(cut to group of people furtively hiding in a densely forested area, clods of thick, wet mud caked around their tracking and control devices in the hope of blocking their signals,)
[...]
'WRITING'... coming this Summer to a theater near you. Rated R."
Or has someone already made this?
That's got more than an element of "Fahrenheit 451" about it. The book, not the film - I think. (I can't remember seeing the film, but I've read the book a couple of times.)
"See that nebula over there? Look at the spectral lines and try to work out how we obliterated that star and every life-supporting planet within 5 parsecs. Really, do that before you sign on the dotted line."
"Amongst the Puppeteers, there was much madness that millennium."
Imagine the energy necessary to move it closer to Mars to have it dropped on the surface!
That's not a huge problem - you just need to drop the perihelion close enough to let Mars pull it in. It's still a lot of energy, but there's no reason to go brute force about it. Letting it happen over a few thousand revolutions (say, 10,000 years) wouldn't change the rest of the timings much. You could do things faster, but that would need more energy.
And who knows what remains of Mars after the impact of 9*10^18 kg of stuff.
Impactor that size - that's in the right order to make some structure the size of the present North Polar Basin - a bit less than a hemisphere, some kilometres deep. Big, but far from planet-busting.
How much of the atmosphere gets blown off in the impact is hard to estimate - which is going to be one of the reasons that adding volatiles for an atmosphere is going to take millennia or longer - like doing a thick weld, you have to let the work piece anneal at some points in the programme of work.
Maybe move Venus to the Mars orbit and create a bi-planetary system like Terra/Luna.
Crossing orbits in a planetary system? That's not likely to end well, and is likely to take a long time - a few hundred thousand cycles or around a quarter million years. It'd be far safer to move the Earth out to co-orbit with Mars (while simultaneously stripping the top couple of km of the surface, oceans soils, ecologies, and putting it all into cold storage in space somewhere) while moving Venus out to take Earth's place. Then re-surface and re-atmosphere Venus while the orbits stabiise (another few hundred thousand cycles?) and take the Earth's ecosystems etc out of cold storage, put everything back in place et voilà - more living space.
With a bit of luck, you might get the job doe in less than a million years. Quite how many species of humanoids will be around to see the end of the project is your guess.
Weren't they still paying the price - in instalments - when they flitted out of the galaxy? Which has the corollary that they expected the Outsiders to be waiting for them when they arrived at the LMC. So they carried on making payments.
How will the Outsiders handle the arrival of the Andromeda galaxy? Apart from "slowly".
Not sure about you but I frequently now find the Ad blocker detected and I get blocked and restricted in my viewing of the web sites.
The vast majority of content is available elsewhere. If a site is restricting your access when you use an ad blocker, don't use that site. With very few exceptions (/. being one), the commentary simply isn't worth the effort of reading. (And/. is declining towards that standard as the UID count pushes towards 10^7.)
... stop electing people with their brains in their pricks to political power.
For which task, you'll have to persuade a significant majority of the voting population. Which you won't do by sitting in your nerd-cave typing on your laptop.
Naked women as pornography couldn't appear before the widespread adoption of clothing. And if you can remember wanking over your Dad's collection of National Geographic with the bare-titted "ethnic" photographs, you'll realise that what is considered pornographic (or stimulating) is culturally variable.
the agricultural revolution, when people started living in fixed homes and had leisure time while well fed.
The evidence is pretty clear that the adoption of agriculture resulted in less leisure time, more stress (from having land, crops, seed stocks and stored grain to defend against both rats and thieves), worse nutrition (including deficiency diseases, due to a less varied diet), and diet-related diseases such as diabetes. About the only thing that improved was the overall calorie count.
Prior to that, leisure time implied seasonal shortages without enough available food to make hunting and gathering worthwhile.
Seasonal shortages were why nomadic people moved somewhere else. Once you've got crops in the ground, then you've literally bet the farm on making a success of the agriculture. And you're vulnerable to the local strongman coming along and demanding "protection" for his "defence force" of "soldiers".
and breasts containing sufficient milk to feed a child.
You don't seem to understand how the mammalian breast works. The milk gland comprises about an A-cup (does America use the same bra-sizing system as Europe and Africa?) ; the rest is useless fat. Or, if you're a porn star, useless silicone plastic.
Also, starting at that time men appear to have spent a few thousand years making dick pics before they even started on pictures of sex.
