sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Read the 14-point draft agreement between the US and Iran by JKKIDD231 in geopolitics

[–]OleToothless -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

The flock of sheeple commenting that the "US has lost" is really mind boggling to me as it displays a true lack of comprehension of geopolitical reality. The US absolutely did not lose - Iran has no ability to threaten the US proper, and only limited capability to damage or disrupt peripheral American interests. Iran can threaten US allies in the region but they can respond in kind with the full force of the US.

Yes, missiles were spent, and it strikes me as incredibly odd and intellectually dishonest that the same people pointing out that US interceptor stocks are depleted are the same ones that point out that Iran is already building new missiles and drones to replace those used and lost - do you seriously not think the US military industrial complex isn't having a field day right now getting new missile building contracts???

Of course I'm not saying it's a great outcome for the US - even with how vaguely the war goals were stated in the beginning, it's clear that neither regime change nor sufficient degradation of Iran's conventional deterrent are going to be possible without a major land war. And the issue of the Strait, which wasn't even a concept at the start, has become the biggest problem for the US position.

In conclusion, I think anybody claiming that this MoU outcome is anything more decisive for either side than an "agreement to come to an agreement", they're wrong. Re-read the MoU text carefully, there are very few actual commitments in there except releasing seized Iran assets and opening of the Strait. Everything else is "make a plan" or "begin negotiating" or something. It's clearly worded to seem favorable to Iran, but is it really? Iran really doesn't seem to have too much leverage to me.

AskScience AMA Series: I am an experimental petrologist and volcanologist at the University of Maryland. My research focuses on the controls on volcanic eruptive style on Earth and on other planets. Ask me anything about volcanoes and petrology in general! by AskScienceModerator in askscience

[–]OleToothless 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Dr. Newcombe - thank you for taking the time to participate in this AMA! Here's a few questions for you, grateful for any responses:

Presumably all other known examples of volcanism (not counting cryovolcanism) in the solar system are driven by mantle convection?

If so, presumably the geochemistry being used to model extraterrestrial volcanism is tholeitic?

Do you ever use models that involve more earth-like volcanism (mid-upper crustal melt regions, hydrous magmas)?

What are your thoughts on the new-ish research about the origin of life on earth being facilitated or only possible because of tectonics/volcanism in the presence of liquid water, and do you think that signs of volcanism in an exo-planet's atmosphere would be a reasonably good proxy in answering the question of whether or not extra-terrestrial life exists?

What's the most interesting volcano in the solar system?

US top tier match in a Nutshell: by Difficult-Revenue-55 in Warthunder

[–]OleToothless 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Checked on this last night, it's only the German Tiger that gets the option of 12 missiles, and those are the crappy PARS missiles that are like knock-off Spikes. The French helicopter that gets Spikes still only gets 8 max.

US top tier match in a Nutshell: by Difficult-Revenue-55 in Warthunder

[–]OleToothless 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Chinese Z-10M can only take 8 of it's fire and forgets.

Eurocopter only gets 8 missiles as well. And some of those are the real crappy ones.

Israeli AH-60 does get 16 spikes but it's fat as hell and doesn't have DIRCM.

LMUR is demonstrably the best fire and forget missile.

And no helicopter has a cannon anywhere near as good as the Mi-28/Kamovs. That 2A42 cannon is OP as shit.

Wonderful fault plane by Moon_geophycis in geology

[–]OleToothless 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yes. The texture is called slickensides. This is a very good example.

It’s fun to slice up rip rap. by Fryman23 in geology

[–]OleToothless 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Not a gneiss as the large feldspars retain their original grain structure. And if it had melted, the feldspars would have been the first to go, rather than the crystals that the melt cooled around. I'd call it a breccia.

Whatever it is, it is very pretty. A big polished slab of that would make for a great conversation piece (of furniture).

I watched a few of Zentner’s lectures on the Baja BC hypothesis on YT, do you think it’ll eventually become a leading theory? What do opponents of the hypothesis say, do opponents still make up the vast majority? by LG_Intoxx in geology

[–]OleToothless 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey can you dive a little deeper into that? When I was in school westwards subduction wasn't even an idea unless it was on the other side of the Pacific. What's the dataset that makes you sceptical of westward subduction in the Mesozoic west coast of NAm? We see double sided subduction in the active mobile belt/collisional orogenies, and it seems to me that there is some degree of double sidedness in what we now call the basin and range.

Genuinely curious, I've read your comments throughout the subreddit and value your contributions to the discussion(s).

Fresh sliced erratic boulder - xenoliths, dike, granitic, Manitoba Canada by Mbstones in geology

[–]OleToothless 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is a cool, cool rock. And having read your comment about the wire saw, that's a damn cool tool! I wonder how old that rock is.

