For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

[Gargamel]

Re Ball lightning, asked my SO who is into weather as much as any of us are into rocketry (she goes to weather conventions for fun):   “We’re pretty sure it exists, but we haven’t been able to document it enough to definitely prove it, yet.” 

[kerbiloid]

13 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Re Ball lightning, asked my SO who is into weather as much as any of us are into rocketry (she goes to weather conventions for fun):   “We’re pretty sure it exists, but we haven’t been able to document it enough to definitely prove it, yet.” 

Weather. I don't doubt that the ball lightnings appear in great thunderstoms, I believe I have seen this once.
High in the sky there was absolutely enormous thunderstorm, with long horizontal lightnings every second, while below it was just a rain.
Every several seconds some lightning was spreading about twenty bright dots, floating aside, and fading away in seconds.
If the lightning was "50 cm", the dots were having passed ~"20 cm".

But what about the lonely fireballs floating above ground, which unlikely are a subject of meteorology, and well-known from the folklore, and causing recommendations like "during the thunderstorm, keep your flies closed to prevent a ball lightning entering", "if you met a ball lightning, don't try to run away, because the air will pull it to you", and so on.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

he lonely fireballs floating above ground

Those can be methane flares.  AKA swamp gas.  Will-o-the-wisp.  I've always thought of those as distinct from ball lightning. 

[kerbiloid]

17 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Those can be methane flares.  AKA swamp gas.  Will-o-the-wisp.  I've always thought of those as distinct from ball lightning. 

No. They are described as electric phenomenon.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

7 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

No. They are described as electric phenomenon.

Actually - people conflate the two.  In English / Irish / American mythology will-o-the-wisp usually occur in forest / wetlands.  Generally still air. 

Ball lightning is often distinct - graveyards and storms (which is where the conflating happened) ball lightning with a storm is decidedly electrical but around graveyards could be swamp gas or lightning... The stories are mixed. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will-o'-the-wisp

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning

See also, St. Elmo's Fire:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elmo's_fire

Edited January 1, 2023 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[kerbiloid]

42 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Actually - people conflate the two.  In English / Irish / American mythology will-o-the-wisp usually occur in forest / wetlands.  Generally still air. 

Ball lightning is often distinct - graveyards and storms (which is where the conflating happened) ball lightning with a storm is decidedly electrical but around graveyards could be swamp gas or lightning... The stories are mixed. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will-o'-the-wisp

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning

See also, St. Elmo's Fire:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elmo's_fire

The "swamp fires" and "St. Elm's fires" are well known and distinct, never confused in common descriptions with ball lightnings, which are exactly an electric phenomenon.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Quibble, Quibble.

[K^2]

7 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Those can be methane flares.  AKA swamp gas.  Will-o-the-wisp.  I've always thought of those as distinct from ball lightning. 

Without better documentation, it's hard to be certain, and I'm sure at least some of the descriptions could have been either (e.g., graveyards at thunderstorm could be electrical due to lightning strike on metal as there's usually a lot of iron there, but can also be organic decomposition gas from graves getting forced out by rain water), but usually, the behavior attributed to ball lightning is more consistent with an electrical phenomenon. The way people claim it "passes through" walls would make sense for a slightly charged plasma ball getting smeared across the wall surface due to electrostatic interaction, causing it to cool instantly, which can look like it's passing into the wall. Also, in attempting to replicate the phenomenon, what I've seen from electrical setups is most promising.

So while I'm sure a lot of anecdotal documentation can be getting crossed, I think what people normally think of as ball lightning is electrical, and will-o-the-wisp is organic gas, and if in some cases these get conflated by the witnesses, we should attribute it to them being mistake about which phenomenon they're describing, rather than alternative cause of the phenomenon, if that makes sense. Id est, just because people might have seen will-o-the-wisps at graveyards during a lightning storm, doesn't make it a ball lightning. Just a graveyard appearance of the wisp. And vice versa, if a lightning found some metal to strike in the swamp, the resulting ball lightning (presumably) might be mistaken for a will-o-the-wisp, but we shouldn't consider it one.

Of course, that's just a matter of terminology, which for something so poorly described might be a moot point, but I think the above approach leads to less confusion and gives us a better path to categorizing these properly.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

12 hours ago, K^2 said:

I think what people normally think of as ball lightning is electrical, and will-o-the-wisp is organic gas, and if in some cases these get conflated by the witnesses, we should attribute it to them being mistake about which phenomenon they're describing, rather than alternative cause of the phenomenon

This.  Exactly. 

