There will be an effect on the magnetic field, but it will never cease to function.
As with most other geophysical phenomena, things are never that simple. When the convection between inner and outer core changes, the poles will shift, but they will do so in a very non-linear way. Simulations show that they will effectively break up into many smaller poles that will run around on the surface for something like a thousand years, and then converge on opposite sides.
Really nothing to worry about, since this has happened about a thousand times since multicellular life appeared.
It's been a while since I had atmospheric chemistry, but if I remember correctly, there's a damn good reason why supersonic stratospheric airplanes are a horrible idea.
The problem is that flux in and out of the stratosphere is extremely slow, so pollution there will be a quite severe problem for the environment.
Now, I seem to remember that a major U.S based aircraft manufacturer was planning on building a fleet of supersonic passenger jets concurrent to the Concorde, but because of pressure from the scientific community, who claimed that stratospheric pollution would be a disaster, the project was scrapped.
France and U.K ignored the warning and went ahead anyway.
Honestly, I'm happy that the concorde went belly-up and will be content to sit and wait another couple of hours in a 'slow' jet, until such technology exists to do it in a better way, like the idea of international partial-vacuum tube railways.
According to the article it would seem that more people than expected know about what their kids are playing, but just don't give a shit about it. So when society goes to hell because the children of today, just remember it's your fault for doing a shitty job of raising them and have no one else to blame but yourselves.
Has it occured to you that there might be a deeper reason for ignoring the stamps on the boxes than just 'not giving a shit'?
Everywhere I go, I see media misrepresentation of reality. You can't say 'shit' on tv. I bet if you took a survey of most common words in american use, 'shit' would come in a close second next to 'fuck'. But people who believe this to be bad moral prefer to proselytise the entire world into submission. Nobody can say these bad things, which of course is an impossible request, so they make the media stop, or at least warn everybody beforehand.
And this is a very general thing. Nobody can do anything anymore without having to force their way through oodles of warning and red tape. And in the sheer information overload of bullshit warnings that the coffee is too hot, etc, people begin to ignore the messages that may actually benefit them.
Say what you want, but 35,000 civilian casualties is pretty fucking far from minimal collateral damage.
If the German people didn't want to be bombed, why stand up and salute Hitler and cheer when he announced he was going to bomb London.
Give me a break. That's the exact same rhetoric islamist fanatics use to justify murdering civilian targets in terrorist attacks: "They are not innocent, because they're not revolutionary, and thus we are fully justified in killing them." Now, I recognize that WWII was a hard time and that it called for hard measures. But the Dresden bombings are a spot of shame on the otherwise (mostly) chivalrous reputation of the allies.
Which reminds me of a cartoon in NYTimes at some point about NASA, outlining an idea of a major overhaul in their manned mission plan to replace the shuttle, consisting of hot air balloon missions that fly up to a certain altitude and throw out huge bags of hundred-dollar bills "to see if they swoop around in pretty patterns", because it:
1. is safer. 2. is cheaper. 3. has greater scientific payback.
Hm, I'll have to remember that if I'm ever stuck in a building about to be destroyed and my only hope is an internet-connected computer with a keyboard with only three characters.
I was going to mod some of your posts in this thread as flamebait, but finally decided that that would be the way of the AC.
I'll be quick and sum up my gripe against you in three sentences:
1. I fully agree that Tom deLay is a candidate for biggest asshole in the world, and he makes my blood curl. 2. Your ad hominem attacks and unilateralist argumentation makes you a candidate too. 3. Don't be an asshole.
"What would happen if the Earth was hit by a giant asteroid? Well, judging from realistic simulations invilving a sledgehammer and a common laboratory frog, the result will be pretty bad."
If aliens evolve in the same fashion as we do, meaning that they evolve intelligence and then develop technology, I think it 99.9999% likely that they will be more advanced than us. Our civilization sprung up in a blink of an eye, cosmically, so the likely fact will be that an alien life-form has either not developed intelligence or have evolved into something far beyond our understanding. If the latter is true, why should they bother with radio communication, for example, when they have transcended all need for communication itself?
