RE: Ad Astra article
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5iotdmmTJQsSzVYQ2Q0YUtCMERRczdYSXMtUWphUl92aHFN/edit?usp=sharing Working on a similar article for much higher circulation outlet. Keith Alright, now I'm feeling pretty hopeful about what power satellites can do for us. Thanks for sharing! I'm less optimistic about the chance of convincing politicians in the West to support something like this. Fossil fuel companies would porbably oppose such a plan vociferously. The best chance might be to persuade government people in a developing country that has more to lose from climate change. That's not to say it couldn't be done... look at the Chinese government, investing far more in wind power than the United States in spite of their dependence on coal. I wonder how much support could be gained from companies that foresee a future in space tourism or asteroid mining? Does the National Space Society have any plans to try to pitch this to anybody? ~E.S. ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Gravitational Waves
A team with a telescope (BICEP2) at the South Pole announced March 17 that they have detected the imprint of primordial gravitational waves on the cosmic microwave background radiation. http://www.nature.com/news/telescope-captures-view- of-gravitational-waves-1.14876 http://www.nature.com/news/gravitational-wave-finding-causes-spring-cleaning-in-physics-1.14910 If this finding is confirmed it will have huge implications. According to (my reading of) the summaries put up by Nature, this would: 1. Come close to confirming inflation theory, and give evidence for a multiverse. 2. Come close to disproving the cyclical (oscillating universe) and ekpyrotic (colliding branes) theories. 3. Demonstrate that gravity is a quantized phenomenon and potentially provide insight into quantum gravity. 4. Tell cosmologists when inflation started, when it ended, how long it took, how fast the universe inflated, how the rate of inflation varied over time, and at what energy level it happened. 5. Start pruning models from the inflation theory hedge, and possibly from string theory and axion theory. First Higgs bosons, and now gravitational waves. I'm excited! Now we just need to turn this new data into a way to travel faster than light ;) ~ E.S. ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
RE: Introducing Myself
From: albm...@centroin.com.br William Taylor wrote: The 4th dimension is going to close down as the galaxy that Jijo is in breaks away from the other four galaxies. It also mean that all the magic will go out from Jijo. Everything that can't be explained by XX-cent technology will cease to work. No more psychic powers either. Some of the lifeforms will go extinct. Some sentient beings that rely on magic will go crazy. I didn't remember that! Is it explained why in Heaven's Reach? It sounds like a really strange result of the hyperspace levels temporarily breaking down. Other than FTL travel, what relies on hyperspace? ~E.S. ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
RE: Introducing Myself
And then Temptation introduced a bunch more cliffhangers to the situation on Jijo, via the Buyur. I think the Buyur will prevent the Jophur from winning, but I doubt they have any incentive to prevent the destruction of any part of the Commons civilization. ~E.S. ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
RE: Introducing Myself
AT LAST my messages from like 6 months ago when I joined the mailing list have materialized. Though I do wonder what took so long. I see references to messages that I know I have not gotten, so I think there's also something preventing my address from receiving some messages from this list. Who is the list manager? Hello. There are plenty of real names and plenty of ‘nyms here, so don’t be shy either way. “ES” or “zoon33” both seem reasonable enough - as long as you’re consistent or let the rest of us know your wishes who are we to argue? Hello! I hope my real name isn't showing! I cannot find any controls to make the email service stop doing that. I will go with E.S. for now. It’s been quiet recently but every now and again this place sputters into life… I doubt it’ll ever reach the volumes of The Old Days again (unless DB WRITES MORE UPLIFT BOOKS…) but there’s always room for discussion. Wouldn't that be nice! Heaven's Reach ended on gigantic cliffhangers, such as WILL HUMANITY GO EXTICT!? :p At one point, there was Between a Grok and a Hard Pace on the net. My fanfic set 100 years before Brightness Reef. A Qheuen challenges a G'Kek to a downhill race--and wins. Then for the sake of continued peace, it's all hushed up. Only worth being a fanfic when written. Vilyehm I think I read that once... the qheuen attached itself to a section of boo and used it as a giant wheel, right? ~E.S. ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
What are peeps reading lately?
