Chaos Manor View, Monday, October 26, 2015

Today was mostly devoured by locusts, although it ended with a nice dinner with friends.

I have killed my Surface Pro 3. Perhaps Eric can revive it; we’ll see.

Today my Surface Pro 4 keyboard came. It looks good. Very good. The keys are separated, making it a lot less likely for a clumsy typist to hit two keys at once. Since my stroke I have been entirely unable to touch type, and my two finger efforts often result in multiple keystrikes; I often spend as much time correcting a sentence as I did writing it.

I had read in reviews that the Surface Pro 4 keyboard would work in the Surface Pro 3, and on inspection the connectors looked identical. I thought what the hell, took the Surface Pro 3 out of the docking station, swapped keyboards noting that the Pro 4 keyboard had the defect of not having a loop into which you could insert the stylus for safekeeping and carrying, but did have a new area obviously intended for fingerprint input. The swap was easy, and nothing happened to the Pro 3. I put it back in the docking station

It did not fit as easily; the docking station could close without quite making contact, and the little light that indicates closure is tiny and it’s easy to overlook that it’s not on. The battery icon showed that Precious was not being charged. I fussed with the seating in the docking station and it closed properly this time, the little light on the dock showed, and the battery icon on the screen chowed that it was charging.

The Surface Pro 3 was working properly but I had been using the touch screen; now I tried the Pro 4 keyboard, and nope: it was as if it were not attached. The mush pad had no effect on the cursor, and no key I hit did anything. I fooled about a bit aimlessly, but it was getting lunchtime and in an hour Larry would arrive to take us to an interview and dinner, so I was perhaps in more of a hurry than I ought to be.

I looked in the box. A manual, sort of, in many languages, but I couldn’t see any useful information, and I was unlikely to do any of the silly things it warned me not to do; and told me nothing about using that keyboard.

Do I decided to reset the system. Did; it said it needed an update; odd, perhaps it detected the strange keyboard? I pressed update and install. It trundled.

It took a while downloading and installing, but nothing disturbing. Came time for the final restart –

And now Precious is in an endless cycle of partial reboots, detecting an error, doing what it thinks is repair, restarting, finding the same errors, attempting to repair, etc. etc.

I’ll get Eric over to see if he can do anything. Of course I have the OLD keyboard in there now, but restoring the old Pro 3 keyboard has not changed the problem. More when I know more. It’s bed time.

It’s pledge week at KUSC which means I get to annoy you about renewals if you haven’t renewed in a while, and subscribing if you haven’t ever subscribed. This place operates on the Public Radio model: it’s free, and don’t want your rent money, but if I don’t get enough subscriptions, this place will go away. We have got quite a few renewals and some new subscriptions already. Keep them coming. Patron subscriptions are $36 Dollars; not per month as KUSC wants. Just per year, or as often as you think you should renew. Platinum subscriptions are $100, generally per once a year. Regular subscriptions are $20 when you feel like it, certainly at least once a year. See Paying for This Place for more information. If you have never subscribed, now’s the time. If you don’t remember when you last renewed this is a good time. If you have a vague feeling that you haven’t subscribed in a while – well, you get the idea.

I don’t like grubbing for money, but this seems to work. I don’t do it often, only when my local good music station has a pledge drive. I don’t annoy you with adds, and I easily could. And we’re all tired of this paragraph. Subscribe now and get it done with

Astronomers spot incredibly rare, insanely explosive pair of stars

Jerry
This goes beyond a “contact binary” to an “overcontact binary,” with the two O-class stars sharing 30% of their mass:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/216779-astronauts-spot-incredibly-rare-insanely-explosive-pair-of-stars
If/when they blow, they will sterilize “every single planet within a non-trivial distance.” The article also cites a gamma ray burst that was so bright that it likely did the same, over galactic distances.
This makes me wonder if the paucity of interstellar contacts with other civilizations has to do with literally cosmic events. Brr.
The article also links to this visual display of spectral class stellar relative sizes.
Do have your astronomer friend comment on this. Looks fairly interesting. It will fascinating to see how it all turns out – and when.
Ed

I have asked Stephanie to comment. She did so, quickly, and hasn’t had a lot of time to think on this.

I was just about to log off and go to bed when I saw this (it is about 2:30am here). I will see about responding more later.

But such overcontact binaries are not THAT unusual. My graduate work was in binary variable stars, and so I can state for a fact that’s the case. We used to nickname ’em “peanut stars,” ’cause that’s about the shape. I’ve never heard the “strapless bra” reference before. Seems a bit crass.

On the other hand, two O stars in an overcontact binary IS rarer, true. I would have to question, however, what precisely the full designation is of the two stars — usually the full spectral classification consists of (at least) a letter and a Roman numeral. (Sometimes an Arabic number is also added immediately after the letter, to subdivide the spectral class.) The letter — O, B, A, F, G, K, M, R, N, S — tend to denote photospheric temperatures/colors, and the Roman numeral denotes the size/luminosity. 

Example: Our Sun is a G2V. This means it is spectral type G, subcategory 2, and the V means it is a dwarf main sequence star. AKA yellow dwarf star.

Nowhere can I find a designation of the actual size of the stars in the system. I assume, given the reference to a hypergiant if they merged, and a combined mass of about 57 solar masses, that they are at least a II or III, and possibly a I — but not a 0. (III = giant; II = bright giant; I = supergiant; 0 = hypergiant.) I fully expect them NOT to have the exact same spectral designation; that very rarely happens, to be so perfectly twinned.

Still and all, it is unlikely to be nearly so catastrophic as is being claimed.

For one thing, the probability that they will both supernova at the same time is essentially nil. And once one of ’em does go blooie, that pretty much takes care of the problem, because it will blow the other star’s outer layers to hell and back again, leaving mostly the stellar core, which will be much hotter than the outer layers but much less massive than the original star. (This sort of thing has been observed, not happening, but the aftermath — with the hot, compact stellar core orbiting the stellar remnant.) It will also ensure that the other star cannot supernova, because a supernova is kind of the irresistible force (outer layers falling inward relativistically under gravitation) meeting the immovable object (the core, which is USUALLY a neutron star, made up of nucleon-degenerate matter), and the explosion itself is the resultant “splat.” It’s also how all the really heavy elements get made, as there is kinetic energy and to spare and to waste, in forcing together nuclei that normally don’t want to hold together. Anyway, so without the outer layers, the second star can’t really supernova. It’ll just gradually exhaust its fuel and probably pull a white dwarf. If there’s enough mass left, it can maybe still form a neutron star, but without the big blooie. 

