HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: be726@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Joseph A. Ellis Jr.)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: Illumination inside reflective spheres
Date: 12 Oct 1992 14:42:27 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: be726@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Joseph A. Ellis Jr.)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu



>In <Bvz3vo.5x2@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca> jdnicoll@watyew.uwaterloo.ca (James Davis Nicoll) writes:
>
>
>>	A while back, I proposed a form of Dyson Sphere where
>>the individual components were suspended on light pressure
>>from the primary. If, for example, some bright person processed
>>a small moon into a 1.5 AU reflective dyson sphere, what would happen
>>to illumination levels inside the sphere? What would the folks on
>>Earth see when they looked up?
>

Ummm.... hey, guys? Are you SURE you want to build that reflective Dyson
sphere? You see, all that reflected energy goes back to the focal point,
right? And at the focal point is the sun, right? And what happens when you 
start pouring all this energy BACK into the sun?


Can you say "Supernova"? I knew you could!  <<grin>>
-- 
 Joe Ellis  o/~ The Synthetic Filker o/~    |     TesserAct Studios
     Internet:   usr6184a@tso.uc.edu        |       P.O. Box 18577
        GEnie:   J.ELLIS22                  |     Fairfield, OH 45018
    All filked up and no place to sing!     |   New Dimensions In Filk!
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,sci.space
From: max@west.darkside.com (Erik Max Francis)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: Illumination inside reflective spheres
Date: 13 Oct 92 07:11:38 GMT
Organization: The Dark Side of the Moon +1 408 245 SPAM

be726@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Joseph A. Ellis Jr.) writes:

> Can you say "Supernova"? I knew you could!  <<grin>>

Nah.  Just raise the temperature at the Sun's photosphere, that's all.  

----------
Erik Max Francis   Omnia quia sunt, lumina sunt.  Coming soon:  UNIVERSE _ | _
USmail:  1070 Oakmont Dr. #1 San Jose CA 95117  ICBM:  37 20 N  121 53 W _>|<_
UUCP:  ..!apple!uuwest!max   Usenet:  max@west.darkside.com   464E4F5244   |
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie (russell wallace)
Subject: Re: asteroid impact
Organization: Trinity College, Dublin
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 14:59:07 GMT

In <1992Oct8.102322.6660@arbi.Informatik.Uni-Oldenburg.DE> Onno.Meyer@arbi.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de (Onno Meyer) writes:

>I read a newspaper notice concerning an asteroid (or some other
>kind of rock) passing the earth with ... million miles distance.
>The paper said that a rock that would hit the earth could be deflected
>with nuclear arms.
>I always thought this is science fiction. Any comments?

Such an object could in principle be deflected or disintegrated by
nuclear explosives, though this would be a nontrivial engineering
project. It woud depend on factors such as, how early we spotted the
object, how big it was, and how quickly we managed to get a spacecraft
out to it (therefore how far away it is from Earth by the time the
spacecraft carrying the bombs reaches it).

--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem"
Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin
rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie
From: ap1i+@andrew.cmu.edu (Andrew C. Plotkin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: Illumination inside reflective spheres
Date: 14 Oct 92 01:01:34 GMT
	<ldklk2INNa5e@appserv.Eng.Sun.COM>
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

Excerpts from netnews.rec.arts.sf.science: 13-Oct-92 Re: Illumination
inside ref.. Bill Spitzak@gree.Eng.Su (2465)

> I think you will receive exactly twice as much radiation at the surface
> of the sphere as you would if the sphere was not there.  As you approached
> the sun the contribution from the sphere would decrease and become tiny
> compared to that from the sun itself.

You're making the simplification of a flat reflector. Since the sphere
is curved, the result is somewhat different: as you get closer to the
sun, the size of the reflection will start to grow again, and when
you're at the sun's surface, you'll see sunlight in *every* direction.
(Draw some little pictures, you'll see.)

This causes big problems. The surface of the sun is whatever temperature
it is because of a thermal balance between heat leaking up from the core
and heat radiating out into space. In the mirror sphere, *no* heat can
radiate away, because it just bounces back and hits the sun somewhere
else, half an hour later. So the sun will start to heat up from the
outside in.

