Ken Fabian

Isn't it the other way around? Taking away the resistance of being active in gravity leads to worse health and recovery outcomes. You would want to be in very good health to attempt a trip to Mars - and you will arrive in poorer health after that trip. Not sure of it, could be wrong, but I thought the less stressful/easier on the body/aging more slowly meme was something Robert Heinlein came up with in his "Man Who Sold the World" story and it got taken up by other space optimist SF writers - the 'whatever it takes' space mogul determined to reach the moon started claiming people would live longer in low moon gravity to help promote his space program - an appeal to older rich people who had money to invest - not because it was true but because no-one knew what prolonged low gravity would do so he could say it because it might be true. But the whole Mars colony thing is science fiction - fiction being the important word. (But it might be true). It seems to appeal to a primitive human urge to seek out new, resource rich lands in times of stress and trouble... and conquer them. A rerun of European colonisation. And perhaps you too can become a Founding Father. Except Mars isn't resource rich, it is the antithesis of resource rich, a global wasteland. Earth is littered with the remnants of failed dreams in the barren places - and none of those were anywhere near as harsh and as barren as Mars. We don't even know if the great many essential mineral ore deposits an advanced industrial economy (the barest minimum for survival) even exist on Mars, let alone economically viable and accessible to any colony site. There are worthwhile things to do in space and some are very ambitious - the capability to divert big asteroids or comets on collision course would be good. Much better to save Earth for everyone like that than build a bolt hole on Mars for a few and letting Earth die.

Here in Australia we have to participate - it is our civic duty and a legal obligation. But that obligation is to turn up at voting place, get issued with and put ballot papers in the appropriate receptacle or submit mail in ballot papers - at the risk being fined if not. We do not have to fill out the ballot papers (equivalent to "I don't know" or "I don't want to") and staff at polling stations are explicitly NOT permitted to look to see whether you have. Rude remarks or drawings are not unknown along with 'donkey votes' - what we call simply numbering the candidates in the order they appear on the paper, a small advantage to candidates at the top and a valid vote nonetheless. Only a few percent of votes are ever invalid, ie most people do vote. Specific ballot papers are numbered as they are passed out but cannot be linked to specific voters; names on the electoral roll get a strike through line at the time, but which voter got which one is not recorded, nor is the order they came and voted. We also have ranked choice voting, where the candidate with the least votes gets eliminated and their ballots are recounted with their second choice. And around again until one candidate gets more than half the valid votes. None of this is a cure for voter disinterest and being uninformed or misinformed. Pressing people's buttons on one issue whilst downplaying other, often more significant issues remains an effective way to induce voters to vote against their own best interests.

@studiot No, the emissions still get counted where they happen, where the fuels are used. Australia's policies in practice give support to renewable energy domestically - more get out of the way of a solar boom already happening and taking credit - in parallel with giving support to apparently unlimited expansion of fossil fuel extraction as long as it is for export. With gas there are big and problematic production emissions, which are counted as Australia's, especially from low grade raw gas high in CO2 that has to be got rid of, for which there are a lot of CCS promises and carbon offsetting and accounting games with land sector emissions that fluctuate hugely) to maintain a pretense that Australia's emissions are declining in line with climate commitments. This is from the 'side' that presents as committed to Net Zero - the conservative side is currently regrouping after election loss and busy working out new ways to better present and market opposing and obstructing climate action and renewable energy. Call me cynical. @sethoflagos I could be wrong calling it virtual spinning inertia but the Hornsdale Power Reserve battery trialed a virtual machine mode for providing inertia. https://arena.gov.au/assets/2023/09/HPRX-VMM-Modelled-vs-Actual-Report.pdf My understanding it does now provide that service and how well it does being assessed although the grid operator is not yet ready to green light that in place of synchronous condensers. Nor yet prepared to create a market mechanism for inertia services; I think virtual inertial does involve holding back some storage and inverter power in reserve, ie does represent a cost to battery operators, as does for syncons and I suppose for FF plants. I think it is just a matter of trials proving it works, and overcoming any problems that emerge.

