We know the theorists want to be able to describe gravitation in terms of Quantum Mechanics. This will necessarily involve hypothetical "virtual gravitons" as "exchange particles" between interacting masses. So:
How do gravitons, even virtual ones, escape a black hole?
How do gravitons from the Sun pass through the Earth to affect the Moon (and artificial satellites) when eclipsed by the Earth, as if the Earth was a zero-size object? That is, the orbits of those bodies don't change just because the Earth sometimes eclipses them from the Sun's perspective.
In a way, just one proposal can answer both those questions, plus the one in the title of this page's article. If gravitons interact very rarely with other particles, including each other, then they can't stop each other from escaping a black hole, the Earth would be mostly transparent to them --AND gravitation would be the weakest force.
"possibly be compatible with the US Constitution" --The fundamental problem is that the US Constitution does not define "enemy". It defines "treason" in terms of "enemy", but it doesn't define "enemy". At this time Congress or the President has to officially declare some entity to be an enemy of the US, for the concept of "treason" to apply. It is not enough for that entity to declare the US to be an enemy --such a declaration is not automatically reciprocated. But perhaps it should be. Yet, even if it did, we can recognize that the concept of "enemy" has flavors. The lead article uses the phrase "Beijing's political enemies", which is a different thing than a "you must be destroyed" sort of enemy. Which still doesn't help, with respect to the US Constitution.
If most of the cost of a car is in the distribution, then at least inside the USA, let me trade that cost for the cost of air fare to the automobile assembly plant. I would be willing to buy it there, and "distribute" it myself, driving it home.
I'm curious about the choice to use osmium. Sure, it is the densest element, but iridium is almost the same density and osmium easily forms toxic compounds while iridium doesn't (easily, I mean).
While the lead comment of this particular thread is funny, there actually is fuel on the Moon, in the form of oxygen in rocks, and hydrogen from the Solar Wind. There is also plenty of solar energy available, for cracking oxygen loose from the rocks, and for collecting/concentrating the hydrogen. Let us imagine a Moon-girdling system of solar power collectors and hydrogen collectors, plus power transmission lines so a single large oxygen-extraction plant can operate continuously even when it is night on the Moon.
NOW imagine we aren't the only species in the Universe that does something like that. If they use Alternating Current in those power-transmission lines, then we could put radio telescopes on the Moon and detect radio waves of the AC-power frequency from distant civilizations. (Can't detect any AC from a home-world that has an ionosphere; can only detect AC from airless worlds.) If they use Superconducted Direct Current, we are out of luck with respect to detecting them. Note AC could be cheaper than SDC, but SDC will be more energy-efficient --yet stellar energy is "free" after the capital cost of infrastructure, so some alien civs might use AC and others might use SDC (and I have no idea which we might use, unless we decided to be paranoid and use SDC to be less detectable).
The old motto "Don't be evil" has always bothered me because the phrasing encompasses two negative things. It is my understanding that the subconscious mind tends to ignore words like "don't", and only focus on the rest of any statement that includes it --which in this case would be a statement that is still a negative thing! So, the new motto "Do the right thing" is, in my view, a vast improvement over the old one. Sure, the subphrase "right thing" is open to interpretation, and we can be sure that sometime someone will choose a problematic interpretation, but for the most part it is quite a positive motto.
Each memory address is normally associated with 8 bits of data (not counting correction bits). But processors nowadays routinely consume 64 bits at a time. That means getting the data from 8 different addresses simultaneously. Things would be simpler if they put all those 64 bits at one address --if every single address had 64 bits of data associated with it. In the previous processor generation, gobbling 32 bits at a time meant accessing 4 different addresses simultaneously, and the total accessible address space of the processor was essentially 30 bits instead of 32 bits --while you were allowed to access 4 addresses starting at Address Zero, you were not allowed to access 4 addresses starting at Address One or Address Two or Address Three. It could have been allowed if every address had had 32 data-bits associated with it. With 64-bit processors today needing to access 8 addresses at a time, the total effective address space is 61 bits instead of 64 bits (still a huge number, I know). Anyway, my main reason for writing this is, wouldn't memory run slightly faster if it didn't have to access all the data from 8 addresses simultaneously, but instead just got 64 bits, nicely parallel from any one address?