This won't cause a supernova, precisely; my guess is that the outer
layers of the sun will start to expand. The pressure in the middle
should stay the same, so fusion will continue. So things will get more
and more hellish inside the sphere until the sphere melts or the
hydrogen runs out. (A perfectly reflective sphere may be immune to
melting, but eventually there's going to be hot gas right out at the
edge, touching the sphere.)

Also, during this process there will be some scattering of light. So we
on Earth will see the sky slowly heat up, even away from the Sun and
Sun-reflection. Eventually it'll turn red, then yellow, until it's
sunlight-colored all around. We'll all be dead by then, of course.

I am unable to estimate time-scales for these processes, nor to estimate
which one will be faster.

--Z

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz)
Subject: Re: A nuclear question...
Organization: Computer Science Department University of Rochester
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 11:55:27 GMT

In article <1992Oct9.040719.16139@ida.liu.se> c89ponga@odalix.ida.liu.se (kand. Pontus Gagge) writes:

>>Of the top of my head, I can think of very few 20th century engineering
>>inventions that were put to practical use before the scientists figured
>>out how they work.
>
>I can think of a big one. Computers. Of course, the physical side of them
>was well understood, but the mathematics!


The mathematics was well underway before actual computers were built.
Numerical analysis dates back to the time when "computer" was a job
title.  The theory of computability was founded by logicians before
WW-2.  Hell, Gauss invented a form of the FFT.

	Paul F. Dietz
	dietz@cs.rochester.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,rec.arts.startrek.tech
From: liebea@marcus.its.rpi.edu (Adam Fred Lieberman)
Subject: Re: Humanoids (was Re: Teleportation == suicide)
Reply-To: liebea@rpi.edu
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 08:10:00 GMT

In article <Bvwwzz.9M6@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> hucke@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Matt Hucke) writes:
>In article <lsloan.718673763@nova> lsloan@nova.gmi.edu (Lance Sloan) writes:
>>randall-joshua@CS.YALE.EDU (Joshua Randall) writes:
...
>>That brings up another question of why most other life forms on ST have
>>two arms, two legs, and a head, but I digress...
>
>TOS mentioned "The Preservers", a race that was the ancestor of all
>humanoid life.

     I think the reason may be that most of the actors doing ST have
two arms, two legs, and a head...

                                       -Adam Lieberman
                                        liebea@rpi.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: Onno.Meyer@arbi.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de (Onno Meyer)
Subject: asteroid impact
Organization: University of Oldenburg, Germany
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 10:17:36 GMT

I read a newspaper notice concerning an asteroid (or some other
kind of rock) passing the earth with ... million miles distance.
The paper said that a rock that would hit the earth could be deflected
with nuclear arms.
I always thought this is science fiction. Any comments?
-- 
* Onno Meyer - Kastanienallee 40 - 2900 Oldenburg - Deutschland  *
*     e-mail: Onno.Meyer@arbi.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de        *
* Mathe-Student, und auch etwas Informatik...                    *
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: spagiola@frinext.stanford.edu (Stefano Pagiola)
Subject: Re: asteroid impact
Reply-To: spagiola@frinext.stanford.edu
Organization: DSO, Stanford University
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 92 16:53:01 GMT

The current Time 'special issue' has a very nice short story by  
Arthur C. Clarke on precisely this topic.

--
-
Stefano Pagiola
Food Research Institute, Stanford University
spagiola@frinext.stanford.edu (NeXTMail encouraged)
From: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: Teleportation (continued)
Date: 7 Oct 92 18:36:10 GMT
Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <1992Oct4.205059.182@pro-magic.oau.org> mikeu> id@pro-magic.ogi.edu (network.ucsd.edu!news!nosc!crash!) writes:
|Great episode of Star Trek, the Next Generation this week on the whole
|subject of teleportation.  I would assume the proverbial "wires" are
|buzzing on rec.arts.startrek.science, but since we don't carry that feed
|yet, I just had to comment here.
|
|I was especially interested in seeing how the teleportee might view the
|process.  Up until now, I had assumed that the disassembly process and
|re-integration were essentially instantaneous, or that at least it was
|perceived that way by the teleportee.

