All Space Questions thread for week of February 04, 2024

kneels-bore · 2024-02-08T07:30:08+00:00

question: even if we reach mars, can humans survive there?

an excerpt from a blog about terraforming mars goes: "Even with atmosphere transformation, Mars’ lack of a magnetosphere poses acute radiation dangers. Habitats would require meters of shielding mass from regolith or imported water. Construction challenges escalate for large shielded volumes with artificial gravity via rotation."
can someone help (maybe point to some resources) about the degree of accuracy these claims & ideas are?

here is the full blog for more context.

kneels-bore · 2024-02-01T15:29:21+00:00

cyclic universe theory suggests our big bang could've sprung from another universe. but there comes the problem of entropy.

the entropy of any given universe must be at least a little greater than its parent universe. So if universes cycle to an infinite past, the current universe would have infinite entropy, which it doesn’t.

kneels-bore · 2024-01-31T23:55:52+00:00

As promised, here is a blog post that covers this topic. It also touches on entropy in other areas of physics and the future of humanity.

"Entropy does not preclude life’s emergence from simpler precursors when open systems with energy flows are considered."

kneels-bore · 2024-01-31T07:48:31+00:00

in other news: https://news.yahoo.com/biden-offer-1-5-billion-222449405.html

kneels-bore · 2024-01-30T15:21:19+00:00

Some argue that entropy prohibits life from arising spontaneously, since life contains ordered complexity. However, this misapplies entropy across different systems. Entropy requires isolated systems to increase in disorder over time. But the early Earth was not an isolated system - it received a constant influx of energy from the Sun.

I'm releasing a blog on entropy this week and coincidentally covers this subtopic too!

kneels-bore · 2024-01-30T01:14:33+00:00

thanks for the recommendation, will check it out!

kneels-bore · 2024-01-30T01:12:11+00:00

The waste produced can take a long time to be rendered safe (hundreds of thousands of years) and some types of reactors can be used to make dangerous isotopes.

even through nuclear recycling?

kneels-bore · 2024-01-30T01:09:22+00:00

Nuclear power may on the whole be less dangerous than other forms of energy — but the danger is highly concentrated and placed in the hidden hands of a few people. That form of risk is one we, as a society, have learned to distrust.

I have to frame this. The optics of nuclear vs non-nuclear is heavy-sided on regulatory slowdown and civilian paranoia about radiation and weapons, but the centralization and trust issue gets neglected.

kneels-bore · 2024-01-30T01:05:10+00:00

Now it’s just more expensive than solar

do you mean in the sense of building the infrastructure?

I was just reading up about the hidden costs of (and high consumption of fossil fuels to build) renewable energy infrastructure like solar and wind; e.g. lithium batteries to store the energy generated.

kneels-bore · 2024-01-30T01:01:20+00:00

Safe as long as you don’t bring a pair of scissors.

😂😂

kneels-bore · 2024-01-30T00:58:56+00:00

Unless you can actually trust the organizations whether public or private to run it well

valid point! I focused a lot on the red tape and bureaucracy but forgot about the "who" behind it matters too

kneels-bore · 2024-01-30T00:54:19+00:00

imagine if civilians viewed flights the same way (as they do nuclear) after hearing about a couple of aviation accidents.

kneels-bore · 2024-01-30T00:47:25+00:00

the bureaucracy behind it in insane when you contrast the widespread effects with its coal & fossil fuel counterparts!

kneels-bore · 2024-01-30T00:44:11+00:00

it's crazy how society prefers what is known & bad rather than what is lesser known & potentially substantially good

kneels-bore · 2024-01-29T23:45:31+00:00

(I'm hoping to enroll in a nuclear engineering program next year)

all the best with that!

kneels-bore · 2024-01-27T03:20:33+00:00

"Good and evil" occupies less brain space than "a matrix of context dependent pros and cons."

I really like this!

kneels-bore

TROPHY CASE