The Factory Floor

5:58 AM

@Shalvenay Hey! I think I'm going to reframe my three books questions in terms of time-travel. In some mad way, I think that might be easier for people to cope with.

Bellerophon

1:34 PM

I still think the three books questions are primarily opinion based.

sphennings

2:29 PM

@Green I'm interested in seeing how you reframe them. Essential books for x is a fun topic to discuss with my technically minded friends. I'm skeptical that it can be made into a good fit for this site.

HDE 226868

2:42 PM

@kingledion I'm assuming that you'll get Legendary on Sunday. Are you still planning to sit back after that and start answering your favorited questions?

kingledion

2:55 PM

@HDE226868 Yeah, thats the plan

I went through all my favorites last night, I have like 70 or so to work on

sphennings

@kingledion There are many adaptions that allow fish to eat coral. Parrot fish are just the most impressive form of this since they inflict damage to the structure of the coral in the process.

kingledion

As long as the adaptation is costly to the fish, then the coral win

You can't just have coral eaters breeding like sardines

sphennings

crown of thorns starfish are doing that already.

"It then extrudes its stomach out through its mouth over the surface to virtually its own diameter. The stomach surface secretes digestive enzymes that allow the starfish to absorb nutrients from the liquefied coral tissue."

James

@Green Insanity is never short of company.

AndyD273

So looking at todays XKCD, I wonder if there is a way to mine the sun...

Future Historian

3:07 PM

Hmmmmmm.

has an idea

@AndyD273? Remind me again what the conditions are for Kepler 452b? Because I am probably going to need to do an overhaul of the Visitors' biology.

AndyD273

If you had macro wormhole technology you could maybe siphon some of the plasma out in a controlled manner to generate power, and collect the residue to separate out all of the elements that are generated in the fusion process

@FutureHistorian I don't know man, that's your area of expertise.

sphennings

The sun's too far away. The alt text suggests a method of getting gold at the near end. This seems much more practical.

Future Historian

@sphennings? For Kepler 452b to be habitable?

kingledion

@AndyD273 The best way to mine something from the sun is to get it to explode and then collect the gold from the resulting dust cloud

Future Historian

Or something else?

kingledion

3:13 PM

I would throw other suns at it until it is big enough to supernova

Future Historian

is confused

kingledion

I mean, there's two right over there in Alpha Centauri

Future Historian

@kingledion? Question: are the conditions on Kepler 452b too hostile for life in general to emerge to the point of developing intelligence and STL interstellar travel?

In real life?

sphennings

@FutureHistorian Do you remember how the sandbox works?

Future Historian

I did.

This is the same question I posted on the sandbox.

sphennings

3:15 PM

You're supposed to edit your question and get feedback on it.

kingledion

@FutureHistorian What gives you the idea that I know anything off the top of my head about Kepler 425b?

sphennings

I didn't say that it was ready to be posted.

Nobody did.

Future Historian

In fact, I did edit the question......during the posting process.

:(

Sorry, @sphennings.

sphennings

You should wait until you are getting positive feedback from the sandbox and at least a day probably two have passed.

@FutureHistorian Stop apologizing and start learning. This is the second time you have done this.

Future Historian

Well, a day did pass.

Technically. Too bad I forgot to account for the feedback part.

sphennings

3:17 PM

Since you posted not since you got feedback. Nobody had commented on the revised form.

@FutureHistorian The question you posted is still about a story anyway. You're asking about how a specific ship survives a specific attack.

HDE 226868

@kingledion I apparently have > 1,000 favorites . . . which just shows that I perhaps favorite things way too much.

kingledion

@FutureHistorian I answered your question. You'll be happy to know that the answer is still ice. I did the math out for you!

@HDE226868 I know, I had over 250 before I whittled it down. You've been collecting favorites for 2 years longer than I have. You're a favorite hoarder

Look at all the favorites you collected!

Green

@kingledion don't try to clean that. Just burn the place down and start over. Ugh.

