On a more serious note, I think what covid exposed is that many decades of a fat and happy society have made it virtually impossible for the average person to assess risk. In a way, that's a good problem, because it points to the fact that things are safer now than they ever have been in the history of the world. But it has the giant downside of every tiny risk being perceived as existential.
You know what sucks? Agreeing with conspiracy theorists. Dead to rights: The CIA hid the entire clandestine overflight program of the 50s and 60s in "little green men" hysteria, and the whole of the stealth program in Hangar 18 bullshit. All this "UAP" bullshit flying around right now is clearly and obviously hiding something else because when you say "it's aliens" nobody pays any attention to what 'it' is. Dead to rights: The KGB hid their entire chemical warfare program against Afghanistan in rumors that the CIA created AIDS. The word is disinformatsiya and it's been the number one go-to of Russia since the CheKa or before. The advantage of living in an unfree society is you can lie all you want since nobody believes you anyway. Live in a democracy? You lose your credibility you lose your authority you lose your government. Dead to rights: the CIA and state department discredited Sinovax purely for purposes of geopolitics. We could have worked together. We didn't. And ultimately, what this means is that everyone - including the US Government - was laboring like crazy to ensure that nobody would trust the US government when they needed trust the most. A lot of that was foreign influence. But a lot of that was own-goals. I suspect that if we'd actually had that pandemic response team that the Trump administration dissolved on Day 1? We'd be in much better shape. But instead it was every agency for itself and the CIA will do dumb shit like use polio vaccination drives to hunt for bin Laden. People have never been good at assessing risk. That's what rules are for. That's what governments are for. That's what police are for. I was out for a walk last week and a cop stopped me and said "careful walking there, buddy, that's a grounded high tension wire." And I looked to my left and huh! 15kV power line! Do I have familiarity with grounded power lines? Nope! But I was careful walking! Does the cop? nope! But he passed along his instructions! Had the power company been watching I'm sure they would have said HOLY SHIT WHY ARE YOU LETTING THIS ASSHOLE ON THE SIDEWALK" (because my other choice would have been to step out into 50mph traffic) but ultimately, the idea was communicated and I'm here to tell the tale. The tragedy of Covid is everyone went "I'ma do my own research" which is exactly what Putin wants.* And I fucking hate how tinfoil that makes me look.
I dunno, actually. The choke hold on the domestic information pipeline that the US gov't may have once enjoyed is obviously not as strong as it once was. Social media is a monster of its own summoning. Uncontrollable, often. For the life of me I cannot see how it is physically possible that many of the videos I've seen are anything but sensor artifacts, doctored footage, etc., like, there is no physics that I know of that would make some of the objects being physical and moving as if they seem to be possible. I can't speak to pilot testimony. But I'd like to think that if I was an equivalent physicist in the 50s or 60s limited to all of the knowledge base of the time, my response to the "it's aliensssssss man" angle would be different. There was much more room for secretive military tech ops back then, I think. The public was entirely unfamiliar with space, for starters. Almost forgot, but I read about Skunkworks in sixth grade for a book report. My dad reminded me the other day when he was passing through Roswell. Maybe we could have the internet's Most Reasonable UAP thread. Nah, I don't think you'd enjoy that... *winkwinkwinkwinkwinkwninwknwinwinwkwniAll this "UAP" bullshit flying around right now is clearly and obviously hiding something else because when you say "it's aliens" nobody pays any attention to what 'it' is.
I've discussed this at length in the past on here and I'm too lazy to dig it up. Here's the long and the short of it: 1) The Navy has been pushing an integrated sensor suite/fleet management system since the mid '90s which had the ability to put objects detected by AWACS or surface sensors on the HUDs of aircraft in flight 2) That suite generated artifacts 3) There's some research that needs to be done in order to eliminate spoofing/EW interference that can't be done in an entirely clandestine way 4) ALIENS Whenever you see the government slinging weird shit into the spotlight it's because there's a bunch of shit in the shadows that they can't figure out without shining a light on it. Pretty much every bit of discussion, study, information or analysis around UAPs is some form of "our sensors are giving us funny data" and "sensors giving funny data" is just another way of saying "jamming."
