We just returned from Pasadena, where Caltech - my alma mater - installed me as Distinguished Alumnus. An honor that I sincerely never expected, given the many brilliant minds I knew when I was there. Reflecting on that is humbling - even 'imposter syndroming' - though people kindly urged me to think otherwise.
In today's delayed posting, I'll be mostly taking a pause from politics... though the topic of my previous blog - about the likelihood of blackmail poisoning top levels of the U.S. republic - remains horrifically plausible...
...especially now that prominent members of one party are openly admitting that their party is suborned in this way, by foreign powers.
Only now, let's move on to news from out there!
== Space News! ==
I've already posted elsewhere about the incredible "chopstix" landing-grab of a returning heavy-lift SpaceX booster stage. The concept is now proved, even though a whole lot more incremental steps are needed.
Don't let any polemical jibber-distractions take away from the wonder that was achieved by Gwynne Shotwell and her SpaceX team.
Anyway, as for that distracting blather... well... I recall when there was a similar problem with Frank Zappa -- vast accomplishments that he seemed bent on contiuously spoiling with audience-insulting rants -- until (at last) Zappa listened to the fans shouting he should "Shut up and play your Guitar!"
The ratio of ravings to accomplishments seems similar, this time. And what will be remembered (whether or not that wise example is followed) is the 'guitar.'**
== The next steps in space exploration? ==
On this Future in Review (FiRe) podcast, I'm interviewed by the brilliant Berit Anderson - focusing on the near and mid-future of human spaceflight, especially Artemis and other planned missions to the Moon. (Incidentally, the annual FiRe Conference - one of the most visionary gatherings on the planet - has been postponed due to landslides.)
Also.... Just released: a newly-updated version of Project Solar Sail: 21st Century Edition: A collection of stories and essays exploring the future of lightships and solar sails in propelling interplanetary... and then interstellar... exploration!
This volume (which I edited with Stephen W. Potts) offers classic contributions by Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, Poul Anderson, Jack Vance, and others... plus new material, including by JPL scientists exploring the latest technologies and vast potential for sails in the future of space exploration.
== A Red/WET Planet? ==
Geophysical/seismic data from the old Mars InSight lander indicates a lot of water – frozen or even liquid – sloshing deep, deep under the surface of Mars. If the water-rich layer now detected deeper below the surface were consistent around the entire globe of Mars, there would be enough water to fill ancient oceans, and then some.
And while we’re there…
NASA's Innovative & Advanced Concepts program - (NIAC) - is pleased to announce the 2024 NIAC Phase III award to the mighty pioneer of applications of spaceflight to future biology, and vice versa, Lynn Rothschild: “Mycotecture Off Planet: En Route to the Moon and Mars.”
In other words, growing space habitats with the help of fungi and mushrooms! A house that protects you from vacuum and radiation... and that you can eat! For a list of all early stage NIAC research, please visit the Funded Studies page.
The Curiosity Mars rover rolled over a rock, accidentally crushing it open to reveal yellow crystals of elemental sulfur! - the first time sulfur has been found in its elemental form on Mars.
A fine article about my friend & colleague (and half of a mighty fencing team) Geoff Landis, epic scifi author and incidentally superstar NASA scientist, proposing ways to explore Venus. See also Land-Sailing: Venus Rover, where Landis introduces younger readers to methods of exploring - and traveling across - the surface of Venus.
Speaking of Venus…. re-analysis of data from the 1990s Magellan probe appears to show that volcanoes there are still active!
== Gettin’ a little galactic wit it ==
Many of you are familiar with Lagrange points – L1 through L5 – where gravity balance between two objects (the smaller orbiting the larger) creates ‘tidepools’ where even-smaller things can gather. Temporarily or (in the case of Jupiter’s Trojan asteroid clusters) permanently. Here Anton Petrov talks about a (slim) possibility that there might be such a point between our sun and the galactic center. It would not be able to collect much, with other stars whipping by over millions of years. But still… I do talk about galactic tidepools in Infinity’s Shore!
Mysterious brightening of a distant galaxy: Did this galaxy suddenly brighten, doubling in infrared frequencies, a 10 fold increase in X-rays)… because its central black hole ate a star?
Getting cosmic. Has the James Webb Space Telescope allowed researchers to resolve the “Hubble Tension” or discrepancy in the rate of expansion of the universe? It may have just been exaggerated… or possible we simply needed a better tool.
