except the temperature, pressure and chemistry is closer to the top of mount everest than the center of an erupting volcano.
You are off by an order of magnitude (or more). It's more like the temperature, pressure and chemistry at 100,000 feet (references sited in another post above). Everest is only 1/4 the way there (by altitude), and since atmospheric pressure is a *logarithmic* function of altitude, that makes a bigger difference than you might expect.
I suspect, however, that part of the reason the pressure is so high on Venus is the composition of the atmosphere. We already have organisms that survive in extremely hot, acidic, high-pressure environments on the earth, so it's not impossible to find an organism that could survive in Venus' atmosphere. If we can find such an organism that ingest the heavy molecules in Venus' atmosphere and excrete less dense molecules like O2, then wouldn't the pressure of the atmosphere on the surface of Venus decrease? Assuming, of course, that the heavy, dense molecules that currently make up the atmosphere aren't replaced at a rate greater than they are being processed into something more suitable for human life, that is.
I'm with you re: Venus vs. Mars for terraforming. In addition to all the points you raised, the gravity of Venus is about 90% that of earth (according to http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/Projects/BrowseTheSolarSystem/venus.html). Mars' gravity is approximately 1/3 that of earth. This is important because less gravity == less atmospheric pressure on the surface of the planet. Consequently, the density of the Martian atmosphere is 1% that of earth. That's really freaking thin, even if you are trying to breathe pure oxygen. This site shows that the density at 100,000 feet is roughly 1% that of sea level at earth, and from what I remember reading as a kid who thought the SR-71 was just the coolest airplane ever, pilots above 60,000 feet had to wear pressure suits because a simple oxygen mask couldn't provide enough pressure to sustain consciousness at those atmospheric pressures.
In other words, Total Recall notwithstanding, humans will not ever be able to breathe the atmosphere unaided on a terraformed Mars without some radical genetic engineering.
I do, too. I was sitting in my high school history class, and the teacher rolled in a TV so we could watch the broadcast. Come to think of it, this was probably one of the most important lessons I learned in school: our technology is impressive, but not infallible.
A well designed part is worthless if the heat from the tools changes the metal properties at the joints.
Annealing and heat treating?
I don't know, and neither do you. That's why it's a breakthrough.
No, that's why neither you, I, nor oldhack are metallurgists. "I don't know and neither do you" is like two chemists agreeing that a bubble sort is a breakthrough because neither one of them know how to write computer code. Yes, it's a breakthrough because they found a way to do it better, with a corresponding improvement in the properties of the final product. However, I took oldhack's post to mean, "what was the breakthrough that allowed them to achieve greater uniformity?", not "what's so groundbreaking about better uniformity?"
That's the problem with having Gig-E wiring in the head, but only a 56K connection to the fingertips. Sometimes a zero or two gets dropped in the transmission, especially when you aren't paying complete attention to what you are typing because you are doing something else at the same time;)
In any case, I would stay say one in a thousand isn't exactly an edge case, particularly in light of the fact that there are plenty of other, more populous parts of the country that get as cold -- if not colder -- than much of Alaska (for example, Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota).
Tried it again from a Windows Virtual Machine, and got..."Within our dataset of about ten thousand visitors, only one in 154 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours."
Go figure...Mozilla on WinXP is more anonymous than Mozilla on Gentoo or Ubuntu and more anonymous than Safari on Mac;)
They sometimes do in Fairbanks (where -40F is not uncommon) but not in Anchorage. I've managed to hold a couple of Unix/Linux jobs here, so they exist...but they aren't as common as Windows/Cisco jobs, unfortunately.
I suspect neither the Tappet Bros. nor Consumer Reports have ever gotten into a car when it was so cold that you can't hardly push the clutch pedal to the floor because the fluid is as thick as molasses. I have, and when it's that cold where I live, I let the car run for a little while until it warms up.
Their advice may be good in some parts of the country, but there will always be exceptions.
You do realize that 2-cycle engines have absolutely no bearing on this conversation, because in a 2-cycle engine, the oil is mixed directly into the fuel, right?
Snowfall is not necessarily correlated to how likely a window is to fog. I've owned five cars (multiple makes and models) since I moved to Alaska; my wife has owned another three since I met her. In every one of these cars and under the right conditions, the windows fog up and make it difficult -- if not impossible -- to see outside, unless the car warms up for a few minutes.
