I love all these discoveries. I'm forced to admit, however, that astronomy, per se, has never made anyone a dime. If we found evidence of alien life on a planet orbiting Sirius B tomorrow, this would not change, no matter how mind blowing such a discovery would be.
And just extended the Windows 7 shell so it had a "Tablet" mode with some sort of auto-detection, they might have kept the desktop people happy AND the tablet crowd happy - just like the actual users suggested on the Windows forums, again and again and again....
Microsoft, missing the obvious since the 80s.
Next up? Microsoft ignores 3d printing until Linux dominates the field!
The amount of time that intelligent critters who can manipulate tools and create recognizable radio signals for communication is likely to be very brief. In less than a century, data compression and encryption will make almost all of our radio traffic look like static from the outside. The vaguely intelligible bits sent out prior to that are so weak that they'll likely never be received or interpreted. Bottom line? Lack of intelligent radio indicates nothing.
Intelligence != tool using either. Dolphins are a bright lot. They don't make radios. Other forms of intelligence may not even be recognizable to us. intelligent Jovian gasbags may have delightful discussions about mathematics, but we wouldn't even necessarily notice them if we were to send a powered probe into the atmosphere. For that matter, if Earth fungi were brilliant, how would we know? Particularly if they only communicate chemically and their major topic of discussion is the mathematics of weather and soil conditions.
6000 thousand cubic feet of natural gas (tcf) = 1 barrel of oil equivalent (BOE)
All the natural gas on the planet at this time, including fracking, ballparks in at 8092 trillion cubic feet
So energetically 8092 trillion cubic feet/6000 =1,348,666,666,666 barrels of oil. Not bad. Assuming we were to convert with no loss, and that, energetically, we were to use it at the same rate that we use oil (i.e. 30 billion barrels a year energy equivalent) we get:
1,348,666,666,666/30,0... = 44 years supply (approximately). Good news, to be sure.
Of course, the USA only has about 2203 trillion cubic feet, so our supply, if used for transportation and extracted at the same rate as oil would add only about 12 years of supply.
Presumably as oil supplies decrease and net energy from the remaining 1.2 trillion decreases, economics will demand that we shift more of our energy use to natural gas, so extraction and usage rates increase. 44 years might be optimistic for the world. 12 years might be optimistic for the USA. Then there's that annoying conversion loss thing.
So, the unknowns are:
1) How accurate are the USA's energy numbers for natural gas? They've increased a lot lately. They may be overly optimistic, or pessimistic.
2) How much of this do we convert directly to liquid fuels and how much energy loss does this represent?
3) How expensive does oil have to get before this occurs?
4) How long will the transition be from natural gas as industrial fuel to a ubiquitous transportation fuel?
Number 4 is critical. The world's supply chains are dependent on cheap transportation fuel. Retrofitting for natural gas will be expensive and time consuming.
The problem I still see, however, is that, even added to oil, this barely gets us to 2100. Presumably coal will provide some additional buffer, but like oil and gas, it's all about net energy and price. Oil's net energy is likely to render remaining supply useless even as trillions of barrels exist in the hydrocarbon horizon. Does anyone know of an energetic analysis of the world's remaining coal, uranium or thorium?
...of gasoline. Not sure about natural gas, but I'm reasonably sure the energy density is higher than that of a lithium battery. Natural gas vehicles are used widely outside of the USA, and we do have a bit of the stuff. Capitalism, exhibiting its usual bacteria colony behavior, will almost certainly push us in that direction unless there's some sort of breakthrough in battery tech.
Well, back in *my* day, we didn't have any of those fancy, dancy Eye Dee Eees. We soldered together wires to our vacuum tubes from instructions sets carved in clay tablets. That's the way is was and we *liked* it!
In America (and many other countries), judges get to be petty tyrants with few restrictions or consequences for rulings no matter how nutbar they may be.
Seriously, once you're out of a gravity well, why crawl down into another one? For construction, there's meltable rock aplenty in the asteroid belts if you have mirrors and time. Water is your main problem, but that's what comets and/or asteroids are for. For that matter, there may be enough in the asteroid belt for practical purposes (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/11/ice_in_them_thar_asteroids/). A bunch of slow robots, slowly and carefully moving these into Earth orbit at the L5 points might do the trick.
I'm quite serious. I run 80+ virtual machines in a lab environment. Every dumb, security-related permissions hassle I have is with Windows 7. While I understand the necessity of security, I just wish the tools to turn things off actually worked consistently and didn't have such poor CL interfaces (e.g. Cacls, Xcacls, Icacles, etc.)
An attack formation would be the one thing the would want to avoid, unless you think of "being surrounded with guys in different boats going at different speeds and in slightly different directions" as an attack formation.
I was using the stinger as an example. I'm sure that even Iran has something better these days, but if I were them, I'd use a heterogeneous mix of weapons, so no one defense system would be able to take them all out.
Slashdot Mirror
or lousy dialog, pathetic special effects or poor scene editing. He'd get the death penalty for sure. Can I issue a fatwah against lousy film makers?
And we're tasty too!
Wait, we get to launch the Senate? Do we have to bring them back?
I love all these discoveries. I'm forced to admit, however, that astronomy, per se, has never made anyone a dime. If we found evidence of alien life on a planet orbiting Sirius B tomorrow, this would not change, no matter how mind blowing such a discovery would be.
