granny told me if you believe them you would be a fool.
10c an hour increase proves My Granny was right.
So Collie, You’re losing money while you trot around after me on the Journal. Interesting.
Billy you are some wally
Wally’s my older brother Alex.
Then who’s Mally Wooney?
He’s Wally’s tribute act Dave. I haven’t got one yet but I’m hoping to one day. Milly Booney has a nice ring to it.
“Increasing the amount of money in circulation through increasing worker’s pay does not cause inflation unless there is a shortage of goods & services to purchase with the additional money”
Surely putting more money in people’s pockets increases demand as they start to spend more, which would lead to increased prices..? With your logic surely you could just print off a shed-load of money and there will be no impact to the price of goods/services?
If minimum wage increases, all the other wage brackets (per say) must also increase… then we (Ireland) become un-competitive…. the only gainers will be Asian countries like India. In the past 18 months, my company has “outsourced” / “offshored” about 500 jobs. If you want to increase your wages, increase your knowledge, skills & education.
Agreed. I think sometimes people tend to over-simplify and just think more money = better, as if the extra wages are coming from some evil banker’s yacht fund.
Carl,
Demand can increase without inflationary effects up to the limits of the economy to produce (or import) goods & services to meet that demand. Nor does demand rise proportionally with income. Would you buy an extra gallon of milk a day just because you had an increase in income?
Damaging levels of inflation will only occur when there is chronic excess demand relative to the real capacity of the economy to produce output to meet that demand. This is rarely a concern in a modern economy which produces an excess of virtually all essential goods & services relative to demand. In other words there is no inflation risk in the creation of new money once there is sufficient real wealth of goods and services to absorb that additional money as clearly borne out in the data.
And the commercial banks have been creating shed loads of money for decades now. Since the 1980s the global money supply has increased almost exponentially as the deregulated commercial banks massively increased their loan books and expanded the money supply (The money is uncreated as the loans are repaid but at a much slower pace). And yet there has been no hyperinflation that the monetarists continually hyperventilate about.
http://positivemoney.org/how-money-works/how-much-money-have-banks-created/
The elite have no issue with vast levels of money creation once its purpose is to enrich the financial sector through commercial bank lending to fuel property bubbles or via QE for example. But money creation to serve the interests of the majority is considered to be economic heresy. Interesting.
Housing of course is the exception and is a product which has experienced significant price inflation. This is because housing is deliberately kept in scarce supply in order to provide profit gouging opportunities for private capital (speculators, vulture funds, banks ,landlords etc).
Ireland has all of the real resources, skilled labour, land, building material etc to provide everyone with an affordable home but our political and corporate establishment choose not to do this as it would impact on their profiteering. This phenomenon is not confined to Ireland but is evident in most nations governed under the pro capital, anti working class neoliberal model e.g. U.K.
‘Would you buy an extra gallon of milk a day if you had increased income?’
No Wally, but you might buy better quality milk, or a nice pack of biscuits, or a cake to go with it.
Idiot.
‘Housing is deliberately kept in short supply’
Are you for real Wally?!
The CIF / UCD report into the housing bubble indicated approximately 170,000 more housing units were built than were needed during the Celtic Tiger period.
So how was housing kept in short supply again?
Oh I suppose because money was so easy to get the capitalist elite increased supply then, right? (Ruins your original bullshyte premise but when did stupidity and loonyeconomics ever stop you).
A fecking sick joke 10 cent while judges get a 20 grand pay increase
Juges are a hell of a lot more qualified and valuable to society than those on minimum wage, simply from the perspective that they are not easily replacable and have a skill that is in demand.
You cannot compae jobs with no skills required on the onset versus a successful legal career.
Yes they provide great value by routinely releasing our skum on to the streets so they can be given their 50th chance…
I’d prefer to live in a world with no judges than a world with no minimum wage workers. Raise the minimum wage to 11 euro.
10 cent now, and 50 cent last jan. thats a 60 cent increase in 7 months, or around 1400 a year better off.
Cian – why stop at 11? *-*
Not the judges we have. They give suspended sentences to genuine menaces to society. They preside over s€umb@gs with 250 previous convictions and allow them free rein to continue making life miserable for all they come in contact with. They enable solicitors and barristers to become very rich by allowing a revolving door, think just how much does each conviction cost the state. Nobody should have hundreds of convictions for violent offences and still be allow to walk the streets. Our judges do, so our minimum wage workers add more value to society than many of these judges.
