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MichaelPoole

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Everything posted by MichaelPoole

  1. The Library of Babel number 103200 is so far the largest here. Digits of Pi does not meet the criteria of being well defined and it might be infinite. It should be said the Library of Babel number is in fact much bigger, as even the number of books in it is at least 251312000. Note - your number does not have to have any physical or other meaning. It is your number after all. So you do not need to be concerned with Planck volumes or whatever.
  2. So, I see KSP forum already had a "my number is bigger than yours" thread here http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/53404-my-number-is-bigger-than-yours/ but it ended up being way too silly and locked. So here I present a more "serious" version of it. The rules I can think of are: 1. The number must be computable (by computable, I do not mean it has to actually be able to get calculated into a decimal form by a human being or a computer, your number can easily be not representable in exponents in the observable universe, I am saying it must be theoretically computable, unlike say Busy Beaver numbers). 2. The number must be well defined (so you cannot write something like "the largest number you can think of"). 3. Do not use numbers of previous users with a trivial addition like "+1" or well known numbers like Graham's number without explaining the process how you get to them. 4. The number must be finite, so no transfinite numbers. 5. You should explain the process used to create the number so people less versed in large numbers are not immediately discouraged from the game by some genius who posts a complicated ordinal notation in the first 5 posts (you can use a notation like that if you explain it). You don't have to explain basic, well known functions like factorials or exponents through. 6. This is not really a rule, but rather than filling pages with exponents, try to find more compact, smart ways to make larger numbers. If you don't know to do that, go ahead and do it the way you know it, but please don't make page filling posts like this http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/53404-my-number-is-bigger-than-yours/&do=findComment&comment=777536 . Everybody can post multiple times and new numbers. I will start with a very big, but easy to make number. 100! = factorial of 100, it is also the amount of ways you can arrange 100 different objects in a row. It is 93326215443944152681699238856266700490715968264381621468592963895217599993229915608941463976156518286253697920827223758251185210916864000000000000000000000000, or 9.3326× 10157.
  3. I am sorry but what is "Squad's FX folder?". I searched for the mod on the web and found nothing.
  4. It gets even better than that. Glaciers are currently clearly moving on Pluto: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/new-pluto-photos-reveal-majestic-icy-mountains-glaciers-and-sweeping-plains-10507039.html http://nineplanets.org/news/glaciers-on-pluto/ http://cbsnews2.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/2015/07/24/f63b8b44-27c6-4828-a9d5-4a1dd5e613d5/34ec7fc5e0ba8e7e9aa6e8824687a024/072415iceflowslabels.jpg You can clearly see how the young soft ice is "eating" the older rugged terrain. Honestly, I don't see why are people so surprised about this. Triton get very little tidal power from Neptune yet it has a young surface with active geysers on it. If NH was an orbiter perhaps we would see some erupting too. Remember, the close flyby took only about 14 hours. A flyby of Earth with just 1 side visible that brief might show no active volcanos at all.
  5. I think most people are also not interested in getting ripped off, yet even rip off artists get more money than space exploration. It also depends on the culture and education - my mom grew up in USSR's countryside in conditions a lot more modest than what majority of people here ever lived in, but they had Astronomy as a separate subject in school, visited planetariums etc. I am not somebody to defend a country like the USSR with the obvious many faults and crimes of its goverment, but I think people should be educated and have a certain "general knowledge". I personally think the modern world is being harmed by the focus of society on the fictional and artificial entertainment instead of reality. I think our future is in space and that knowledge uplifts the human spirit and this is one of the few things I must say I agree with the USSR's idea on this issue. Sure, you don't need to know anything about space. Technically speaking we don't even need higher intelligence as most creatures do okay without it. However, I think such an existence would be a very impoverished one. Furthermore, even in a democracy, mob rule should not set the priorities. NASA and other space agencies deserve enough money to be able to fulfill their scientific goals. I don't think the Average Joe wants fighter jets either yet they are even more expensive than spacecraft. There are many things that are funded that the average person wants less than spaceships. Also, the power problem could be solved by a nuclear reactor. It was tried before by the USSR.
  6. Space exploration is not that expensive. A group of jerks has stolen 2.16 billion Euros from people in my country, Slovakia, or 2.32 billion Euros. That is not conjecture, but amount of money that is being officially discussed in the court proceedings with the people who cheated a big number of people from their money. That is like 3 New Horizon missions. It is a huge travesty that NASA has less money for one mission than a bunch of thieves from a post-communist country of just 6 million people. People who see the word millions and think how expensive space exploration is have no idea about what kind of money are spent in budgets of whole states. After India's MOM mission was launched, many people were condemning India because it is a third world country where many are starving. But let us be honest, would this money really go to the people in such a corrupt country? This amount of money would hardly save the whole India. The whole mission has cost 73 million USD. There are private individuals who would be able to fund something like that from their own pocket, hell, there are mansions more expensive than that. The funding of NASA is a travesty, by all means, space exploration is the cheapest part of a national budget. Europa is interesting, but without a "ground truth" probe with a drill and a microscope there will be no definite real proof of life, just "maybe this maybe that". Same with Mars, the only probe that actually had a (very primitive) apparatus to detect life was the Viking Lander, which landed on a random location and the apparatus was so unreliable it couldn't detect life in Antartica or desert on Earth despite life being present in those samples. Instead of doing half hearted searches and obsessing over possible microbes, maybe we should go somewhere unseen and unexpected. Maybe I am weird, but I do not think space exploration should be a desperate search for life in our immediate neighbourhood. If you want to do that, at least do it right. Send out probes that can actually detect life.