Nostalgia is nice, but "retro" can accommodate it in a modern way. Like putting more efficient engines in a lighter-weight (composite fiber construction) look-alike, of the original Concorde. Building a modern look-alike might cost less (3D manufacturing for special parts) and be safer, too (no years of age and wear-and-tear on a new plane).
I think you are not noticing a fundamental point of physics. But before getting to that, a separate point needs to be addressed first. The Type III civilization uses the energy of its galaxy; it doesn't have to generate that much extra energy. Just like a Type II uses all the energy of its star; it doesn't need to be generating the equivalent of a star. One way to make a Type III is by filling a galaxy with Dyson Spheres. So, the only way to see that galaxy at all (besides stars not yet englobed) should be in the infrared or lower, not the visible/higher frequencies.
Now the physics point: Like extracting energy from a waterfall, higher-energy stellar photons can be used to do work, and leave the system as lower-energy photons. But the same total energy must leave as arrives. Else the "system" processing that energy-flow will get hotter and hotter....no Type II or Type III civilization would overlook such an important thing, in creating Dyson Spheres around stars.
According to the article linked in the news blurb, "encapsulating the energy of stars by so called Dyson spheres or swarms is one way to harness enormous energies" --the thing that bothers me is, nothing is described about how an advanced civilization using the total output of stars changes the measurable total output of stars. It makes sense to think that light-frequency-and-higher emissions would be reduced, while infrared emissions would be increased --something any appropriately-large dust cloud can do! It seems to me that we should want to analyze visibly dust-free-zones for excess infrared. And radio waves pass fairly well/equally through all dusty and non-dusty zones, which is why radio astronomy is popular, so...what am I missing?
"effectively setting the project back a decade if not longer"
It seems that the simplest solution is to wait. And hope that Google survives various future and as-yet-unknown disruptive technologies.
"Knowledge is power." Every government understands that. In the USA, so many businesses also know it, that most of the population knows it. PLUS, just about everyone in the USA is also told, "Power corrupts", and how important it is for citizens to be aware of what government officials are doing. There need be no cynicism in simple logic!
Now, if the government could prove it has a way to possess knowledge without becoming corrupted by the power it represents, the situation might be different. Good luck with that!
Yes, the food problem isn't entirely overpopulation-related. However, that's not the only problem mentioned on the page. You explained ONE in terms of it is caused by things outside of overpopulation, but what about all those other problems on the page? If you can't offer alternative explanations for all of them, then overpopulation is real.
There are two major types of ignorance, which we can call "passive" and "active".
Passive ignorance is the same as simply not-knowing something. Like, we are ignorant of whether or not there are any living organisms on Mars.
Active ignorance is the deliberate ignoring of facts. See the Flat Earth Society for an example of active ignorance, although there are plenty other offenders, like Creationists who claim the Earth is only a few thousand years old (so explain this), abortion opponents who claim the Earth isn't overpopulated (so explain this), etc.
Modern high-definition TV, whether broadcast or supplied by cable, involves lots of computer processing. The concept of "communications" is about data getting moved, not how it gets moved.
Steam cars lost out to gasoline engines because of the water problem --they couldn't build radiators good enough to condense all the water that had been turned to steam (after the steam had expanded in the engine). So they had to frequently fill a water tank, in addition to filling a fuel tank. Today, we might be able to build efficient-enough radiators, especially if we go the route of making only 20 HP steam engines in conjunction with something that allows rapid acceleration and storage of regenerative-braking energy, as described in prior posts. You make a 150 HP steam engine for a car even today, and you, too, will probably have to add water at regular intervals. And then there is the efficiency problem, in that car-sized steam engines are probably only/roughly 40% efficient (the steam engines in large power plants manage 50% efficiency partly because of size-scaling). Better things are available, for cars.
