MichaelK

Also, as has been said: this is not a good movie monster. Why? Because you want your real life "monster" — i.e. genetic engineering — to be an infinite risk, so you have made your monster into an infinite risk. Where is the conflict? Where is the resolution? You can save yourself all this work by instead just printing a banner saying "Genetic Engineering = End Of World, m'kay?!". It gets the message across, while also being honest that it is an opinion piece.

I concur with previous speakers: manifesting a risk out of nothing but your burning desire for people to see a phenomenon as dangerous, is shallow, disingenous, unimaginative and — above all else — ineffective. Readers are going to see right through that in a heartbeat. C.f. Trump claiming wind curbines give people cancer. That is essentially what you are doing here: making up a risk out of nothing, saying "that will happen".

The issue is that this religious context is not shared with even 1/3 of the world's population, and even less if we count all the humans that have ever existed and that has had a religion.

The issue I have with your answer is that it essentially says "If we just assume that 'a god' is a supernatural being, then it cannot be a natural person". Well, d'uh. So what if we do not make that assumption. Because we have no reason to make it, other than that this assumption aligns with – what I assume (yeah, I noticed that) – is the prevailing religious context you were brought up in.

@cmaster-reinstatemonica Yeah if you say so, then it must be so.

@cmaster-reinstatemonica Your impression is wrong.

@cmaster-reinstatemonica "If you define it the way I do" I do not. "the rest of my answer is just an implication with an unmet precondition". That reads like nonsense to me.

You can play it all you want, it is your post that falls apart by it, since you state — as a condition for the rest of your answer — "as long as you define "God" to mean "creator of the universe" and/or "all-powerful, can work wonders".

@cmaster-reinstate-monica "the term "god" was created precisely to mean supernatural beings that were thought to have some special power over something" . According to you and what authority? And, pardon for this really silly sounding argument, but... where you there, when the word was created? There are so many god-myths out there that there is even a taxonomy of deities. If you are going to claim that the defining quality of a deity is "wizard powers", you will rather soon run into problems; Hirohito and Q are just the tip.

@cmaster-reinstate-monica If, however, you mean "a god means something that has absolute authority over its adherents", then I am willing to agree with you. But that does not demand wizard-powers.

@cmaster-reinstate-monica You can insult a cop from here to high-heaven and they – unless they are one of those idiots that end up on YouTube for not knowing the law and the constitution – will not do a single thing about it since that is protected speech, because insults are not slander. This has been through the courts so many times it is not even a contentious issue. Oopsie! Turns out "everyone knows" is not an argument after all. So my question to you stands: according to you and what authority? Do better than "everyone knows", because they do not, as you just demonstrated with gusto.

@cmaster-reinstate-monica According to you and what authority? Being able to affect miracles makes you a cosmic wizard, not a god, as even the simplest gedankenexperiment affected by a mundane TV show demonstrates; or are you prepared to call this "a god"? Power over physics is evidence of capability, not divnity.

as long as you define "God" to mean "creator of the universe" and/or "all-powerful, can work wonders". I do not. And as soon as you start to move to – in particular – the polytheisms, this definition falls apart right quick.

@AlexP Post your own answer with that solution. Just a heads up tho: the Falcon 9 first stage needs to deal with a suborbital speed of 2 km/s, from about 80 km of suborbital altitude, and no payload. Coming down from orbital altitude — 320 km, or more — and orbital speeds — 4 km/s, or more — with a full complement of troops and their equipment, is something different entirely than what the Falcon 9 first stage does. At a minimum, we are talking about 20 times the amount of energy to dissipate.

No, I did not take anything as an attack. I instead feel that people here — mods and users — are more keen to look for things to criticise and strike down on, than things to encourage and lift up. People hold grudges, and spite-vote. So the answer stays gone, and had I been able to delete the question I would have, because this is not worth it.

