For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

[AckSed]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

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

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4246535/

Don't touch the glass wool with bare skin, it will be itching.

The glass grains are sharp crystals, like the regolith is, while the sand grains are smooth due to water and wind erosion.

In "Performance of recycled waste glass sand as partial replacement of sand in concrete": https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S095006181933257X

Quote

In addition, due to the smooth surface and relatively low water absorption, glass sand can improve the fresh concrete properties [9].

 

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

Fun story, back then it was new some guy my father knew tried use it as an makeshift Santa Claus beard.  It was not conformable. 

Spoiler

 

 

 

They show, what happens to the people, who did.

[Gargamel]

On 11/1/2024 at 2:02 PM, kerbiloid said:

Don't touch the glass wool with bare skin, it will be itching

I have found an effective method to remedy this is to apply a layer of excessively adhesive tape (duct tape at the minimum) to the affected area and peel it off after a bit.    Usually pulls the glass fibers right out.    And all your hair.       But the itching has stopped.   

[darthgently]

1 hour ago, Gargamel said:

I have found an effective method to remedy this is to apply a layer of excessively adhesive tape (duct tape at the minimum) to the affected area and peel it off after a bit.    Usually pulls the glass fibers right out.    And all your hair.       But the itching has stopped.   

This works.  Gorilla tape works very well.  Do not rub the skin as this will drive the fibers deeper

[Gargamel]

2 minutes ago, darthgently said:

This works.  Gorilla tape works very well.  Do not rub the skin as this will drive the fibers deeper

Yeah, don’t touch the thing that is driving you absolutely bonkers.     Good luck with that.   

[Nuke]

cold water always worked for me.

[Terwin]

Cold water tends to work so long as the cold is being applied, but for longer lasting relief, take water just below the temp where it is painful on healthy skin, and apply it to the irritated skin.  

If it is not painful on healthy skin, it should not cause any damage, but on the irritated skin it will be painful, then after you remove the heat it will not itch for a while.

I suspect it is related to either desensitization or using up neurotransmitters for your pain receptors, so that it takes a while before the itch can return. (often long enough to fall asleep if you hold it under the hot water until it is no longer painful)

This is the most effective method I have found for dealing with the itch of poison ivy without damaging the skin by popping all of those fluid filled blisters with scratching.

[Selective Genius]

Is there a nuclear reaction to convert Oxygen to Carbon and Hydrogen? Just like how rutherford's friends transmuted Nitrogen to oxygen?

[kerbiloid]

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

Now it's a question, how to take the neutrons from O-16 to get O-11,12,13.

Nuclide [n 1]	Z	N	Isotopic mass (Da)[4] [n 2]	Half-life[5] [resonance width]	Decay mode[5] [n 3]	Daughter isotope [n 4]	Spin and parity[5] [n 5][n 6]	Natural abundance (mole fraction)
	Excitation energy							Normal proportion[5]	Range of variation
11 O [6]	8	3	11.05125(6)	198(12) ys [2.31(14) MeV]	2p	9 C	(3/2−)
12 O	8	4	12.034368(13)	8.9(3.3) zs	2p	10 C	0+
13 O	8	5	13.024815(10)	8.58(5) ms	β+ (89.1(2)%)	13 N	(3/2−)

P.S.

Or take an alpha-particle from O-16 to turn it into C directly.

Maybe intensive gamma may help, to make the O overexcited.

[K^2]

On 11/23/2024 at 1:00 AM, Selective Genius said:

Is there a nuclear reaction to convert Oxygen to Carbon and Hydrogen? Just like how rutherford's friends transmuted Nitrogen to oxygen?

Yes, it's called a supernova.

Short of that, a particle accelerator works, but if you need more than a handful of atoms, you're out of luck.

[magnemoe]

48 minutes ago, K^2 said:

Yes, it's called a supernova.

Short of that, a particle accelerator works, but if you need more than a handful of atoms, you're out of luck.

Agree, note that supernovas has an danger close distance measured in light years. 
Second question is why, none of the 3 is rare, hydrogen is most common. 
Transmutation is an thing its how we make plutonium and other trans uranium elements. 
But you have other tools like starlifting for more materials then your already Kardashev 2. 

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

 

[magnemoe]

6 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

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I see some problems with that if laws of physic works as here  

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

I see some problems with that if laws of physic works as here  

Interesting, what would happen if the best Hogwartz mages had compressed a fissile ball to critical density and held it then.

Spoiler

 

[magnemoe]

57 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Interesting, what would happen if the best Hogwartz mages had compressed a fissile ball to critical density and held it then.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Not sure how an suddenly 20 kg ball of plutonium would work.  My guess is an tactical nuke as its way over the 11 kg critical limit. 
And you are not containing that, nor shielding from it unless you have an almost infinite strength shield, even then you will fall down into the crater. 

Later a bit like tanks getting targeted by battleship shells or large bombs.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

Not sure how an suddenly 20 kg ball of plutonium would work.

10.5 and even 4 kg work just brilliantly.

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

And you are not containing that, nor shielding from it unless you have an almost infinite strength shield, even then you will fall down into the crater. 

As they can crash stone walls with spells, they probably could apply similar pressure to the plasma ball to confine it.

And the protective spell can provide an opaque bubble shield to hold the photons inside.