Anyway, you yourself are admitting you let the car warm up and the windows defrost before you drive off: "...I brush it off and in the 2 minutes it takes..."
It's a lot better for your car than driving down the road completely blind because your window fogged up as soon as your (presumably) warm body sat in the driver's seat. When it's -10F outside, it doesn't take much heat and moisture for the window to become completely opaque.
Thanks for the advice, but I'll continue to warm my car before I drive off, thanks.
I had a college speech professor who was Catholic...and pro-choice. Considering the Vatican's views on birth control, I thought her views on abortion were, perhaps, a little unusual. Point being, just because someone says they identify with a particular group (Roman Catholic, for example) does not necessarily mean they accept all of the traditional, orthodox views of that group.
I always loved the "...contact your system administrator" quote when the troubleshooter reached the end of its rope. I *AM* the @#$%!!!! system administrator!!!
Catholicism != Christianity for all instances of Christianity. (There may very well be other branches of Christianity that embrace transubstantiation as well, but Catholicism is the only one I know of, off the top of my head.)
While most branches of Christianity do, in fact, share a lot of common beliefs with Catholicism, it is every bit as fallacious to claim that Christianity IS Catholicism as it is to suggest that all numbers are integers, and for the exact same reason -- Catholicism is a SUBSET of Christianity, just as integers are a subset of numbers.
We just turned up a Windows terminal server, and after managing Linux servers for so long, I got completely fed up with all the hoops I had to jump through to get the CALs configured for the term server. Even then, I didn't get it right, and had to fix it after the 120 day temporary license stopped working. I'm sure it gets easier with experience, but for me, it was just another reason to avoid Microsoft as much as possible.
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except the temperature, pressure and chemistry is closer to the top of mount everest than the center of an erupting volcano.
You are off by an order of magnitude (or more). It's more like the temperature, pressure and chemistry at 100,000 feet (references sited in another post above). Everest is only 1/4 the way there (by altitude), and since atmospheric pressure is a *logarithmic* function of altitude, that makes a bigger difference than you might expect.
I suspect, however, that part of the reason the pressure is so high on Venus is the composition of the atmosphere. We already have organisms that survive in extremely hot, acidic, high-pressure environments on the earth, so it's not impossible to find an organism that could survive in Venus' atmosphere. If we can find such an organism that ingest the heavy molecules in Venus' atmosphere and excrete less dense molecules like O2, then wouldn't the pressure of the atmosphere on the surface of Venus decrease? Assuming, of course, that the heavy, dense molecules that currently make up the atmosphere aren't replaced at a rate greater than they are being processed into something more suitable for human life, that is.
I'm with you re: Venus vs. Mars for terraforming. In addition to all the points you raised, the gravity of Venus is about 90% that of earth (according to http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/Projects/BrowseTheSolarSystem/venus.html). Mars' gravity is approximately 1/3 that of earth. This is important because less gravity == less atmospheric pressure on the surface of the planet. Consequently, the density of the Martian atmosphere is 1% that of earth. That's really freaking thin, even if you are trying to breathe pure oxygen. This site shows that the density at 100,000 feet is roughly 1% that of sea level at earth, and from what I remember reading as a kid who thought the SR-71 was just the coolest airplane ever, pilots above 60,000 feet had to wear pressure suits because a simple oxygen mask couldn't provide enough pressure to sustain consciousness at those atmospheric pressures.
In other words, Total Recall notwithstanding, humans will not ever be able to breathe the atmosphere unaided on a terraformed Mars without some radical genetic engineering.
Who modded this flamebait? I actually thought it was kind of funny...
Still remember exactly where I was standing.
I do, too. I was sitting in my high school history class, and the teacher rolled in a TV so we could watch the broadcast. Come to think of it, this was probably one of the most important lessons I learned in school: our technology is impressive, but not infallible.
A well designed part is worthless if the heat from the tools changes the metal properties at the joints.
Annealing and heat treating?
I don't know, and neither do you. That's why it's a breakthrough.
No, that's why neither you, I, nor oldhack are metallurgists. "I don't know and neither do you" is like two chemists agreeing that a bubble sort is a breakthrough because neither one of them know how to write computer code. Yes, it's a breakthrough because they found a way to do it better, with a corresponding improvement in the properties of the final product. However, I took oldhack's post to mean, "what was the breakthrough that allowed them to achieve greater uniformity?", not "what's so groundbreaking about better uniformity?"