== Truly mind-stretching! ==
Incredible. About 20 seconds into this video by Anton Petrov (one of the best ‘casts about new discoveries in space) you’ll see an amazing image from the Webb Space Telescope. A very deep field photo that dives into the faint past, beyond redshift-3, this one image captures eighty(!) supernovae taking place ‘simultaneously’ (as seen from Earth today) in a single, narrow frame. Each in a different galaxy.
There are so many things this tells us.
1. Since any one supernova only remains stand-out visible for a few weeks (maybe a bit longer in infrared, the Webb specialty), this means there ‘are’ absolute gobs of them happening out there…
2. …or there used to be gobs of them, since we are in this case peering way back in time, making it a wee bit less surprising, since early star formation must have led to a great many giant, 1st generation stars, of the kind the burn bright and then blow themselves up with core-collapse supernovas… seeding later generations with heavier elements. Certainly, nothing like this rate is occurring “today”… (our redshift <1 era.) Though Betelgeuse is simmering...
That we are a civilization capable of building such a wonder as the Webb… and perceiving and marveling at such wonders… fills me with joy! And also fear that we might throw it all away, in a fit of anti-modernity angst, Pushed by powerful fools bent on restoring us to feudalism’s darkness.
More impact news...
Recent chemical and isotopic analyses from samples obtained by coring into the Chicxulub, Mexico's crater site in the Yucatan peninsula, indicate that the 66-million year old mass-extinction event was likely caused by the impact of a carbonaceous asteroid, originating from the outer solar system, rather than a comet.
As for the moon... Bombardment and impact vaporization of meteorites hitting the lunar surface appear to replenish and maintain the moon's extremely thin atmosphere.
Watch this simulation of a black hole tearing apart a star.
And...You can help find black holes: a new app, Black Hole Finder - enables citizen scientists to help identify singularities in astronomical images collected by BlackGEM telescopes in Chile.
And yeah. Again. ALL of this is under threat by ingrates with a lunatic grudge against not only scientists, but every fact-using profession. A too-seldom-mentioned aspect of this dire fight for the only civilization that ever brought us all these wonders... and that now stands poised to venture the stars.
If we decide not to blow it.
====
====
** Patrick Farley's Electric Sheep Comix appears to no longer support the beautiful series DON'T LOOK BACK, which featured Guitar spaceships! You could nag him to repost it?
Or else enjoy... and be terrified by... APOCAMON, revealing what fate some of our neighbors believe and fervently salivate for, from from the Book of Revelation. OMG read that one and know what they want and plan for us! People who want this are not nice and they are openly telling you what they want for you.
Well it looks like I'm a wee bit late with this, the Onward has been called:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9Aj7W3g1qo
I'm betting a whole lot of folks around here will recognize it.
Paul SB
I never saw that before! snork.
DeleteMy daughter visited Italy this past summer, and one of the sights she saw was the Sistine Chapel. There's apparently a huge mural there, also by Michelangelo, depicting a vista of the heavens, earth, purgatory, Hell, etc. He gave the devil the face of the contemporary pope's major-domo, who I gather Michelangelo was not fond of.
DeleteThe story my daughter heard was that the major-domo complained to the pope to have the artist remove his face from the image. The pope, who must have had a sense of humor, replied that had the artist put that figure in purgatory, he (the pope) might have been able to do something about it, but as the figure was in hell, the pope had no dominion.
On the Monty Python video--I don't remember seeing it as a whole, but the bit about the three Christs and the thin ones balancing out the fat one is definitely familiar.
DeleteI note you're giving credit where credit is due on the Starship flight...
ReplyDelete(I'm afraid that the "Take the red pill!" xit caused me to respond with "Hail the Trumpod!" because, while blackmail is the more likely cause for the promotion of krazy, the prior antics of Cambridge Analytica and all those 'caps' also have me glancing sideways at a YA series by John Christopher.)
Farley has shifted to Bluesky, and is currently doing his bit to get out the vote.
He's now working at Facebook which, I suspect, has prompted him to take down some of his more ... risque works. His reworking of 'Spiders' is still up, though, which, as an alternative view of future warfare, is worth adding to TASAT.
Dr Brin in the main post:
ReplyDeleteI recall when there was a similar problem with Frank Zappa -- vast accomplishments that he seemed bent on contiuously spoiling with audience-insulting rants...
