FaustianQ

Is there any serious researh on how alien life forms can exist/evolve in different enviroments? Some time ago i heard a short piece of a theorie about sophisticated lifeforms in very low temperatures.

It's almost all hypothetical. Besides carbon, silicon and boron/boron-nitrogen based life has been explored, while using a variety of solvents like ammonia, hydrogen flouride, and methane. The reoccuring theme though is that carbon based life outcompetes other forms in water rich enviroments across a wide range of temperatures, and there is really only edge cases for things like silane life at extremely low temperatures in an ammonia/methane enviroment [silane life cannot interact with carbon life, everything that sustains carbon life would cause a silane lifeform to burst into flames]. Titan is a really fertile ground for silane lifeforms, but it's possible carbon based life still outperforms it even in such an enviroment.

Finding not only life but silane lifeforms on Titan would be huge though and would honestly be compelling evidence life of some kind will persist somewhere no matter how extreme and that the process of abiogensis to biogensis is a standard planetary process.

...But it makes it very easy for the loader to access and maintain rpm?

Venus? Unless they are capable of surviving 900 F and 90 atm, you're probably not going to find stuff on the surface

Wasn't necessarily talking about the surface though, although life in a 90atm 900F atmosphere isn't impossible, just exotic by requirement. I'm fairly positive that sulfur can be used in lieu of oxygen for metabolic purposes for instance.

Seconded. The more sophisticated our techniques get, the more it looks like ours is a perfectly average solar system.

 

Which leave Fermi's paradox looming a bit, but whatever...

It feels odd to assume our solar system is perfectly average when it appears the norm graviates toward Red Dwarfs and tidally locked planets being bathed in high levels of radiation. What value of average are we trying to get here, because I'd say out system is rather placid and hospitable and on the high end of habitability. Venus, Mars, Ganymede, Europa, Callisto, Titan, and Enceladus are all highly colonizable and our asteriod belt is an easily accessible resource rich area. Places like Neptune and Uranus are fuel rich, and Jupiter and Saturns cloud tops allow for floating mining colonies. The outer solar system is abundant with water and fuel sources, and I'd go further and say our system is extremely wet.

Further exoplanets studies will probably prove me wrong but we keep slashing NASA budget because reasons, because "a billion dollars" sounds scary when you don't put into the context of the US budget and it makes it easy to sound like one is tough on wasteful spending.

Enceladus does indeed have an ocean. That is interesting to have 3 bodies in the solar system to have liquid oceans that can theoretically support life. 

 

Viruses are still not aliens though. 

I want to say that our solar system seems to be an aberration. We don't just have three bodioes with liquid water, but at least one if not two that could support cyrobiology. Mars and Venus are both habitable with technological assistance, both may have or still harbor life. There are abundant sources of easily extractable minerals and water. I'd say our system was/is predisposed in comparative terms to being life sustainable, while 90% of discovered exosystems seem to be hellish.

Newest Republican attempt to increase the proliferation of nuclear arms.

Raising the minimum wage is fine as a current solution, the costs of wage are a tiny portion of a companies expenditure and wouldn't necessitate a equivalent increase of the price in goods. The company can eat it and deal with the fact they won't be subsidized by government support for workers (which is basically how Walmart etal treat food stamps, housing and heat assistance), and in doing so actually lowers the necessary tax burden on middle and lower income brackets.

I think a longterm solution is the abolition of the minimum wage, the implementation of a maximum wage, being aggressive on going after tax havens, increasing taxes for outsourcing, public data on wages and salary for any given job, a UBI, universal housing, and universal healthcare.

Ashely Madison, secret gay dating site funded by adulterous men. This is such a hilarious clusterfuck.

I'm going to be a bit of a devils advocate here and say that your 90s experience with "VR" is nontransferable to the experience now. VRs biggest stumbling block is that the technology for real VR is still quite away, like 4-5 years away considering estimates on what's required to fool a human brain; turns out the brain is already running a VR simulation and doesn't take kindly to your bullshit.

Binding international agreements? Yeah. Fuck that. The US Senate has to approve treaties. It's one of the things they still do that is actually Constitutional (Article 2, Section 2, Clause 2). It's to prevent some yokel from going off and getting snookered on the International scene without the representatives of the People ( originally representatives of each sovereign State legislature) having some recourse.