Well, if you had carefully watched the original ST series, you would have
realized this was not the concept.  There are several episodes where it
is made clear that the teleportee experiences some subjective sense of
time during transport (including one where the transportee comments "That
was a rough ride" or somehting similar).

|But after seeing the teleportee move about in the beam and see how things
|looked from his eyes, I think that Hollywood is getting further away from
|credibility as far as science fiction might allow.  Especially when the
|traveler actually acts on his own while in the beam and grabs someone else
|theroretically in stasis in the electron stream.

Eep, now *this* is getting a little extreme.  Each transport beam should
be completely seperate.
-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: pciszek@nyx.cs.du.edu (Paul Ciszek)
Subject: Re: Illumination inside reflective spheres
Organization: University of Denver, Dept. of Math & Comp. Sci.
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 92 01:07:13 GMT

dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) writes:

>Actually, a sphere doesn't have that precise a focal point, though this
>is somewhat of a nitpick.  More to the point...

       2
nitpick :  There is one situation in which a sphere is *exactly* the right
shape to produce a point focus, and that situation is reflecting light radiating
from the center of the sphere BACK to the center of the sphere.  Don't
laugh, some multi-pass cells used in laser work are built on just this 
priciple.

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: jdnicoll@watyew.uwaterloo.ca (James Davis Nicoll)
Subject: Illumination inside reflective spheres
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 20:07:00 GMT

	A while back, I proposed a form of Dyson Sphere where
the individual components were suspended on light pressure
from the primary. If, for example, some bright person processed
a small moon into a 1.5 AU reflective dyson sphere, what would happen
to illumination levels inside the sphere? What would the folks on
Earth see when they looked up?

						James Nicoll	
--
 "Captain, I can't help but feel interstellar diplomacy is out of our
	league."
 "Hence the explosives."
From: smith@ctron.com (Larry Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: Teleportation == suicide (and further digressions)
Date: 8 Oct 92 12:19:21 GMT
Reply-To: smith@ctron.com
Organization: Cabletron Systems, Inc.

In article <1992Oct1.190618.3580@cs.hut.fi>, oahvenla@robin.cs.hut.fi (Osma Ahvenlampi) writes:
>>What one would seem to want to actually do is to do a brain transplant, ala
>>some of the flakier horror flicks, so at least "you" continue to "exist."
>
>This would probably be the only possible way of doing it at all, as I can not
>imagine any machinery capable of reading all the information stored in the
>brain and constructing a new one. On the other hand, I can imagine medical
>technology advanced enough to take a brain out of the body and putting it into
>another, splicing all the nerves back. Much of this can be done today, if
>you could only make the brain and the body then accept each other...
>This would not be a way to immortality, on the other hand, as the brain would
>be the same old brain with 5% of the neurones dead. A few transplants, and
>the brain would be too old, even if the body was young...

Suppose you could build nueristors good enough to replace living neurons.
Suppose you program a squad of nanotech robots to enter a living brain and
replace the damaged or dying neurons as they where out.  The final result,
probably after many decades, would be a completely synthetic brain.  Would
"you" still be in that brain?  If so, are you not therefore "software"?  If
not, at what point was it no longer "you"?

Larry Smith (smith@ctron.com)  No, I don't speak for Cabletron.  Need you ask?
-
How about we all do something reasonable?  I bet that'll confuse 'em!
From: max@west.darkside.com (Erik Max Francis)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: asteroid impact
Date: 12 Oct 92 17:44:33 GMT
Organization: The Dark Side of the Moon +1 408 245 SPAM

Onno.Meyer@arbi.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de (Onno Meyer) writes:

> I read a newspaper notice concerning an asteroid (or some other
> kind of rock) passing the earth with ... million miles distance.
> The paper said that a rock that would hit the earth could be deflected
> with nuclear arms.

This certainly would work, if we got there in time and in full enough 
force.  Just detonate a nuclear warhead in the right place, and it will 
alter the path of rock, hopefully to miss the Earth.  (Shattering into a 
million pieces would be a very bad idea.  Instead of having a 
trillion-tonne mass slam into the Earth, you have a million million-tonne 
masses pepper the Earth, creating _real_ damage.)

The key is you have to get there early enough and have enough time to 
analyze the situation well enough to detonate the warhead at the right
position on the rock, so that it gives maximal push but doesn't cause any 
calving.

