Man of Honour
Always cool listening to John Michael Godier, especially on Event Horizon episodes.
Pentagon releases UFO footage
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Man of Honour
Isaac is cool but I just can't gel with the way his voice tones out after every line!
Man of Honour
I think that would be a far bigger deal than the discovery of some microbes or maybe some pond slime. People with vastly more power than humanity coming to Earth would genuinely be a very big deal. I don't think there would be mass panic, but I think there might be. I'm sure it would get vastly more attention than some microbes in a place hardly anyone has heard of or cares anything about.
No, it won't definitely change. Not for almost everyone, anyway. It would change for some biologists, probably. Maybe some medical researchers. Maybe some astronomers. Maybe. But not for the vast majority of people because it has no relevance to them or anything they're interested in. It wouldn't even change anything for most of the people who do have some interest in the subject because they're already thinking of it as a possibility. It might have some indirect relevance at some point in the future, maybe. Perhaps it would lead to some advances in medicine. But it would be that which was relevant to most people, not the microbes or algae that might or might not exist on a moon hardly anyone has even heard of and nobody can go to.
Soldato
I hope if beings from another world appear I hope they show us how to make infinite energy, so we can become more self sufficient.
An increase in solar and battery technology could change the world too.
I think the main people who will be annoyed will be the ones that make masses of money by manipulating the supply of resources.
An increase in solar and battery technology could change the world too.
I think the main people who will be annoyed will be the ones that make masses of money by manipulating the supply of resources.
Man of Honour
We are already on our way to limitless energy with Nuclear Fusion as it's been gaining strong momentum lately and especially now with more investment and with ITER well under construction as well as the first fusion reactor being built in Oxford which is being completed in 2025. That will be the gradual turning point and the initially slow to fairly rapid decline of "old school" energy generation.
We will still be a generation or two away from Fusion powering the world's cities, but once that happens, game changer.
We will still be a generation or two away from Fusion powering the world's cities, but once that happens, game changer.
Soldato
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We already detected it in the 70's with the Viking missions, it just wasn't convenient for NASA to go along with it despite allowing the tests (they probably expected a failed experiment)
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/04/science/space/gilbert-v-levin-dead.html
Sadly he passed before seeing himself vindicated on this plane of existence
Man of Honour
Or the huge number of people who'd see their paid employment ended. For such a rapid change, we'd need the aliens to bring the whole nine yards of Star Trek economy and society. Which was made of pure handwavium.
The first fusion reactor was built ~70 years ago. The first fusion reactor in Oxford was built ~30 years ago.
Hmm...I'll check my dating, which is from memory...
The first fusion reactor was completed in 1958. 63 years ago. A bit less than the 70 years I thought.
The first fusion reactor in Oxford was completed in 1983. 38 years ago. A bit more than the 30 years I thought.
We've been 30 years away from that for ~60 years now. And we're still 30 years away by the most optimistic estimates. ITER is a research facility that is never intended to ever be a power station. The most optimistic estimates are that it will work as proof of concept by maybe 2030 and maybe result in a potentially viable testing facility that might possibly be able to function as a power station by 2040 that might lead to an actual power station by 2050. If everything goes according to the most optimistic estimates.
It's true that fusion is gaining momentum. At this rate we really might have the first fusion power station in 30 years. Maybe.
Man of Honour
It would have to be inorganic life that can survive in conditions that would kill the hardiest extremophiles on Earth. Which would be a noteworthy thing in itself. Levin's experiments didn't detect life. They detected a chemical reaction that might have been caused by life of an unknown kind.
Man of Honour
Those reactors are science proof of concepts, whereas these new ones being built and ready for around 2025 are demonstrable ones that are actively used to showcase to investors, public and education alike. The new Oxford one is the first of its kind by that nature alone and whilst it is not the size of an actual Fusion reactor (it is 75% scale), it is designed to show how viable the technology will be in real world use.
It's funny people always say that scientists keep saying it's "30 years away" - The actual increase in output has been improving every few years to the point of now where it's actually usable for actual studies and use once complete.
Hell this below TED talk is from 2014 and the progress made between then and now has been equally impressive but he outlines the gains well:
@ 4:40
Commercial fusion will happen in our lifetimes, this is pretty much a given. The UK gov has set a date of 2050 for the country to be net zero which gives a 25 year buffer to work with if the General Fusion reactor does go live from 2025.
