The Factory Floor - 2016-12-05

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1:03 AM

@ArtOfCode Why did you write "This tag is often off-topic." in the philosophy tag wiki?

@HDE226868 you'd have to ask year-and-a-half-ago me that question :)

8 hours later…

8:49 AM

@Catalyst well I looked at my hand, and stroked gently across. When I noticed something strange, that I could find on both. I made use of my fingers, my senses of touch. Where I identified some sort of sinew, or muscle, or such

9:08 AM

WHOOOP WHOOOP WHOOOP I AM A 2000er NOW

FEAR MY MIGHT

9:48 AM

@Separatrix The original title was a mistake on my side, I was intending to make the titlea pun on the title of a movie about dragons. I hoped that people going to answer the question would actually read it and hence answer the question as stated at the end of the body.

The question stated there was formulated: What parts of the dragon could be eaten? and was subsequently changed to What are the parts/cuts of the dragon's carcass? in order to make it even clearer that the question was not asking for recipes.

Judging from early answers though, this intention of not asking about recipes but about the parts/cuts of dragon-meat, etc. that can be used / how the meat would behave, has been understood by at least some of the readers.

Thus, and because asking for recipes would be opinion-based, I felt justified in adjusting the question to bring that point accross better than I initially had managed to

5 hours later…

3:07 PM

Greetings mortals!

o/

Yo <-- lizard man giving the 2 fingered salute

whoa

3:25 PM

so anyway, today I'm having a really hard time paying attention to work, so I was going to ask a question about the effects of Martian sand on firearms. Does that seem like a reasonable question to ask?

Reasonable question, and the answer is excessive wear and short life spans. Martian fines are so small they will get deposited on every moving surface, wearing it excessively over time.

@DaaaahWhoosh Fines get everywhere. Any moving parts are going to have a real issue with getting the super fine dust in all the mechanisms

This is a significant plot element of Kim Staley Robinson's 'Red Mars' series.

You'd need firearms designed specifically for mars with some way to stay sealed...

@kingledion yeah, that's why I want to ask it, I just was afraid that since Red Mars is fiction that fines would not be well-known (or even real)

3:29 PM

I'm pretty sure they are real. We do have rovers and stuff up there to know these things.

Well known? Maybe not, but that's just a paragraph in the story to explain the concept

what I'm aiming for is a sci-fi world with low-tech warfare, so I'm trying to investigate different ways to make technology more scarce

if fines really would be detrimental to moving parts, maybe that would be a good reason to not use automatic rifles

Well that would be one way to do it. Esp if the fines are slightly conductive being partly iron oxide. So you'd be able to limit moving things like that, and also have non sealed electronics have issues.

Journeyman Geek

can't be that different from sand in a desert. All you need are condoms.

Well, the fines would be detrimental to weapons, but guns will still shoot for a while. Even if you can only kill people with your gun for a few months, its still better than using a sword.

Journeyman Geek

or gyrojet type weapons

3:36 PM

@JourneymanGeek Martian soil is ground up much more finely than sand. There are no water-processes to rejoin smaller pieces into larger, so over millions and billions of years of blowing around the surface, the pieces are basically microscopic. Same thing with moon dust; that caused respiratory problems in the astronauts since it stuck to everything and got all over the interior of the Apollo modules.

@dot_Sp0T Im not sure what you're talking about but I am intimidated.

@DaaaahWhoosh You're probably going to want them water cooled too...

@James I just figured it out, he has 2k rep

oooooh...yeah I was too lazy to check

@James guns on Mars? Oh, because the air is so thin?

I topped 18k over the weekend

@DaaaahWhoosh yup

3:46 PM

@James congratulations

@James I like how we're leapfrogging here

@ArtOfCode Ah, good. I finally have an excuse to build that time machine.

I need to actually go answer some questions...I want my 20k privileges back.

@HDE226868 why do I have no memory of that, then?

@HDE226868 Dude...don't forget to kill Hitler

@James In 1945, or earlier?

@ArtOfCode Huh. Maybe the history is wonky.

