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Thread: Living on Mars?
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2018-01-02, 03:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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2018-01-02, 05:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Living on Mars?
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2018-01-02, 05:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Living on Mars?
Last edited by Leewei; 2018-01-02 at 05:49 PM.
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2018-01-02, 07:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Living on Mars?
Specifically Venus, as supposedly the temperature will help offset the energy input by the comet slamming into the planet, which supposedly is being done to correct the direction of rotation? Because... I can't actually follow why that's supposed to be necessary, so because reasons?
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2018-02-02, 07:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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"If you want to understand biology don't think about vibrant throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology" -Richard Dawkins
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2018-02-03, 01:42 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Living on Mars?
Partly. But the reason why relatively weak radiation is able to heat food uses both resonant frequencies, and patterns of constructive interference. It's why most microwaves rotate meals; certain areas within the microwave will be warmed faster than others, so rotating the food should ensure a more even cook. In theory at least. In practice, pockets of molten cheese continue to sit beside Frozen bits in our hot pockets
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2018-02-03, 01:48 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Living on Mars?
There's another reason for that behaviour--microwaves basically work by heating the water in the food, but they're not very good at heating ice. Since the heating is also uneven, as you say, and the clumps of ice are of differing sizes, you will tend to get bits that melt first and then heat very quickly while the other bits are still frozen and not absorbing microwaves very well. This is why you're supposed to stir frozen things partway through cooking, or else leave them to stand for a couple of minutes to allow the hot parts to melt the still-frozen bits.
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2018-02-03, 11:57 AM (ISO 8601)
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2018-02-03, 07:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2008
Re: Living on Mars?
The amount of current we can get through the wire without superconductivity breaking down is proportional to the cross-section of the wire.
Multiply that cross-section by the several thousand lightyears to the closest magnetar and you have a LOT of wire.
That means you need a lot of energy to position it. Simply dropping it off from a moving rocket isn't good enough, the wire needs to be stationary.
In fact, it's probably more energy than you could ever hope to transfer even in millions of years of operation.
Once you have the wire in place, you still need to worry about things like galactic drift, objects passing through the space occupied by the wire etc. so it's unlikely you could actually keep the wire in place for millions of years without needing to re-string it.
Oh, and the dynamo might not work as well as you want it to because superconductivity also breaks down in intense magnetic fields.Last edited by Bucky; 2018-02-03 at 07:38 PM.
The gnomes once had many mines, but now they have gnome ore.
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2018-02-04, 12:25 AM (ISO 8601)
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2018-02-04, 02:11 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Living on Mars?
Using a super-long wire to transport power in that situation would not be practical. The relative motion of the magnetar and Sol would render it impossible. Likewise, transmitting power through some other means (say, a honkin' great laser) wouldn't work because your aim point would keep changing--you're essentially trying to hit a target moving at several hundred metres per second from information you have from several thousand years ago!
It has to be said, though, once we're at a point in our development where we could reasonably consider such a thing, we'd have to be a galaxy-spanning civilisation anyway, so send the power to somewhere much closer where we can make better use of it.