I'm too a bit too young to know the details of what his rants were about or who they were directed at. But what you describe sounds a lot like Dave Sim who was largely abandoned by most of comics fandom for his...questionable...views on gender politics. He took out much of his frustration on the readers who still interacted with him--exactly the ones who hadn't abandoned him.
until (at last) Zappa listened to the fans shouting he should "Shut up and play your Guitar!"
Yes, but...
It sounds like the only damage Zappa did was to his own reputation, which could be redeemed by better behavior toward is fans. What if his antics were designed to (for example) support censorship laws which would make future music more difficult if not impossible to produce? It seems to me that that is more analogous to what Musk's "antics" are doing.
The ratio of ravings to accomplishments seems similar, this time. And what will be remembered (whether or not that wise example is followed) is the 'guitar.'
The obvious analogue, which has already been mentioned, is Wernher von Braun. He gave us rocketry and the V2 attacks on London. I'm honestly not sure which he's more remembered for, but it depends a lot on the fact that the Allies won. Had he actually helped Hitler win, how fondly would the conquered think on him?
Musk's ratio of good to bad will depend a lot on whether his attempts to aid Trump succeed or not. If they do, I'd say it won't be a matter of balance. The bad will wipe out the good.
"Cities are built with bricks. The strong make many, the starving make few. The dead make none."
"So let it written, so let it be done!"
Delete@DP,
DeleteNotwithstanding Airplane and Ghost Busters, I think The Ten Commandments is in the running for most quotable lines in a movie.
Stop calling me Shirley!
DeleteI would also add Casablanca (We'll always have Paris... Here's looking at you kid... Round up the usual subjects...) and Wizard of Oz (Auntie Em its a twister... I'll get you my pretty, and your little dog too!... I have a feeling we aren't in Kansas anymore...) as the most quotable movies.
DeleteI think too much is made about the lack of archeological evidence for Moses, Israelite slaves and the Exodus. This probably occurred during or immediately after the Bronze Age Collapse (circa 1177 bc) when a highly sophisticated and interconnected system of kingdoms and empires centered on the Middle East fell apart and were plundered by the Sea Peoples (basically a Mediterranean Bronze Age version of the Vikings). And like the Vikings founding Dublin and Normandy, the Sea Peoples founded the city states of Philistia. .
DeleteCities, literacy, trade, populations - all were wiped out. Except for Egypt, which survive in a much shrunken form. Very few records of anything survived. And if you were a pharaoh fighting for the life of the Egyptian kingdom are you going to memorialize a defeat at the hands of some ragtag rebels. Nope, that would be bad PR - better to pretend it never happened.
My favorite theory is that only the priestly Levites and their households left Egypt, a few thousand at most - they would fill the visitor bleachers of a high school football stadium. They brought with them a now probably outlawed monotheism going back to Akhenaten after a couple centuries of being persecuted as heretics - using the chaos of the Bronze Age collapse to cover their escape.
Once they arrived in Canaan, they hooked up with and converted local desert tribes and began their genocidal ethnic cleansing. Then writing an origin story that justified their conquest and glorified their origins.
If Trump does win it means that American democracy is DEAD - and it killed itself
DeleteBlaming Musk is like blaming the guy who pissed in a volcano for the next eruption
Solar sails and their derivatives (mag sails, laser sails, etc.) are the only way to escape the tyranny of the rocket equation - and thus our only way to expand to the stars. Also it is far more cost effective to pay the capital costs of only one power plant (laser array, Dyson swarm , black hole halo drive, etc.) to power any number of payloads.
ReplyDeleteSlowing down on arrival would be a problem - especially if traveling at relativistic speeds towards another sun or a black hole (boron drogue chutes, nuclear pulse retro rockets, sending a robot ahead to explore and construct another laser array at the destination, using the halo drive in reverse when arriving at another black hole, etc.).
So perhaps we should think of interstellar travel not in terms of sailing ships but as railroads made out of lasers. You would still need standard rockets to get to the either the Dyson array or a local black hole, but that's no different than driving to the rail road station.
Traveling to a nearby star at 50% c could be a routine as catching the 8:15 into the city.
And when we have a network of Dyson array and black hole powered laser railroads crisscrossing the galaxy, we can build subways - faster than light subways.
ReplyDeleteIt's a method that will get you both FTL and time travel.