3:47 PM

@HDE226868 I think earlier is the universal preference.

also don't forget to kill Abraham Lincoln

@DaaaahWhoosh ...dare I ask. Why?!?

@James because otherwise he's gonna get shot in the head in the middle of a play. The man deserves better

@James Make the world safer for vampires?

@AndyD273 That movie was surprisingly good

3:49 PM

@James The book was much better.

I did not realize it was a book...

@AndyD273 that's pretty much an axiom of the universe at this point

They did a really good job of mixing the real history with just enough stuff to make it plausible.

amazon.com/dp/0446563072

He also wrote Pride and Prejudiced and Zombies

Prejudice

4:18 PM

@JourneymanGeek doesn't help, Mars is catholic

Would someone mind giving feedback to answers to this question?

@HDE226868 by 'feedback', do you mean 'downvotes'?

@HDE226868 Honestly from a read of the question I would say the user doesn't understand the hard science tag...

@DaaaahWhoosh I didn't mean it like that, but if you want to, that's okay.

If you want hard science I feel like you need more parameters/details provided in the question, plus its not one scenario they are looking at or considering so what exactly is there to science

4:25 PM

;)

4:36 PM

Hammer dropped. I don't know how those answers got so many votes in the first place.

I still think the problem is the question. Anyone opposed to the removal of the hard science tag

Not that answers shouldn't take it into account anyways...

at this point, it's in that "it's too ugly to save" area

if you remove the tag, there's already been too much effort put into enforcing it

if you leave it in, there's too many answers that don't honor it

I think it is a very legitimate question. The problem is I don't know if anyone on this site has the relevant knowledge to answer it.

I work with satellite communications and I don't really have a clue how to estimate the total energy being directed into space, or how likely it is that we could find that energy from 200 ly out. Tough question.

@kingledion @MichaelKjörling has written some good answers in the area. Perhaps he could give it a stab.

And Schwern answer isn't bad as it is, I think.

4:49 PM

Maybe just put the idea of removing the hard science tag in as a comment and let the OP decide on their own if the answers they are getting are good enough?

I mean, it is their question, and if they are happy with the answers then great. If not, then maybe they need to rewrite the question.

Well there you go, VictorToth just came through with information about the most powerful radio telescopes in the world and their detection threshold.

I love this site, collective wisdom is the best.

5:02 PM

@kingledion Just for the record, my discussion on deleting hard-science answers that fail to meet the criteria was not met with significant response one way or the other. Currently, they're allowed to stay, because there's no consensus on the matter.

There is to much politics in hard-science.

That's why I prefer to stick to science-based.

5:16 PM

The only reason I can see for actually deleting someone else's answer to a hard science question is if they answer it with equations that are wrong. Like if someone answered that tidal heating question with a formula that calculates the area of a cylinder then I can see it as being beyond the threshold.

If someone answers with some creative/informative ideas that apply to the question but don't have enough math to satisfy the tag, that doesn't mean that they are bad answers, just that they shouldn't be chosen as The Answer.

5:29 PM

Good use for that magnum...
Though from reading this mars and moon dust is way worse than sand in the desert: http://now.space/posts/problem-dust-moon-mars/

Michael Kjörling

5:50 PM

@HDE226868 Oh, so I'm 30345 now, huh? Are you referring to 63401?

6:03 PM

@MichaelKjörling I have no idea. I did mean to ping you, but I just clicked on your gravatar on the prompt.

Michael Kjörling

Well you superpinged me, and it showed up with my chat user ID in the inbox. :)

Ah, good.

Michael Kjörling

You wouldn't happen to know how to convert from W/m² to dBm, do you? :-)

Nope.

@AndyD273 Yeah, it wasn't an "I think we should consider this because why not" so much as an "We've tried a lot and there hasn't been much improvement. Let's put this on the table".

aww, I keep forgetting that questions are worth half the reputation

(even though a good answer is its own reward)

Michael Kjörling

6:18 PM

Well, whatever the conversion is, that the NASA DSN would have a detection threshold of -54 dBm doesn't make any sense. I'm pretty sure the FM radio in my car does much better than that!