And just extended the Windows 7 shell so it had a "Tablet" mode with some sort of auto-detection, they might have kept the desktop people happy AND the tablet crowd happy - just like the actual users suggested on the Windows forums, again and again and again....
Microsoft, missing the obvious since the 80s.
Next up? Microsoft ignores 3d printing until Linux dominates the field!
particularly the military, is clearly the highest crime.
"Barking mad" would have been more diplomatic and just as accurate.
The amount of time that intelligent critters who can manipulate tools and create recognizable radio signals for communication is likely to be very brief. In less than a century, data compression and encryption will make almost all of our radio traffic look like static from the outside. The vaguely intelligible bits sent out prior to that are so weak that they'll likely never be received or interpreted. Bottom line? Lack of intelligent radio indicates nothing.
Intelligence != tool using either. Dolphins are a bright lot. They don't make radios. Other forms of intelligence may not even be recognizable to us. intelligent Jovian gasbags may have delightful discussions about mathematics, but we wouldn't even necessarily notice them if we were to send a powered probe into the atmosphere. For that matter, if Earth fungi were brilliant, how would we know? Particularly if they only communicate chemically and their major topic of discussion is the mathematics of weather and soil conditions.
I'm not sure that anyone *doesn't* speak for God, or has any choice in the matter.
If temporal dimensionality only exists inside universes, I'm not sure there's a meaningful answer to that question. Otherwise, who the hell knows.
Which produce light as a byproduct. By odd coincidence, they would fit in standard light sockets.
So, let's take a closer look at the goldmine, eh?
6000 thousand cubic feet of natural gas (tcf) = 1 barrel of oil equivalent (BOE)
All the natural gas on the planet at this time, including fracking, ballparks in at 8092 trillion cubic feet
So energetically 8092 trillion cubic feet/6000 =1,348,666,666,666 barrels of oil. Not bad. Assuming we were to convert with no loss, and that, energetically, we were to use it at the same rate that we use oil (i.e. 30 billion barrels a year energy equivalent) we get:
1,348,666,666,666/30,0... = 44 years supply (approximately). Good news, to be sure.
Of course, the USA only has about 2203 trillion cubic feet, so our supply, if used for transportation and extracted at the same rate as oil would add only about 12 years of supply.
Presumably as oil supplies decrease and net energy from the remaining 1.2 trillion decreases, economics will demand that we shift more of our energy use to natural gas, so extraction and usage rates increase. 44 years might be optimistic for the world. 12 years might be optimistic for the USA. Then there's that annoying conversion loss thing.
So, the unknowns are:
1) How accurate are the USA's energy numbers for natural gas? They've increased a lot lately. They may be overly optimistic, or pessimistic.
2) How much of this do we convert directly to liquid fuels and how much energy loss does this represent?
3) How expensive does oil have to get before this occurs?
4) How long will the transition be from natural gas as industrial fuel to a ubiquitous transportation fuel?
Number 4 is critical. The world's supply chains are dependent on cheap transportation fuel. Retrofitting for natural gas will be expensive and time consuming.
The problem I still see, however, is that, even added to oil, this barely gets us to 2100. Presumably coal will provide some additional buffer, but like oil and gas, it's all about net energy and price. Oil's net energy is likely to render remaining supply useless even as trillions of barrels exist in the hydrocarbon horizon. Does anyone know of an energetic analysis of the world's remaining coal, uranium or thorium?
...of gasoline. Not sure about natural gas, but I'm reasonably sure the energy density is higher than that of a lithium battery. Natural gas vehicles are used widely outside of the USA, and we do have a bit of the stuff. Capitalism, exhibiting its usual bacteria colony behavior, will almost certainly push us in that direction unless there's some sort of breakthrough in battery tech.
The scum (advertisers, government agencies, et. al.) will continue to use it. Three cheers for ghostery.com.
Well, back in *my* day, we didn't have any of those fancy, dancy Eye Dee Eees. We soldered together wires to our vacuum tubes from instructions sets carved in clay tablets. That's the way is was and we *liked* it!
In America (and many other countries), judges get to be petty tyrants with few restrictions or consequences for rulings no matter how nutbar they may be.
Sanity. We haz it.
Seriously, once you're out of a gravity well, why crawl down into another one? For construction, there's meltable rock aplenty in the asteroid belts if you have mirrors and time. Water is your main problem, but that's what comets and/or asteroids are for. For that matter, there may be enough in the asteroid belt for practical purposes (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/11/ice_in_them_thar_asteroids/). A bunch of slow robots, slowly and carefully moving these into Earth orbit at the L5 points might do the trick.
It's the only way to be sure...
I think they're all mostly right too.
Disclosure: I hate white vinegar.
Go Army.
It's the only way to be sure...
I'm quite serious. I run 80+ virtual machines in a lab environment. Every dumb, security-related permissions hassle I have is with Windows 7. While I understand the necessity of security, I just wish the tools to turn things off actually worked consistently and didn't have such poor CL interfaces (e.g. Cacls, Xcacls, Icacles, etc.)
An attack formation would be the one thing the would want to avoid, unless you think of "being surrounded with guys in different boats going at different speeds and in slightly different directions" as an attack formation.
I was using the stinger as an example. I'm sure that even Iran has something better these days, but if I were them, I'd use a heterogeneous mix of weapons, so no one defense system would be able to take them all out.
A new, efficient and tastier type of energy too.