Science!

[Friday]

language study is important so the best waifu can be scientifically discerned

[Büge]

heeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee

[Mongrel]

WHOA COOL

[Mongrel]

[mharr]

So the magnetic wristband woo merchants have progressed to shark repellant gear, apparently. http://theworstthingsforsale.com/2020/0 ... -wristband

And here's the science on that:

[Thad]

[JD]

This reminds me of the "negative ion" wristbands and such, apparently containing "tourmaline". Turns out it's radioactive thorium.

[mharr]

That's... a lot of extra effort and expense to go to when you could just fill the devices with bicarb and cover the packaging with the same nonsense claims. The fuck?

[Upthorn]

That's... a lot of extra effort and expense to go to when you could just fill the devices with bicarb and cover the packaging with the same nonsense claims. The fuck?

Basically, there are a few companies in China selling waste thorium and calling it tourmaline. People who believe in new age crystal negative ion woo-woo bullshit then buy the "tourmaline" and put it in products to give people health benefits, not knowing that it's fucking radioactive.

[mharr]

Late stage capitalism meets the question of nuclear waste disposal?

[Mongrel]

"MIT Researchers Say Their Fusion Reactor Is “Very Likely to Work”" is just a screamingly funny headline to me.

In any case always be very skeptical of fusion reactor promises, because well, like the article says, a hundred years of failure means that "A bunch of MIT researchers have a paper reactor" translates to sweet fuck all.

But you know, it's not impossible that it might work. We know the sun can do it, so maybe someday!

[Mongrel]

Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass

[Mongrel]

[Mongrel]

[Yoji]

I was just thinking the other day about how any given spot in the sky should fall on a star or other celestial body at some point, and how massive the universe must be for the entire night sky to not be as bright as the sun.

[Lottel]

It's something more like since everything in space is moving away from us and light moving away becomes infrared so we can't see the stuff farther away and that's why satellite telescopes use infrared cameras and the sky looks dark to us.

Something like that.

[Lottel]

Infrared-sighted animals must have a weird time looking up.

[Friday]

how massive the universe must be

The thing about the "universe" is that when people say that word (even scientists) what they mean is observable.

Now, in terms of light this is relevant of course, because that's the definition of observable.

But yeah, we don't know how big the universe actually is. Because we can only see so far.

100 billion stars in the Milky Way. As far as we can tell, that's roughly average.

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars (using the average) in observable universe. That's a Sextillion.

Assume only 1 out of 1000 stars has an earthlike "goldilocks" planet. So a Quintillion.

Of those, only 1 out of 1000 has any life at all. Down to a Quadrillion.

Of those planets with life, only 1 out of 1000 managed to do that insane thing where two cells got together and didn't eat eat other and instead worked together to create multi-cellular life. Down to a Trillion.

Of those planets, only 1 out of 1000 managed to evolve past basic multi-cellular life and make, you know, fish, and lizards. Billion.

And finally, of those, only 1 out of 1000 evolved advanced intelligence and tool-use as an adaptation. Million.

So that's a million sapient alien species in the observable universe alone.

And we don't know how much bigger the actual universe is, though, from wiki:

Estimates suggest that the whole universe, if finite, must be more than 250 times larger than the observable universe.[59] Some disputed[60] estimates for the total size of the universe, if finite, reach as high as 10^10^10^122 megaparsecs, as implied by a suggested resolution of the No-Boundary Proposal.[61][b]

Anyway, so, when someone asks me "do you think aliens exist?" I say "Yes."

b. Although listed in megaparsecs by the cited source, this number is so vast that its digits would remain virtually unchanged for all intents and purposes regardless of which conventional units it is listed in, whether it to be nanometres or gigaparsecs, as the differences would disappear into the error.

[Friday]

Oh, we can apply some more filters if you want, also. Working from "a million sapient species" we can say

Except for 1 out of 1000, they do not exist in the same time era. (Meaning, they already went extinct a long time ago, or they have yet to come into being and won't until humans are extinct.)

That gives us a much more manageable 1000 alien races that exist during this current era of time. If you go a bit further and say "only 1 out of 100 develop space travel that can go outside their solar system" you start to understand why we will never ever meet any of these people.

Two trillion observable galaxies, with only 1000 aliens to meet using the previous filters. That also means that almost all galaxies are empty of sapient life, though a lot of them have boring life using this filter model.

[Büge]

That reminds me of a thing that I saw.