The Factory Floor - 2017-03-08

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1:37 AM

@Shalvenay is this tungsten carbide or something else?

@Green yup, tungsten carbide in a cobalt-alloy matrix (I've run PCBs off on a CNC mill before, and still have the tool from that job as we were given one/student by the lab assistant)

Cemented carbide

Cemented carbide is a hard material used extensively in cutting tools for machining, as well as other industrial applications. It consists of fine particles of carbide cemented into a composite by a binder metal. Cemented carbides commonly use tungsten carbide (WC), titanium carbide (TiC), or tantalum carbide (TaC) as the aggregate. Mentions of "carbide" or "tungsten carbide" in industrial contexts usually refer to these cemented composites. Most of the time, carbide cutters will leave a better surface finish on the part, and allow faster machining than high-speed steel or other tool steels. Carbide...

10 hours later…

11:30 AM

@JDługosz I can see the point of the deletion flags on worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/73323/10945 - by my way of thinking, if you're a moderator or high rep user, you should really be seen to provide high quality answers. Fuzzy stuff like this might be more suited to comments. Just my take though.

11:50 AM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Questions

In the anime RWBY most characters have crazy weapons with multiple forms, like a scythe, that’s also a gun, or a gauntlet, that’s also a gun or a sword, that’s also a scythe AND a gun! But the weapon I find the most fascinating is a bow that is also two one-handed swords. I was wondering if i...

2 hours later…

2:20 PM

@HDE226868, that's an excellent answer to the waves in a stronger gravity well. You got a +1 from me.

2:49 PM

@Green Thank you.

@HDE226868 I've essentially closed my answer with a reference to yours since the best that my answer can be is your answer. Very nicely done.

I just hope it helps the OP, if he ever comes back to see it.

I've been trying to go back and answer some older questions. One of the risks is that occasionally, the asker has moved on. I can only hope that it will help people in the future.

@HDE226868 True. Whoever they are hasn't been here since last September.

@HDE226868 have you ever heard of Fireside Magazine?

@Green Actually, I haven't.

@HDE226868 They're a Patreon funded fiction publishing house. Even cooler is that they host their website on GitHub with all the benefits that provides.

2:56 PM

Ooh.

Have you ever submitted anything?

You know, I wonder if that would be good for a community promotion ad.

@HDE226868 I haven't. I don't know if they take world descriptions. I don't do especially well with just writing stories about characters. They end up being flat and pretty boring (so I think anyway).

huh, looks like they'll be accepting submissions in a couple weeks

and they pay 12 cents a word and are accepting 1000-word stories. That's, what, $120 max?

There's this story about corporate brand identity as a means to revolution. It's been a really good read so far.

3:13 PM

I'm reading the site's "about" page, and wow, they seem really... actually I don't know if there's a word for it

I guess 'politically correct', but that doesn't really cover it

Hola

"...if we think it crosses the line, we’ll blacklist you. There are no appeals.
And seriously, don’t email us to argue why your terrible subject matter deserves to be considered. You can publish your story somewhere else. Maybe in a flaming dumpster."

@Green LIIIIINNNNNNKKKKKKKK

oh...nevermind you already did.

:35899940 What's up with you dude?

Would "How would the command structure of a galactic war be organized?" be a completely stupid question?

3:28 PM

@James Sorry, I've been reading some aggressive literature this morning and that just slipped out. It was a mean comment. My apologies.

@Pᴇᴛᴇ ...I mean it could be if its poorly written, but I don't think the concept is inherently stupid

@Green I honestly missed it...which is unfortunate, I probably would have gotten a kick out of it.

I have a feeling that whatever way I write it in, someone will call it inherently stupid.

@Pᴇᴛᴇ it is inherently stupid

But I'm figuring that hyperspace exists at a rate of Y x light-speed and communication lines are (Y x 2) x light-speed.

there, now you've got nothing to lose

3:31 PM

@James Ah, James. I'm sorry. :(

This is what I'm reading now:

firesidefiction.com/the-revolution-brought-to-you-by-nike

@DaaaahWhoosh - I lost my credibility around here a long long time ago. A complete loser can't lose much more.

