What makes us so superior that we can make genocidal decisions for others in the distance future? Maybe, just maybe, they have to make their own decisions and suffer their own consequences. They might even like each other.
Sqreater
I've come to believe that form is function and for there to exist other intelligent life in the universe there has to be another Earth, with the exact same environment, and the intelligent species would have to have had the exact same events-path through its history. Not likely. No intelligent dinosaurs, or frogs, or fish, or lizards or whatever naive people like Hawkings are thinking. I don't believe the existence of other intelligent life in the universe depends much on an awe for the numbers. Primitive life is probably widespread however. And THAT is the true problem. It is the bacteria that we have to be afraid of arriving here and using our resources, not intelligent life in large space ships. Or perhaps some interplanetary kudzu arriving or being brought back by us to spread over the world. But even bacteria probably need a somewhat Earth-like path. Extremophiles, in my humble opinion, probably evolved in better circumstances and adapted to the extreme environments rather than evolving in the extreme environments. We ARE alone. The rest is science fiction.
Sqreater
Finally we have someone getting it. Thanks Tim Garrett. Let me point out something that follows naturally: intelligence in a species is pathological. It is intelligence that allows us to create the economies and the natural distortions that result, distortions that must inevitably lead to the collapse of the species. For this reason I don't believe there are intelligent species out there that we will be contacting. Nor will we be around long enough to create all the wonderful scifi futures we seem to take for granted.
Intelligence, as we commonly think of it, is a combination of ability and one's particularly accented variation of the Human Motivation Array. We build and execute from birth a behaviorspace to satisfy our HMA. You may have an Einsteinian IQ, but if you have the HMA of a comedian, you are not going to build a behaviorspace that includes study and thought about physics. You are not going to spend your life pursuing one particular area of physics. Remember, Einstein never accepted Quantum Mechanics. He had the IQ. He just did not have the HMA to do so. The IQ + HMA combination of Newton is amazing.
Legal gambling entities make money off the mentally ill in my opinion. And as for this "card counting fraud" technology, anyone on a winning streak will look like he is card counting. With this computer technology in place they will have an excuse to end any hot streak. "The computer says you are card counting!" Who questions a computer result today? Who can? And when did using your own mind and abilities come to constitute theft and fraud?? It is just bizarre and points out that the whole casino thing is government sanctioned, logically bankrupt, legalized theft from people with problems.
Sqreater
I have T-Moble and it was my intention to cancel my service and go to AT&T with the first charge for a paper bill. I don't bother complaining about such things. Time and energy are limited. I just act. Same with credit cards. No man is an island and the complainers are just the tip of the iceberg.
Sqreater
Sqreater's law says that a thing cannot make an artifact as complex as itself. That would be "bootstrapping" and is not allowed by this universe any more than it allows you to lift yourself by your physical bootstraps. Our level of complexity is an asymptotic goal that can only be reached by an ever increasing application of effort and resources, like the speed of light. We don't have, and never will have, an infinite amount of resources. Therefore, we never will be able to replicate our own intelligence. And those who project complete health and very long life forget entropy. It's also the law.
I offer these comments in the spirit of participating in a robust public discussion about a current issue of public concern: privacy before goverment secrecy. Don't blame me for being an American. Further, no insight is based on inside information, of which I have none.
NSA might be (probably is) archiving the outside of every piece of mail being processed through the United States Postal Service today. This would NOT be done by the USPS, which legitimately uses the info to route mail, then discards it normally. The data would be siphoned off and stored elsewhere in my opinion. The only place with the desire and the capacity would be the NSA. This may be legal under current law as law enforcement already can record the cover of your mail. But I'm not a lawyer. Imagine, storing two-hundred billion images a year in grayscale! Imagine if they could data mine that massive database! It could be worth billions to commercial interests nationwide. Imagine if they could kick in your door in the middle of the night because of a pattern in your received mail.