If the first star does indeed form a black hole (and it sounds like it is big enough, regardless of which one of the pair), then we are probably looking at it cannibalizing the companion star pretty rapidly, given proximity. And again, that would pretty much prevent the companion’s going blooie. Arguably this could be considered a merger, but it isn’t the type being talked about, where they are both already black holes spiraling into each other. 

I just really can’t see either the double-supernova scenario OR the two-black-holes death-spiral scenario occurring. Were they farther apart, then perhaps. It is the very fact that they are an overcontact binary that I think will actually prevent those scenarios.

However, it should be noted that even a standard supernova can clear a wide swath of life — depending who you talk to, on order of 100LY radius. And yes, GRBs are much more powerful — but tend to be directed, as I understand it. Still and all, such things are factored in as one possible solution of the Fermi Paradox.

Stephanie Osborn

“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”
http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com

My own thought is that it’s not likely to do much to us at that distance… We’ll have more when Jim gets back from a business trip.

A reader says:

Sometimes your web site takes more time than I have time to  think!  That’s a good thing, btw. 

The Dyson sphere discussion is one of those times

And yet there’s a touch more.

Dyson Swarm

Jerry,

Most of the popular articles on the oddly variable star KIC 8462852 are misusing the term “Dyson Sphere”, of course – a true Dyson sphere would totally enclose the star and collect all its energy, and would be visible externally only as a warm-ish infrared source. What we’re talking about here is the possibility that 8462852 is a “Dyson Swarm” – a star with enough orbiting energy-collection structures to block a significant fraction of its total output.

Not as remarkable a possibility as an actual Dyson Sphere, of course, but remarkable enough for me. The combination of variability too complex and large to be caused by a small number of planets and the apparent absence of the dust you’d expect to accompany a large number of natural-origin bodies is intriguing. I’m looking forward to the results of proposed radio-telescope surveys. I’m also hoping some bright person can take the existing Kepler data and come up with an orbiting-objects model (or models) that fits the observed variations.

Interesting times, indeed. In the good sense, in this case.

Henry

Dyson Sphere discussion

Jerry, just a few closing remarks.

1) Lack of artificial signal from the star: As I said in the original correspondence, it does not matter what type of communications medium an alien race might use; human astronomers are well equipped to detect it. As I mentioned, Claudio Maccone, the chairman of the SETI Permanent Committee of the International Academy of Astronautics, is a friend of mine and we have actively discussed what alien comm might look like, as well as ways to communicate over interplanetary and interstellar distances. If there were an alien race around that star, it would be the brightest object in WHATEVER MEANS they chose to communicate — and it isn’t. In any means, visible, IR, microwave, radio, UV, X-ray, gamma-ray, neutrino, WHATEVER. It simply isn’t. And they have to be able to broadcast/transmit — you cannot string fiber optics all around a stellar system for ALL of your comm. Also, contrary to popular belief, lasers are not THAT highly collimated, and spread out a considerable distance just from here to the Moon; how much the more interplanetary distances? Which again means that we would see the comm. More, since lasing frequencies are readily calculated and many used here, we know exactly where to look. And again, we don’t see it.

2) Since the IR is coming FROM the purported orbital structure, the notion that the structure is BLOCKING said IR is moot. And it is therefore also not possible to redirect the IR. The structure becomes a blackbody radiator, absorbing all of the star’s energies, rising to a given temperature, and radiating at a frequency corresponding to that temperature, which would (per calculations) be in the IR. Also you don’t want to stop the radiation, as this provides the equilibrium system to prevent runaway temperature rise.

3) The whole point of a Dyson sphere was originally to create a homeworld-type environment which could be inhabited around the entire star, while collecting all of the energy release of that star. Therefore you would indeed want to place the sphere at approximately the orbital radius of the homeworld; it is no fallacy, but was inherent to the original concept. If, of course, you only want to capture the star’s energy, you can place it at any distance you like, though certain distances will be more efficient than others, and placing the structure at the homeworld’s distance, or proximal, is certainly easiest. It is worth noting that the objects occulting the star are in fact roughly in the Earth to Mars orbital range, judging by their period(s) of occultation.

4) No structure is ever going to simply “hover.” That just isn’t the way the universe works. You can begin by placing it in hover mode, but it will not remain there, for the simple reason that you will have many other forces working on it. Remember that we still have not solved the multi-body problem: this is because of the extreme complexity of the forces involved, and it would have to be solved — or approximated to an immense accuracy — in order to “hover” structures in orbit around a star. More, you would have other things acting upon it. It isn’t, for example, a matter of IF a micrometeoroid hits a solar sail — it’s WHEN. And over time, the tiny, incremental momentum imparted will mount up. And the more system material you’ve incorporated into your structure, the less you have left over for adjusting. Solar sails can “tack,” but as soon as you start all that, now you have motion that subtracts from the “hover;” you’ve just destabilized the system, and it will start to fall from orbit.

5) It is also worth noting that whatever is being seen is NOT “hovering,” but actively in orbit about the star.

6) I will repeat my original statements regarding a ring structure and segmental variants: a ringworld is the ONLY such construct which has a hope of working. And it has its own problems: the orbit must be circularized, and perfectly circular orbits are NOT natural, and tend to be easily perturbed into elliptical orbits, which then deforms a solid ring to the point of breaking, and which will tend to result in collisions between components if the ring is unconnected. (Accelerating as they near periastron, decelerating as they approach apastron, etc.) Yes, you will have transverse forces on a ring structure as well, but assuming a relatively narrow ring, they will be much much less than the forces on the polar regions of a Dyson sphere.

