Green Baron

Without offending anybody, but really, how relevant are such guesses ? Do we have standard-density-parsecs now :-) ? It is, to say it clear, not serious to deduct any rule from a single observation. Those guys can't have much knowledge of how statistics work. Our ability to detect such objects outside earth's orbit isn't that old enough. So, this was the first one observed long enough to allow for trajectory calculation. It may be that others are still hiding in the heap of yet unreviewed data and of course future observation with current and better equipment may reveal new ones.

Aluminium passivates itself if left uncoated. I'd think a paint is just additional weight. Must be another reason, or not ? Edit: i think rockets are painted white mainly to increase reflectivity and avoid propellant heating and boiloff. So again why do they leave it black ? Looks cool but heats more easily when standing on the launch and coasting in space ...

Well, to be honest, it is not exactly my idea (i'm not that clever :-)), but some of the papers on that thing begin with a sentence like that. But if you look at it closer, since when do we muster the sky, and since when do we have things like the VLT. Pan Starrs, which produced the initial announcement, began mustering 2010 an finished the first batch in 2014. But, yeah, i think that with for example the LSST, a big telescope dedicated to wide field surveys alone, data will explode.

Congratulations !

If H reacts with O .... a reactor isn't necessarily reacting nuclear Seriously, in chemistry a lot of reactions take place in reactors :-) But i disagree as well. Solar is much easier to handle, lighter to get up and more efficient.

The trajectory relative to the sun and a rough galactic course is in the wikipedia article ... Moar detail: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1711.09397.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.11364.pdf astrobiology.com might not be the best source for hard facts ;-)

Yeah, a theoretic thing, with a mass at the other end, rotating to keep it straight, and a conductive tether interacting with earth's magnetic field like a current brake. Did i understand that right ? The washing line can only be used as a brake if thrown out prograde.

Winter solstice ("Sun stands still") today (Dec 21.). Sun at its lowest point for everybody above the tropic of cancer. Or, in general terms; the daylight times are getting longer again for the vast majority of us. Except for those head first, who are in the opposite situation :-) There seems to be a slight difference between southern and northern hemispheres in solstice times. Knows somebody how this comes ? Only because of our calendar or is there an astronomical reason ?

Is that a pony ? Anyway, its an equid

Don't worry, we'll see more of these things (and others) as our telescopes and detection techniques get better. We are just in the middle of the current telescope generation in terms of precision and resolution. Adaptive optics are being attached and calibrated to the telescopes, and so on. Every month a new discovery of something is published. Moar data ! :-)

Exactly ! :-) They know how to make a nice and warm egg that does not need to baked

For tidal forces e.g. from tidal waves of the oceans or the influence of other bodies (sun/jupiter) to be effective the rope must be rigid for the forces to get a grip on the craft. Or, the roche limit for a rope is far out :-) It'll rather begin a chaotic dance between straightening and coiling up while hanging down/staying behind or going up/being in front while minuscule gravity differences and forces between the fibres like electro-statics and mechanical elements from "remembered" former states play with each other. But, well, anyway, we are willingly ignoring physics/astronomy/atmosphere as well as house keeping habits ... :-)

Question or recipe ? If q then any reptile/bird could answer this ...

My ears are itching, i sense profit. 20m² wilderness for rent ! 20funds/day. Cactus, lizards, centipedes and siamese fighting cat included. Spiders for a little more. Guaranteed >10min longer life time than ... before ! :-)

Heat resistant ? I doubt that. Enzymes are proteins and as thus, above 40°C they break up, which has a negative effect on the body functions. Above 42°C body functions quit.

I know, but what i said was that both limit the mental capabilities :-)