Seems to me newborn crying would provide early training in paying attention for the parents, especially mothers. Achieving the sort that goes right up the spine is probably getting it right. Not using it unnecessarily has to be learned.

Heading in the right direction. China's coal use peaking 5 years earlier than their 2030 commitment under existing international agreements has to be a good thing if it turns out true - their commitment to push ahead with economic development, lifting hundreds of million people out of poverty was why/how ongoing growth of coal use up to 2030 was justified, with nations like my own (Australia) happy to go along with that to sell a lot of coal - which emissions don't count against Australia's. All well short of what the global warming problem really requires but better in some ways than expected and a lot better than nothing but it does look like lots of people are being lifted out of poverty along the way - a greater good that unbridled capitalism rejects as their job and seems to oppose in their governments. The very large scale construction of not-fossil fuels the transition requires seems to be the necessary precursor to emissions starting to go down. It does appear that ongoing emissions reductions depends on renewable energy is being taken up preferentially primarily because it delivers least cost electricity rather than for the low emissions although high populations and coal energy has serious pollution issues beyond CO2. Ultimately not good enough but still looks like we are in a better place to do more than the gloomy doomist pundits defending going slow and doing nothing radical insist. I do think that introducing lots of solar and wind ends up bad for the economics of coal electricity - eating it's lunch so to speak, making it harder to recoup costs because more hours each day coal power doesn't make money yet cannot turn off. They end up competing outside those times with more flexible generation and with battery storage that is the most flexible of all - able to go from high levels of discharge to charging in milliseconds. As well as providing voltage and frequency control and virtual 'spinning inertia'. And then there is pumped hydro. I don't know that all the challenges of managing very high RE grids are fully worked out - I suspect for example we may need better, dedicated low latency data networks for system monitoring and fine control.

@CharonY PS - It may not be correct usage but I think 'species' is an arbitrary concept, versus shared traits as evidence of ancestry - homology that applies to clades - that looks sound. Clade - a grouping of organisms with a common ancestor and all of its lineal descendants.

I could be wrong about the term - my understanding is that a morphology shared by all members of a clade would be considered homologous - thereby showing ancestry in common - and that this would apply within a species. It may be a different term within a species - a fixed trait maybe - versus sub-species variants. I may need to re-read and refresh.

I am supposing those new saplings with the resistance are descendants of specific parent(s) that already had that different genetics - selection amongst existing variations seems more likely than specific, recent mutation, ie more likely that some already had that but for other reasons they were not shared universally (not homologous) within the species. Seems possible it IS very recent mutation and rare within the overall population but pinning that down could take wide ranging sampling and genetic testing, although if it a rare and localised phenomena that might be indicative. Not sure it is can be assumed it is all good. Any widespread loss of all those without that resistance - the trait becomes homologous - will reduce the genetic diversity, which may include losing some of the traits that made the larger population so successful. It is not like climate and other environmental factors are stable anymore - less diversity can be a longer term problem.

