Points to ponder

**Luigi** · 02-07-2019, 08:50 AM

**Buckaroo Banzai** · 09-07-2019, 01:03 PM

Cipolla's Theory of stupidity
Points to ponder-stupid-jpg

Bandit: You benefit only yourself
Helpless: You Benefit only others
Stupid: You Benefit no one
Intelligent: You Benefit both yourself and others

Carlo M. Cipolla , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla

**jabir** · 14-07-2019, 04:22 PM

Not just another cosmic image. This is the core of the Milky Way, as seen by the ESO's VISTA telescope. Under the right conditions the centre of the Milky Way could probably be seen with the naked eye, countless stars and cosmic dust clouds, all occupying a small patch of some few inches. Not that you could focus to any meaningful degree, but it's there and you can see it.

Enter VISTA, which has given us stunningly detailed portraits of the Milky Way, allowing astronomers to catalogue a staggering 84 million stars. Never mind the rest of the universe, some might ask again if we are alone in the Milky Way.

This pic is just a small thumbnail version of the original, which has a mind-boggling resolution of 108,500×81,500, or 9 gigapixels, occupying 24.6 gigabyte. If you want to download the full version and go play among stars that few people have ever seen before, try: https://www.eso.org/public/archives/...l/eso1242a.psb

About VISTA: ESO’s VISTA telescope (Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy) shows how cool the sky really is, through thousands of incredibly high res images which astronomers have compiled into a single 9 gigapixel mosaic.

The above image is crystal clear at higher res because VISTA boasts an infrared camera which can peer through the dust clouds that obscure the view of other telescopes. As an example of how powerful the VISTA telescope really is, compare the same image of the Milky Way as seen from an infrared telescope and a visible telescope.

So now astronomers have been able to identify 84 million stars in this patch of the Milky Way, which is part of a cosmic highway that stretches some 500 million light years across and contains around 100,000,000,000,000,000 suns.

Another fun fact: While astronomers continuously upgrade their numbers to reflect expanding realities, new estimates suggest that the Milky Way has around 400 billion stars, give or take, and phenomenal tech advances are likely to push this to 500 billion within a couple of years. Multiply this by the 500 billion galaxies in the known universe, with an unknowable number of galaxies beyond, and this suggests some 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (5×1022) habitable planets.

No reason to ever feel alone.

**tomcat** · 14-07-2019, 05:24 PM

Originally Posted by jabir

Multiply this by the 500 billion galaxies in the known universe, with an unknowable number of galaxies beyond, and this suggests some 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (5×1022) habitable planets.

...or none at all and we're...special...

**Latindancer** · 14-07-2019, 05:29 PM

^^ Thanks Jabir. My brain just seized up.

**Buckaroo Banzai** · 14-07-2019, 06:46 PM

Originally Posted by tomcat

...or none at all and we're...special...

You are definitely "special"

**Buckaroo Banzai** · 14-07-2019, 07:04 PM

I am Thinking of Quantum entanglement where entangled particles remain connected so that actions performed on one affect the other instantaneously , even when separated by great distances.
So the thought would be , why can't entangled particles be used for intantanouse communications over great distances?
maintain one entangled particle on earth and transport the other to Mars. (there is a 13 min communication lag now) . change the "spin" on one and the spin on the other changes instantaneously
Right is 1, left is 0 and you have a binary language.

I did a google search and it seems that there ai research being done on the subject right now.One problem is isolating the particles so that they don't become disentangled or entangled to another particle. and some other issues that I did not focus on or understand.

But IMO this is agame changing proposition, with many possible applications that can circumvent the light speed limitation.

**SKkin** · 14-07-2019, 08:50 PM

^ That's nothing. Try to explain Medicare and Medicaid...and their differences.

**Cujo** · 14-07-2019, 09:36 PM

I need another beer.

**Dillinger** · 14-07-2019, 09:42 PM

Originally Posted by Cujo

I need another beer

You and your fad diets

**Mendip** · 14-07-2019, 10:15 PM

You can pick your friends.