HDE 226868

I'm going through them and trying to remove ones from questions that I've either now successfully answered or probably will never be able to answer.

kingledion

Hah, you hear that @HDE226868? @Green says just burn your account down :)

3

HDE 226868

3:27 PM

@Green I can interpret that as burning down my account, or burning down the whole site.

kingledion

@HDE226868 You can see how much damage you can do with the mod-hammer before community managers intervene

Green

@HDE226868 well, clearly, the whole site will have the prettier flames. There's enough arcane chemistry and alchemy around there to really make things brilliant.

AndyD273

@kingledion It would be pretty diffuse at that point, and you're going to lose a lot. Worm holes, which are allowed by general relativity, would allow for a more controlled method.

HDE 226868

@kingledion Not that much, given that @James is probably watching the room. I assume his reaction time is good.

Future Historian

:D

@kingledion.

HDE 226868

3:33 PM

Oooh, I found a good one. There's a potential there for an answer. If I can get ahold of a computer and someone who knows how to do orbital situations. Which probably won't happen.

kingledion

@HDE226868 Well well, its now #102 on my favorite list

Green

@HDE226868 that feels to broad but it's really just "computationally expensive".

HDE 226868

@kingledion What's #1?

Future Historian

Hmmmmm. So, turns out that I need to think of a delta-v for each antimatter stage.

@kingledion? A spacecraft 10 km long and 6 km in diameter has how much dry mass and wet mass?

I will need them for the sake of calculating delta-v count for the antimatter stages.

Which are ~724 km long each.

Actually, no.

kingledion

@FutureHistorian Why are you using the term 'dry mass'? What does wet mass mean in this context?

Future Historian

3:47 PM

@kingledion. Tsilokovsky's Rocket Equation.

I am trying to find out the delta-v per antimatter stage.

kingledion

@HDE226868 This one

2

Q: Planet Titan, could this work?

So I'm guessing you guys know about the speculation that life exists on Titan. To me, this is very interesting but many point out that it would probably only be microbes and unicellular life because the freezing point and melting point of liquid methane is so close together. But! More complex l...

Future Historian

If the main spacecraft is 6 km in diameter, and the stages are 724 km long......what does this mean?

For the mass of the spacecraft with and without fuel/propellant?

kingledion

@HDE226868 I've actually got a whole bunch of simluator ones in my favorites, I'm going to do them all at once some night. I should have done them last night.

Future Historian

Engine mass is 10,000 kg, BUT the mass of the stages is TBD.

Green

@Bellerophon I did some significant rework on the medicine question. With those constraints, does your opinion change at all?

Future Historian

3:53 PM

Why? Because most of that is radiators, power generation, fuel/propellant tanks, shielding, the structure, etc.

Green

@James damn right it's not short on company.

Future Historian

So, how much mass does a 724 km long antimatter stage have?

Oops. Wrong person, @sphennings.

sphennings

@FutureHistorian Why would I know this?

Future Historian

Oh. Because I accidentally pinged you in the comments section.

Still, antimatter stage mass = ?????

With and without the fuel/propellant.

Oh and acceleration for the stages is 0.35 Earth gees.

James

@kingledion I see all and know all. Fear me ye' mortals.

@sphennings lol

AndyD273

4:02 PM

@FutureHistorian Antimatter is pretty similar to regular matter, except antiparticles, so just figure out what it would mass using normal matter, and you'll have your answer. No one here but you knows what your 724 km stage is made out of, so no one here can answer your question.

Future Historian

Well, that is not good.

Oh...oh.......

684,461,960,516,272.4 kg?!

Wait.

AndyD273

Could be. That's a REALLY LONG stage.
Just figure out the mass of 1 meter, and multiply by 724,000.

Better yet, instead of having it be 724 km long, just have 724 1km long stages, and drop them off as they empty. That way you have to push less mass as you go along.

kind of like this:

Bellerophon

4:19 PM

@AndyD273 That doesn't look totally space worthy to me.

@FutureHistorian You should remove the middle three paragraphs from you newest question.

AndyD273

@Bellerophon Is this one better?

Bellerophon

@Green I'd say it's borderline. I'm not going to VTC it but I doubt I would reopen it if it were already closed.

@AndyD273 Remind me to let someone else test any rocket you build. Preferably while I am in a different continent.

