Observatory Version of Misc Musings, Ravings, and Random Thoughts

[Dr Nno]

If you define "I really want to be able to go faster than light speed" as plausible.

I do.

It's called a wormhole, or occasionally an Einstein Rosen bridge. Sometimes folding space.

Then where are the time travelers?

Why would there be time travel if there's no movement? You don't move, so your relative time stays the same.

 

[Dr Nno]

I've been thinking about starting a thread about how right now we probably have the maximum possible level of technological development possible in the universe. It also looks increasingly likely that human civilization will hit a precipitous collapse 100-150 years from now due to resource depletion, global warming, and an utter failure to control population levels. The next intelligent species that arises however many million years in the future will look at our civilization with bewilderment at the level of technology. Like, one common trope in sci-fi is the "elder race" which creates ascendant levels of technology and which wields incredible power.

We are the elder race.

If you had information/data which corroborated this conjecture it would probably make for an interesting thread.

One day I'll get to it. I kind of don't have the time/energy right now. I have a few loose threads in my head for how I would construct it.

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/11/peak ... rspective/

This guy's blog is really really good. But in short, what I expect will happen is we *will* hit peak oil within my lifetime. So much of agriculture is oil-based, from fertilizers to machinery. Combined with global warming, which it appears we will hit the worst case scenario of over 4 degree celcius by 2100 because we are unwilling to make hard choices, both population control and consumption. The global south will exponentially increase in population and greenhouse emissions. Global warming will both make the global south unlivable in terms of heat indexes, but also will flood coastal areas. It also will decrease crop yields. This will result in a humongous migration making Syria look like a cute affair. The chaos from the migration will result in so much strife that collective action will be impossible. Additionally, human rights and welfare demands of the new migrants will hamper high technology efforts by depriving them of funding.

Check The Collapse of Western Civilization from Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway for an option about this kind of scenario. Civilization should be really resilient, but it can take many shapes, and the one we're living in can lead to different outcomes depending on where on Earth you're located at the time of the collapse.

 

[Dr Nno]

Packing tape and all

Interplanetary-grade packing tape!

 

[Dr Nno]

Interesting. Earth’s magnetic field is acting up and geologists don’t know why

Aren't we due for another magnetic field flip anyway? That'll be some interesting times, heh.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal

...

As far as life goes, well, we survived a ton of them before, so while there may be a bit more UV out there, life will, um, find a way?

Or not.

Apparently it's pretty survivable for humans:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 084936.htm

Some 41,000 years ago, a complete and rapid reversal of the geomagnetic field occured. Magnetic studies on sediment cores from the Black Sea show that during this period, during the last ice age, a compass at the Black Sea would have pointed to the south instead of north. Moreover, data obtained by the research team, together with additional data from other studies in the North Atlantic, the South Pacific and Hawaii, prove that this polarity reversal was a global event.

IOW, much less of a problem for us and most species than global warming.

True, not much of a problem for biological life. But, any period of weak magnetic field might might be a problem for computers. After all, they do not like cosmic rays.

Don't you think some migrating species could be lost because of a polarity reversal? Birds and turtles rely on the magnetic field to find where to lay eggs, that could wipe a species real quick.

Regarding the computers, ECC memory should be able to prevent bits flipping because of the cosmic rays. I'd worry more about satellites. Shouldn't a stronger solar wind cause additional drag for them?

 

[Dr Nno]

The Venus balloon thing should be getting a good revisiting.

Fortunately, the technology for solar powered balloons with powerful comms is now commercial, so a long duration Venus aerostat is quite possible!

Would solar power work well in the Venus atmosphere? I thought the clouds would block the Sun, even at 50km high.

And I watched some videos about supercritical CO2, and I cannot imagine what the surface of Venus would feel like if it's basically an ocean world of this gas/liquid. The few pictures of the Venera missions seem so "normal"...

