There is a SNR (SuperNova Remnant) that can be seen with infrared telescopes and is seen to be expanding quite fast. When the maths was done on it's dimensions a couple of years ago, by which time they had a decade or so of adequate IR observations... they calculated zero size in the 1860s to 1880s.
A supernova went off in industrial times, in our galaxy and we didn't see it.
(Which doesn't actually help with the problem of getting a pulse of GR onto the top of the atmosphere, because GR is scattered too so would have been effectively blocked like the visible light.)
At the Academy they taught us it was the destruction of a planet in our solar system, creating the asteroid belt,
... and leaving the question of where the other 99.(something)% of the mass of the planet went. Don't forget how light and inconsequential the asteroid belt is (at least, as long as it stays more-or-less where it is at the moment).
as a side effect of war between galactic powers.
Oh, hang on... is that my phone beeping, or my humour detector going off?
Same answer as the people who want me to change electricity suppliers get : a tirade about how, because they are advertising something, then they are by definition lieing thieving bastards who should raise their moral standards by renting out their arseholes down at the docks. Then they get the whistle in the ear.
There's a reason I put my name on the Telephone Preference Service's "Do Not Call" register. Advertiser-liars are meant to Not-Call me. Doh!
A human analogue: [SNIP details] Shoot them up full of Novocaine first and they won't even feel it. I assume no one thinks that's acceptable?
Why would you assume that?
I think that your experimental protocol is no less unacceptable than the one described using cats, dogs, rats, cockroaches, etc as analogues for human beings.
What sort of mines have you been in, apart from those poof-ish modern ones. T'Owd Man would cut his coffin levels 8inches wide at the bottom (for your feet) widening to 18inches wide at a height of 30 inches from the floor, then tapering back to about 10 inches at the top, 36inches above the floor.
Real Men (T'Owd Men) cut their own tunnels with the sweat of their brow and feathers and wedges. So they'd make them big enough and no more. And then you wonder why the would so-often exploit, follow or expand natural cave passages. Much to the mild disgust and frank astonishment of cave divers who, surfacing after a thousand-metre dive in muddy water... would find T'Owd Man had left hobnail boot prints and candle stubs in what should be *his* virgin cave passage.
Well, I was born and raised in Soviet Union, so, on the other side of the barricades.
Same as my wife.
As you may guess, this sequence of events was taught a little bit differently there.
I can't say that I'd noticed any particular lack of knowledge in that area on her behalf, though I won't claim that it's an endless topic of conversation.
Well, now you know ; it was certainly perceived on this side of the curtain as a flat-out race.
Although, the 9/11 stuff does get a mention under False Flag opperations in the List of Conspiracy Theories page.
That would probably be because regardless of the truth of all the tedious regurgitation of shit about the events of 2001-09-11, it is certainly true that people assert that "it" (for various values of "it" w.r.t. 2011-09-11) as having been a "False Flag" operation. So this is a datum that can appear in an encyclopedia.
As a parallel example, there are probably people who assert that JFK was actually shot by an aggrieved Abe Lincoln, who is in reality a Time Lord in a threesome with Captains Jack and John ; discussing the credibility of such beliefs is not a Wikipedia activity, but reporting the existence of such beliefs is.
I know most EULA also have some sort of required Jurisdiction for disputes to be heard in, that usually isn't legal either,
That's pretty normal here - a perfectly normal contract could easily have four plausible countries of jurisdiction, each with different legal systems and at least three different languages. There's the jurisdiction of the seller company ; the jurisdiction of the buyer company ; the jurisdiction in which the sale takes place, and the jurisdiction of any of the lawyers or banks involved. Our default contract states that we'll assert jurisdiction to be held in *our* country, unless otherwise agreed. Which is very rarely a problem. It's less of a problem than agreeing a currency to transact in, typically.
Of course, if you're normally only dealing with your near neighbours, this might feel head-exploding for you. Don't worry, you'll get over it. Or you'll continue dealing with just your nearest neighbours instead of being involved with most of the world.
What universe do you live in? Have you walked into a church lately?
Yes, I walked into a church a couple of years ago. Apart from the tourists looking at the architecture (I was only really interested in the stained glass - I have a friend who makes the stuff) and the others hiding from the rain, there didn't seem to be anything particularly scary. A few pictures and carvings of people being skewered and roasted for being of the wrong religion ; all the usual shit you expect from religion.
