npts2020

8 hours ago, swansont said:

It depends on how highly ionized they are

Why is that? Wouldn't the highly ionized negative particles have just as highly ionized counterparts with positive charge?

11 hours ago, zapatos said:

Unfortunately, while you may be able to find such an environment at the local level, at  the global level there is never a time when there are no weapons around. Hence the reason nations tend not to disarm.

Even more unfortunately, it isn't because it couldn't be done. Locally would be harder, IMO.

8 hours ago, Moontanman said:

So you've never had the shit kicked out of you by an unarmed man? 

No, even though I have been in some supposedly tough neighborhoods all over the world and been threatened on more than one occasion (although it has been a while). Apparently, I am pretty good at convincing a potential adversary that there will be no benefit for being so.

20 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

One can feel safe in many way's, but it usually involves some sort of stick/weapon.

I feel much safer when no weapons are around.

On 4/23/2023 at 8:32 AM, dimreepr said:

what's the point of having more nukes than we need to make a statement?

$$$$$, same as virtually everything supplied to the military. What is the point of having airplanes costing hundreds of millions of dollars to be used in the kind of war we haven't been involved with for longer than most of us have been alive?

On 4/20/2023 at 11:57 AM, swansont said:

What atoms with virtually no net charge? The fission fragments would be highly ionized. This isn’t the sticking point. Because they are charged they deposit their energy in a short distance, as they collide with other nuclei and ionize atoms along their path. 

Of course they are ionized temporarily. What is the net charge of all the fragments?

On 4/18/2023 at 6:37 PM, GrahamF said:

I was mostly trying to determine would would be needed to devise a more efficient method absorbing and using the energy from the nuclear reactions. Like, say, a molecular level lattice system that has a complicated configuration of various elements that when struck with high energy particles directly absorbs them and releases electricity 

One of the problems is that fission occurs much better (in uranium, anyway) with thermal (slow) neutrons but those fissions make fast (high momentum) neutrons. The hydrogen in water is very efficient at slowing those neutrons down by absorbing some of their energy causing the water to heat up enough to make steam for running a turbine to turn a generator for making electricity. If one or more of those steps can be eliminated, you may have something worthwhile. The sticking point comes in channeling exploded atoms with virtually no net charge into an electrical current and finding materials that will hold up to nuclear bombardment, like swansont points out above. It's all about turning atomic kinetic energy, which almost always exhibits itself as heat, into a usable form of energy.

16 hours ago, swansont said:

Are there any reactors that directly generate electricity, rather than heating water to run a steam turbine?

I wasn't aware the OP was for direct conversion from fission to electricity, rather than asking about a novel configuration to do essentially what we now do. My apologies for not understanding that to be the case.

7 hours ago, paulsutton said:

Do they even need to raid silos,? they can perhaps get hold of nuclear material by other means if  they wanted to,

"They" would probably need to raid silos. Producing materiel that is refined enough to make a nuclear explosion is not a trivial undertaking and requires expertise, high tech equipment and a fair amount of time.

On 4/14/2023 at 9:27 PM, GrahamF said:

Let's say we had a device that used thin round plates of fissile material. The fissile material is well below critical mass, but you can stack them to achieve critical mass. Now imagine we have something called... idunno, a "Magischeibe" which is a flat disk that's stacked alternating with the fissile material like a voltaic pile. The Magischeibe can allow enough energy to pass through for the critical mass reaction, but is able to absorb a portion of the energy to convert to electricity.

 

Take the stack and put a hole through the middle for a rod of neutron absorbing (but not fissile) material like boron or hafnium to control the reaction and you have essentially the same kind of configuration as reactors commonly in use for power production today.

If it is possible for a computer to solve it but I don't see why a quantum computer would do it any better/differently from another computer of equal power.

10 hours ago, Erina said:

I confidently draw a link between time and the cost management skills as the private sector lives and dies by it. All funding for public services comes from the productive part of the economy, so the circle is complete.

Unless that private sector is contracting with the government, check out health care spending and defense contracting in the US. Also, how is the USPS funded? Or is mail delivery not a public service?

You might be interested in "The Invisible Universe" by Matthew Bothwell from 2021. Anything very much older will miss the latest findings and revisions. I don't know of much besides scientific papers about quark stars, theorized but not yet shown to actually exist/have existed.

Actually, (on Earth, anyway) a pendulum does a 360 degree swing because the rotation of the planet will make it swing in an ever widening ellipse beginning with the first movement. This does take quite some time to be noticeable so can be ignored to make the apt analogy valid. 

I don't know but this seems pretty innovative. Some guy from Australia built something similar which can be wielded like an AK-47 or other rifle.

22 hours ago, Sensei said:

External sources of fertilizer make monoculture etc.. redundants.. even to the level that even soil is not needed.. i.e. hydroponic..

Problem is "getting enough external sources of fertilizer" without causing a host of other problems and I don't see hydroponics replacing dirt farming anytime soon for  many crops.

1 hour ago, Externet said:

Good day. 

What single crop could be cultivated to provide humanity an emergency substantial and reasonably balanced diet by itself, as if critical climate changes prevented variety of foods to be produced some day ?   