Given a galactic radius of 220,000 light years, what would be a workable multiple of lightspeed for communication?

@Pᴇᴛᴇ depends on what you mean by 'workable'

So, what I'm basically thinking is a galactic version of ancient nation warfare where it could take months for a message to get from (lets say) Rome to England. It's the same sense of separation/autonomy but on a far huger (and faster) scale.

Does that make any kind of sense?

@Pᴇᴛᴇ It makes sense to me. What you've proposed complies with what I know about how empires are governed.

So the end question (if people could interpret it), is whether ancient empire based conflicts could scale up to galactic proportions and would/could technology change the way the command structure is made up.

How fast would a message have to travel to get 220,00 light years in six months? 440,000 times light speed?

3:44 PM

1.2k light years per day?

I have zero math mojo.

but that's assuming you're going from one side to the other. You should have some sort of command center in the middle of the galaxy

especially considering the view

sort of, yes. I'm assuming one empire is on one side, and the other on the other.

so I guess you still have the worst case scenario of having to send a message from one end of the front line to the other

actually, huh, it might be really hard to fight a war on a circle

Might even be worse than that - I expect whatever is at the galactic core plays havoc with communications.

3:49 PM

@Pᴇᴛᴇ And plays havoc with people living there too (I'm assuming that the radiation levels in the galactic core are absurdly high).

not to mention a fair amount of dark matter.

and supermassive black holes

@Pᴇᴛᴇ We can work on it here.

Ok, so maybe it's not entirely dumb, just as long as I don't use science-based

I'm wondering if it'd be worthwhile asking for the most defensible place in the galaxy to set up an empire

3:53 PM

@Pᴇᴛᴇ Actually I think science based is perfect...hard science would be bad.

@Pᴇᴛᴇ I think that's reasonable.

People will undoubtably get pissy about FTL travel and FTL communication.

How about dreaming up a billion star systems and a billion star destroyers for each side to fight over?

hard science is always bad. I avoid asking and answering those questions.

Ok, just drafted up something in the sandbox - meta.worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/4637/10945

I'm a bit reticent to draw a parallel with ancient empire conflicts as I'm hoping people will get there by themselves.

Mithrandir24601

4:11 PM

@Pᴇᴛᴇ FTL is very messy - you have to be careful with frames and if you ignore things like acceleration, you can easily get time travel

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Questions

How would a command structure for a galactic war be organized? We have a galaxy roughly the size of the Andromeda galaxy (average 220,000 light years radius). Warring empires are roughly half-half in distribution. Faster than light travel exists, as does FTL comms. FTL comms is twice as fast ...

4:39 PM

And Star Wars/Star Trek avoids that issue in what way?

@Pᴇᴛᴇ Star Trek just has a bunch of time-travel episodes

Yep. And normal warp/hyperspace doesn't equate to time travel in any way.

that's the world where this question lives. otherwise, the first person to answer will just kill it.

4:58 PM

Man, I was hoping to break 9k today, but it didn't work out. maybe tomorrow.

5:29 PM

@Pᴇᴛᴇ That actually sounds pretty fascinating. I think the start is good. I'm wracking my brain for what other criteria you could add.

@Pᴇᴛᴇ No issue there. Dark matter doesn't interact with electromagnetic radiation (discounting gravitational lensing, which should be negligible).

On an unrelated note, numbness after having a cavity filled is freaky.

1 hour later…

6:31 PM

@HDE226868 - Thanks a lot. Sorry for your impending pain.

6:44 PM

@Pᴇᴛᴇ There's no more pain, just quite a lot of numbness.

@Pᴇᴛᴇ, you might make 9K today anyway.

Hurrah, thank you chaps!!

Mithrandir24601

7:13 PM

@Pᴇᴛᴇ I'm beginning to really like this question :) Has anyone ever looked at a general-relativistic version of an alcubierre warp drive?

