For the purposes of balance it's fair to say that most (currently 70% US refineries are optimised for heavy crude, so it would hurt the US economically to have to rely on it's own sweet crude, from both a refining perspective, and a market perspective by forcing US producers to sell domestically.

It depends on the orbital shell how long the natural cleanup takes. StarLink is deliberately in quite a low shell with a lot of drag where it should naturally self-clean on a fairly short timescale (few years as mentioned). Higher shells will take a lot longer to clear. I was pretty astounded to learn that we currently only avoid a Kessler event due to constant satellite manoeuvres. If we lost the ability to do this for only 24 hours (say due to an extreme solar storm, or some failure affecting navigation instruction systems such as a hack), it would result in 30% chance of a Kessler event. The crash clock is pretty illuminating. Maybe this will indeed cause it, but it's a slow motion event apparently - will take many years to happen.

If you check the location of this installation you'll find it's right next to Mojave, so pretty much desert not productive farmland. I'm not saying that's always the case but they are usually sited in areas where farming isn't possible, or marginal, not on prime agricultural land.

It's not a black material printed onto white ceramic, it just looks like that from the electron microscope image. They used ion beam etching to engraved the qr code into a flat ceramic surface. Assuming it's not subject to weathering it should last a pretty long time given what's know about ancient ceramics.

Just noticed nospam007 beat me to it but missed the gag. Maybe I should read the comments

.. was it an antarctic? Oh dear, my jokes are really getting bad. At least I baryon trying.

Chuck will be roundhouse kicking that drum

Iin seems everyone has failed their comprehension test. Note it says 128 MORE. There are actually 129 events in the data set.

Just 128, or any 2^n number?

And back to grades being decided 100% on in person invigilated exams. It's hard to see how continual assessment can realistically survive this.

Besides, English English doesn't really trip of the tongue

Just wondering how you'd collect on winning a bet on nuclear war.

But.....It can effectively compress space and time

You missed out the intermediary step where somebody pre-masticates your pizza for you

According to this the Lazuli diameter should be 3m (118 inches)