  7. I wholly support this. Also, Sedna is a lot colder than Pluto and can harbor exotic ices that are gaseous at Pluto temperatures. I honestly very much dislike the "you've seen one you've seen them all" fallacy. Everyone expected Pluto to be either exactly the same as Triton or a cratered dead iceball yet it turned out to be neither of that. Moons of giant planets are all very much different in their geological history and composition and yet they are all similiar sized when it comes to moons for each planet with a few outliers and orbit the same distance from the Sun. The Jupiter system contains both the most active and the least active major solar system body (Io vs Callisto). You might say "but tidal heating..." except none of the moons of Uranus get any appreciable tidal heating at the moment, yet Miranda is a crazy world of chasms and 25 km high cliffs, Ariel has frozen "rivers" of ancient half-melted ice "lava" flows, Titania has a thin CO2 atmosphere and is criss-crossed with chasms, Umbriel is a crater ball - except fully black, yet one crater is bizzarely white, Oberon is a reddish cratered world. Look at Pluto and Charon - drastically different worlds. Sedna is Charon sized, but much colder. At aphelion, it is cold enough to freeze hydrogen. Right now, it might be warm enough for a nitrogen atmosphere. The temperature difference between perihelion and aphelion of Sedna are quite major. Think Pluto has dramatic seasons? Sedna is FAR more extreme.
  8. By the way, seeing small meteors impact Pluto would be interesting because it has such a high scale height (60 km), so 60 km high on Pluto, the atmospheric pressure would be just 2.71828x lower than on the ground. The ground pressure is roughly 10 microbars. Meteors start burning up 76 to 100 km from Earth and usually burn up completely at 50 to 95 km. Earth's mesosphere (50-80 km up) has a similiar pressure to Pluto at ground level. So, maybe Pluto has "ground bursts", meteors exploding near the ground like little grenades. I don't think people should wave away an atmosphere's effects just because it is thinner than ours at ground level. Sure, you might compare it to vacuum made on Earth but most "general purpose" vacuums suck - the pressure in a lightbulb is 0.7 atm, on Mt. Everest it is 0.337 atm. So by lightbulb manifacturing standards, Mt. Everest is surrounded by a vacuum. This can also be an effect on future landers. They might use aerobreaking even if just to slow down a little. Actually, considering the pressure 60 km from Pluto is not much smaller than pressure on the ground, there might be some regular meteors as well, and reentry effects might be more appearant than you might think. Don't forget - LEO orbital stations and satellites have to constantly correct their altitude or they fall down and burn up in the atmosphere. Pressure at LEO is much lower than on Pluto. As for optical effects, it is no surprise Pluto's atmosphere is visible considering the Moon has almost no gas atmosphere but a bit of electrostatically charged dust is enough to make visible crepuscular rays visible both to astronauts and space probes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_the_Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_soil#Moon_dust_fountains_and_electrostatic_levitation http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/30mar_moonfountains/ http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/455854main_Surveyor_LHG_obs_selection.jpg . Considering Pluto's atmosphere is full of aerosol fog and is more than billion times thicker than the Moon's, it is no surprise it is very well visible. Solar corona is trillion times more rarefied than out atmosphere yet I saw it with my own eyes during a full solar eclipse. Comet's outer comas and tails are even more rarefied yet they can be very bright.
  9. Also, "why would you go on Io anyways?". To study this wonderful, active world? Why has everything to be about finding life, life, life? I honestly don't care that much about finding alien life, I am an enthusiast into astronomy, I find planets, moons and their geology and sceneries to be beautiful in the same way I find desert rock formations or the Grand Canyon to be beautiful. If you ask me, I'd gladly put Deinococcus radiodurans genes into me to see Io's surface in person. And I believe modification of humans is the future of space colonization instead of huddling under hardened spacesuits or pharaohic terraforming projects.