I am still angry. This was no simple "lashing out" The mood on WB SE has gone down the toilet since I came here in 2016. And my enthusiasm to contribute has gone with it. I try every once in a while to come back and restore it, but it just gets worse and worse. This use to be a lovely, cozy, friendly and communal place. I do not feel that any more. And the mods... yes, they carry a large amount of responsibility for that.

In any case... you got what you wanted: answer removed. Go celebrate. Bye.

You nearly gave the answer to the "problem" yourself: the answer yourself: we selected a common reference: the Earth. So, we can select a common reference in the galaxy and make it part of the time-keeping standard. No-where in the question was is said that every civilisation must work out a common time reference without consensus or communication with the others.

Also, your objections... I say the same as I did to Alex: you arguing "Well I cannot see how it can be done", is not an argument for anything. All it does, is demonstrate a negative, down-putting attitude, fuelled by what I can kindly assume is lack of imagination or knowledge; less kindly as a deliberate refusal to see solutions for reasons best left unspeculated lest I get mod-slapped again.

@terdon You tell me "You done wrong", and when then I ask for an explanation so I can avoid doing it again , you just delete things and, now I have no idea what it is I have done wrong. Thanks...

@terdon In the same manner we do for GPS satellites. They operate in a frame of reference that is different enough from the ground-based frame of reference to lead to clock drift. If you know what the frame of reference is in relation to another, adjusting for the difference is trivial.

@terdon As for that — literal — edge case... I have no idea, and I do not really care, because the amount of habitable planets sitting on black hole event horizons I expect to be very small. And getting out of that gravity well to sync your local clock against an unaffected time source that uses the Pulsar scheme, ought to suffice.

@terdon Alex got the tone that he(!) set for the conversation. Give, and ye shall get what ye gave.

@AlexP No, not a difficult problem... for those that know the math, which you do not, apparently. Essentially it is a problem very close to that of calculating your time and position via GPS. Slightly more tricky since you get ticks here and not the time stamps, but, never the less doable.

No, @AlexP, it is not a difficult problem. And no, the point of pulsars is that they do not behave chaotically but very predictably. Just because you do not know the math for how to do this, or because you use ridiculous names like "Weaky Pedia", does not mean everyone else is as lost as you on the matter. If you have a better suggestion, then by all means present it as an answer. But this line of commenting of just trying to disparage another answer for no better reason than — in effect — "I don't get it", is abjectly pointless. I advise you to find something better to do with your time.

@HDE226868 That is why I set the tolerance really wide... a whole second, give or take, which in time-metrology terms is a huge amount. The catalogue and the time standard must have been disseminated at some point. And for as long as there is a need to have synchronised clocks, there must also be a way to disseminate updates to that time reference.

No @AlexP, I really do not see the problem. Because if you hear tick-tick-tick from enough sources, and you know their respective period, and you know what their relative phases to each other were at a given time... then you do know what time it is. It is a trivial problem to calculate it. Also... I am kind of curious what you believe the use of a derogatory name for WP is meant to showcase... other than your personal bias and lack of arguments.

Also, I am not looking for ideal — or perfect — here... I am looking for good enough. Remember the old maxim: Perfection is the natural enemy of Good Enough.

@HDE226868 Then the obvious follow-up question is this: how can this be mitigated? Because — of course — the users of this time reference do not need to sit still on their arses — or whatever counts for them — and shrug their shoulder-analogues and go "Okay... guess that's that... back to flying clocks around". If there is an inherent flaw with using pulsars, then there should be ways around it, to minimise the accuracy error. Such as: use more pulsars for reference; update the catalogue frequently enough; use local "tickers" to detect glitches and to compensate for drift.

But does Alice and Bob need to agree that pulsars have the same period in both their respective reference frames? Is it not enough that they know the period of the pulsar in its frame of reference? Then, also knowing their own relative velocities and positions compared to the pulsar, that should alleviate the issue, no? If the time standard has then also picked an origo, the galactic frame of reference point in space and time, then everyone else should be able to calculate what that is, even in their own frame of reference.