Late last year when I wasn't feeling well and needed some lighter reading than The Lord of the Rings, I started the Dragonriders of Pern series. Now that I'm feeling better somehow I got sidetracked into very complicated math and trying to make the GURPS solar system simulator and GURPS Uplift alien generator even more complicated... by the way anyone know of a good source of free/public phase diagrams for compounds such as methane, ethane, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, etc.? As in, a book that might be found at a library? ~E.S. Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2014 15:37:57 -0500 Subject: Re: I just picked up KSR's 2312 and Jack Campbell's The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knights (sequel series to the Lost Fleet series). Haven't started reading them. I was re-reading Sword of Shanarra as MTV is threatening a new series al a Game of Thrones. It's turning into a slog (seemed much better when I was a kid!) Damon. ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
RE: Uplift questions
Spoiler warning to anyone who hasn't read Heaven's Reach!! And that's Alvin, Mudfoot, and Huck on Harathrurptra. (Correct spelling anyone?) Mudfoot can become VERY important if Harathrumta (Sp?) has Rousit. In what way? By influencing Rousit in some way to be friendly to Clan Tymbrimi than their patrons are? I wouldn't hire Tytlal for my PR campaign, that's for sure. Does anybody remember the Rousit? Contacting Aliens didn't. (The above is subject, of course, to Dr. Brin actually making the Rousit clients of the Hoon. It wasn't that clear in Heaven's Reach.) Buh wait, that isn't canon? I assumed they were confirmed Hoon clients. 2. Did we ever find out why Gillian wanted a herd of Glavers? They speak to hydrogen breathers, IIRC. Reading Contacting Aliens cleared that one up for me. Though I don't recall any glavers sitting in on her interview with the Transcendent being... then again maybe a few were sitting in a corner wordlessly chewing their cud or whatever glavers do. (It would also have made it possible for Dwer to take a few back to Jijo, but I doubt David Brin would make things so narratively easy for Jijo.) Oops, that comment of mine was about red rings, not glavers. But seriously, you'd think Lark would remember Asx's request to take the original red ring to the Sages, and try to get somebody to take some. And Alvin could use the bio-life preservers in his sailing business. Ahah yeah! Hoon can't swim so they might find those traeki scuba-gear rings handy. But then traeki were basically written as biological Swiss-army-knives for nearly every need... to the extent of producing the enzymes that make it possible for humans and maybe others to exist on Jijo without dying of malnutrition. It makes me wonder how the Path of Redemption folks plan on replacing that function once traeki are mindless dirt-eaters. ~E.S. ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
RE: Stephen Hawking: There are no black holes
So if this is correct, what is the difference between a black hole and a naked singularity? The article describes an event horizon shrinking or growing in relation to a black hole's apparent horizon, but isn't Hawking saying that the apparent horizon is real and the event horizon just doesn't exist? In which case how can a black hole have both? ~Ellen Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2014 21:28:28 -0600 Subject: Stephen Hawking: There are no black holes Notion of an 'event horizon', from which nothing can escape, is incompatible with quantum theory, physicist claims. http://www.nature.com/news/stephen-hawking-there-are-no-black-holes-1.14583 ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
RE: For David Brin and the rest of you
Solar and wind energy on Earth certainly are economically viable, far more than the costs and damages we'll have to pay for massive climate change. Fossil fuels are cheap right now only because the costs (military action, increased pollution and disease and medical costs, climate change, wildfires, crop losses) are paid for through circuitous routes, or are not being paid yet (read: borrowed/stolen from future generations), or the costs and damages are forced onto disenfranchised people in poor countries who have no recourse to the people making these decisions. We literally can't afford to keep paying for that crap. Solar energy beamed down from outer space? I don't know anything about that. ~Ellen Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2013 17:40:15 -0300 Subject: Re: For David Brin and the rest of you Even if these things were economically viable (which they probably ain't), ambientally it would be a disaster. I can't image the Earth getting such extra amount of radiant energy and not turning it (she? Gaia?) into a hell much worse than the most pessimistic images of the most radical ecogroups. Alberto Monteiro (oil company guy) ___ ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