The idea involves creating wormholes via the Casmir effect and using them as time machines. For a simple explanation of how these would work see this episode of the 1990s science series "Future Fantastic" The part about converting a Casmir induced wormhole into a time machine starts at 19:19:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3yyr7f_epk
(Disclaimer: the fact that this series was hosted by the smoking hot Gillian Anderson of the X-Files has absolutely nothing to do with my enjoyment of this series. Nothing, I swear.)
OK, so let's create the pair of charge plates that create the wormhole via the Casmir effect (as described by Dr. Michao Kaku in the video). Instead of being built on Earth, the first set of plates is placed in orbit around the Sun at 99.99999999999.....% of the speed of light. If this occurs on January 1, 3001 it will essentially always be that date at this end of the wormhole. A time traveler could enter the other end of the wormhole and emerge on New Year's day of the year 3001 - but not earlier since the wormhole did not exist before this date.
Meanwhile, the second set of charged plates with the other end of the wormhole gets carried by a spaceship to another star system at nearly the speed of light so that the crew is subject to time dilation, and they experience a journey of a thousand years as lasting only a few months. Once they enter the alien star system in the year 4001, they set up the other end of the wormhole and explore/colonize the planets of this system. Shortly thereafter, the crew can return via the wormhole back to Earth in the year 3001, later on the the same day they left.
The crew experienced a journey of only a few months. Also, the people back home on Earth watched them leave on January 1st and return via the wormhole a few moments later from a star system a thousand light years away.
Once in place, the wormhole becomes a permanent subway to the stars. Millions of these wormholes would create a subway system across the galaxy like that used by the mysterious monolith aliens in "2001" through which astronaut Bowman traveled to meet his destiny.
Like the roads built by the Roman Empire, this subway system of wormholes could knit together a vast galactic empire/federation with essentially instant interstellar travel.
The downside? The energy requirements for such a system would be equivalent to the energy of an exploding star. Which can be had from a large black hole (preferably a binary black hole pair orbiting each other) spinning at nearly light speed either by dropping matter down into the black hole or using a local equivalent of the halo drive for energy generation.
So FTL and time travel are no longer impossible - they are just engineering problems.
Now if only we could find a similar wormhole array constructed by a now vanished alien civilization 1,000,000 years ago only a few thousand light years away.
DeleteWe could enter the wormhole at the other end end go back 1,000,000 years ago. Then travel to earth at near light speed and use intervals of time dilation to go forward in time to any year in human history or earth epoch.
Maybe bring some dinosaurs back .
The use more time dilation to return to our own time.
So time travel is possible it just an engineering problem requiring sufficient amounts of energy. Easy peasy.
Though a Delorean would still be cooler.
Would the FTL subway described above violate causality as in (SPOILER ALERT) Alistair Reynolds "House of Suns".
ReplyDeleteMaybe not. All lot has to do with perception.
If the USS Enterprise traveled at warp 10 to Earth, we would se the Enterprise suddenly appear in orbit since it moved faster than its light image. We would then see this light image of a second ghostly Enterprise apparently travelling back ward in time to its origin as its light images finally arrive.
Has causality been violated? We know the backwards traveling enterprise is not real. Any radio message from the Enterprise while traveling would finally arrive but be backwards (like playing a Beatles album backward to hear "Paul is Dead").
We can use a gravity lens to see a distant galaxy which appears as a ring - though we know its not ring shaped.
Nice explanation here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-jIplX6Wjw
Near as I can tell, a message from Kirk would arrive and sound like a tape run backwards. I don't see this being the same as sending messages back in time and violating causality.
DeleteMaybe somebody smarter than me can confirm.
Interesting note - the best shape of a solar sail isn't long wings or even a parabolic mirror - it's a disco ball:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.newscientist.com/article/2108650-disco-ball-sail-propelled-by-laser-could-fly-to-a-nearby-star/
Disco-ball sail propelled by laser could fly to a nearby star
It turns out that a ball is the perfect shape for inherently keeping the orientation of the sail just right in relation to the laser beam that propels it.
Envision mankind spreading throughout the galaxy on giant thin walled reflective disco balls (with the payload at the center) to the music of the BeeGees.
Ok - so they'd suicide before they got there then=).
DeleteOK, so the water issue is solved for terraforming Mars - we just need to heat up the planet and all the water melts and becomes oceans.
