Your supreme court agrees you have no expectation of privacy on a public road, now shut the hell up and enjoy your "freedom".
My right to privacy does not mean that I have no expectation of accountability - especially in terms of city governance, if the city will not avow of the cameras, then how do I know who to impeach or vote out of office in the next election for misuse of funds?
John Ioannidis, a medical statistics researcher on a small island in the Aegean, leads a group that has done significant work in this area. Here is an article in The Atlantic about his work.
From the article: ". . . Ioannidis laid out a detailed mathematical proof that, assuming modest levels of researcher bias, typically imperfect research techniques, and the well-known tendency to focus on exciting rather than highly plausible theories, researchers will come up with wrong findings most of the time. Simply put, if you’re attracted to ideas that have a good chance of being wrong, and if you’re motivated to prove them right, and if you have a little wiggle room in how you assemble the evidence, you’ll probably succeed in proving wrong theories right."
"Unlimited economic growth" is utterly impossible. Fundamentally, as Tom Murphy points out here and here,
a) all activity requires energy, and
b) there are fundamental limits to efficiency, guaranteed by the second law of thermodynamics.
Read the article. Both of these facts together mean that continued growth is impossible. Even the most optimistic scenarios lead to absurd conclusions i.e. the energy needed for continued growth exceeds that available to a civilization which operates at the best possible efficiency, and which uses all conceivable resources within a spherical volume expanding outward at the speed of light.
In other words, all possible efficiency combined with all possible resources are not enough. Period. Growth must come to a stop, at some point.
The entire solar system condensed from the same rotating, swirling cloud. So the ratios of the elements are pretty consistent throughout. There do exist some differentiating processes, e.g. heavy atoms sink to the interior of planets, but the starting ratios for all parts of the cloud were the same.
The incoming stream seen by IBEX has a O/Ne ratio falling significantly outside of the range expected for gasses of solar system origin.
Thank you for a though-provoking post. However in the geologic near term I am convinced the human race can adapt to things like natural glaciation or Yellowstone erupting
Yes, we'll adapt - the last time we were in such a situation we won the smackdown with the Neanderthals. We're survivors. But merely surviving doesn't mean we'll maintain the ability to launch and therefore allow life to survive in the longer term.
In the geologic long term when issues like the Sun boiling off the oceans become real, it will be10^9 years from now. Things can change so much that not only will there be time for new species to evolve to sentience, but there will actually be time for a second Carboniferous period to *replenish* the earth's supply of fossil fuels. Let me remind you that 10^9 years ago, life on Earth was single-celled. That far in the future, all bets are off.
Yes, let the oceans eutrophy and there might be time for *one* more round of oil-making. That's an ugly way to get energy from the sun. If we are not able to find a way to lift life off the planet, then maybe the next sentient species won't either? Now is very likely life's only chance, so it is imprudent to assume another solution will bubble up before the oceans bubble off.
Good point. Short answer: the volatiles are leaking out the top, so Earth's air and water have a shelf life. Eventually, either the greenhouses on Earth would have to have exactly the same construction as the freely orbiting vessels, or the Earth would need to be terraformed.
Also, the ratio of sunlight available to outer space settlements to that available to the Earth, i.e. the area of a sphere 1 AU in radius to that of a circle 1 Earth radius big, is 550 million. That's 550 million times as much energy available, given enough time for construction. (Yes, such a sphere is not orbitally stable; 550 million is an upper limit.)
And yes, when the sun goes out all solar collection stops. But by then, with billions of years of experience in living in free vessels, the hope is that nearby red dwarf stars would be settled: they have life expectancies in the trillions of years.
And yes, the universe is running out of energy, or is going to be ripped apart at the sub-nuclear level, or is going to collapse back down into a singularity. Maybe all the protons will decay. But given trillions of years of physics research on a galactic scale, who can estimate the discoveries that might lead to a solution?
Bones cracking? A properly designed spinning vessel would provide centrifugal force that would be a perfectly good substitute for gravity.
The Earth's habitability might be maintained a bit by "Terraforming the Earth", but that would require massive resources only available in the rest of the solar system.
The traditional vision of living on a large sphere, with life, water, and air held in place by the sphere's gravity can only work on Earth. The only real way to extend life beyond Earth is to build many large, rotating, centrifugal-gravity ships, dispersed throughout the solar system.
You don't need to terraform to have a place to live. Multiple large vessels, freely orbiting and rotating to supply artificial gravity, would do nicely.