I don't know how things work in the UK. Here in Australia what actually gets done is less an overarching long term 'green' plan than it is short term political compromises, with the doubt, deny, delay crowd 'helping' exacerbate the planning, coordination and management problems that emerge from rapid change and new technologies, that they then go on to highlight and criticise as flawed and inadequate, as if what we get is what the proponents had wanted all along. The rate of uptake of RE has grown rapidly, far more rapidly than even optimistic 'planners' anticipated and is now driven primarily by electricity generation companies seeking to add capacity at least cost, yet at the politician level the influence of fossil fuel lobbyists promoting alarmist economic fear of RE and insisting that if not coal then gas must expand remains strong. There is a lot of coordinated, political party supported local astro-turf opposition and obstructing of the elements a high solar and wind grid need to advance, like transmission lines, like solar and wind farms, especially off-shore that have high capacity factors, like large battery install. Every power outage becomes an opportunity for criticism of RE, even when RE was a lesser factor in them - Outages vs media mention of RE (FYI - graph shows Australia National Electricity Market power outages as minutes per year per customer, ups and downs but clearly declining, but the most recent major outages incited an abundance of media blaming of RE - even when triggered by storms taking out transmission or when coal and gas plant failures were the initial and primary cause. Note - I don't know why I can't insert this image as an image rather than as a link - it wants to put it into 'downloads' folder and takes multiple steps to get to view. Part of recent changes to site? Is there another way?) I think we are getting massive growth in battery storage to add to solar and wind not only because it has come down in cost so much, so fast but because, in part it is a consequence of expectations that solar and wind would cost a lot more and grow much more slowly; batteries have become the quick fix to add system strength in the face of the failure to anticipate, whilst longer term actions like major transmission upgrades or pumped hydro need longer lead times; the investments in them were never going to happen until it was clear that there would be enough solar and wind to need it. A few years could see better use of 'idle' wind farm assets.

You will need a universe with different physics to get planets that are not close to spherical. At fine scale it may look very uneven but viewed from space Earth looks close to spherical, the unevenness too small to pick out by eye. With accurate measurement, shown to be oblate - fatter around the equator due to centripetal force from spinning. Gravity tends to make stuff higher than that around it to tumble and flow to fill lower places. How do we know? Does someone really have to count the ways for you? That could be a homework assignment. Google and Wikipedia would probably give a start. Google Scholar for the more technical, published papers.

The moon? I think we will see crewed missions within a decade overseen by NASA - because the goal is known to be achievable and already has US Congressional support, with contracts to provide different elements already approved. Private sector (not Provide sector)? Taxpayer funding is the source of all private sector profitability; without it there won't be moon missions. The moon isn't a cash cow waiting to be milked, it is taxpayers that are the cash cow, and no shortage of milkmaids for that. (Same breed of cow as jumped over the moon?). Is it a private enterprise activity when it depends on public funding? When the most cited commercial opportunity is imaginary demand for He-3 from imaginary fusion reactors that is a red flag, not a green light. Mars? Not convinced that will happen at all, but it seems possible, barely. Nothing there is worth what it will cost to send astronauts there but that hasn't damped the optimism around it. Which just says to me the optimism is based on the imaginary, not on well thought business plans.

Apparently people can taste and smell garlic through their feet - https://www.popsci.com/you-can-taste-garlic-with-your-feet/ Unlike synesthesia (wikipedia - "Synesthesia or synaesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People with synesthesia may experience colors when listening to music, see shapes when smelling certain scents, or perceive tastes when looking at words") it seems that one of the crucial aromatic chemicals in garlic can be absorbed through skin and be carried around the body by the bloodstream to mouth and nose. So technically you still taste and smell it through nose and mouth. (As an odd anecdote, possibly unrelated, I sometimes get odd 'itchy' nerve sensations in the 'webs' of my fingers, that will be echoed by unpleasant nerve sensations in my teeth. Crossed wires somewhere?)

Worth keeping in mind that LFP type lithium batteries are becoming the dominant type - and they have low fire risk. They don't need cobalt amongst other advantages. Our solar batteries and electric ride-on mower are LFP - the mower rated at 3,000 cycles, so at the rate we use it... over 60 years. (Hah! That won't happen but battery should last the life of the mower. Long lifetime is a significant factor). I think some emerging Sodium batteries do rely on cobalt in their cathode, but others do not. I'm in wait and see mode. With mass manufacture Sodium might undercut lithium for many purposes. Not sure to what extent the costs of the materials sets the price or if it is manufacturing costs; a bit of both no doubt. Supply constraints emerging for lithium (or nickel or cobalt) might be the factor that decides in favour of alternatives.

