Technology has improved a great deal in the last thirty years. Unfortunately, some of the constraints on deep space exploration are physical, rather than engineering problems.
The limit with any engine, high or low thrust, is fuel. Essentially, any reaction drive that carries fuel with it will eventually run out (whether it's making ten Gs of acceleration over a few seconds, or.0001 G over a matter of years). You get more milage per mass of fuel as you increase the exhaust velocity (the speed of the exhaust relative to the craft), but then you're up against power requirements - it takes more and more energy to accelerate the reaction mass to higher and higher speeds. That power has to come from somewhere, and any generator system will increase the overall mass of the spacecraft, decreasing the acceleration.
Combining an ion drive with, say, solar panels will work wonders in the inner solar system, since you're getting your power for free, and firing off your fuel in small quantities at extremely high speed. In the outer system though, solar power isn't an option and radiothermic generators (RTGs) like those used on voyager are heavy, at least relative to their power output. Most other power technology we have available today would add fuel and/or maintainance constraints. RTGs and solar panals are used for precisely those reasons - because they have neither signifigant fuel limitations nor many moving parts to break down.
Plus, the engines themselves will undoubtably have a limited working lifetime - extending that lifetime to operate for years or decades will involved increasing the mass of the engine, which kinda puts you back at square one.
Something like a light sail would work better (over long distances the lower thrust is offset by the lack of fuel requirements), but that's still more in the realm of science fiction. Nuclear drive technology could also fill the gap, but the political constraints involved in putting anything fission based in orbit are huge, and we won't have fusion for decades at least (longer, if you factor in the need for miniaturization).
Bah, where did I ever claim that I wasn't preaching?
I can call Jack's soapbox stance irrational, ill concieved, idiotic and generally worthless from my own soapbox. It's not the soapbox I'm attacking after all, it's the moron who's climbed atop it (metaphorically speaking).
The problem is the people who take him seriously and agree with him. Sometimes ignoring the opposition isn't the solution - you must speak out and denounce them.
With Jack, ignoring him will merely be taken as a sign that you either cannot counter his flimsy arguements, or else that you agree with him. He may be the worlds biggest troll, but he's considered credible by politicians and the media, and that makes him more dangerous than most crackpots.
Not that I agree with ole' Jackass, but how does that make things different? To devils advocate for a moment, people like JT are the ones who blame things like the Columbine shootings on video games, and that was related to bullying (in that the perpetrators were themselves bullied and perceived their actions to be revenge).
In Thompsons warped view of the world, games make children violent. This isn't a particularly rational viewpoint, but his actions here are consistant with it. What does he care that the game doesn't condone bullying? It's a Rockstar game (which he hates), and it's violent (which gives him a chance to get up on his soapbox and preach).
And how do you know they can "stand up for themselves"?
I'd say that it's pretty obvious that minors and dead people can't.
On a more general level, this is an area where I'd say legal reform is needed, specifically to favour the smaller party. We have a heavy bias in criminal law favouring the defendant, to offset the advantages the government has over individual citizens.
Why not apply similar rules to civil cases where a corporation is pursuing legal action against an individual? Currently we have far to many cases where the recipient of a RIAA type lawsuit has no viable option but to settle out of court; this essentially means they pay regardless of their guilt or innocence.
Note that this is a criticism of civil law more generally, rather than the RIAA specifically. However, when they exploit the letter of the law in order to strong arm people into settlements, I think there is a problem. If the letter of the law can be abused in such a manner, then the law is itself in need of change.
That was "breach of contract" not copyright.
Duely noted. My point however was that perpetual delaying tactics are an abuse of the court system.
I think his point was that telling people to boycott them doesn't work if they in turn shift any blame for loss of sales to piracy. How do you send them a message that the crap they're pulling won't be tolerated by consumers when they in turn are going to spin that message as justification for the very behaviour you boycotted them for?
In any circumstance or scenario, is it ever acceptable for an owner of a work, or their duly specified agent, to protect that ownership, even when the work may be freely copied in an unlimited fashion, and to use the legal frameworks provided by the society in which it exists, to enforce or demand recompense for such ownership?
In any circumstance? I suppose I coulda agree with some circumstances.
I'd probably be fine with a lawsuit leveled against commercial infingers (ie, people selling material they don't own the copryright for). Likewise, small suits for non-commercial infringement I could support (by small, we're talking at most the commercial value for the material, eg 10-20 dollars per CDs worth of music, or per movie), if they were carefully executed and if the defendant was able to actual stand up for themselves in court.