AndyD273

@Bellerophon None of those are mine, but do illustrate the point. This one is also good

KSP Mars Ultra Direct: Ludicrous single launch to Mars in Real Solar System

►

Green

5:23 PM

@AndyD273 what game is that?

@Bellerophon is it in the verification of which book is better than another?

SaneDragon

Hi

Bellerophon

@Green Partly that, partly that with medicine you can only cover a tiny part of the subject and deciding which bit is most important is opinion based.

@SaneDragon Hello. I don't think we have met before.

Welcome to the chat, I hope you enjoy it.

Green

@Bellerophon why is it so important to cover a lot of the material?

AndyD273

@Green Simple Rockets. It's a fun little rocket simulator

Bellerophon

@Green It isn't, but there is no way to decide which bit it is most important to cover. I could give you a list of the best three books on vaccines or the best three books on anti-botics. How do we decide which are better?

Green

5:31 PM

@Bellerophon (thanks for talking about this. Im getting insights into my assumptions.)

Future Historian

@Bellerophon?

Fixed it!

-3

Q: How does an extraterrestrial spacecraft survive a nuclear explosion in LEO?

So, I am trying to think of some materials that an extraterrestrial spacecraft owned by an extraterrestrial species known as the Visitors to humans (native name: Xwlnnr, which should be pronounced as Exvielnier in their native tongue) can use to survive a nuclear explosion in Low Earth Orbit. T...

reality-check warfare aliens spaceships nuclear-weapons

:P

Better?

@Secespitus? Still terrible? :(

Green

@Bellerophon hmm, but three books on the same subject doesn't make sense because that's a depth of knowledge they can't use with their level of knowledge development.

Secespitus

@kingledion How come you answered and later VTCed Futures question when there was no edit in that timeframe?

Future Historian

^

Bellerophon

@Green Sure, but I reckon there are more subjects than can be fit into three books.

Future Historian

5:44 PM

;(

Bellerophon

Like I said, it's borderline. I may be wrong on the above assumption.

Future Historian

I am officially sad.

Secespitus

@FutureHistorian I am not sure why you need to describe the ship's capabilities if you want to know how it's armor is constructed, but it definitely looks better.

Bellerophon

@FutureHistorian You could probably also remove the middle paragraph then give some information on the tech level of the people who built the ship.

Future Historian

@Bellerophon? As in.......?

Bellerophon

5:50 PM

What tech level they are. I believe you said they are K2 so say that they are a K2 civilisation and put in a link to the scale and a brief description of what a K2 civilisation is.

Future Historian

Reupdated it.

-3

Q: How does an extraterrestrial spacecraft survive a nuclear explosion in LEO?

So, I am trying to think of some materials that an extraterrestrial spacecraft owned by an extraterrestrial species known as the Visitors to humans (native name: Xwlnnr, which should be pronounced as Exvielnier in their native tongue) can use to survive a nuclear explosion in Low Earth Orbit. T...

reality-check warfare aliens spaceships nuclear-weapons

@Bellerophon? Better?

Bellerophon

@FutureHistorian I think so.

Future Historian

:D

HDE 226868

6:07 PM

@AndyD273 Would you at all be interested in an answer to worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/32900/627 if I discussed what would happen if this occurred in certain other galaxies (because the effect could be non-negligible)?

AndyD273

@HDE226868 Go for it!

HDE 226868

@AndyD273 Cool! Thanks.

Future Historian

So........@Bellerophon? How do we reopen this thing?

Bellerophon

@FutureHistorian You wait.

You need 5 reopen votes.

You are on 4.

Future Historian

Oh.

kingledion

6:17 PM

@Secespitus Yeah I'm wrong. My close vote was in good faith; my answer was mostly not in good faith.

Future Historian

@kingledion. :(

sphennings

@FutureHistorian The majority of that question is unnecessary details. In general questions get a better response when they are clear and easier to read.

Future Historian

Thank you!

sphennings

@kingledion Have you done any analysis on question length to how well received it is?

kingledion

I have not

@sphennings As in, plotting question length against chance of a question being closed?

sphennings

6:20 PM

I'm more interested in views, number of answers, and upvotes

Secespitus

@sphennings Isn't that this?

sphennings

@Secespitus That's characters per upvote.

kingledion

@spe

sphennings

@Secespitus I'm more interested in a histograph of paragraphs/lines vs average number of answers.

kingledion

@sphennings Hmmm...