7) Magnetic suspension of an orbital ring: The thing to realize here is that stars do not have simple, relatively unvarying dipolar magnetic fields like Earth. Stars are not solid bodies — they differentially rotate. This means that the core does not rotate at the same speed as the photosphere, and the equator does not rotate at the same speed as the circumpolar regions. And all of that differentially-rotating material is plasma, aka charged particles — aka electric currents. This scenario results in a very complicated dynamo, or series of dynamos, which in turn results in a very complex, and often varying, magnetic field. And this is quite aside from stellar winds (plasma flowing away from the star), coronal holes (locations where the magnetic fields don’t recurve back to the star but, like at the poles, extend out to infinity), coronal mass ejections (titanic “mushroom clouds” of plasma thrown off by giant magnetic reconnection events), etc. — which latter would be potentially devastating to a Dyson or ring structure anyway, and which I haven’t brought up until now. So while theoretically possible, from a practical engineering standpoint, probably not possible.

8) And again, let me just point out that the concept of a true Dyson sphere was tossed out by humans years ago as being impossible to build (due simply to the orbital mechanics) without some serious exotic matter…which would, again, almost certainly require interstellar travel in order to obtain. And frankly if you have the ability and technology to manipulate such exotic matter, you have the ability and technology to do interstellar travel anyway.

9) Colonization as an overpopulation solution: only in the near term, agreed. Very quickly the colonies would establish population increase rates of their own, which would negate the homeworld solution, unless whatever organizing body imposed some very harsh reproduction rates/rules on the colony…which rules likely wouldn’t last long, at least on an “existence of the race” timescale. For that matter, the governing/overseeing body probably wouldn’t last much longer than said rules. 

Jerry, I will try to get on to the other thing you sent me last night, very shortly. I think the analysis I sent you last night is correct, but there are a few things I want to check first — my technical analysis ability may not have been enhanced by being exercised an hour past my usual bedtime of 2am…
Stephanie Osborn

“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”
http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com

Freeman Dyson on climate change, interstellar travel, fusion, and more • The Register

Greetings, sir. I thought you might be interested in this interview with Freeman Dyson. I’m including an excerpt with a link to the rest of the interview.

Take care,

Tim Elliott

Are climate models getting better? You wrote how they have the most awful fudges, and they only really impress people who don’t know about them.

I would say the opposite. What has happened in the past 10 years is that the discrepancies between what’s observed and what’s predicted have become much stronger. It’s clear now the models are wrong, but it wasn’t so clear 10 years ago. I can’t say if they’ll always be wrong, but the observations are improving and so the models are becoming more verifiable.

It’s now difficult for scientists to have frank and honest input into public debates. Prof Brian Cox, who is the public face of physics in the UK thanks to the BBC, has said he has no obligation to listen to “deniers,” or to any other views other than the orthodoxy.

That’s a problem, but still I find that I have things to say and people do listen to me, and people have no particular complaints.

It’s very sad that in this country, political opinion parted [people’s views on climate change]. I’m 100 per cent Democrat myself, and I like Obama. But he took the wrong side on this issue, and the Republicans took the right side.

Because the big growing countries need fossil fuels, the political goal of mitigation, by reducing or redirecting industrial activity and consumer behaviour, now seems quite futile in the West.

China and India rely on coal to keep growing, so they’ll clearly be burning coal in huge amounts. They need that to get rich. Whatever the rest of the world agrees to, China and India will continue to burn coal, so the discussion is quite pointless.

At the same time, coal is very unpleasant stuff, and there are problems with coal quite apart from climate. I remember in England when we burned coal, everything was filthy. It was really bad, and that’s the way it is now in China, but you can clean that up as we did in England. It takes a certain amount of political willpower, and that takes time. Pollution is quite separate to the climate problem: one can be solved, and the other cannot, and the public doesn’t understand that.

Have you heard of the phrase “virtue signalling“? The UK bureaucracy made climate change its foreign policy priority, and we heard a lot of the phrase “leading the world in the fight …” and by doing so, it seemed to be making a public declaration of its goodness and virtue …

No [laughs]. Well, India and China aren’t buying that. When you go beyond 50 years, everything will change. As far as the next 50 years are concerned, there are two main forces of energy, which are coal and shale gas. Emissions have been going down in the US while they’ve going up in Europe, and that’s because of shale gas. It’s only half the carbon dioxide emissions of coal. China may in fact be able to develop shale gas on a big scale and that means they burn a lot less coal.

It seems complete madness to prohibit shale gas. You wondered if climate change is an Anglophone preoccupation. Well, France is even more dogmatic than Britain about shale gas!

…Now for my space-mad children’s question. They want to get to the stars. So how are we going to get there – what’s the best prospect for interstellar travel?

The main point is to leave the energy source behind; don’t carry it on the ship. What makes a huge difference if you really want to go fast is have a big laser in space, and ride the beam. The beam will supply the energy and you don’t have to carry it with you. It’s essentially a public highway system with the laser beam as the highway, and little ships with sails. That works and doesn’t involve any new physics – it’s just a question of engineering. And you could get up to half the speed of light, and that’s much better than you can with any energy source you have with you.

That was proposed by Bob Forward, he worked out the details, and it certainly does work. He called it Starwisp. You’re using the speed of light in your favour: you’re borrowing the momentum from the light.

Finally, what are your views on fusion? Do you see any real progress being made?

I think they made a terrible mistake 50 years ago when they stopped doing science and went to big engineering projects. These big engineering projects are not going to solve the problem, and they’ve become just a welfare programme for the engineers. You have these big projects, both national and international, that are really a dead end as far as I can see. Even if they’re successful, they won’t provide energy that’s useful and cheap.

But it’s not clear when you do science, whether you’ll discover anything or not. But that’s the only answer.

So with fusion, we should go back to the drawing board?

Yes, and it’s not going to solve any problems for the near future.

But I don’t think there is a problem in the near future anyway [laughs].

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/11/freeman_dyson_interview/

Top Physicist Freeman Dyson: Obama ‘Took the Wrong Side’ on Climate Change

A good article about Dyson’s “heresy” on the topic of CAGW, catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. The Gaeaists will never forgive him.