What I, and other people, can't stand is the use of legal brute force against people who can't realistically fight back. Following the letter of the law with the intent of ruining someone in a civil suit which they cannot afford to defend themselves against isn't "protecting their copyright", it's mafia style intimidation.
Software company suing another software company for breach of copyright on their code? I'm fine with it, as long as the suit doesn't abuse the court system (think SCO and their delay tactics as an example of such abuse). Record company launching a small suit against a major uploader (instead of massive suits against everyone)? I would at least be on the fence, and acknowledge their rights.
Part of the problem of course is that the way the law is set up, the corporations have the upper hand. They can sue for the maximum possible amount per infringement, and they can drag out court cases longer than any individual could afford, forcing an out of court settlement. Plus, they aren't held to a high standard of evidence when it comes to bringing the case before a court.
For the record, I don't pirate. However, at this stage I've completely stopped buying RIAA label music, since I'll be damned if my money is going to pay their bloodsucking lawyers.
Natural state in this context means the state that evolution prepared us for. We didn't evolve brains in order to post witty comebacks on slashdot, we evolved them to survive as hunter gatherers. Tool making functioned as a way to kill food, not play with computers.
The normal state of people living in an industrial society has zero bearing on the conditions we evolved under. Evolution takes millenia, while technological advances take decades, if that. The life we evolved for is ancient history, yet our natural instincts are still geared for it (try applying your fight or flight reflex the next time you get a speeding ticket).
My primary point was that what was natural from an evolutionary perspective has no bearing on the modern human world. If we equate "unnatural" with "wrong", then aren't we condeming ourselves? I don't think so, but the GP seemed to, hence my arguement.
First off, it would probably have been better had I made it clear what I was arguing against. The GP (the person I replied to initially) was ascribing intent to nature, as if the proccess of evolution was somehow intelligent. Ergo, comments about right/wrong have more bearing on the idea that there is a "goal" to evolution, or an objective way to measure evolutionary fitness. I take issue with this idea; I don't like it when people make evolution or "nature" out to be some sort of thinking being.
I mention this because you seem to have taken some of my post out of context. That being said...
Two mistakes. One, human beings can't be unnatural, nor can our activities be unnatural. That would imply the possibilty of a non-natural cause or factor involved, which you already said can't exist.
Unnatural in this context was taken to mean "no longer governed by evolution". Natural selection gave us intelligence, but how we use that intelligence has very little bearing on what its original function was.
You could argue that we evolved as toolmakers and social animals, and that therefor anything arising out of technology or society is inherently natural to human beings. I'd rather not get into this however, as I've had that debate before and find it too easy to get bogged down in semantics. In the context of my post, I was using "natural" in the same manner as the person I replied to.
Everything we do is part of the natural course of our evolution. Finally, if there WERE some way to deviate from evolution, there is certainly no way it could be described as "wrong", except under some sort of arbitrary cultural and human constructed ethical viewpoint.
Since we're debating the intervention of humans into the survival of another species (tasmanian devils), that "arbitrary cultural/ethical viewpoint" is crucial. I hardly think you can somehow seperate human motivations in this sort of situation from our culture.
If we're debating whether it is right to intervene in the natural extinction of a species, then what we're debating is ethics. Ergo, "wrong" does have a meaning. If we choose to view interfering in natural selection as ethically wrong (as the GP seems to think), then what does that say about our own development, where we've done exactly that to ourselves?
There are plenty of arguments on both sides, I'm sure, but as far as evolution is concerned, there is no argument for or against preserving them.
Agreed. And my only point there was that the GP was trying to use evolution as an arguement against presevering them; I do not think that evolution is a factor either for or against.
Ok, now you've totally lost it. Species can't possibly have any obligations under evolution
Do you use evolution as your measure or right or wrong in your own life?
I ask this because most of what I wrote was on either the idea that evolution isn't a system of morals (which we seem to agree on), and that we shouldn't feel obligated to stand aside and allow natural selection to make a species extinct. I don't recall saying we had an obligation to preseve them; I said we could choose to, and should not adopt a non-interference policy.
Yet, to use your own example of pressure change, we can make no statement about the movement of a single molecule of gas. We can only state what the preponderance of gas molecules will do; gas law is accurate in the aggregate.
What I have a problem with is the idea that evolution (or nature) does anything as if governed by intelligence. This is a widespread misconception, based on a sort of anthropomorphicised concept of natural proccesses. There is no more intent to evolution than there is to the movement of molecules in a gas container, yet both proccesses behave predicably. This predicability fools people into thinking there is more going on than probability.
