The Astronomy Thread

Big Phoenix_sl said:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_dark_age

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I didn't realize that we had completely eliminated text books and paper publications of scientific journals. Yup, you're right, all of humanity's knowledge is only stored in digital formats that will go poof when our society ends, and there aren't thousands upon thousands of libraries and archives with physical copies of the majority of our knowledge that the following society could pick up the pieces from.

Well man to be fair the formulas to create specific polymers don't do you a hell of a lot of good without specialized chemistry training and apparatus. The the training and apparatus don't do you any good without enough of a food surplus to employ the workers you need at all stages of production and distribution.

I'm just thinking that a catastrophic but not cataclysmic event, like say a worldwide epidemic with 40-60% 1-2 year mortality. Just for whatever reason poof, and it's pretty uniform. Would the current catalog of knowledge still be there? Sure, of course. Would it be accessible? Ehhh... maybe. Parts would be, but it's all so inter reliant. Would it do them any good even if it was all accessible? Doubtful. How many generations would be interrupted? I know it's pretty standard sci-fi disaster stuff, but the entire system -could- crash and remain at a lower technological state. It's not inevitable. Our technologies are shaped by our culture as much as they shape our culture, and if that culture were to irrevocably change who knows if the old tech would even be relevant. If you don't have the means to produce how quickly does the method get reduced to a mythical dogma? 5 generations? 10?

You've always got to allow that this might just be as good as it gets.

But I mean yeah, sure. Knowing how to get a fire hot enough to smelt steel would help. If you have some iron and some coal you want to smelt it.

first thing i'd do during a recovery knowledge wise, raid the technical section of a library- get books on: power plant maintenance and design, steam engine design, locomotive design, water wheel, blacksmithing stuff etc. also any agricultural books i could find.

setting up my dwelling, i'd choose a place with adequate water- ie near a river, plus i'd choose a place with a septic system installation if from an existing dwelling. it wouldn't be all that hard to re-route roof runoff into an attic cistern and use that for flushing the toilets. ideally, find a place that had a solar grid tie system with battery backup.

now back to astronomy. has there been any updates on the potential viewing of the comet this late summer/fall?

dble post deleted

If there was a global catastrophic event I think the world would end up as some weird hybrid of the ancient and modern worlds. In the ancient world, technology levels and societies varied greatly. Some areas were experiencing societal collapse while others where flourishing. Even after hundreds of years of global contact there is still great disparity between regions. A global collapse will just re-isolate regions and force them to find their own solutions to any problems that come up. Some regions may stay relatively uninterrupted and continue advancing. Other regions may revert to primitive methods. Still others may simply keep on going with no real advancement because the people there have been living the same way for a few hundred years already.

In time some group may again have the technology and resource base needed to exert global influence. At that point we will get to repeat the process of globalization and will see regions re-establishing contact. Maybe this time we can skip the genocide and slavery items on the colonization to-do list. Would be interesting to see an occupying force hailing from Manhattan. That way, New New York might become a reality.

Eomer_sl said:

I didn't realize that we had completely eliminated text books and paper publications of scientific journals. Yup, you're right, all of humanity's knowledge is only stored in digital formats that will go poof when our society ends, and there aren't thousands upon thousands of libraries and archives with physical copies of the majority of our knowledge that the following society could pick up the pieces from.

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Unfortunately, books also have the alternate use of fuel for fire. Most of the scrolls in the Library of Alexandria were used to fuel heated baths. No reason that something like that couldn't happen again post-catastrophe.

Cybsled_sl said:

Most of the scrolls in the Library of Alexandria were used to fuel heated baths.

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Pretty sure that's filed next to Napoleon canonballing away the nose of the Sphinx in the fictional history cabinet.

Cybsled_sl said:

Unfortunately, books also have the alternate use of fuel for fire. Most of the scrolls in the Library of Alexandria were used to fuel heated baths. No reason that something like that couldn't happen again post-catastrophe.

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I dunno man, the sheer number of books out there today is fucking staggering. Even if only a teeny, tiny, weeny little fraction of them survive whatever catastrophe, that's still a shit ton of knowledge that doesn't have to be rediscovered.

Hell, my university, which isn't exactly an Ivy league school, has an entire basement full of bound, science journal periodicals dating back a hundred years. We're talking tens of thousands of books covering every aspect of science and mathematics that you can think of. If I'm super bored and between classes I'll go down there and pull a Nature from 1932 or something similar. i would think a pretty huge chunk of our scientific endeavors are represented down there. Extrapolate that out to every decent university in the world and it's pretty obvious that humanity has enough insurance to keep the dark ages from ever happening again.

Araysar_sl said:

And most of the books are awful anyways. Harry Potter sold 450,000,000 copies and there are over 6 billion copies of the bible

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That's lots of fuel for fires.

Tuco_sl said:

What do you expect to find with a 100,000+ km particle accelerator that we can't find out with the LHC and similar designs?

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i'd like to point you to this lecture

i think what Zyyz was trying to say is to build an accelerator many times more powerful than LHC. Personally i'm not sure if "bigger = more powerful" but the idea, like the video say, is there is a link between energy and the level of experiments with particles we can do

the LHC discovered the Higgs, and it was only at half its power. i have no idea what scientists hope to find beyond the higgs when they turn it at full power, but the trend has always been more power = deeper understanding of foundamental physic

thats the reason why, even if im an european, im damn sad that you guys scraped the project for your new accelerator that was supposed to be 3 times more powerful than the LHC

in this field it's not a dick contest

If we've confirmed the Higgs, how much smaller particles can there be?