So, what do you do with your churches there? Brothels? Discotheques? Housing? Landfill?
There is also a trend towards non U.S.-built UAVs, due to the lag in receiving export approvals for the aircraft and spare parts."
Why is there an expectation that people would buy product from some particular country, particularly if that country has severe restrictions on export? Is this "U.S." place going to get used to being in a free market one day?
Most of the time if we're being perjorative about Americans, we refer to them as "Septics," (from rhyming slang of "septic tanks" for "Yanks".
"Merkins" is still pretty rare and nowhere near as perjorative. The only "place" where I know of "Merkin" being the preferred contemptuous dismissal is in fora discussing Terry Pratchett's works. And there, because it's generally fans talking about other fans, it's rarely hurled with any force, no more scathing than a "Jock", "Paddy", "Boyo", "Geordie", "Makem",...
Surprising that two such closely related cultures (Norway and Iceland) can have such widely different approaches to ensuring that they actually benefit from "investments" in their country.
Most cruelly of all, RAID won't save you from SSD failure, because [...] more often than not, if you have 3 identical SSDs doing RAID5 and something triggers that fatal condition, it's likely to trigger it in ALL of the drives simultaneously.
Old joke:Patient to doctor "Doctor, doctor, it hurts if I do X!"
Doctor : "Then don't do X"
So... you don't do that.
I don't know about you, but ever since I've had to think about critical systems (specifically, which climbing ropes to use, 30+ years ago), everyone who actually considers that an equipment failure may killthem, personally, uses different hardware for their two redundant safety-critical systems unless there is an absolutely overwhelming requirement to have exact duplication of systems. So, you're unlikely to have two identical systematic failures at the same time. So, when climbing with dual ropes ; have an Edelerid on left and a Bridon on right. When diving in an overhead environment with dual air systems - Poseidon on right, Manta on left. It's a good general principle. (Counter example : same braking systems on all corners of a car, because imbalance is even more dangerous ; but you've also got the clutch and engine, as well as the parking brake, so you've still got redundant systems-level backup.)
SSDs in a raid... well unless they are emulating synchronised spindles... then what possible reason would you have for using identical drives. Closely comparable total capacities, and closely comparable data rates I can see reasons for. But identical systems... your description is a lovely examples of "Then don't do X"
I'm sorry, did you expect sympathy? You've failed a fundamental test of realistic paranoia, and you've got burned by it. Count yourself lucky to be alive.
Well, you might know better next time. But I rather doubt it - you seem to believe specifications ("adverts," as I call them). Not healthy.
Well, you clearly know more about high power electric systems than I do. 3% losses per thousand kilometres for HVDC. Well, that's better than I'd thought. 1900km London to Reykjavik... straight line maybe. I thought it was further. Hmm, a bit less than I'd thought. But it'd still be around a thousand kilometres from {Iceland} to {landfall in Scotland}, which is still a big step up from installed base.
Where will the maintenance jobs be? There will be a small number of harbour jobs in Iceland. Maybe a small handful of design engineers etc. But unless the entire North Sea oil industry collapses, the overwhelming majority of the on-ship work will be done by re-deploying existing vessels from the North Sea. which will mean that the large majority of the jobs will be in the Netherlands, Norway, the UK, and the Philippines, with the majority of the earning going to Norwegians and Dutch. (Oh, there'd be a few Canuks too.) Manufacture of the cables... unless Iceland has an industrial base of such heavy manufacture, I'd be surprised if it's not in the places that normally manufacture the cables. The equipment base to manufacture a hundred-km length of cable, and to ship it in one piece, almost requires a substantial factory site next to a substantial quay.
Why are power (and fluid) conductors more difficult than data cables? A datacable can have 90 or 95% of it's mass-per-unit-length devoted to mechanical support of the conductor, so you can choose (say) high grade stainless steel, or Kevlar for your mechanical support, and still be able to pick up a 3km length of the cable from seabed to the laying vessel. But for a power (or fluid) conductor your choice of materials is much more constrained. For a power cable, you've got to have a sufficiently good conductor almost regardless to it's mechanical strength. Pure copper is not very strong (it goes with being ductile) and is dense, which is why it is not used normally for power distribution cables. Normally it's aluminium with a steel core for strength. But spans of that material with lengths of over a kilometer are... rare (I can only think of one example, at Glenelg, and I haven't checked if that one still exists). Even with buoyancy of seawater, the 3km span form boat to seabed is going to be a challenge. The ratio of {strength material} to {conductor} is going to have to be different ; then there is the insulation and corrosion control (aluminium is more reactive than copper), which weighs significantly. All of that makes the cables much larger and stiffer, which means that they don't rest on the seabed so well - unless you trench them.