When someone says that a species is not "meant" to survive (as the person I initially replied to did), what they're doing is assuming intent on the part of evolution. Hence my reply disputing this. Perhaps I should have been clearer.
Finally, for the cancer to spread in the way described, we must be talking about cells with a high degree of mobility. This can't be something attached to something, like a tumour, or it couldn't spread identically from organism to organism.
I could be way out of line here, but I'm pretty sure that metasticized cancer cells have a high degree of mobility in normal, non-contagious cancers. The ability to jump from one organ to another via bodily fluids doesn't seem that far removed from the ability to jump from one organism to another via those same fluids. So I don't think the distinction here is mobility.
Part of what's unusual about this strain of cancer is mentioned in TFA:
Studies suggest that, unlike most tumor cells, which contribute to their own demise by becoming increasingly genetically fragile, Sticker's tumor cells are remarkably genetically stable, perhaps explaining in part their evolutionary success.
So the cells are unusual, at least when compared to other forms of cancer.
Another thing I find odd is that the dog's immune system doesn't recognize these cells as foreign and attack them; one of the reasons that your own immune system has trouble attacking your own cancer cells is because they're identical to the host's. OTOH, they say the cancer isn't fatal in dogs, so it's quite possible that the immune system does limit it's development.
I dislike the arguement that "nature" has any intent or say in the matter. It's too close to a religious belief for my liking; making the natural world or the proccess of evolution into some planning, thinking deity.
Evolution is non-linear. It's a blind proccess based on probability, not some infallable mechanism for ensuring the correct changes occur. Extinction is not fated, nor does it unerringly take only those species who are unsuited to their environment (look at the major mass extinctions in history as proof of this).
And even when natural selection is responsible, why is that "right"? Evolution has no ethics, it simply is. Moreover, even if we start from the assumption that natural selection is right (or is best not interfered with), how can we seperate it out from every other factor involved in an extinction? Death by evolution is like death from old age; it's not a specific cause, it's a general description of what went wrong.
The death of the dodo or the passanger pigeon can argueably be considered a form of evolution; those species unable to cope with a new predator (man) die off. Yet we restrain ourselves from causing other species to go extinct.
We are ourselves unnatural creatures. The natural state of humans is poor health, early death, superstitious ignorance and starvation. We're hunter-gatherers naturally. Do we view our deviation from evolution as wrong?
And even if the tasmanian devils are dying out purely due to non-human factors, what arguement is there against trying to preserve them?
If you want to argue that the only species we have an obligation to preserve are the ones that our own actions have endangered, then that's fine - you're entitled to your own point of view. However, I don't agree with that line of thinking. The fact that we're probably blameless in the fate of the tasmanian devil doesn't mean we have no cause to preserve them.
I think the problems started when they changed editors. The old guy (Johnny something?) retired, and there were at least two successive replacements that I remember. Bear in mind, this was quite a while ago, so my memory is fuzzy, but it was about ~1-2 years after that that I finally gave up and cancled my subscription. By then, they were well on their way downhill, with smaller and smaller magazines, and less good writing in between the ever increasing number of ads.
I'm not overly surprised it took this long. They were damn good in their prime, and it takes quite a long time for a slow decline to lead to cancelation.
Consider where you'll be getting the materials to build a solar/fuel cell hybrid arraingment.
Water isn't free on the moon; we'd need to ship up any hydrogen and mine any oxygen. Recombining them into water to tap into potential energy and then splitting that water to create more potential energy would require a large standing supply of water that's used for fuel instead of drinking, plus a continious import of new hydrogen (since there will inevitably be losses due to hydrogen escaping the fuel cells and/or fuel tanks - hydrogen leaks out of just about anything, while water does not).
Add to that the fact that the (water + power) -> h2 + o -> power + water cycles are really quite wasteful (ie, the losses that manifest as heat are relatively high), and you've got a problem.
As to the radioisotope generator solution, it's a good idea, but doesn't get around the need to send up radioactives, which will inevitably create a PR stink. Remember that those generators put out a lot of power over their life time, but aren't as good as a real nuke plant for power relative to mass. Since the mass of the materials we ship up is a huge consideration for launch costs, and a small nuclear reactor probably is the best bet.
Alternatively, we could make our hypothetical moonbase mobile, and have it stay ahead of the sunset. That posses a bunch of other problems though, and would probably be more trouble than it's worth.
Just pray they don't start spawning any new processes. You wouldn't beleive how much resources they use, and they're notoriously difficult to get rid of - some take 18 years or more!
