Universe Factory

James

14:03

@Vincent Maybe, you have a sample or two you can share?

Green

@James, good morning

James

@Green Hola Senor Verde.

Green

@James Hola Senor! How was your weekend?

James

14:25

Eh, not bad, kinda felt like crap all weekend.

Green

@James Sorry to hear that.

James

It happens. How about you?

Green

@James Made a little progress on another project I'm working on. I'm learning Elixir/Phoenix.

Also learning the ins and outs of married life. You know, the usual. :)

Green

14:48

@James Can we address a little bit of the atmosphere next episode? As I was reading Andy's summary of the world, it struck me that the super high mountain/volcano is actually ejecting ash and gases so they fall down into the tops of the atmosphere instead of being blown up to the top.

AndyD273

@Green It does seem like the climate could use a little more discussion, and atmosphere would be a good place to start.

do you have any initial thoughts?

Green

@AndyD273 Yep. Getting a mountain that high, without magic, is going to require a bonkers active volcanic spot. We haven't nailed down in lore what caused this ice age but a giant mountain blasting fine ash and aerosols into the upper atmosphere seems like a good way to kick off an ice age.

So maybe the super volcano hasn't been active for the last thousand years or so and the world is finally starting to warm up again.

AndyD273

aerosols?

Seems like the CO2 would help warm things up, and as ash falls down onto the ice it would increase insolation retention, which would help counter the snowball earth senario

Green

@AndyD273 nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/factsheets/Aerosols.html

AndyD273

15:03

The problem with an ice age is that the ice reflects sunlight, making it hard to warm things up. With the ash/soot on the ice the reflection would be reduced a lot

James

@Green That makes sense to me.

Green

@AndyD273 This sounds like a perfect way to get "rapidly" cyclic warm-ice ages.

Long active periods of the volcano spew enough ash that it melts the glaciers. Short active periods cool the planet but don't put out so much ash that the ice/snow melts immediately.

....that sounds like a scenario ripe for a model! Win!

AndyD273

@Green Huh, I guess I never thought of a volcano as an aerosol source... Now i'm just picturing a volcano with a giant can a hairspray and an Elvis outfit...

Green

Also, because the top of the volcano is so high, sometimes, it's going to be explosive enough to throw rocks for hundreds of miles. Holy crap!

This planet is scary but I like it!

@AndyD273 Maybe a local people will call it Mt. Pressley.

We might be able to get short lived orbital rings from the garbage that the volcano throws into orbit.

AndyD273

Hmm, I wonder if there are any studies about volcanic outgassing in a vacuum... Like, there is no atmosphere to keep partials suspended, so once the particles lose their momentum they'd fall down, either landing on the mountain above the atmosphere, or falling into the atmosphere itself...

Green

15:17

@AndyD273 There probably is but I don't know where to find it.

@AndyD273 If there's no atmosphere, then it's just gravity and orbital physics to see where they go.

Also, it means this planet is deflating over time as the volcano ejects gases directly to space.

AndyD273

@Green But most of the gases won't have escape velocity, so a lot of them should fall back down to mix with the atmosphere. I think anyway...

Green

@AndyD273 I know that helium gets out fairly quickly but heavier gases, I'm not sure either.

Ta da! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_escape

You're going to get ice clouds in LEO! ICE CLOUDS IN LEO!

AndyD273

@Green Is that was was going on the one planet in Interstellar?

If so that's pretty cool

Green

@AndyD273 No idea. Never seen Interstellar.

AndyD273

@Green It was pretty good, aside from a few really dumb choices that smart characters made.

Supposed to be an extremely accurate simulation of a black hole, at least up to the event horizon.

Serban Tanasa

15:31

u"hello world"

damn it python

Mithrandir24601

15:55

@AndyD273 the super-accurate black hole looks phenomenal but never actually made it to the film :/

^ this image is so accurate, I used it to help me study for an MSc level exam on black holes

AndyD273

Are you sure? IIRC from the making of documentary they said they got a bunch of astro physicists to do all the modeling and stuff:

wired.com/2014/10/astrophysics-interstellar-black-hole

Mithrandir24601

@AndyD273 sadly, yes - they created the super-accurate simulation for the film, but it never actually made it into the film :/

AndyD273

@Mithrandir24601 So I'm pretty sure that the one that they modeled showed up in the film. The one in the film looks a lot like that one.

I wonder what the differences were

Granted, the simulation was over 800 terabytes, so maybe they just took the accurate one and modeled it in a program that would be more usable in the movie.

So it would have looked right for the screen, but you couldn't actually run calculations against it like the real model.

It doesn't have to be the model, so long as it visually looks like it.

Mithrandir24601

@AndyD273 see page 23 of this: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0264-9381/32/6/065001/…

AndyD273

16:15

@Mithrandir24601 Ah, so like I said, an artists rendering of the model to better fit the medium.

Green

16:28

@SerbanTanasa I appreciate the u'string' syntax. I like knowing that I've forced a string to Unicode.

Serban Tanasa

17:15

@Green turned blue now?

Green

@SerbanTanasa Yeah, it was time for a change.

Serban Tanasa

@Mithrandir24601, dunno, looks kinda wave-splashy. What causes that

Green

@AndyD273 if we make the volcano into a shield volcano, it's could be up to 2000 miles in diameter. If it's a stratovolcano, it's gonna be around 500 miles in diameter. Holy crap! This is huge!

5E24 cubic miles of ash/lava in this volcano. Dang!

AndyD273

Old lava tubes are going to be an interesting feature/plot location

Green

17:34

@AndyD273 And there's going to be entire labyrinths of them. Dang! This volcano is almost large enough to be a world, all by itself.

Given its age, there's enough space for completely unique species to be hiding in those tubes.

AndyD273

@Green Oh, huh... what if there are a lot of normal size volcanoes which throw the aerosols into the air, and started the ice age, and then to fix it the god(s) made the big volcano, and since it's so high you get the heavier elements like ash and CO2, while the fine aerosols fall out. The ash and CO2 help end the ice age.

All the little islands and archipelagos could be volcanic in origin in the seams where the plates are pulling apart, and the big landmasses are where the plates are pushing together. So the islands would be volcanic mountains, and the big landmasses are mostly upthrust mountains.

Mithrandir24601

17:49

@SerbanTanasa there's quite a lot of effects in there once you know what to look for (mostly as a result of it rotating) - what exactly are you referring to?

Green

18:37

@AndyD273 At lower altitudes it's the combination of aerosols and water vapor that clears out the aerosols (depends on the aerosol though). It's complicated.

ericfdiaz.wordpress.com/stratovolcanoes

James

19:21

@Green @NexTerren What all needs to be done before we post the first couple episodes officially?

Just checking to see if I am the only thing we are waiting on.

Green

Green TODO:
- Include the intro sound at the beginning of the podcasts.
- Edit whatever copy is given to Green for the podcast announcements
- Publish podcasts episodes and upload audio files.

Someone else TODO:
- Write copy for episode 0 and 1.
- Deliver to Green.

We will probably want an out-tro sound bite with link descriptions, further info....whatever we want. If nothing else, probably a nice sound to close it all out.

James

@Green What is "write copy for episode 0 and 1?"

@Green Do you want it to be different or could we just reuse the intro sound at the end?

Green

@James Sorry, 'copy' is editor speak for 'words to be published'. Sorry.

James

Ah, gotcha, I have started on those, I will try and pick up the pace.

Green

@James Probably different though I haven't gotten beyond "hey, we might need that."

James

19:27

Yeah that happens.

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