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Icon Of Sin posted:They were just abandoned in the woods, after the Soviet Union fell apart. The batteries themselves were used for navigation aids and "radiometric devices", whatever that means. Best note of all: 2/8 of them were unaccounted for at the time the report was written! Oh, it's so much worse than that. quote:But the canisters are turning up all around the old USSR. After being prodded by the IAEA, Russia’s Ministry of Atomic Energy gradually divulged that in Soviet times a factory in Estonia churned out at least 900 of the generators, including some models that are five times more radioactive than the units recovered in Georgia. No more than a couple dozen of the generators have been accounted for, says González, adding that the IAEA’s efforts to track down the missing generators are hampered by a legacy of lost records and even theft. Because the generators once also provided electricity for lighthouses along the Arctic coast, from the Baltic to the Bering Strait, Russia is working with the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority to salvage radiothermal generators in the Murmansk region and ship them to a Russian nuclear site for storage.
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Oct 30, 2017 16:26
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gently caress You And Diebold posted:this seemed up this thread's alley And yet, if I were to force Dupont executives to West Virginia to breathe the air and drink the water there, I'd be the one who'd be called the bad guy.
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Oct 30, 2017 20:57
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Does a five meter long stick of dynamite and a slow mo camera that can film at 210,000 frames per second sound like a good time? It should..... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThLtMhiak-Q&t=273s
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Oct 31, 2017 07:34
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`Nemesis posted:Does a five meter long stick of dynamite and a slow mo camera that can film at 210,000 frames per second sound like a good time? It should..... I love these two so much.
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Oct 31, 2017 13:46
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`Nemesis posted:Does a five meter long stick of dynamite and a slow mo camera that can film at 210,000 frames per second sound like a good time? It should..... I should have known it would be them.
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Oct 31, 2017 14:16
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Zemyla posted:And yet, if I were to force Dupont executives to West Virginia to breathe the air and drink the water there, I'd be the one who'd be called the bad guy. Nah, you'd be seen as soft. Pulling that wouldn't change anything. No,. drag them down there, and throw them screaming into the hellfire that they caused.
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Oct 31, 2017 14:45
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Johnny Aztec posted:Nah, you'd be seen as soft. Pulling that wouldn't change anything. No,. drag them down there, and throw them screaming into the hellfire that they caused. But if you contaminate them, how are you supposed to eat the rich?
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Oct 31, 2017 15:04
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:But if you contaminate them, how are you supposed to eat the rich? some just need to be punished as examples so the rich prefer being eaten to the alternative.
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Oct 31, 2017 15:15
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`Nemesis posted:Does a five meter long stick of dynamite and a slow mo camera that can film at 210,000 frames per second sound like a good time? It should..... That's basically a Bangalore torpedo, right?
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Oct 31, 2017 15:56
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Here's another question/thought experiment that has just popped into my head. Tons of science fiction has written about the possibilities for forms of life that might exist on other planets -- how a being could survive under a layer of ice in an ocean of liquid methane, or at hundreds of degrees on the surface of Venus, or in a murky atmosphere of ammonia. But has anyone asked what those aliens' technology might look like? Like, consider the materials we use today. Other than wood and vegetable matter (both products of our carbon-based life) it's primarily metals and synthetic polymers. We think of ABS as a pretty resilient plastic, but it's dissolved by acetone and attacked by many other hydrocarbons that you might see on other worlds. It also becomes soft at temperatures achievable on the surface of our planet -- even on a a planet only 100 degrees hotter it would be a liquid. Similarly, we think of steel as pretty good and strong -- but freeze it down to -100C and it becomes brittle and fragile, unsuitable for making things like anvils and springs. How would you even shape a metal object if you were working in an oxygen-free atmosphere? You can't light a fire -- are there any other reactions that could produce the sort of heat required, that would also be achievable by a neolithic civilization? On the other hand, there are also things on our planet that we think of as fragile that might not be on another world. There are many water-soluble compounds, like salts, that are insoluble in non-polar hydrocarbons -- an alien on a world full of liquid pentane might use sheets of sodium chloride as windows. Maybe there's other chemistry that works well in environments we can't reach. Are there any compounds that are liquids on the surface of our planet, but which turn into a strong, hard polymer when frozen to the temperatures you might see on Titan? What material would a Venusian use for clothing, for a roof, to build a battery? Is it possible that our planet's perfect position and environment isn't only required for life like ours to form, but also for advanced technology in general to be developed? Sagebrush has a new favorite as of 03:15 on Nov 3, 2017 |
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Nov 3, 2017 03:13
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Sagebrush posted:How would you even shape a metal object if you were working in an oxygen-free atmosphere? You can't light a fire -- are there any other reactions that could produce the sort of heat required, that would also be achievable by a neolithic civilization? Volcanic vents, perhaps. You move past wood and vegetable matter quickly, but that may be the solution. Early plastics research was spurred in part by the desire of an alternative to elephant ivory. If intelligent life arises on a planet or moon, they won’t have wood or ivory as we know them, but it seems likely that they will have their own biomaterials that they can harvest and later mimic.