@Mithrandir24601 Isn't that relativistic by definition? It's a solution of the Einstein Field Equations.

oh, hey, I just noticed

happy Women's Day everyone!

3

^

Mithrandir24601

@HDE226868 Yeah, it's relativistic, but I'm talking about, say in the presence of a black hole or something - the bit "travelling close to the core would create more problems in terms of travel" made me wonder what could actually happen

@Mithrandir24601 Ah, so as opposed to embedded in flat spacetime? That's interesting.

Mithrandir24601

7:28 PM

@HDE226868 Yeah, this exactly :)

7:43 PM

@Mithrandir24601 which is an interesting twist on housing your galactic congress near the center of the galaxy where the super massive blackholes live.

How much does time go more slowly in the center of the Milky Way compared to us out on the fringes?

@Green Galactic congress near a black hole. . . Sounds like a handy place to put politicians you don't like.

@Green There was a question on Physics about that. Let me dig it up.

@HDE226868 Wouldn't that be the set of all politicians?

20

Q: Why isn't the center of the galaxy "younger" than the outer parts?

I understand that time is relative for all but as I understand it, time flows at a slower rate for objects that are either moving faster or objects that are near larger masses than for those that are slower or further from mass. So, the illustrative example I always see is that if I were to leav...

general-relativity spacetime reference-frames galaxies time-dilation

@Green True.

@HDE226868 Holy crap there are some smart people over at Physics.SE.

Mithrandir24601

@Green Yep... There are nobel prize winners on Physics SE

7:49 PM

Gerard t'Hooft. ^

@Mithrandir24601 NO! No way. I mean, it doesn't surprise me but....dang.

See also meta.physics.stackexchange.com/q/6322/56299.

Oh, and Peter Shor.

@HDE226868 Cool! He lives in my backyard.

No, really in my backyard.

He's got a tent and everything. :)

Mithrandir24601

Ah... If only

Mm-hm.

For the record, this is a huge part of why I emphasize rigor in answers.

The fact that other sites do it so well, that is - not that Shor or t'Hooft would be watching; they won't.

7:56 PM

yeah, we need more people who can write 1000-word essays with at least three citations in under five minutes

Mithrandir24601

Certainly not me... It takes me hours to write up a decent answer...

@HDE226868 I appreciate rigor in WB answers because it makes them much more tractable to use. I also appreciate that many questions on WB are anti-rigor and can't be made that way.

That said, because of my time on WB, I'm a much better researcher. I also ask "Yeah, but where's your sources?" much more often.

@Green Yes, and you have to know your audience, too.

Which can be easy to mess up. I do it sometimes.

Wb is weird. I find that when I drop a lot of time and research into an answer it often gets little attention...when I repeat the word crossbow 6 times and the answer takes 8 minutes to write with no research things do better.

@James That was certainly true with my three genders answer. That took me days to get working but only got a few upvotes. It did make a nice blog post though.

Mithrandir24601

8:09 PM

@James Out of my 5 'nice answers', only 1 of them is science-y, while about half of my overall answers are science-y :/

I wonder if the lack of attention to science answer is because the people who can appreciate a particular science answer are far fewer than the total population?

Mithrandir24601

comparing with physics SE, it's more that non-science answers get an unusual amount of upvotes as opposed to science answers getting unusually few upvotes

8:34 PM

Just popping in to say thanks for whoever flooded my inbox with votes, very much appreciated! And thanks for the great ideas for the great galactic war question too!

@Pᴇᴛᴇ Good luck with that galactic war question. Can you ping me when you post it?

To comiserate: I've had laborious answers that I think are quite good resources go under appreciated, while a short remark gets a pile of upvotes in a frenzy.

8:58 PM

I want to say 'democracy is a failure' but maybe that's going too far

9:14 PM

@Green of course. Might be tomorrow.

10:08 PM

@Pᴇᴛᴇ excellent! Thanks!

1 hour later…

11:19 PM

hey there folks

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