ReplyDeleteBut if you really want to settle and terraform Mars, you are still going to need Ceres. Because you still need nitrogen.
The Dawn mission showed that Ceres has potentially large deposits of frozen ammonia. So let's start there with some back of the envelope calcs:
55,910,000.000 mi2 Surface area of Mars
196,900,000.000 mi2 Surface area of Earth
0.284 Surface Area Ratio Mars/Earth
...
0.380 g Gravity of Mars
1.000 g Gravity of Earth
2.632 Gravity Ratio Earth/Mars
...
0.747 Required Atmosphere Mass Ratio Mars/Earth for 1 Bar
5.15E+18 kg Mass of Earth's Atmosphere
0.780 Percent Nitrogen
....
4.02E+18 kg Mass of Earth's Nitrogen
3.00E+18 kg Required Mass of Mars Nitrogen
....
14.000 Atomic Weight of Nitrogen
17.000 Molecular Weight of Ammonia
3.64E+18 kg Required Mass of Ammonia
....
0.817 g/cm3 Density of Frozen Ammonia
817.000 kg/m3
8.17E+11 kg/km3
....
4.46E+06 km3 Required Volume of Frozen Ammonia
4.34E+08 km3 Volume of Ceres
0.010 Required Percent of Ceres to be Frozen Ammonia
....
3.64E+18 kg Required Mass of Frozen Ammonia
0.516 km/sec Ceres Escape Velocity
0.029 g Ceres Gravity
....
105.800 kj Energy to send 1 kg into Earth Orbit
3.068 kj Energy to send 1 kg into Ceres Orbit
1.12E+19 kj Energy to send Required Frozen Ammonia to Ceres Orbit
....
5.80E+17 kj Current Human Annual Energy Consumption
19.281 Ratio Ceres Launch Energy to Human Energy
....
So if only 1% of Ceres is frozen ammonia, that is enough to provide Mars its needed ammonia and nitrogen.
But the amount of energy required to launch this ammonia to Mars is 20 time that of human energy use in a single year, or the annual human energy use over 20 years...
Kip Thorne is very modest. He was asked recently why Gargantua from INTERSTELLAR didn't match the recent M87 image. (not sure of the telescope, don't have a link). He just answered, Because they were looking at the objects from different angles.
ReplyDeleteOh, of course.
ReplyDeleteLH I agree re Zappa etc. But you are not the audience for my remarks who matters. There is a fellow who might (slim chance) be edified by my essentially complimentary parallel with Frank Zappa. Even if it spreads to him fifth hand.
DP see how I fill the universe with laser-propelled things in EXISTENCE: http://youtu.be/wzr-DSDMkJM
You might also enjoy a novel called RAILS ACROSS THE GALAXY.
WOW, you and LH are Heston/Brynner fans!
Problem with the wormhole time machine. Everyone from the future wants to come to Opening Day. Everyone. All at once.
Quotable lines. At the theater or somewhere, I stop by the Men’s Room and tell my wife “Where I’m going you can’t follow; what I have to do you can’t be any part of.” Eyerolls commence. Remember Bogart saying it?
"Everyone from the future wants to come to Opening Day. Everyone. All at once."
DeleteDid I mention that these wormholes would be huge, like the wormholes in "The Expanse"? Maybe make them expandable.
But here is another problem. 100,00 years from now as the last wormhole is being constructed on the far side of the galaxy, a return ship makes a series of hops from one wormhole to another going backwards intime until it enters the first wormhole at Alpha Centauri and then arrives back on Earth in 3001.
It brings with it 100,000 years of history and scientific advancement. To quote Doc Brown from "Back to the Future" (another quotable movie):
"No! Marty! We've already agreed that having information about the future can be extremely dangerous. Even if your intentions are good, it can backfire drastically!"
If only we could make a time traveling space ship out of a DeLorean.
And your wife can respond with a quote from Last of the Mohicans:
Delete“You stay alive, no matter what occurs! I will find you! No matter how long it takes, no matter how far”
DP:
DeleteIf only we could make a time traveling space ship out of a DeLorean.
Didn't you see Avengers: Endgame? Back to the Future is wrong.
For quotables, the Firefly Series/movie has some gems -
ReplyDeleteZoë: Captain will come up with a plan.
Kaylee: That's good. Right?
Zoë: Possibly you're not recalling some of his previous plans.
And always:
"Stand down, or by my pretty floral bonnet, I will end you."
