Article re worldwide population decline

[Stargazer]

21 minutes ago, Jamie said:

As far as I am concerned you may indulge yourself to your heart's content.  I appreciate your desire to explain more in detail.  I still think drag is an effect of gravity though because when there is anything in space that may retard the movement of something else, rather than just move when that object hits it with no retardation effect on that moving object, the reason that matter caused that retardation is because it was being affected by gravity to be where it was.  Gravity is what holds any object in its position or causes it to move within a gravitational field, by my understanding.

I suppose one might associate gravity with drag because gravity affects movement, and movement through a medium (such as a thin gas) causes friction and drag. It doesn't necessarily hurt anything to think that way. It might in some circumstances lead one to incorrect conclusions, however. I don't know that it will do so in this conversation, however.

But imagine a bullet fired in the earth's atmosphere, horizontal to the surface. It is slowed and heated by its passage through the atmosphere, and this is called drag. It is irrespective of gravity. Gravity alters the vector of the bullet's travel, but doesn't cause the drag. Drag is the frictional interaction between the material of the bullet and the material of the atmosphere.

Or imagine a spherical chunk of iron ten feet in diameter that is a billion light-years from any other solid body, and it is moving through a nebular cloud that is as dense as the solar wind coming off the sun. There is drag on the chunk of iron caused by its movement through the cloud, though there is no gravity present, and it affects its velocity and direction of that travel (though very very little).

 

[Jamie]

11 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

I suppose one might associate gravity with drag because gravity affects movement, and movement through a medium (such as a thin gas) causes friction and drag. It doesn't necessarily hurt anything to think that way. It might in some circumstances lead one to incorrect conclusions, however. I don't know that it will do so in this conversation, however.

But imagine a bullet fired in the earth's atmosphere, horizontal to the surface. It is slowed and heated by its passage through the atmosphere, and this is called drag. It is irrespective of gravity. Gravity alters the vector of the bullet's travel, but doesn't cause the drag. Drag is the frictional interaction between the material of the bullet and the material of the atmosphere.

Or imagine a spherical chunk of iron ten feet in diameter that is a billion light-years from any other solid body, and it is moving through a nebular cloud that is as dense as the solar wind coming off the sun. There is drag on the chunk of iron caused by its movement through the cloud, though there is no gravity present, and it affects its velocity and direction of that travel (though very very little).

 

I am thinking gravity may be and probably is present everywhere, even in space which you may think has no gravity.  Gravity on planets as they orbit their sun, gravity on suns as they orbit their galaxy, gravity in galaxies as they orbit each other or are affected by other gravitational fields, etc.  That is the way I understand objects affecting the movements of other objects.  An object that may seem to be still, not moving in space, is actually moving in some gravitational field, by my understanding.  So when something runs into something else or is affected by some other matter, the effect of that collision will be affected by that gravitational field of all of the objects in movement, as I understand things to be moving.

[The Nehor]

5 hours ago, Jamie said:

As far as I am concerned you may indulge yourself to your heart's content.  I appreciate your desire to explain more in detail.  I still think drag is an effect of gravity though because when there is anything in space that may retard the movement of something else, rather than just move when that object hits it with no retardation effect on that moving object, the reason that matter caused that retardation is because it was being affected by gravity to be where it was.  Gravity is what holds any object in its position or causes it to move within a gravitational field, by my understanding.

No.

[Stargazer]

For @Jamie and @The Nehor

Just newly uploaded by one of the more informative and interesting Youtube channels, Anton Petrov. This one pertains to the space debris problem...

 

[Stargazer]

A new video talking about the deorbiting of Falcon 9 second stages, and orbital degradation in general. I thought that @Jamie and @The Nehor might be interested...

 

[The Nehor]

47 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

A new video talking about the deorbiting of Falcon 9 second stages, and orbital degradation in general. I thought that @Jamie and @The Nehor might be interested...

 

Yeah, I knew most of this but there was some more information I didn’t have. Thanks.

This is the more responsible way to do space launches. We still have a larger problem though. If space travel becomes more common the reality is that space launches are ‘bad’ for the atmosphere on a level way above the carbon footprint of our industry. This hasn’t been much of a problem so far because we don’t launch that much stuff. One of the hard sci-fi series I read posited that the eventual effect would be to move all people on Earth into domes and/or arcologies.

In the long run if space travel is to become common we need a way to get stuff up and down without the damage of rocket use. The most common idea is the space elevator where you basically put a counterweight structure in space and put a cable from that structure down to Earth and anchor it somewhere near the equator. The pull of gravity on the bottom and the centrifugal force of the counterweight structure would counteract each other and prevent it from pulling itself apart. The problem is we don’t have a material strong enough to build this thing out of though there are some promising theories as to what we could use to build it. Many of the big breakthroughs we most need for space travel and in general are in the field of materials science.

 

[The Nehor]

In reference to the space debris video that is also a possible nightmare scenario.