Greetings, fellow organic sentient meatbags.

Michael Kjörling

Oh, lovely. I found a NASA document stating that the DSN requires special configuration when the downlink signal strength exceeds -85 dBm, and the downlink signal strength must never exceed -65 dBm, but nothing on its detection threshold!

Also I have an Amazon 2-day shipping package expected December 3, and this vexes me.

@NexTerren sentient, eh...? :-)

@DaaaahWhoosh A good answer IS it's own reward, and also worth double the points of a question.

Michael Kjörling

6:26 PM

@NexTerren "Greetings"? You're playing hardball today, I see.

@RoryAlsop Are these not the words that we use to describe ourselves, bleep bloop?

@MichaelKjörling It felt only natural on this foggy day.

Huh, I can buy the Fast and Furious complete collection on BluRay for $27 and attempt to fill the void inside my life, or not buy it and refuse to support the capitalist industrial machine. Choices, choices.

@NexTerren that sounds like a really good deal

and yet...

Michael Kjörling

@NexTerren Would that not, in order to be useful, require a Bluray playback device with associated imager and audio distribution equipment?

@MichaelKjörling Indubitably it would, however by chance I have acquired two such devices via the exchange of abstract monetization and use of packaging data in networking protocols.

Michael Kjörling

@NexTerren So you are, in effect, saying that you have traded network traffic for a Bluray playback device and associated paraphenalia?

6:36 PM

@NexTerren I find your circumstances to be more fortuitous than average

@MichaelKjörling Unquestionably.

Michael Kjörling

@DaaaahWhoosh The means of an average, to be fair, must include the circumstances of those of below average means. Average it all!

@DaaaahWhoosh Indeed, they are distributed along a positive vector on the curve.

/r/totallynotrobots/

Michael Kjörling

s,/r/totallynotrobots/,totallynotrobots.se/g

Oops, wrong window. ;-)

Worldbuilding SE is turning into the XKCD of Stack Exchange. There's almost always an appropriate post to link to.

@MichaelKjörling Give me three random keywords and we can test this out.

Michael Kjörling

6:48 PM

@HDE226868 intelligent black hole.

That random enough for you?

Ooh, we had something like that once. worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/55462/627 is similar but not exact.

Maybe the question I'm thinking of is deleted.

Michael Kjörling

@HDE226868 Too bad it's been closed.

user image

Well, at least that worked. That's xkcd.com/895 by the way.

@MichaelKjörling I linked to that in a comment on Worldbuilding yesterday!

Michael Kjörling

@HDE226868 Oh, right. I saw your username attached to that comment but it somehow didn't register.

Searching deleted:1 "black hole" doesn't bring up anything I remember. Maybe I'm misremembering.

Michael Kjörling

6:55 PM

And while we're in that vein...

"There's also all the laws Santa breaks every year " - including several laws of physics — Jan Dvorak 46 mins ago

Speed limits. Air traffic zones. The FAA has been after him for years, but he's just to fast and stealthy.

Michael Kjörling

I think the Nobel Prize Committee is also interested in arranging a meeting.

all I've wanted for Christmas for years is the secret to FTL travel, but Santa still hasn't given it to me

Michael Kjörling

@DaaaahWhoosh Forget about the Alcubierre drive, have NASA start researching the Santa Claus drive.

I would love to fly to Mars on the back of a reindeer

Michael Kjörling

7:02 PM

I will respectfully refrain from mentioning how that trip would appear from the reindeer's perspective... ;-)

Ohh! New plan! Send Santa a letter addressed from Curiosity asking for a new martian rover to keep it company. Then when Santa delivers it then NASA will have a new rover with no launch costs

"Dear Santa, I am very lonely. All I want for Christmas this year is the Mars 2020 Rover to keep me company. I have been very good this year, and haven't run any over any cats. Love, Mars Rover Curiosity."

But have you been a good rover?

7:17 PM

@dot_Sp0T Yes Santa! I have worked hard, reported in on time, and haven't gotten stuck. I know people say that I kill cats, but it's not true. It must be some other Curiosity. I've been a good little rover!

