mistermack

Things in Iowa must be getting tough. But now I think about it, I have custom keys to my front door. They are for survival too.

When a black hole evaporates, you get a massive release of energy. I don't think it's ever been witnessed. They have to be below a certain size because the rate of evaporation slows down with increasing mass. I think the prediction is of a gigantic gamma ray burst, but maybe an FRB could be triggered as well or instead. It's theorised to happen in a tiny sliver of time.

I suppose in the end, it can mean whatever you want it to mean. If you view a knife as a tool, then in the world of tools, custom means specially made for a specific job. Custom tools are used all the time in industry. A one off tool for a one off job. In the sense of customised, it's as you say, produced to a customer's individual wants, it's less of a survival tool sense and more of a fashion item, much of the value being in the "one off" nature of production to make it exclusive, like a Dior dress.

There are loads of people doing that on youtube if you want inspiration. But really, "custom" and "survival" are opposites. Custom means designed for one particular job, whereas a survival knife is the exact opposite, a jack of all trades. Any knife is a survival knife, if it's all you've got. There are loads on the market, and you can get used ones a lot cheaper. There's very little point in making one, except sentimental reasons.

Not a problem. In fact it's a bonus if it were true. It's hot in the Sunlight, and freezing cold in the shade. In craters at the poles, temperatures of around minus 240 are maintained because they don't see the Sun overhead. So if heat was a problem, you just erect a reflective screen, and you immediately have extreme cold. The two extremes would be great for running a turbine, if you wanted to generate electricity that way.

I forgot to mention earlier, that there are places on the Moon, at one of the poles, that have eternal light. You also have the possibility of putting a giant reflector in orbit around the Moon, to reflect sunlight onto your station during the days of darkness. Or a number of them, if a stationary Moon orbit was too far away to be practical. It wouldn't be particularly costly, the materials could be extremely thin and light.

It's a shame that genetic diversity is being lost in dogs, and that dogs and cats are being bred with exaggerated features for our amusement. Luckily, dogs don't really matter, except to us humans. We created them, and we are messing them up. And all is not lost anyway. There must be plenty of dogs in the third world that have hardly a scrap of intensive breeding in them? I'm more worried about the extinction of naturally evolved species, although I do dislike the cruelty involved in producing freak dogs. (which is what they are)

I've done the external disk process many times to recover files. I'm not sure about Linux though. I would use a windows computer. I did it with UBUNTU linux once, and the files copied ok, but didn't work afterwards. I can't think why that would be, but it did happen. I went back, and used a windows pc, with the disk connected through USB and everything worked fine. Files copied ok and worked ok.

Cosmic rays. And Solar wind. Also, while I can see how microbes can get lifted high up in the atmosphere by turbulence, I don't see how they can get any further. To avoid being pulled back down to Earth, the space station has to orbit at nearly 30,000 km per hour. Once a particle got away from any trace of atmosphere, it would accelerate downwards till it met other some gas. And size doesn't matter. It would fall as fast as the space station would fall, without it's orbital velocity. Even if it got as far away as the Moon, it would still be pulled straight back, without orbital speed. Then of course, if it somehow got away from Earth's gravity, it would still be orbiting the Sun. Solar storms and mass ejections regularly cause bursts of radiation that are even more damaging to life. A particle of living matter would probably be well and truly sterilised before it managed to float away from the Sun's gravity. Maybe the Solar Wind might help it on it's way a bit though? And then of course, it would need energy to nip from the Solar System to the next star. I can't see where that's coming from. So I can't see panspermia happening without intelligent action of some sort. The environment is too hostile and the distances are too great.

I had the same notion years ago, when I first read the statistic that the upper atmosphere of Venus is so like Earth, in temp and pressure. I'm sure it could be done, because with such a dense atmosphere, it would be easier to float than here on Earth. I would worry about the Venus weather though. I thought it was pretty rough, and there is a huge amount of lightning going off constantly. The other thing against it is what is the payoff? The atmosphere is the only thing that you could interact with, and I don't think there's much useful stuff there.

But it would cost far more to lift resources off Mars than off the Moon. A launch off from Mars would cost far more than an Earth Launch, because you would have to launch the vehicle off Earth to start with. How many centuries will it be, before they could completely build a rocket on Mars?

I've always been extremely strong compared to my peers. At school I could lift much bigger weights, and beat nearly everyone at arm wrestling. But I was always rubbish at running, and throwing. My build is typical Neanderthal. Long body, short arms and legs. Short limbs means that you have better leverage for lifting and pushing, but much worse for running and throwing. It's horses for courses. People who are less powerful when it comes to sheer force have other advantages. Big muscles run out of energy quickly. You don't see heavily muscled people winning marathons.