I hate this "all-eggs-in-one-basket" argument for preserving the human race. It misses the point entirely, because in the bigger picture Earth is not a sustainable system. The Sun is getting brighter; in less than a billion years it will be too intense
for Earth's oceans to continue to exist. Like Mars did in ages past,
Earth is going to lose its water. On the
other side of the balance, Earth's interior is cooling, geological activity is diminishing, and so
volcanic
replenishment of the atmosphere is slowly winding down.It is clear, at such time scales, that if the entirety of life on Earth is to avoid extinction then life must branch out off the planet. That means launching equipment and people to build massive, robust infrastructure. Crops. Botanical gardens. Zoos.
Except that space is HARD. It's really expensive to get there and it is a high-vacuum radiation hell. It would take a long time and an expensive, sustained effort to construct
off-planet habitats - a *tremendous* amount of effort and money before there is any payoff at all.
On the other hand, for example the asteroid 16 Psyche contains enough metal to construct a solid cylinder fivekm in diameter stretching from here to the Moon. Or cover North America in a layer 280 meters thick.The resources available to
an outer space civilization are great enough to insure that if outer space habitats do reach the point where they can expand and grow, the
payoff would be big enough to sustain life past the death of the Sun.
We are half-way through the era of animals on Earth. There have been at least a half dozen
mass extinctions since
animals first started evolving a half-billion years ago; there will be more.
The glaciers have grown and
retreated dozens of times over the last two million years; they will return.
Yellowstone
is going to explode again. And again. And again. Time is not unlimited.
But we have time. Abundant fossil fuels, and the internet - we are right now living in the decades of maximum wealth. At some point, within a few
decades, we will either run out of fuel or we will
run out of the capacity to sink carbon emissions. When this happens, it will mean the end of a way of life. Maximum wealth *right now* means that *right now* is
the best and possibly the only time to lift off. Life on Earth only gets one pass at the fossil fuel heritage; if the next extinction
event brings us to a place where launching is not possible, life will have missed its chance.
I'm not a nutter, I am a realist. I'm certain that outer space settlements will not solve our current growth vs. environment problems - the payoff will come way too
late for that. None of our current issues will be solved, or even mitigated, by vigorous and immediate launches
into the great expanse. Nonetheless, if DNA is to
avoid extinction we need to start moving now as rapidly as we can. Nothing else matters.
The cocoon we call Earth is going to wither; whether or not she gives birthbefore she dies is entirely in the hands of human civilization. Our civilization,right now, we're the only chance. Sure, leaving Eden is a horrible burden. Suckit up. We have to go. Now.
Or, we can continue toasting marshmallows at the planet's one-time-only oil burning party.
Except that, in the long run, the planet is not sustainable. In less than a billion years, all the water will be gone. While it is easy to imagine that future generations will develope amazing launching technologies, it's also easy to imagine Mad Max and the fall of the oil-users. If we don't use it, now, we might lose it.
We could mine the moon for for water, bring into low earth orbit and convert nto rocket fuel at a tenth of the price that it takes to launch the same fuel from the earth: Bill Stone on TED.
I keep hearing about these computer viruses. I hear they are a bad thing. Why doesn't Congress do anything about them? Why don't they pass a law to make them illegal? Call your Congresscritter now and ask him to sponsor a Stop Internet Viruses Act.
And also, water is way more abundant than any of the alternative solvents. It's also way better - chemically stable, high heat capacity, more stuff dissolves in water than in anything else, the heat of vaporization keeps things cool if needed, ice floats, etc. Water has already been seen on Mars, it would be silly to look for alternative mechanisms.
Not to say that liquid methane wouldn't work, i.e. on Titan, which in fact should be investigated some day.
Why a solvent? Life requires complex chemistry, which requires removal of by-products, which requires a liquid. Water is the best such liquid.
A star system forms from the collapse of a (slightly) rotating cloud. Conservation of angular momentum means that as the cloud collapses, it rotates faster. The final star rotates on the same axis as did the birthing cloud, and the star's planets have orbits that lie on the stars equatorial plane.
The rotational axes of nearby stars are randomly oriented throughout the sky. The only planets that can be detected by Kepler are those whose orbital planes are nearly edge on from our view. Too much apparent inclination, and the planet will not pass in front of the star as it orbits. Only a small fraction of orbits will fit this criterion, but I'm not sure what percentage.
I'm certain that finding one planet about a star increases the odds of finding the other planets orbiting that same star, simply because they will all have similar orbital planes. But, as was pointed out earlier, it is no guarantee that all such planets will be found.
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Your supreme court agrees you have no expectation of privacy on a public road, now shut the hell up and enjoy your "freedom".
My right to privacy does not mean that I have no expectation of accountability - especially in terms of city governance, if the city will not avow of the cameras, then how do I know who to impeach or vote out of office in the next election for misuse of funds?
Mad Parent upward and onward!
Isn't gasoline derived from all natural ingredients? That means it's good for the environment. We all have to do our part!
John Ioannidis, a medical statistics researcher on a small island in the Aegean, leads a group that has done significant work in this area. Here is an article in The Atlantic about his work.
