@Hannah The arsenic in the finished product is too low to be harmful. Also in an alloy properties change so it may no longer be poisonous to the user. To the smith on the other hand...
Yesterday I asked whether we should burninate the fiction tag on the Main site here. In that post and the comments I mentioned that I think the science tag would already be enough to show that a question is about science-fiction, as I think that every question on this site is dedicated to creatin...
@Shalvenay seems like overkill on a very high level. You'd probably remove a lot of NK, SK, China, SE Asia... You could get a similar effect with a Rod From God at just orbital velocity without the possibly world ending effects.
@Shalvenay There was a sci-fi story that basically postulated that the only safe, sane, action for an intelligent species to do after discovering evidence of life on a planet around another star is to immediately launch an asteroid or similar mass on a collision course towards that planet with rocket engines attached, so it accelerates towards .9c or higher by impact. Thereby destroying that planet before the aliens can do the same to you.
In case that's not the one, the basic idea is that each civilization is like a hunter in a dark forest. You know that there are other hunters out there, and you know that at least some of them could be hostile. If you happen to run into one, there is a non zero chance that they will try to kill you. In this scenario, a purely logical hunter will shoot first, before the other hunter can shoot you.
The only way that you can safely try to peacefully approach another hunter is if you do it from a position of overwhelming power, to the point where the other can't possibly hurt you.
@AndyD273 I don't think my knowledge of it comes from there; it was in the page 1 text of another novel that I never finished, but that author may have been referencing that? Too many years between then and now...
This is the founding premise of science fiction "The Three Body Problem"
It starts with two axioms
Survival is the most important goal of every civilization
Every civilization will continue to expand and grow , but resource in the universe is limited.
With two assumption
Suspicion Chain
...
@CM_Dayton I kind of favor the kinetic kill option (IE, rods from god) for purely local disputes. All the power of a nuke with none of the radiation...
@CM_Dayton The only real problem with this is the fuel needed to get it up to speed... Maybe ion thrusters or laser accelerated sails could do it eventually, but it would take so long to get to the destination that they'd have plenty of time to first strike you back.
Yeah. Winning your wars via nuclear attack just takes all the fun out of it. You can't ride through your vanquished enemy's fertile farmlands, gloating from the curtained litter at their despair when radiation is involved.
@AndyD273 it certainly requires something beyond our current technology level. Chemical thrusters just aren't fast enough.
I was surprised this afternoon to discover my question had been put on hold for being "too broad," despite positive receiption of the question and some surprisingly good answers.
Considering broad — even sweeping — questions are asked regularly (even religiously) on this site (such as this one),...
So do you like the idea that negative matter is just normal matter moving backward in time that Richard Feynman proposed? It would kind of explain why they cancel each other out. Like two equal opposite waves meeting.
@AndyD273 Yes, very much so - it's called the Feynman-Stueckelberg interpretation of an antiparticle - there is the issue that we have yet to properly observe gravitational interactions of antimatter, which will probably(?) break this CPT symmetry
(I've just got to the end of the video and the part about whether it's a meaningful statement is a big part of the reason that it's a 'pop-sci explanation')
@AndyD273 so the way that CPT symmetry works is that if we have a particle with a charge and parity, then make it go back in time, what we observe is that the particle is travelling forward in time, only with one of the charge or parity 'flipped' (i.e. CPT symmetry is conserved, so if it is 'T-antisymmetric, then it must be 'CP-antisymmetric' (ignoring gravity, because we don't have a verified quantum theory of gravity))
Of course, it could be T-symmetric, in which case, we observe it going forward in time, only with the same charge and parity or both charge and parity 'flipped'
(although I'm trying to think if it's physically possible to be T-symmetric. I really ought to know this, but my mind clearly isn't working properly right now :P )
So last week I read "Spooky Action at a Distance" by George Musser, and the whole history about scientists going back and forth about locality vs non-locality was pretty interesting. Got a little lost when it tried to explain quantum field theory, but I'll probably go back and reread that part.
