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Green Baron

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  1. Green Baron
    Who knows ? Won't get into details, costs too much time. Earth's evolution has developed organisms weighing in the hundreds of tons per individual as well as sedimentary rock building microorganisms or flyers with a wingspan of 10m (33feet) or those with just a few cm. Gravity, atmospheric/oceanic composition, temperature were the same (+/-a few K or percent oxygen) in that time. There must be other mechanisms in excess of those we could probably watch in the future on et planets that drive a proper evolution ;-) Edit: though i admit it is fun to speculate :-)
  2. Green Baron
    ... next year, would look sexy with a christmas hat :-)
  3. Green Baron
    Hmm, i'm a bit early. But i couldn't find any appropriate easter rabbit/beagle ears. I should maybe change the avatar into Jeb as Louis XIV or something ...
  4. Green Baron
    Since an hour, i have terrestrial internet ! Yay ! Well, almost. The last few kilometers are still via a dish to a central antenna on a ridge overlooking the valley. Background: a few weeks ago the end of a fibre optic cable has arrived on the far side of the island i live on and immediately the first providers popped up. I decided to wait for the first positive customer reports and then i ordered. Before there was only satellite internet, but 36,000km up and down and a limited bandwidth aren't really fun, especially with those pages that are dynamically generated. It'll make you guys yawn i assume, but i now have freaking 6Mbit down and 2 up. And no monthly limit any more. I just hope i can resist watching stupid youtube videos ;-)
  5. Green Baron
    Much on life forming has been discussed heartily in this thread:
  6. Green Baron
    Thanks. ESA launches are just so ... unpretentious :-)
  7. Green Baron
    Guys stop flinging wikipedia articles at each other, they seemingly add questions, not answers :-) First, the canyon is "preliminary". It is covered with kms of ice and thus beyond probing. Second, there is no strangeness. The ice shield over Greenland built up in the last 10-20 million years in phases. The canyon is probably an erosional structure forming by subglacial meltwater under the pressure of the ice sheet. See: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/341/6149/997#aff-1 Maybe there is younger work on this, idk. :-) Edit: ice shield dynamics are a young field in geoscience. Imagine that - besides the constant flow of the masses from the center outwards - ice constantly melts by pressure and temperature and builds up anew on top through precipitation. Thus there is constant throughput. Though the ice shield (better: cap) as a whole is several million years old, the base ice is "only" a few hundred thousand years old. Enough throughput for a proper erosion. And a fast melting if we carry on being so careless ;-)
  8. Green Baron
    I would think that in interstellar space there is only the omnidirectional light of the surrounding stars. A single star's radiation pressure a few light hours away even on a humongous "sail"area is not enough to accelerate something. Forces go down with the square of the distance. I must say that i have my difficulties with the word "sail" in this context, since i do sail and know how our different kinds of sail work to propel a boat on the ocean. This starshot thing (which is just a crazy idea well marketed without a fundament in reality in my eyes) shall be "blown" by well aimed radiation pressure from a single point (laser park) on earth in a concentrated, short term act (earth must face in the direction of the chips), more like grains of pepper on the hand that you blow away. The rest of the chips' journeys are drifting.
  9. Green Baron
    It is some time since i read scifi. I found Stanislaw Lem by far the most intelligent, refreshing and humorous reading. Much more thoughtful than all the others i read, including Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, etc. Lem, a Professor of Literature, lectured in Krakow and Vienna, died 2006. I am not sure if his books were translated into English, he published in Polish and German and his language is not always easy reading. Edit:oh, i see a quite a few english translations on amazon !
  10. Green Baron
    Nice idea with the Schiefspiegler (wasn't aware that this found its way into English language). Cock-eyed reflector :-) ? But they have their fan base. If someone asks himself how to pronounce it: like sheefshpeegler. Could be used for nice pieces of "artwork" in photography due to its enormous aberrations, but i assume that is not why you want to build it. Good success !
  11. Green Baron
    Any science on this ? On how to transmit a ping over 4ly (a flat "antenna" has terrible characteristics, works with a decent power source on short distance) ? Apropos power source (yeah radionucleids) ? Instruments ? Or how and where to mount the fans errr lasers to blow them away ? And power them with what ? How many new technologies would have to be invented or existing ones improved ? All of them ;-) ? "Breakthrougzh Starshot is a plan to send man-made probes across the gulf of space to our nearest neighbour, Proxima Centauri." "The 3.5cm by 3.5cm packages, weighing no more than 4 grams, will carry sensors, solar panels, processors and transmitters." Yeah, exactly. And the next news will be that they work on a method to shrink humans to fit in the ship errr chip ? Every other day someone comes up with a new idea, but few really become reality one day. This one most probably not, i dare say.