YIKES!!!
American TV is a step UP from German TV?!?!?!
Tell you what...if 1337 is too "five years ago" for you, feel free to donate the reward to me if you win it ;)
That's significantly less than I'd assumed.
Why yes, yes it is.
;)
That's the problem with having Gig-E wiring in the head, but only a 56K connection to the fingertips. Sometimes a zero or two gets dropped in the transmission, especially when you aren't paying complete attention to what you are typing because you are doing something else at the same time
In any case, I would stay say one in a thousand isn't exactly an edge case, particularly in light of the fact that there are plenty of other, more populous parts of the country that get as cold -- if not colder -- than much of Alaska (for example, Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota).
Tried it again from a Windows Virtual Machine, and got..."Within our dataset of about ten thousand visitors, only one in 154 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours."
;)
Go figure...Mozilla on WinXP is more anonymous than Mozilla on Gentoo or Ubuntu and more anonymous than Safari on Mac
My Gentoo box: "Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 12,564 tested so far."
;)
My Ubuntu box: "Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 13,730 tested so far."
My Mac: "Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 13,337 tested so far."
I didn't realize I was so unusual
Yeah, I was in a hurry and left out a zero...or two. Sigh.
They sometimes do in Fairbanks (where -40F is not uncommon) but not in Anchorage. I've managed to hold a couple of Unix/Linux jobs here, so they exist...but they aren't as common as Windows/Cisco jobs, unfortunately.
Anchorage, Alaska, where at least once a year, it hits -20F, and sometimes gets as low as -30F ;)
I suspect neither the Tappet Bros. nor Consumer Reports have ever gotten into a car when it was so cold that you can't hardly push the clutch pedal to the floor because the fluid is as thick as molasses. I have, and when it's that cold where I live, I let the car run for a little while until it warms up.
Their advice may be good in some parts of the country, but there will always be exceptions.
You do realize that 2-cycle engines have absolutely no bearing on this conversation, because in a 2-cycle engine, the oil is mixed directly into the fuel, right?
Snowfall is not necessarily correlated to how likely a window is to fog. I've owned five cars (multiple makes and models) since I moved to Alaska; my wife has owned another three since I met her. In every one of these cars and under the right conditions, the windows fog up and make it difficult -- if not impossible -- to see outside, unless the car warms up for a few minutes.
Anyway, you yourself are admitting you let the car warm up and the windows defrost before you drive off: "...I brush it off and in the 2 minutes it takes..."
There's 415,000 "edge cases" where I live...that's about 1/10th of the population of the U.S.
...MORON. Good grief, what are you? 18? 19?
Pot...kettle...black?
It's a lot better for your car than driving down the road completely blind because your window fogged up as soon as your (presumably) warm body sat in the driver's seat. When it's -10F outside, it doesn't take much heat and moisture for the window to become completely opaque.
Thanks for the advice, but I'll continue to warm my car before I drive off, thanks.
I had a college speech professor who was Catholic...and pro-choice. Considering the Vatican's views on birth control, I thought her views on abortion were, perhaps, a little unusual. Point being, just because someone says they identify with a particular group (Roman Catholic, for example) does not necessarily mean they accept all of the traditional, orthodox views of that group.
Point taken. I really don't know much about what Eastern Orthodox believes.
I always loved the "...contact your system administrator" quote when the troubleshooter reached the end of its rope. I *AM* the @#$%!!!! system administrator!!!
Catholicism != Christianity for all instances of Christianity. (There may very well be other branches of Christianity that embrace transubstantiation as well, but Catholicism is the only one I know of, off the top of my head.)
While most branches of Christianity do, in fact, share a lot of common beliefs with Catholicism, it is every bit as fallacious to claim that Christianity IS Catholicism as it is to suggest that all numbers are integers, and for the exact same reason -- Catholicism is a SUBSET of Christianity, just as integers are a subset of numbers.
Personally, I am waiting for the Nexus Six. I hear they are killer!
We just turned up a Windows terminal server, and after managing Linux servers for so long, I got completely fed up with all the hoops I had to jump through to get the CALs configured for the term server. Even then, I didn't get it right, and had to fix it after the 120 day temporary license stopped working. I'm sure it gets easier with experience, but for me, it was just another reason to avoid Microsoft as much as possible.