Top Physicist Freeman Dyson: Obama ‘Took the Wrong Side’ on Climate Change

http://cnsnews.com/blog/mairead-mcardle/top-physicist-freeman-dyson-obama-took-wrong-side-climate-change

Regards,

Jim R

I have always considered Mr. Dyson as one of the sanest men on this planet

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Saturday, October 24, 2015

I’ve been busy with fiction and other stuff for days. I have also been faithfully doing the Five Tibetan Rites daily, which is good for me but tiring. If you don’t know about The Five Tibetan Rites, you should learn; they may not be your idea of a fitness program, but they do seem to work better than anything else I know of.

You can get a good idea of the mechanics of the Rites from Hugh Howie and Amber http://www.hughhowey.com/the-five-tibetans/ but for a bit more of the background and the importance of form, see Ellen Rush https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjtslbrFbLY , and there are more expositions all over the web. Form vs. getting through enough repetitions is a long time question. Howie is an advocate of just getting through it. Various martial arts masters like Steve Barnes are more concerned with form. Steve says one of the goals is training the mind as well as the body, which is similar to what the physical therapists insisted on when I was first recovering from the stroke. My conclusion has been that you need both unless you have a coach, which is to say like most of us.

That is: before my stroke I was working up to sufficient repetitions of each Rite, but I never got there because I couldn’t do enough in proper form. I had the strength, probably – no, almost certainly – so I was letting myself go with what I thought was a good excuse. After the stroke I missed the Rites – couldn’t even get down on the floor, or get up if I did, and the thought of doing Rite One was absurd. But after watching Hugh Howie, I decided that I had always had better form than him and he was getting through all of them just as he could. Amber has better form than I will ever have. They both do this daily and speak highly of it, and they aren’t the only ones I respect who do – after all, it was Steve Barnes who introduced me to this rather obscure ritual, years ago, and it has served me well for years.

The result is that I do 21 repetitions of each Rite daily. The first few are in reasonable form, and I am working hard to get all of them right; but when I can’t do it in good form, I don’t quit. I just do what I can in good form, and get through 21 no matter how hard it is – or how long it takes, which, I fear, is one reason I haven’t written much here this week. (The other is that my typing is getting sloppy again; Microsoft has said they are shipping the Pro 4 keyboard, which looks good for correcting some of that, but really, it’s as Dr. Lupo, the Rehab doctor at Holy Cross where I learned to be something other than a vegetable after the stroke says, “practice makes perfect.” He was talking about just swallowing my breakfast, but I since found that one of the most useful bits of advice I have ever had.)

I will add that before the stroke, the Five Tibetans were pretty well good enough for all my formal exercise, but I did a lot of walking – a couple of miles a day – and my office was upstairs so I climbed those stairs many times a day.  Now I don’t, and I find that even with the Five Tibetans daily I need more exercise – walks with my walker, formal exercise, etc. – to keep from turning into a vegetable. Now that we don’t have a dog, it’s easy to forget to take a morning walk, and the consequences can be grave.  Pity, but there it is.  I’m working on a new schedule. 

One thing that would help is the right device for Audible and other audible books; I need to listen to some of my own since we are writing in that universe. Suggestions on the right equipment for an hour a day walk in a walker while listening to a book – equipment suitable for someone with Costco hearing aids – appreciated.  Thanks in advance; I’ll read it all, but I may not be able to answer every email. Please use subject “audible book reading.” I suppose I should add that Audible has done a good job of publishing Legacy of Heorot and Beowulf’s Children as audio books. They’re free on a special promotion just now, and very well done.

I have two comments on the paucity of posts this week. First, unfortunately this begins Pledge Week for KUSC, the LA good music station. It began Thursday, and runs until next Saturday. Long time readers will know that signals my own pledge drive. I run this place on the same model as KUSC: it’s free, but like Public Radio, if it doesn’t get support from users it will go away. That’s not immanent, as it happens, but it’s possible. In addition to the comments and essays, I read a lot of mail from readers, publish what I think is pertinent – usually with what I hope are intelligent comments – and encourage rational discussions, some of which I edit into publishable exchanges.

I also go through more press releases than I normally would, and tease out some that I think are worth your attention. That includes product announcements. I sometimes send email to the Platinum list; never more than one a day, always about something interesting; I can’t and wouldn’t send email to all patrons or readers, because it would be far too many.

Mostly I encourage rational discussion, including disagreements.

All of this takes up time.

The KUSC practice is to have their music program announcers vamp through pitches on why you should subscribe at $15 to $150 a month, and to give away prizes like free records — well Cd’s – well, DVD’s – prizes anyway, for subscribing NOW. I don’t ask for anything like that much. You and find out more at Paying For This Place http://www.jerrypournelle.com/paying.html which tells all. If you’re curious as to what this place is, http://www.jerrypournelle.com/ has a lot of information.

So the pledge drive comes at an awkward moment when I was less productive than usual, but there it is. If you have been reading this for a while and just haven’t got around to subscribing, http://www.jerrypournelle.com/paying.html will tell you more than you need to know. If you’ve subscribed but can’t remember when you last renewed, it’s probably time to renew. Go to http://www.jerrypournelle.com/paying.html and get it over with. It doesn’t take long.

And if you’ve recently renewed, as many of you have, I thank you.

I regret to announce:

Maureen O’Hara, RIP.

<http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-maureen-ohara-20151025-story.html>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

I enjoyed her pictures a lot. RIP

Some residuum on the Dyson Sphere matter:

Jerry:

I was delighted to see my amateur musings on Dyson spheres in correspondence with Ms. Osborn reproduced on your website.

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/dyson-spheres-and-the-mile-high-club/

IMHO, our failure to detect communications from the star does not preclude the possibility that this is a Dyson sphere or other megastructure because it is predicated on the premises that the aliens use a communication medium that we can detect. This argument is akin to Neolithic savages concluding that a modern city can not be an artificial construct rather than a natural feature because they haven’t seen any smoke signals or heard any drums. If the aliens rely on anything as mundane as tight beam lasers or fiber optics for communication, we will not detect them.