 

[Dr Nno]

When a farmer sustains 0.3 people, it means they can provide enough food to feed themselves and an additional .3 people. So it takes roughly 3 farmers to support 1 non-farming individual. Remember that in a pre-industrial society, everyone is a subsistence farmer. Man, woman, child as soon as they can take orders and follow them, all contribute to food production, which *may* free one person per family to do something else. Often, producing food is the only occupation people in those societies have for their whole life, and they cannot decide otherwise, because they would starve.

Advancements in food production allow the farmers to support more people in their society in roles not directly tied to food production. If a farmer can sustain 4 additional people, they can become crafters, teachers, merchants, and create enough value from their work to advance society as a whole.

But if your food output is too low (if you lost access to technology all of a sudden), you cannot escape the vicious circle of food production preventing you to re-learn the technology you lost.

 

[Dr Nno]

News coverage journalists tends to be non-scientific even especially when the subject is of scientific interest.

T, FTFY.

 

[Dr Nno]

If I didn't know that antimatter is real and I were to read about it in a science fiction story, I'd think it was pretty unrealistic. All they have to do to release mind-boggling amounts of energy is to just mix a little of this stuff with any regular matter? Talk about about an overpowered plot device.

I swear, someday some physicist is going to figure out how to easily convert regular matter into antimatter and our civilization will never be the same again*. On account of it having been vaporized in a flash of gamma rays, along with most of the rest of the solar system. If there really is a simple recipe for making antimatter, it's existence is probably one of the most effective of the great filters, to be honest.


* It will, no doubt, involve a fresh cup of really hot tea.

Not a physicist, but as far as I understand, creating antimatter is not THAT difficult. Whenever you convert energy to mass*, matter and antimatter are generated equally. The thing is that we live in an universe made of matter, and antimatter quickly reacts with anything in it and is quickly converted back to energy. Keeping antimatter long enough to use it is the real hurdle in fueling your tea-loving lifestyle. But there is progress.


* That requires a lot of energy, and of course that's a big part in the difficulty of the process

 

[Dr Nno]

Fire season is already ongoing, and Arizona's an eager participant in the season with fires by Flagstaff and Prescott. I don't suppose that any firefighting equipment companies are moving beyond drones for reconnaissance and adapting ground and air drones for actual fire suppression yet? Even if it was a "follow the leader" type of Loyal Wingman deal where the drones mostly imitated a lead, human-piloted vehicle, that could still add a lot of fire suppression potential without needing to train so many more people for the equipment.

Beyond reconnaissance I wonder about the utility of current gen drones in fire suppression. My first instinct is that they are too small to carry the volume of fire suppressant to make a meaningful difference. Or, if you had drones large enough and powerful enough to carry useful amounts of suppressant, would you need 50 of them? 500 even, to constitute a difference. You'd need a logistics 'train' to utilize them too, I imagine. While closer in to cities and towns, you could possibly deploy them - from say a series of specialized truck carriers and tankers with suppressant - but in more remote locations I think that is unrealistic.

In France, the most important component of fire control is the constant monitoring of the forests by professional watchers during the fire season. The earliest a fire is detected, the less you need to put it out with a nearby truck, helicopter or plane. The US forests are an order of magnitude larger than the French ones, so drones could be used to improve the surveillance level, and maybe provide precise fire locations for a plane or helicopter to put it out quickly?

 

[Dr Nno]

Talking about Black Holes, our own Milky Way's central black hole has the honor of a front page article. With a picture!

 

[Dr Nno]

I was taking a shower this morning when I had an unexpected introduction to a little biological oddity known as the Dimorphic Jumping Spider.

The males come in two very different forms! One has an intricate pattern of black and gray stripes all over the body, with bright orange pedipalps. The other has translucent beige legs and a shiny black body with a triple mohawk of hairs over the crest of the head.
Both forms also have different mating displays, but! Each one constitutes roughly 50% of the local male population throughout their range. I haven't been able to find any literature suggesting there's variation based on local conditions, climate, etc.


Pictures spoilered for spoider
Tufted male:

Spoiler

Tuftless male:

Spoiler

Female:

Spoiler

This reminds me why I despise insects and arachnids so much. They are definitely not human.