Frugality that is forced on people, that is widely disliked and resented, does not help and can work counter-productively to give ongoing popular permission to policies that build and expand fossil fuel use - no questions that fossil fuels do work whilst new technologies do come with uncertainties. Of course the climate consequences of emissions have a lot of 'certainty' but they are widely seen as remote certainties and (frankly) the ability to weigh it all up by the public, without resort to trusting high level expertise, in a milieu where false claims of expertise is common and can be well aimed at popular dislikes and resentments, is very limited. Whilst frugality as a choice by those who are informed and care enough helps a bit - and as a choice by everyone would help a lot - that still can't get us to zero emissions without threatening more than access to unnecessary luxuries. It can put a ceiling on them but the ceiling is still too high; we are too dependent. We need abundance of low cost low emissions energy to displace the fossil fuels and that takes forethought, planning, with sufficient funding and investment, which seem harder to get when economies are struggling. Dependence on the economy we are part of (and on the energy economies use) is too great for 'going without' to fix the problem. And yes, frugality as a choice is a virtue - but it remains deeply unpopular.

@studiot I'll stand by what I said - 'very close to homogeneous'. Yes there is a slight effect, but too small to be significant. Gravity will slow the rate of vertical diffusion mixing (slightly) but not actually cause any separation under Earth's atmospheric conditions. Any observed accumulation - the sort that present hazards in enclosed spaces - will be from nearby sources that begin at higher concentration than surrounding air - bulk air - sinking and pooling before getting mixed, not from any separation at the molecular level due to different density - molecular speeds are too high. More extreme conditions eg gas centrifuges used for nuclear fuel enrichment can overcome that diffusion due to molecular speeds, yes, but the equivalent 'gravity' to do that is extreme. (Lab centrifuges can get up to millions of g's).

This is incorrect. There is higher than average concentration because the sources of CO2 are at the surface and it takes mixing to disperse and homogenize them in the air. Those sources are higher concentration than the air, not from any stratification. Total gross amounts are mostly greater because lower atmosphere is higher density. At larger scales bulk air movements mix atmospheric gases - convection and wind. A big thunderstorm will carry air from ground level to the stratosphere with vigorous mixing all the way. At small scales diffusion mixes them and prevents any stratification, even in enclosed spaces with still air. Without a source at higher concentration it won't pool in the bottom - and is maintained by the source. Take the source away and diffusion will mix them to very close to homogeneous.

I don't see how they can be serious. I think it is unrealistic enough to expect much from Carbon Capture and Storage even in more familiar forms - it would have to become the world's single biggest industry, without any profitability, ie paid for by taxes or levies, which will be opposed and evaded. Oceans are so enormous I can't see how useful amount of sea water could be processed at all, let alone cost effectively - or even do it in a way that is easier and cheaper than (not economically viable) Direct Air Capture. The top 1mm of Earth's oceans is 360 Gigatonnes and I doubt treating even that much (that little) would be sufficient. Having localised, probably coastal processing and expecting mixing by currents seems to require taking more CO2 out of some water, to well below an ideal concentration, to dilute the concentrations elsewhere, with ecological impacts of that. Then there is all that CO2 to temporarily store and transport and then permanently store somewhere. There are few ways it can be used that won't ultimately release the CO2 back again and those uses that could permanently lock up the carbon are not going to have markets big enough. I think low emissions energy to displace fossil fuel burning is both the most directly effective and the least cost action we can take. Studies to explore the novel 'solutions' are worthwhile but committing to schemes like this is not.

@Airbrush Yes, the 'floor' would need to be angled, like the sides of a pie dish to get the correct artificial horizontal. It would ideally be a curved surface in both directions although probably tolerable to have rooms with a flat floor if the diameter is very large. The weird Coriolis effects have effects on movements in particular directions, (but not other directions) and are going to be noticeable whilst moving around but the inner ear driven sensation of being unbalanced and turning around won't go away by staying still, it will be all the time. Sounds a bit like lying down drunk only you don't sober up and get over it. Little 'stones' in the ear canals as well as fluid motion make those sensations. Again, I would have to search for the specific experiments - I seem to recollect much larger diameter than 50m being needed to be turning slowly enough to be imperceptible. 100's of metres to kilometres? It did sound like it is hard to get used to and even people who seemed okay for a while usually found it harder to tolerate as time went on. The experiments used a rotating room in regular gravity - rotation but not in the same plane as would happen in space or as a centrifuge in different gravity - but the idea was that the ears detect that rotating motion in any direction.