Our generation actually lives in a key moment of historical importance. We saw the birth and growth of the internet, the exponential boom of technology, having seen the shift in attitude to space exploration and non Earth life being taken seriously instead of mocked, landing on Mars being livestreamed and now the real world use of fusion power set to offer limitless energy. That's a heck of a set of things to witness in one lifetime and far more than any other generation before us.
Edit*
I swear Google is watching this thread, my Google Now feed just popped up with this from 6 days ago:
https://phys.org/news/2021-09-superconducting-magnet-magnetic-field-strength.amp
So yeah, huge strides in Fusion in the last couple of years alone and this new advancement is only going to amplify that further.
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Soldato
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By their own definition of the test though it had detected life, it's not like they sent the test up with a set of variable conditions for what could be identified as life, they sent up with a fixed set of rules for detecting life and those rules were passed, so technically they detected life by condition of the test, the fact they chose to actually ignore the results and move the goalposts is quite shocking from a scientific viewpoint
What they should have done was sent more tests to mars in order to verify with more stringent conditions, not just flat out ignore the results and claim they were wrong without any verifiable reason
Man of Honour
The tests did not detect life and weren't designed to detect life. Not least because it would have been impossible to do so. The tests detected a chemical reaction with an unknown cause.
They didn't claim the test results were wrong. They claimed one interpretation of the test results was wrong, on the basis of other test results. Mainly the tests looking for organic molecules (completely non-existent) and the tests determining various conditions (utterly deadly to everything that's alive in any known way).
I agree they should have done more tests to try to determine the unknown cause of the chemical reaction detected by Levin's experiments. It's currently an unanswered question. I doubt if the answer is a non-organic life form living in conditions utterly deadly to anything we can think of as life, but we don't know what the answer is and that's a good enough reason to try to find out.
Man of Honour
It's another experimental test reactor. A "science proof of concept", as you put it. The difference is that it's funded by a business rather than by a government. It's also at least 11 years behind schedule and that's assuming that it works as planned in 2025. Which might or might not happen - it's an unproven method of creating fusion.
Fusion has been usable and used for studies for the last 60 years. None of the existing test facilities are useable for anything else at the moment since they're nowhere near q=1 let alone the much higher figure that would be necessary for useful power generation. The record is q=0.67 and none of the existing facilities can sustain their maximum output (that record-setting run lasted for 0.85 seconds).
It's true that there have been significant improvements over the last 63 years since the first working fusion reactor. And commercial fusion power stations are still thought to be 30 years away. The issue is therefore that commercial fusion power stations were a lot further away than people thought it would be in the 1950s. Which is no surprise - look at the other highly optimistic predictions that didn't come true.
The fact that a UK government has said that by 2050 the UK will produce no more carbon dioxide than it absorbs does not make it a given that commercial nuclear fusion will be made to work any time soon. It might well be, but that won't be because a UK government has set an arbitrary deadline for something else and set the deadline for long after that government will have ceased to exist.
And that General Fusion reactor is a test facility that's already at least 7 years behind the time the company first claimed to be able to have it working by. Not just working but attaining a sustained q>1. But it doesn't yet exist at all and it's unknown if it will function as well as the company hopes it will. It's a test facility. Not a commercial fusion power station.
I've seen a lot of optimistic claims for a lot of things over the years, especially when there's money and/or publicity to be had. Some of them worked out, usually rather later than initially claimed. Some didn't. A few were scams. The way the system works, especially for privately funded research, strongly favours convincingly made bold claims over more realistic claims. See Theranos for the most famous example of the worst end of the results of that system.
I do think that commercial nuclear fusion will probably exist within the lifetime of some people alive today. Probably not mine, but probably some people alive today. Probably. A lot has been put into it and we're about on the edge of a situation where investors can consider it potentially profitable to fund research into fusion. Which, of course, will ensure that if it does work then the cost to consumers will be much higher than it needs to be.
Man of Honour
The Oxford one being built by general fusion is indeed a research reactor, it's not even to full scale size but it is one that will showcase what fusion is about to people and investors which can only be a good thing. They wouldn't be actually building the thing costing billions if it wasn't in some way viable to then later built a full scale device.