"Jamming" implies, active, line-of-sight (or single/double bounce, etc.) influence, like radar jamming, but I think you are outlining a public "Debug our software!" campaign. I dunno how that's possible without a public-facing code library. Is that happening? Surely not. Maybe they crowdsourced coming up with new directions to go in, though? That's a bit unnerving, I thought they had a hella deep bench of nerds to lean on. God knows if I was an alien programming a probe I'd have it skip over this rock with minimal reporting sent back home. "We found another ant hill, sir"
Maybe I will crosslink to this pubski over there. Another thing is people will e.g. listen to the audio of the pilots reacting to their HUD as though it is visible to the naked eye, and people's projections span the gap to "pilot saw". I've seen the text on the UFO poster in the X-Files. I get it. I'm glad video editing software wasn't easy to get or use when I was of an age, because now, there are many, many /r/iwannabelieve's out there full of teenage kiddos who know how to video edit, and wanna believe so badly that they want others to believe fakes. Or just wanna have fun. But the very fact that people can disprove edits with e.g. cloud evolution problems or tineye searches and we still have yet to get that sweet, indisputable footage in the age of 6 billion smartphones is... glaringly obvious enough that I'm sure this point has been made on hubski before. Ironically enough, one thing that a probe should do is take hi-res imaging of planets and detect unnatural satellites. Would be easy with enough optical tech, an algorithm would be trivial. It should see the pyramids, great wall, Dubai bullshit, the metroplexes even more clearly, and resolve man-made radio waves above the noise floor. We'd be resolved for sure if it passed between one of the Voyagers and Earth at some point. On that note; At work? I should actually pursue an Oumuamua chaser mission. We have planetary, astrobio, imaging, and particle people in house, the only thing I think we'd definitely need to sub-contract all out somewhere else is the e- & b-field instruments. The biggest hurdle to this is the people who don't take it seriously, which, given that the worst case scenario is we science an extrasolar asteroid or comet, and the instrumentation need not differ too much, not sure what the drawback is. Win-win. Socially? It's kind of a cool litmus test to find the dreamers. Great excuse to network with some of the new people, too. Going to be hard to convince me that once we got the 'scopes good enough to sense objects of that size (~100 m), a thousand-year+ occurrence just happens to slice through the solar system within a few years. Ultimately, building an Oumuamua chaser would be the first step in building an Oumuamua. Everything about it, actually, right down to "as light as possible and with the biggest rocket possible". The chaser is even a little more challenging, in a sense, because you can't bank on being able to launch into the ecliptic plane and use gravity assists from other planets. The chaser has to find a way to intercept, probably can't bank on having an asymptotic chaser velocity above what the object does. I'm also not thinking about mass producing chasers, yet, as ya would for building an actual Oumuamua, but it is fun to consider.I'd have it skip over this rock with minimal reporting sent back home.
So I've seen the math on what an 'Oumuamua flyby looks like. It's gnarly. I wholeheartedly invite you to run shit down yourself but when I glimpsed it here's the following: Rate of closure: 17km/s Target size: 0.1km New horizon's LORRI imager had an angular resolution of 5 microrad/pixel or around 1 arcsec. If you were able to build a 1 gigapixel camera, which clears frames at 10 frames/second, you will get 100 pixels for 20 minutes, 1000 pixels for 2, and 120 frames at 10,000 pixels. You're also out there at 207AU. New Horizons passed Pluto at 34 AU so you've got 1/6 the light. Now here's the thing. I've worked with some weird fuckin' metals in my day. For attaching spark plugs to hearts we used an 80/20 platinum/iridium alloy cooked up special just for us. You don't alloy platinum for anything but jewelry and catalysts, that I know of. And yet ole Avi Loeb did some trawling out Australia way and turned up an 8mm curl of platinum-manganese wire. I have spent some time trying to find a manufacturer of platinum manganese wire. Closest I've gotten is an outfit that will make it for you if you order it. I don't know what you'd use it for. It's probably a lot like steel but more corrosion-resistant. And when Dr. Loeb went "so we found this thing" everyone went "it's obviously natural, you crank." Even though nobody else has ever found platinum-manganese wire in nature before. You should read his book. His argument is basically "look, space garbage is far and away the easiest explanation for the data" and then he decided to dredge up some space garbage. Further, his argument is "in an infinite universe it makes sense to get the delta V of anything you jettison at cosmic rest so no one can track you down" and that's exactly what 'Oumuamua was at. Really, he's at "space garbage is probably boring AF but it's also the most likely sign we'll ever find that there are other intelligent species out there, so why not look" and I gotta say, he makes a compelling argument. But 8mm hairs of platinum manganese aren't likely to slaughter cows so it's boring.