We've got 13 POB ("personnel on board") for terminating one pair of fluids+control pipeline/umbilicals to a well ; they've been on site for 28 days minimum (the time since I first came on board), and I suspect their total time budget will be in excess of 1200 man-days ; we've two vessels laying the pair of cables ($250k/day ; 6 weeks each) and a guard vessel has been dispatched to the location as we approach the critical phases. Our nearest coast is the Shetlands. There's not a single Shetlander in the crew (unless they're hiding their accent).
Data cables have an additional simplification : you can periodically boost the signal:noise ratio in a data cable using relatively small amounts of power from a relatively small power cable as part of your assembly. Local faults can, to a degree, be compensated for by ramping the gain in adjacent boosters. You can't do that with a power cable (unless you build two, operating at half-capacity, with cross-overs).
I'm quite convinced that the option is being seriously considered. I'm also quite convinced that the power industry is still pretty conservative (a friend in the game complains about MTBFs for his equipment of under 40 years. "Unacceptable!"), so I'll believe that an Iceland to UK (and thence, Europe) cable is on the horizon when I see a 1000km cable in place.
I'm following the link to that conference, but the connection here is pretty slow.
A priori, the problems with an export cable are multi-fold : power losses in the cable ; construction and maintenance of the cable ; environmental impact.
Power losses : unless you're going to build a superconducting cable (hmmm, question mark, exclamation mark), it will act as a long resistor heating up the deep Atlantic. Power output = voltage X current = current^2 * resistance = voltage^2 / resistance. Choose how to balance the two parameters that you do control, but you're going to lose a lot of power over a long run. And even then, when you make landfall (presumably near Cape Wrath ; land power lines are much cheaper tham marine ones), you're also going to lose power there too.
Construction is going to be really "interesting". You're going to have to lay a very large cable over several thousand kilometers under some pretty horrible sea conditions. You're going to be doing it in 1-2km of water depth, deeper in some parts - and that's if you take a rather dog-leg route to follow the shallowest water. I've done 5 or 6 wells in that part of the Atlantic, and I've probably spent more time waiting on weather than I have actually drilling. It will be one of the most comprehensively horrible and expensive construction projects in the world. Interesting
Maintenance : the seabed to east and west of Iceland is scoured by significant currents which go to make the deep cold current that runs under the Gulf Stream, and which is a major component of the global thermohyaline circulation system. That's going to scour the surface of your cable ; it's going to undercut other sections ; the cable will move, sag and stretch. Eventually either the cable or one of the joints in the cable (a really long reel of this sort of equipment carries 3 to 5 km of lay ; you'll use hundreds if not thousands of joints) is going to part. Or go high-resistance. Which will heat it, and damage it further. Maintenance is going to be a repeat of construction.
It's probably do-able ; whether it's cost effective is a separate question.
You already raise some of the "NIMBY" aspects of the environmental impact. I'm sure that the shy retiring Icelandic people are perfectly capable of emulating their saga-inspiring ancestors and having their own arguments about that. But weigh this argument : if a power export cable is built, it will eventually employ a few operators, a few harbour people for inspection and maintenance support... and that'll be it. How many people are employed in your aluminium smelters (fertilizer too, is a popular one for electricity-rich nations), in the harbours moving megatonnes of or in and kilotonnes of product out? Is Iceland in general devastated by the plants in existence, or can you manage their environmental impact as it is?
I remember when I was still on dial-up, and wondering if my telephone exchange would ever support 28kbps data rates, hearing a joke about "do not under-estimate the effective bandwidth of a 747 filled with CDs". Well, with the proposed power export line, you're looking at a quite similar situation, but with one important difference : 15 years ago, the technology of telecommunications was nowhere near the limits of the raw physics, as we have seen. However, the physics of electrical conduction are far more mature. Unless you really have got a superconducting pipeline up your sleeve, (ah, that conference link has opened!), then you're in well-understood territory.
I followed up on that conference link - just a press puff really - and following clues, the most recent contract I see mention of is
The Fenno-Skan 2 HVDC project [ a ] 800 MW, 500 kV submarine [following a] 200 km route across the Gulf of Bothnia.
