By 1985, the “Solar Power Satellite” program of the late 1970s was effectively dead. SPS rose to prominence atop the rising oil prices due to OPEC oil embargoes and the like, but in the early 80’s the global price of oil collapsed and potentially competitive systems such as SPS suddenly were no longer remotely competitive. Still, Rockwell International hoped that they could leverage their considerable experience with SPS to generate a [profitable business. But it was not to be.
“It belched out a buttload of dust in our direction” seems to be the explanation. If so… no supernova for you.
The star has begun regaining its prior brightness. An examination of its surface shows no cooling, only dimming, which is best explained by some of the light being simply physically blocked.
I was pointed towards THIS LISTING of the “Apollo 11” documentary, available on a 4K disk:
My first reaction was “Huzzah!” followed by “About time!” followed by “Huh? Wait a minute…”
It even ships from overseas… Britain, apparently.
Frak.
Anyone know if:
1) there are plans for a US release?
2) this UK release works adequately on US 4K players?
Or, in fact, *any* virus. This guy – who I’m shocked to not see the press (yet) declaring a MAGA-hat wearing Trump supporter – was apparently upset that an Asian-looking guy was standing near him on a subway, so he got belligerent, threatened violence, and sprayed the guy with Febreeze. Apparently some people got it into their noggins that since this virus comes from China, Asian people in New York are somehow to be particularly feared… by which logic the other guy here should be assumed to be a carrier of Ebola.
Nothing here makes sense outside of “somebody’s kind of a ᛞᛁᛈᛋᚺᛁᛏ”.
Posted by Doris Au on Wednesday, March 4, 2020
Things like this are what make people yearn for the Sweet Meteor Of Death.
First point: When did “Lesbos” get re-spelled?”
Second point: How did *anyone* ever think this was going to go well? What’s the end goal here? So many refugees have been dumped onto this island that the options for the future all seem pretty bleak. I think the best of all possibilities would be a flotilla of transport ships, load them all up and transport them to Syria and dump them off en masse. An army of a few hundred thousand refugees (taken not only from “Lesvos” but Paris and Malvo and Rotherham and Arizona) could probably make a pretty good dent in the Assad regime.
When the temperature in the house is too low, cats have two options for being warm.
Option 1: for sociable cats, there is the “sharing bodily warmth” method.
Option2: For anti-social cats… “fark you, I got mine.”
People like this let you know what’s worth knowing.
“Mike Bloomberg spent enough on his campaign to give every American $1 million.” @BWilliams on @11thHour @MSNBC pic.twitter.com/iBsWvqEIHf
— Bad Econ Takes (@BadEconTakes) March 6, 2020
Each gear has a reduction ration of ten to one. There are one hundred gears. That means for the last gear to turn once, the first gear must turn 10100 times…a googol times. The guy who built it says that the device will require more energy than the entire universe has to complete a single rotation. I don’t know what the power consumption of the device is, but given that “there are between 1078 to 1082 atoms in the known, observable universe” this means that the device will have to turn the first gear a minimum of 1018 times per atom in the universe. The video seems to show that it takes about 4 seconds per rotation of the first gear. Pretty sure that no matter how efficient the motor, how well lubed the bearings, spinning that first gear 1018 times is going to require a lot more energy than you’d get by converting an atom of even uranium into pure energy.
Not a terribly useful or practical device. Cool, though.
This looks like it has potential…
