My slave mountain question was commented on by two Tim B's; Diamond Tim B, and Nova Tim B.
I replied to Diamond Tim B in a comment @TimB.
Which Tim B did I just ping? Both?
@AndyD273? About your comment regarding the whole "Voyager 2 in a museum" thing, and the Visitors in general, I may have noticed a potential that I never even considered for this story.
Since the Visitors have the real agency, while humans are mere observers, I wonder how I can make the Visitor story arcs as interesting as that of the human story arcs. And the trilogy that I originally wanted to kick off with is now a bunch of sidequels.
Four story arcs per book; two per continent, one for both humans and Visitors in each one.
@FutureHistorian There is an extended periodic table proposed that goes beyond 118, but no evidence of any of them made so far, and some further ahead there's a suggestion of an element limit near 173 something due to the proton drip line
I mean we can even start calling James of the Many Names @Jam now. That's making him much less scary being compared to something you put on bread and all that
An extended periodic table theorizes about elements beyond oganesson (beyond period 7, or row 7). Currently seven periods in the periodic table of chemical elements are known and proven, culminating with atomic number (Z) 118, which completes the seventh row.
If further elements with higher atomic numbers than this are discovered, they will be placed in additional periods, laid out (as with the existing periods) to illustrate periodically recurring trends in the properties of the elements concerned. Any additional periods are expected to contain a larger number of elements than the seventh period...
> Similarly, the next superactinide, unbibium (element 122), may be a congener of cerium and thorium, with a main oxidation state of +4, but would have a ground-state 7d18s28p1 valence electron configuration, unlike thorium's 6d27s2 configuration. Hence, its first ionization energy would be smaller than thorium's (Th: 6.3 eV; Ubb: 5.6 eV) because of the greater ease of ionizing unbibium's 8p1/2 electron than thorium's 6d electron.[11]
But I guess the main thing you need to worry is that it will probably decay in a blink of a second
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Because I am thinking of some hypothetical materials within the periodic table that could be more practical than neodymium as magnets to contain antimatter.
Hey @Jam is it possible to get the current sandbox put into the meta featured list? It's kind of harder to find right now, which means that newer users probably wont.
I don't think any of them will work. Even if an element is located right at the centre of the islnd of stability, it is going to decay with half life of seconds to days
So apparently there's a feature (undocumented or otherwise) that allows you to ping people based on the first three letters of their name. I guess I can sort of see what went through its developer's mind but it causes a problem.
My name is Oli. It's short for Oliver. In the Ask Ubuntu chat room,...
Hmmmmmm. @Secret? Do we need a high-temperature superconductor, a room-temperature superconductor or can we find a better rare-earth magnet than Neodymium?
I don't think you can easily make that hard scifi. We still hae no idea what will be a good room temperatue superconductor, we don't even know how high temperature superconductivity work yet
metallic hydrogen needs extremely high pressure similar to a planet core. IF you have a mechanism to generate such high pressure in your settings, then yes it will work
Because if I can solve these issues, then we have our antimatter-catalysed pure fusion bombs AND our pure antimatter bombs. I think.........
@Secret? So, could that fix the antimatter containment problem for the pure fusion bomb's antimatter ignition mechanism?
That and I made a redesign for the Leviathan to use an antimatter Bussard Ramjet, so this means a slower velocity to make the entry into our Solar System more reasonable.
From 0.75 c to 0.25 c as an upper limit.
Mainly to not use ridiculous amounts of antimatter, because I feel I should reserve that for a more advanced faction.
you might want to read more in detail on how magnetic confinement works in antimatter. And I am not sure if it is a safe thing to have a highly pressurised chamber of metallic hydrogen onboard your ship, but perhaps a level 1.25 civillisation have the technology to handle and possible violent depressurisation?
but yeah, suppose you do have this choice, you need to read up on how the geometry of the confinement device is in order to generate the correct magnetic bottle to contain the antimatter
@Secret. On average, the Visitors are K1.6, though technological progress varies between factions. This becomes more apparent the further from Kepler 442b they get.
But still, I understand.
Hmmmm. Come to think of it, in-setting Earth is in the Visitor version of frontier space.
After all: scattered colonies in the periphery of Visitor civilisation? Checked. Semi-nomadic groups like the one that conquered Earth? Checked. More anarchic than the rest of Visitor-controlled space? Checked.
So, basically, we were in the very edges of the periperhy of Visitor space at the time of the Invasion.
You know, come to think of it, I wonder if these two semi-nomadic Visitor factions would be seen by the main Visitor factions are just fighting a minor war.
For them, the NV_70110 War is just another war as we often see both Congo Wars in Africa. For us, the Human-Visitor War (the opening phase of the NV_70110 War/Sol System War) is the last chapter of human history.
@Secret? What historical wars on Earth are almost never even thought of?
Because I see this whole Congo Wars comparison with the Sol System War as an understatement in terms of how most Visitors view the conflict.
Is there a feasible low tech method of cracking oil to derive lift gas for ballooning?
In a previous question, I asked about storing natural gas over distances,with an eye toward supporting early ballooning.(1) One answer suggested I that try thermal cracking instead, to release methane and hydr...