Plus, the box they get rooted on loses some of its performance...
The Apple brand ones do. However, the "nano" varient hasn't been a huge success.
The Microsoft version is larger, but there have been complaints about the power adapter and USB port getting in the way, and not being adequatly waterproofed. The Sony ones seem to have problems with DRM screwing the user (and not in the good way)...:-)
Well, first off, the reason I drew the ocean comparison is the idea of contamination. Urine isn't just gross, it's also toxic, at least to animals like us. However, while nobody would want to get it in their drinking water (fetishists nonwithstanding), nobody would seriously think that pissing in the ocean is going to hurt anybody. It's not that urea is harmless; it's that in a large enough body of water, it becomes irrelevant.
Now as to the effect of dropping waste into the sun, consider both it's size and age. Radioactives are not that uncommon in space, and the sun is an awfully large target. Over 4 billion years, how much uranium do you suppose it's swept up? Hell, during the earlier days of the solar system, it's likely that entire planetary masses fell into the star. These things happen when a system forms. If a "stupid sci-fi apocolypse" scenario was going to happen, it would have done so already.
It's similar to the arguement that particle colliders could create black holes. Given that the same type of reactions occur naturally in the upper atmosphere as they do in a collider, we'd expect miniature black holes to form repeatedly over billions of years. The fact that none have destroyed the planet yet is strong evidence that it won't happen - and our current theories surrounding Hawking radiation says it can't happen anyways.
Remember that all the damage mankind has done to our home throughout history (pre and post industrial) has been climatic or ecological. These systems are delicate and respond strongly to even fairly minor human input, such as importing species into an evironment that they aren't native to. It's also worth remembering that climate change and mass extinctions have happened before; these kinds of destruction did not begin with human civilization, we've merely done more damage in a shorter time frame. In other words, we're effecienty destructive, but the type of damage we've caused isn't novel.
Stuff like igniting the atmosphere and other doomsday scenarios capture our imagination, but are massively implausable. Nuclear weapons are merely the most powerful weapon made to date; far more powerful explosions have occured in the past due to asteroidal collisions. The fear was unfounded then, but was taken seriously nonetheless.
We've seen the amount of damage we can do to the biosphere, and thereby overestimate just how much harm we can do to other pre-existing systems.
If a doomsday scenario can happen naturally, then I will worry about it happening accidentally due to human error (a good example would be anti-biotic resistant bacteria, or global warming). If it can happen due to human malice, then I will likewise worry (nuclear war comes to mind). If it can't happen accidentally, or should already have happened without our help, then I wouldn't worry about it.
By your logic, I should never, ever, even consider taking a piss into a water supply that might be drunk by another person.
Yes, I'm being facetious as well.:-)
But the comparison is valid. The total mass of the sun is many orders of magnitude greater than the earth, while the total mass of all the nuclear waste we've ever produced and ever will produce is likewise orders of magnitude smaller than the mass of the earth. We could dump every single gram of uranium in the earth's crust into the sun and it would make zero difference; solar fusion would continue as it always has. Do you seriously think that a body four and a half billion years old and 300,000 times the size of the earth hasn't swallowed up far worse garbage?
Dumping that waste into the sun really, literally, is equivalent to pissing in the ocean. The amount of urine in your bladder compared to the water in the ocean and the amount of terrestrial uranium compared with the amount of hydrogen in the sun both represent such an enormous difference in quantity that assuming we could alter the sun's composition by dumping even a planetful of waste into it is directly equivalent to assuming a man pissing in the ocean could contaminate it.
This isn't a matter of hypothetical or cutting edge physics. The composition, mass and driving mechanisms of the sun are well understood and have been for donkey's years.
Look, I realize that you're asking questions in the name of caution, so I won't flame you (pun intended). But you have to understand, the science involved in this isn't difficult. Astronomical objects are really really big, and far beyond the ability of modern humans to affect.
We can't even appreaciable affect the planet earth itself; all we've done so far has been to screw around with the biosphere (which is far more delicate). Organisms are fragile, and networks of fragile things break easily; planets are durable, and stars even more so. The fact that we've screwed things up on earth in the course of our history does not mean that we somehow have the power to screw up astronomical objects, even inadvertantly.
And if we could even slightly affect an object the size of our star, why on earth would we need to worry about bloody fission? Seriously, we're tiny, it's huge - if we could even affect it accidentally, we'd have the kind of power at our disposal to make nuclear waste utterly irrelevant.