Flywheels can be charged up lots faster than batteries. But actually, my personal preference is for supercapacitors, with almost perfect charge/discharge efficiency, rapid charging rates, AND they never wear out. But so far as I know, nobody offers supercapacitors potent enough to be used in cars, even if only for acceleration-power and regenerative-braking energy storage (while a fuel cell is still superior to batteries for long range). That's why I never mentioned them in any of my prior posts here. Does anyone know if the supercapacitor total-capacity situation is likely to change soon?
Both the heavy battery pack and the motor-generator-plus-flywheel (I never called it magical or weightless, but this data suggests it can weigh a lot less than a battery pack) need at least one electric motor to drive the car wheels (did you know one electric motor can drive a pair of wheels without a mechanical differential?). If the battery charges/discharges at 90% efficiency, while the flywheel does it at 95% efficiency, guess which is superior? (And "rare earth" metals are not actually all that rare; the problem has been chemically separating them from each other, to get the particular ones we actually want to use, and the pollution associated with the process. Obviously that technology needs to be improved.)
Another poster has claimed that modern lithium batteries can have better-than-95% efficiency, making them better than a motor-generator-flywheel. If accurate, the only advantage a flywheel would have is a very fast charging time.
One other advantage of a flywheel over a battery is that it can be "charged" very rapidly. If you could get it charged near your workplace, a 50-mile range flywheel car could work for you. But I only brought up the subject because flywheels with motor-generators were so much more energy-efficient than any batteries I knew about, and wanted to work toward using them only for rapid acceleration and regenerative-braking storage.
Slashdot Mirror
We know the theorists want to be able to describe gravitation in terms of Quantum Mechanics. This will necessarily involve hypothetical "virtual gravitons" as "exchange particles" between interacting masses. So:
How do gravitons, even virtual ones, escape a black hole?
How do gravitons from the Sun pass through the Earth to affect the Moon (and artificial satellites) when eclipsed by the Earth, as if the Earth was a zero-size object? That is, the orbits of those bodies don't change just because the Earth sometimes eclipses them from the Sun's perspective.
In a way, just one proposal can answer both those questions, plus the one in the title of this page's article. If gravitons interact very rarely with other particles, including each other, then they can't stop each other from escaping a black hole, the Earth would be mostly transparent to them --AND gravitation would be the weakest force.
Obligatory XKCD cartoon.
If you fry the electronics of a drone, it won't fly so well.
"possibly be compatible with the US Constitution" --The fundamental problem is that the US Constitution does not define "enemy". It defines "treason" in terms of "enemy", but it doesn't define "enemy". At this time Congress or the President has to officially declare some entity to be an enemy of the US, for the concept of "treason" to apply. It is not enough for that entity to declare the US to be an enemy --such a declaration is not automatically reciprocated. But perhaps it should be. Yet, even if it did, we can recognize that the concept of "enemy" has flavors. The lead article uses the phrase "Beijing's political enemies", which is a different thing than a "you must be destroyed" sort of enemy. Which still doesn't help, with respect to the US Constitution.
If most of the cost of a car is in the distribution, then at least inside the USA, let me trade that cost for the cost of air fare to the automobile assembly plant. I would be willing to buy it there, and "distribute" it myself, driving it home.
I'm curious about the choice to use osmium. Sure, it is the densest element, but iridium is almost the same density and osmium easily forms toxic compounds while iridium doesn't (easily, I mean).
While the lead comment of this particular thread is funny, there actually is fuel on the Moon, in the form of oxygen in rocks, and hydrogen from the Solar Wind. There is also plenty of solar energy available, for cracking oxygen loose from the rocks, and for collecting/concentrating the hydrogen. Let us imagine a Moon-girdling system of solar power collectors and hydrogen collectors, plus power transmission lines so a single large oxygen-extraction plant can operate continuously even when it is night on the Moon.