Oh no, I should have been more clear, sorry. When I say "Oumuamua chaser", I don't mean "something to chase Oumuamua", I mean "something to chase the next one". I'd have to work extended launch readiness scenarios into the proposal. You probably have to launch while the thing is somewhere between Jupiter and Saturn and headed in for another similar close approach to the sun (within maybe a few tens of solar radii?) on a hyperbolic (non)orbit. And like I said, it's doubtful you can rely on the hyperbola being within the plane of the ecliptic, which complicates launch and/or a good trajectory. Need a superlight craft and something like a Starship, ideally. I'll be back
It's not common, but notable in chemistry. You sometimes burn/melt stuff for analysis in Pt/Au bowls because it's known that ceramics could introduce (soluble) contaminants (leeching sodium from glaze, metals and glass 'fluxing' around alumina dust - that level of analytic pedantism). For 'chemically inert' reason, gas-phase synthesis may necessitate piping and vessels made of platinum or Pt/Rh or Pt/Ir alloys, but I can't give you a reaction example off-hand. I also got to use Pt/Nb anode and Pt/Ir 'combustion mantle' (that fine mesh around a flame, like on old-timey gas lamps) in organic synthesis, but the latter was hella niche even by the "Pt alloys in lab" category. And it wasn't used for catalyst either; I needed to cleanly keep the water away with flame, with this somehow being the least stupid setup. You don't alloy platinum for anything but jewelry and catalysts, that I know of.
That makes sense. I once asked "so what happens when I put gold foil on silver for enameling" and was told "you increase the gold content in your silver alloy" and silver is relatively benign as alloyants go. The Edwardian Era/Belle Epoque is noteworthy for platinum because it allowed haute joilerrie houses to make light, lacy constructions that would be impossible in gold or silver. Of course it also wants to be worked in an oxygen-free environment so it was mostly cold-formed stuff pinned together rather than castings or soldered components. So. Ever seen Pt/Mn? Any guesses what it would behave like? "manganese alloys" aren't really where I live. Only thing I know about alloying manganese with steel is it gets impressive and the only comparison I can draw between platinum and steel is neither likes oxygen and both can be made magnetic (which freaked me out when I first learned that).
Not really, but maybe it's more notable industrially, considering what you wrote about its mechanical properties. I recall someone from Czechia working on MnPt nanocomposites, but I couldn't see the significance of their work, to put it euphemistically. I guess it could be used as a catalyst, since both manganese and platinum are stupidly robust in that role? Maybe for alcohol oxidation or more generally as a replacement of sorts for metal-carbonyl complex catalysts. I can search more thoroughly if you want, but nothing pops up in my immediate wheelhouse.Ever seen Pt/Mn?
I wanna say no because I WANT TO BELIEVE but I'm going to say yes because if there's a legit use case for platinum-manganese wire I'm really curious as to what it is. You'll be much more successful at your search than I was because you are not a golden retriever in goggles in this field.
Hah, no worries, I'm Team Mulder too. And science is probably always a blast, so it looks like an interesting thing to check out for myself. For instance, I looked into chemical, but completely neglected (the applications of) magnetic properties it could have, which is much more my day-job area of interest. I'm just lukewarm on the whole controversy, because Avi "chair of physics at Harvard" Loeb crying foul at the 'physics establishment' is a tad hilarious. If nobodies like am_U or I seriously postulated anything like he did, we'd be keelhauled under the liquid nitrogen cystern, not published. ;)
I'm not saying 'the system' doesn't suck, but it's undeniable that anyone else would have been strongarmed into removing the part even implying/suggesting ET intelligence as a possible explanation for the possibility of the object being a 'pancake' sail rather than rotated oblong. Would it be awesome to be true? Absolutely. Do we need more data? Yes. Does it require more research? Ditto. Do I want to believe? Hell yeah! But because of the implications of this work, skepticism has to be on the all-time high. Back when the topic was fresh, I was being dismissive of quite a few rebuttals to Loeb, saying how "adding these 15 parameters gives a better explanation" is a worthless statement on par with "my gf is homeomorphic with a torus, so is Liv Tyler, therefore I'm screwing Arven on the daily, therefore I'm Aragorn." Now? I want to believe, but don't want to be reckless or show any less scrutiny than I'd give to my research, neither on the record nor off. Which I suppose is exactly what you want in a scientist. I just became far more wary of Loeb('s persona) with time.
fun fact, this is how one of the Cassini instruments (CAPS) died, I think?. It starting growing tin whiskers fluxing around soldering lead from the current in some of the high voltage circuits and shorted itself out. Little guy lived a full life, though, only missed the last few years in a nearly two-decade lifespan.fluxing around ______
Distrust and skepticism are required for keeping society humming or progressing. However, for example, if Project 2025 wants to abolish the department of education, and the plan for replacing it is "who cares?", I'll be instead listening to someone else's ideas for improving our education system. I'm not going to absolve America or the world writ large of personal responsibility for their wilful idiocy, but there has been a coordinated effort to undermine the legitimacy and the trust we place in the institutions that got us to our zenith. The people most heavily funding extremist disinformation campaigns doing said undermining are billionaires, and all while they're building off-the-grid doomsday bunkers. They know they're destroying society. I guess they delight in it or something, I can't really figure that part out, it's related to the classic "does becoming a billionaire fundamentally corrupt almost everyone?" or "is becoming a billionaire selecting for sociopathic psychos?" chick-egg question. edit: and yeah, like 'bl00 mentions, obviously the close messaging alignment of one party with Russia is, um, illustrative.