The absence of IR radiation to compensate for the decrease in emissions in the visible spectrum is the most compelling argument against the idea that the star is being occluded by an artificial structure. However; this argument is less compelling if the star is being periodically occluded by a megastructure that only partially occludes the star. How about a really big light said that is being launched towards Earth?

Finally, it is a fallacy to assume that a Dyson sphere or other megahabitat should be built at the same orbital radius from the star as the home planet of the builders. Because the radiating surface of a planet is four times greater than the instellation surface, a planet is on average much cooler than a flat surface that constantly faces the star would be. A Dyson sphere might and probably should be built at a greater distance from the star than the home planet. Of course Ms. Osborn is correct that a Dyson sphere or a “Bowl of Heaven” would collapse under a star’s gravity unless the materials were astonishingly strong. Even Niven’s Ringworld would experience substantial gravitational force transverse to it’s circumference that would compress it into a string. An armada of lightsails that enclose a star and use light pressure to support themselves is possible, but a large number of collectors in carefully orchestrated and actively managed orbits is more plausible.

James Crawford=

Orbital Rings and Dyson Spheres
A couple of possible “engineering” counter-points to some of the “science” objections raised against orbital rings and Dyson spheres:
Circular Orbital rings:
More of a question than a point – might an orbital ring be maintained in a circular orbit using electromagnetic interaction with the sun’s magnetosphere? The magnetic field is weak, but the size of the coils could be huge, and there should be plentiful solar power to feed the coils. Continuous maintenance of a circular orbit ought to require much less power than attempts to restore circularity from an elliptical orbit. If it is workable, it would eliminate most of the requirement for reaction mass.
Dyson Sphere radiation detection:
If the Builders wished to minimize their IR signature in most directions, it should be possible to direct their IR radiation mostly in two opposing directions, for example along a line perpendicular to the galactic plane.
For simplicity of terminology, think of the sphere as having an “up/down” orientation. Directed IR radiation could be accomplished by making the surface a series of stair-steps – with “horizontal” surfaces highly conductive while “vertical” surfaces are highly insulated, forcing most IR radiation into the “vertical” directions. Seen exactly edge on, there would be very little IR radiation, increasing at higher angles. The directional effect might be further enhanced by putting the radiating surfaces in insulated wells.
Tom Craver

Still yet more thoughts on Dyson Spheres

As regards whether it is more efficient to build a “Dyson Sphere” around a star, or engage in interstellar colonization, here’s something else to think about.
Consider the information transmission time between different elements of a civilization that are separated by A. Dyson sphere: light minutes B. Interstellar colony: dozens/hundreds of light years. Now think about how fast information can spread, and how rich/vital the respective civilizations might be…
If the neurons of a human brain could be separated by hundreds of kilometers from each other, but the same pattern of connections maintained, and the absolute transmission speed is the same, it would be as smart… but way, way, slower.
Also, as regards colonization as a solution to a population problem: Nah. As Asimov pointed out, if population doubled every 47 years (it recently doubled every 18 years in Syria!) it would take only 6700 years to convert all the matter in the universe into human flesh. So the answer to population growth is neither interstellar colonization nor Dyson spheres, but population growth restraint (which may be either the easy way or, like recent Syria, the hard way). If civilizations do build things like Dyson Spheres, surely it will be to increase the richness of the culture/total computational power, not deal with an exponentially growing population, because in a finite universe that’s impossible. The issue is not ‘efficiency’ per se, but what you hope to achieve…

TG

Russia Hit the Iceberg

I guess when things get crazy, you go to what you know:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11937348/Russia-retreats-to-autarky-as-poverty-looms.html

https://news.yahoo.com/stalin-portraits-soviet-nostalgia-rule-ukraines-rebel-regions-052534004.html

It’s over. If we can’t get something worked out with Russia now or very soon, it seems we’ll need to pass through another round of unpleasantness before we sit down and look at this again. Your thoughts?

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

My thought? This was predictable and predicted. When Clinton let us get into the anti-Slav position in Europe, endorsing Albanian thugs rather than Serbian thugs and bombing Slavic Serbs and destroying the economy of the lower Danube, what did he expect to happen? NATO closed an iron ring around Russia. The US continues with entangling alliances and concerns itself with the territorial disputes in Europe that have gone on for hundreds of years, and now we wonder what is happening?

Assad and the Kurds are tolerant of Christians. (And Jordan, which is probably the next Arab state to fall despite last minute US efforts taken when we suddenly realize the problem.) The Caliphate is not, nor are most of the Sunni rebels. Russia has always had an interest in the Middle East, particularly Persia; we are astonished that this interest continues? They do not require history in most of the major universities; what would you predict that does for foreign policy?

It is a bit late now to invest our money in energy production and tell the Arabs to drink their oil, but it is perhaps not too late…

Of course Russia will become an autarky. What incentives have we ever given Russian patriots to do otherwise?

“If it’s an invasion map, you wouldn’t show the bus stations.

It’s a map for when you’re in charge.”

<http://www.wired.com/2015/07/secret-cold-war-maps/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Surprise!

Quantum Theory Experiment Said to Prove ‘Spooky’ Interactions    (nyt)

By JOHN MARKOFFOCT. 21, 2015

In a landmark study, scientists at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands reported they have conducted an experiment they say proves one of the most fundamental claims of quantum theory — that objects separated by great distance can instantaneously affect each other’s behavior.

The finding is another blow to one of the bedrock principles of standard physics known as “locality,” which states that an object is directly influenced only by its immediate surroundings. The Delft study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, lends further credence to an idea that Einstein famously rejected. He said quantum theory necessitated “spooky action at a distance,” and he refused to accept the notion that the universe could behave in such a strange and apparently random fashion.

In particular, Einstein derided the idea that separate particles could be “entangled” so completely that measuring one particle would instantaneously influence the other, regardless of the distance separating them.

Einstein was deeply unhappy with the uncertainty introduced by quantum theory and described the implications of quantum theory as akin to God playing dice.

But since the 1970’s, a series of precise experiments by physicists are increasingly erasing doubt — alternative explanations that are referred to as loopholes — that two previously entangled particles, even if separated by the width of the universe, could instantly communicate.