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Nov 3, 2017 04:29
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I'm making a decent sized assumption here but something complex enough to develop even basic tools needs to respire some oxidant. There's one side of the fire triangle. Fuel can be anything that "burns" in that oxidant.
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Nov 3, 2017 04:48
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Imagine a world where ClF3 is stable enough to be reliably used as an oxidant. Actually, scratch that, a world where most of the atmosphere is that.
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Nov 3, 2017 04:50
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There are lots of ways of making fire without oxygen. Here's a lecture demonstration of hydrogen and acetylene burning in chlorine gas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtygiCwnEzw So any civilization that had access to a sufficiently exothermic combination of fuel and oxidizer should do fine. If the atmosphere was all hydrocarbons, they could burn with any isolated oxidizing "fuel" - a pipe introducing chlorine into a methane atmosphere would burn like an ordinary candle, or perhaps a gas lamp. The specific reactions that work for us wouldn't work for them, but the generalized fuel+oxidizer combination would.
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Nov 3, 2017 04:53
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Friendly reminder is an oxidizer is something that pulls electrons off things. It just happens that oxygen is really good at it.
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Nov 3, 2017 04:55
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Sagebrush posted:Here's another question/thought experiment that has just popped into my head. Tons of science fiction has written about the possibilities for forms of life that might exist on other planets -- how a being could survive under a layer of ice in an ocean of liquid methane, or at hundreds of degrees on the surface of Venus, or in a murky atmosphere of ammonia. But has anyone asked what those aliens' technology might look like? There are some aliens in one of the Doc Smith books who are really freaked out when the human protagonists show up, since they're on a super cold planet and their primary structural material is water ice.
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Nov 3, 2017 05:26
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All terrestrial planets are big lumps of metal, so if there's any available oxidizer, it'll react. So, there isn't going to be any free oxidizer on any planet, unless some life obtaining energy from a source other than chemical oxidation produces it as a waste product, and a large biomass is required to maintain equilibrium. Oxygen is the 3rd most abundant element in the universe, and is 4 orders of magnitude more abundant than chlorine or fluorine. Plants that farted out chlorine gas would be severely limited in growth potential by available chlorine. So it is extremely improbable that there would be any lifeform producing an oxidizer than isn't oxygen or oxygen-rich. I would have to guess that you either have oxygen or you sit on your slimy little rock going nowhere.
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Nov 3, 2017 05:32
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Base Emitter posted:All terrestrial planets are big lumps of metal, so if there's any available oxidizer, it'll react. So, there isn't going to be any free oxidizer on any planet, unless some life obtaining energy from a source other than chemical oxidation produces it as a waste product, and a large biomass is required to maintain equilibrium. Or, you know, you create stable wormholes at surface level.
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Nov 3, 2017 06:08
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Tunicate posted:There are some aliens in one of the Doc Smith books who are really freaked out when the human protagonists show up, since they're on a super cold planet and their primary structural material is water ice. Hahaha. That would be like aliens coming to earth and melting our cars to quench their thirst.
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Nov 3, 2017 06:10
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Proteus Jones posted:Hahaha. That would be like aliens coming to earth and melting our cars to quench their thirst. But only the red ones.
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Nov 3, 2017 06:24
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iospace posted:Friendly reminder is an oxidizer is something that pulls electrons off things. It just happens that oxygen is really good at it. Fluorines even better. 
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Nov 3, 2017 06:33
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or for something more grounded, imagine if the biochemistry needed to break down cellulose evolved alongside plants. almost no coal, almost no oil. You can't do anything without them.
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Nov 3, 2017 06:55
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Proteus Jones posted:Hahaha. That would be like aliens coming to earth and melting our cars to quench their thirst. Well, that explains what the Man from Mars's deal was.