Anyway, this is complete speculation, because the probability that they evolved in a way even remotely similar to ours is, in my opinion, infinitisimal.
An idea to this is that life can be any kind of sufficiently complex interaction. For example, a theory states that superheavy elements could start getting stable again after something like element 140. Life on the surface of a neutron star, anyone?
The possibilities are endless. All you need, possibly, is a set of interactors and a suitable environment, and some new unfathomable complexity process could start.
I honestly believe that it goes further than that: The Drake Equation is a horribly prejudiced guess in itself.
Forget hot chicks with ridges on their noses. Forget telepathic flying congregations of starfish. Forget every science fiction story you've ever read or seen, with a few notable exceptions(Solaris(the book), for example). If life exists in other places in the universe, it would be most likely to be like nothing we could possibly imagine. Therefore, the entire Drake equation is an excellent example of old school earth centrism. Even the second term in the equation, which should be a no-brainer, how many stars are likely to form planets, is in my opinion of questionable merit. Why would life even have to have a planet on which to form? Couldn't we imagine a model of life not even based on organic chemistry? How about life formed by the complex interaction between nuclear particles on the surface of a neutron star?
What is intelligence? Isn't it possible that it's just a sufficiently complex interaction between elements of 'information' processing, which has certain emerging properties like memory or problem solving skill? In that case, looking for alien intelligence could be a search for information processing systems. The process of evolution could in this sense be a candidate for intelligence. (Disclaimer: I'm not talking about Intelligent Design, but Emergent Intelligence).
My point to all this is that the Drake Equation isn't just composed of a bunch of variables that are hard or even impossible to measure or derive. The entire hypothesis is a limitation to our thinking about our place in the universe.
However, I have to disagree about SETI being a religion, any more than cold fusion is a cult. It's a bit too pragmatic for that denomination.
They usually don't send scientists. That's for well established missions; usually they send pilots.
But I agree, and I think that whenever an effort to build a permanent settlement is made, they will send someone qualified to settle. They'd probably have to be all three: pilots to get there, engineers to build and scientists to make quicky and dirty solutions to whatever life-threatening emergency the colony is facing this week.
But the question that begs is, does it matter that stupid people procreate more?
One thing is that a statistical trend says that their numbers are increasing, but that doesn't necessarily mean that intelligent people are a dying race.
I saw a peanut stand, heard a rubber band,
I saw a needle that winked its eye.
But I think I will have seen everything
When I see an elephant fly.
I saw a front porch swing, heard a diamond ring,
I saw a polka-dot railroad tie.
But I think I will have seen everything
when I see an elephant fly.
I seen a clothes horse, he r'ar up and buck
And they tell me that a man made a vegetable truck
I didn't see that, I only heard
But just to be sociable I'll take your word
I heard a fireside chat, I saw a baseball bat
And I just laughed till I thought I'd die
But I'd be done see'n about everything
when I see an elephant fly.
That would have to be one motherfucker of a nasty disease to circumvent the safety network provided by people such as you. I mean, the black plague did away with around the same relative figure, but if people then had understood what we do now about vectors and pathogens....
At least in the western hemisphere, I find it hard to imagine. What would it look like? An airborne ebola type virus with long incubation time?
Slashdot Mirror
There will be an effect on the magnetic field, but it will never cease to function.
As with most other geophysical phenomena, things are never that simple. When the convection between inner and outer core changes, the poles will shift, but they will do so in a very non-linear way. Simulations show that they will effectively break up into many smaller poles that will run around on the surface for something like a thousand years, and then converge on opposite sides.
Really nothing to worry about, since this has happened about a thousand times since multicellular life appeared.
It's been a while since I had atmospheric chemistry, but if I remember correctly, there's a damn good reason why supersonic stratospheric airplanes are a horrible idea.
The problem is that flux in and out of the stratosphere is extremely slow, so pollution there will be a quite severe problem for the environment.