There, that is my thought process. You asked for information, so... there it is. Do with it as you wish.

I also feel that any answer of the sort "We act by the rules; the rules are good; therefore inconceivable we have a problem; the users are at fault for being dumb/not understanding/not liking the rules" is not resolving this issue, but instead proof of the problem.

That said, this sort of behaviour, where moderators are apparently — i.e. this is how it looks, in my biased view — looking for reasons to shut a post down instead of looking for a reason to keep it open, is grating on me. And apparently OP of the UFO crash question felt the same way. I believe this should serve as a red flag and make the mods of WB SE — at least — ask themselves "Okay... do we have a problem here or not?"

Now, I grant that this is very much a biased view on my part, because I am not seeing the full picture and I am not seeing the instances where moderators went "Ah, okay, that makes sense" and reverse their decision... like you did with the recent question about interchangable barrels.

And when users are objecting to this, the moderators double down... i.e. get defensive and refuse to see it any other way, and become rude, dismissive, even snide. And that happened here.

@Tortliena Okay, I have simmered down and went back to read your question. The thought process is this: moderators are — in my optics — increasingly injecting themselves into posts, and taking moderator action, needlessly. I am more and more seeing that — if a post can be interpreted as both breaking and not breaking a rule, depending on your subjective interpretation — moderators are deliberately choosing the negative interpretation. And that happened here.

@Tortliena As I said before: I am out, and not engaging in this discussion any more. Passez un bon Noël et une bonne année. Au revoir pour le moment.

@Tortliena To restate: I am out. This turned into a toxic struggle for prestige, and that is utterly ruining my holiday cheer. Hence: I am out, not considering any more said here. It is simply not worth it.

@Tortliena The only ones I see going on and on with counter-arguments are you and @JBH, barging in long after people have already come to a conclusion that satisfied them, and going "Nope, that's no good, because I know nothing". Again: I am out, cheers, and have a Happy Holiday, however you decide to spend it.

@Tortliena "We know nothing about when it happens, nor do we know whether the U.S. caught it on sky or space radars." OP knows, meaning that they can decide for themselves whether the answers given fits what they are looking for. And by OPs comments so far, they seem satisfied.

@Tortliena If you want to know more about what US authorities watch for things dropping out of the sky, I can highly recommend this answer.

@Tortliena The FBI or CIA is not called in every time a piece of space junk falls on the US, not even when it is things like Soviet nuclear reactors, as in the cases of Kosmos 954 and Kosmos 1402. Yes, I know they did not fall on the US specifically, this is merely to highlight that non-naturally-occurring stuff falling out of space is a rather mundane event (from a security perspective) and not something that makes everyone call the feds while hollering "the reds are coming!!"

Hello, and welcome to Worldbuilding. Question: why the FBI? What crime has been committed that warrants the attention of the FBI? The FBI is concerned when people threaten the domestic security of the United States through criminal/terrorist activities. How is object dropping out of the sky indicative of any such threat?

@JBH Happy Holidays to you too, however you decide to spend them. And — in case it it was missed — I am out of the discussion, simply CBA about any toxic prestige fight.

@NathanielRobinson You are not alone in that feeling. Anyway, glad to have helped, and I do hope you choose to stick around on WB SE since there are quite a lot of helpful people here, people that far outnumber the others.

Now it has becoming an issue of prestige. And since I do not want to be that kind of person: I am out. I have said my piece, OP is happy, that is good enough for me. If you want to spen Yule/Christmas arguing for why it is very important to deem this an unworthy question... go ahead... have "fun" with that. Cheers, and Happy Holidays.

They are happy because they can use it to improve their world, is that not right @NathanielRobinson?

OP seems happy with both accepted answer and my answer, and their problem was solved.

...with some facts about what agencies could become involved, but without saying exactly how that would happen.

And the answers were very consistent: local law enforcement and rescue services first, then the NTSB, then it reaches the President... and then you are on your own authoring what happens next.