  12. Green Baron
    If you insist in doing so, i STRONGLY recommend to make contact with an amateur radio club in your country, since in most states the operation of radio is strictly regulated because nearly all of the technically useful frequencies are used for something, from highly sensitive aircraft traffic to automated garden gates. But be prepared that they just shake their heads, really ... Edit: you really need licensed equipment and operation in all countries i know of, radio clubs have the necessary knowledge.
  13. Green Baron
    OT: @WinkAllKerb'': i like your avatar. Oldest art of humankind :-)
  14. Green Baron
    Debian 9/xfce4 (+ gnome editor and a calculator). I once used gnome and gnome2 and was content. When i tried gnome3 i didn't get it. So i looked for something with the historic look and feel and found xfce and got stuck. Never tried kde, maybe i should, but it works for me and i am too lazy (or stubborn) :-) Edit: I always update manually. Have done too many rollbacks in my life ... and since i browse very cautiously and never open emails i do not know where they come from i had never a problem with malware (until now).
  15. Green Baron
    All of the above: plus humans radiate all over the magnetic spectrum into the universe, mostly banal nonsense. Your message would be like the sound of an ant under a Saturn V at ignition. Also it takes 3.000 years to your designated target, which is unable to respond. If you're interested in an answer you must have patience. All this "sending a message to the stars and hoping for an answer" is a refreshingly human attitude ignoring time and distance and capabilities of sender and receiver establishing a meaningful contact. Over and out :-)
  16. Green Baron
    Maybe, what you're looking for is the "information paradox" of a black hole. Quite a few sites on the internet explain it. tl;dr: yeah, having enough power to transmit a signal over 3kly, you can send something in, but you'll never get it back. "Never" means in the time of the universe because it has left spacetime.
  17. Green Baron
    I would like to if i understood the question. Sure could one transmit something in that direction. It'll arrive very much diluted due to the distance but it'll arrive. In 3kyr. Data that goes in a black hole is gone, there is no more to say. Live project ?
  18. Green Baron
    lol ... that's also true for a classical rocket launch with fossil fuel ;-)
  19. Green Baron
    Was out watching again. But too much stirring in the atmosphere, planets bounced around, Saturn's rings weren't even recognizable, Andromeda galaxy rose as a mixed up blob. A strong warm wind blew over the ridge but it was cool and clear below, i think that a few hundred meters above my position conditions would have been much better. Oh sorry, i missed that. Yes, Jupiter and Saturn, Andromeda galaxy, galactic center is high in the sky here. Seeing conditions limited the experience. No photo-weather right now ...
  20. Green Baron
    It's about the same horizontal movement as that of the plates at San Andreas fault. The latter moves between 1 and 2 inches/yr, that are 25-50mm. It is not a continuous movement. Shear forces build up over time and at some point the force exceeds what the crust can take, so the forces release in a single or a series of events. It is impossible to predict how and when the next release of shear force will happen, any attempts to do so have failed. Spreading rates at ocean ridges and compression near subduction zones can be much more (e.g. 15cm/year or 6 inches in the eastern pacific). The material must go somewhere ...
  21. Green Baron
    Looking at my shaver i think it was designed after a real life space warship (or war spaceship ?) whatever ... :-)
  22. Green Baron
    Exactly !
  23. Green Baron
    Morning :-), as sure as one can be with any modeling. Models are under constant revision and update as new insights come in. Modern astronomy is a young science. Short form: none. Plasma generated on earth is too thin and/or too hot. There are only observations via telescopes and checks against the models. These experiments are too big to conduct on earth. Constant observation and revision and exchange of findings in the scientific publications and reviews. That includes the danger of being mistaken, in which case the model will be overthrown and a new one takes its place or it stays vacant for some time until a new one takes its place. But a model with an acknowledged foundation is far better than all the guessing that takes place, in many fields in general, especially with planet hunting and newly observed deviations from the norm in stars. That is actually harming science a lot, as can be read in almost every issue of the scientific journals (Science, Nature, Elsevier journals).
  24. Green Baron
    You can't look inside a star. Modelling of the conditions (temp, pressure, forces in equilibrium -> hull burning, etc.) and the conception of energy transport through radiation, convection, etc. in a star leads to the analyses of nuclear reactions in stars. Main figure is the star's mass. I don't want to cite wikipedia ... :-)
  25. Green Baron
    Displacement of crust can easily reach several meters (10s of feet) during catastrophic earthquakes along active fault lines. See USGS (United States Geological Survey) page for exact data of the San Andreas fault, if i remember correctly the plates move at 5cm relative movement per year which can build up a tremendous tension. As to tunnels: it is less (but of course also) the earthquake itself (wave propagation) but the possible mobilisation of watery sediments that imposes danger to underground structures. That can dislocate a huge body of sediments in one single event. Maybe USGS has info on that as well, i am too lazy to look it up :-) Edit: the picture is absolutely real, it is not even soooo much displacement. Looks as if it was compressed ?
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