"The arbitrated result is sent back to DIOSS 1 . If the image was read successfully and a ZIP+4 delivery point identified, DIOSS 1 sends a signal to image server 8 instructing it to discard or archive the grayscale image saved for that mail piece. Information obtained from the image data, typically a header including destination information and a copy of the binary image data, is transmitted to a storage and transfer processor (STP) 4 . In the majority of cases, image data for mail pieces will be resolved and a sorting decision made at DIOSS 1 , and a POSTNET bar code label will be printed on the mail piece in DIOSS 1 in real time.
The ability to archive the grayscale image may become increasingly important for forensic reasons in the event of a bio-terrorist attack. According to a further aspect of the invention, all of the sorter machines used by the USPS forward their archived image data (binary, grayscale/color, or both) to a central database which stores the image for a period of time, along with identifying information (destination address or ID number), the date and time of processing, and the identity and location of the sorting machine that handled the mail piece. This data, extremely large in volume, would be saved for a period of time before being discarded, anywhere from several days, a month, or a year or more depending on storage capacity available. Law enforcement officials working on a case wherein contaminated letters were sent through the mail could thereby determine accurately where the mail piece was processed so that decontamination can be carried out and any patterns of mailing used by the perpetrator can be analyzed.(my emphasis)
...killed it. A relationship based, talky, meditative series that was deliberately constructed it seems NOT to be attractive to male psychology. The latest Star Trek movie is a success because it appeals to male motivational and psychological structures. Let the male hero be the hero, not an angst-filled, reluctant non-hero dominated by females. No female magic/future-reading/esp crap.
And a point about fear - don't make the enemy local, familiar, and understood. See that movie with Dennis Weaver where he is chased by an anonymous truck driver. We never see him. We never really know his motivation. We haven't met his wife and kids and sympathized with him over his Vietnam experiences etc etc etc. Star Trek made human the Borg and destroyed it as the unknown, outside menace. The machines-made-local and human in Chronicles made it possible for relationships in the story line (maybe even sex) and explaination, but that just muddies the menace. Black and white. They are the unredeemable enemy and we are the good guys. They aren't human and never will be -- we are. Galactica did the same thing. The enemy is the enemy. You don't make some of them friends. You don't make them indistinguishable from humans. You cut the balls off the menace when you do that, and you doom your scifi series.
I was a Telecommunications Specialist in the military Autodin System (Automatic Digital Network) in the DCS from 1975 until 1979. I was a network troubleshooter - fault isolation and correction. This was a worldwide packet switching system for military communications and supported the NSA need to funnel intercept data back to the US from Menwith Hill and other bases. I could be wrong, but something seems wrong with the given timeline as there was a full-blown worldwide system in 1975 when I entered the service. I had approximately 150 circuits to bases that I was responsible for keeping up - modems, crypto gear, tropospheric scatter and microwave links carried our data (had HF radio too). Was there enough time to set that up? Was there a parallel development that is not showing up in technical history? Just a thought. We used a Philco-Ford, then Aeroneutronics Ford computer for routing. We had two Procs that swapped on error, and drum memory. I viewed the circuits by dialing them up on an "MTC" Monitor and Test Console, to watch the bit traffice on a dual trace oscilliscope. Things have changed so dramatically that I can go onto Google Earth to view my old base and note the changes that have taken place in the interim. I thought the advent of advanced technology would have caused my small base to shut, but that's not the case. It has been security hardened and 4 new large satellite dishes added.
...they don't PC it up by female-izing it for a fanciful scifi demographic. That is death to any scifi story. Don't title it "The Forever Romance, And By-The-Way, There Is a War In Here Somewhere--But Don't Worry, The Lead Soldier Is A Woman." Tell the story, and they will come.
"Alternative energy" has as much connection to reality as "gay sex" does. But let's spend a few more decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to prove the obvious to ourselves.
Sqreater
The CEO gets the biggest office and the more advanced toys. It is not about reality; it is about perception. The center of focus is the CAPTAIN of the Enterprise, not the doctor.
