Wednesday, September 30, 2026

Space Travel

Science fiction romanticizes space travel, but what it really romanticizes is traveling to other worlds and finding alien creatures. Space itself is not particularly romantic and is perhaps best described as "the big empty." Really, really empty. The nearest star is about 4.2 light-years away, and the nearest large spiral galaxy is about 2.5 million light-years away. Between these things is an almost unimaginable amount of nothing, which is not the least bit romantic or exciting. Traveling to another star requires so much energy that it is close to impossible, or at least impractical with our current technology. There are also many problems and dangers. I don't see us traveling to another star for at least a few thousand years. Fortunately, there is plenty to explore within our own solar system.

Sunday, September 27, 2026

A Journey Through the Atmosphere

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CerJbZ-dm0

In the video, the person jumps from 19 miles up and survives.

The atmosphere is conventionally considered to end at 100 km, or about 62 miles, above Earth's surface, a boundary known as the Kármán line. In reality, there is no sharp boundary where the atmosphere ends. It gradually becomes thinner with increasing altitude, eventually becoming an extremely tenuous atmosphere that approaches a vacuum.

I saw a video where someone compared the atmosphere to a peel on an apple.  Good thing we have it.

Saturday, September 26, 2026

LBN438 Lizard Pillar Nebula

825350949_10243990966138362_4266815371628308280_n.jpg

A photographer on Facebook published this image of the LBN 438 Lizard Pillar Nebula, a collection of gas where new stars are born. It is roughly 8 to 10 light-years across and about 1,200 light-years away.

I suspect that nobody has heard of this nebula, but imagine being able to see a completely different part of our galaxy so clearly.

Space is interesting, but it would be almost impossible for humans to ever go there. Maybe thousands of years from now, our descendants will have technology that would make such a trip possible, but it would be extremely costly, probably for very little practical benefit.

This reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon where he said that rather than travel the world, he just looks at pretty pictures online.



How Dark Is It On Pluto?

Wednesday, September 23, 2026

Tennessee Stellarator Fusion Plant License

On Tue, Sep 22, 2026 at 5:11 PM Larry wrote:

Tennessee grants first fusion license for 400MW stellarator plant

Maybe getting a license is the first step toward building a reactor. I'm not sure whether this represents some sort of breakthrough toward practical fusion. I don't know enough about it to say.

Although practical nuclear fusion would be a tremendous breakthrough for mankind, I am extremely skeptical that we will reach it anytime soon.

If I can believe the numbers I have seen on solar and wind, we should be able to supplement our slowly declining fossil fuel reserves with them. They are not my favorite ways to generate power, however, because of their reliability issues.

For a really long time, I have thought that geothermal was interesting. My reasoning is that there is a tremendous amount of energy inside the planet.

What's the Only Country In The World Without Mosquitoes?