The new experiment, conducted by a group led by Ronald Hanson, a physicist at the Dutch university’s Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, and joined by scientists from Spain and England, is the strongest evidence yet to support the most fundamental claims of the theory of quantum mechanics about the existence of an odd world formed by a fabric of subatomic particles, where matter does not take form until it is observed and time runs backward as well as forward.

The researchers describe their experiment as a “loophole-free Bell test” in a reference to an experiment proposed in 1964 by the physicist John Stewart Bell as a way of proving that “spooky action at a distance” is real.

“These tests have been done since the late ’70s but always in the way that additional assumptions were needed,” Dr. Hanson said. “Now we have confirmed that there is spooky action at distance.”

According to the scientists they have now ruled out all possible so-called hidden variables that would offer explanations of long-distance entanglement based on the laws of classical physics.

The Delft researchers were able to entangle two electrons separated by a distance of 1.3 kilometers, slightly less than a mile, and then share information between them. Physicists use the term “entanglement” to refer to pairs of particles that are generated in such a way that they cannot be described independently. The scientists placed two diamonds on opposite sides of the Delft University campus, 1.3 kilometers apart.

Each diamond contained a tiny trap for single electrons, which have a magnetic property called a “spin.” Pulses of microwave and laser energy are then used to entangle and measure the “spin” of the electrons.

  The distance — with detectors set on opposite sides of the campus — ensured that information could not be exchanged by conventional means within the time it takes to do the measurement.

“I think this is a beautiful and ingenuous experiment and it will help to push the entire field forward,” said David Kaiser, a physicist at M.I.T., who was not involved in the study. However, Dr. Kaiser, who is with another group of physicists who are preparing to perform an even more ambitious experiment next year that will soon measure light captured at the far edges of the universe, also said he did not think every scintilla of doubt had been erased by the Dutch experiment.

The tests take place in a mind-bending and peculiar world. According to quantum mechanics, particles do not take on formal properties until they are measured or observed in some way. Until then, they can exist simultaneously in two or more places. Once measured, however, they snap into a more classical reality, existing in only one place.

Beyond the immediate result, physicists noted that the experiment represented an advance in the understanding of a Lilliputian world that was once largely the province of theory. Quantum mechanics has already had a huge impact on modern technology and industry. For example, it is the foundation for modern computers and lasers.

“What I do find interesting is that the experimenters are learning how to manipulate quantum systems, and do experiments that are far beyond what was possible when I was starting in physics,” said Leonard Susskind, a theoretical physicist at Stanford. “Things which were at best ‘thought experiments’ become possible, then routine. That is incredibly impressive.”

Indeed, the experiment is not merely a vindication for the exotic theory of quantum mechanics, it is a step toward a practical application known as a “quantum Internet.” Currently the security of the Internet and the electronic commerce infrastructure is fraying in the face of powerful computers that pose a challenge to encryption technologies based on the ability to factor large numbers and other related strategies.

Researchers like Dr. Hanson envision a quantum communications network formed from a chain of entangled particles girdling the entire globe. Such a network would make it possible to securely share encryption keys, and know of eavesdropping attempts with absolute certainty.

For some physicists, even though the new experiment claims to be “loophole free,” the matter is not yet completely closed.

“The experiment has closed two of the three major loopholes beautifully, but two out of three isn’t three,” Dr. Kaiser said. “I believe in my bones that quantum mechanics is the correct description of nature. But to make the strongest statement, frankly we’re not there.”

A potential weakness of the experiment, he suggested, is that an electronic system the researchers used to add randomness to their measurement may in fact be predetermined in some subtle way that is not easily detectable, meaning that the outcome might still be predetermined as Einstein believed.

To attempt to overcome this weakness and close what they believe is a final loophole, the National Science Foundation has funded a group of physicists led by Dr. Kaiser and Alan H. Guth, also at M.I.T., to attempt an experiment that will have a better chance of ensuring the complete independence of the measurement detectors by gathering light from distance objects on different sides of the galaxy next year, and then going a step further by capturing the light from objects known as quasars near the edge of the universe in 2017 and 2018.

Quantum Theory Experiment Said to Prove ‘Spooky’ Interactions (NY Times)

Think about three positions: A, B, and C.

A is the place where the two entangled particles come from.

B and C are the current locations of the particles.

There’s definitely no way to get the particles from location A to locations B and C faster than the speed of light.

There’s also no way to influence the state of either particle at locations B or C from location A at any speed.

That’s old news.

As far as I know, there’s still no way to control the state of the particle at B from location C or vice-versa.

While an event at position B can cause a change at position C, there’s no way to control or predict what that change is or will be, so no way to use the change to communicate any information.

But that’s just my own interpretation. You probably have real physicists among your readers, so I suggest you pose that question on the website and see how they respond.

Best,

.               png

Meanwhile, on the subject of spooky:

‘The researchers demonstrated that they were able to suppress quantum tunneling merely by observing the atoms.’

<http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/10/zeno-effect-verified-atoms-wont-move-while-you-watch>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

What’s going on with El Nino…

…and the real (okay, probable) effect on the weather. This is a good article; the writer had his head on his shoulders, logicked his way through, and gathered some very good statistics.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/imageo/2015/10/14/godzilla-the-blob-son-of-blob-el-nino-reality-check/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DSC_News_151022_Final&utm_content=&spMailingID=23815290&spUserID=MTE2MDc4MjYyNjg3S0&spJobID=662308129&spReportId=NjYyMzA4MTI5S0#5468

Basically what’s happening, insofar as I can tell, is that the strength of the El Nino is throwing off the circulations in the Pacific, resulting in The Blob and Son of Blob. I make no claims to expertise on this, but that’s what it looks like to me.
Stephanie Osborn

“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”

Prepare for a wild winter.

