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Ask Slashdot: After We're Gone, the Last Electrical Device Still Working?
Leomania writes: After watching a post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi short on YouTube (there are quite a few) and then having our robot vacuum take off and start working the room, I just wondered what would be the last electric/electronic device still functioning if humans were suddenly gone. I don't mean sitting there with no power but would work if the power came back on; rather, something continuously powered, doing the task it was designed for. Are we talking a few years, decades, or far longer?
one perspective.
Probably satellites would last the longest, with maybe Pioneer or Voyager probes for however the RT batteries last.
A very similar question was in an XKCD "What If?", but only in the printed book version (which has a bunch of extra chapters compared to the blog): "What would be the last artificial light source to glow when all humans were gone".
IIRC, the conclusion was that it would be status LEDs on space probes or radiation glow from buried nuclear waste.
A nuclear power plant (and its control room)?
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
Solar-powered, geosynched satellites will keep going for a while.
you should watch WALL-E next, while pondering that question
1. Solar powered parking meters, obviously. Humans may be all gone, but you still gotta pay for your spot downtown.
But seriously though, these are designed to be robust, and to keep working even if the solar panel gets dirty. I don't see any reason why it would fail at any time.
2. The other one I can think of are (again, solar powered) satellites in higher orbits. But I am not sure how much damage the solar radiation does to those on the long run.
3. Wouldn't it be sad if the last electric device to work is one of those crappy solar powered moving plants (made of plastic)?
One of these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Ray Bradbury asked the same question in 1950.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
The Cutter
These puppies are way out there, running on neclear power. No-one to bug them, nothing to break them.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
They are just a piece of wire, often embedded in some kind of ceramic. Without power and stored at a place well protected from the enviroment it would likely last for 100,000 years or more.
Jan
The Oxford Electric Bell has been running since 1840 and will probably carry on for a long time yet
andrew trigdell told me an amazing story back in 1999 about how he helped install Linux 0.99 on a solar-powered data collection computer in antarctica. Linux 0.99 was known to be highly stable, hence why it was chosen. it has a 56k modem which is enough to get the data back, and to check (very slowly) that it's still operational. so i think anything that's designed for long-term with those kinds of harsh remote and inaccessible conditions in mind, powered off of sustainable independent power, would be a good candidate for a device that would still be functioning even decades later.
It's actually on an adjacent planet rather than Earth, but Opportunity seems like it will just keep going.
xkcd joke about it.
Topic: Ask Slashdot: After We're Gone, the Last Electrical Device Still Working?
Reply Subject: Who cares?
Response: I don't care. I think that it isn't a interisting problem.
Analysis: Looks like this dim bulb has gone out.
Tally: Currently at 999 Points of Light
Who: A Child Left Behind
What: Passionate declaration of indifference.
When: 42 years after men last walked on the Moon.
Where: March For Apathy 2015 [cancelled]
Why: Dissonant aggressive demotivational pathos.
What: 's the use.
How: Did we get here?
Further Reading on this Topic: Failed Slashdot submission,
Breakthrough: Manned Space Travel Achieved Using 40-Year Old Technology
TheRealHocusLocus writes
"Paul Rosenberg has uncovered some surprising new evidence that manned space travel is not only possible, it has actually been achieved using decades-old technology. Some 40 years in the making, a tale too amazing to remain untold. With a few quaint photographs he asks, could we build this? The answer is no. Or is it? It is uplifting to read that "Productive humans have been delegated to mute observance as their hard-earned surplus is syphoned off to capital cities, where it is sanctimoniously poured down a sewer of cultured dependencies and endless wars..." for it must take something really compelling to prevent us from reaching the stars, and he has nailed it. This essay makes the case that the headliner of 2052 may well be: Breakthrough: Manned Space Travel Achieved Using 80-Year Old Technology. I can hardly wait! Down with robots."
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
My Casio is up to year 8 on the original battery. If my corpse fell where there was plenty of sunshine but not so much dirt as to wash up and bury my wrist I could see it going quite some time more. It's good for 200 meters diving, it should handle exposure for a good long time.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
The little LED on my pink Floyd pulse album will still be flashing long after we are all gone.
Having spun a number of boards in my career, I can tell you that it is trivial to add an 0402 LED indicator, just as an indication that the 3.3 V logic rail is powered. And because it was easiest (via inertia) to keep it in than to cut it out (even as a do-not-populate instruction to the board house) that little LED stayed in the design, even though in production no one would ever see it.
Given the complexity of most satellites, I would be deeply surprised if there wasn't at least one LED on one of those boards.
With moderate use, those things last forever.
We don't design LEDs into our own boards, and we explicitly remove them from COTS boards that we use. Generally speaking the diffusers on LEDs outgas, meaning a) they are depositing materials on your spacecraft surfaces (bad) and b) could result in a shorting risk (also bad). There may be space-grade LEDs that big-space (think Hubble, JWST, Voyagers, etc.) use but I would be surprised. There's simply no need.
"Is it plugged in? Is it turned on? Is it on frequency?" solves about 99% of basic device connection issues. An LED will make one very short portion of that slightly shorter, and then only when testing on the bench, since you can't see it as soon as you box it up. As soon as you can talk to a device, you are able to run a long form functional test on it, exercising every part of the design and ensuring everything is working correctly. If it passes, you're good. If it fails, you pull the unit.
For ground support equipment, yeah sure, throw an LED on every rail and switch output.
"Hot damn, an LED! We can sell this and eat for a month! Too bad we don't have the technology to actually make these anymore...."
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The former Soviet Union built hundreds of automated lighthouses in remote locations powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators. Those use 90Sr, which has a half-life of 30 years so they can go for many decades. They were installed in the 1970s-90s, so most of them are around one half-life out. They could well continue operating for several decades, but some small solar-powered devices might well outlast them if they aren't damaged too badly by weather over the years.
That's kind of an interesting point. Let's say 500 years from now humans have warp drive and can zip between stars. Should the Voyagers be collected* and placed in a museum? Should it be left alone as a historical "site?" One could visit it. Get the sense of what ancient man accomplished, sending this tiny thing so far from home. But that would be lost putting it on display at the Smithsonian.
I argue a "traveling" museum should be built next to Voyager, sharing its journey. School kids could warp in on their Space Bus, view Voyager from the observation deck, yawn through holoexhibits that tell the story of ancient space exploration, and then have lunch at the Carl Sagan Cafeteria.
* I used as neutral a word as I could, "collected," rather than something that implies a relationship. "Recover" isn't right, because that implies retrieving something that rightfully belongs elsewhere and was lost, and Voyager is not lost. It's exactly where it should be doing exactly what it was designed to do. "Rescued" is right out. That's recovered + emotion. "Interrupt its mission" or "abduct" are emotionally loaded from the opposite perspective.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.