They just don't get it anymore. But I'll say it anyway. Science fiction and superhero comics are about satisfying male adolescent psychology. Stray from that with ass-kicking females wielding blasters and you will crash and burn. No female captains. No ass kicking female aliens. Male to male conflict. Have a strong, even arrogant male lead who is the ONE WHO IS QUICKER, SMARTER, almost all the time. It is NOT a group effort. It is about a superior male captain. Look to the original Kirk. Note that Spiderman succeeded and made a LOT of money. Unsure adolescent male becomes confident, capable, and powerful when he puts on the spiderman personality. And he saves the FEMALE....who does not kick his butt anywhere in the movies. Nor does she somehow acquire powers of her own to satisfy modern Political Correctness. As for a Vulcan, the Vulcan MUST be a blend of Vulcan and Human. It is not optional. The Vulcan exists entirely to explore human psychological and social truths. By itself, a Vulcan is a piece of cardboard.
One more point of many more I could make. Science fiction has taken the depressing direction of the failure of humanity. Star Trek I was about the success of mankind. Get back to that. Apparently "serious" series makers did not feel very adult making a story in which mankind succeeds. Ok, do it again. Get them lost. Get them destroyed. Get them wandering around. Make the characters "real" by making them mean, nasty, slutty, jerks. Make them inferior and struggling. Have the female characters engage in comments about how stupid, inferior, ridiculous, juvenile male motivations and behavior are. Fail as a series.
Oh, and don't engage in the ridiculous, like making a holographic doctor or having an alien doctor who knows more about human medicine than humans. Jeesh, who came up with that grating piece of nonsense? Someone making a job for a friend? And the sick bay should not be bigger and more technologically advanced than the bridge. etc etc etc.
The future will be more of the same, only different. Remember that.
Sounds like they are ripe for a Communist revolution. (That's sarcasm by the way, just in case you are Big Brother and recording all this.) Unregulated Capitalism is as evil as unregulated Finance. Unregulated anything is evil.
Sqreater
All the relevant scientists have to do is promise a cure for cancer or AIDS and at least the Congress of the United States will fall all over itself to shovel billions into the project. Amoral science is rapidly becoming out-of-control immoral science. They want to do any freak thing they can think up -- and they demand the public pay for it. I'm growing sick of the science news. I'm growing sick of them all. I would like to see some scientists stand up and say there are hard limits somewhere. Remember Nazi "scientists" studied the effects of cold and war wounds on concentration camp victims.
"Is there some other scheme that would deliver customers the kind of QOS and value they seek?"
What makes you think that if they don't give what they promise now there is some other kind of arrangement where they won't won't give what they promise?
I became interested in the design of nuclear weapons at the time I read "The Curve of Binding Energy"
around 1980 or so I think. It may have been in the 70s some time. Anyway, I always find these conversations interesting. Mostly people just pass around pictures and information. But there are no secrets in physics and engineering and you are as likely to determine the true designs as anyone if you put in the effort. For instance. Someone mentioned the D-T tube being used to initiate nuclear explosions now. Probably not. At least not as I've seen it in diagrams. The D-T tube is a commercial source of neutrons and would be destroyed by the explosives before the core was ready for a pulse of neutrons. More likely deuterium and tritium is pumped into the core from the bomber at the time the device is armed. The detonation of the explosives would compress and heat the d-t and drive it to fusion. The resulting neutrons would initiate the nuclear reaction and give high efficiency due to the number of neutron chains produced.
It may be possible that there is no explosive compression at all now and that a D-T tube is actually the only thing needed to push a modern small design into criticality, but that needs more thought. Keep in mind there are fissionable isotopes with fission cross sections much higher than either uranium or plutonium and devices made from them would be much smaller than either a uranium or plutonium device. Perhaps one of these isotopes, sitting on the edge of criticality, could be pushed over with a blast of neutrons, making unnecessary the bulk and complexity of the old devices. Anyway, I ran across a comment by Hans Bethe a long time ago in which he basically said that they made complicated designs in those days. To me that means they made overly complicated designs and that the devices they made probably worked despite those designs and not so much because of them. I definitely believe that to be the case with regard to the Teller design of the Hydrogen bomb.