From the article: ". . . Ioannidis laid out a detailed mathematical proof that, assuming modest levels of researcher bias, typically imperfect research techniques, and the well-known tendency to focus on exciting rather than highly plausible theories, researchers will come up with wrong findings most of the time. Simply put, if you’re attracted to ideas that have a good chance of being wrong, and if you’re motivated to prove them right, and if you have a little wiggle room in how you assemble the evidence, you’ll probably succeed in proving wrong theories right."
"Unlimited economic growth" is utterly impossible. Fundamentally, as Tom Murphy points out here and here,
a) all activity requires energy, and
b) there are fundamental limits to efficiency, guaranteed by the second law of thermodynamics.
Read the article. Both of these facts together mean that continued growth is impossible. Even the most optimistic scenarios lead to absurd conclusions i.e. the energy needed for continued growth exceeds that available to a civilization which operates at the best possible efficiency, and which uses all conceivable resources within a spherical volume expanding outward at the speed of light.
In other words, all possible efficiency combined with all possible resources are not enough. Period. Growth must come to a stop, at some point.
But I'm not going to throw it away just yet . . .
I want me some Reggae Telescope!
Forces acting on the feet are transmitted to the rest of the body: we call this "standing up". This is true regardless of your frame of reference.
Centrifugal force is a pseudoforce, i.e. a force arising from the acceleration of a non-inertial frame of reference.
Gravity is also a pseudoforce - this is the fundamental premise of General Relativity.
The entire solar system condensed from the same rotating, swirling cloud. So the ratios of the elements are pretty consistent throughout. There do exist some differentiating processes, e.g. heavy atoms sink to the interior of planets, but the starting ratios for all parts of the cloud were the same.
The incoming stream seen by IBEX has a O/Ne ratio falling significantly outside of the range expected for gasses of solar system origin.
Thank you for a though-provoking post. However in the geologic near term I am convinced the human race can adapt to things like natural glaciation or Yellowstone erupting
Yes, we'll adapt - the last time we were in such a situation we won the smackdown with the Neanderthals. We're survivors. But merely surviving doesn't mean we'll maintain the ability to launch and therefore allow life to survive in the longer term.
In the geologic long term when issues like the Sun boiling off the oceans become real, it will be10^9 years from now. Things can change so much that not only will there be time for new species to evolve to sentience, but there will actually be time for a second Carboniferous period to *replenish* the earth's supply of fossil fuels. Let me remind you that 10^9 years ago, life on Earth was single-celled. That far in the future, all bets are off.
Yes, let the oceans eutrophy and there might be time for *one* more round of oil-making. That's an ugly way to get energy from the sun. If we are not able to find a way to lift life off the planet, then maybe the next sentient species won't either? Now is very likely life's only chance, so it is imprudent to assume another solution will bubble up before the oceans bubble off.
Good point. Short answer: the volatiles are leaking out the top, so Earth's air and water have a shelf life. Eventually, either the greenhouses on Earth would have to have exactly the same construction as the freely orbiting vessels, or the Earth would need to be terraformed.
Also, the ratio of sunlight available to outer space settlements to that available to the Earth, i.e. the area of a sphere 1 AU in radius to that of a circle 1 Earth radius big, is 550 million. That's 550 million times as much energy available, given enough time for construction. (Yes, such a sphere is not orbitally stable; 550 million is an upper limit.)
And yes, when the sun goes out all solar collection stops. But by then, with billions of years of experience in living in free vessels, the hope is that nearby red dwarf stars would be settled: they have life expectancies in the trillions of years.
And yes, the universe is running out of energy, or is going to be ripped apart at the sub-nuclear level, or is going to collapse back down into a singularity. Maybe all the protons will decay. But given trillions of years of physics research on a galactic scale, who can estimate the discoveries that might lead to a solution?
Bones cracking? A properly designed spinning vessel would provide centrifugal force that would be a perfectly good substitute for gravity.
The Earth's habitability might be maintained a bit by "Terraforming the Earth", but that would require massive resources only available in the rest of the solar system.
The traditional vision of living on a large sphere, with life, water, and air held in place by the sphere's gravity can only work on Earth. The only real way to extend life beyond Earth is to build many large, rotating, centrifugal-gravity ships, dispersed throughout the solar system.
You don't need to terraform to have a place to live. Multiple large vessels, freely orbiting and rotating to supply artificial gravity, would do nicely.
We can't guess at the results of billions of years of physics research stretching across many star systems. A way could be found, you never know.
A generation ship makes sense after, and only after, life, in nearby settlements, is secured against the decline of the earth.
I'm not talking about going to other star systems, I'm talking about settling within the solar system we already inhabit.
Succeed at that, and then we have a few billion years to find a way to get to other stars.
