Airbrush

Excellent info, thanks for that. What do you think of billions of ping pong balls to cover the arctic ocean to reflect sunlight? I thought of volcanoes in Antarctica or Alaska, or wherever the wind direction is away from populated areas. But it would be terribly dirty no matter where the volcano is located. Also, they would need to excavate the volcano with nukes. Or foresting deserts? If you could desalinate sea water, sun-powered water distillation, while you plant the desert with trees, one tree at a time, one water-hose per tree to not waste water. The forest starts small and expands outward. Or is there a device that can be built to large-scale to extract CO2 from the air, that works faster than a tree can? Think of anything that can bridge the 50-year gap between today and an idyllic future that is totally carbonless and clean, abundant energy for cheap.

Maybe this is better in Climate Science? But engineering is what people DO to address human problems. About all humans can do to control anything about a volcano is to divert lava flows. But what if we could get a volcano to erupt on demand? Or kept erupting to deliver enough dust to the atmosphere to cool the earth enough to stall global warming? The big island of Hawaii has a volcano called Mona Loa erupting. Could it be used to deliver dust to the atmosphere, if the winds are blowing east the dust would get into the atmosphere before falling on the western US. Is there anything we could throw into the volcano that would help? "Climate scientists bring up volcanic eruptions to better understand and explain short periods of cooling in our planet’s past. Every few decades or so, there is a volcanic eruption (e.g., Mount Pinatubo, El Chichón) that throws out a tremendous amount of dust and gases. These will effectively shield us enough from the Sun to lead to a short-lived global cooling period. The particles and gases typically dissipate after about 1 to 2 years, but the effect is nearly global." What do volcanoes have to do with climate change? – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet (nasa.gov)

In high school I did poorly in physics and chemistry. In college at CSULA I had wonderful professors for beginning Physics and Oceanography so I did very well in Physics and Oceanography. Good teachers are more valuable than we can imagine! Neil deGrasse Tyson for president! However, Neil said he would not want to be president. He would rather educate people to vote based on facts rather than emotions.

"The concept of a galactic habitable zone analyzes various factors, such as metallicity (the presence of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium) and the rate and density of major catastrophes such as supernovae, and uses these to calculate which regions of a galaxy are more likely to form terrestrial planets, initially develop simple life, and provide a suitable environment for this life to evolve and advance." Galactic habitable zone - Wikipedia The Goldilocks Zone is where there are enough supernovae to create heavy elements that life needs, BUT not too many supernovae because they also destroy life on planets. Generally, there are more supernovae, and therefore deadly radiation, near the center of the Milky Way, and in the densely-packed spiral arms. In sparsely populated regions there are not enough supernovae.

When I try to answer this question, I think of light traveling through the vacuum of empty space as photons. But if light is both a particle AND a wave, when light travels through space, it is a wave of WHAT? There is no medium, no ether, to transmit a wave.

Would EVERY fusion reactor require a large number of gigantic, powerful, expensive lasers? Or is there another way to kick start fusion?

Is it a true story? The story is almost too good to be true. Only a year ago did I hear the story of North Sentinel Island. But do you think a boatload of surfers in 1999 would risk surfing the southern tip of an island they were warned to avoid because of hostile natives (but it had good waves)? They knew it was illegal, so they snuck in at night and they had a shot gun with them. I suppose they would dare do it.

Recently I read this story that sounds hard to believe but may be true. According to John Callahan and verified by the photographer on board in 1999 a boatload of surfers anchored off the notorious North Sentinel Island and had an encounter with the generally hostile natives. The following song was playing on the boat's sound system when the natives approached in their canoe, holding spears, bows and arrows. They paddled around their boat listening to the music for a while and then left them alone. Good thing the music was mellow, contemplative instrumental. Seems to me if it was heavy metal the surfers may have been murdered. Here was the music that was playing that may have saved their lives: "Suddenly, the warriors stopped paddling. Gliding towards the boat they looked transfixed. With no engine noise from their canoe, the captain said they could hear the music from the sound system on the boat." "They could throw spears or shoot poisoned arrows at any time, and we were scared shitless. But they did nothing, appearing to be listening to the music. After three slow circles around our boat, they paddled away, reached the sand, carried their canoe up past the tree line and disappeared into the forest" Escape from North Sentinel Island | Swellnet Dispatch | Swellnet

They were able to get 50% more energy out of the fusion experiment at LLNL. However, to do that required MANY GIANT LASERS. How else can you get a fusion reaction going without so many giant powerful lasers to get it started? It seems so impractical to have fusion energy for the masses.