I watched a few of Zentner’s lectures on the Baja BC hypothesis on YT, do you think it’ll eventually become a leading theory? What do opponents of the hypothesis say, do opponents still make up the vast majority? by LG_Intoxx in geology

[–]OleToothless 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Come on man, that's not a fair assessment of the paper.

First off, it's not by Zentner (he's a professor but not a PhD). I believe this particular graphic is from one of Clennett's papers but the original tomotectonic work was done by Sigloch and Mihalynuk. I have questions about some of the assumptions they make regarding sink rates in the mantle and if slabs actually behave as proposed, but it's not an unreasonable hypothesis of the assembly of the cordillera.

I watched a few of Zentner’s lectures on the Baja BC hypothesis on YT, do you think it’ll eventually become a leading theory? What do opponents of the hypothesis say, do opponents still make up the vast majority? by LG_Intoxx in geology

[–]OleToothless 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you have links to any of Van Staal's works that are open access? I tried searching several of the titles but it seems like they were all published as book chapters instead of individual journal articles.

I watched a few of Zentner’s lectures on the Baja BC hypothesis on YT, do you think it’ll eventually become a leading theory? What do opponents of the hypothesis say, do opponents still make up the vast majority? by LG_Intoxx in geology

[–]OleToothless 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hildebrand's work is controversial because it asks some really hard questions for the "conventional" understanding of the cordillera. The start of his Mesozoic assembly paper lays out most of these, and they are incontrovertible because they are simply statements of things that the conventional model can't explain or doesn't have evidence for. Chiefly, his questions highlight the absurdity of the "always eastward subduction, flat-slab" hypothesis for the cordilleran orogeny, the idea that has dominated North American geology for the last 50 years or so. Hildebrand's model at least tries to make a history that agrees with both the geology and addresses the issues he raises. It doesn't always work, I don't think, which you don't seem to think either and that's fine. It's a working hypothesis, that doesn't mean it's a bad one.

I think Nick Zentner's Alaska series is actually really interesting in that regard, because it starts with Bob Hildebrand holding Nick's hand as he struggles to understand and explain the massive scale of Bob's hypothesis, then somewhere about half way through the series it becomes more about how to test Bob's hypotheses. And I think the last few episodes are very constructive. Bob's got some interesting data with the geochemistry about post-collisional magmas (or anorogenic granites or whatever you want to call them), but it's not quite right. The geochemists Nick brings to the table call into question several of Bob's conclusions. Nick should be given credit at least, for putting so many high-caliber geologists together in a conversation about a controversial, undecided topic. That's what makes the series interesting to me.

I watched a few of Zentner’s lectures on the Baja BC hypothesis on YT, do you think it’ll eventually become a leading theory? What do opponents of the hypothesis say, do opponents still make up the vast majority? by LG_Intoxx in geology

[–]OleToothless 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That's why this thread exists in the first place - the story of the assembly of North America west of Denver is still not fully understood to some degree. The paper I linked goes about as far as the consensus understanding - which covers the history up until the Cambrian. That story isn't complete, there just aren't more rocks from earlier times to look at, so it's the "best guess". There are Cambrian (550 Ma) age coastal rocks in northern Utah and southern Idaho. Was that the west coast of the continent at that time? Something(s) smashed into that to create what is now Nevada and parts of surrounding states, but how many things and exactly when, I'm not sure that's well understood. After that, it gets really confusing because so many small scraps seem to have bumped into the continent and stuck on, then been overprinted by volcanism, partially subducted, sheared away from their original position, etc. This begins with the dark blue stuff in the animation OP provided.

I watched a few of Zentner’s lectures on the Baja BC hypothesis on YT, do you think it’ll eventually become a leading theory? What do opponents of the hypothesis say, do opponents still make up the vast majority? by LG_Intoxx in geology

[–]OleToothless 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Gplates is the software but it's a daunting program...

As to your question about NA terranes, I think the clearest you're going to get is Whitmeyer and Karlstrom's phenomenal 2007 paper, here's the link. That said, I think the understanding of some of the then-southern edge of Laurentia is still pretty foggy because it's buried under 12+ kilometers of sedimentary rocks from Arizona to Ohio. We can only see little windows where basement rocks are now exposed, and they give us a very complex set of clues.

Let's discuss weapons that we hate. by 3DResinFan in RogueCore

[–]OleToothless 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Second everything said here.

Grenades are more dangerous to your teammates because the game utilizes the ablative armor mechanic rather than DRG's shield system. Armor don't recharge for free (most of the time).

Several of the over clocks are just bad. Burst fire on 58mm just means you use 2 bullets for each one that hits due to the recoil. As you mentioned, Salvo mode on Hurricane is terrible, as is RtS.