Succeed at that, and then we have time to explore ways to deal with the death of the universe.
I hate this "all-eggs-in-one-basket" argument for preserving the human race. It misses the point entirely, because in the bigger picture Earth is not a sustainable system. The Sun is getting brighter; in less than a billion years it will be too intense for Earth's oceans to continue to exist. Like Mars did in ages past, Earth is going to lose its water. On the other side of the balance, Earth's interior is cooling, geological activity is diminishing, and so volcanic replenishment of the atmosphere is slowly winding down.It is clear, at such time scales, that if the entirety of life on Earth is to avoid extinction then life must branch out off the planet. That means launching equipment and people to build massive, robust infrastructure. Crops. Botanical gardens. Zoos.
Except that space is HARD. It's really expensive to get there and it is a high-vacuum radiation hell. It would take a long time and an expensive, sustained effort to construct off-planet habitats - a *tremendous* amount of effort and money before there is any payoff at all.
On the other hand, for example the asteroid 16 Psyche contains enough metal to construct a solid cylinder fivekm in diameter stretching from here to the Moon. Or cover North America in a layer 280 meters thick.The resources available to an outer space civilization are great enough to insure that if outer space habitats do reach the point where they can expand and grow, the payoff would be big enough to sustain life past the death of the Sun.
We are half-way through the era of animals on Earth. There have been at least a half dozen mass extinctions since animals first started evolving a half-billion years ago; there will be more. The glaciers have grown and retreated dozens of times over the last two million years; they will return. Yellowstone is going to explode again. And again. And again. Time is not unlimited.
But we have time. Abundant fossil fuels, and the internet - we are right now living in the decades of maximum wealth. At some point, within a few decades, we will either run out of fuel or we will run out of the capacity to sink carbon emissions. When this happens, it will mean the end of a way of life. Maximum wealth *right now* means that *right now* is the best and possibly the only time to lift off. Life on Earth only gets one pass at the fossil fuel heritage; if the next extinction event brings us to a place where launching is not possible, life will have missed its chance.
I'm not a nutter, I am a realist. I'm certain that outer space settlements will not solve our current growth vs. environment problems - the payoff will come way too late for that. None of our current issues will be solved, or even mitigated, by vigorous and immediate launches into the great expanse. Nonetheless, if DNA is to avoid extinction we need to start moving now as rapidly as we can. Nothing else matters.
The cocoon we call Earth is going to wither; whether or not she gives birthbefore she dies is entirely in the hands of human civilization. Our civilization,right now, we're the only chance. Sure, leaving Eden is a horrible burden. Suckit up. We have to go. Now.
Or, we can continue toasting marshmallows at the planet's one-time-only oil burning party.
Except that, in the long run, the planet is not sustainable. In less than a billion years, all the water will be gone. While it is easy to imagine that future generations will develope amazing launching technologies, it's also easy to imagine Mad Max and the fall of the oil-users. If we don't use it, now, we might lose it.
And in a billion years, it will all be gone . . .
Air is perfectly communist.
We could mine the moon for for water, bring into low earth orbit and convert nto rocket fuel at a tenth of the price that it takes to launch the same fuel from the earth: Bill Stone on TED.
Too late. The bungalow you purchased here has the same fate.
. . . and the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
I keep hearing about these computer viruses. I hear they are a bad thing. Why doesn't Congress do anything about them? Why don't they pass a law to make them illegal? Call your Congresscritter now and ask him to sponsor a Stop Internet Viruses Act.
SIVA. Now *THAT* would make us safe!
And also, water is way more abundant than any of the alternative solvents. It's also way better - chemically stable, high heat capacity, more stuff dissolves in water than in anything else, the heat of vaporization keeps things cool if needed, ice floats, etc. Water has already been seen on Mars, it would be silly to look for alternative mechanisms. Not to say that liquid methane wouldn't work, i.e. on Titan, which in fact should be investigated some day. Why a solvent? Life requires complex chemistry, which requires removal of by-products, which requires a liquid. Water is the best such liquid.
A star system forms from the collapse of a (slightly) rotating cloud. Conservation of angular momentum means that as the cloud collapses, it rotates faster. The final star rotates on the same axis as did the birthing cloud, and the star's planets have orbits that lie on the stars equatorial plane. The rotational axes of nearby stars are randomly oriented throughout the sky. The only planets that can be detected by Kepler are those whose orbital planes are nearly edge on from our view. Too much apparent inclination, and the planet will not pass in front of the star as it orbits. Only a small fraction of orbits will fit this criterion, but I'm not sure what percentage. I'm certain that finding one planet about a star increases the odds of finding the other planets orbiting that same star, simply because they will all have similar orbital planes. But, as was pointed out earlier, it is no guarantee that all such planets will be found.