One of the worries is that a rogue state or even Russia or China in a conflict situation would fire a nuke or nukes into orbit. Without the attenuating effect of the atmosphere this could knock out some to all of the satellites in orbit. This is a credible threat. The US military is heavily reliant on satellite data in a way that Russia and China and other potential adversaries just are not. The Soviets used to be more reliant on satellites but largely backed off. This attack would be a viable Hail Mary play for North Korea if they could get the weapon up there.

There is the potential of a ‘doomsday’ attack that basically fries most everything in orbit and potentially we start seeing the Kessler Effect as collisions cascade making orbit unusable or almost unusable for generations. The Starfish test back in the Cold War was at first considered a success until they realized how much collateral damage there was and space was pretty empty back then. There are also theoretical ways to ensure this. You throw up a series of small objects into set to deliberately collide with other objects using weapons designed to break the target up. Most nations wouldn’t use this kind of an attack as the loss of all satellites would hurt everyone but a rogue desperate state or someone in a desperate situation might.

There are also small scale anti-satellite weapons in development. The US, China, Russia, and India have tested weapons in the last few years. Russia, China, and the US shot down old satellites and the India sent up a specific target. Israel has theoretical ability to knock out a satellite with some of their anti-ballistic missile systems but it is never been tested. There has been a minor arms race in this area since the US pulled out of the anti-ABM treaty back in 2002. The Outer Space Treaty bans putting “weapons of mass destruction” in orbit but most anti-sat weapons work fine from Earth and the treaty doesn’t cover more conventional weapons.

Just some fine nightmare fuel.

[nuclearfuels]

On 5/23/2021 at 12:37 PM, smac97 said:

Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications
Fewer babies’ cries. More abandoned homes. Toward the middle of this century, as deaths start to exceed births, changes will come that are hard to fathom.

Legalizing polygamy and reinstituting polygamy seem like possible solutions. 

But why do that when we can print our way out of any financial problem and remove our borders to replace our population who has decided to not reproduce?

Of me and my 5 siblings, there are 5 children (grandchildren of my parents.)

Of my wife and her 5 siblings, there are 9 children (grandhcildren of her parents).

So twleve adults have produced 10 kids. That's a problem that to me seems systemic and contirbuted to from many sources 

[The Nehor]

11 hours ago, nuclearfuels said:

Legalizing polygamy and reinstituting polygamy seem like possible solutions. 

But why do that when we can print our way out of any financial problem and remove our borders to replace our population who has decided to not reproduce?

Of me and my 5 siblings, there are 5 children (grandchildren of my parents.)

Of my wife and her 5 siblings, there are 9 children (grandhcildren of her parents).

So twleve adults have produced 10 kids. That's a problem that to me seems systemic and contirbuted to from many sources 

Or we could just accept that humanity had a good run (we didn’t) and slide into oblivion with some dignity (we don’t have any of that either).

[Peacefully]

On 7/2/2021 at 8:29 AM, The Nehor said:

In reference to the space debris video that is also a possible nightmare scenario.

One of the worries is that a rogue state or even Russia or China in a conflict situation would fire a nuke or nukes into orbit. Without the attenuating effect of the atmosphere this could knock out some to all of the satellites in orbit. This is a credible threat. The US military is heavily reliant on satellite data in a way that Russia and China and other potential adversaries just are not. The Soviets used to be more reliant on satellites but largely backed off. This attack would be a viable Hail Mary play for North Korea if they could get the weapon up there.

There is the potential of a ‘doomsday’ attack that basically fries most everything in orbit and potentially we start seeing the Kessler Effect as collisions cascade making orbit unusable or almost unusable for generations. The Starfish test back in the Cold War was at first considered a success until they realized how much collateral damage there was and space was pretty empty back then. There are also theoretical ways to ensure this. You throw up a series of small objects into set to deliberately collide with other objects using weapons designed to break the target up. Most nations wouldn’t use this kind of an attack as the loss of all satellites would hurt everyone but a rogue desperate state or someone in a desperate situation might.

There are also small scale anti-satellite weapons in development. The US, China, Russia, and India have tested weapons in the last few years. Russia, China, and the US shot down old satellites and the India sent up a specific target. Israel has theoretical ability to knock out a satellite with some of their anti-ballistic missile systems but it is never been tested. There has been a minor arms race in this area since the US pulled out of the anti-ABM treaty back in 2002. The Outer Space Treaty bans putting “weapons of mass destruction” in orbit but most anti-sat weapons work fine from Earth and the treaty doesn’t cover more conventional weapons.

Just some fine nightmare fuel.

I put this in the category of “above my pay grade.” Not a lot I can do, so no use in dwelling on it. That is also why I don’t watch the news. Baking shows keep my mind off of these world-ending scenarios:)

[nuclearfuels]

On 7/7/2021 at 2:52 AM, The Nehor said:

humanity had a good run

I've had a good run...and I was also saying Boo-urns :)