With a copper cross-section of 2,000 square millimeters, this will
For someon who is visiting a website that advertises itself as "News for Nerds", how on Earth (or "How within the space region gravitationally dominated by Earth") can you not know that? It's only arguably the most important science and technology series of events of the last 3/4 century. And you don't know about it.
I've only heard very vague rumour of this project. Links please (assuming that you do know something about it and can avoit the adverts for Icelandic cable porn).
Working some of the time out in the North Sea and North Atlantic, I can envisage some of the scale of technology and investment that would be required for a significant power system like this. It's going to be seriously not-cheap for both installation and maintenance. Which begs the question of whether it would be worth it for geothermal (I assume) generation. Which in itself isn't particularly cheap to install, though relatively low running costs.
Tapping Etna, Vesuvius, the big fumarole field near Rome... and other hot rock spots - surely that is going to be significantly cheaper, if only because of the power transmission costs.
PS : I don't play a geologist on TV... because I find my day job as a geologist much more interesting than TV.
The sea rose 7" over the 20th century, with zero acceleration in rate until the satellites came online
ITYM "in OBSERVED rate," the satellites being able to gather more uniform and more accurate data, with less variation in biases compared to ground-based surveying.
and no one noticed for 90 years
No-one made much of a fuss about it, many of the areas with patent sea-level change or fall having well-understood reasons for those changes. For example, the Baltic Sea has been shoaling for all of the areas recorded history, but this has been understood since the 1850s (courtesy of M. Agassiz) as the result of isostatic rebound following deglaciation. Similarly, over the same period the UK has been well-known to be tilting along an axis (approximately the Tees-Exe line) due to deglaciation of the Scottish highlands and longer term (Alpine) subsidence in the Thames/ Rhine/ Southern North Sea Basin, which has been happening for 30+ million years.
None of this has excited particularly much comment (well, Londoners bleat about being drowned while Cloggies get on with building dykes) over the 40+ years that I've been aware of the issue. What has changed in that time is that regional surveying has got better and more consistent, allowing global inventories of the changes... and the realisation that there is a global eustatic change going on, not just local isostatic changes.
SSDs are supposed to be more robust, but two out of three I have owned have failed.
But you've not been testing for "robustness", you've been testing for longliveity - which is a different thing.
If you'd mounted your SSD on one side of a shaking plate with peak accelerations of (say) 50g, and mounted a conventional hard drive on the other side of the plate, then the SSD would probably have outlived the hard drive.
OTOH, if you've kept up-time records for your machine and you can demonstrate that the observed MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure) for your SSDs is lower than that for your hard drives, then you've got statistics, not anecdotes. Which is a whole other story. And grounds for demanding refund with menaces.
(I can't say that I've felt the temptation to get a SSD. I don't see a need for the potential speed. And I've seen enough situations where we've spent a million dollars trying to acquire some data to find that the tool's internal data storage has failed and we've got no data. That's with high-spec SSDs in 200g environments at 140+ degC temperatures and thousands of kg/m^2 confining pressure environments. But it doesn't make the waste of money, brains and time feel any better.)
Having been working at sea a couple of years ago, for the Koreans, near the (disputed) median line ; having seen the Japanese gunboats prowling around to within around a half-kilometer of the vessel (we were very close to the disputed median line) ; having had the daily overflights by large unidentified planes at a couple of hundred feet altitude, I can say from personal experience that there is a dispute.
We had a couple of technical staff on board from Japan, who told me that the basis of the dispute was whether certain nubbins of rock are "inhabited" or not ; the case isn't quite as silly as Britain's claim to huge swathes of the NE Atlantic on the basis that "Britain has Rockall" (try singing it ; it's an old joke), but it's in the same league.
Why does anyone care?
1. Currently, fishing rights. Every night, the sea would be lit up by squid boats ; obviously significantly productive.
2. In prospect, oil and gas. South Korea want to have their own Deepwater Horizons, and this is as good place as they've got to get it.
There is a similar dispute between S.Korea and China over the "West Sea" (to the S.Koreans)/ Yellow Sea (to the Chinese). Exactly the same reasons.
I don't know if the North Koreans are in dispute with the Chinese similarly over their part of the Yellow Sea/ Gulf of Bohai ; on the other side of the peninsula, there's more room for a large EEZ for both Japan and North Korea, so much smaller grounds for dispute.
