Airbrush

Sorry I never intended to suggest that when I said the BB "happened." I thought the BB only started 13.8 billion years ago. Our bang had a beginning, even if it was only one of many "bounces." Our BB or bounce is NOT infinitely old.

The universe could be infinitely old, but our big bang (or bounce) happened about 13.8 billion years ago.

Just try your best. Only you know what your best is. I have made wrong choices many, many times in my life. Trump would call me a "loser" because of it. To lose is not to be a loser. Each time, I do my best to recover and get better, somehow, in some way. That is all any form of life can do is live and try their best at survival.

How does the universe happen with "no beginning?" We don't know ABOUT the beginning, but because it exists, and it's expanding, it looks like it popped out, somehow, less than 14 billion years ago.

Exactly. The purpose of life is to live. Then, suppose that life can get a little better at living, that will enhance it's ability to continue living and leave behind progeny. To get better is to live, supercharged. Sorry that "purpose" is a meaningless term in science, but many people think in simple terms, such as myself.

Scientists don't know the big bang started? That's interesting. How can any event happen and not begin? How can the big bang happen, if it never began?

I have a correction to make. I suggested that evolution is an example of life changing, through mutation, in effect to adapt better to a changing environment. "Getting better" as evolution is only half the story of life. Life endeavors to survive and reproduce. Sharks and cockroaches have not evolved much but they survived over 100 million years almost unchanged. Life does not always need to evolve to survive. Right?

The observable universe has a range. Beyond that we can only speculate it is not much different than what we see for a good distance. But very, very far away, like a googol light years away, what does the big bang look like? Maybe space between big bangs in a multiverse?

The big bang had a beginning. The question is what was before the big bang? And what is beyond the range of the big bang?

The question is what is the purpose of life in general, not what the human purpose for life is. I don't know, but it looks to me like life endeavors to survive by respiration, eating and drinking, and avoiding being eaten or injured, and staying at a comfortable temperature, and eventually procreate to leave genetic replicas. If life can adapt to more environments it can be more successful at leaving progeny.

Improvement, in itself, is enough success and happiness. So you get better, why not try to get even better? Or better at something else? If you don't get better, big deal, just try some other way to get better. What's not to relax about a job well done? If you become the best then just try to beat your best. But don't worry if you can't. It's no big deal. When I jog my neighborhood 4 km almost every morning, the same route, I time myself. Sometimes my time is better than others. Depends on how much effort I try. I don't care how much I try, but I like to try. My best time was under 24 minutes, and usually I do it in 25 to 27 minutes.

This is a serious question. I'd like to know how you would answer this in a few words. My answer to the question is the purpose of life is to get better, in a few words. "To get better" is evolution, adaption, and survival. If you get sick, your purpose is to get better. If you do well in anything, the purpose is to get better.

Game of Thrones. Some argue the ending was wrong, but I disagree. The ending was as unpredictable as I could imagine. Arya Stark was the hero, saving the world of the living from the world of the dead.

Suppose we discovered an asteroid that has as much gold as humans have ever extracted from the Earth? Suppose it was not too expensive to extract the gold and send it back to earth. After deducting the cost of mining and transport back to the surface of the earth, could this theoretically reduce the value of gold by about half, if as much gold extracted throughout history was dumped on the market within a period of a few decades?

Does anyone think we could discover an asteroid that has a very large quantity of precious metals? Maybe we could find an asteroid that has more gold than the earth has? If we found an asteroid that is so valuable, maybe it could be towed into Earth orbit and the metals could be extracted in nearly zero g and then send to Earth by parachute. What about "rare earth" metals?

Yes you are correct. Dark energy does not cause superclusters to move apart it only accelerates the motion that began with the big bang. Thanks for the correction. Whenever you think of dark energy, its' effect only works uniformly on entire superclusters of galaxies. I heard that eventually all the galaxies in a supercluster (which is a cluster of galaxy clusters) will merge into a single galaxy and eventually all galaxies in a supercluster will end up in a single supermassive black hole, in trillions of years.

To be exact, only superclusters of galaxies are moving apart. By definition, dark energy causes superclusters to move apart. Dark energy has no impact at all on individual galaxies.

Mueller will testify about his report on Wednesday. The other investigations into Trump and company continue. The White House has put up a total stone wall against all subpoenas for information and testimony from Barr, McGahn, and others. They will drag this out in court until after the elections. Behind the scenes, could Barr have squashed any of the Southern District of New York investigations? What investigations could Barr have terminated without us ever knowing? Why don't the Dems clarify the difference between beginning "impeachment proceedings" and simply beginning "impeachment investigations"? Why would any Dem in congress be against beginning "impeachment investigations" immediately?

