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  2. @KJW. I understand that you regard my last few posts as too much of a waste your precious time to be worth responding to. But I trust that in turn, you will not object to me regarding your silence, particularly wrt the non-conservation of linear momentum in general gas collisions, as concessions to the arguments presented. Live long and prosper.
  3. If you weren't in hot water writing this post, you would have read (or between the lines i.e. in good faith) that we were talking about the potential bombing of Tokyo.. so, I was not comparing Hiroshima vs Washington, but Tokyo vs Washington, i.e. destruction of capital city of 1st country vs destruction of capital city of 2nd country.. Which is quite obvious from my statement. Thus, the introduction of Hiroshima into this topic is out of place, as I was comparing destruction of two capitals..
  4. I meant no disrespect, but what you're discussing here isn't much different from our previous exchanges other than perhaps your clearer assertion of mind emerging from some non-physical/material source. If I've misunderstood, my apologies; however, any assertion of mind emerging without a brain or some functionally similar structure is ludicrous without a basis in science. From all you have discussed here, you have not sufficiently nor convincingly provided such a basis. From nearly half-century in private study of the dreaming brain and now amid the twilight of my life, I want to believe that their could be something more to the nature of the mind than I have discovered...but I believe in the science, I believe in the objective truths good science provides. To believe in something more may be comforting, but it's a lie if not proven or provable and I, personally, won't believe in a lie.
  5. The circumstances surrounding this and Hiroshima are hardly comparable.
  6. @Phi for All There may be imaginary "better" uses in space - never any shortage of those - but the only advanced industrialized economy that actually has high demand and high value uses for PGM's and can pay for them, the only one at all - is Earth's. The 'but we can use in space' is sort of right; most of what any proposed asteroid mining operation produces will be for use in space, as essential to being able to deliver resources of high value to Earth - like fuel for the rockets. There is no independent space economy only outposts of Earth's economy. Sure, if my proposed test case worked it could deliver small amounts of usable asteroid materials eg water, raw nickel-iron, carbonaceous material to NEO there could be demand for them from whatever space stations there are. But what are those space stations doing that makes a profit? I've asked this before but no-one can answer without getting all imaginary. Taxpayer funded space stations that make no profits using such materials may reduce their costs doing that, but the overall totality still relies on Earth subsidy, just a bit less direct. I don't think any projects in space can achieve self perpetuating growth unless the economics work. What are those activities in orbit that pay their own way with enough left over to support future growth? Subsidy until it works isn't good enough; we need a lot better than that to commit the levels of investment needed. Without a way to deliver tangible returns to Earth investors it is just dreaming.
  7. Ouch ,did you mean to say "really"?. I think it is just a mathematical construct to model real effects.
  8. Yesterday
  9. Because it is still a question! Discussion "ad nauseam" was inconclusive and ended at agreeing to disagree. Participation in discussion is voluntary, but requires respect.
  10. No. To better fight a war. Nothing magical about nuclear weapons, they are just like other weapons only more powerful. They also worked to develop radar, better and faster planes, jet engines, etc. None of these were to show off; they were to help win a war.
  11. Servo's/stepper-motor's encoders (as sensors) pass data of joint-angles (node-spaces) to computers. Back-EMF (resistances) pass costs of edges (moves,) to allow to plan lower-cost routes.
  12. 1- Odds are not very good indeed! even for finding remnants of low life forms. 2- If we find intelligence all over in nature, this would also be a key sign of wherein lies mind. Just helping us understand us would be, well, helpful too.
  13. Sadly (well happily enough) ,I don't think that will ever happen (unless we ever chanced upon a defunct civilization that left records) Perhaps we could find intelligent life here on earth among the other species if we learn to communicate with them and they understood symbols....or even if they just helped us to understand our own intelligence. (the intelligence we use when our basic needs have been met)
  14. Maybe data and observation will determine if a useful dichotomy is there or not! Brain is part of the body, definitely; where is mind is the main issues that we need to address; It has the potential to change our understanding of our place in the universe; are we mere accidents of nature or active partners in the cosmic dance. Finding life elswhere in the universe, without it either being brought to or coming from earth, would begin to help us also resolve the enigma. Hard to understand should not stop us from trying.
  15. Am I missing something? Why would you bring it back here, where it would be really, really expensive nickel-iron, or really, really expensive platinum? I don't have numbers, but terrestrial mining has to be a lot cheaper in almost every aspect. Does not having to pay for mineral rights offset asteroid mining's inherent challenges and their costs, which include identifying and safely bringing the metals back to Earth? We can keep the metal out in space to build HE3 gathering facilities, something we'll need more of for quantum computing and medical imaging. Not sure how I feel about mining the moon for it, but we don't need much to make a big difference and it's in limited quantities on Earth. It makes more sense to bring this back. Anything we don't have to send offworld is a resource we get to keep, so I think it makes sense to use what we find out there out THERE as much as possible. At some point, we'll need the metals from asteroids for more projects out there.
