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Comment Re:Breeding issues (Score 0) 73

Alternative enforcement mechanism (which would rule out Musk as an investor) would be to hardwire the editing so that any breeding results with "wild type" humans would be both female and profoundly haemophiliac. (Or that all male offspring have some lethal failure of oxygen metabolism. Whether that would be acceptable to Musk ... who cares?)

Comment Re:Investment advice needed (Score 1) 90

But the demand for petrochemicals as chemical feedstocks will continue.

We might not burn the stuff, but we'll continue to want to put it into chemical plants because it's cheaper than making long hydrocarbon chains ourselves.

Until someone manages to commercialise algae-catalysed CO2 -> long chains reactions. Which without the fuel market, is not so attractive an investment.

Comment Re:The big crunch (Score 1) 90

I don't think there's anything that absolutely precludes an "observer".

But there is something that absolutely precludes any observer from communicating to anywhere outside the black hole's event horizon. That is what "event horizon" means : events the other side of it cannot be observed.

Which is why there are occasional fusses over rotating (+/- small, primordial) black holes - some arguments on general relativistic frame dragging get used to "expose" the black hole's central singularity without a masking event horizon. And (TTBOMK) every time someone has come up with such an argument, after a few months someone else has shot a hole in it. Successfully. So far.

Comment Re:Dark energy discovered 27 years ago?? (Score 1) 90

Dark Matter is [...] the necessary matter throughout the galaxy for it to orbit the way it does.

It's not just throughout *this* galaxy, but throughout almost every galaxy for which a rotation speed (profile) can be measured, and also individual galaxies orbiting in galactic clusters. It's not just the one case, but many observations.

Comment Re:Dark energy discovered 27 years ago?? (Score 1) 90

It is a placeholder for something hypothesised, but not yet discovered.

... but for which substantial evidence has been claimed.

The challenge of this paper is that, in effect, it is saying "that evidence (interpreted as support for Dark Energy) is actually non-existent because the observations are a consequence of mis-reading progenitor-star ages, which changes the modelled SN brightnesses.

Comment Re:Dark energy discovered 27 years ago?? (Score 1) 90

A hypothesis for which no test is feasible ... there are discussions about that sort of concept in Popper et al over the decades. But a workable description of such ideas is "useless". Personally, I think, with similar support, that it's invisible pink lizard-aliens moving the interferometer legs.

Comment Re:Dark energy discovered 27 years ago?? (Score 1) 90

In fact, I believe that any universal rate of expansion [...] seems to require a universal frame of reference.

That step needs expansion or considerable clarification. Your reticence ("seems to") suggests that you agree.

If the expansion rate is a function of elapsed time since [Big Bang / end-of inflation / breaking of the Higgs symmetry/ whatever], then each local area would react similarly (without requiring long-distance communication - a not-very-hidden "hidden variable") without requiring either a universal reference frame, or FTL communication.

Would the rate of change of time also vary with [whatever] is (allegedly) causing changes in the expansion rate? Unclear - to me.

Comment Wait, what ... (Score 1) 138

So America doesn't allow schools to be in "residential zones".

And they also don't allow pedestrian walking outside residential zones (AIUI). (Do they allow walking inside residential zones?)

So enforcing the ridiculous thing of parents having to drive their children to school - or rely on the poor people's bus.

And then they complain about raising a generation of obese lardballs?

Something doesn't add up here. Who thought this through before implementing it? Anyone?

Comment There will be a way out. Otherwise ... (Score 1) 188

... the name of the crime (here) is "false imprisonment". It carries a considerable jail term with the other crimes you commit as part of it. Years in addition to your other crimes.

I'll grant that the click-bait AI author at (whoever was hoping to earn advertising revenue from this) maybe wasn't capable of looking around and reading the signage, including the "small print". But that's a problem of moronic pseudo-journalism, not whatever the store chain is doing.

For that matter, my local store (within walking distance - how to say "not American" without saying "not American") has recently added gates to the "self-checkout area" which the human assistant (I think) triggers if they've seen you complete a purchase. Me - if I don't buy anything (common - I pop in to see what's on the "reduced" shelves for supper tonight ; nothing good ; nothing brought) - I just push through the barriers. It takes about 5kg force. Or I go through one of the till-lanes, putting my hand basket into the receptacle at the conveyer end (no force, just an "excuse me". Absolutely no compunction about doing it. If the stores prices aren't to my liking, I'm not going to buy. End of discussion.

Comment One way or another, physiology will win. (Score 1) 36

OK, on one hand they have a moon pool - meaning that the habitat is at ambient (sea-depth) pressure. While on the other hand, they have a "massive steel door" implying a pressure difference. Either way, the inhabitants of the habitat will have to either saturate their bodies with gases to match the sea-depth pressure. Which means a pressurised transfer vessel and "descending" and "ascending" in a surface pressure chamber. Or their transfer vessel will have to take many hours to days for the transit from surface to depth and back again.

Physiology doesn't lie. If you're going to have "sea bed cities", either the city will be at surface pressure (with no decompression/ compression between "city" and surface, but no easy transit between city and the sea outside), or it will be at a non-surface pressure, with compression/ decompression between surface and city and (maybe) easier transit between city and sea.

What, exactly, is the point?

We know how to do diving physiology - people died in some of the experiments to determine the range of adaption of human physiology, and more people were injured. Without gene engineering some pretty profound parts of physiology (which will get into every other aspect of physiology, including probably reproduction) living at elevated pressures is going to be a temporary, difficult situation. And it would probably mean the modified people would have to live in pressure suits on the "surface".

So, what's the point?

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