Slashdot Mirror
A supernova went off in industrial times, in our galaxy and we didn't see it.
(Which doesn't actually help with the problem of getting a pulse of GR onto the top of the atmosphere, because GR is scattered too so would have been effectively blocked like the visible light.)
Oh, hang on ... is that my phone beeping, or my humour detector going off?
Oh grave, where is thy victory?
Oh Carnot, where is your cycle?
(Sorry. It's below even my normal standard, which goes down from "terrible".)
Haven't you checked the voting records for the formal acceptance of standards for IP version 6? It did vote. For it's own extinction, even!
Turkey, meet Christmas ; Hog meet Hogswatch.
There's a reason I put my name on the Telephone Preference Service's "Do Not Call" register. Advertiser-liars are meant to Not-Call me. Doh!
FTFY
Why would you assume that?
I think that your experimental protocol is no less unacceptable than the one described using cats, dogs, rats, cockroaches, etc as analogues for human beings.
What sort of mines have you been in, apart from those poof-ish modern ones. T'Owd Man would cut his coffin levels 8inches wide at the bottom (for your feet) widening to 18inches wide at a height of 30 inches from the floor, then tapering back to about 10 inches at the top, 36inches above the floor.
Real Men (T'Owd Men) cut their own tunnels with the sweat of their brow and feathers and wedges. So they'd make them big enough and no more. And then you wonder why the would so-often exploit, follow or expand natural cave passages. Much to the mild disgust and frank astonishment of cave divers who, surfacing after a thousand-metre dive in muddy water ... would find T'Owd Man had left hobnail boot prints and candle stubs in what should be *his* virgin cave passage.
Same as my wife.
I can't say that I'd noticed any particular lack of knowledge in that area on her behalf, though I won't claim that it's an endless topic of conversation.
Well, now you know ; it was certainly perceived on this side of the curtain as a flat-out race.
That would probably be because regardless of the truth of all the tedious regurgitation of shit about the events of 2001-09-11, it is certainly true that people assert that "it" (for various values of "it" w.r.t. 2011-09-11) as having been a "False Flag" operation. So this is a datum that can appear in an encyclopedia.
As a parallel example, there are probably people who assert that JFK was actually shot by an aggrieved Abe Lincoln, who is in reality a Time Lord in a threesome with Captains Jack and John ; discussing the credibility of such beliefs is not a Wikipedia activity, but reporting the existence of such beliefs is.
That's pretty normal here - a perfectly normal contract could easily have four plausible countries of jurisdiction, each with different legal systems and at least three different languages. There's the jurisdiction of the seller company ; the jurisdiction of the buyer company ; the jurisdiction in which the sale takes place, and the jurisdiction of any of the lawyers or banks involved. Our default contract states that we'll assert jurisdiction to be held in *our* country, unless otherwise agreed. Which is very rarely a problem. It's less of a problem than agreeing a currency to transact in, typically.
Of course, if you're normally only dealing with your near neighbours, this might feel head-exploding for you. Don't worry, you'll get over it. Or you'll continue dealing with just your nearest neighbours instead of being involved with most of the world.
Yes, I walked into a church a couple of years ago. Apart from the tourists looking at the architecture (I was only really interested in the stained glass - I have a friend who makes the stuff) and the others hiding from the rain, there didn't seem to be anything particularly scary. A few pictures and carvings of people being skewered and roasted for being of the wrong religion ; all the usual shit you expect from religion.
So, what do you do with your churches there? Brothels? Discotheques? Housing? Landfill?
Why is there an expectation that people would buy product from some particular country, particularly if that country has severe restrictions on export? Is this "U.S." place going to get used to being in a free market one day?
"Merkins" is still pretty rare and nowhere near as perjorative. The only "place" where I know of "Merkin" being the preferred contemptuous dismissal is in fora discussing Terry Pratchett's works. And there, because it's generally fans talking about other fans, it's rarely hurled with any force, no more scathing than a "Jock", "Paddy", "Boyo", "Geordie", "Makem", ...
Next question?
Time for some politics?
Guilty.
Off to the lime pits at Gitmo. Next case.
Old joke :Patient to doctor "Doctor, doctor, it hurts if I do X !"
Doctor : "Then don't do X "
So ... you don't do that.
