I did a calculation and assuming that you were standing 3 meters away, 1 million pounds of mass would generate about one-millionth of G force on your body. Not significant, but it is there. Since the mass is spread out a bit, it might be a little less. If you and the mass were both floating in space, you might very slowly pull toward it. However, it wouldn't take much distance to make the effect negligible.
Tuesday, December 1, 2020
Sunday, November 29, 2020
Monday, November 23, 2020
Warp Drive News. Seriously! - YouTube
I sort of consider this much ado about nothing.
Sunday, November 22, 2020
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
What If Yellowstone's Supervolcano Erupted? | RealClearScience
https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2019/10/10/what_if_yellowstones_supervolcano_erupted.html
Yellowstone super volcano eruptions are rare and one is not predicted to happen in the next few thousand years. I read that smaller eruptions are more likely than bigger ones.
I suspect that in the event of a big eruption, the safest place to be (or head to) would be Florida. It might be safer to stay indoors. According to one site, the ash fallout in Indiana would be just a few millimeters, and extend down to the southern states like Georgia.
However, the ash contains silicates that can damage your lungs. You would want to have protective breathing gear.
A major eruption would severely damage the environment, causing crop failures worldwide.
There would be massive loss of life in the western states. The last major eruption, around 700,000 years ago, wiped out all the animal life in the neighboring states. The entire western half of the country would be in danger, as well as parts of Canada and Mexico.
Yellowstone super volcano eruptions are rare and one is not predicted to happen in the next few thousand years. I read that smaller eruptions are more likely than bigger ones.
I suspect that in the event of a big eruption, the safest place to be (or head to) would be Florida. It might be safer to stay indoors. According to one site, the ash fallout in Indiana would be just a few millimeters, and extend down to the southern states like Georgia.
However, the ash contains silicates that can damage your lungs. You would want to have protective breathing gear.
A major eruption would severely damage the environment, causing crop failures worldwide.
There would be massive loss of life in the western states. The last major eruption, around 700,000 years ago, wiped out all the animal life in the neighboring states. The entire western half of the country would be in danger, as well as parts of Canada and Mexico.
Sunday, November 15, 2020
We’ll Need More Than One Vaccine to Beat the Pandemic
But this is the first mRNA vaccine, and it turns out to be a precious little snowflake. Pfizer's vaccine has to be stored and shipped at ultracold temperatures, less than 80 degrees below zero—it'll keep for a few days at higher but still very cold conditions. And it needs vials made of a special glass that's able to tolerate the freezing temperatures.
All that shipping and freezing requires a level of technical sophistication that, for now at least, mostly exists in hospitals and labs—posing significant logistical challenges in rural areas and in the developing world. These are the "cold chain" problems that Koff mentioned, the problem of refrigerated shipping. (A critical Ebola vaccine needs the same deep freeze, and engineers stepped up to create specialized coolers to transport it across western Africa—but that was a pandemic that affected tens of thousands of people, not billions, and the people who made the coolers have since gotten out of the cold-chain innovation game.)
https://www.wired.com/story/well-need-more-than-one-vaccine-to-beat-the-pandemic/
All that shipping and freezing requires a level of technical sophistication that, for now at least, mostly exists in hospitals and labs—posing significant logistical challenges in rural areas and in the developing world. These are the "cold chain" problems that Koff mentioned, the problem of refrigerated shipping. (A critical Ebola vaccine needs the same deep freeze, and engineers stepped up to create specialized coolers to transport it across western Africa—but that was a pandemic that affected tens of thousands of people, not billions, and the people who made the coolers have since gotten out of the cold-chain innovation game.)
https://www.wired.com/story/well-need-more-than-one-vaccine-to-beat-the-pandemic/
Tuesday, November 10, 2020
Sunday, November 8, 2020
Wednesday, November 4, 2020
Saturday, October 31, 2020
How Large is the Universe? Bigger than you can Imagine?
The universe that we can see is so large that it might as well be infinite. Our little solar system is like a speck of dust by comparison. That part of the universe that we can't see may actually be infinite, but we might never know.
Friday, October 30, 2020
How Large is the Universe? Bigger than you can Imagine?
The universe that we can see is so large that it might as well be infinite. Our little solar system is like a grain of sand by comparison. That part of the universe that we can't see may actually be infinite, but we might never know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2YJ7aR25P0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2YJ7aR25P0
Thursday, October 29, 2020
Fwd: Chemical Printer
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Larry
Scientists make digital breakthrough in chemistry that could revolutionize the drug industry
- At the Cronin Lab at the University of Glasgow chemists developed software that translates a chemist's words into recipes for molecules that a robot can understand.
- Professor Lee Cronin, the lab's principal investigator, has designed a robotic chemist called a "chemputer" that can produce chemicals from XDL programs, including the drug remdesivir, a FDA-approved antiviral treatment for the coronavirus.
- Cronin and his colleagues represent one of many groups rushing to bring chemistry into the digital age.
digital instructions for whipping up a batch of the nearly 400-atom molecule at the push of a button have been sitting on Github, an online software repository, freely available to anyone with the hardware needed to execute the chemical "program."
A dozen such chemical computers or "chemputers" sit in the University of Glasgow lab of Lee Cronin, the chemist who designed the bird's nest of tubing, pumps, and flasks, and wrote the remdesivir code that runs on it. He's spent years dreaming of a future where researchers can distribute and produce molecules as easily as they email and print PDFs
Cronin and his colleagues described their machine's capability to produce multiple molecules last year, and now they've taken a second major step toward digitizing chemistry with an accessible way to program with the machine. Their software turns academic papers into chemputer-executable programs that researchers can edit without learning to code, they announced earlier this month in Science. And they're not alone. The team represents one of dozens of groups spread across academia and industry all racing to bring chemistry into the digital age, a development that could lead to safer drugs, more efficient solar panels, and a disruptive new industry.
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
What's inside the Millennium Falcon? (Star Wars)
More than you ever wanted to know about The Millenium Falcon.
Contrary to what is presented in the video, I would expect redundant systems in any kind of spacecraft. Nothing is mentioned of heat shielding for re-entry, although if you could slow a craft to a near stop then you wouldn't need it.
Even if we could create and store antimatter, which would be the most compact fuel possible, it would still take an enormous amount of fuel to continuously accelerate a craft all the way to the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Reaching anywhere near the speed of light takes several times more mass of antimatter than the mass of the ship.
Thursday, October 15, 2020
Sunday, October 11, 2020
Saturday, October 10, 2020
Why Does Wi-Fi Use the Same Frequency as Microwaves?
The other day I guessed that a router would broadcast at only 0.1 watts, which would make it about the same power as a cheap walkie-talkie. In theory, the 5ghz band allows for higher speed, but shorter range.
Tuesday, October 6, 2020
The secret history of dirt
This is a bit environmentalist but interesting nevertheless.
It would be reasonable to assume that farmers have some training in how to take care of their soil as well as some incentive to do so. Otherwise, they would be getting lower yields every year. It is possible that they rely heavily on chemical fertilizers, which is mostly just nitrogen, instead of natural ones. Chemical fertilizers are derived from fossil fuels, which are a finite resource.
Thursday, October 1, 2020
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