NOW imagine we aren't the only species in the Universe that does something like that. If they use Alternating Current in those power-transmission lines, then we could put radio telescopes on the Moon and detect radio waves of the AC-power frequency from distant civilizations. (Can't detect any AC from a home-world that has an ionosphere; can only detect AC from airless worlds.) If they use Superconducted Direct Current, we are out of luck with respect to detecting them. Note AC could be cheaper than SDC, but SDC will be more energy-efficient --yet stellar energy is "free" after the capital cost of infrastructure, so some alien civs might use AC and others might use SDC (and I have no idea which we might use, unless we decided to be paranoid and use SDC to be less detectable).
The old motto "Don't be evil" has always bothered me because the phrasing encompasses two negative things. It is my understanding that the subconscious mind tends to ignore words like "don't", and only focus on the rest of any statement that includes it --which in this case would be a statement that is still a negative thing! So, the new motto "Do the right thing" is, in my view, a vast improvement over the old one. Sure, the subphrase "right thing" is open to interpretation, and we can be sure that sometime someone will choose a problematic interpretation, but for the most part it is quite a positive motto.
Each memory address is normally associated with 8 bits of data (not counting correction bits). But processors nowadays routinely consume 64 bits at a time. That means getting the data from 8 different addresses simultaneously. Things would be simpler if they put all those 64 bits at one address --if every single address had 64 bits of data associated with it. In the previous processor generation, gobbling 32 bits at a time meant accessing 4 different addresses simultaneously, and the total accessible address space of the processor was essentially 30 bits instead of 32 bits --while you were allowed to access 4 addresses starting at Address Zero, you were not allowed to access 4 addresses starting at Address One or Address Two or Address Three. It could have been allowed if every address had had 32 data-bits associated with it. With 64-bit processors today needing to access 8 addresses at a time, the total effective address space is 61 bits instead of 64 bits (still a huge number, I know). Anyway, my main reason for writing this is, wouldn't memory run slightly faster if it didn't have to access all the data from 8 addresses simultaneously, but instead just got 64 bits, nicely parallel from any one address?
It seems to me that someone hasn't paid enough attention to certain science-fictional warnings. I can't be the only one who has read that book!
Nostalgia is nice, but "retro" can accommodate it in a modern way. Like putting more efficient engines in a lighter-weight (composite fiber construction) look-alike, of the original Concorde. Building a modern look-alike might cost less (3D manufacturing for special parts) and be safer, too (no years of age and wear-and-tear on a new plane).
I think you are not noticing a fundamental point of physics. But before getting to that, a separate point needs to be addressed first. The Type III civilization uses the energy of its galaxy; it doesn't have to generate that much extra energy. Just like a Type II uses all the energy of its star; it doesn't need to be generating the equivalent of a star. One way to make a Type III is by filling a galaxy with Dyson Spheres. So, the only way to see that galaxy at all (besides stars not yet englobed) should be in the infrared or lower, not the visible/higher frequencies.
Now the physics point: Like extracting energy from a waterfall, higher-energy stellar photons can be used to do work, and leave the system as lower-energy photons. But the same total energy must leave as arrives. Else the "system" processing that energy-flow will get hotter and hotter....no Type II or Type III civilization would overlook such an important thing, in creating Dyson Spheres around stars.
According to the article linked in the news blurb, "encapsulating the energy of stars by so called Dyson spheres or swarms is one way to harness enormous energies" --the thing that bothers me is, nothing is described about how an advanced civilization using the total output of stars changes the measurable total output of stars. It makes sense to think that light-frequency-and-higher emissions would be reduced, while infrared emissions would be increased --something any appropriately-large dust cloud can do! It seems to me that we should want to analyze visibly dust-free-zones for excess infrared. And radio waves pass fairly well/equally through all dusty and non-dusty zones, which is why radio astronomy is popular, so...what am I missing?
"effectively setting the project back a decade if not longer"
It seems that the simplest solution is to wait. And hope that Google survives various future and as-yet-unknown disruptive technologies.