You can pick your nose.

Yet you can't pick your friend's nose... ?

**Buckaroo Banzai** · 14-07-2019, 10:28 PM

Originally Posted by SKkin

^ That's nothing. Try to explain Medicare and Medicaid...and their differences.

I think it was Richard Feynman who said "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics."
I think this applies equally or even to a greater degree to federal regulations.

**Looper** · 14-07-2019, 11:52 PM

Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai

So the thought would be , why can't entangled particles be used for intantanouse communications over great distances?

How 'spooky' that you should suggest this on TD just 2 days after physicists first photographed quantum entanglement

Points to ponder-5d29b8071939e-jpg

https://phys.org/news/2019-07-scient...e-quantum.html

**Buckaroo Banzai** · 15-07-2019, 12:20 AM

Originally Posted by Looper

How 'spooky' that you should suggest this on TD just 2 days after physicists first photographed quantum entanglement

Points to ponder-5d29b8071939e-jpg

https://phys.org/news/2019-07-scient...e-quantum.html

I get the "spooky" reference LOL
as usual they use jargon making it difficult for layman to understand.
I was intrigued as to how you photograph one photon .A photograph requires the recording of returning photons.One photon can only return one photon as far as I know.
In the explanation they said they use "Non conventional Objects"
What the heck are non conventional objects? before one can know what non conventional objects are, one needs to know what conventional objects are.
Anyway, Thank you for sharing , as I said , exciting stuff.and a field of research to keep an eye on.

**tomcat** · 15-07-2019, 05:45 AM

That Giant Asteroid of Gold Won’t Make Us Richer

Creating wealth goes way beyond bringing lots of precious metal to Earth.
By Noah Smith (Bloomberg)

Gold to Earth. Come in, Earth. Photographer: Bloomberg

Rejoice, people of Earth! News outlets are reporting that NASA is planning to visit an asteroid made of gold and other precious metals! At current prices, the minerals contained in asteroid 16 Psyche are said to be worth $700 quintillion -- enough to give everyone on the planet $93 billion. We’re all going to be richer than Jeff Bezos!

OK, now for the bad news: This isn’t going to happen. Yes, 16 Psyche and other asteroids will probably be mined for their metals. But once those metals start hitting the market in large quantities, they’re unlikely to be precious for much longer. As any introductory economics student knows, price is a function of relative scarcity -- flood the market with gold, and it will go from being a rarity to being a common decoration. Supply goes up, price goes down.

But in fact, there’s a more fundamental reason why a giant golden asteroid wouldn’t make the world fabulously rich. It’s because wealth mostly doesn’t come from big hunks of metal. It comes from the ability to create things that satisfy human desires.

A steel factory represents real wealth, because you can use it to make parts for cars, buildings and so on. A house does too, because you can live in it or rent it out. The skills and knowledge in your head are also a form of wealth, even though they’re not counted in the official statistics. Even a sandwich is wealth, at least until it goes bad.

But a giant asteroid full of gold only adds a little to real wealth. The metal would have various industrial applications and make nice jewelry and dental fillings, but it wouldn’t spark a new industrial revolution, or dramatically bring down the cost of goods and services, or in general make human life much better or more comfortable. Gold doesn’t command high prices just because it’s rare -- plenty of rare things have little to no market value. It’s because it’s rare relative to people’s demand for it. And because a golden asteroid wouldn’t increase the world’s total demand for gold, there’s no way it could create quadrillions of dollars of new real wealth.

Something a bit like a golden asteroid happened once before. In about 1500, Spain conquered South and Central America and discovered large deposits of gold and silver. It then shipped these metals back to Europe and used them to pay for government expenditures (mostly wars). Because gold and silver were used for money at that time, a drop in the value of gold and silver meant a drop in the value of money -- in other words, inflation.
Gold no longer is used as money, nor is the value of modern money pegged to the value of gold or any other metal. Thus, the arrival of a giant golden asteroid would probably not cause consumer prices to go up, and would instead simply cause gold prices to crash to almost zero.