But....
The CFS/MIT magnets linked earlier are the real game changers though which means all things proposed previously can go ahead with meaningful levels of success (aka net positive energy). Not even ITER can do that due to the humongous low temperature magnets being used. It's no longer a case of probably or what if, instead it is now a case of when. CFS are interested in commercialising it as soon as possible (2025), whilst MIT want to share the technology with the world. A win win really. This has only been possible in the last 3 years as MIT/CFS built from scratch the HTF magnet solution.
Only drawback is only the MIT solution is using these high temp electromagnets, and current fusion reactors elsewhere use low temp massive magnets. There is no possibility to use the new magnet solution at ITER and others so various fusion solutions around the world's science labs will fade away whilst the approach by MIT/CFS almost certainly becomes the preferred approach as it's currently proven to actually work.
MIT have their published papers on the magnets freely available to read too, this isn't just research for a future generation any more.
But....
The CFS/MIT magnets linked earlier are the real game changers though which means all things proposed previously can go ahead with meaningful levels of success (aka net positive energy). Not even ITER can do that due to the humongous low temperature magnets being used. It's no longer a case of probably or what if, instead it is now a case of when. CFS are interested in commercialising it as soon as possible (2025), whilst MIT want to share the technology with the world. A win win really. This has only been possible in the last 3 years as MIT/CFS built from scratch the HTF magnet solution.
Only drawback is only the MIT solution is using these high temp electromagnets, and current fusion reactors elsewhere use low temp massive magnets. There is no possibility to use the new magnet solution at ITER and others so various fusion solutions around the world's science labs will fade away whilst the approach by MIT/CFS almost certainly becomes the preferred approach as it's currently proven to actually work.
MIT have their published papers on the magnets freely available to read too, this isn't just research for a future generation any more.
Man of Honour
ITER is intended to reach q=10, i.e. output of 10 times input, i.e. very much net positive energy. The people working on it think that's possible.
That new magnet does look extremely promising. Retrofitting existing fusion reactors with it may be a non-starter, but the knowledge gained from them remains directly applicable. Those magnets would still be for a fusion reactor using magnetic confinement. Not a plug-in replacement for the existing systems for magnetic confinement in fusion reactors, but the rest of the knowledge gained about fusion reactors using magnetic confinement remains relevant.
But I'll hold off on being excited until they have at least a test reactor working for half a second.
Man of Honour
Exciting times for sure, but ultimately a global shift needs to happen sooner rather than later, I don't mean just in Fusion though. The latest articles on climate change highlight the irreversible damage fossil fuel burning has been doing and unless action is taken pretty much starting now, then no amount of Fusion power generation is going to stop the chain reaction of climate events already underway.
Greenland's highest area of the ice sheet received rainfall for the first time ever, which should never happen at that sort of altitude, it should be snow. The melting rate means many major coastal cities will be flooded year round and it will only get worse. Details (ignore the headline, it is not accurate) can be read here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/13/greenland-ice-sheet-melting-fridtjof-nansen
Scientists and explorers have been warning of this for decades but nobody in power has ever cared to listen because where will their pockets get lined if they do!
Greenland's highest area of the ice sheet received rainfall for the first time ever, which should never happen at that sort of altitude, it should be snow. The melting rate means many major coastal cities will be flooded year round and it will only get worse. Details (ignore the headline, it is not accurate) can be read here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/13/greenland-ice-sheet-melting-fridtjof-nansen
Scientists and explorers have been warning of this for decades but nobody in power has ever cared to listen because where will their pockets get lined if they do!
Soldato
I'd be happy if they would give me the euromillions numbers for friday
That could be possible
For all that we call random acts there might be something controlling it that science hasn't discovered yet.
Man of Honour
That could be possible
For all that we call random acts there might be something controlling it that science hasn't discovered yet.
My first thought on reading that was about Quark from ST
S9 [EDIT: Obviously I didn't type a smiley face - the forum changed it. I wonder if ST: DS9 will remain as intended] A scam involving something that a more technologically primitive people thinks is random but which isn't sounds like it could be a dodgy money-making scheme of his. One episode briefly referred to him selling gold (which can be easily and cheaply made with Star Trek tech) to a pre-contact civilisation that was too technologically primitive to be able to easily make gold and thus considered it valuable.