Actually, if the GP is correct and they are increasing the radiation output in proportion to the reduction in the half life, what's to stop us from harnessing that output as power? The major reason we can't use many forms of nuclear waste as a power source is the difficulty in converting low levels of radiation into usable power; fast fissioning material on the other hand is perfectly usable as a fuel source.
Of course, the temperature of the storage device poses a major problem (if we have to supercool it, then harnessing the radiation as a heat source is right out). Assuming we can't do this at a higher temperature, and I don't understand the article well enough to make a guess here, then we'd have to find a way to convert the energy output of the waste into usable power without heating the storage vessel to the point where the accelerated half life drops back to normal.
I wonder if there is some way to allow the radiation to escape the waste storage vessel and transfer it's energy into something useful...
Yeah, real cute. First you launch a misdirected ad hom, then follow up with a flame to cover up your previous error. You're just trying to mask the fact that attacking someone you agree with makes you look like an ass.
Swallow your pride, admit you made a mistake, and drop it.
Slashdot Mirror
Technology has improved a great deal in the last thirty years. Unfortunately, some of the constraints on deep space exploration are physical, rather than engineering problems.
.0001 G over a matter of years). You get more milage per mass of fuel as you increase the exhaust velocity (the speed of the exhaust relative to the craft), but then you're up against power requirements - it takes more and more energy to accelerate the reaction mass to higher and higher speeds. That power has to come from somewhere, and any generator system will increase the overall mass of the spacecraft, decreasing the acceleration.
The limit with any engine, high or low thrust, is fuel. Essentially, any reaction drive that carries fuel with it will eventually run out (whether it's making ten Gs of acceleration over a few seconds, or
Combining an ion drive with, say, solar panels will work wonders in the inner solar system, since you're getting your power for free, and firing off your fuel in small quantities at extremely high speed. In the outer system though, solar power isn't an option and radiothermic generators (RTGs) like those used on voyager are heavy, at least relative to their power output. Most other power technology we have available today would add fuel and/or maintainance constraints. RTGs and solar panals are used for precisely those reasons - because they have neither signifigant fuel limitations nor many moving parts to break down.
Plus, the engines themselves will undoubtably have a limited working lifetime - extending that lifetime to operate for years or decades will involved increasing the mass of the engine, which kinda puts you back at square one.
Something like a light sail would work better (over long distances the lower thrust is offset by the lack of fuel requirements), but that's still more in the realm of science fiction. Nuclear drive technology could also fill the gap, but the political constraints involved in putting anything fission based in orbit are huge, and we won't have fusion for decades at least (longer, if you factor in the need for miniaturization).
Ah, ok. I misunderstood your post - I thought you were reffering to my standing on a soapbox and denouncing JT's soapbox as ironic. My bad.
Really? I coulda swore he was communicating out of the other end... :-)
Bah, where did I ever claim that I wasn't preaching?
I can call Jack's soapbox stance irrational, ill concieved, idiotic and generally worthless from my own soapbox. It's not the soapbox I'm attacking after all, it's the moron who's climbed atop it (metaphorically speaking).
I'd much rather play this JT themed game:1 012
http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=2005
The problem is the people who take him seriously and agree with him. Sometimes ignoring the opposition isn't the solution - you must speak out and denounce them.
With Jack, ignoring him will merely be taken as a sign that you either cannot counter his flimsy arguements, or else that you agree with him. He may be the worlds biggest troll, but he's considered credible by politicians and the media, and that makes him more dangerous than most crackpots.
Not that I agree with ole' Jackass, but how does that make things different? To devils advocate for a moment, people like JT are the ones who blame things like the Columbine shootings on video games, and that was related to bullying (in that the perpetrators were themselves bullied and perceived their actions to be revenge).
In Thompsons warped view of the world, games make children violent. This isn't a particularly rational viewpoint, but his actions here are consistant with it. What does he care that the game doesn't condone bullying? It's a Rockstar game (which he hates), and it's violent (which gives him a chance to get up on his soapbox and preach).
On a more general level, this is an area where I'd say legal reform is needed, specifically to favour the smaller party. We have a heavy bias in criminal law favouring the defendant, to offset the advantages the government has over individual citizens.
Why not apply similar rules to civil cases where a corporation is pursuing legal action against an individual? Currently we have far to many cases where the recipient of a RIAA type lawsuit has no viable option but to settle out of court; this essentially means they pay regardless of their guilt or innocence.
Note that this is a criticism of civil law more generally, rather than the RIAA specifically. However, when they exploit the letter of the law in order to strong arm people into settlements, I think there is a problem. If the letter of the law can be abused in such a manner, then the law is itself in need of change.