Future Historian

6:22 PM

So...........one more......vote.......

kingledion

Good thing I'm compiling at work all day today...

3

AndyD273

I already voted

sphennings

That would help advising new users, to be able to say "Aim for x paragraphs" since on average questions of this length are better received.

Bellerophon

As did I. I assume Sphennings has since you edited.

Future Historian

I know.

Wait.......

:D

sphennings

6:24 PM

@Bellerophon I still think it's a bad question. Removing the sub question makes it less bad.

kingledion

Alright fine, your question is open again @FutureHistorian, but the answer is still ice

Future Historian

:P and....... :(

sphennings

@FutureHistorian You should know by not that you should ask one question per post.

Future Historian

Oh.

Hmmmmmmmmm. Question: has anyone played Hearts of Iron IV before?

Besides me.

:P

kingledion

Man the closing and re-opening wars on the Only Three Books series has to stop

I feel like I've reviewed each question at least 3 times.

Future Historian

6:35 PM

I just want to know since.......well, I just realised: I am playing as the Martians in the game's War of the Worlds mod and....so far, the Soviets, Americans and Germans have been smashed.

Britain is next...........

laughs evilly

kingledion

@sphennings Ok, here is an appropriate query: data.stackexchange.com/worldbuilding/query/edit/787005

Now I will make some plots

Future Historian

@sphennings. I forgot to add in the point defence lasers and other means of protection.

sphennings

@FutureHistorian You're asking how your ship can survive a nuclear blast. That presupposes that it has made it past point defense systems. They are irrelevant to the question and shouldn't be in there.

Future Historian

Oh.

Done!

sphennings

6:50 PM

@kingledion Is there a way of tracking which questions have gone HNQ?

Can you quantify the effect of HNQ on a questions activity?

Future Historian

Hmmmmmmm. I wonder how those point defence lasers work.

As in: what wavelength would be required to operate a point defence laser system capable of easily and effortlessly vapourising thousands of nuclear warheaeds at once?

HDE 226868

@sphennings There's no record of a question's HNQ history. People have been wanting to know that for a while.

Future Historian

@HDE226868? Speaking of questions, what wavelength would be good enough for a point defence laser system to vapourise thousands of nuclear warheads at once?

I am not sure if infrared, UV or visible light would work more efficiently for this job (since x-ray lasers may be a bit overkill).

Oh, right.

No interrupting.

:(

I will just pretend I asked someone else that question.

So, say....I had at least one point defence laser and 3 MIRVs are heading towards the target nearby.

sphennings

@HDE226868 We hit HNQ often enough that we could tap @kingledion To gather every HNQ question we have for a month and compare that sample to the rest of the questions WB has asked.

Future Historian

What wavelength would be the most effective at stopping these nuclear warheads from destroying their target?

sphennings

6:58 PM

That would be a more representational sample anyway.

Secespitus

@FutureHistorian Remember to clean up the Sandbox once you posted a draft on the main site.

AndyD273

7:14 PM

@HDE226868 Interesting answer. So basically, it would only really make a difference in small galaxies with very massive black holes

HDE 226868

@AndyD273 Yes, that's basically it.

I might pick up what Cort started and try to figure out what fraction of stars, for instance, might be travelling at above the new, lower escape velocity.

AndyD273

7:31 PM

@HDE226868 So my question with that is, say there are a handful of stars near the core that are moving fast enough to be above that limit; and another handful that are below the limit, but moving fast enough to suddenly get elliptical orbits, moving far out into the galaxy before looping back toward the core again... Will enough stars move out of the core to further lower the escape velocity speed limit?

HDE 226868

@AndyD273 In that case, these stars with highly elliptical orbits will move outwards, but they won't keep going (excluding those moving faster than the escape velocity). The thing is, there's a radius (measured from the center) beyond which they won't move each orbit, right? They each only travel a finite distance from the center.

Any stars beyond that will still have the same escape velocity, I believe, because of the shell theorem.

