Comment Re:HAARP offline == summer weather good? (Score 1) 112
Coincidence?
There are no coincidences.
They stopped sending men to the moon about the time I learned to talk. You should pay more attention to my posts.
Coincidence?
There are no coincidences.
They stopped sending men to the moon about the time I learned to talk. You should pay more attention to my posts.
"I am currently pursuing a bachelor's in CompSci and I just spent three hours working on a few differential equations for homework. It is very frustrating because I just don't grok advanced math. I can sort of understand a little bit, but I really don't grok anything beyond long division."
Don't rush into judgement on this. There can be several reasons why you have difficulty with math.
First, it could be as you say, but consider the alternatives:
Second, it could be that you just need to review the background material, or even that you overlooked something early in a course. Whenever I reach the "I'm lost" stage, I try to back up to where I first became slightly confused...then back up one or two steps further.
It could be a motivation issue. Try looking ahead to see where you're trying to go--for instance, the seemingly pointless epsilon-delta definition of limits that most calculus textbooks starts off with is only there because they intend to use the concept of limits in explaining integrals, derivatives, and infinite series. Without seeing where you're going, half of the first semester of calculus will seem like pointless bullshit.
It can also be that the instructor isn't good at teaching large groups. First, I would try asking the instructor for help in class--it may be he needs a nudge to remind him he's skipped over something important. If that doesn't help, try contacting him outside of class--odds are good you'll get better communication when he's trying to help one or two students as opposed to 120. If that still doesn't work for you, see if another professor or even another student can explain what you're having trouble with.
Note that the earth's atmosphere, at ~15psi sea level pressure, is equivalent to being under ~10m of water. While there's less solar irradiation at the surface of Mars, there's also not much of a magnetosphere to divert lots of charged radiation. So, to rough order of magnitude, one would need about the same amount of shielding as offered by Earth's atmosphere: about fifteen pounds of material per square inch, requiring a shell on order of 10 meters thick. That's a lot of material to melt/form! We're not talking about a couple-inch-thick shell, but an extremely thick and heavy structure. Tunneling underground would be a much more practical way to accomplish this than trying to sinter new structures on the surface. Of course, that doesn't fix the problem of dangerous doses on the trip over.
This cloth shield you speak of could be refined, perhaps. It only needs to protect people, so you could reduce it to human-shaped cloth bundles so you don't waste material shielding unoccupied surface area. Once colonists get crops growing they could use less expensive straw as a construction material, thus giving each colonist a straw man to hide behind.
Alternatively, you could own up to the part you're trying to ignore, where he said "sandbags packed with regolith". I'm pretty sure you need a minimal thickness of cloth to contain a much thicker load of dirt.
You make it sound like any fertilizer will work in any situation as a "one size fits all" position. That isn't how you grow plants, which needs a much more balanced approach and several different kinds chemicals.
I don't know where you get that conclusion from. The prior poster asserted that ALL fertilizer is explosive, and I merely pointed out that's false in the vast majority of cases. I was in fact pointing out that his "one size fits all" position was bunk.
Most fertilizers contain less than 5% nitrate nitrogen, since plants are able to utilize more than one form of nitrogen. Thus there are formulations using ammonium phosphate, ammonium sulfate, urea, biuret, etc.
Industrial explosion kills 100+ from the last i was reading.
You need to start thinking critically about where you get your information. At this point, there are only two confirmed dead and six missing firefighters (probably also dead, but you never know)
The cause of the explosion is not precisely known, but the plant was on fire beforehand.
Golly, do you think there's a connection?
"Explosion" can mean many things--from a pile of ammonium nitrate being detonated to failure of a tank or tube in an air compressor.
There is a world of difference between how you need to deal with an ammonium nitrate explosion ("Everything within a mile is flattened and on fire") vs rupture of an anhydrous ammonia tank ("Evacuate everyone 17 miles downwind".)
Fertilizer itself is inert, but under certain conditions it may explode. In any case after that bombing sale of fertilizer is severly restricded and I suppose non-farmers are not even capable of obtaining big amount of it. So, if somone wants to make a huge explosion by fertilizer the only other option (apart from stealing it) is to set it on fire wherever it may be.
What you are saying only applies to ammonium nitrate fertilizer.
Ammonium phosphate is also commonly used as an ingredient for fertilizers, and not only won't explode--it's actually used in fire extinguishers.
." And these "fuse boxes" are an important target for terrorists, so this will obviously fall under the DHS
Fuses are an essential component of bombmaking, so anyone who buys or sells them will be placed on the no-fly list.
No it isn't gone, it just takes longer to reply because it's crawling back from chasing kids off the lawn.
(Seriously, wait longer before browsing the comments and you'll see it's true).
It's still the same old
Cptn. Obvious says: "It was 2003 ten years ago". Thanks captain.
It's lacking something--something like overly long JonKatz articles where the "facts" are entirely made up in a thinly-veiled attempt to hide the author's ignorance of which he speaks.
This doesn't have anything to do with swampland really, rather it has to with the limestone that makes up the base of Florida. Same with really anywhere there's limestone, Ontario, Michigan, parts of Quebec, large swaths of the NE US. Some places are more stable than others and don't have to worry about it. And there's no much you can do in some cases, and while the limestone is thick where I live several hundred feet there have been huge sink holes.
Does Michigan even have much in the way of sinkholes or caves? My understanding was that glaciers in the last ice age scrubbed away most of the rock that was conducive to cave formation.
From the article:
This sets off a reaction in which one of the neutrons in the nickel atom splits into a proton, an electron and an antineutrino. This changes the nickel into copper, and releases energy without dangerous ionizing radiation.
So l do not really see a recycling/upgrading/replacing process.
Thanks for quoting that particular bit. This illustrates a point about trying to "dumb down" theories for the general public to understand.
I love how they describe beta decay in the same breath as they say "without dangerous ionizing radiation" in that quote.
More from TFA:
Instead of using radioactive elements like uranium or plutonium, LENR uses a lattice or sponge of nickel atoms, which holds ionized hydrogen atoms like a sponge holds water.
A bit misleading there, since there may be no radioactive fuel sitting around, but they supposedly produce a radioactive nickel isotope in the process. (Nickel and copper are naturally slightly radioactive, but it's so weak I'll cut them some slack on that point) Still, I'd like to see some numbers to back up the idea that all slow neutrons would immediately react with the nickel, with none escaping into nearby materials.
At this point, I'm thinking the author is trying too hard to simplify his explanation. Or I might be giving him too much credit since he seems to be whitewashing the subject just a little bit.
Still more from TFA:
In past years, several labs have blown up while studying LENR and windows have melted – showing that if it really works, it can produce an impressive amount of energy.
Or, this could have nothing to do with LENR, and simply indicate that some LENR researchers are ignorant of the fact that nickel (along with palladium and platinum, if the LENR experiment used one of those instead) are commonly used as catalysts for reacting hydrogen with unsaturated molecules like oxygen, and promptly blew up the experiment by not removing/excluding said element from the apparatus.
OK, forget what I said about the author oversimplifying this for the public. He's clearly either trying to share his kool-aid, or hopelessly ignorant. Probably both.
Oh, it's perfectly safe from fire. See, a hydrocarbon world like that is a chemical Bizarro World. It's the oxidizers that you have to keep under control.
Indeed.
I've occasionally wondered whether anyone at NASA has ever designed a UAV with oxygen or fluorine tanks instead of fuel tanks, for use on worlds with hydrogen/hydrocarbon atmospheres.
"The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity." - Oscar Wilde
