Likewise, perhaps *we* can't focus a laser today, but that's not an inherent limitation of lasers even by today's known physics,

Errr, diffraction?

That's pretty fundamental for lasers, as long as they continue to consist of electromagnetic waves.

We could get away from it with particle beams - but that's substituting one wavelength for a shorter wavelength. And your particle beams have to be neutral, otherwise they'd disperse rapidly by electrostatic repulsion. And if the particles are not joined to each other then they're still going to disperse. So you're back to projectiles. It may or may not matter if they're solid or liquid if you can get your rail gun velocity high enough, but until then ... there are good reasons for making bullets out of depleted uranium, and those reason aren't going to go away in space.

Could we get around diffraction limits in future? Well, slim possibilities of using the negative refractive indices of metamaterials. But I've got a sneaking suspicion that you'll need to get the beam focussed to a particular range ... which is not a perfect solution, but would probably be useful. And putting anything relatively delicate (metamaterials) in the path of energy intended to cause damage is a recipe for things breaking.

You might find that the long term use of beamed energy weapons is restricted to pulsed and shaped beams of high-intensity microwaves intended to fuck up transmission and reception of communications, where the beam sources are controlled in phase to generate the damaging effects at a chosen range. Non-trivial weapons, but not a death ray.

Worked my way through "Red Mars" ; not feeling any particular desire to order Blue or Green. OTOH, if I found myself imprisoned on an oil rig (which happens several times a year, for up to several months at a time) with nothing else to read, I'd probably not be too upset. That's not going to happen, because I'm the only SF fan who takes books out for the rig's library.

A dome that large would probably be big enough for thunderstorms to develop within it.

Therefore, the people who came up with this idea are trying to develop a terribly unsafe solution. Which makes that proposer a terrorist.

The bus will be along to collect you soon. It's more economical than sending out a whole black helicopter for each convict.

I would say that power consumption of small devices will drop and all devices could last forever.

The lifetime of straps and casings would become a limiting factor.

About 6 or 7 years ago my wife got me a radio-updated, solar cell-powered wrist-watch of theoretically unlimited lifetime. It lasted about 3 years, when the strap ( a complex bolt and lug fitting, not a regular pin joint) broke. It took me 18 months to find a replacement, which then cost more in taxes than the face value to bring into the country. A real PITA, which I wouldn't have done except that it was a birthday present.

There's always some point of failure. Cure one, and you'll find the next. The next thing to go will probably be the solar cell. (Incidentally, "solar powered" means different things in short-sleeved sunny tropical weather versus the cold and dark of long-sleeved northern climes.)

Attacking Russia would be species suicide.

FTFY.

Arguably? You've carried out your own exploration and you disagree about its extent?

Here's an argument : The Kara Sea is 880000km.sq of mostly shallow waters ; the GoM is 615000km.sq of deep and shallow water. Both have major rivers draining the interiors of continents into them, bringing in sediment and organic matter. So there's no immediate reason to expect much different quantities of sediment or their yield in barrels oil per km.cu sediment. Therefore, if anything, you'd expect the Kara Sea to be appreciably bigger than the GoM. Complexity of drilling and distance from market will counterbalance that to some degree in the direction of the GoM.

All in all, I've just argued that the Kara Sea could well be bigger than the Gulf Of Mexico.

FWIW, I'd bet that there are lots of undiscovered oil fields under deep ocean, or perhaps that you need to access by drilling sideways into the continental shelf. But that's expensive even compared to working in the Arctic Ocean.

FWIW, the USGS's estimate for global undiscovered oil reserves puts around a quarter of the total in the Arctic regions. Mostly because until recently it was really, really hard to do exploration work there, so everywhere else got explored already.

In the Kara Sea? That is a much rougher place to work than in the Gulf of Mexico.

So what?

We've been working in the northern North Sea, Norwegian Sea, Canadian Grand Banks (colloquially "iceberg alley") for decades now (I'm just listing the ones where I've worked, personally), and the Russians have been working Sakhalin for 15 years now (I've only done office work on wells from these fields).

Just because it's too rough for Louisiana rednecks to work, doesn't mean that it's hard to work there. Just that Louisiana rednecks don't know how to work there.

The goal is most likely the Arctic - borders in Arctic are heavily disputed and here Russia learns how to deal with the West

Some borders in the Arctic are disputed. there are no international borders in the area under discussion. The borders of the Kara Sae are Novaya Zemlya (Russian territory), Severnaya Zemlya (Russian territory), Franz Josef Land (Russian territory), and the Russian mainland (Russian territory too, unsurprisingly).