Thanks 

Sometimes you think you have communicated effectively... And sometimes you fail 

[ARS]

If you're a mad supervillain with a goal to destroy the world, what's the cheapest way to do it using existing technology? (doesn't have to blow up the whole planet, just rendering it uninhabitable is enough)

[K^2]

Create a new crypto fad. Just a few more of these, and catastrophic global warming will be inevitable.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, ARS said:

If you're a mad supervillain with a goal to destroy the world, what's the cheapest way to do it using existing technology? (doesn't have to blow up the whole planet, just rendering it uninhabitable is enough)

Relax. They're doing all right.

[ARS]

1 hour ago, K^2 said:

Create a new crypto fad. Just a few more of these, and catastrophic global warming will be inevitable.

LMAO

[DDE]

3 hours ago, ARS said:

If you're a mad supervillain with a goal to destroy the world, what's the cheapest way to do it using existing technology? (doesn't have to blow up the whole planet, just rendering it uninhabitable is enough)

Painting the polar icecaps black with carbon powder is probably the most sure-fire way. Some bioengineered nastiness may be cheaper and more potent, but far from a surefire bet (like dirty bombs, bioterrorism is something that doesn't seem to happen as often as one would expect... fortunately).

[KSK]

4 hours ago, ARS said:

If you're a mad supervillain with a goal to destroy the world, what's the cheapest way to do it using existing technology? (doesn't have to blow up the whole planet, just rendering it uninhabitable is enough)

Propaganda to appeal to existing vested interests, corporate lobbying to enforce those interests, and internet influencers to mould public opinion in favour of the status quo.

Talk is cheap. Talk which is merely telling people what they want to believe anyway is even cheaper.

 

Edited January 3, 2023 by KSK

[K^2]

12 hours ago, DDE said:

Painting the polar icecaps black with carbon powder is probably the most sure-fire way. Some bioengineered nastiness may be cheaper and more potent, but far from a surefire bet (like dirty bombs, bioterrorism is something that doesn't seem to happen as often as one would expect... fortunately).

I was looking into some benign biohacking on some plants, and was surprised to find that synthetic plastids are something like less than a dollar per base pair with something like a 400bp minimum, making it exceptionally accessible for basic edits. Great for someone like me who just wants to make a fruit taste like something it's not supposed to, but it also makes me realize that I can put a custom antibiotic resistance into an infectious bacterium or protist for less than $2k in equipment and material. And I have bare minimal microbiology training. I'm kind of terrified of what someone with knowledge and a grudge can do with this.

[FleshJeb]

7 hours ago, K^2 said:

I'm kind of terrified of what someone with knowledge and a grudge can do with this.

This why when firearms enthusiasts ask me my favorite caliber, I respond with "one micron."

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, FleshJeb said:

"one micron"

",   five picosecond".

"Look at that laser maniac.", whispering they behind your back.

[FleshJeb]

48 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

",   five picosecond".

"Look at that laser maniac.", whispering they behind your back.

Maybe these are all just references to my love life?

[Flying dutchman]

what are reasons why mars surface probes don't carry a small compressed gas container for blowing the dust of the solar panels at least once?

[DDE]

Is there some sort of alternative balloon filling to helium? This doesn't look like an inert gas - or can a thin layer of expanding rubber conflagrate like that? https://t.me/mmmadnet/4309

[kerbiloid]

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Светильный_газ

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gas

A polluted 80% hydrogen. The "black hydrogen", lol.

[StrandedonEarth]

10 hours ago, DDE said:

Is there some sort of alternative balloon filling to helium? This doesn't look like an inert gas - or can a thin layer of expanding rubber conflagrate like that? https://t.me/mmmadnet/4309

Good old hydrogen, just like the Hindenburg....

 

[Terwin]

15 hours ago, Flying dutchman said:

what are reasons why mars surface probes don't carry a small compressed gas container for blowing the dust of the solar panels at least once?

Complexity is one reason.

There are fewer modes of failure if you just increase the size of the solar panels to account for dust accumulation.

If you have a gas cannister, it will eventually run out of gas, so if switching that weight to more solar panels will last as long or longer, then solar panels are the simpler solution.

After all, our Martian landers have all lasted much longer than the original plan(possibly because they put in additional redundancies if the mission is likely to go under the minimum desired period). 

[magnemoe]

On 1/7/2023 at 10:41 AM, kerbiloid said:

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Светильный_газ

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gas

A polluted 80% hydrogen. The "black hydrogen", lol.

The scary part here is carbon monoxide who makes the flammable part sound pretty safe, now I assume most of the CO will become CO2 then the hydrogen is burned. 

Now I could easy see some using hydrogen or an hydrogen mix to save money making party balloons. 

Edited January 8, 2023 by magnemoe