Hmmm. Colour me unconvinced. I can think of a number of phallic standing stones and a few carvings in the published record, but for the vast majority of megalithic constructions I've seen (hundreds, over the years ; they're pretty common here - I bumped into one just last Sunday which I completely wasn't expecting) look about as phallic as something that doesn't look very phallic. That's dating back to well into the "Bronze Age", if not into the "Copper Age" (which are diachronous units in any case).
Being fat was attractive, but not for the "built in insulation". The fat meant that a month or two of poor hunting/ gathering results wouldn't mean the pregnancy aborting or the milk drying up through malnutrition.
Didn't you know that granny-porn is one of the bigger "sophisticated" markets? No, seriously. Look in the "dial-a-wank" adverts of your local newspaper and you'll probably find as many granny-porn phone lines, websites and prostitutes as you will for BDSM and far more than for hardsports.
It's in Britain. which means it could be either in Scotland, or in England and Wales, or Northern Ireland.
If it were in Scotland, the government of Scotland has stopped fracking (actually, it's just declined planning permission for any fracking operations - legislatively easier and quicker). Scotland does have a "right to roam" which which does allow most land to be accessed by most people, as long as the visitor's behaviour is reasonable (eg, not burglarising properties, damaging fences, crops or gates). But that's irrelevant. Otherwise, the decisions are taken by the London government. Most of the land in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is not in public ownership, and even if it is, there is not a general assumption of any right of public access except on specific defined routes called "rights of way".
Basically, your assumption of US legal concepts applying doesn't work, because it's not America. Neither of the legal systems possibly involved follows from American precedents.
Exactly. Pop the breaker and the problem is finished.
Many pumps also have a padlock slot on them so the pump can't be lifted from the rest, or the trigger can't be depressed to allow fuel flow. No reason you can't use both.
Forcing 85% of the world population to change clocks for no apparent reason, to appease the 15% that live where this matters
Living in Scotland, and having lived almost on the Arctic Circle and on both sides of the Equator, I'm perfectly happy dealing with DST. A 1 hour change every 6 months is pretty trivial compared to a 6, 8 or 12 hour time shift every week or two, which is what you get if you're working in 24x7 operations.
I honestly don't know how many equatorial to tropical to temperate countries (ones below 45 degrees of latitude, or whatever number you choose) just don't bother with a DST, But I bet quite a number don't. If that number includes even one of India, China, the Philippines or Brazil, then your 85% dog being wagged by a 15% tail becomes pretty dubious.
So in column A, we have something that saves between -$300M and $300M in energy per year, unknown-- and in column B, we know that it kills at least 30 people a year. Doesn't seem like a great policy to me.
So in column A, we have something that saves between -$300M and $300M in energy per year, unknown-- and in column B, we know that it kills at least 30 people a year. Doesn't seem like a great policy to me.
Hmmm, so those people are worth about $10 million each. That's considerably higher than the normal estimate, which is between $1 and $2 million per death (comprised of fines and costs of avoiding a repeat).
1-Ceres isn't physically large enough to have more water than Earth. If it were 100% liquid water, it still would amount to less than half the amount of water on Earth
Let's check that - mass of Ceres is approximately 0.0009393 * 10^24kg, while Earth is 5.97 * 10^24kg, for a ratio of 0.00016 (0.016%). My collection of bits of solar system data gives the proportion of water (by mass) in Earth as 0.00022. that would be about 1.4 Ceres masses. Not a wild disagreement, since we've considerable uncertainty about the water content of the Mantle (80-odd % of the mass of the Earth).
Actually that would mean the Ceres would contain enough mass of oxygen to give Mars a workable atmosphere, if it were all water. but if it were a few percent water, then it's a lot closer a question.
Let everyone register their domains under whatever country they belong to.
Why are you assuming that people have one country? My wife and I cover three nationalities and citizenships, and stepping out one degree of relationship further, the family covers five nationalities. I work in 7 countries on a regular basis, three of which would justify me using a.EU domain in addition to the national ones and, of course,.INT
And I have an email address in goatse.cx - Christmas Island, in the Indian Ocean. Which I have at least swum in.
If you're an American (always a good guess when this sort of parochialism is spouted), then I take it all your domains are in.US
The development of animal life about 600 million years ago looks like it is tied to oxygen level of the atmosphere
The appearance of animals with hard parts about 600 million years ago post dated the appearance of multi-cm body animals by approaching 100 Myr. At the same time eyes also appeared, and there was also a change in the phosphate chemistry of seawater - and the earliest "hard parts" of several phyla were composed of phosphates.
There are vocal advocates for all three explanatory narratives. I'm not going to try to pick between them.