If it would be idyllic to float above the clouds of Venus in a giant airship, you better not fall out because you will land in hell. It takes just one crazy, homicidal, suicidal person to destroy a huge airship, and there is no parachuting to safety I do wish they would send a super tough lander to Venus, just to see how robust they can build a rover, comparable to the Curiosity Rover on Mars, but able to withstand such high temperature and pressure. Maybe it is still impossible.

As an American, what I think about nuclear N Korea is their missile technology is a diversion. They have no incentive to launch a ballistic missile against any other nation. The missile launch would be detected and the source located. This would be definitive proof of a war crime. Retaliation would be immediate, overwhelming (fire and fury) nuclear, and totally destroy most of N Korea's military infrastructure, and everything dear to Kim. Their nuclear weapons are worth a lot of money to a terrorist group that has that much cash. What would a nuke be worth on the terrorism market? Kim is desperate for money. N Korea could secretly sell a nuke to a terrorist group for a high enough price. The terrorists transport the nuke in an old fishing boat. They park the boat outside a major port city. They drop the nuke to the bottom in a good depth of water. Nobody could prove the nuke came from N Korea.

As you note, it would also be worthwhile to build a comfortable spaceship with centrifuge for human compartments, for the luxury of one g gravity for a long-term mission of several decades, if not a one-way trip. You find the best prospect asteroid with lots of, easy to extract, water-ice. The spaceship parks nearby the asteroid and workers commute to the ice digs, in work in shifts, where ice blocks are hauled to a processor that extracts water, and creates air and hydrogen fuel to power the whole operation. With climate change here on Earth, rising sea levels, coastal dwellers forced inland, and growing populations, scarcity of water, political strife, etc, etc, life on Earth could become quite miserable for the majority in the near future, and many people would be glad to take a one-way trip to Mars or an asteroid, IF they can have a good time going there and working there. It will have to be fun, or at least MORE fun than their life on Earth. On their one-way trip they should have great video games to play and something like the Star Trek "Holodeck" for recreation.

Then one milli-g is one thousandth-g for an asteroid 10 miles in diameter. How much gravity for an asteroid 100 miles in diameter? I'm searching for the ideal size and gravity of an asteroid to attach an ice-processing factory. Suppose an asteroid 100 miles in diameter has a gravity of about 20 centi-g or one-two-hundredth-g. You divide the mass of your ice slab by 200 for Earth-weight conversion. So if I could carry in a backpack 50 pounds on Earth I could carry a slab of ice that would weigh 1000 pounds or half a ton on Earth. Do we even have the technology already to launch a module into orbit that can land in an ice field in Antarctica and start cutting into the ice with lasers and convert ice into air, water, and fuel automatically?

This is how I think humans can best adapt to outer space. What you need for survival is just water-ice. If you can find a large supply of ice on an asteroid of maybe 100 miles in diameter, you can start building your space station there. You can also get a centrifuge rotating at one g gravity for crew quarters. How many g's of gravity would the workers experience working on a 100 mile diameter asteroid? If a 10 mile diameter asteroid has about ONE NANO G. Then a 100 mile diameter asteroid would have about 10 to 20 NANO G's? Anyhow it is so low a gravity that very massive volumes of ice could be moved and processed with minimal amounts of energy. You excavate the ice using laser cutters then the ice is transported to a nearby processing station that melts the water out of the rock and from the water you get oxygen for air, and hydrogen for fuel. You can start using the hydrogen fuel to power the cutting lasers and excavation. And the workers have air and water. You can fabricate ice panels for building. As you dig into the asteroid you can start building your space station INSIDE the asteroid where you dug out the ice, and you will be sheltered from cosmic rays and micro-meteors. We can use asteroids as gas stations and as stepping stones to other stars. Who cares about the Moon and Mars?

Who cares about intelligent life in another galaxy? I'm only interested in something nearby, like what is within our reach? How many habitable planets are within a radius of about 100 LY or even 1000 LY?

Any means of anchoring the laser, or no anchoring at all. Just using rockets to counter the cutting lasers thrust. Only needs a tiny thrust right? Because of the very low g work environment, workers could literally carry thousands of tons of material on their backs across the asteroid, to the materials dump and sorter, right?