Funniest quote in any SF show belong to firefly:
Delete"Yes, this is a fertile land, and we will thrive. We will rule over all this land, and we shall call it...this land."
"I think we should call it your grave."
"AH! Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"
"Hahahar! Mine is an evil laugh...now die!"
"Oh no, God! Oh, dear God in heaven!"
By Alan Tudnyk currently starring as an alien stranded on earth in "resident alien ".
Dr Brin:
ReplyDeleteWOW, you and LH are Heston/Brynner fans!
The NRA thing kind of cooled me on Charlton Heston as a human being, but for some reason doesn't affect me relative to his movies. Ben Hur, Soylent Green, even Planet of the Apes are just right for him. But The Ten Commandments has to be on my list of "ten films I'd have with me stranded alone in space". Probably even "five films...".
“Where I’m going you can’t follow; what I have to do you can’t be any part of.”
Thanks for loading me up with that image.
Remember Bogart saying it?
No offense, but it sounds better on him.
From the rat breathing fluid demo in THE ABYSS (1989)
ReplyDelete"That is, no bullsh-it, hands-down, the god-damnedest thing I ever saw"
The only improvement would have been Bill Nye exclaiming, SCIENCE!
I know Bill Nye. Bill Nye is a friend of mine. Bill Nye is no Thomas Dolby. "Science!"
DeleteNeither was Dolby. It was a scientist named Magnus Pyke who exclaimed "Science!" in "She Blinded Me with Science."
ReplyDeleteI've heard that he was quite miffed at the success of the song, too, since he was a serious scientist and science advocate, but people only wanted him to scream, "Science!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Pyke
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She_Blinded_Me_with_Science#:~:text=The%20song%20features%20exclamations%20from,%2C%20you're%20beautiful!%22
huh!
DeleteDid someone start yelling 'Science!'?
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of which, this talk of soggy Mars makes me wonder anew about tectonics. Water is what lubricates Earth's plates, so what's the hold up on Mars? Not enough inner heat?
Even Earth didn't have plate tectonics for a long time. The plates were too thin in the early days to BE plates. More like a foam on top that accreted as low density melts bubbled up to thicken things eventually.
DeleteMars had less time to do it all... and less heat.
I'd have to check on the Wiki or something, but I think you're right....Mars is smaller and probably cooled faster...?
ReplyDeleteYeah, no conclusive evidence of recent tectonic shifts, but old evidence suggests it used to happen, and there are obvious signs of volcanic activity*, some pretty recent - but no 'rings of fire', more like isolated 'hot spots' such as the one that formed the Hawaiian Island chain on Earth. I'm sure Dr. Brin has better sources than I do.
Unfortunately for my fantasizing mind, the 'underground oceans' mentioned above aren't going to be 'sunless seas' a la Coleridge or Greenwood.
*Olympus Mons being pretty hard to miss
Pappenheimer
AH, here we go - Martian core magnetism shut down billions of years ago. Suggests that the core rotation that powers the dynamo here on Terra isn't there - maybe partial crystallization?
ReplyDeletePappenheimer
P.S. a good chunk of Earth's remnant heat is from radioactive decay* - does Mars have a deficiency of heavier/radioactive metals? Here we go - less than 1/6 than in our soil, according to our (obviously limited) sample size.
* Lord Rutherford's calculations were a bit off because of that; we would have frozen over already if not for fissioning minerals
Heavier elements (inc the fissile ones) in the protoplanetary disc would *tend* to congregate nearer the Sun, so it's no surprise that Mars has less uranium to burn.
ReplyDeleteThe weird thing being that smaller, lighter, cooler world Pluto *does* appear to have some sort of activity (perhaps through serpentine reactions?)
Earth also has a fair size moon providing a tidal massage to loosen things.
ReplyDeleteTony,
ReplyDeletewas thinking the same thing re: element sorting during solar system formation - so Mercury might be uranium - rich? Its iron core is disproportionally large, apparently...of course, there is another reason that Mercury is a tad warmish...
Pappenheimer, who is going to have to leave 'serpentine reactions' to another day, as I am old and need my sleep. Wikipedia science articles are like popcorn - even worse, they link to each other.