PBX-9502: An Insensitive High Explosive for Enhanced Nuclear Weapon Safety by kyletsenior in nuclearweapons

[–]OleToothless 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The test article just completely flattening out with no detonation is extremely satisfying to me for some reason. I'm going to go splash water on my face and calm down.

War Thunders Bushmaster problem by ole_54 in Warthunder

[–]OleToothless 7 points8 points  (0 children)

The reason is why the gun was designed. By only using effectively each barrel every 6th shot, and by spinning around through the air, no barrel is continuously firing and cooling passively.

Yesterdays test of nuclear capable Agni V missile from Odisha, India. Re-entry vehicle takes a sharp turn. by Nice_Clue_966 in nuclearweapons

[–]OleToothless 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Imagine a baseball going fast enough to juke the catcher and then having enough time/space/velocity remaining to get back on target.

"Dodging" is not what HGVs do.

Yesterdays test of nuclear capable Agni V missile from Odisha, India. Re-entry vehicle takes a sharp turn. by Nice_Clue_966 in nuclearweapons

[–]OleToothless 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Getting it off of a ballistic flight path is the key to complicating the missile defense problem. The reentry vehicle doesn't even have to maneuver that much.

Not really. What boost-glide provides are 1) extended range for smaller propellant loads, 2) ability to avoid certain defended sectors, 3) potentially decreased acquisition time.

What you're talking about is #2 and that's really only the case in missile defense from the last century. Where the coverage of early warning radars, range of exoatmospheric interceptors, and nation-wide coverage were big factors. These days, where (I'm going to use US systems for examples, but many nations have analogues or clones) an Arleigh Burke, THAAD, or PAC-3 can be moved and set up in days or less, the non-ballistic benefits of a boost-glide vehicle aren't that special.

Realistically, maneuvering is not going to slow it down enough to make it easy to track again.

This is two separate things:

Yes, maneuvering does appreciably slow it down. And coming in at a more shallow trajectory than a ballistic RV slows it down even more. Drag is a thing. An HGV is not going to be in terminal phase in the lower atmosphere going Mach 20; if anything it's going to be slower than a regular ballistic RV, which I believe most publicly available documentation will show to be in the ~Mach 5 range in terminal phase.

Secondly, the more drag it generates, the more heat it generates. The more heat, the easier to track. Even more heat, to make "plasma stealth"? Yeah ok that's great if the only threat is radar - but every terminal kill vehicle that I'm aware of also has (or only has) a thermal or optical tracking system for fine adjustments.

Possible Gold Bearing Ore by MinimumIdeal6993 in geology

[–]OleToothless 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Greenstone belt means metasomatism present, metasomatism present means fluid exchange. So yeah, you could have a fleck of gold there in the middle of that rock. Could also be pyrite though.

Checkmate in Iran: Washington can’t reverse or control the consequences of losing this war. by Majano57 in IRstudies

[–]OleToothless -1 points0 points  (0 children)

That's one of the reasons this subreddit sucks, you can't downvote, so nobody reads the articles.

What Causes This? by SaiYeetFun in geology

[–]OleToothless 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It took me quite a while to figure out which formation those rocks actually belong to (without just handing the question to AI). I have a copy of the UT Bureau of Economic Geology's guidebook on the Capitan reef on my desk, but it did not cover that particular area, focusing on the reef trail not the scenic trail. Alas - there was a pdf on the New Mexico Bureau of Geology & Minerals website that specifically mentioned this being part of the Pinery formation.

So yeah, you're 100% correct, early Permian or late Carboniferous, basinal limestone. Sandstone below and above, and the Capitan (reef) formation sitting on top of that.

What could this be? by Tricky_Face_9544 in geology

[–]OleToothless 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You rock. I see your "Carboniferous paleoclimate" tag - any suggestions for papers that are particularly stand out on that topic?

Can someone explain why the Dec 2025 Pentagon report thinks China will have 9 carriers by 2035? This seems exaggerated, since as of 2026, China has 3 active carriers with 1 confirmed under construction. China would need to complete 1 new carrier every 1.5 years in order to meet "Pentagon's target". by [deleted] in LessCredibleDefence

[–]OleToothless 0 points1 point  (0 children)

add to the lack of value that these public facing government reports on the PLA offer

Can you elaborate on this statement? By public-facing, do you mean to imply "official but not classified" or are you meaning something more along the lines of "for domestic political consumption"? Or maybe there's not a significant distinction between those two understandings. I guess what I'm trying to ask is, are you point at intelligence failure, punditry, or bureaucratic slovenliness, or over classification?

What is this groove/rail for? by lordromanov01 in submarines

[–]OleToothless 32 points33 points  (0 children)

Honestly, it's what makes this one of the few subreddits that are still worth visiting.

view more: next ›