Nuclear waste

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jimbob
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Re: Nuclear waste

Post by jimbob » Sat Oct 23, 2021 7:42 pm

bjn wrote:
Sat Oct 23, 2021 6:34 am
Off topic. Didn’t know Niven and Pournelle went all anti-science WRT carbon emissions, but can’t say I’m surprised.
I remember picking this up at the library - it must have been newly published at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallen_An ... ynn_novel)

Strawman environmentalists. And the novel's internal narrative *still* undermined the denier's argument at the time because there was an ice age, which would have been avoided if the environmentalists hadn't won, and stopped fossil fuel use.
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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JQH
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Re: Nuclear waste

Post by JQH » Sun Oct 24, 2021 3:13 pm

jimbob wrote:
Sat Oct 23, 2021 7:42 pm
bjn wrote:
Sat Oct 23, 2021 6:34 am
Off topic. Didn’t know Niven and Pournelle went all anti-science WRT carbon emissions, but can’t say I’m surprised.
I remember picking this up at the library - it must have been newly published at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallen_An ... ynn_novel)

Strawman environmentalists. And the novel's internal narrative *still* undermined the denier's argument at the time because there was an ice age, which would have been avoided if the environmentalists hadn't won, and stopped fossil fuel use.
Indeed. The argument seemed to be "Carbon dioxide emissions do not warm the Earth and anyway we need to warm the Earth to stave off an ice age so emissions are good."

Incidentally, did anyone else see "The Trick" on BBC last week? Made me really angry:

1. Seemed to be little interest in finding the hackers and they never have been
2. Despite the fact that the claims of data fiddling have been repeatedly and comprehensively debunked I still see Big Oil's useful idiots on line parotting the claim that the data is faked.

3. One of the characters suggested that technologically induced climate change may be a solution to the Fermi Paradox. I fear he may be correct.
And remember that if you botch the exit, the carnival of reaction may be coming to a town near you.

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Millennie Al
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Re: Nuclear waste

Post by Millennie Al » Mon Oct 25, 2021 2:03 am

JQH wrote:
Sun Oct 24, 2021 3:13 pm
technologically induced climate change may be a solution to the Fermi Paradox. I fear he may be correct.
There are two ways that might work. Firstly, the intelligent species might be unable (either technically or politically) to deal with the change, and so fail. Secondly, the species might succeed so well that they make their planet so comfortable that they never leave and so get wiped out by the next big meteorite.

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JQH
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Re: Nuclear waste

Post by JQH » Mon Oct 25, 2021 9:13 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Mon Oct 25, 2021 2:03 am
JQH wrote:
Sun Oct 24, 2021 3:13 pm
technologically induced climate change may be a solution to the Fermi Paradox. I fear he may be correct.
There are two ways that might work. Firstly, the intelligent species might be unable (either technically or politically) to deal with the change, and so fail. Secondly, the species might succeed so well that they make their planet so comfortable that they never leave and so get wiped out by the next big meteorite.
The Fermi Paradox is not just the lack of space travelling aliens- they're not transmitting (by any means we can detect) either; The Great Silence
And remember that if you botch the exit, the carnival of reaction may be coming to a town near you.

Fintan O'Toole

Millennie Al
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Re: Nuclear waste

Post by Millennie Al » Mon Oct 25, 2021 10:09 pm

JQH wrote:
Mon Oct 25, 2021 9:13 am
The Fermi Paradox is not just the lack of space travelling aliens- they're not transmitting (by any means we can detect) either; The Great Silence
That's a lot easier to explain. If you consider transmissions from Earth, in a fairly short period we have gone from transmitting very simple, easily recognised and decoded signals, to much more complex signals. More and more connections are encrypted, which makes the data seem random. And the next major advance in security may be a way of defeating traffic analysis, which might make it impossile to even detect that there is a signal. If all civilisations follow this path, the amount of detectable signal may be negligible.

WFJ
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Re: Nuclear waste

Post by WFJ » Mon Oct 25, 2021 10:19 pm

Millennie Al wrote:
Mon Oct 25, 2021 10:09 pm
JQH wrote:
Mon Oct 25, 2021 9:13 am
The Fermi Paradox is not just the lack of space travelling aliens- they're not transmitting (by any means we can detect) either; The Great Silence
That's a lot easier to explain. If you consider transmissions from Earth, in a fairly short period we have gone from transmitting very simple, easily recognised and decoded signals, to much more complex signals. More and more connections are encrypted, which makes the data seem random. And the next major advance in security may be a way of defeating traffic analysis, which might make it impossile to even detect that there is a signal. If all civilisations follow this path, the amount of detectable signal may be negligible.
"Random" radio/microwave transmissions would not appear random to when viewed from across the galaxy. They would be a clear signal, even if the information encoded in the signal would not be understandable. They would however be incredibly weak and coming from a tiny angle of the sky.

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dyqik
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Re: Nuclear waste

Post by dyqik » Tue Oct 26, 2021 12:13 am

WFJ wrote:
Mon Oct 25, 2021 10:19 pm
Millennie Al wrote:
Mon Oct 25, 2021 10:09 pm
JQH wrote:
Mon Oct 25, 2021 9:13 am
The Fermi Paradox is not just the lack of space travelling aliens- they're not transmitting (by any means we can detect) either; The Great Silence
That's a lot easier to explain. If you consider transmissions from Earth, in a fairly short period we have gone from transmitting very simple, easily recognised and decoded signals, to much more complex signals. More and more connections are encrypted, which makes the data seem random. And the next major advance in security may be a way of defeating traffic analysis, which might make it impossile to even detect that there is a signal. If all civilisations follow this path, the amount of detectable signal may be negligible.
"Random" radio/microwave transmissions would not appear random to when viewed from across the galaxy. They would be a clear signal, even if the information encoded in the signal would not be understandable. They would however be incredibly weak and coming from a tiny angle of the sky.
Spread spectrum, digital encoding and wider use of the spectrum is making signals pretty hard to detect against the thermal and non-thermal background, as they are less distinguishable from thermal noise when integrated together than less dense analog signals.

Remember that any signal from Earth when viewed from as close as Alpha Centauri is embedded in the background radiation from Jupiter and the Sun, among other sources. Jupiter's radio emissions total over 100 GW, and are highly variable. That should be compared with the average power consumption of the human race, about 17 TW, most of which is not emitted as radio signals, or to total TV signal transmissions, of the order of 1 GW. Earth also has natural radio emissions in the 100 kHz range that are as bright as Jupiter's.

Additionally, the Sun has a radio brightness temperature of about 300,000 K, many times brighter than it is in the optical.

A useful paper on detectability of narrow band human signals is this one from 1978. However, digital signals are much broader band, and thus harder to detect.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1745785

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