I’m not stopping at 11. I’m starting at 11.
REMINDER , Marg this story is about the cost of living and the minimum wage and not about the crime . So go back to bed.
any excuse to have an aul gripe about the big legal aid conspiracy
I would find it derisory if I were on the minimum wage. Sure, every little helps, but 10c? You risk insulting people.
I don’t think the low pay commission should make findings of this nature, they should say yes/no to a 50c increase on a quarterly basis, taking a number of factors into account.
There also needs to be a Dublin loading on the minimum wage. 9.15 to work in Dublin 1/2 is not the same as 9.15 to work in the west of Ireland.
Its not as simple as that Rónán, where I grew up in the west, you needed a car to drive to what ever job you had, so the money you saved in rent, is spent in running the car (pertol, tax and insurance). Its all relative.
How much of a payrise did government give themselves again recently?
I’d be interested to hear about this because I haven’t heard anything about TDs getting a pay rise.
Seems like it’s never a good time to raise costs on business.
Reduce the cost of living instead
Exactly Chris. Our minimum wage is already the second highest in Europe and if it goes any higher we’ll become uncompetitive and ultimately there will be fewer jobs. Focus on reducing cost of living, more competition to drive down prices etc.
Competition doesn’t seem to work here. Electricity gas and telecoms were all opened to competition with that very promise but the price drops never happened.
That’s because raising the cost on doing business in our country isn’t a good thing.
Why do you think we’re the EU home of Google, Facebook, Twitter, pharmaceuticals etc?
Minimum wage should he at least 11.50 and employers contributions to prsi need to be higher
The perfect formula for job creation.
Using your logic China should have 100% employment then.
Does anyone think employers are going to take on the cost of any rise themselves?
I can’t believe I’ve scrolled past so many debating an extra €4 a week for those who works a full 40 hour week and is on the lowest wage legally allowed already.
Sure, give the little people something.
Neither business or people on low income will win…. Revenue will ensure that they get their pound of flesh from both sides ..
In fairness, people that work 40 hours a week on the minimum wage pay very little PAYE a year, only around €250 I think.
People on minimum wage (18K) pay about 3% in all income related taxes. How low do you think it should go?
I’m a minimum wage employee, and I’ve paid nearly €250 PAYE this year so far.
a person doing a 40 hour week for 50 weeks a year should pay €360.00 in PAYE, thats coming from this site, which is pretty accurate going by my pay slips http://www.virtualaccountant.ie/Tools/tax2016.jsp
I wonder would Td’s vote in support this, if by doing so they had to accept only an equivalent increase in their own incomes, based on this percentage of increase, eveytime they vote to give themselves a pay rise? Somehow I doubt it.
Ireland may be the second highest minimum wage in Europe but it is also one of the most expensive countries to live in Europe.
Government really needs to be looking seriously at the possibility of a staggered introduction to a Universal Basic Income for the country and with Dublin in particular should be more concerned with the supply and condition of housing. 10c an hour won’t do anything for anyone
Insultingly low increase, as if that s able to get me a roof of my own. Can get me a few bags of chips a year and nothing more substantial for the future.
40 hour week @ 8.65 person will take home 334. 40 hour week @ 9.25 person will take home 338. Based on a single person. Gross figures make you think your nearly 40 Euro better off.
So ye saying they pay 90% tax on increase?
Gross is €40 ( how you make that for a 60cent rise equals €40) and take home only €3.50 extra?
You may need to talk to your wages department ab
I’m confused about why they didn’t just say 60 cent in January. Oh wait yeah, if they got it right first time they wouldn’t have a job anymore
Yay… so if you’re on 40 hours a week you can look forward to grand total of an extra four euro.
Before tax
No this will cripple small businesses , this only benefits big businesses like Tesco , I’d rather if they abolished the usc charge like they promised
It’s impossible to vote in this poll. We really should be looking at the living wage. 0.50 cent?? IBEC, SFA and others still running the Country. It’s a simple equation most of the people who would benefit from a living wage would spent in the local economy. So the members of the Small Firms Association would benefit?
Make it a living wage which I think is about 11:20ish I could be mistaken. The minimum wage is extremely hard to live on.
lowering taxes be better, people will have more money spent more business will collect more vat and pay more taxes, some might save but likely for big purchases, home renovations, weddings etc… which all in return help big, small business and employment and government revenue.
15 Euro minimum wage, what about that?
have your say