As for the Chinese, fuck them too. If they want to sleep with Ayatollahs and Best Korea, let them. In the meantime, our leaders should be dumping a pollution tariff on every piece of crap that comes out of China until they clean up their act environmentally or until they go tits upeconomically. But some scum on Wall Street might lose money on one of their hedge funds so we can't have that.

I don't see the point in getting mad at executive agreements in this case. Moving to treaty would have resulted in something unworkable, the US excluding itself from the deal, and Iran getting 90% of what it wants with basically no concessions.

China desperately wants Best Korea to die. They're a cancerous appendix and the only reason China doesn't do something now is, yes, a humanitarian/refugee crisis. The US/Better Korea in the case of reopened warfare, won't make it to Pyongyang because the Chinese will already be there. As far as Iran though, China wants to compete with Russia for influence, and promises of arms and funding in exchange for oil and gas and regional influence. To let China and Russia do this is a huge security risk to US interests and can't be ignored. In fact, it'd be beyond negligent to do so while Iran is starting to face it's millennial demographic crisis which is pushing it away from China and Russia - literally defeat from jaws of victory there.

China is cleaning up it's act actually, but shit like the overhyped Fukushima disaster actually slowed China down in nuclear development (fuck hippies). Those hedge fund managers though? Getting their shit wrecked as China's economy implodes while the US is on the upswing. The US is actually in a good vantage point to refocus the world economy on itself since it'd actually be the least hurt (like .5% reduce growth at best) by China imploding, making America a safe haven again for physical investment and tremendously boosting the US economy post Chinese collapse. China can't even pull devaluement shenanigans to up trade, because the collapse has more to do with internal economic factors (their workers being treated like shit, the pollution, the vast overvaluing of property and businesses, etc).

That is why I moved out to the middle of what was once nowhere. I have a strong dislike of people and out here I didn't need to see many of them. 

 

Now, people are moving out here in droves to "get into the country"  but bringing everything from the city with them.  Rezoning land, building strip malls and chain stores, and throwing up cookie cutter housing developments with names like "The Estates of Fox Oak Creek" although they chased off the foxes, cut down the oaks, and paved over the creek...

Congrats on absorbing suburbanites, the urban areas thank you for your sacrifice.

The issue is that even the most short-sighted liberal politician understands this deal is just so much wet ink on paper which has zero weight. It gives the Administration a nice Selfie to post on their Facebook page as they focus on Social Justice and Climate Change.

I think the more amusing scenario would have been the US not participating in forming the treaty, Iran getting even more favorable terms with Russians and Chinese arms manufacturers, and getting pretty much 90% of the trade it needed while the US misses out on developing a nonvolatile relationship with Iran. The deal is better than basically every other achievable outcome.

We can make much more money in the private sector. 

 

The government cannot keep talent if the pay them those lousy GS or military salaries. Relying on guys who rotate through their enlistments/commissions every few years and then get poached by the private sector is not a strategy that will ever work. 

Oh no, I don't disagree and this is part of the issue as well, combined with the usual political attitudes of of those who work in IT makes attracting and keeping the necessary talent close to impossible. Private sector poaching is an overall larger issue with the entirety of public sector work, but that's what happens when the public sector is underfunded. That's why I think a large cultural change is required as well, the problem isn't just within how the government is structured but just how Americans even think or perceive.

You guys are just going through the same urbanisation pattern we (and other 'developing countries') are. The joke is that such a lopsided distribution (empty countryside and jam-packed megacities) is the most efficient way of distributing goods and services to a population. So the Western European model of more mixed distribution may just be an anachronism due to their weird demographic setup.

In this sense, Judge Dredd is a bit prophetic, although the Foundation series is a more light hearted take on it.

All will become one with Russia, Da?

Government IT is an awful place, not really because the people there are necessarily unprofessional, but because there is no funding. They can't attract necessary talent, they can't get the overhauls in necessary infrastructure, and problems successively compound themselves.Unless something changes and a huge funding influx comes in with changes to American culture, RIP the US because it can't keep up in cyberwarfare. Not because it doesn't have the technological capability or the knowledge base, but because members of the government itself are ideologically opposed to funding or supporting it.

New sim for tanks, that really goes heavy on simulator part. Early Access and I think my only complaint is that the graphics harken back to pre 2000.

http://wccftech.com/tank-sim-m4-tank-brigade-steam-early-access/

US change in foriegn policy towards Iran might grow warmer still if the Saudis go nuts.

The lesson everyone should have taken from Arab Spring is that overthrowing vile, despotic Middle Eastern regimes invariably leads to their replacement by worse.