You'd do better looking for international border disputes in Lough Neigh, Lake Como, or the Great Salt Lake.

I can see that already. Find a small rock in that see and build a shelter on it

And that's where it breaks down. Firstly, the surrounding islands and mainland are already occupied - in many cases by Russian nuclear missile bases, supported by Russian regular army, navy and special forces. So, you're going to move in without being spotted and having to fight?

Secondly - you did notice that the country you're planning to invade has nuclear weapons, didn't you?

People like you, even the neo-Cons keep out of the War Room. Too likely to start a fight by shooting yourself in the head.

I suspect that cars will become luxury items in the future. The rich will own cars, be it new electrics or classic IC exotics. Everyone else will not have a car at all, and will rent one by the hour when needed.

You say this as if it is a bad thing. I think it would be an excellent thing, and I work in the oil industry.

The whole of Japan is what we refer to as a volcanic island arc. Essentially the whole chain is volcanoes, or eroding volcanoes, which will be covered over by more volcanoes in due course. It's been like that for tens of millions of years if not longer (I've only drilled bits of the area to about 25 million years, approximately), and it'll remain the same ... until probably fragments of Hawaii, the Marshalls and the Windwards hit, shortly followed by California. Say a couple of hundred millions of years. And them the volcanism will shift to the Death Valley or Long Lake (sorry, my geography of California is no better than the average American's geography of Japan) coast of the island of California.

When (not "if") Fuji goes, that's not going to be a good day. For anyone. It'll solve Japan's ageing population problem though. For a time.

Yeah, there was green flashes in that smoke at it's thickest part

Lightening within the cloud.

Is anyone here learned in this type of event, that would like to give us all a practical idea of what to do in case you're in this situation?

As I said up-thread, first thing is not to be there. That's not applicable in this event as there does not appear to have been any significant warning.

Second thing - the clouds (nuees ardentes) have two components - a high-density flow of extremely hot rock, steam and air which flows at essentially ground level, and a cloud of dust and glass shards (and hot, often noxious gases) which streams off the lower part of the cloud. The first you may have a good chance of getting away from by getting away from valley bottoms as fast as possible. That may entail running across hillsides to ridges, if that is going to be quicker than running up-slope. Given the looseness of volcanic deposits, you may actually benefit from doing a descending traverse across the hillside and away from valley bottoms towards ridges.

The upper parts of the clouds are much more mobile, and can still be highly lethal. Distance is your friend. You might save your life by holding wet cloths tight over your mouth, but you're likely to get severe lung damage from the bubble-wall shards of fragmented glass that makes up the dust. If you inhale these (hot or cold), then you're likely to develop lung damage, pulmonary oedema and short- or long- term difficulties breathing difficulties.

It's not a death sentence. But recognise that this is one of those "Stercus, stercus, stercus, moriturus sum" moments. Being somewhere else is a really, really, really good idea.

Do you mean aside from the cost of putting seismometers on the moon in the first place?

The seismographs were a piggy-back on what was essentially a political project.

Getting unexpected results like this out of data such as a seismograph simply means that any piece of hardware that lands on another planet, moon or comet will have what seismographic equipment put on board that the weight (and/ or data transmission) budget can support without busting anything else. Data links and relays would be additional hardware to put on such jettisoned hardware.

No way you'd outrun the pyroclastic flow from a major eruption.

If it's travelling much more than walking pace, no. (Some pyroclastic flows, particularly underwater ones, travel quite slowly. But a warm (70degC) lahar can kill you as dead as a hot (700degC) nuees ardente. "Pyroclastic flow" covers a wide range of phenomena, including but not limited to ignimbrites and nuees ardentes.)

One characteristic that they do all have is that they have a higher density than the surrounding air (or water). If they didn't, they'd be rising up and away from you, and not immediately a problem. That characteristic leads to your survival strategy - get as far away from valley bottoms as quickly as you possibly can. Given the looseness of material on volcano slopes, that may well mean doing a downhill descending traverse along a valley side, getting towards the bounding ridge as quickly as possible.

What killed the Kraffts on Unzen in 1991 was an ignimbrite which partly over-topped the ridge which they hoped would separate them from the ignimbrite.

Of course, you've got seconds to figure this out when the event starts to happen. Which is why you have your escape lines planned before you go into the situation, and you're constantly revising your plans while you're in zones not known to be safe.