It is my opinion that in a modern fusion device a directed fission blast induces a high temperature/high pressure shockwave in the fusion fuel, actually raising its temperature to billions of degrees at the expanding shock front, causing the fuel to "burn" or undergo fusion. At these temperature you could use peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as fusion fuel. The "Teller-Ulam" design we see in books is probably too complex and unnecessary. Refer to "The Curve of Binding Energy" for the idea that there are shaped fission explosions and ask yourself why would a nuclear designer know about them and want to turn them to tunneling in mountains. I doubt the idea was created FOR tunneling. More likely it was being adapted TO tunneling into mountains.
Back to fission. Replacing the uranium 238 tamper with a smaller, lighter reflector/neutron multiplier would have decreased the size and weight of the original device and increased it efficiency significantly I believe. More than the tamping of the explosion, the number of neutrons available for fission is important. Besides, beryllium itself is fissionable and there are a lot of these small atoms per unit volume.
Firstly, no one mentions the tone or spirit of the nation. Perceiving that we are now in a new millennium, and recognizing that Congress works in a museum and the President lives in one, as President I'd push new budgets that attempt to reign in the busy-tech spending of the scientific-industrial-complex (aka a trip to Mars) and spend money on updating the architecture of government to more accurately represent our current position as the most powerful democracy that has ever existed. Respect for our own accomplishments is justified and necessary if we are to have the forward looking thinking necessary to solve today's problems.
We are so superior to the Greeks or Romans that I don't know why we still sit in their buildings. That means you Supreme Court. Come down to the people again. You are not British Lords either. Get off that high bench.
Start building monuments to hope and the spirit of democracy and the people again. We seem to only build monuments and memorials to death and destruction now.
As President, I'd try to bring the American people back to an understanding that we must all die sometime, that we are mortal, and that grubbing for the last minute of life at huge, even unlimited medical expense is not right because it will destroy the financial life of the nation, of generations to come. The 77 million or so baby boomers especially must be made to understand that a lifetime of work and sacrifice must be capped by this last sacrifice for the nation. We can never afford all the retirement and medical care we think we are owed. Politicians must stop promising it.
As President, I'd point out strongly that we cannot allow ourselves to accept the calls to perfect protection from terrorism or criminality. No right, no freedom, no individuality can stand before the need for perfect security. We must understand that the price of freedom is not paid just on the battlefields of our nation's wars, but in our daily lives. Some of us will die for it. Some will be injured. That is the way it has to be. A courageous President would say so. He would not push for every right-destroying law or regulation that comes to mind in panic for a few lives. Save a few lives now, strip billions to come of rights and freedoms. It is not good stewardship.
We need a World Military Council so that the major powers can sit together as military people in order to expose themselves to each other's thinking and thus perhaps head off the next, and perhaps final, war. Isolation of military leaders may be fatal. A kind of Military United Nations.
As President I'd push strongly for the incorporation of technology into our political system. It is a great shame on us that we have not advanced our democratic thinking using technology. I think our political ancestors would be ashamed of us. Advance or stagnate. The last word on the philosophy of democracy was not uttered 200 years ago. The people are not a mob. Nothing we've done has shown that we are.
During the current political struggle for the position of President of the United States we hear each candidate trying to make themselves appear an agent for change. I hear nothing new.
Intelligence in a species is pathological. It inevitably leads to the death of the species in short order. There may even be evolutionary, genetic checks on the development of intelligence--in which case, we somehow got off the reservation and went intelligent contrary to those checks--maybe even a unique event in this universe. End of Fermi Paradox.
Slashdot Mirror
SHOW ME THE ALIEN!
Sure.
What makes us so superior that we can make genocidal decisions for others in the distance future? Maybe, just maybe, they have to make their own decisions and suffer their own consequences. They might even like each other.