As I understand it, the present problem is with near-Earth asteroids.  
These are mostly tiny little asteroids that are zipping around right 
around our neighborhood.  Somewhat recently, a very small one passed 
between the Earth and the Moon -- that's less than 400 000 km.  Our 
problem right now is with spotting it.  If I recall, we discovered this 
particular body only a few days before aphelion, closest approach.  If 
that had been less than the Earth's radius, then it would have hit and we 
couldn't have done anything about it.

At the present time it would difficult to deflect an object, but we could 
do it if we had sufficient time warning.  How long?  A month?  Three 
weeks?

----------
Erik Max Francis   Omnia quia sunt, lumina sunt.  Coming soon:  UNIVERSE _ | _
USmail:  1070 Oakmont Dr. #1 San Jose CA 95117  ICBM:  37 20 N  121 53 W _>|<_
UUCP:  ..!apple!uuwest!max   Usenet:  max@west.darkside.com   464E4F5244   |
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: baylor@nebula.ssd.lmsc.lockheed.com
Subject: Re: A nuclear question...
Reply-To: baylor@nebula.ssd.lmsc.lockheed.com
Organization: LMSC, Sunnyvale, California
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 92 23:22:59 GMT

In article <1992Oct9.115527.293@cs.rochester.edu>, dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz) writes:
>
>The mathematics was well underway before actual computers were built.
>Numerical analysis dates back to the time when "computer" was a job
>title.  The theory of computability was founded by logicians before
>WW-2.  Hell, Gauss invented a form of the FFT.
                                           ^^^
Sorry, but I can't resist this: Without a computer, wouldn't 
this be a Slow Forrier Transform ;-)
From: be726@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Joseph A. Ellis Jr.)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: Teleportation (continued)
Date: 7 Oct 1992 12:36:58 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: be726@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Joseph A. Ellis Jr.)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, gatech!pro-magic.oau.org!mikeu (Mike Ungerman) says:

>Great episode of Star Trek, the Next Generation this week on the whole
>subject of teleportation.  I would assume the proverbial "wires" are
>buzzing on rec.arts.startrek.science, but since we don't carry that feed
>yet, I just had to comment here.
>
>I was especially interested in seeing how the teleportee might view the
>process.  Up until now, I had assumed that the disassembly process and
>re-integration were essentially instantaneous, or that at least it was
>perceived that way by the teleportee.
>
>But after seeing the teleportee move about in the beam and see how things
>looked from his eyes, I think that Hollywood is getting further away from
>credibility as far as science fiction might allow.  Especially when the
>traveler actually acts on his own while in the beam and grabs someone else
>theroretically in stasis in the electron stream.
>
>Up unti now, even in these discussions, we have considered teleportation as
>a scanning and breaking down process of atomic structure of the body and
>then sending the electrical image to a receiver where the sender is
>reassembled.  This episode seems to have changed the way that process is to
>be perceived. Perhaps, not to the betterment of the series.
>
>Comments?
>
>-------------
>Mike Ungerman

Well, _I_ thopught that this went a ways towards linking the 'movie' and 'tv'
versions of the ST transporter. Remember, in the movie version (where SFX has
a bigger budget!) they've been able to move and even carry on a conversation
while in transport. (RE: STII, beaming up from the Genesis cavern). TV
doesn't have the budget of a movie, so they freeze motion. It makes it  a lot
cheaper to do the sparkley dissolve.

How big a SFX budget are we going to give our transporter? <<grin>>

-- 
 Joe Ellis  o/~ The Synthetic Filker o/~    |     TesserAct Studios
     Internet:   usr6184a@tso.uc.edu        |       P.O. Box 18577
        GEnie:   J.ELLIS22                  |     Fairfield, OH 45018
    All filked up and no place to sing!     |   New Dimensions In Filk!
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,rec.arts.startrek.tech
From: lsloan@nova.gmi.edu (Lance Sloan)
Subject: Re: Teleportation == suicide
Organization: GMI Engineering&Management Institute, Flint, MI
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 23:36:03 GMT

randall-joshua@CS.YALE.EDU (Joshua Randall) writes:

>In article <66740@cup.portal.com> ts@cup.portal.com (Tim W Smith) writes:
>[stuff deleted]

>>Second, consider taking a ride, late at night.  There aren't many passengers.
>>The operators are bored, and perhaps inclined to experiment.  They might do
>>fun things like turn off the atomizer and, er, "play" with the passengers
>>after the scan is done.  As long as they kill and atomize them eventually,
>>whose to know?
>>
>>--Tim Smith

>Yikes.  Raises various interesting and nasty possibilities, such as the
>operators raping female scanees, or torturing them, or whatever.  Then what
>if one of the operators can't live with the guilt and spills his guts?  Can
>the scanee have him arrested for rape?  Or does it not count becuase that
>particular body no longer exists?