Duely noted. My point however was that perpetual delaying tactics are an abuse of the court system.
Nah, that would be "12 year old boys and dead careers". :-)
I think his point was that telling people to boycott them doesn't work if they in turn shift any blame for loss of sales to piracy. How do you send them a message that the crap they're pulling won't be tolerated by consumers when they in turn are going to spin that message as justification for the very behaviour you boycotted them for?
I'd probably be fine with a lawsuit leveled against commercial infingers (ie, people selling material they don't own the copryright for). Likewise, small suits for non-commercial infringement I could support (by small, we're talking at most the commercial value for the material, eg 10-20 dollars per CDs worth of music, or per movie), if they were carefully executed and if the defendant was able to actual stand up for themselves in court.
What I, and other people, can't stand is the use of legal brute force against people who can't realistically fight back. Following the letter of the law with the intent of ruining someone in a civil suit which they cannot afford to defend themselves against isn't "protecting their copyright", it's mafia style intimidation.
Software company suing another software company for breach of copyright on their code? I'm fine with it, as long as the suit doesn't abuse the court system (think SCO and their delay tactics as an example of such abuse). Record company launching a small suit against a major uploader (instead of massive suits against everyone)? I would at least be on the fence, and acknowledge their rights.
Part of the problem of course is that the way the law is set up, the corporations have the upper hand. They can sue for the maximum possible amount per infringement, and they can drag out court cases longer than any individual could afford, forcing an out of court settlement. Plus, they aren't held to a high standard of evidence when it comes to bringing the case before a court.
For the record, I don't pirate. However, at this stage I've completely stopped buying RIAA label music, since I'll be damned if my money is going to pay their bloodsucking lawyers.
Natural state in this context means the state that evolution prepared us for. We didn't evolve brains in order to post witty comebacks on slashdot, we evolved them to survive as hunter gatherers. Tool making functioned as a way to kill food, not play with computers.
The normal state of people living in an industrial society has zero bearing on the conditions we evolved under. Evolution takes millenia, while technological advances take decades, if that. The life we evolved for is ancient history, yet our natural instincts are still geared for it (try applying your fight or flight reflex the next time you get a speeding ticket).
My primary point was that what was natural from an evolutionary perspective has no bearing on the modern human world. If we equate "unnatural" with "wrong", then aren't we condeming ourselves? I don't think so, but the GP seemed to, hence my arguement.
I mention this because you seem to have taken some of my post out of context. That being said...
Unnatural in this context was taken to mean "no longer governed by evolution". Natural selection gave us intelligence, but how we use that intelligence has very little bearing on what its original function was.
You could argue that we evolved as toolmakers and social animals, and that therefor anything arising out of technology or society is inherently natural to human beings. I'd rather not get into this however, as I've had that debate before and find it too easy to get bogged down in semantics. In the context of my post, I was using "natural" in the same manner as the person I replied to.
Since we're debating the intervention of humans into the survival of another species (tasmanian devils), that "arbitrary cultural/ethical viewpoint" is crucial. I hardly think you can somehow seperate human motivations in this sort of situation from our culture.
If we're debating whether it is right to intervene in the natural extinction of a species, then what we're debating is ethics. Ergo, "wrong" does have a meaning. If we choose to view interfering in natural selection as ethically wrong (as the GP seems to think), then what does that say about our own development, where we've done exactly that to ourselves?
Agreed. And my only point there was that the GP was trying to use evolution as an arguement against presevering them; I do not think that evolution is a factor either for or against.
Do you use evolution as your measure or right or wrong in your own life?
I ask this because most of what I wrote was on either the idea that evolution isn't a system of morals (which we seem to agree on), and that we shouldn't feel obligated to stand aside and allow natural selection to make a species extinct. I don't recall saying we had an obligation to preseve them; I said we could choose to, and should not adopt a non-interference policy.
Yet, to use your own example of pressure change, we can make no statement about the movement of a single molecule of gas. We can only state what the preponderance of gas molecules will do; gas law is accurate in the aggregate.
What I have a problem with is the idea that evolution (or nature) does anything as if governed by intelligence. This is a widespread misconception, based on a sort of anthropomorphicised concept of natural proccesses. There is no more intent to evolution than there is to the movement of molecules in a gas container, yet both proccesses behave predicably. This predicability fools people into thinking there is more going on than probability.
When someone says that a species is not "meant" to survive (as the person I initially replied to did), what they're doing is assuming intent on the part of evolution. Hence my reply disputing this. Perhaps I should have been clearer.