Sqreater
I've come to believe that form is function and for there to exist other intelligent life in the universe there has to be another Earth, with the exact same environment, and the intelligent species would have to have had the exact same events-path through its history. Not likely. No intelligent dinosaurs, or frogs, or fish, or lizards or whatever naive people like Hawkings are thinking. I don't believe the existence of other intelligent life in the universe depends much on an awe for the numbers. Primitive life is probably widespread however. And THAT is the true problem. It is the bacteria that we have to be afraid of arriving here and using our resources, not intelligent life in large space ships. Or perhaps some interplanetary kudzu arriving or being brought back by us to spread over the world. But even bacteria probably need a somewhat Earth-like path. Extremophiles, in my humble opinion, probably evolved in better circumstances and adapted to the extreme environments rather than evolving in the extreme environments. We ARE alone. The rest is science fiction.
Sqreater
Finally we have someone getting it. Thanks Tim Garrett. Let me point out something that follows naturally: intelligence in a species is pathological. It is intelligence that allows us to create the economies and the natural distortions that result, distortions that must inevitably lead to the collapse of the species. For this reason I don't believe there are intelligent species out there that we will be contacting. Nor will we be around long enough to create all the wonderful scifi futures we seem to take for granted.
Intelligence, as we commonly think of it, is a combination of ability and one's particularly accented variation of the Human Motivation Array. We build and execute from birth a behaviorspace to satisfy our HMA. You may have an Einsteinian IQ, but if you have the HMA of a comedian, you are not going to build a behaviorspace that includes study and thought about physics. You are not going to spend your life pursuing one particular area of physics. Remember, Einstein never accepted Quantum Mechanics. He had the IQ. He just did not have the HMA to do so. The IQ + HMA combination of Newton is amazing.
Legal gambling entities make money off the mentally ill in my opinion. And as for this "card counting fraud" technology, anyone on a winning streak will look like he is card counting. With this computer technology in place they will have an excuse to end any hot streak. "The computer says you are card counting!" Who questions a computer result today? Who can? And when did using your own mind and abilities come to constitute theft and fraud?? It is just bizarre and points out that the whole casino thing is government sanctioned, logically bankrupt, legalized theft from people with problems. Sqreater
I have T-Moble and it was my intention to cancel my service and go to AT&T with the first charge for a paper bill. I don't bother complaining about such things. Time and energy are limited. I just act. Same with credit cards. No man is an island and the complainers are just the tip of the iceberg. Sqreater
It'll drive people crazy. Driving is a controlled crash. Sqreater
Sqreater's law says that a thing cannot make an artifact as complex as itself. That would be "bootstrapping" and is not allowed by this universe any more than it allows you to lift yourself by your physical bootstraps. Our level of complexity is an asymptotic goal that can only be reached by an ever increasing application of effort and resources, like the speed of light. We don't have, and never will have, an infinite amount of resources. Therefore, we never will be able to replicate our own intelligence. And those who project complete health and very long life forget entropy. It's also the law.
I offer these comments in the spirit of participating in a robust public discussion about a current issue of public concern: privacy before goverment secrecy. Don't blame me for being an American. Further, no insight is based on inside information, of which I have none.
NSA might be (probably is) archiving the outside of every piece of mail being processed through the United States Postal Service today. This would NOT be done by the USPS, which legitimately uses the info to route mail, then discards it normally. The data would be siphoned off and stored elsewhere in my opinion. The only place with the desire and the capacity would be the NSA. This may be legal under current law as law enforcement already can record the cover of your mail. But I'm not a lawyer. Imagine, storing two-hundred billion images a year in grayscale! Imagine if they could data mine that massive database! It could be worth billions to commercial interests nationwide. Imagine if they could kick in your door in the middle of the night because of a pattern in your received mail.