This reminds me of a SF novel a read a couple years ago, called "A Thunder
on Neptune."  If I remember it right, astronauts (children were used because
of their ideal size), were transported down to Neptune's surface.  But they
didn't end up looking like humans.  They looked like slugs with six legs.
They were re-designed during transport to have the optimum biology for
living on Neptune.

I find it very hard to believe that most of the planets and ships on ST
are suited for humans.  I don't think there are that many class M planets
around.  I think that crew members are adapted for the place they're going
to.

That brings up another question of why most other life forms on ST have
two arms, two legs, and a head, but I digress...

Lance Sloan
lsloan@nova.gmi.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: baylor@nebula.ssd.lmsc.lockheed.com
Subject: Re: Teleportation (continued)
Reply-To: baylor@nebula.ssd.lmsc.lockheed.com
Organization: LMSC, Sunnyvale, California
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 92 23:20:23 GMT

In article <golovch.718599322@prim.rose.utoronto.ca>, golovch@prim.rose.utoronto.ca (Gene Golovchinsky) writes:
>Speaking of heads, how did Data's head co-exist with itself on the Enterprise
>before data went back in time to lose it?
It didn't co-exist with itself. It co-existed with another head 500 years
older. (Truth to tell, I don't believe that one myself. Surely some
of the systems degraded in that amount of time. Data should be suffering
some memory loss &/or senility)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: TOBIAS@bonnie.physik.uni-stuttgart.de ()
Subject: Re: Teleportation == suicide (and further digressions)
Organization: Physics Dept, University of Stuttgart, FRG
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 08:29:54 GMT
X-News-Reader: VMS NEWS 1.24

In <1992Oct1.190618.3580@cs.hut.fi> oahvenla@robin.cs.hut.fi writes:

> >What one would seem to want to actually do is to do a brain transplant, ala
> >some of the flakier horror flicks, so at least "you" continue to "exist."
> 
> This would probably be the only possible way of doing it at all, as I can not
> imagine any machinery capable of reading all the information stored in the
> brain and constructing a new one. On the other hand, I can imagine medical
> technology advanced enough to take a brain out of the body and putting it into
> another, splicing all the nerves back. Much of this can be done today, if
> you could only make the brain and the body then accept each other...
> This would not be a way to immortality, on the other hand, as the brain would
> be the same old brain with 5% of the neurones dead. A few transplants, and
> the brain would be too old, even if the body was young...
> --

The problem with that is, that you not only can take the neurons but also
the rest of the brain. For example the venes. As we all know a lot
of things in the brain (take the venes) have to be "repaired" after some
days/years (i mean part of the cells). 
Also we know that this regeneration only can occur up to an certain
age. (the cells can only regenerate 50 Times (in average).)
So it`s quite clear that you have to solve this problem.

But if that is solved you won`t have to transplantate the brain because
the whole body can live furthermore.

Bye. Tobias.


Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: golovch@prim.rose.utoronto.ca (Gene Golovchinsky)
Subject: Re: Teleportation (continued)
Organization: University of Toronto, Department of Industrial Engineering
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 02:55:22 GMT


>*EEP* [and subsequent comment that I inadvertantly deleted and cannot recover
due to the obstinancy of vi] ...
>be completely seperate.

Given the fantastic (and computationally prohibitive) assumption of a 
transporter (saving us much shuttle-craft drudgery), why do you disallow the
possibility that the entire contents is not beamed together, but in separate
pieces?

As far as being inconsistent or under-explained, why that's the halmark of
the entire series and the core of much of its charm. Why you, never know when
they'll come up with another type of particle to explain why some member of
the crew suddenly (but quite reversibly) grows a second head.

Speaking of heads, how did Data's head co-exist with itself on the Enterprise
before data went back in time to lose it?

 2
G
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science