Now, I seem to remember that a major U.S based aircraft manufacturer was planning on building a fleet of supersonic passenger jets concurrent to the Concorde, but because of pressure from the scientific community, who claimed that stratospheric pollution would be a disaster, the project was scrapped.
France and U.K ignored the warning and went ahead anyway.
Honestly, I'm happy that the concorde went belly-up and will be content to sit and wait another couple of hours in a 'slow' jet, until such technology exists to do it in a better way, like the idea of international partial-vacuum tube railways.
And let the Feast of a Thousand Beasts begin!!
According to the article it would seem that more people than expected know about what their kids are playing, but just don't give a shit about it. So when society goes to hell because the children of today, just remember it's your fault for doing a shitty job of raising them and have no one else to blame but yourselves.
Has it occured to you that there might be a deeper reason for ignoring the stamps on the boxes than just 'not giving a shit'?
Everywhere I go, I see media misrepresentation of reality. You can't say 'shit' on tv. I bet if you took a survey of most common words in american use, 'shit' would come in a close second next to 'fuck'.
But people who believe this to be bad moral prefer to proselytise the entire world into submission. Nobody can say these bad things, which of course is an impossible request, so they make the media stop, or at least warn everybody beforehand.
And this is a very general thing. Nobody can do anything anymore without having to force their way through oodles of warning and red tape. And in the sheer information overload of bullshit warnings that the coffee is too hot, etc, people begin to ignore the messages that may actually benefit them.
President Skroob: "I'll be down immediately."
Cmdr. Zircon: "Shall I have Snotty beam you down?
President Skroob: "I don't know about that beaming stuff. Is it safe?"
Cmdr. Zircon: "Oh, yes. Snotty beamed me twice last night. It was wonderful."
President Skroob: "Alright, I'll take a shot at it. What the Hell, it works on Star Trek."
Yes, all those evil nine-year old girls that were killed certainly got what they deserved.
Say what you want, but 35,000 civilian casualties is pretty fucking far from minimal collateral damage.
If the German people didn't want to be bombed, why stand up and salute Hitler and cheer when he announced he was going to bomb London.
Give me a break. That's the exact same rhetoric islamist fanatics use to justify murdering civilian targets in terrorist attacks: "They are not innocent, because they're not revolutionary, and thus we are fully justified in killing them."
Now, I recognize that WWII was a hard time and that it called for hard measures. But the Dresden bombings are a spot of shame on the otherwise (mostly) chivalrous reputation of the allies.
Could you please explain your sig to me?
Which reminds me of a cartoon in NYTimes at some point about NASA, outlining an idea of a major overhaul in their manned mission plan to replace the shuttle, consisting of hot air balloon missions that fly up to a certain altitude and throw out huge bags of hundred-dollar bills "to see if they swoop around in pretty patterns", because it:
1. is safer.
2. is cheaper.
3. has greater scientific payback.
And now, thanks to slashdot, you know that 'Boa Sorte' also means 'Snake Black' in danish.
Hm, I'll have to remember that if I'm ever stuck in a building about to be destroyed and my only hope is an internet-connected computer with a keyboard with only three characters.
I was going to mod some of your posts in this thread as flamebait, but finally decided that that would be the way of the AC.
I'll be quick and sum up my gripe against you in three sentences:
1. I fully agree that Tom deLay is a candidate for biggest asshole in the world, and he makes my blood curl.
2. Your ad hominem attacks and unilateralist argumentation makes you a candidate too.
3. Don't be an asshole.
But keep up the good fight.
"What would happen if the Earth was hit by a giant asteroid? Well, judging from realistic simulations invilving a sledgehammer and a common laboratory frog, the result will be pretty bad."
If aliens evolve in the same fashion as we do, meaning that they evolve intelligence and then develop technology, I think it 99.9999% likely that they will be more advanced than us. Our civilization sprung up in a blink of an eye, cosmically, so the likely fact will be that an alien life-form has either not developed intelligence or have evolved into something far beyond our understanding. If the latter is true, why should they bother with radio communication, for example, when they have transcended all need for communication itself?