In unexpected discovery, comet contains alcohol, sugar – Yahoo News India

Jerry:

It sounds like the ingredients to a good cocktail.

https://in.news.yahoo.com/unexpected-discovery-comet-contains-alcohol-182309427.html

James Crawford=

Unsurprising but possibly of interest:

www.climatedepot.com/2015/09/20/update-leader-of-effort-to-prosecute-skeptics-under-rico-paid-himself-his-wife-1-5-million-from-govt-climate-grants-for-part-time-work/

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Monday, October 19, 2015

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide.

There will be a separate post on Dyson sphere discussion.

Saturday night I did a radio interview, http://www.blogtalkradio.com/authorsontheair/2015/10/18/sf-giant-jerry-pournelle-live-interviewed-by-h-paul-honsinger which isn’t likely to interest any of the readers here; it was good enough, but mostly for people who don’t know who I am. Sunday it rained, sort of, in Los Angeles, and we didn’t get out of the house after church and brunch with my son and Larry Niven. I didn’t do much Sunday, and Roberta and I watched some TV, and I read some more of Sarah Hoyt’s Witchfinder. I don’t really recommend it, not because it isn’t well written – all of Sarah’s books are well written – but it was originally published a chapter at a time, and that format requires a hook at the end of each chapter; and that requires that it be a surprise for the characters, so they can’t have seen it coming, which they didn’t know the rules that allow that sort of thing to happen, because if they had, they’d have been prepared.

That sort of thing is not my cup of tea. I prefer to be surprised but to say to myself, oh! I didn’t see that coming, but I should have seen that coming – thereby not making the characters be astonished because they were too stupid to see something coming that I saw; which I would have if I’d known the rules. And this is getting complicated; I did say I was reading the book, and yes. I’ll finish it because the characters are interesting and that part is well done; but the plot structure is just not my cup of tea. It does have a thrill every five minutes, but then they have to get out of that, and Pauline must be in peril again by the end of the chapter… Anyway I am fascinated by the characters and the way that Regency England can be preserved given open use of magic, and I read too late and woke up too late.

So this morning I felt like I was turning into a vegetable, and before lunch I went upstairs to the Monk’s Cell, not to write but to perform the Five Tibetan Rites I used to recommend back before I had my stroke, and which I have missed terribly since then. If you want to know more about the Five Tibetan Rites, there’s a huge stewpot full of information; just Google Five Tibetan Rites and stand back. You’ll learn all you need to know, and yes I still recommend them. There’s a new piece about them: Hugh Howie and Amber [posted last May after my stroke, but seem to be at the top of Google). Naturally it’s four oh four, and Time Warner Cable has done its daily shut down of the Internet, so I’m getting page not found. That will go away by four fifteen, but it’s vastly irritating because I always seem to need the Internet at 1600, and it’s never available; probably some kid down the block gets home for his daily porn while mother watches some TV program. (No, I have no real theory, only the observation that at 1600 Time Warner Cable Internet connection dies and isn’t restored until 1615, and I am becoming increasingly irritated .) Ah, it’s 1515. http://www.hughhowey.com/the-five-tibetans/ Hugh Howie and Amber demonstrate well, without much mysticism; if you want more on the origin of the Rites, you’ll have fun looking, at least you will if you don’t do it on Time Warner Cable Internet at 1600.

Up I went, but before I started the exercises I turned on the ThinkPad. I’d used it with Outlook for the first time since last year, and it downloaded a pile of incoming mail most of which I deleted anyway, and I just left it when I went downstairs. That was probably Friday. It needed a punch on the power button to get its attention, which is normal if no one has been around for days. I should have just closed the lid when I left, but I hadn’t; getting down those stairs is a daunting experience, not dangerous so long as I pay attention step at a time, and I do a certain amount of mental preparation. Anyway the ThinkPad came up all right, restoring Windows and wanting a fingerprint, but it was acting slow. I brought up Task Manager and noted a whole potload of processes were running. I shut down Outlook, but everything seemed sluggish, and then nothing worked: I couldn’t even get the START button to work so I could shut it down.

Nothing seemed to be working. Eventually I used the Big Red Switch. Well, it’s not big or red on the ThinkPad, but I still think of it that way; it used to be the power switch on home computers.

It turned off, and when it tried to open Windows up came a blue screen. I let it try to repair the system, and up came a blue screen again. It was doing a lot of trundling, so I started the Five Tibetan Rites – scary, especially Rite One, since I am still using a walker – and when I’d get my 21 repetitions I’d go over and try to get the computer to come up. It would go through the repair routine, then blue screen; but each time it seemed to me that it had got a little farther in the startup, so despite the definition of insanity I kept trying the same thing over and over, and when it would get started I’d go back to the Rites. About the Fourth Rite I said to hell with it, used to power button to turn it off, and went back to the Fifth Rite; I’d only been able to do 13 of that last time, but I got through 21 in terrible form but I did them; then I did 30 situps.

Went back to the ThinkPad and tried once more; came to blue screen; let it try the repair again, and when it reset up came Windows; so far as I could tell, it was genuine Windows 7, worked fine, everything there. I closed the lid on the laptop and came downstairs, and that’s the current status.

I see Lenovo Laptop T410-W7P Intel Core i5 2.40GHz 4 GB Memory 160 GB HDD 14.0″ Windows 7 Professional 18 Months Warranty

From New Egg for $250 refurb, which seems a decent insurance against this system dying away; but how to transfer Office from one to the other? And there are other options. I’ll keep you posted on what happens next. It’s dinner time.

Tuesday, Oct 20, 2015  1215;

Went up to do the Tibetan Rites and the ThinkPad is working fine, although it seems to have forgotten some passwords;and of course so have I.  I’ll have to look them up.  Maddening.  But the ThinkPad works fine now.  I make sure it is asleep before I leave it; some of my advisors say the symptoms of its disorder yesterday are much like they have heard about systems trying to install Windows 10 and failing.  All I know is that the rebuild worked on the fifth attempt, and having worked it’s just fine.

I’ll have a mail on Dyson spheres shortly…

Apple keychain wants to send me text messages on a landline phone that does not get text messages. It does this with the iPhone and the MacBook Pro, and there is apparently no way out of this loop. I got the iMac before I got my iPhone, and the landline was the only phone; this was the first year iPhones came out. And now I can’t get the cloud validation number except as a text message to a phone that doesn’t have text messaging, and I can’t validate my iCloud stuff without having two apple devices, and nobody answers if I try to make contact with them.