So a giant asteroid wouldn’t make us all billionaires. But whatever space-mining company managed to claim the space rock would still probably be able to make a substantial fortune for itself. It would have to follow the playbook of the diamond company De Beers.

Diamonds used to be exceedingly rare, until large deposits were discovered in the 1800s in South Africa. The British businessman and colonial government official Cecil Rhodes consolidated all South African diamond mining under the De Beers company, an effective monopoly which later was controlled by the Oppenheimer family. Over the years, De Beers managed to defend this monopoly against challenges from various upstarts, by hoarding diamonds when prices were low and flooding the market to destroy competitors.

A monopoly allows a company to limit supply to keep prices high. But De Beers needed more than that in order to prevent diamonds from eventually becoming commoditized -- and so it turned to marketing, launching one of the most effective advertising campaigns ever with the slogan, "A Diamond Is Forever." This convinced couples all around the world that diamond engagement rings were an indispensable symbol of marital commitment. That symbolism represents real value.

Owners of a golden asteroid could conceivably try to pull a similar trick, launching advertising campaigns to get people to start using gold for more things -- building materials, perhaps, or clothing. But it seems unlikely that they could persuade the world to pay a premium for the sheer volume of gold coming from an asteroid like 16 Psyche -- especially if a rival company showed up with another golden space rock.
The impossibility of extracting untold riches from 16 Psyche teaches two important lessons about how wealth really works. First, it shows that a great deal of wealth exists only on paper -- when you try to sell your assets, the price goes down. Liquidity -- the ability to sell an asset for cash -- is an important factor that tends to be forgotten when calculating net worth.

And second, this example shows that real wealth doesn’t actually come from golden hoards. It comes from the productive activities of human beings creating things that other human beings desire. De Beers’ fabulous fortunes ultimately came not from its control over a certain type of dazzling rock, but from its ability to convince the world that this rock could be used to communicate love and devotion.
If you want to get rich, don’t think about how to seize scarce resources. Think about how to use resources in an innovative way to make something people truly want or need.

**OhOh** · 17-07-2019, 08:20 PM

I'm pretty sure "prices" will rise to keep the newly rich indebted

**Luigi** · 23-07-2019, 11:31 PM

**Luigi** · 23-07-2019, 11:31 PM

I believe the first font is called 'Katie'.

The second one 'Smeg'.

**OhOh** · 26-07-2019, 12:20 PM

Originally Posted by Luigi

I believe the first font is called 'Katie'.

Copied from an English language GIF supplier more likely

Which she probably fails to comprehend that the word, "always", actually represents the concept of a never ending commitment

**jabir** · 14-08-2019, 12:16 PM

The last time all living humans were together on Earth was 20 Nov 2000.

Since then there has always been someone on the ISS.

**jabir** · 23-08-2019, 03:22 PM

The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; just post the wrong answer.

**tomcat** · 23-08-2019, 03:26 PM

Originally Posted by jabir

The last time all living humans were together on Earth was 20 Nov 2000.

...disagree: FaRT was posting from space in the late 90s...

**Saint Willy** · 24-08-2019, 11:41 AM

Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai

I am Thinking of Quantum entanglement where entangled particles remain connected so that actions performed on one affect the other instantaneously , even when separated by great distances.
So the thought would be , why can't entangled particles be used for intantanouse communications over great distances?
maintain one entangled particle on earth and transport the other to Mars. (there is a 13 min communication lag now) . change the "spin" on one and the spin on the other changes instantaneously
Right is 1, left is 0 and you have a binary language.

I did a google search and it seems that there ai research being done on the subject right now.One problem is isolating the particles so that they don't become disentangled or entangled to another particle. and some other issues that I did not focus on or understand.

But IMO this is agame changing proposition, with many possible applications that can circumvent the light speed limitation.

Wow, you thought of it?

Genius.