A take from an actual Saudi is that no one in the ME has any faith in secular authority not being vile, hence the religious radicalization. What ended up happening is that ME dictatorships were/are beyond paraniod and don't allow even token opposition parties to form and allow people to vent.

The real take away then is that any future government needs to allow dissent, even in controlled form, or when the people get fed up their going to pick any even more insane option. Like, Iran does a really good job of this TBH.

Well, the T-72 doesn't need a sun to live, and as long as it never encounters a black hole or substantial corrosives, will exist forever.

Also, a few billion years? When did a "few" mean in excess of 100?

4chan and reddit are both awful, hth.

I don't think a Hind is a really good match up for an Apache, a Havok might be okay.

Well, according to the latest patch, the Apache model was added in.

Is the GRM getting any good AAA or is this "US calls in Gunship to endlessly shit on insurgents".

I'd love to see at least some kind of BF2 faction setup (RF, USA, UK, EU, MEC, PLA), if not a WG:ALB or RD setup.

Also, wouldn't mind if they focused on some kind of spergy AFV v AFV combat.

As this is a dumb alt.history thing, I decided it belongs here, not in the AFV section (despite being about AFV armament), because that's serious discussion about real things. I think I've brought this up on TS before, but I think I have a case for an alternate US armament for WW2.

First, the US Army during the 20s-30s has access to a rather good anti-tank weapon for the time period, the 6 pounder Mk3, 5 and 7 hotchkiss used in coastal defense. No, this isn't Mr.Williams inspired, rather it's something the US has in number that actually exceeds the performance of most of the guns 1930. Unlike his theory, the US met most of the performance requirements in reality, a 2.72kg shell @ 683m/s. This is already good enough for a 30s weapon

Theoretical US 57mm: 2.72kg @ 683m/s, 634kj

US 37mm M5/6: .87kg @ 884m/s. 340kj

German 50mm KwK38: 2.04kg @ 745m/s, 565kj

French 47mm SA37: 1.72kg @ 855m/s, 629kj

British 40mm: 1.08kg @ 853m/s, 393kj

Russian 45mm 20-K: 1.4kg @ 760m/s, 404kj

As you can see, the French lead based on similar energy, smaller crosssection for improved penetration with a much higher velocity. although only at shorter ranges. But unlike the SA37, the US 57mm would be available in very large numbers during the 30s, the US already had a mount developed for it in the M1921, and they could easily put it into a 3 man turret.

Going further, The US pack howitzer might be potentially used to replace the 75x350 entirely. The US pack howitzer is 75x272, and interestingly enough another similar US projectile has similar dimensions and nearly the same performance as the 75x350, the obsolete US 76x273 for the 1902 field gun. I think, with a focus on using 76mm projectiles. the pack howitzer could be modified to fire a 6.8kg AP projectile @ 580m/s and meet most of the needed requirement for a dual purpose gun, while being smaller and likely interchangable with the theoretical 57mm gun, by the late 30s. Keep in mind, the US had a mount for the pack howitzer already developed, again for the M1921, so development time of a competent 76mm gun in a three man turret would be small.

I also think that beginning in 1938, the US interest in the British 6 pounder could lead to something better. The 6 pounder is known to have been modified to fire a 75mm projectile, so firing a 76mm projectile is not out of the question. My theory is thus - the US starting in 1939 begins by blowing out the casing of the 6 pounder to accept US standard 76mm projectiles, resulting in something like a 76x420 with a 6.8kg projectile @ 745m/s velocity. Something like this could be ready for the Sherman in 1941, resulting in a more highly effective tank for the entire war. I could forsee greater pressure on Ordnance to push the 76mm M1 gun to 853m/s, thus more effectively competing with the 17 pounder in the antitank role for TDs and HV Shermans. This also ends up making the Chaffee useful vs T-34-85s later on in Korea.

I've been thinking of a larger alt.history scenario and this is a bit key. If it's unfeasible, then a bit of it falls apart, but I think it it can work. I however lack the skills to mathmatically figure out whether it is possible.

There is a pretty stark difference between animal testing and murder, just saying.

Germans, postmondernist pioneers in engineering

"No, we didn't fuck anything up, it's actually artistic and a deconstruction of the modern combat vehicle and it's influence on the military."

"No, we didn't fuck anything up, it's actually artistic and a deconstruction of the modern airport and it's influence on us all."