Michael Kjörling

"I have been a very Curious rover, and have made my Mission Control and Science teams very happy. Please keep this in mind when considering my Christmas list."

hehe

Michael Kjörling

"You better watch out... Santa Claus is coming TO MARS!"

anyone want to upvote two of my answers? only need 18 more for another 200er

@dot_Sp0T 18 points, or 18 votes?

7:21 PM

points

but I'll recycle the other one in some 8hours if you don't mind :)

Michael Kjörling

There's 4 ½ hours left to go on this UTC day...

Indeed, there are

...how did you get that '1/2' in there?

½ ½ ½ is there a way to get that fraction easily?

With the ½ key?

Michael Kjörling

What @AndyD273 said. It's Shift + § on mine, but that might not help you.

7:23 PM

D: nope

Michael Kjörling

There's also ø and ç and ì and a whole bunch of others that I can use ;)

well, now I feel inadequate

çava?

alt+0189 = ½

alt+0188 = ¼, and alt+0190 = ¾

huh, when I type that it gives me the character, but it also tries to edit my last post

7:26 PM

it's the beauty of shortcuts

Michael Kjörling

»There is no need to feel inadequate« said the Çat. »Just pick a keyboard and start typing.« Alice was confused. »But I don't know what to type!« she exclaimed. »Then« said the Çat, »It matters not what keys your keyboard has.«

that was both reassuring and mocking

user image

Michael Kjörling

I couldn't remember the exact passage, but I feel it was sufficiently close to be recognizable.

I think I am really cool

user image

Michael Kjörling

7:30 PM

Pfft. Come back when you have 13 gold and 37 silver. Then we can talk cool. :-)

you're just envious of my LEET SKILLZ

And when you are really confused you can use the inverted interrobang⸘

Michael Kjörling

@dot_Sp0T Yes. And? ;-)

And you want to bake some christmas cookies..?

Michael Kjörling

@AndyD273 Plain ¿ is also quite useful.

7:31 PM

Other than in Spanish⸮

Michael Kjörling

5×⅝≃¿

3⅛

Michael Kjörling

$\pi$

Well, that didn't work.

π

Hmm, looks funny in this font

OH NOOOOO! The mad stapler is back!

Michael Kjörling

7:37 PM

Most "mad scientists" are actually just mad engineers

3

And I'll likely end up neither

and its bigger brother Π. They are Clippy's angrier cousins.

Michael Kjörling

@dot_Sp0T Scientist, engineer, or mad?

@MichaelKjörling the former

Michael Kjörling

@AndyD273 s/it's/its/ -- "it's" = "it is", but "its" is possessive "it"

7:40 PM

I like my apostrophes.

Look at me I am Michael Kjörling. I can do grammar and orthography.

Michael Kjörling

If you're going to have things starred, they may as wel be spelled right.

hahahaha

Ouch

Michael Kjörling

(Yes, I did that on purpose!)

7:41 PM

Sure, pretend to be prefect

Michael Kjörling

@dot_Sp0T I don't have a Ford!

Someone got my HHGTTG reference

Also I wanted to brag that I am basically grazing rep over there for a simple question you people thought I oughta asked on this chat instead

Michael Kjörling

An infinite universe multiplied by infinite improbabilities equals... one.

@dot_Sp0T yeah, that cow question got a lot of upvotes

Michael Kjörling

Is that now referred to as grazing?

7:49 PM

maybe it was a reference to the cow

(I'll go out back and shoot myself now)

8:12 PM

@DaaaahWhoosh Save a tenderloin for me

Is this still a HHGTTG discussion?

If you don't mention it then no

Hmm, probably better that I mentioned it then

If you don't mention it it can't mention you

sigh so many good books to read and read over again

I definitely need to pick up douglas adams' books again; I really liked the story of fenchurch

Also that edit privilege is sweet; I can wait until someone fixes what I would've fixed and then approve their edit because I feel the same about it

@dot_Sp0T pure serendipity

/s

8:24 PM

@James I don't speak your fancy inglese

Also anyone ideas on how to make airships with that stuff from avatar?