"The arbitrated result is sent back to DIOSS 1 . If the image was read successfully and a ZIP+4 delivery point identified, DIOSS 1 sends a signal to image server 8 instructing it to discard or archive the grayscale image saved for that mail piece. Information obtained from the image data, typically a header including destination information and a copy of the binary image data, is transmitted to a storage and transfer processor (STP) 4 . In the majority of cases, image data for mail pieces will be resolved and a sorting decision made at DIOSS 1 , and a POSTNET bar code label will be printed on the mail piece in DIOSS 1 in real time. The ability to archive the grayscale image may become increasingly important for forensic reasons in the event of a bio-terrorist attack. According to a further aspect of the invention, all of the sorter machines used by the USPS forward their archived image data (binary, grayscale/color, or both) to a central database which stores the image for a period of time, along with identifying information (destination address or ID number), the date and time of processing, and the identity and location of the sorting machine that handled the mail piece. This data, extremely large in volume, would be saved for a period of time before being discarded, anywhere from several days, a month, or a year or more depending on storage capacity available. Law enforcement officials working on a case wherein contaminated letters were sent through the mail could thereby determine accurately where the mail piece was processed so that decontamination can be carried out and any patterns of mailing used by the perpetrator can be analyzed.(my emphasis)
From here: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7145093.html
...killed it. A relationship based, talky, meditative series that was deliberately constructed it seems NOT to be attractive to male psychology. The latest Star Trek movie is a success because it appeals to male motivational and psychological structures. Let the male hero be the hero, not an angst-filled, reluctant non-hero dominated by females. No female magic/future-reading/esp crap.
And a point about fear - don't make the enemy local, familiar, and understood. See that movie with Dennis Weaver where he is chased by an anonymous truck driver. We never see him. We never really know his motivation. We haven't met his wife and kids and sympathized with him over his Vietnam experiences etc etc etc. Star Trek made human the Borg and destroyed it as the unknown, outside menace. The machines-made-local and human in Chronicles made it possible for relationships in the story line (maybe even sex) and explaination, but that just muddies the menace. Black and white. They are the unredeemable enemy and we are the good guys. They aren't human and never will be -- we are. Galactica did the same thing. The enemy is the enemy. You don't make some of them friends. You don't make them indistinguishable from humans. You cut the balls off the menace when you do that, and you doom your scifi series.
I was a Telecommunications Specialist in the military Autodin System (Automatic Digital Network) in the DCS from 1975 until 1979. I was a network troubleshooter - fault isolation and correction. This was a worldwide packet switching system for military communications and supported the NSA need to funnel intercept data back to the US from Menwith Hill and other bases. I could be wrong, but something seems wrong with the given timeline as there was a full-blown worldwide system in 1975 when I entered the service. I had approximately 150 circuits to bases that I was responsible for keeping up - modems, crypto gear, tropospheric scatter and microwave links carried our data (had HF radio too). Was there enough time to set that up? Was there a parallel development that is not showing up in technical history? Just a thought. We used a Philco-Ford, then Aeroneutronics Ford computer for routing. We had two Procs that swapped on error, and drum memory. I viewed the circuits by dialing them up on an "MTC" Monitor and Test Console, to watch the bit traffice on a dual trace oscilliscope. Things have changed so dramatically that I can go onto Google Earth to view my old base and note the changes that have taken place in the interim. I thought the advent of advanced technology would have caused my small base to shut, but that's not the case. It has been security hardened and 4 new large satellite dishes added.
...they don't PC it up by female-izing it for a fanciful scifi demographic. That is death to any scifi story. Don't title it "The Forever Romance, And By-The-Way, There Is a War In Here Somewhere--But Don't Worry, The Lead Soldier Is A Woman."
Tell the story, and they will come.
"Alternative energy" has as much connection to reality as "gay sex" does. But let's spend a few more decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to prove the obvious to ourselves. Sqreater
Sounds like you need a dominatrix. Most guys don't.
The CEO gets the biggest office and the more advanced toys. It is not about reality; it is about perception. The center of focus is the CAPTAIN of the Enterprise, not the doctor.