  10. Actually, we have something like that. Those are called radioprotectives http://ispub.com/IJIM/8/2/3973 .
  11. Okay, so I saw 2 incorrect bits of info. 1. Ion engines as "pathetic" (despite this probe having chemical ones), sure, their thrust is not enough to propel a skateboard, but regular engines fire for minutes while ion engines fire for years. The specific impulse of ion drives is 10x that of chemical ones and the exhaust velocity is 10x too. If they had the thrust of chemical rockets, you would be getting very close to speed of light. Ever seen this weird spiral trajectory Dawn has: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/blog/20140331/dawn_blog_20140331-full.jpg ? Notice how the majority of it is powered for 3 years? And how these are not flybys, but hopping from one orbit to another? A chemical powered craft can never do this. Seen NASA engineers saying how orbiting Pluto is impossible because it would require too much fuel? Well, actually, it is possible - just not with a chemical engine. The reason why ion engines were never used beyond the asteroid belt is the high power requirements that an RTG cannot meet, only solar energy - or nuclear power. Solar panels are useless at Pluto, so New Horizons could have been an orbiter if it used ion propulsion and a full nuclear reactor. PR is really what prevented this - the Soviets have used full nuclear reactors on satellites decades ago. 2. NASA having a 6 month embargo policy and not releasing images from yesterday. No, just no. It is not justifyable, which is why NASA is not in fact doing it, unlike ESA. NASA has no embargoes and press releases always mean full release of the information too. Remember how New Horizon image of Pluto was on Wikipedia the day it was taken? Read http://www.universetoday.com/84526/were-done-with-embargoes/ .
  12. There are no high energy photons in Jupiter's radiation belt, because magnetic fields only capture charged particles = solar wind from the Sun. Jupiter does not make any appreciable ionizing radiation. Lead would make this a lot worse because it not only doesn't protect you from charged particles, it actually creates more of them when impacted by charged particles! So if you wanted to put humans there, just put regolith bags on the outside of your bunker, or ice, that will protect you way better than lead - simply adding mass. Robots are not magical solutions to everything.
  13. Here are 2 good articles on atmospheres I found today: http://beyondearthlyskies.blogspot.sk/2015/05/detection-of-oxygen-atmosphere-around.html http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/04081101-a-moon-with-atmosphere.html So you can have a collisional atmosphere with weather and wind down to dozens of picobars pressure range.
  14. Actually, real life Earth is close to the inner edge of the habitable zone and our oceans will boil in 2.5 billion years at best. Eve's seas are explodium, not water and it is clearly intended as a Venus analog.
  15. Somebody here mentioned that because Pluto has old areas as well as young, it proves geological activity is only local and global tectonics is dead. First, tectonics can be global, it doesn't have to specifically be plate tectonics. Second, Earth has areas that are billions of years old too http://earthquake.usgs.gov/data/crust/age.html . Nafnlaus on the Unmanned Spaceflight forum pointed out it might take just 18 meters of solid nitrogen to provide enough pressure for liquid nitrogen http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=8060&view=findpost&p=224056 . Solid nitrogen sinks in liquid nitrogen, but it is also highly porous as you can see here . My bet is on nitrogen slush or glaciers with little capilaries with liquid nitrogen in them. A little known fact is that practically all ice on Earth, or more properly, Earth temperatures (basically, warmer than -90 degrees Celsius), contains some liquid water, even hard, glacier ice. This is the reason why microbes live even in Antarctic glaciers (found in deep ice cores) and on frozen rocks in Antartic dry valleys. Water ice is a hard rock at Pluto temperatures, but nitrogen ice is near its melting point, actually exceeding it and boiling in the summer https://blogs.nasa.gov/pluto/2015/10/23/a-planet-for-all-seasons/ , so nitrogen, methane, and CO ice take the role of "glacier ice" on Pluto while water ice is like sillicon dioxide on Earth - rock. I elaborated more in my post here http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=8103&view=findpost&p=227686 where I found analogies of landforms on Io of all the places.The latest photos are very interesting. I don't think even the "old" terrain of Pluto is really that old or inactive. The craters are clearly deformed and there are deep tectonic features or water "lava" flows there. Remember, on Ariel, "lava" of liquid water- ammonia mixture has formed some very interesting landforms and that is a body more like Charon in size . It is a shame we only have Voyager images of the Uranian moons. Just because a surface is billions of years old doesn't mean there are no changes - it is only the general age of the crust. The latest recorded impacts on the Moon occured in 2013 and 5 tons of cometary particles are thought to impact the Moon everyday, so even a surface 3.5 billion years old can have younger features. The Cthulu regio is clearly not as resurfaced as Sputnik Planum but that is probably because it is mostly composed of hard water ice and not lack of activity. You can clearly see on the borders of Cthulu Regio-Sputnik Planum that Sputnik Planum is "trying" to encroach on the Cthulu Regio and volatiles ices have already filled some craters. Also, Plutonian atmosphere is still about 100 billion times thicker than that of the Moon - it is collisional and can support wind. You could even feel the wind as the pressure is roughly like a dollar bill resting on your palm. Solar wind is about trillion times less dense than that.
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