  16. I like your proposal. Politicians are like children. Want to put on the ritz, show off in the sandbox.. It is irrelevant.. Nuclear fission was discovered by German-Nazi scientists in 1938. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_nuclear_fission ..and this led to Einstein's proposal to create an American version of it, before Nazis.. This is patently untrue. Are you suggesting a large cost? Compare how much NASA spent, and how much SpaceX spent, on the same task. Would the Americans surrender if Washington was destroyed? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Washington ..it could have been done anywhere and none of the living observers would have understood what actually happened.. This statement is silly..
  17. Before KJW and Markus make this discussion too mathematical, and the rest of us can only look on, let me put in my two cents. The rubber sheet ( trampoline ) analogy fails because it is 2D, gravity pulls the trampoline down, and we cannot show 4D curvature ( yes I know, KJW and Markus, except mathematically ). You would need to imagine trampolines above the mass, on all sides of it, and even extending into past and future. And all of those are not pulled down by gravity. Can, or is, space-time really curved ? All we know is our model does a very good job of describing how test masses act in space-time, by using the curved geodesics that ascribe curvature to our model. And that's why I never engaged full-time 4 wheel drive with my Jeep Grand Cherokee on firm, dry surfaced roads.
  18. Just to clarify. The matter dominated era comes later; the first era was radiation dominated. What later became matter, with mass, was originally all massless radiation ( possessing the property of energy ), because the Electroweak force had not decoupled yet for the Higgs mechanism to give mass to Fermions, This would have been when the observable universe was in causal contact ( light/information has time to traverse it ) in order to establish an equilibrium that ensures isotropy and homogeneity, prior to a vacuum energy driven inflationary period that expanded that observable universe many many orders of magnitude. See Alan Guth, Electroweak symmetry break, and Inflationary Theory.
  19. I doubt there is a useful dichotomy between the mind and the brain. To my view the brain is a part of the body and what the mind is is very hard to understand.
  20. To me, life around us does not always follow a logical path, hence the need to make sense of it. As for the before and after void, I like your use of the word "apparent", as we really do not know. However, if mind is within brain, then there isnothing waiting for us afterward. If mind acts upon brain, then, maybe.
  21. Can you explain (in simple terms for me and perhaps in greater detail for others) how time dilation causes gravity? I thought time dilation was caused by relative motion and that relative motion does not necessarily entail ,or cause gravity. So you can have time dilation where there is no curved spacetime.
  22. No ,the life we see around us follows logical paths .(animals,trees,humans,societies and the physical universe) The senselessness I had in mind was the apparent void we come from at birth and the void we enter after we are finished. In between we try to understand what our place is in that context. I doubt other species entertain these ideas but ,who knows maybe they might.
  23. The theory for the fission bomb was already well established, but some of the parameters could only be obtained by experiment. The problem is that the experiment consumes a large amount of fissile material. As it was, the Americans were already hedging their bets, because they didn't know which system would work ( better ? ). E Fermi had already shown how to produce Plutonium from large amounts of Uranium in the reactor in Chicago; the other approach was liquid thermal diffusion of a Uranium compound to enrich it. The fissionable material for the bombs, Plutonium and enriched Uranium, was produced at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. That is where the 'heavy lifting' was done. Given the fissionable material, and some resources, even a shmuck like me could design a simple fission bomb. Other complications are arming and delivery of the weapon without it doing unintended damage. The Germans were well ahead of the Americans in the late 30s in the theory aspect, but by 1940 A Hitler had conscripted many of Germany's leading scientists; others, mostly Jewish, were either purged, or escaped to America. Hitler's advisors overestimated the time needed to develop a fission bomb, and he refused to devote manpower and resources to such a project, assuming it would not be ready in time to make a difference in the war. He did authorize development of a reactor, but even that was small scale, and used inefficient heavy water moderation instead of graphite. Japan was given a chance to surrender, but the military leaders had promised to oppose an invasion of the Japanese mainland to the very last man. It would have resulted in much higher casualties on both sides. As Swansont noted, even fire bombing Tokyo, and the first A-bomb drop, was not enough to convince them. You know what they say about 20/20 hindsight, armchair quarterbacking, the fog of war, and losing opportunities by second guessing, don't you ?
  24. Yes, if life has no meaning, then we are left with making our own sense of, and emphasise rationality and logic in doing so! .....our own sense of it, and emphasize........
  25. Klaus Fuchs. The Rosenbergs. And others. Also, your premise that Japan was beaten does not match the facts. They did not acknowledge it. They rejected the Potsdam terms. They did not surrender, even after the first bomb was dropped. Did they do their own Manhattan project equivalent, or did they use pilfered results? One thing about research is the time, money and effort you spend finding out things that don’t work. Subsequent efforts don’t have to expend resources chasing these down.
  26. "To Be or not to Be" https://youtu.be/1u8OlUS7BhU?si=rMV91ELFEeaZncRA Or is the meaning of life to make sense of what has no sense?(we can all make sense of what seems logical, I would say)
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