Animal. Even if microbial life is plentiful, multicellular life seems likely to be very uncommon. We've only had it on Earth for the last half-billion years, seemingly by some freak accident.
The Ediacaran faunas go back to around 700 million years (but remain of "uncertain affiliation"). A number of examples from a number of regions currently widely separated going back to well over a billion years suggest mobile organisms grazing on or under microbial biofilms. Which would be early animals - though whether affiliated to the Ediacarans, or modern "worms" (sensu Linnaeus), or some other segmented organism... who knows?
See : C. Sagan; W. R. Thompson; R. Carlson; D. Gurnett; C. Hord (1993). "A search for life on Earth from the Galileo spacecraft". Nature. 365 (6448): 715â"721.
That's 1993. Publication date. The research was done in December 1990. Since then, a number of other Earth gravitational assist manoeuvres have been done by other spacecraft, and taking "ground truth" measurements as a way of checking instruments, systems and procedures remains a useful ploy.
Slashdot Mirror
That's got more than an element of "Fahrenheit 451" about it. The book, not the film - I think. (I can't remember seeing the film, but I've read the book a couple of times.)
"Amongst the Puppeteers, there was much madness that millennium."
That's not a huge problem - you just need to drop the perihelion close enough to let Mars pull it in. It's still a lot of energy, but there's no reason to go brute force about it. Letting it happen over a few thousand revolutions (say, 10,000 years) wouldn't change the rest of the timings much. You could do things faster, but that would need more energy.
Impactor that size - that's in the right order to make some structure the size of the present North Polar Basin - a bit less than a hemisphere, some kilometres deep. Big, but far from planet-busting.
How much of the atmosphere gets blown off in the impact is hard to estimate - which is going to be one of the reasons that adding volatiles for an atmosphere is going to take millennia or longer - like doing a thick weld, you have to let the work piece anneal at some points in the programme of work.
Crossing orbits in a planetary system? That's not likely to end well, and is likely to take a long time - a few hundred thousand cycles or around a quarter million years. It'd be far safer to move the Earth out to co-orbit with Mars (while simultaneously stripping the top couple of km of the surface, oceans soils, ecologies, and putting it all into cold storage in space somewhere) while moving Venus out to take Earth's place. Then re-surface and re-atmosphere Venus while the orbits stabiise (another few hundred thousand cycles?) and take the Earth's ecosystems etc out of cold storage, put everything back in place et voilà - more living space.
With a bit of luck, you might get the job doe in less than a million years. Quite how many species of humanoids will be around to see the end of the project is your guess.
Just some very rough designs that don't actually break the laws of physics. Not detailed plans. They're a couple of millennia from being necessary.
How will the Outsiders handle the arrival of the Andromeda galaxy? Apart from "slowly".
NATO's articles of constitution preclude a "first strike". It is an organisation of mutual self-defence. Not of communal offence.
Are you one of Trump's international relations advisors?
That would explain the (relatively small) sums of money sunk into Project Mohole.
What's the size of the possible EU market compared to the US market? 100 million higher, or 150 million higher? I forget which.
The vast majority of content is available elsewhere. If a site is restricting your access when you use an ad blocker, don't use that site. With very few exceptions (/. being one), the commentary simply isn't worth the effort of reading. (And /. is declining towards that standard as the UID count pushes towards 10^7.)
... stop electing people with their brains in their pricks to political power.
For which task, you'll have to persuade a significant majority of the voting population. Which you won't do by sitting in your nerd-cave typing on your laptop.
Naked women as pornography couldn't appear before the widespread adoption of clothing. And if you can remember wanking over your Dad's collection of National Geographic with the bare-titted "ethnic" photographs, you'll realise that what is considered pornographic (or stimulating) is culturally variable.
The evidence is pretty clear that the adoption of agriculture resulted in less leisure time, more stress (from having land, crops, seed stocks and stored grain to defend against both rats and thieves), worse nutrition (including deficiency diseases, due to a less varied diet), and diet-related diseases such as diabetes. About the only thing that improved was the overall calorie count.
Seasonal shortages were why nomadic people moved somewhere else. Once you've got crops in the ground, then you've literally bet the farm on making a success of the agriculture. And you're vulnerable to the local strongman coming along and demanding "protection" for his "defence force" of "soldiers".
You don't seem to understand how the mammalian breast works. The milk gland comprises about an A-cup (does America use the same bra-sizing system as Europe and Africa?) ; the rest is useless fat. Or, if you're a porn star, useless silicone plastic.