Michael Kjörling

@dot_Sp0T And the world knows how you felt about the edit.

@dot_Sp0T flying bison?

airbending?

be more specific

The room temperature superconductor unobtainium that abuses the Meissner effect to make floating islands

so... earthbending, then?

@dot_Sp0T Mine it, refine it, turn it into hull plates?

8:29 PM

@dot_Sp0T I mean, so you have four things that deviates from our word: A) The animals, B) The bending, C) The spirit world, D) It's a cartoon.

Some of the things that happen/are in that works you have to turn to D) for.

Michael Kjörling

@dot_Sp0T Requires only 1.21 GW at 39.34 m/s?

@NexTerren the Cameron Movie..

@NexTerren I think he means Avatar the movie with aliens

OH

Otherwise I'd have written Legend of Aang

or Avatar TLA

8:30 PM

@NexTerren I like how mine was a joke, and yours was serious, and everyone called you out but no one called me out

Well airships in the Avatar-Planet world is easy, since they have all manners of aircraft and spacecraft.

@DaaaahWhoosh 2 srs bsns 4 u

@NexTerren not making an airship in the avatar world but using the same principles applied in that movie in my world

@dot_Sp0T Do you have the same technology in your world?

Have you seen the movie Nex?

@dot_Sp0T I hear it's awful and all the characters are white

8:33 PM

@dot_Sp0T When it first came out, yeah. Pocahontas destroyed by space-age technology with a GI Joe flare. Also brain braids and mind-reading bed chambers.

@DaaaahWhoosh I really didn't think it was awful it just didn't live up to the hype. Also half the characters are blue.

I can't tell if you're calling my bluff or not, but I fold

I give up

@dot_Sp0T oh, sorry, I sort of derailed that

what is the Meissner effect?

@dot_Sp0T could you just turn it into ship hull components and get ships that have the ability to float without expending power. Would save a lot of energy to get/stay airborn

@dot_Sp0T I don't follow the question, so there's something I'm missing. If your setting has the same technology the humans in the Avatar movie have, can't you just toss in the hover jet things they have on a large craft and say "look, airship!"

8:38 PM

@NexTerren there was never any mention of same technology

@NexTerren I think he wants to use whatever it is that makes the islands float

@dot_Sp0T If your setting has the same technology that the natives have, then you're out of luck since they didn't have anything capable of actual flight.

Oh.

So duplicate the islands?

Okay, I think that's what I was missing.

hence my question, what's the Meissner effect?

@NexTerren Harness the effect to get floating vehicles that don't need to expel energy to fly?

29

Q: How do the flying islands in Avatar stay in place?

I've watched movie "Avatar" few times. In my opinion it's one really good movie but every time I watch it I wonder how the hell that pieces of ground or "flying islands" can be in the air? Is there any explanation for that? And if they can somehow fly, how is it even possible that they stay in o...

8:39 PM

Meissner effect

The Meissner effect is the expulsion of a magnetic field from a superconductor during its transition to the superconducting state. The German physicists Walther Meissner and Robert Ochsenfeld discovered this phenomenon in 1933 by measuring the magnetic field distribution outside superconducting tin and lead samples. The samples, in the presence of an applied magnetic field, were cooled below their superconducting transition temperature. Below the transition temperature the samples cancelled nearly all interior magnetic fields. They detected this effect only indirectly because the magnetic flux...

23

Q: Why did the mountains float in Avatar?

In the movie Avatar, the moon Pandora had floating mountains. I believe it was in an area called the flux vortex that was said to have a electrical interference. Did they ever explain or give hints as to why those mountains floated? Were they floating because they were at the balance point bet...

@dot_Sp0T MY LINK IS BETTER

@AndyD273 yeah, but still, I'm not smart enough for that

@NexTerren actually your link is the one that does not really elaborate on the answer but just says: Here read it yourself stupid

@dot_Sp0T But... but... :(

@DaaaahWhoosh In action

Levitating Superconductor on a Möbius strip

8:42 PM

the question is mostly about either continuing with negative mass or moving over to roomtemperature superconductors

are the superconductors on the ground or in the air?

