TheVat

How do magnetic sails work, or provide the ∆v required for something which was accelerated with a rocket? Also, this slow boat speculation shifts the topic from aliens visiting Earth to aliens who dwell in space and are willing to move their city to the Sol system over several millennia (and be separated from a handy radiant energy source for a very long time). Hardly a "visit."

But for a statement to be true, it must correspond to some state of affairs in the world, i.e. be factual. (Or, if an analytic truth, be inherent in the meanings of the words used) So synthetic truths (to use Kant's distinction) ARE dependent on facts. (This, BTW, is not about me being a science guy, but a precision in how we use words in any context like this) Your example isn't really working, given that it describes a situation where key facts were missing and therefore an untrue verdict resulted from a failure of due process. The true statement is that you did not shoot the man, and it is also a fact that you did not shoot him. That a court made a grave error in discovering the key facts doesn't require us to redefine what facts are. Synthetic truths DO require facts, i.e. statements which correspond to reality. So, a certain George Orwell book has been banned?

TIL dwarf planets have moons large enough to name. Cool. How had I missed this? Dwarf planets...I listen...Alp frawd?

I was unaware of the Eris Dysnomia character, apparently from some sort of digital gaming. (I only knew dysnomia as the neurological condition, so had been a bit confused) I was thinking of the dwarf planet out in the Kuiper belt, also home to Sedna (clearly a missed opportunity there, given my reference to mountain ranges) and Pluto. I'm at parallel, Ella - rapt am I.

I just saw the error here. Correction: Siren ode: was Plato sot Alps-awed on Eris? Did this one get away from you a bit? I strive to connect multiple sentences with an unbroken thread of meaning. (I know, I'm the guy who just tried to situate the Alps out in the Kuiper Belt) I hope some of this wordplay will somehow help me understand the Standard Model of particle physics. 😁

Or the actual money available. I once had a struggle with someone who told me it was feasible to move Earth's present population to other planets (making Earth a sort of wilderness park). Other aspects aside, I pointed out the math on amounts of propellant, technology and resources needed just to keep pace with net population growth of 190,000 per day, i.e. just hold population at 8.3 billion. The lowest price currently to get a mass to LEO is $1000/lb. Say through various engineering miracles it was cut tenfold to $100/lb. So, just to get to LEO (let alone suitable locations for space habitats or other planets) would in that reckoning cost an average adult person (140 lb) $14,000. A journey to a viable habitat and the cost of building it would easily be a hundred times that.* So, $1.4 million per person, an extremely conservative estimate. The median net worth of a US citizen is $190,000. One may safely assume it's lower for the global population. This kind of disconnect with actual costs of anything space travel related is probably due in part to the human tendency to fill in gaps in knowledge with "a miracle occurs here," - in my example there are both engineering and economic miracles. *(for a sense of the scale on this, consider the cost of moving somewhere on Earth to the cost of the home you're moving to - now think on how that ratio might compare to moving to Mars or an O'Neill colony or whatever)

Quite. I replied in a similar vein to someone who told me the elderly should do crosswords to keep their minds sharp: "Crosswords enhance your cognitive skill...at doing crosswords."

Siren ode: Was Plato Alps-awed on Eris?

@sethoflagos If you can use eudaimonia and sweat bees in a single palindrome, it's possible you can attain eudaimonia. More Eva requests... Eva, can I, AI, Nomia, duel eudaimonia in a cave? Eva, can I pose Aesop in a cave? Eva can I put solitary rat I lost up in a cave?

A fact is defined as information or a piece of information presented as true or accurate. To be accepted as a fact, there must be reason and evidence which supports it as a true statement about reality. Facts, then, are very much dependent on their truth value. Your dichotomy is a misrepresenting of what those terms mean. When a Court asks for the whole truth, it is asking for a meaningful and evidenced collection of facts on the matter before the Court.

Worth noting this sentiment was actually expressed by Albert Michelson in an 1894 address - but it's often misattributed to Kelvin. Kelvin, however, did say in a newspaper interview in 1902, "No balloon and no aeroplane will ever be practically successful." Chuckle.

Well what to make of Lord Kelvins famous comment in 1897, "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement." One imagines the eminent physicist felt himself quite underpinned by the science of his day. (pins which quickly gave him some sharp pricks within the year)

Emily follows aviation news... Laine, due to gyrater, Cessna bans secretary - got EU denial.