Hmmm. Colour me unconvinced. I can think of a number of phallic standing stones and a few carvings in the published record, but for the vast majority of megalithic constructions I've seen (hundreds, over the years ; they're pretty common here - I bumped into one just last Sunday which I completely wasn't expecting) look about as phallic as something that doesn't look very phallic. That's dating back to well into the "Bronze Age", if not into the "Copper Age" (which are diachronous units in any case).
Being fat was attractive, but not for the "built in insulation". The fat meant that a month or two of poor hunting/ gathering results wouldn't mean the pregnancy aborting or the milk drying up through malnutrition.
Didn't you know that granny-porn is one of the bigger "sophisticated" markets? No, seriously. Look in the "dial-a-wank" adverts of your local newspaper and you'll probably find as many granny-porn phone lines, websites and prostitutes as you will for BDSM and far more than for hardsports.
If it were in Scotland, the government of Scotland has stopped fracking (actually, it's just declined planning permission for any fracking operations - legislatively easier and quicker). Scotland does have a "right to roam" which which does allow most land to be accessed by most people, as long as the visitor's behaviour is reasonable (eg, not burglarising properties, damaging fences, crops or gates). But that's irrelevant. Otherwise, the decisions are taken by the London government. Most of the land in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is not in public ownership, and even if it is, there is not a general assumption of any right of public access except on specific defined routes called "rights of way".
Basically, your assumption of US legal concepts applying doesn't work, because it's not America. Neither of the legal systems possibly involved follows from American precedents.
Many pumps also have a padlock slot on them so the pump can't be lifted from the rest, or the trigger can't be depressed to allow fuel flow. No reason you can't use both.
Living in Scotland, and having lived almost on the Arctic Circle and on both sides of the Equator, I'm perfectly happy dealing with DST. A 1 hour change every 6 months is pretty trivial compared to a 6, 8 or 12 hour time shift every week or two, which is what you get if you're working in 24x7 operations.
I honestly don't know how many equatorial to tropical to temperate countries (ones below 45 degrees of latitude, or whatever number you choose) just don't bother with a DST, But I bet quite a number don't. If that number includes even one of India, China, the Philippines or Brazil, then your 85% dog being wagged by a 15% tail becomes pretty dubious.
Hmmm, so those people are worth about $10 million each. That's considerably higher than the normal estimate, which is between $1 and $2 million per death (comprised of fines and costs of avoiding a repeat).
Why are your Monday morning victims so valuable?
Let's check that - mass of Ceres is approximately 0.0009393 * 10^24kg, while Earth is 5.97 * 10^24kg, for a ratio of 0.00016 (0.016%). My collection of bits of solar system data gives the proportion of water (by mass) in Earth as 0.00022. that would be about 1.4 Ceres masses. Not a wild disagreement, since we've considerable uncertainty about the water content of the Mantle (80-odd % of the mass of the Earth).
Actually that would mean the Ceres would contain enough mass of oxygen to give Mars a workable atmosphere, if it were all water. but if it were a few percent water, then it's a lot closer a question.
Those 2000-year-old documents were only 1300 to 1000 years old then.
Unless you're talking about Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.
You seem perfectly normal to me. I lost my last model M to the burglars, but do sometimes think about replacing it.
Why are you assuming that people have one country? My wife and I cover three nationalities and citizenships, and stepping out one degree of relationship further, the family covers five nationalities. I work in 7 countries on a regular basis, three of which would justify me using a .EU domain in addition to the national ones and, of course, .INT
And I have an email address in goatse.cx - Christmas Island, in the Indian Ocean. Which I have at least swum in.
If you're an American (always a good guess when this sort of parochialism is spouted), then I take it all your domains are in .US
The appearance of animals with hard parts about 600 million years ago post dated the appearance of multi-cm body animals by approaching 100 Myr. At the same time eyes also appeared, and there was also a change in the phosphate chemistry of seawater - and the earliest "hard parts" of several phyla were composed of phosphates.
There are vocal advocates for all three explanatory narratives. I'm not going to try to pick between them.
The Ediacaran faunas go back to around 700 million years (but remain of "uncertain affiliation"). A number of examples from a number of regions currently widely separated going back to well over a billion years suggest mobile organisms grazing on or under microbial biofilms. Which would be early animals - though whether affiliated to the Ediacarans, or modern "worms" (sensu Linnaeus), or some other segmented organism ... who knows?
That's 1993. Publication date. The research was done in December 1990. Since then, a number of other Earth gravitational assist manoeuvres have been done by other spacecraft, and taking "ground truth" measurements as a way of checking instruments, systems and procedures remains a useful ploy.