Some root, tuber, grain, legumes, leaves, beans... ?  

Monocrop farming is not recommended. I would think alternating between legumes and grains (depends on the climate where the grower is for types) is the best bet.

8 hours ago, TheVat said:

What chord sounded when they dropped the piano with picric acid covered hammers down a mineshaft?

.

.

.

.

A flat minor.

It was a smashing success!

23 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Yes you do...

What I see is that depopulation is being conflated with what is sustainable for 8,000,000,000 humans in the environment they desire to live. I would not (nor have seen anyone here) argue that depopulation wouldn't be necessary for everyone to live the lifestyle of an average American. Are you telling me you can't see the difference between figuring out a lifestyle for X number of people and how many people can be supported at X type of lifestyle?

Apparently, trying to figure out what is sustainable for the number of humans on Earth is a tangential discussion to climate change. I fail to see how that translates into;

7 minutes ago, iNow said:

You: We need to reduce number of people

Especially when put into the context of what I have actually written on this thread.

2 minutes ago, TheVat said:

I'm also a little concerned that this case will steal some thunder and spotlight from the two far more significant cases upcoming, where Trump actually tried to subvert democracy and institute fascism.  The current indictment is a bit of petty sleaze, pretty low on the Trumpian Peccadillo scale, when you look at some of his other crimes.  

OTOH, if as @Janus mentioned, unsealing the charging document reveals larger felonious acrivity, then let's make some popcorn...

Agreed. Mr. Trump has probably had more lawsuits (supposedly 3,500-4,000) filed against him than everyone who ever visited this forum combined.

32 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

What exactly does constitute a sustainable lifestyle?

That is the slippery fish I am trying to get hold of. I defined what "sustainable lifestyle" was in the context in which I am using it but nobody seems able to see any limits the planet's citizens ought to limit themselves to within that context.

27 minutes ago, iNow said:

We’re well passed that threshold and have been for quite some time already. You may as well be arguing for solutions like “don’t allow the internet to be created.”

Obviously! That is why the current threshold would be well below some future one after the ecosystem has gotten back to a more steady state.

30 minutes ago, iNow said:

Which specific groups do you recommend we murder first, and have you thought through the logistics of forced sterilization?

It's a shame that someone with your intelligence can't imagine any other ways of reducing the population, something I have not advocated. If you take the statement of overpopulation being a problem within the context of everything I have written previously on this thread, you will see that it is only overpopulation in relation to resource use. Hence, the question of what is sustainable for the number of humans in existence?
 

I can see the issue ending up appealed to the Supreme Court with Mr. Trump claiming he couldn't get a fair trial of his peers because he has no peers. Of course, a frivolous appeal but it would take more time to resolve (along with all of the other appeals) and push final resolution even farther into the future, possibly even beyond "The Donald's" lifetime. His people are experts at delaying and tying things up until something happens like the prosecutor leaves office or plaintiffs lose interest/run out of money. 

49 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Growth has nothing to do with it, because the economy will grow with it, as proven by history, and fair share is a purely political issue. Niether need be a problem, but Houston we have a problem...

It seems "history" is beginning to show us what unlimited economic "growth" will do to us. "Fair share" may well be a political issue but it seems to me to be a good place to start for considering what exactly constitutes a sustainable lifestyle

1 hour ago, Ken Fabian said:

I think it is a mistake to frame global warming as a population problem instead of a dirty energy problem; if it truly were so inextricably linked then the logical conclusion is zero emissions can only be achieved by having zero people.

And I think it is a great mistake to not consider population to be a large part of the problem. Firstly, zero emissions is not necessarily the goal, we will almost certainly have some amount of them no matter what we do. The real goal IMO should be to keep emissions of all kinds of pollutants (not just greenhouse gases) below the level at which the ecosphere can effectively filter out or neutralize them. With the current rate and style of resource use/waste, overpopulation is certainly a problem and has been for longer than the time anyone commenting here has been around, especially if we are all to aspire to a first world lifestyle.

The question isn't so much how many humans the planet can sustainably support so much as what kind of lifestyle that number can expect to live. The Earth *could* support billions more people than exist now but everyone would have to live at a bare subsistence level with few of the things most first world citizens take for granted (cars, consumer goods, travel, meat in meals, etc.) being available. One of the bigger obstacles, IMO, is a clear idea of exactly what comprises a sustainable lifestyle. Few would argue that things like bicycling instead of driving, cutting meat from the diet and keeping your house cooler in the winter and warmer in the summer are good things but there is little guidance for what is one's "fair share".

For discussion purposes, I would define "fair share" as the resources an individual would be entitled to if all the world's obtainable resources were divided equally between its inhabitants. Can everyone in the world eat hamburgers twice a week or filet mignon once a month or does everyone need to cut all of that out of their diet? Is it even possible to build sustainable mechanized transportation for 8,000,000,000+ humans? Will everyone have to move to temperate zones because energy for heating and cooling is unsustainable or will it be enough to better insulate houses?

21 hours ago, Endy0816 said:

I'm sure they're planning to simply wait DeSantis out. They can afford to play the long game.

Yep, and Disney can afford to buy the next governor and enough state and local legislators to do pretty much whatever they want...