Anyway, this is complete speculation, because the probability that they evolved in a way even remotely similar to ours is, in my opinion, infinitisimal.
the chance that we could ever meet and TALK TO such aliens is probably very close to 0.
...further verified by the fact that they probably don't speak spanish. If they speak at all.
An idea to this is that life can be any kind of sufficiently complex interaction. For example, a theory states that superheavy elements could start getting stable again after something like element 140. Life on the surface of a neutron star, anyone?
The possibilities are endless. All you need, possibly, is a set of interactors and a suitable environment, and some new unfathomable complexity process could start.
I honestly believe that it goes further than that:
The Drake Equation is a horribly prejudiced guess in itself.
Forget hot chicks with ridges on their noses. Forget telepathic flying congregations of starfish. Forget every science fiction story you've ever read or seen, with a few notable exceptions(Solaris(the book), for example). If life exists in other places in the universe, it would be most likely to be like nothing we could possibly imagine. Therefore, the entire Drake equation is an excellent example of old school earth centrism.
Even the second term in the equation, which should be a no-brainer, how many stars are likely to form planets, is in my opinion of questionable merit. Why would life even have to have a planet on which to form? Couldn't we imagine a model of life not even based on organic chemistry? How about life formed by the complex interaction between nuclear particles on the surface of a neutron star?
What is intelligence? Isn't it possible that it's just a sufficiently complex interaction between elements of 'information' processing, which has certain emerging properties like memory or problem solving skill? In that case, looking for alien intelligence could be a search for information processing systems. The process of evolution could in this sense be a candidate for intelligence. (Disclaimer: I'm not talking about Intelligent Design, but Emergent Intelligence).
My point to all this is that the Drake Equation isn't just composed of a bunch of variables that are hard or even impossible to measure or derive. The entire hypothesis is a limitation to our thinking about our place in the universe.
However, I have to disagree about SETI being a religion, any more than cold fusion is a cult. It's a bit too pragmatic for that denomination.
Nope, in fact the definition has been changed five times since the pole-to-equator definition in 1793.
The current, and probably permanent, definition, is the distance covered by light in vacuum in 1/299792458 of a second.
This was instated in 1983, due to the realization that time was measured much more accurately than distance.
Unless of course the commercials are for Molten Boron.
Nobody doesn't like Molten Boron
They usually don't send scientists. That's for well established missions; usually they send pilots.
But I agree, and I think that whenever an effort to build a permanent settlement is made, they will send someone qualified to settle. They'd probably have to be all three: pilots to get there, engineers to build and scientists to make quicky and dirty solutions to whatever life-threatening emergency the colony is facing this week.
But the question that begs is, does it matter that stupid people procreate more?
One thing is that a statistical trend says that their numbers are increasing, but that doesn't necessarily mean that intelligent people are a dying race.
Sure, but 25%? The great Spanish Flu of 1918 killed 25 million people out of around 2 billion. And that was before we knew about viruses.
I saw a peanut stand, heard a rubber band,
;)
I saw a needle that winked its eye.
But I think I will have seen everything
When I see an elephant fly.
I saw a front porch swing, heard a diamond ring,
I saw a polka-dot railroad tie.
But I think I will have seen everything
when I see an elephant fly.
I seen a clothes horse, he r'ar up and buck
And they tell me that a man made a vegetable truck
I didn't see that, I only heard
But just to be sociable I'll take your word
I heard a fireside chat, I saw a baseball bat
And I just laughed till I thought I'd die
But I'd be done see'n about everything
when I see an elephant fly.
Best movie ever!
That would have to be one motherfucker of a nasty disease to circumvent the safety network provided by people such as you. I mean, the black plague did away with around the same relative figure, but if people then had understood what we do now about vectors and pathogens....
At least in the western hemisphere, I find it hard to imagine. What would it look like? An airborne ebola type virus with long incubation time?
Oh, man, I sure hope we don't evolve this particular trait...