Two-class societies are stable and easily controlled. Doesn't have to be capitalist; communists on strike are dead communists just as much as capitalists on strike are dead capitalists. Three-class societies with mobility are a threat to the upper class because they tend to lose their position. The average hang-time within wealth and privilege in an egalitarian, democratic society is three generations - Grandpa made it big, Pop spent it, Junior works for a living. The average hang-time within wealth and privilege in a two-class society is Rothschild.
I'm talking about much smaller things than that. For example, overestimating the chances of harm from an MMR vaccine vs. underestimating the harm from texting while driving. Or never letting your kids go to the park by themselves vs. virtually unfettered access to digital devices. There's a whole mixed up world perceived vs. real harms. Maybe KB is correct that we've always been bad at risk assessment, but my sense is that the way in which were bad at his has morphed into something that looks like the tragedy of the commons on steroids. Certainly in that environment it's a lot easier for bad actors to exploit people's fears for whatever gain they get out of it. But also a lot of leadership in this country has scored some nasty own goals since the pandemic that are inexcusable. There's a good line in a thing I posted this morning about suicides in the army where a soldier says how fucked up it is that the army preaches sacrificing the individual for the collective but then still fails the collective. I'm not into making predictions, but one I'm fairly certain of is that we're going to continue to experience a leadership gap for at least another 4 years and change.
Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational" would be a great read for you. Humans suck at abstraction, full stop, and our impressions of risk are shaped very much by societal expectations. Ariely points out that the most dangerous thing in modern life is stairs, and has been for 5,000 years. But since we have no alternative to stairs, we accept the risk of stairs and assign it to zero. We're 30 years into computers, which is nothing from an evolutionary perspective. We're 20 years into social media. Kids at the park by themselves? We're 30 years into America's Most Wanted and the ABC Sunday Night Movie. Both are more than 10 years gone, though, so the backlash is well-advanced. My kid stays home alone for hours at a time and when I mention this to fellow parents they're all at "whew, ours too" because while they know they'll be judged, they also know that fuckin' hell an eleven year old can manage on her own with an iPad for a couple hours fer chrissake. I think we're starting to see the turn on social media, too. A dreary percentage of this country wants serfs. A much bigger percentage wants to be serfs. Turns out they're all white.
Well yeah, people latch on to hyper-specific manifestations of a broadly anti-science mis/disinfo campaign, often when it's personally convenient, but apparently very much so also when it's politically normalized. Not even "normalized" so much as required, nowadays, for MAGA. As for e.g. texting while driving, shit's ripe for PSAs. edit: here's a good one. Since I first heard about the electric universe cranks, back in the day on physforum (deleted, became physorg.com, I even had the same username) like 15 years ago, they have been largely hijacked by the climate change deniers. Largely, they didn't use to tie in climate change or anything else, that happened later. And that's how it goes; mostly-harmless armchair dummies coaxed into supporting dangerous right-wing politics. Seen it so many times that it's a cliché now. I keep hearing distant chants of "Whitmire" louder than other competing voices. You've probably given your take previously, has it changed at all in the interim?leadership gap
As in , do I think Whitmer would be a better candidate than Biden? I mean, I think marshmallows taste better than an old shoe. But I also think that an old shoe is what's for dinner, and that beats the shit out of cyanide. Whitmer will be a candidate in 2028, but I think it's engaging in wishful thinking to think there isn't a 98% chance Biden is the candidate, with a 2% chance that Harris is should Biden suffer some sort of medical emergency. I don't have the slightest clue how you'd dump her. Whitmer is great, and has done a very good job as the chief executive of my fair state, but we don't live at the end of the rainbow.
Oh no, it is a 100% chance that Biden is this year's dem party candidate. Whitmer*, yes, sorry, I have Houston's mayor on my mind, I guess. Biden's health will be fine through the election, I guess because he's a maybe-somewhat-benign sociopath or something, I'd be dead by now from the stress, but I wouldn't be too surprised if he steps down within a year or two if he wins.. and manages to stay in the white house.