Macs are fine for a lot, but you had better use them exclusively. They don’t seem to play nice with Microsoft products. Jobs comes through again.

SITREP, China

Bill Gertz is one hell of a China analyst. I capped off my analytic studies with a country analysis course focused on China. Gertz and Shambaugh are two writers that I became very familiar with during that course and I’ve seen them time and time again in the media, all over the world. This latest article from Gertz comes from the Asia Times and he’s someone that we should be listening to:

<.>

By telegraphing its plan for warships to intrude within the 12 miles of the islands, the Obama administration believes it can minimize any diplomatic fallout with the Chinese. The US strategic message seems to be that sailing so close to the disputed islands is normal and should not be viewed as a military provocation. China, however, is not getting that message.

The new chief of naval operations, Adm. John Richardson, seemed to undermine US efforts to bolster regional allies with a political message of American resolve last week. Richardson told sailors aboard the Reagan that the freedom of navigation operation will be routine.

“I don’t see how these could be interpreted as provocative in any way,” he said Oct. 15.

The comments reflect the overriding desire of US policymakers in the White House, State Department and to a lesser extent in the Pentagon to play down the upcoming operations. These officials are opposing all military activities in the disputed waters that could upset Beijing, as part of the President Obama’s diplomacy-first policies.

The administration for months has been under pressure to conduct the sailing operation that was sought privately by US Pacific Command commander Adm. Harry Harris. The four star admiral is concerned that a weak US response to what he regards as China’s illegal territorial claims will be misinterpreted as quiescence unless there is a show of force in the region challenging the claims.

Harris wants to push back against China’s efforts to dominate the international waterway in the face of competing maritime claims, mainly from Vietnam and Philippines. Until a Senate hearing last month, when Harris said he had presented options for conducting freedom of navigation operations within 12 miles of China’s reclaimed islands, his appeals had fallen on deaf ears.

</>

http://atimes.com/2015/10/the-looming-military-showdown-in-the-south-china-sea-gertz/

This is like watching a train wreck, but this is worse because they can hear us telling them how to avert this catastrophe and they’re just going on with their bad selves and their related bad policies like that guy riding the bomb in Dr. Strangelove. We’re looking at militant madness or compound stupidity; I’m not sure which. And, yeah, Napoleon said that thing about malice and incompetence but Napoleon never bothered to consider the topography and weather when he invaded Russia; so I take his points with a grain of salt.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Close Air “Cooperation” 

Jerry,

US Air Force problems with doing close air support for the Army go back considerably farther than Korea. I recently came across an excellent book on both the origins of the problem between the wars, and on how at least part of the US armed forces solved it (temporarily, alas) to good effect during WW II: “Patton’s Air Force: Forging a Legendary Air-Ground Team”, by David N. Spires.

Amazon has it at

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J6Y99XU?keywords=patton’s%20air%20force&qid=1445261098&ref_=sr_1_1&s=books&sr=1-1

, or if you’re fortunate as I was, you might find it at your local library.

Just a couple of the interesting points this book raises: The US Army going into WW II was specifically designed to be a highly mobile force that lacked its own truly heavy weapons (think Tiger tanks versus Shermans, or railroad guns versus 105’s) and thus by design needed a lot of close air support. (My own thought on this, provoked by the generous dose of battle-campaign maps in the book, is that Patton obviously understood how to use this mobility far better than anyone else on the US side.)

And the Army Air Force was focused enough on gaining complete independence from the ground Army that the term “close air support”

became inadvisable careerwise. “Support” apparently implied just another auxiliary branch like the artillery or engineers. The correct term for those who wanted to get ahead in the nascent USAF was “close air cooperation.”

The book is not a light read, covering considerable dry doctrinal, organizational and logistical detail in addition to the political, tactical and technical (and of course, battlefield) story. It’s very much worth plowing through for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the issue. (It also is, as a side-benefit, the best overview of Patton’s Third Army campaigns from D-Day to the Elbe within the overall western campaign context I’ve seen.)

Henry

Yes. I’ve written about this before.  It is becoming increasingly important.

r.e “Without answers to these fundamental questions, the Air Force nuclear enterprise remains on the same trajectory…

Dear Jerry,

The USAF and its hierarchy clearly don’t want this mission anymore.  They have it made it abundantly clear they are not going to resource it adequately, which includes providing viable career paths into senior ranks for the personnel.  Further argument with an entire culture of people who have their minds made up this way is pointless.

So as a first step let’s take the ICBMs away from the USAF.  This includes equipment, facilities, budget, manpower and manpower authorizations, including the Air Police tasked with guarding the facilities and all related logistics personnel. 

Now we’re free to examine other options, and there are several viable options.

1.  Set up an independent land based ICBM force ala the ex-USSR and Russian Strategic Rocket Forces.  However, such an entity will not mesh well with the present Joint Chiefs of Staff system or with DoD’s present logistics system. 

A better idea therefore is:

2.  Return this mission to the US Army.   Unlike the USAF I believe the US Army’s Artillery Branch will provide the ICBM corps with an honored position.  Instead of being those guys down in holes who don’t fly they’ll be the guys with the biggest artillery of all.  Unlike the USAF the Army has never considered pilot/aviator wings a prerequisite for advancement to anything except for presiding over flocks of helicopters.  Therefore advancement paths to senior commands will be far more open, including the potential for promotion to four star general officer ranks.

Best Wishes,

Mark

I agree that the ground army should have the a strategic nuclear force. Whether it ought to be in command of the strategic nuclear mission in war is not so easily determined. Air war is a specialty career.

Re: BLOWING THE WHISTLE ON THE UC BERKELEY MATHEMATICS DEPARTMENT

Jerry,

http://alexandercoward.com/BlowingTheWhistleOnUCBerkeleyMathematics.html

It’s a >2,600 word letter by Alexander Coward about the situation he’s encountered as a professor at the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department. If it’s even partly true it’s infuriating.

Regards,

George

An important data point in the modern education drama. 

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.