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Nov 3, 2017 10:44
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iospace posted:Friendly reminder is an oxidizer is something that pulls electrons off things. It just happens that oxygen is really good at it. And life based on alternate ones isn't merely theoretical. The blue hole caves someone mentioned earlier are dark and anoxic, so the extremophiles living there have evolved a respiratory cycle based on sulfuric acid, with geothermal heat as the energy input instead of sunlight. I liked when someone stated a while back in the thread that the meaning of life on Earth, as defined by a chemist, is hydrolyzing carbon dioxide. This implies that the purpose of animal life is to stave off catastrophe by oxidizing carbohydrates, which is comfortably within reach as an existential goal. Vincent Van Goatse posted:Well, that explains what the Man from Mars's deal was. goddammit that song
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Nov 3, 2017 14:50
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There's a lot of talk about Nitrogen really "wanting" to just be stable N2 -- it seems like the opposite is generally true of oxygen, right? Is there any reason you'd expect an "oxygen rich" atmosphere (i.e. 15-25% like on Earth) WITHOUT some kind of ongoing biological/chemical process like photosynthesis to create it? e: Syd Midnight posted:I liked when someone stated a while back in the thread that the meaning of life on Earth, as defined by a chemist, is hydrolyzing carbon dioxide. This implies that the purpose of animal life is to stave off catastrophe by oxidizing carbohydrates, which is comfortably within reach as an existential goal. Brew and drink beer, got it Hubis has a new favorite as of 14:55 on Nov 3, 2017 |
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Nov 3, 2017 14:50
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Hubis posted:There's a lot of talk about Nitrogen really "wanting" to just be stable N2 -- it seems like the opposite is generally true of oxygen, right? Is there any reason you'd expect an "oxygen rich" atmosphere (i.e. 15-25% like on Earth) WITHOUT some kind of ongoing biological/chemical process like photosynthesis to create it? That's right. Maybe it's possible that it could exist in non-biological form on some weird planet (or maybe not idk) on this planet all free oxygen has a biological source. First cyanobacteria, later plants. Probably others as well. The exciting thing is that you can see atmospheric oxygen on exoplanets with spectrography. But none seen so far.
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Nov 3, 2017 15:00
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Ola posted:The exciting thing is that you can see atmospheric oxygen on exoplanets with spectrography. But none seen so far. Have we detected the atmosphere of any Earth-sized planets? I thought we were still stuck at analyzing hot Jupiters. (We observe smaller, rockier, exoplanets, but I didn’t think we’d manage to detect any of their atmospheres so far.)
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Nov 3, 2017 16:06
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Grundulum posted:Have we detected the atmosphere of any Earth-sized planets? I thought we were still stuck at analyzing hot Jupiters. (We observe smaller, rockier, exoplanets, but I didn’t think we’d manage to detect any of their atmospheres so far.) Yes, earlier this year for the first time. http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39521344 quote:Scientists say they have detected an atmosphere around an Earth-sized planet for the first time. The bigger a planet is and the closer it is to its host star, the more wobble it induces in the host star and the easier it is to detect. That's why it's been mostly hot Jupiters btw.
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Nov 3, 2017 17:45
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Early life on earth used all sorts of electron acceptors in their respiration processes. If I remember correctly there's an archaean that uses uranium oxide for that purpose. Pathways that end up at oxygen are just much better.
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Nov 3, 2017 19:09
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Uranium... oxide. Brutal.
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Nov 3, 2017 19:16
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Life would not have gotten very complex using radioactive metal compounds to breathe. That's more of a single cell trick since once you got above a certain size you'd have to start dodging criticality incidents.
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Nov 3, 2017 19:21
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Kwyndig posted:Life would not have gotten very complex using radioactive metal compounds to breathe. That's more of a single cell trick since once you got above a certain size you'd have to start dodging criticality incidents. U-238 isn't that bad I don't think, and that's most of it.
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Nov 3, 2017 19:25
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Yeah I don't think it's even possible for 238U to undergo a chain reaction, no matter how much of it you have and how tightly you squeeze it
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Nov 3, 2017 19:28
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Considering there were natural fission reactions 2 billion years ago this would have been more of a concern back when there was more U235 than there is today. Sure, today it's not going to happen.
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Nov 3, 2017 19:33
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Uranium minerals and incompatibility with complex life is more to do with heavy metal poisoning. Although reality never disappoints , there is such a thing as a natural fission reactor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor
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Nov 3, 2017 19:35
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Kwyndig posted:Life would not have gotten very complex using radioactive metal compounds to breathe. That's more of a single cell trick since once you got above a certain size you'd have to start dodging criticality incidents.
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Nov 3, 2017 20:13
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You can't hug your children with nuclear arms
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Nov 3, 2017 20:15
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Slavic Crime Yacht posted:You can't hug your children with nuclear arms If you've ever read Command and Control you should know that it was surprisingly easy and possible to bring home nuclear arms to hug your kids with  If you haven't read it this is a reference to a bomb disposal tech who would bring a dummy nuke off base in the bed of his pickup truck as a way to impress his dates... but it was stored in the same bunker as the real nukes.
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Nov 3, 2017 20:37
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At least the airlines would give people enough space to stretch and stuff.
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Nov 3, 2017 20:42
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Mr. Despair posted:If you've ever read Command and Control you should know that it was surprisingly easy and possible to bring home nuclear arms to hug your kids with I have and it was far and away the most terrifying book I've ever read.
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Nov 3, 2017 20:54
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