They just don't get it anymore. But I'll say it anyway. Science fiction and superhero comics are about satisfying male adolescent psychology. Stray from that with ass-kicking females wielding blasters and you will crash and burn. No female captains. No ass kicking female aliens. Male to male conflict. Have a strong, even arrogant male lead who is the ONE WHO IS QUICKER, SMARTER, almost all the time. It is NOT a group effort. It is about a superior male captain. Look to the original Kirk. Note that Spiderman succeeded and made a LOT of money. Unsure adolescent male becomes confident, capable, and powerful when he puts on the spiderman personality. And he saves the FEMALE....who does not kick his butt anywhere in the movies. Nor does she somehow acquire powers of her own to satisfy modern Political Correctness. As for a Vulcan, the Vulcan MUST be a blend of Vulcan and Human. It is not optional. The Vulcan exists entirely to explore human psychological and social truths. By itself, a Vulcan is a piece of cardboard.
One more point of many more I could make. Science fiction has taken the depressing direction of the failure of humanity. Star Trek I was about the success of mankind. Get back to that. Apparently "serious" series makers did not feel very adult making a story in which mankind succeeds. Ok, do it again. Get them lost. Get them destroyed. Get them wandering around. Make the characters "real" by making them mean, nasty, slutty, jerks. Make them inferior and struggling. Have the female characters engage in comments about how stupid, inferior, ridiculous, juvenile male motivations and behavior are. Fail as a series.
Oh, and don't engage in the ridiculous, like making a holographic doctor or having an alien doctor who knows more about human medicine than humans. Jeesh, who came up with that grating piece of nonsense? Someone making a job for a friend? And the sick bay should not be bigger and more technologically advanced than the bridge. etc etc etc.
The future will be more of the same, only different. Remember that.
Sounds like they are ripe for a Communist revolution. (That's sarcasm by the way, just in case you are Big Brother and recording all this.) Unregulated Capitalism is as evil as unregulated Finance. Unregulated anything is evil.
Sqreater
All the relevant scientists have to do is promise a cure for cancer or AIDS and at least the Congress of the United States will fall all over itself to shovel billions into the project. Amoral science is rapidly becoming out-of-control immoral science. They want to do any freak thing they can think up -- and they demand the public pay for it. I'm growing sick of the science news. I'm growing sick of them all. I would like to see some scientists stand up and say there are hard limits somewhere. Remember Nazi "scientists" studied the effects of cold and war wounds on concentration camp victims.
"Is there some other scheme that would deliver customers the kind of QOS and value they seek?" What makes you think that if they don't give what they promise now there is some other kind of arrangement where they won't won't give what they promise?
I became interested in the design of nuclear weapons at the time I read "The Curve of Binding Energy" around 1980 or so I think. It may have been in the 70s some time. Anyway, I always find these conversations interesting. Mostly people just pass around pictures and information. But there are no secrets in physics and engineering and you are as likely to determine the true designs as anyone if you put in the effort. For instance. Someone mentioned the D-T tube being used to initiate nuclear explosions now. Probably not. At least not as I've seen it in diagrams. The D-T tube is a commercial source of neutrons and would be destroyed by the explosives before the core was ready for a pulse of neutrons. More likely deuterium and tritium is pumped into the core from the bomber at the time the device is armed. The detonation of the explosives would compress and heat the d-t and drive it to fusion. The resulting neutrons would initiate the nuclear reaction and give high efficiency due to the number of neutron chains produced.
It may be possible that there is no explosive compression at all now and that a D-T tube is actually the only thing needed to push a modern small design into criticality, but that needs more thought. Keep in mind there are fissionable isotopes with fission cross sections much higher than either uranium or plutonium and devices made from them would be much smaller than either a uranium or plutonium device. Perhaps one of these isotopes, sitting on the edge of criticality, could be pushed over with a blast of neutrons, making unnecessary the bulk and complexity of the old devices. Anyway, I ran across a comment by Hans Bethe a long time ago in which he basically said that they made complicated designs in those days. To me that means they made overly complicated designs and that the devices they made probably worked despite those designs and not so much because of them. I definitely believe that to be the case with regard to the Teller design of the Hydrogen bomb.