Part of what's unusual about this strain of cancer is mentioned in TFA:
So the cells are unusual, at least when compared to other forms of cancer.
Another thing I find odd is that the dog's immune system doesn't recognize these cells as foreign and attack them; one of the reasons that your own immune system has trouble attacking your own cancer cells is because they're identical to the host's. OTOH, they say the cancer isn't fatal in dogs, so it's quite possible that the immune system does limit it's development.
I dislike the arguement that "nature" has any intent or say in the matter. It's too close to a religious belief for my liking; making the natural world or the proccess of evolution into some planning, thinking deity.
Evolution is non-linear. It's a blind proccess based on probability, not some infallable mechanism for ensuring the correct changes occur. Extinction is not fated, nor does it unerringly take only those species who are unsuited to their environment (look at the major mass extinctions in history as proof of this).
And even when natural selection is responsible, why is that "right"? Evolution has no ethics, it simply is. Moreover, even if we start from the assumption that natural selection is right (or is best not interfered with), how can we seperate it out from every other factor involved in an extinction? Death by evolution is like death from old age; it's not a specific cause, it's a general description of what went wrong.
The death of the dodo or the passanger pigeon can argueably be considered a form of evolution; those species unable to cope with a new predator (man) die off. Yet we restrain ourselves from causing other species to go extinct.
We are ourselves unnatural creatures. The natural state of humans is poor health, early death, superstitious ignorance and starvation. We're hunter-gatherers naturally. Do we view our deviation from evolution as wrong?
And even if the tasmanian devils are dying out purely due to non-human factors, what arguement is there against trying to preserve them?
If you want to argue that the only species we have an obligation to preserve are the ones that our own actions have endangered, then that's fine - you're entitled to your own point of view. However, I don't agree with that line of thinking. The fact that we're probably blameless in the fate of the tasmanian devil doesn't mean we have no cause to preserve them.
I think the problems started when they changed editors. The old guy (Johnny something?) retired, and there were at least two successive replacements that I remember. Bear in mind, this was quite a while ago, so my memory is fuzzy, but it was about ~1-2 years after that that I finally gave up and cancled my subscription. By then, they were well on their way downhill, with smaller and smaller magazines, and less good writing in between the ever increasing number of ads.
I'm not overly surprised it took this long. They were damn good in their prime, and it takes quite a long time for a slow decline to lead to cancelation.
Consider where you'll be getting the materials to build a solar/fuel cell hybrid arraingment.
Water isn't free on the moon; we'd need to ship up any hydrogen and mine any oxygen. Recombining them into water to tap into potential energy and then splitting that water to create more potential energy would require a large standing supply of water that's used for fuel instead of drinking, plus a continious import of new hydrogen (since there will inevitably be losses due to hydrogen escaping the fuel cells and/or fuel tanks - hydrogen leaks out of just about anything, while water does not).
Add to that the fact that the (water + power) -> h2 + o -> power + water cycles are really quite wasteful (ie, the losses that manifest as heat are relatively high), and you've got a problem.
As to the radioisotope generator solution, it's a good idea, but doesn't get around the need to send up radioactives, which will inevitably create a PR stink. Remember that those generators put out a lot of power over their life time, but aren't as good as a real nuke plant for power relative to mass. Since the mass of the materials we ship up is a huge consideration for launch costs, and a small nuclear reactor probably is the best bet.
Alternatively, we could make our hypothetical moonbase mobile, and have it stay ahead of the sunset. That posses a bunch of other problems though, and would probably be more trouble than it's worth.
Just pray they don't start spawning any new processes. You wouldn't beleive how much resources they use, and they're notoriously difficult to get rid of - some take 18 years or more!
Plus, the box they get rooted on loses some of its performance...
The Microsoft version is larger, but there have been complaints about the power adapter and USB port getting in the way, and not being adequatly waterproofed. The Sony ones seem to have problems with DRM screwing the user (and not in the good way)...
Well, first off, the reason I drew the ocean comparison is the idea of contamination. Urine isn't just gross, it's also toxic, at least to animals like us. However, while nobody would want to get it in their drinking water (fetishists nonwithstanding), nobody would seriously think that pissing in the ocean is going to hurt anybody. It's not that urea is harmless; it's that in a large enough body of water, it becomes irrelevant.
Now as to the effect of dropping waste into the sun, consider both it's size and age. Radioactives are not that uncommon in space, and the sun is an awfully large target. Over 4 billion years, how much uranium do you suppose it's swept up? Hell, during the earlier days of the solar system, it's likely that entire planetary masses fell into the star. These things happen when a system forms. If a "stupid sci-fi apocolypse" scenario was going to happen, it would have done so already.