There is, but it's very thin. They made use of it in Curiosity, but a manned mission would have to be on a totally different scale. Curiosity was a real triumph of technology, but it only weighted about a ton, and they were not risking human lives so it was in a different league to any manned mission. It proved it could be done, on a small scale, but it cost 2.5 billion. I would say that a manned mission would have to be at least a hundred times that. The other thing that makes a permanent Mars colony impossible is that nobody knows what the consequences will be, of low gravity on an unborn baby, or on their development. You can't call it a bolthole for the human race, if you can't reproduce in a healthy way. Space stations, on the other hand, can produce artificial gravity of 1g by spinning, so they are the way to go, for long-term living away from the Earth.

It's not impossible as you say. But another reason I would doubt it is that if that was the cause, you would expect FRBs to be generated at a similar rate in our own region, but they say that they are all coming from far away. We have galaxies colliding locally so why not any local FRBs? In fact the Milky Way and Andromeda are due to collide in about four billion years time, and there are various visible galaxies that are colliding right now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_2207_and_IC_2163 Wiki says that when the Milky Way and Andromeda do "collide" it's unlikely that any individual stars will collide.

It's not the going that is expensive, it's the landing. Landing on the Moon is a piece of cake. Landing (and taking off again) on Mars is a nightmare. The difference is down to the greater gravity of Mars, and the much higher speeds needed to get there in a reasonable time. When you get to Mars, you need a huge amount of rocket fuel to slow the craft, and then a lot more to fight the acceleration due to the planet's gravity. And taking off is almost as difficult as leaving Earth. The success rate of landing on Mars at the moment is less than fifty percent, I believe. And that's for tiny craft, compared to what you would need for a human landing.

I'm guessing as much as anyone on this. There as so many variables when you think of two stars colliding. The odds are hugely against it, given the distances involved, and if it did happen, it could be a near miss with transference of material, or a glancing blow, or a direct hit. But the odds against a direct hit would be huge, so it's the least likely of all the instances. I've never read what would happen. There are binary stars, I don't know if they resulted from a collision, or not.

It only takes the thinnest layer of Subcutaneous fat to hide muscles. Bodybuilders who want their muscles to show try to eliminate all the fat that they can. The fat has no effect on strength, but seems to aid stamina. ( or so it's said in boxing circles ). Boxers that are overdeveloped often run out of energy in a fight, but that might be to do with bigger muscles using more, just on movement.

I applaud any attempt to get permanently into space. But I don't think Mars is the way to go. Not initially anyway. It's far too difficult and expensive, landing and taking off from Mars. I would like to see progress in space stations, including artificial gravity and manufacturing capability. The Moon is the most viable source of raw material in space so we should be working on going back there and developing industrial techniques.

One condom can save 800 tonnes of carbon over an 80 year period. A lot more if you count subsequent generations. If they were serious, they'd be giving them away free. I believe Bill Gates does.

While I would agree with 20 deg as a reasonable substitute for room temperature, I don't see the attraction, if you are hoping to preserve dna. From reading a few of the links, it would seem that dna degenerates like most food items, in that any cooling is better than room temperature, a fridge would be good, and a freezer would be very good. Bacteria are responsible for much of the degradation of dna. I would put it in a tiny quantity of distilled water, and put it in a decent freezer at minus 20. If the dna of the ice man survived 5,500 years, and the dna of the meat in his stomach survived being cooked, eaten, and frozen all those years, then your hair samples should last well enough to be tested in five years time. I did try to search the internal temperatures of glaciers, but couldn't get an answer. I think the Ice Man glacier was at about 10,000 feet, I very much doubt if the average temperature was lower than minus 20. Probably a fair bit higher.

I'm perfectly ok with negs. There are a lot of sad people out there, who will never get the chance to ride a white stallion to the defence of a damsel in distress. This is the nearest they will ever get, so they should get the chance to gallop to the rescue, deadly mouse in hand. If it makes them feel fine and noble like Sir Galahad, it's fine by me. There are also people who would like to reply with a wise and insightful post, but can't think of any words, or are scared that it will just come out stupid, and expose them to ridicule. A negative click is safe and anonymous, it's a boon for the less gifted.

How can it be false? "It is considered" is a vacuous statement.

Kavanaugh claims to be a victim of a false allegation of sexual assault. In this country, that's a crime. So everyone who attacked him is also 'victim blaming' by your reasoning. It was a free-for-all on Kavanaugh. You need to be a bit more consistent.