First: i don't take things in here too serious any more, so the following is just a random thought of mine. And i am in writing mode before i go to town :-) There are several things i feel a little uncomfortably with: first the moral obligation. All life i know feasts on its resources until they are depleted and then disappears. That is what the physical basis dictates: the reaction takes place until energy is cut off or fuel is gone. From archaeology, looking at the development since the earliest neolithic, humans are exactly the same. They are a little "fitter" than the the other higher animals (not bactaria !) in filling more niches, but in the end they are reduced or a group disappears completely when things change and there is no place else to go. Today the bar is a little higher with all that technology, but that is only valid for the developed countries and the principle does not change. Even the countries that have been mentioned as "new moral leaders" in the press lately do not comply with the self imposed rules on green house gas emissions for example (just a recitation of the news, no political statement i hope). All i can deduct is that humans did, do and will further, like a stem of bacteria, take their basis away. Second: leave the sh.. behind and start new. That was possible in the past as long as there was ground to move to, since iron age mostly in connection with killing the ones who are already there. But the masses cannot leave earth, a few specially trained and highly educated astronauts do for a short while and depend on intensive medical care afterwards. So even they did never leave earth with its technology and infrastructure, had they they would have died sooner than "normal". Much sooner. There simply is nothing to feed on elsewhere and space is deadly and no technology lasts a human lifetime. Dreams of billionaires and fantasies of people living from the public hand (Nasa), and all their more or less hopeful followers as well as colourful movies will not change this. Third: eternal. This word does not exist in my treasury of words ... even the universe itself is not assumed to exist "eternally". The limits physics, chemistry and biology sets for our individual existence as well as the further evolution process pushes the whole idea beyond my poor limited imagination. Or, simpler: it'll be the first time if humans didn't go the way of all the other species before. I don't believe in god, so the reverse is as hard to imagine for me. We surely don't ! We don't even manage it in our individual lifetimes to "get our crap together", and nonody really cares for the future of our children. They will have to find their own ways. Like getting rid of all the debt that was piled up in the last 12 years. Nope. There is no "explosion". We are looking at 100-150 million years from first Ediacaran fauna to the first fish, and the limits may still shift. I'd like to see the source for that, it is probably not from geoscience/palaeontology ... sorry ! There is a rich marine fauna and biocenosises in the early Cambrian, but it didn't "appear". It looks in itself on ~100My, that are themselves standing on the back of 3 billion years of biologic evolution. For the part: mission accomplished. Wait, there is still something moving ... *splat* ... ok, done :-) For the second part: yes i think that's well possible. I wouldn't build a logical chain on this. This is a fixed idea of a few American journalists and even scientists, but not supported by data (correct me !) and not accepted widely (no correction necessary :-)). There are no traces of this in Europe for example. Humans were already scattered all over the world in different species, a genetic bottleneck may have happened locally, but again, data isn't really siding with "Toba catastrophists" :-) I don't :-) Have a nice one, i am going to hit the town now.

It might be be shorter until it gets too hot. Find new worlds, i rather think we go the way of any other species loooong before that :-) The whole process is short in a cosmic scale but still takes a few million years. The probe has to be patient.

Morning :-) several times actually, from prehistory to right now. Latest reason for not being able to dwell a longer time is when ground water levels sink out reach (>2km). Water is being brought in then. And not only so in a desert, in some steppe areas the same problem exists. It is all not that easy ;-) First you have to build/prepare/secure/construct them. And for that you need more than a bucket and shovel, if i may say so trying to be funny :-) That water thing is less than clear, studies posted by several people here have shown that it is probably not enough and in the wrong places, that what might be there at all. You can't use water from the south pole in a house in the Atacama even on earth. Even fossil ground water in an earthly desert/steppe is/may be not enough to provide enough water for a settlement (see above). Yes. And it is too high :-)

Well, a person with fever or externally induced heating (hard work in the sun drinking not enough) has difficulties thinking clear, that is sure. @linuxgurugamer ha the point i think. The margin for body core temp. (and thus brain as well) where people can be brought back to life is rather small: 20°C to 42°C.

I haven't seen the video but read most the reliable publications on Mars. There isn't much real hard data, one can get through with it in a day or two, then it starts becoming repetitive. So i won't link anything again here. What disturbs me is "easily disproven", for that you need a conclusive proof, which does not exist. So it remains a claim, doesn't it ? Mars does not have the resources to maintain a colony, you'd need a cocktail of today barely known complexity to independently support something that has never been made before. We know for sure that is impossible to run a settlement in Antarctica without support from outside. The same would be valid for deserts like the Rubh-al-Khali for example, even on the ocean(*). It is surely not possible on Mars, no matter how many billionaires dream otherwise. Mars radiation level it >13.000 higher than earths (8.000mrad to 0.62mrad per year). That will kill some of your colonists if no care is taken and probably even if. They arrive in very bad shape after 6 months in space with a damaged immune system and all. Nobody knows right now if they survive. I'd say that the picture of a colony is much bigger than a few single points taken out from colourful magazines and pictures :-) (*) i know of crews who have caught fish crossing the Atlantic. And of others who haven't caught a single one, despite of drawing a fishing line behind all the way.

Let go of pc gaming and study something, i suggest from the field of natural sciences ;-) Start with forgetting about "Human Ascension".

True, life in general and its whole evolution is in a constant filter (selection) situation on several scales, including cosmic scale and self inflicted/constructed things, like bacteria dying of their own excretions in a limited environment. That's how it works and i fear humans are nothing special here. That's a good point imo, if they are in a bottle-neck situation anyway a disease might finish of the rest. A healthy population wiped out, idk, i'd consider is possible, maybe extremely aggressive bacteria that leave the affected no time, but improbable.

I loved that quietness after a snowfall when i was living in continental Europe. Here where i am now it is often so quiet at night. Though my tinnitus is still ok ... :-) Canary islands, local windsystems: 0-1bft to the right where the water is flat, 5-6bft to the left where the foamtips are. Sailing here can be demanding and rewarding. Sea is about 550m below and foreground 6-7km away

I am not a physicist ! Afaik those two are proposals to bring quantum mechanics and general relativity together in a theory of quantum gravity or "theory of everything". They are highly theoretic and afaik atm there is no way to test the one or the other edit or even to formulate something concrete. And the whole thing can be regarded as an open item. A big open item :-) Any physicist around ? @sevenperforce maybe ? Sorry if i disturbed you :-)