The basic principles seem sound but the engineering and construction difficulties and costs seem prohibitive. Even doing a test version on Earth seems difficult. They would have to have a very large diameter or else the mismatch between what the eyes and ears say - an "unmoving" room - and what the inner ears say - turning around - can be nauseating. Ideally the rotation rate should be slower than the inner ears can detect, although some people may naturally cope better with higher rotation rates, and perhaps people can use anti-nausea medication. On the ground such a structure may be best done as using tilted circular railway rather than a wheel or centrifuge on an axle. Like bends on regular railways, the durability depends on the stability of the track and underlying groundwork. The entry/exit presents some serious challenges, as would connections for the air ventilation, plumbing and electrical supplies.

I'll be happy if I don't get shingles again (once only, but that was enough) - a few months until I have the follow up injection. Time and further studies will tell us whether it provides significant 'immunisation' against dementia.

Just read the late Octavia Butler's Patternmaster stories - Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, Clay's Ark, Patternmaster. I was always impressed by her Xenogenesis aka Lilith's Brood stories but am not normally a fan of horror/supernatural themes, which (barring Clay's Ark) these stories explore. That is an odd one out in the collection, being almost pure hard SF, with no supernatural elements but to my mind more disturbing in the themes even than the others that do have them - probably for an alien parasite/symbiont seeming more credible than magical powers. I might have said Butler's themes were about being on the losing side yet surviving and even finding optimism in their slavery - no heroes always winning against impossible odds in her stories - but I think they may be more about surviving sexual enslavement, where people not only have no choice but have to deal with acquired/imposed biological urges overwhelming them - becoming addicted and enjoying it whilst hating the powerlessness. Even the Master races in her stories can be powerless against their own biological needs.

Have Musk release the doge's to investigate the breaches? Even without such blatancy I don't expect much legal comeback on Trump. Given the inability to prosecute Trump himself in a timely manner (4 years) - and a Trump friendly Congress and a compliant Supreme Court I won't hold my breath waiting for the wheels of justice to turn on Trump's inner circle.

@toucana Everyone who participated had to know the use of Signal was a breach of security protocols in and of itself. Every one would know they may be called before a relevant Committee and have to answer questions; the politicals might consider lying under oath (in the absence of records) to be BAU but the others? Hard not to think the point of using Signal was to have a discussion that was unofficial, unrecorded (after someone presses 'delete all') and therefore deniable - and they could 'speak their minds' more freely. May even have been instructed by Trump himself to use Signal and push the boundaries of What The President Says is Always Legal? Seems to me like all the more reason to - like organised crime - be very clear who is in the loop. Big oops.

Well, incompetent people being careless of their security obligations might trust the convener and not be clear exactly who they are sharing information with. Actually I would expect organized criminals to want to be sure of who they are talking with before saying anything incriminating. The aides and spooks in the discussion didn't check who was on-line either? I kind of expected it would be an obligation (and a critically serious one) of every participant to know who is included before participating. The junior ones probably had a good grasp of the requirements - but chose not to, out of deference, Trump loyalty or to avoid notice? I wonder if the proper communications protocols - NOT Signal - would have provisions for confirming everyone involved had the requisite clearances. As well as keep records.

Not familiar with Signal but... wouldn't every participant know who every other participant is? Aren't they clearly listed? Wouldn't they check that list if only to be sure everyone who is supposed to be in the discussion is on-line before they start if only to not have to call another meeting? Or is that list only for the 'convener' and others can be kept unaware of the identity of some participants? Which sounds like it would be an absolute no-no for such a meeting to me. It does sound like a level of carelessness as well as disregard for proper procedures for a high level classified meeting that is incompatible with their duty for dealing with classified information.