[DDE]

On 12/7/2024 at 10:37 AM, kerbiloid said:

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Utterly pathetic by Adeptus Soveticus standards.

Import Know-Hows for Everyone: Compact Thermonuclear Ordnance

[kerbiloid]

12 hours ago, DDE said:

Utterly pathetic by Adeptus Soveticus standards.

You may laugh, but the way I had run into fizzix-schmizzix and later the university, was my school studies on making a fusion charge from scrap materials (lithium from tobacco leaves, deuterium by distilling water, ignition by thin wire electric explosion).

Alas, it got frozen on the design and calculation phase, but it's just because I then turned to computers.

Of course, now I understand that the project was doomed, because I would need tungsten, but had no way to melt enough electric lamps.

Edited Monday at 06:29 AM by kerbiloid

[AckSed]

Theoretically, you could make a chemical explosive inertial-fusion warhead by means of a set of very precisely-placed staged flyer plates backed with explosives, and a capsule of fusion fuel at the end (scroll down): https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, AckSed said:

Theoretically, you could make a chemical explosive inertial-fusion warhead by means of a set of very precisely-placed staged flyer plates backed with explosives, and a capsule of fusion fuel at the end (scroll down): https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php

Don't think its that easy, 1.6 metric tons, length of 2.5 meters, diameter of 40 giving 2 kiloton would be very very interesting for any military, even 200 ton explosive force would be.
It would also have very little fallout and don't require plutonium or U235 making it much easier to build once you know the tricks. 

Makes me wonder could you not use these 2 kt to set off an larger secondary fusion charge? 
The tzar bomb was supposed to have an extra fusion stage set off by the previous but this was replaced by lead as the plane could not have escaped an 100 megaton blast. 

Stuff like railguns can also reach much higher speed than high explosives. 
Plenty of fusion ideas is pulsed who is not an issue, IC engines is pulsed after all. 

[K^2]

6 hours ago, AckSed said:

Theoretically, you could make a chemical explosive inertial-fusion warhead by means of a set of very precisely-placed staged flyer plates backed with explosives, and a capsule of fusion fuel at the end (scroll down): https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php

Theoretically, sure. There isn't really an upper bound on how much compression and temperature you can get from accelerating matter towards a common focal point, as in a perfectly spherical case, it is indistinguishable from the action of gravity, and we know stars work.

Practically, that's another matter. There's only so much pressure you can generate in the chemical explosion stages, so you have to rely on inertia and hydrodynamics of materials you normally consider solid for the rest. That seems to be the direction the linked article suggests, but any imperfection will lead to a high pressure zone that's going to turn your perfectly focused explosion into a spray. It's a bit like balancing a skyscraper on a needle-point. I'm pretty sure that not only do your shaped charges and plates have to be flawless, you can't even rely on cylindrical symmetry, as the device's own weight will produce enough density variation to cause it to fail. Unless you're going to detonate it in space, you'll have to account for how this device sits on the ground.

The fact that no nation has built one, despite the fact that it perfectly circumvents many of the nuclear treaties, is a strong indication that even with modern simulation methods, this is a little too precise.

[farmerben]

How warm could you make Mars?

Enhanced global warming with CFC gasses can help you reach Mt Everest level environments according to Zubrin.  But, what if you wanted to go warmer than that and become downright tropical.  Can you do it with greenhouse gasses?

[darthgently]

50 minutes ago, farmerben said:

How warm could you make Mars?

Enhanced global warming with CFC gasses can help you reach Mt Everest level environments according to Zubrin.  But, what if you wanted to go warmer than that and become downright tropical.  Can you do it with greenhouse gasses?

Given the Martian atmosphere is already 95% CO2 I wonder if any amount of additional greenhouse gases could make it as warm as you describe.   Correction, if you add enough gases to increase atmospheric pressure dramatically the sheer pressure would increase temperatures, but it wouldn’t be because of greenhouse effects, just pressure.

I recall some research awhile back that very accurately predicted the surface temperatures of bodies in our solar system based purely on atmospheric pressure without regard to what the actual gases are.

Distance from the Sun, albedo, and atmospheric pressure rule the math basically, greenhouse effects are not nearly as significant 

[farmerben]

Robert Zubrin says that if we warmed Mars by 10 degrees C, then CO2 would outgas from the soil raising the pressure to almost 1/3 atm.

[darthgently]

3 hours ago, farmerben said:

Robert Zubrin says that if we warmed Mars by 10 degrees C, then CO2 would outgas from the soil raising the pressure to almost 1/3 atm.

That would help.  If we could warm enough to get water vapor from the soil that would be really something.

There is a lot of oxygen in the soil; if we GMO’d a lichen or something to release it that would be super really something.

 Something always nags at me though.  Mars lost most its atmosphere before.  Do we want to lose what remains of water and oxygen to space again?  Lately people have been downplaying the need for an EM field because they say radiation isn’t that horrible on life if shielded at surface, but EM field deflecting the atmosphere stripping solar wind is seemingly forgotten lately.

So maybe 2 phases, first encapsulated bases where native oxygen and water were specifically suppressed from entering the general atmosphere (so warming suppressed), then phase 2 only after the EM problem is solved if ever.

Edited 8 hours ago by darthgently