I don't know about you, but ever since I've had to think about critical systems (specifically, which climbing ropes to use, 30+ years ago), everyone who actually considers that an equipment failure may kill them, personally, uses different hardware for their two redundant safety-critical systems unless there is an absolutely overwhelming requirement to have exact duplication of systems. So, you're unlikely to have two identical systematic failures at the same time. So, when climbing with dual ropes ; have an Edelerid on left and a Bridon on right. When diving in an overhead environment with dual air systems - Poseidon on right, Manta on left. It's a good general principle. (Counter example : same braking systems on all corners of a car, because imbalance is even more dangerous ; but you've also got the clutch and engine, as well as the parking brake, so you've still got redundant systems-level backup.)
SSDs in a raid ... well unless they are emulating synchronised spindles ... then what possible reason would you have for using identical drives. Closely comparable total capacities, and closely comparable data rates I can see reasons for. But identical systems ... your description is a lovely examples of "Then don't do X "
I'm sorry, did you expect sympathy? You've failed a fundamental test of realistic paranoia, and you've got burned by it. Count yourself lucky to be alive.
Well, you might know better next time. But I rather doubt it - you seem to believe specifications ("adverts," as I call them). Not healthy.
Where will the maintenance jobs be? There will be a small number of harbour jobs in Iceland. Maybe a small handful of design engineers etc. But unless the entire North Sea oil industry collapses, the overwhelming majority of the on-ship work will be done by re-deploying existing vessels from the North Sea. which will mean that the large majority of the jobs will be in the Netherlands, Norway, the UK, and the Philippines, with the majority of the earning going to Norwegians and Dutch. (Oh, there'd be a few Canuks too.) Manufacture of the cables ... unless Iceland has an industrial base of such heavy manufacture, I'd be surprised if it's not in the places that normally manufacture the cables. The equipment base to manufacture a hundred-km length of cable, and to ship it in one piece, almost requires a substantial factory site next to a substantial quay.
Why are power (and fluid) conductors more difficult than data cables? A datacable can have 90 or 95% of it's mass-per-unit-length devoted to mechanical support of the conductor, so you can choose (say) high grade stainless steel, or Kevlar for your mechanical support, and still be able to pick up a 3km length of the cable from seabed to the laying vessel. But for a power (or fluid) conductor your choice of materials is much more constrained. For a power cable, you've got to have a sufficiently good conductor almost regardless to it's mechanical strength. Pure copper is not very strong (it goes with being ductile) and is dense, which is why it is not used normally for power distribution cables. Normally it's aluminium with a steel core for strength. But spans of that material with lengths of over a kilometer are ... rare (I can only think of one example, at Glenelg, and I haven't checked if that one still exists). Even with buoyancy of seawater, the 3km span form boat to seabed is going to be a challenge. The ratio of {strength material} to {conductor} is going to have to be different ; then there is the insulation and corrosion control (aluminium is more reactive than copper), which weighs significantly. All of that makes the cables much larger and stiffer, which means that they don't rest on the seabed so well - unless you trench them.
We've got 13 POB ("personnel on board") for terminating one pair of fluids+control pipeline/umbilicals to a well ; they've been on site for 28 days minimum (the time since I first came on board), and I suspect their total time budget will be in excess of 1200 man-days ; we've two vessels laying the pair of cables ($250k/day ; 6 weeks each) and a guard vessel has been dispatched to the location as we approach the critical phases. Our nearest coast is the Shetlands. There's not a single Shetlander in the crew (unless they're hiding their accent).
Data cables have an additional simplification : you can periodically boost the signal:noise ratio in a data cable using relatively small amounts of power from a relatively small power cable as part of your assembly. Local faults can, to a degree, be compensated for by ramping the gain in adjacent boosters. You can't do that with a power cable (unless you build two, operating at half-capacity, with cross-overs).
I'm quite convinced that the option is being seriously considered. I'm also quite convinced that the power industry is still pretty conservative (a friend in the game complains about MTBFs for his equipment of under 40 years. "Unacceptable!"), so I'll believe that an Iceland to UK (and thence, Europe) cable is on the horizon when I see a 1000km cable in place.
I'm a bit surprised that smelters aren't signi
I'm following the link to that conference, but the connection here is pretty slow.
A priori, the problems with an export cable are multi-fold : power losses in the cable ; construction and maintenance of the cable ; environmental impact.