The original article clearly indicates that such particles need to be found first, within the abilities of the LHC. OR, we need something bigger than the Earth's circumference.
"Knowledge is power." Every government understands that. In the USA, so many businesses also know it, that most of the population knows it. PLUS, just about everyone in the USA is also told, "Power corrupts", and how important it is for citizens to be aware of what government officials are doing. There need be no cynicism in simple logic!
Now, if the government could prove it has a way to possess knowledge without becoming corrupted by the power it represents, the situation might be different. Good luck with that!
Let's see....
Acquire Target
Aim At Target
Fly Toward Target
Turn Off Propellers
Hit Target
--does that count as "lethal force"?
Yes, the food problem isn't entirely overpopulation-related. However, that's not the only problem mentioned on the page. You explained ONE in terms of it is caused by things outside of overpopulation, but what about all those other problems on the page? If you can't offer alternative explanations for all of them, then overpopulation is real.
There are two major types of ignorance, which we can call "passive" and "active".
Passive ignorance is the same as simply not-knowing something. Like, we are ignorant of whether or not there are any living organisms on Mars.
Active ignorance is the deliberate ignoring of facts. See the Flat Earth Society for an example of active ignorance, although there are plenty other offenders, like Creationists who claim the Earth is only a few thousand years old (so explain this), abortion opponents who claim the Earth isn't overpopulated (so explain this), etc.
Modern high-definition TV, whether broadcast or supplied by cable, involves lots of computer processing. The concept of "communications" is about data getting moved, not how it gets moved.
Steam cars lost out to gasoline engines because of the water problem --they couldn't build radiators good enough to condense all the water that had been turned to steam (after the steam had expanded in the engine). So they had to frequently fill a water tank, in addition to filling a fuel tank. Today, we might be able to build efficient-enough radiators, especially if we go the route of making only 20 HP steam engines in conjunction with something that allows rapid acceleration and storage of regenerative-braking energy, as described in prior posts. You make a 150 HP steam engine for a car even today, and you, too, will probably have to add water at regular intervals. And then there is the efficiency problem, in that car-sized steam engines are probably only/roughly 40% efficient (the steam engines in large power plants manage 50% efficiency partly because of size-scaling). Better things are available, for cars.
A coal-powered car could work if it had a Stirling engine (about 45% efficiency). Stirling engines are external-combustion, like steam engines.
Flywheels can be charged up lots faster than batteries. But actually, my personal preference is for supercapacitors, with almost perfect charge/discharge efficiency, rapid charging rates, AND they never wear out. But so far as I know, nobody offers supercapacitors potent enough to be used in cars, even if only for acceleration-power and regenerative-braking energy storage (while a fuel cell is still superior to batteries for long range). That's why I never mentioned them in any of my prior posts here. Does anyone know if the supercapacitor total-capacity situation is likely to change soon?
Both the heavy battery pack and the motor-generator-plus-flywheel (I never called it magical or weightless, but this data suggests it can weigh a lot less than a battery pack) need at least one electric motor to drive the car wheels (did you know one electric motor can drive a pair of wheels without a mechanical differential?). If the battery charges/discharges at 90% efficiency, while the flywheel does it at 95% efficiency, guess which is superior? (And "rare earth" metals are not actually all that rare; the problem has been chemically separating them from each other, to get the particular ones we actually want to use, and the pollution associated with the process. Obviously that technology needs to be improved.)
Another poster has claimed that modern lithium batteries can have better-than-95% efficiency, making them better than a motor-generator-flywheel. If accurate, the only advantage a flywheel would have is a very fast charging time.
One other advantage of a flywheel over a battery is that it can be "charged" very rapidly. If you could get it charged near your workplace, a 50-mile range flywheel car could work for you. But I only brought up the subject because flywheels with motor-generators were so much more energy-efficient than any batteries I knew about, and wanted to work toward using them only for rapid acceleration and regenerative-braking storage.