The Factory Floor

3:02 PM

I am back......

@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.

And that is just for the opening trilogy.

@Sec that is a sweet test; did you get the ping?

yup, it works for 3 letters

nice

(and from what I knew, you will ping anyone else that start with those 3 letters)

@Sece will then ping another person with almost no more effort on my side

3:10 PM

@dot test

@Secret? I am officially going to have to ask........is there any more hypothetical elements to the periodic table?

(In theory it should only ping the last person whose username matches, that participated in chat)

@Secret bingo bongo!

@dot Hmm, we need someone with names that start with the first three letters.

One letter does not work, need at least two I think

@An u got that?

Nope

3:12 PM

@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

@dot Looks like three

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

2

ajnatorix zersolar

is there any way i can help?

Extended periodic table

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...

4pm local time and I've been in this room, on this chair since 8am local time. Uni does things to you, scary things

2

Ferret Civilization

3:14 PM

Indeed

So, for example. If I used element-122, what properties could this hypothetical element have?

So the girls got to see the lunar eclipse streaming from NASA while getting ready for school this morning. That was pretty cool.

@FutureHistorian It would probably be really heavy

It is basically the second of the predicted superactinides.

@AndyD273. Understandable, but what else? It is obviously VERY heavy.

So, what properties can it have?

@ajnatorixzersolar Have anything in mind?

Other than being extremely heavy?

ajnatorix zersolar

3:16 PM

your three letter hypothesis

> 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

Ah. I don't know if anyone else has a name starting with @ajn

Well, my problem is........could it be applicable?

@ajn I think we got it all worked out pretty nicely - feel free to make use of the fruit of our work!!

As in: is there anything pratical a civilisation (be that humans or extraterrestrials) could do with Unbibium/element-122?

ajnatorix zersolar

3:19 PM

@AndyD273 you mentioned a sandbox, how do you find it?

For example: what are some practical uses for synthetic elements besides plutonium and other radioactive materials?

Q: Sandbox for Proposed Questions

27

In order to make the Sandbox easier to use, a new Sandbox question will be posted when the old one becomes too full. This Sandbox is currently active. You can check here for the full list of past and present Question Sandboxes. What is the Sandbox? This "Sandbox" is a place where Worldbuildin...

discussion questions sandbox

btw very good work of music/art if you didn't know it: youtube.com/watch?v=RoLTPcD1S4Q

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.

Ferret Civilization

3:23 PM

@dot_Sp0T My other son, ouch.

are any of the theoretical elements actually stable? Meaning that they would last longer than a second?

Well, according to the Rocket Emporium Discord server, Unbibium is SUPPOSEDLY stable.

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

@dot_Sp0T yes

@Secespitus NICE

so it seems @Sec will ping the both of you!

3:27 PM

@dot_Sp0T No, the most recent one

@Secespitus but then you responded to the wrong message^^,

@Secret? In that case, what is better than a neodymium magnet for antimatter containment?

@sec if you get this ping reply

@AndyD273 Reply

Because either we need a room-temperature superconductor OR at least a high-temperature superconductor, come to think of it.

3:30 PM

@dot_Sp0T Maybe chat replies work different from comment replies??

@Sece we can only wonder

@AndyD273 xyzxyzxyz

Ah ha!

whoops there's the confirmation

Q: Disable three-letter pings from chat to save Oliver, Olivier and Olive from Oli's pings

43

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,...

feature-request chat ping

3:32 PM

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 guess it's a matter of being aware of the feature. If you are then you can use it to efficiently do Burst transmissions and similar

Hmmmmm.

has an idea

Room-temperature superconductors..........

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

also, no magnet is stronger than an electromagnet

that's why they use that in the colliders

@Secret. That is why I am asking.......can a room-temperature superconductor replace a conventional neodymium magnet?

in theory yes, cause the lack of resistance means the material can support very high magnetic fields without cooling

3:41 PM

@Secret? So, could metallic hydrogen work?

And how do we keep it from becoming just normal hydrogen again?

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?

Perhaps.

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

3:47 PM

@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.

Do you not agree?

@Secespitus it seems that @kingledion is being mean to you

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.

@FutureHistorian The Sumer and Elam war. For instance, I've never thought of it before, and once I finish typing this, I'll never think of it again.

"Oh look, old friend. Turns out a war just broke out in Frontier Space."

"Really? I wonder why that region is always so chaotic."

"It was always like that, and frontier space only gets bigger as more colonies are established."

"Still, why is this war happening?"

"Oh, not much. Just a minor dispute. Supposedly, a bunch of primitives were exterminated in the NV_70110 system's third planet."

"Primitives again? Oh. Well, forget I asked anything, then. And cheers!"

"Agreed."

@Secret? You understand the dynamic, right?

Even though it would have been heard about centuries later?

Basically, it would be as relevant as the Anglo-Zanzibar War, right?

And that war lasted 46 minutes.

So, eat that, Seven Hour War from Half Life 2!

@AndyD273? Let me guess: the events here in the Solar System in the scale of galactic history are as relevant as the Anglo-Zanzibar War, right?

Just checking.

4:08 PM

hey guys, there's a critical error in my calculations in the PhD that I need to fix. I won't be free to respond anytime soon probably tonight

Nex Terren

@Secret Good luck!

@FutureHistorian Huh? That doesn't look like anything to me.