This would have effectively ended my wife in shop dressing rooms long ago.

Ahh. Thanks. If you're using Hetzner (German firm) that might explain Seems likely these were part of the glitching. And banning more crawlers and bots is never a bad idea. That log file is sobering.

Yes materials technology would need some leaps forward and any kind of excess heat handling would likely involve the sail having a circulation of coolant and more mass from that. (also you got me thinking about imperfect reflection and IR radiating from the back of the sail...) The recoil effect is another interesting problem. Put the laser on an airless planet and there's also issues with rotation and orbiting a primary, if continuous thrust is wanted. As @exchemist comment about deceleration suggests, there's also no way I could see to tack and jibe like a sailboat.

Seems unlikely. Aren't contestants fans who want to get on the show and audition for a slot? (Not from UK, so unfamiliar with this particular show, but assume all such game shows have some similarities) Does it involve doing the Time Warp?

Depending on your browser, it's usually easy to delete cache without deleting passwords/logins that are stored. In a "delete browsing data," menu there is usually a column of boxes to check or uncheck - I leave saved passwords and sometimes autofill form data and history unchecked, so it just clears cache and cookies. Once you've checked only what you regularly want deleted, it will store that. The cache is where corrupted file debris tends to build up, causing problems....things like outdated temp files - old images, scripts, or layouts. Clearing the debris will force your device to fetch the fresh, correct data directly from the server.

These both sound like bad gateway (502) problems, where a middleman server accepts your request but the actual website is overloaded. Again, this makes me think Invision Community is another cheapo web service which cuts corners and doesn't allocate sufficient ports for its hosted websites. Be sure and clear your cache after these glitches happen.

Here, volcano, erupt uber-god! Rats admire her. ( I'm dastard ogre but pure on a clover, eh?)

Not an either/or, given other possible scenarios which don't involve rubber science. Present physics has options, and we also have yet to discover if those have engineering feasibility. E.g. we don't know if we could collimate a laser beam well enough to photonically push a lightsail ship through interstellar distances. Or suspend humans cryonically for centuries or millennia. BTW, Bob Lazar was exposed and debunked as a hoaxer decades ago, wasn't he?

Was down most of Tuesday and all of Wednesday here. Starting to wonder if Invision Community is really the best place for SFN. No idea why I kept getting a 502 error, but am logging it here in case it's ever useful.

Eva, can I set a tornado so Dan rotates in a cave? As a palindromedary (i.e. I can travel far without replenishing my supply of reversible words), I have long deified that 11 letter pinnacle of viniculture. Sometimes in a dairy myriad.

Emily likes asking her friend Eva what is feasible in a cave. The "Eva can I....in a cave" opens up many possibilities. Eva, can I face decaf in a cave? Eva, can I bonk a knob in a cave? (More her brother's thing, really) Eva, can I, a model apostle, melt so pale domain: a cave? Eva, can I stamp mats in a cave? Eva, can I let, oh, senior, eh, heroines hotel in a cave? Anyone is welcome to give Emily more queries to send to Eva. I remember Phi contributed early in thread to the Eva Permissions subgenre. With a nod to @sethoflagos dire narrative of disaster in the Sahara.... Eva, can I stop gnu dung pots in a cave?

Why CERN hasn't moved to the far easier dilithium crystal containment is truly perplexing. If there were a editing button for hearty applause, this summation would have me pushing it. Smaller and green/autonomous homes and rakes instead of leaf blowers would be baby steps away from thermodynamic crisis, but they are the sort we need to start taking. (I find it interesting recently reading that the nations with the largest houses (US, Oz) are among those with currently the most social isolation and least socializing in those houses - we seem to have vast districts of lonely and carbon-intensive castles now) To bring this (sort of) round to topic, I have to wonder if there are alien civilizations which are felled by the culture of plenty (built into their biology, too) and then emerge from the ruins with a distinct technophobia. Which could be how space faring ambitions end for some sentient species. Or some species could turn back even sooner, say after a catastrophe at the WW1 stage of chemical weapons. Or WW2's urban obliterations. With zero data, I couldn't be sure but what humans are a rare extreme of stubbornness and self-destructiveness in the galaxy (and I acknowledge this is also a well-worn sci-fi trope). And there's also the Dark Forest types of theories, where civs suppress technology that would show visible technosignatures and attract potential "wolves."