Construction is going to be really "interesting". You're going to have to lay a very large cable over several thousand kilometers under some pretty horrible sea conditions. You're going to be doing it in 1-2km of water depth, deeper in some parts - and that's if you take a rather dog-leg route to follow the shallowest water. I've done 5 or 6 wells in that part of the Atlantic, and I've probably spent more time waiting on weather than I have actually drilling. It will be one of the most comprehensively horrible and expensive construction projects in the world. Interesting
It's probably do-able ; whether it's cost effective is a separate question.
I remember when I was still on dial-up, and wondering if my telephone exchange would ever support 28kbps data rates, hearing a joke about "do not under-estimate the effective bandwidth of a 747 filled with CDs". Well, with the proposed power export line, you're looking at a quite similar situation, but with one important difference : 15 years ago, the technology of telecommunications was nowhere near the limits of the raw physics, as we have seen. However, the physics of electrical conduction are far more mature. Unless you really have got a superconducting pipeline up your sleeve, (ah, that conference link has opened!), then you're in well-understood territory.
I followed up on that conference link - just a press puff really - and following clues, the most recent contract I see mention of is
For someon who is visiting a website that advertises itself as "News for Nerds", how on Earth (or "How within the space region gravitationally dominated by Earth") can you not know that? It's only arguably the most important science and technology series of events of the last 3/4 century. And you don't know about it.
Geek card, at the door. Now.
Working some of the time out in the North Sea and North Atlantic, I can envisage some of the scale of technology and investment that would be required for a significant power system like this. It's going to be seriously not-cheap for both installation and maintenance. Which begs the question of whether it would be worth it for geothermal (I assume) generation. Which in itself isn't particularly cheap to install, though relatively low running costs.
Tapping Etna, Vesuvius, the big fumarole field near Rome ... and other hot rock spots - surely that is going to be significantly cheaper, if only because of the power transmission costs.
PS : I don't play a geologist on TV ... because I find my day job as a geologist much more interesting than TV.
ITYM "in OBSERVED rate," the satellites being able to gather more uniform and more accurate data, with less variation in biases compared to ground-based surveying.
No-one made much of a fuss about it, many of the areas with patent sea-level change or fall having well-understood reasons for those changes. For example, the Baltic Sea has been shoaling for all of the areas recorded history, but this has been understood since the 1850s (courtesy of M. Agassiz) as the result of isostatic rebound following deglaciation. Similarly, over the same period the UK has been well-known to be tilting along an axis (approximately the Tees-Exe line) due to deglaciation of the Scottish highlands and longer term (Alpine) subsidence in the Thames/ Rhine/ Southern North Sea Basin, which has been happening for 30+ million years.
None of this has excited particularly much comment (well, Londoners bleat about being drowned while Cloggies get on with building dykes) over the 40+ years that I've been aware of the issue. What has changed in that time is that regional surveying has got better and more consistent, allowing global inventories of the changes ... and the realisation that there is a global eustatic change going on, not just local isostatic changes.
But you've not been testing for "robustness", you've been testing for longliveity - which is a different thing.
If you'd mounted your SSD on one side of a shaking plate with peak accelerations of (say) 50g, and mounted a conventional hard drive on the other side of the plate, then the SSD would probably have outlived the hard drive.
OTOH, if you've kept up-time records for your machine and you can demonstrate that the observed MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure) for your SSDs is lower than that for your hard drives, then you've got statistics, not anecdotes. Which is a whole other story. And grounds for demanding refund with menaces.
(I can't say that I've felt the temptation to get a SSD. I don't see a need for the potential speed. And I've seen enough situations where we've spent a million dollars trying to acquire some data to find that the tool's internal data storage has failed and we've got no data. That's with high-spec SSDs in 200g environments at 140+ degC temperatures and thousands of kg/m^2 confining pressure environments. But it doesn't make the waste of money, brains and time feel any better.)
We had a couple of technical staff on board from Japan, who told me that the basis of the dispute was whether certain nubbins of rock are "inhabited" or not ; the case isn't quite as silly as Britain's claim to huge swathes of the NE Atlantic on the basis that "Britain has Rockall" (try singing it ; it's an old joke), but it's in the same league.
Why does anyone care?
There is a similar dispute between S.Korea and China over the "West Sea" (to the S.Koreans)/ Yellow Sea (to the Chinese). Exactly the same reasons.
I don't know if the North Koreans are in dispute with the Chinese similarly over their part of the Yellow Sea/ Gulf of Bohai ; on the other side of the peninsula, there's more room for a large EEZ for both Japan and North Korea, so much smaller grounds for dispute.