It is my opinion that in a modern fusion device a directed fission blast induces a high temperature/high pressure shockwave in the fusion fuel, actually raising its temperature to billions of degrees at the expanding shock front, causing the fuel to "burn" or undergo fusion. At these temperature you could use peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as fusion fuel. The "Teller-Ulam" design we see in books is probably too complex and unnecessary. Refer to "The Curve of Binding Energy" for the idea that there are shaped fission explosions and ask yourself why would a nuclear designer know about them and want to turn them to tunneling in mountains. I doubt the idea was created FOR tunneling. More likely it was being adapted TO tunneling into mountains.
Back to fission. Replacing the uranium 238 tamper with a smaller, lighter reflector/neutron multiplier would have decreased the size and weight of the original device and increased it efficiency significantly I believe. More than the tamping of the explosion, the number of neutrons available for fission is important. Besides, beryllium itself is fissionable and there are a lot of these small atoms per unit volume.
Firstly, no one mentions the tone or spirit of the nation. Perceiving that we are now in a new millennium, and recognizing that Congress works in a museum and the President lives in one, as President I'd push new budgets that attempt to reign in the busy-tech spending of the scientific-industrial-complex (aka a trip to Mars) and spend money on updating the architecture of government to more accurately represent our current position as the most powerful democracy that has ever existed. Respect for our own accomplishments is justified and necessary if we are to have the forward looking thinking necessary to solve today's problems.
We are so superior to the Greeks or Romans that I don't know why we still sit in their buildings. That means you Supreme Court. Come down to the people again. You are not British Lords either. Get off that high bench.
Start building monuments to hope and the spirit of democracy and the people again. We seem to only build monuments and memorials to death and destruction now.
As President, I'd try to bring the American people back to an understanding that we must all die sometime, that we are mortal, and that grubbing for the last minute of life at huge, even unlimited medical expense is not right because it will destroy the financial life of the nation, of generations to come. The 77 million or so baby boomers especially must be made to understand that a lifetime of work and sacrifice must be capped by this last sacrifice for the nation. We can never afford all the retirement and medical care we think we are owed. Politicians must stop promising it.
As President, I'd point out strongly that we cannot allow ourselves to accept the calls to perfect protection from terrorism or criminality. No right, no freedom, no individuality can stand before the need for perfect security. We must understand that the price of freedom is not paid just on the battlefields of our nation's wars, but in our daily lives. Some of us will die for it. Some will be injured. That is the way it has to be. A courageous President would say so. He would not push for every right-destroying law or regulation that comes to mind in panic for a few lives. Save a few lives now, strip billions to come of rights and freedoms. It is not good stewardship.
We need a World Military Council so that the major powers can sit together as military people in order to expose themselves to each other's thinking and thus perhaps head off the next, and perhaps final, war. Isolation of military leaders may be fatal. A kind of Military United Nations.
As President I'd push strongly for the incorporation of technology into our political system. It is a great shame on us that we have not advanced our democratic thinking using technology. I think our political ancestors would be ashamed of us. Advance or stagnate. The last word on the philosophy of democracy was not uttered 200 years ago. The people are not a mob. Nothing we've done has shown that we are.
During the current political struggle for the position of President of the United States we hear each candidate trying to make themselves appear an agent for change. I hear nothing new.
SqreaterI guess we need another aircraft carrier battle group now and a major naval base to protect the "Northwest Passage" from the Russian baddies.
Intelligence in a species is pathological. It inevitably leads to the death of the species in short order. There may even be evolutionary, genetic checks on the development of intelligence--in which case, we somehow got off the reservation and went intelligent contrary to those checks--maybe even a unique event in this universe. End of Fermi Paradox.