@AndyD273 I'm actually doing a PhD (about to start research in about a month and a half) and the topic will be on simulating (C)PT symmetric Hamiltonians on a quantum chip :P Orthogonal interpretations, therefore use whichever makes life easier, as both are equally valid :P (although combining non-locality with relativity is... Difficult)
It's a bit odd, as interpretations that are used in every-day life (i.e. local) have the feeling of 'following the letter, not the spirit' of locality, yet non-local theories can often be very, very messy, even though they're easier to talk about using classical physics terms, like 'trajectory'
@Mithrandir24601 Yeah, though some of the explanations I've read to try to explain how non local effects like entanglement are actually local seem pretty weak...
Also, it's probably just me, but the whole frame of reference thing seems really centrist (maybe not the right term. Like how people used to think the sun orbited the earth).
@AndyD273 It is local, but fundamentally by a technical, mathematical argument. There are a couple of physical arguments, which usually involve having to send a classical signal or that you're storing information (like having a sealed envelope), but it's never really massively satisfactory
@AndyD273 the frame of reference is supposed to be the exact opposite of centrist :P The point is that there is no frame of reference and something is only moving relative to some other thing
Apropo of nothing, but had to clean out the desk of a fired co-worker today. He had a drawer full of Taco Bell hot sauce. Like dozens of packets. What does it mean?!? I suspect some sort of Call of Cthulhu style plot...
The reason I think it sounds centrist is because it seems to say perception of an event is valid from my perspective, irregardless of facts. On example was a man throws a baseball at a train faster than the speed of light. The man sees the ball go in the back of the train, down the cars, and through the front of the train.
Meanwhile another man is sitting at the front of the train. Because of the speed of light, he sees the ball come from the front of the train, travel toward the back, and then into the pitchers hand.
If you are on a train moving at 0.99999c and you throw a baseball towards front of that train, could that baseball exceed the speed of light, relative to the someone outside the train?
@CM_Dayton "Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it."
Oh. yes. We all know that you can't go faster than light speed, so we must instead go somewhere where that rule doesn't apply. Somewhere... else... the old "hyperspace jump" theory. But what no one admits is that hyperspace isn't really just some random dimension. Nope. It's where the Great Old Ones live. Try to take a shortcut and BAM there's Cthulhu. Ships don't get lost in hyperspace. They get consumed.
@Mithrandir24601 Ok, so instead of FTL, say the baseball is traveling through the train at C, because magic. Also because magic the train doesn't explode as air molecules experience fusion as the ball runs into them.
@AndyD273 Both frames of reference are right - both see the 'baseball' travel at c - what happens is that the two people travel through time at different rates
What that what-if fails to account for is that the sudden acceleration from 0 to 0.9c would probably involve sufficient G forces to atomize the ball before it ever left the pitchers hand anyway.
From the balls frame of reference, it leaves the pitchers hand, and because of time dilation instantly plows into a mountain 40 miles away, with an impression of train in the middle.
@Mithrandir24601 The relativistic difference between the guy standing on the surface of a rotating planet, around a star, which is itself orbiting around the galactic core, vs a guy traveling on a train at 50mph, on a rotating planet, orbiting a star, which is orbiting the galactic center, isn't enough to have any meaningful effect on how quickly each of them ages.
oh. I thought the universe was travelling outwards from the big bang, not expanding like a loaf of bread cooking. Sigh. Discover channel has failed me again. I'm not saying it was aliens.... But it was aliens...
@CM_Dayton plus our movement compared to other galaxies in our local cluster, and on and on. Technically, I don't know if universal expansion counts as movement. Especially because galaxies are moving away from each other faster than the speed of light, so they can't actually be moving.
@Mithrandir24601 So what does that have to do with the frame of reference of the man riding on the train seeing the ball go from front to back, instead of back to front like the pitcher sees? How is the man on the trains perception of the ball not a trick of the (speed of) light?
This is the founding premise of science fiction "The Three Body Problem"
It starts with two axioms
Survival is the most important goal of every civilization
Every civilization will continue to expand and grow , but resource in the universe is limited.
With two assumption
Suspicion Chain
...
The Factory Floor
The Factory Floor