It's similar to the arguement that particle colliders could create black holes. Given that the same type of reactions occur naturally in the upper atmosphere as they do in a collider, we'd expect miniature black holes to form repeatedly over billions of years. The fact that none have destroyed the planet yet is strong evidence that it won't happen - and our current theories surrounding Hawking radiation says it can't happen anyways.
Remember that all the damage mankind has done to our home throughout history (pre and post industrial) has been climatic or ecological. These systems are delicate and respond strongly to even fairly minor human input, such as importing species into an evironment that they aren't native to. It's also worth remembering that climate change and mass extinctions have happened before; these kinds of destruction did not begin with human civilization, we've merely done more damage in a shorter time frame. In other words, we're effecienty destructive, but the type of damage we've caused isn't novel.
Stuff like igniting the atmosphere and other doomsday scenarios capture our imagination, but are massively implausable. Nuclear weapons are merely the most powerful weapon made to date; far more powerful explosions have occured in the past due to asteroidal collisions. The fear was unfounded then, but was taken seriously nonetheless.
We've seen the amount of damage we can do to the biosphere, and thereby overestimate just how much harm we can do to other pre-existing systems.
If a doomsday scenario can happen naturally, then I will worry about it happening accidentally due to human error (a good example would be anti-biotic resistant bacteria, or global warming). If it can happen due to human malice, then I will likewise worry (nuclear war comes to mind). If it can't happen accidentally, or should already have happened without our help, then I wouldn't worry about it.
By your logic, I should never, ever, even consider taking a piss into a water supply that might be drunk by another person.
:-)
Yes, I'm being facetious as well.
But the comparison is valid. The total mass of the sun is many orders of magnitude greater than the earth, while the total mass of all the nuclear waste we've ever produced and ever will produce is likewise orders of magnitude smaller than the mass of the earth. We could dump every single gram of uranium in the earth's crust into the sun and it would make zero difference; solar fusion would continue as it always has. Do you seriously think that a body four and a half billion years old and 300,000 times the size of the earth hasn't swallowed up far worse garbage?
Dumping that waste into the sun really, literally, is equivalent to pissing in the ocean. The amount of urine in your bladder compared to the water in the ocean and the amount of terrestrial uranium compared with the amount of hydrogen in the sun both represent such an enormous difference in quantity that assuming we could alter the sun's composition by dumping even a planetful of waste into it is directly equivalent to assuming a man pissing in the ocean could contaminate it.
This isn't a matter of hypothetical or cutting edge physics. The composition, mass and driving mechanisms of the sun are well understood and have been for donkey's years.
Look, I realize that you're asking questions in the name of caution, so I won't flame you (pun intended). But you have to understand, the science involved in this isn't difficult. Astronomical objects are really really big, and far beyond the ability of modern humans to affect.
We can't even appreaciable affect the planet earth itself; all we've done so far has been to screw around with the biosphere (which is far more delicate). Organisms are fragile, and networks of fragile things break easily; planets are durable, and stars even more so. The fact that we've screwed things up on earth in the course of our history does not mean that we somehow have the power to screw up astronomical objects, even inadvertantly.
And if we could even slightly affect an object the size of our star, why on earth would we need to worry about bloody fission? Seriously, we're tiny, it's huge - if we could even affect it accidentally, we'd have the kind of power at our disposal to make nuclear waste utterly irrelevant.
Actually, if the GP is correct and they are increasing the radiation output in proportion to the reduction in the half life, what's to stop us from harnessing that output as power? The major reason we can't use many forms of nuclear waste as a power source is the difficulty in converting low levels of radiation into usable power; fast fissioning material on the other hand is perfectly usable as a fuel source.
Of course, the temperature of the storage device poses a major problem (if we have to supercool it, then harnessing the radiation as a heat source is right out). Assuming we can't do this at a higher temperature, and I don't understand the article well enough to make a guess here, then we'd have to find a way to convert the energy output of the waste into usable power without heating the storage vessel to the point where the accelerated half life drops back to normal.
I wonder if there is some way to allow the radiation to escape the waste storage vessel and transfer it's energy into something useful...
Yeah, real cute. First you launch a misdirected ad hom, then follow up with a flame to cover up your previous error. You're just trying to mask the fact that attacking someone you agree with makes you look like an ass.
Swallow your pride, admit you made a mistake, and drop it.