Any fans of Anton Petrov? In his Youtube he says he found a study critical of the Kardashev Scale. I cannot find the paper. Anyone heard of this? This is about a qualitative approach to understanding levels of ETIs rather than the quantitative Kardashev Scale. Below is what I paraphrased from Anton's excellent video. "According to this study, advanced civilizations could be anywhere in the universe, our galaxy, even close to us. They would be indistinguishable from their natural environment, so we would not detect them. Super-intelligent alien life would look to us like ordinary matter. We would not know what to look for. We cannot imagine what we can discover about them. They could easily manipulate the environment around themselves using extremely efficient methods without need for megastructures. SETI would definitely fail in their search for such an ETI." "This explains the Fermi Paradox, we don’t see anyone out there by design. Complexity does not make you easier to detect. They don’t need megastructures. Rather they blend into the background."

Wonder why politician them won't go way...

Anyone else notice the connection? For the Trumper crazies, it's a tough job to NOT hit Pelosi with a hammer. Someone tried to follow McCarthy's advice, but instead hit Pelosi's husband with a hammer. "The crazed man who allegedly attacked the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with a hammer was charged with attempted murder by the San Francisco District Attorney on Monday. David DePape, 42, was also charged with assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, false imprisonment of an elder, residential burglary and threats to a public official and their family, according to District Attorney Brooke Jenkins." Attempted murder charge filed against David DePape (nypost.com) House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy joked at a Saturday night event that it “will be hard not to hit” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with the speaker’s gavel if Republicans take control of the chamber in the 2022 midterms and he becomes speaker. “I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that gavel. It will be hard not to hit her with it,” McCarthy said in audio posted to Twitter by a Main Street Nashville reporter. Kevin McCarthy says 'it will be hard not to hit' Pelosi with gavel if he becomes House speaker | CNN Politics

Thanks for the info! Great man with the Drake Equation. The physicist/musician Brian Cox, regarding the Drake Equation, thinks ETIs may be very rare, there may be only one or two intelligent ETIs per large galaxy. That is the Rare Earth Hypothesis. Does anyone know what Frank Drakes final estimate was on communicating ETIs? Has anyone heard of any other Drake Equation estimates?

Maybe there are places in the world where you may predict, according to climate change, that will likely have EXCESS water in the future, and other areas that will likely have a water SHORTAGE in the future, that are not too far separated, that water could be transported from one area to the other using mostly gravity, but also a few water pumps to get the water over humps. I was thinking of half pipes to transport the water with a thin cover. My question is, since I live in Southern California, could water be transported from the wet north to the dry south? My water cost is only one penny per gallon. When will my water utility start taxing my water usage in order to build future infrastructure (as well as maintain the current infrastructure) to save or channel water?

Has anyone ever heard of any plans to transport water from flooded areas to drought-stricken areas? What would it cost to transport huge quantities of water a thousand miles? Maybe cheaper than desalinating sea water? The experts always stress conservation and water recycling. Every drop of rainwater needs to be saved. Every house in drought areas should be designed to channel rainwater down drains around the house for storage under the house. Parking lots, streets, and sidewalks in cities could also channel and save rainwater in underground storage. "But moving vast quantities of water is not simple or cheap, and thus not realistic, experts say. Mostly, it's too costly and political. However, these dreamed-up concepts show that a quiet water crisis is getting more desperate." Too wacky? Moving water from flood to drought (phys.org)

To answer my own question, after watching the following Youtubes, I think Graham's number is vastly larger than googolplex, raised to a googolplex power, a googolplex number of times. That means Graham's number is vastly larger than a power tower of googolplexes, a googolplex high.