P.S. I learned on my recent trip to SC that there is a whole war I never heard of that wracked that region from 1715-1717, caused primarily by growing European pressure on local tribes like the Yamasee, and one reason the Yamasee lost was not numbers - they outnumbered the newcomers pretty heavily - but that hit-run and ambush musketry tactics, while extremely effective in forests and marshes, doesn't work when you have to face a line of muskets on an open field*. Different cultures use the same weapons in different ways. (English traders had been selling a lot of muskets locally, so there was no shortage on the other side.)
*Another reason was another tribe intervening on the English side, looking for advantage over a traditional enemy, the same thing that doomed the Aztecs
Australia also had a few frontier wars that were brushed under the carpet. Start with 'Penuway'.
ReplyDeletePappenheimer
ReplyDeleteMars is a lot smaller than earth - if it had the same percentage of uranium then it would still be cooler
The old "Cube/Square Law" strikes again
Final note - the movie with the most memorable quotes on a per-line basis may be "The Princess Bride." On a lot of them, you don't even have to give the full line. See:
ReplyDelete"You keep using that word..."
"Hello! My name..."
"He's only mostly..."
"You fool! You've fallen..."
Pappenheimer, who had to play "Musical Gates" in DFW airport in order to be 2 hours late getting home on a packed flight 2 days ago. "Your gate is A13. No, it's C2..."
I didn't actually see Princess Bride until much later than most of us. I was disappointed to see that "There's dead, and there's mostly dead," isn't exactly the way that line appears in the film.
DeleteWell, Larry, that's just another "Play it again, Sam" moment. ;D
DeleteEven if a solution to FTL travel was even, at this moment, on a chalkboard, there's a lot of work to be done if we're going to survive the journey. How might those technologies alter our lives here? I'm thinking first of Arthur C. Clarke's recycler/kitchens, but there's likely to be more.
ReplyDeleteIs it just me, or is there a connection between the E. Coli outbreak at McDonalds and the fact that Trump recently handled some of their food?
ReplyDeleteScott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov make the Thiel and Musk points so much better than I do. Key points start around 22:00
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biP8ejZyG5o
"Another reason was another tribe intervening on the English side, looking for advantage over a traditional enemy, the same thing that doomed the Aztecs". That's how 2/3 of colonialism happened. Interventions in local wars or brother spats.
ReplyDeleteOk, so my brother just got me to read Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven for the first time. This is a book which takes place in an unspecified future, but was published in 1971. For everyone who insists that global warming wasn't on anyone's radar in the 70s, I relate this passage:
ReplyDeleteRain was an old Portland tradition, but the warmth--70 F on the second of March--was modern, a result of air pollution. Urban and industrial effluvia had not been controlled soon enough to reverse the cumulative trends already at work in the mid-twentieth century; it would take several centuries for the CO2 to clear out of the air, if it ever did. New York was going to be one of the larger casualties of the Greenhouse Effect, as the polar ice kept melting and the sea kept rising; indeed all Boswash was imperiled. There were some compensations. San Francisco Bay was already on the rise, and would end up covering all the hundreds of square miles of landfill and garbage dumped into it since 1848. As for Portland, with eighty miles and the Coast Range between it and the sea, it was not threatened by rising water; only by falling water.
And more poetically from the same book: "...the endless warm drizzle of spring—the ice of Antarctica, falling softly on the heads of the children of those responsible for melting it.”
DeleteAnd words to live by: “Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”
What a great book!
@Gator,
DeleteI'm only on chapter 3, but it did come highly recommended.
Love that bread analogy. Some things are perishable. I think it applies to economics too, which is why I'm not as offended as some others here by a mild level of inflation. I see it as entropy doing it's work on the cash in your mattress, the same way it would on bread stuffed in there.
My first nod would be to JG Ballard's "Deep End" 1961 and Drowned World in 1962. But his causes are seasoned with a bit more of the extraordinary. Another one that comes to mind is In "Behind the Walls of Terra" 1970 where Philip Jose Farmer prominently contrasts the (current) 1970s smog of the Los Angeles basin to an Earth Prime and a character who hasn't been to earth since the 1940s and is shocked by the pollution. I'm sure we could find a lot more.
DeleteI went on a school trip to CSIRO's division of atmospheric physics in the mid-seventies. I don't recall greenhouse gases being mentioned (although it would have been a topic of research, *and* scientific debate), but they were certainly looking into ozone depletion. That may have been because it was a more immediate concern back then: it was only about twenty years ago that people started realising the effects that greenhouse gases were having were observable now, not in about a century.
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