 

[Dr Nno]

edit: anyhow my point was that to some alien observer, human pattern baldness would also be very similar to how those spiders are. Of course, to us now it is just an undesirable trait (you can always shave your head cheaply, but hair transplants are expensive and hurt). To an alien observer, well they would have trouble telling males and females apart to begin with (with only 9% size difference), so they would look for beards, note that beards are about as reliable as manes, but for some reason a lot of men shave beards, and also mention that bald spots are very strongly indicative it is an older male, but about half of the males don't form bald spots until very advanced age if at all (at which point it gets a lot less indicative of gender anyway because of general hair loss).

I think it's better to look at the boobs. Please consider the context of this discussion when reading the previous sentence. Or don't.

 

[Dr Nno]

The problem isn't the lack of direction. The problem is that large organisations with larger megaphones deliberately drowned out the message. The message you talked about, turning out the lights etc. That was the disinformation campaign from the fossil fuel lobby. They literally invented the carbon footprint framework in the 90s.

And it was successful. You bought it completely, because you incorrectly attributed it to the people who are working on the problem.

So many times this.

In 1982, Exxon was made aware of Global Warming. The results?

To summarize,

• In the early 1980s, Exxon’s own scientists accurately predicted the ensuing global warming to within a margin of 20%;
• Exxon’s predictions were consistent with those made by mainstream climate scientists;
• In the late 1980s, Exxon began funding think tanks whose scientists inaccurately predicted that temperatures would remain essentially unchanged;
• These findings highlight the fact that Exxon knew about the dangers of global warming and yet quietly gave tens of millions of dollars to groups that tried to convince the public otherwise.

 

[Dr Nno]

The view from Earth was impressive too.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1574583529731670021

 

[Dr Nno]

Classical "They were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."

 

[Dr Nno]

In my youth, I used to look at the Sun with a magnifying glass. As I was not stupid, I was not looking through the glass, but I was using it to project the image of the sun on a sheet of paper, and it worked pretty well.

 

[Dr Nno]

The Lucy spacecraft completed its first flyby of an asteroid on its way to the Trojan asteroids orbiting the Sun around Jupiter. Asteroid Dinkinesh had been added at the last minute, and served as a test of the instruments and observation.

First picture is up on the NASA site, and it's a success. A double success even, as Dinkinesh is a binary.

I'm a total sucker for this kind of space news. And the picture is gorgeous! Those shadows, those ridges across the the equators!

More pictures in a week or so.

 

[Dr Nno]

The Lucy spacecraft completed its first flyby of an asteroid on its way to the Trojan asteroids orbiting the Sun around Jupiter. Asteroid Dinkinesh had been added at the last minute, and served as a test of the instruments and observation.

First picture is up on the NASA site, and it's a success. A double success even, as Dinkinesh is a binary.

I'm a total sucker for this kind of space news. And the picture is gorgeous! Those shadows, those ridges across the the equators!

View attachment 66658

More pictures in a week or so.

Even better, as reported on the Front page with the new Daily Telescope feature, the above picture was taken with an angle that hides an even more surprising fact. Dinkinesh's satellite is a contact binary!

The perpendicular view taken 6 minutes after the first picture shows it clearly:

Incredible mission so far, and we're only on the first encounter.

 

[Dr Nno]

We don't even have the beginning of an understanding of what is needed to survive on Mars for extended periods of time, let alone any device to send there to help that goal. I give it at least 30 to 50 years before anyone 'lives' on Mars with better survivability than a 1950's Siberian gulag.

 

[Dr Nno]

spaceweather.com has a summary of the July 14, 2000 "Bastille Day" solar storm, the strongest storm so far this century.
It's worth a read, just to remember the event and its magnitude.

This century started on January 1st 2001, so you're probably talking about the last Solar Storm of the 20th Century?

 

[Dr Nno]

You need a kind of network with several relays around the Moon, to cover the time when the ships are on the Far Side, on the ground or in orbit. The Chinese did a rudimentary version of it when then landed their Chang'e 4 lunar rover. This is independant from the medium, lasers or radio waves can't go through the Moon.