@DaaaahWhoosh In Avatar it appears that the floating mountains hold the special element that's the superconductor (at room temperature).

I thought the superconductor was the planet

Nah, the planet has a magnetic field that is just strong enough

but not as strong as to make ferromagnetic metals float and stuff

@DaaaahWhoosh In the air. One of the effects of a superconductor (as described in that video) is that it will lock itself in place above a magnet. You can take a superconductor and place is above a magnate at a 45 degree angle, and it will stay at that angle as long as it stays cool enough to super conduct.

It's a really neat effect.

8:51 PM

yeah, I wish I had more time to understand the concept

So the question would be if it'd be possible to create and airship using this effect, and how you'd have to do it

You think that'd be a good question?

is the magnet the Earth?

@DaaaahWhoosh I don't think anyone really understands it any more than that they can reproduce it with certainity

@DaaaahWhoosh it's my own world, so I should be able to adjust the magnetic field by any means necessary

@dot_Sp0T Any means? A toothpick and a stopwatch.

I want to answer the GUI question, but I won't get any rep for it

:(

8:56 PM

@dot_Sp0T I can upvote it for you tomorrow

@dot_Sp0T Type up your answer and post it in a couple hours after midnight cte

@dot_Sp0T If you answer it now, it may hit the HNQ and you'll end up getting more rep overall than if you wait.

@dot_Sp0T I feel like I should tag you in a message to be part of the cool kids club, so I'm doing so now.

@dot_Sp0T golly I hope I can be part of that club

Did I break the chat?

9:14 PM

@dot_Sp0T w҉h͢a̰̮̦͚t̹ ̧͇̩͖d͓̦̮̦͡o͎͎̝̞ ͎̞̞͓̦̖͠yo̗̣͖̻u̡̮̗̱ ̥̮͟m̫͎̟͉̲e̬͎̥͡a̗͈͖̗͎̼n̛̠͚̜͔͍?̗̯̥̦̹̼̳ ̦̖̫

t̟͎̲̤̜́ͅh̞͍̪ȩ̭̪̭̭͖͇ͅ ͏c͚̕h͍̞̖͡a͖ṯ͈͈̻ ̙͖͍̪͟i̴̩͇̗s͇̱̞͖̩͞ ͜f̸̞i͓͔n҉̟̪̯̠e̛͙̰̣̲

@DaaaahWhoosh ZALGO :D

;D

@DaaaahWhoosh Quit barfing all over chat

Well, answer that does not reiterate the same points as all other answers written; obligatory joke about archaic webbrowsers hidden in comment section; I'm good to go

see you around o/

\o

9:41 PM

@HDE226868 Hey, just curious (without filling up the comments of the answer) how is what you said different than what I put in my answer: "We only really see their effects on a massive scale, and how they interact with things like galaxies."

@AndyD273 Never mind. That was meant to be a comment on the question.

@HDE226868 hmm, ok. I am answering questions on 4 hours sleep, so I figured it was entirely possible that I made a mistake, so I was hoping to be able to set it right before to much time went by

@AndyD273 No, that was entirely my bad.

9:57 PM

So I need shopping assistance

@James My wife says I'm pretty hard to shop for. You can get me a drone quad copter. I'm not picky.

I want to buy some transformers for my kids (mostly for my kids anyway) and I just want to find a place that sells all the same series, Transformers Prime. Searching on Amazon is killing me, they have I think 3 different series just from that show, all mixed together, not to mention all the other series' that exist...

@AndyD273 Ill whip something up out of rubber bands, paper clips and toilet paper rolls

At long as I can mount a camera on it and scare the cat, I'm game

@James tfwiki.net/wiki/Transformers:_Prime_(toyline)

bigbadtoystore.com/bbts/menu.aspx?menu=2819

10:08 PM

@James just get them from the manufacturer? variac.com

10:32 PM

@dot_Sp0T wiseass

@dot_Sp0T Well played. (Yes @James, I realize this is merely encouraging him).

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