Sorry. I didn't mean to send that four times. Blame the internet connection.

kingledion

@sphennings Ok, we got some results. First up is a plot of questions score vs question length

sphennings

Is this character count length?

kingledion

Left axis is the blue datapoints, which is the average score for a certain question length (in characters)

Right axis is a gaussian smoothing on the data

Y-axis are questions score, for both sides

Next up: same thing except instead of score it is views:

Third we have # of answers

and finally sum of answers score

They all have the same pattern

4

sphennings

Damn.

kingledion

7:45 PM

I would actually say that the 'optimal' question is about 5000 characters long; you see a noticable decline after that up to about 10000.

Secespitus

Very cool

kingledion

Above that its just outliers

Hmmm..lemme see what if I do it on a log_x scale

AndyD273

:42381795 Sure, I get that, but if enough stars move out of the center, will the shell move outward? I mean, the ones that will eventually loop back are no longer contributing their mass to the center, and so the galaxy gravity well will flatten out a bit more.

Using the whole rubber sheet example, the galaxy makes a big depression in the sheet, and the black hole at the center really pushes it down. Then that's removed and the depression gets a little shallower.

Some stars are moving fast enough to climb up out of the depression and escape the gravity well, and some are just a little too slow, and so cant make it all the way out, and loop back eventually. But while they are looping out, they are not contributing their mass to the center, and so the depression gets a little shallower, and the effort needed to get out gets a little less.

Maybe the galaxy doesn't fall apart with every star heading out into the void, but maybe a majority of stars in the galaxy end up with highly elliptical orbits on galactic time scales.

kingledion

That is the last graph on log x scale

HDE 226868

@AndyD273 Not by a lot, no. The effect wouldn't be as large as the black hole itself disappearing because all of the mass is still there. It'll be be damped, I think. I'd have to do some calculations to get you a better answer.

@AndyD273 That'll probably be true for a lot of the central stars, yes.

But not for most; most probably never get near the center of the galaxy.

@kingledion It looks like questions with tweet-able bodies don't do so well, then.

AndyD273

7:51 PM

@HDE226868 That's cool. It mostly was to quench my curiosity in regards to the story mentioned in the question. It kinda ruined my immersion; "Wait, the galaxy just lost it's center, why aren't you guys panicking??

kingledion

@HDE226868 @sphennings Yeah, I'm actually pretty surprised how well recieved a lot of the enormous questions are:

HDE 226868

@AndyD273 Heh, yeah, that made me laugh when I first read it.

kingledion

24

Q: How do I use weird bouncing magic to power my society?

Edit: See bottom of the post for answers to some great questions I got! The Short Version: How do I make perpetual motion machines that utilize the following things: Bundles of weightless energy that bounce around like pool balls, exerting force on physical objects and disappearing after a ...

magic steampunk fuels

12

Q: How viable would an analog computing revolution be?

I am trying to write a sci-fi setting in a not so distant future in which analog signal (brainwaves, in this case) processing is one of the main points of the plot and pretty much required to explain some of the mechanics going on in the universe. Thing is, analog to digital conversion is expens...

science-based reality-check near-future computers science-fiction

39

Q: Is this alternate history plausible? (Hard Sci-Fi, Realistic History)

Is this alternate history I came up with plausible? What holes does it have? Are some events very unlikely to happen, even impossible? Should I change some dates of some events? Most of my knowledge is in Science, not in History. Note that this would be in a history timeline of a wikipedia-lik...

science-based society warfare alternate-history space-colonization

For some examples from the top 10 longest qustions

Green

9:49 PM

@kingledion I'd be curious about question length vs closed.

kingledion

10:06 PM

@Green I'm glad you brought that up, because that exposes a catastrophic error. I didn't count deleted posts! I'll have to redo those graphs sometime.

Just not right now.

HDE 226868

10:16 PM

Oh, wow, this is cool: S2 orbits Sagittarius A* and will next reach periapsis in mid-2018. It'll reach speeds of 5000 km/s.

That's maybe 9 times the galactic escape velocity where we are (although the escape velocity around the black hole for S2 is higher).

Shalvenay

11:35 PM

hey there @Mithrandir24601

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