HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: grs01150@stat.appstate.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: Virtual reality, the brain, and high-speed modems.
Date: 14 Apr 92 19:22:48 GMT
Organization: Appalachian State University

In article <1992Apr7.160153.13146@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>, mjg51721@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Michael James Gebis) writes:
> I have recently read a variety of stories concerning COMPLETE virtual reality..
> where the user has had an implant (or something, sometimes this is not very
> clear) in his brain which totally simulates all sensory input, and also receives
> all commands from the brain.
> My question is....how much information is this?  How fast an interface would be
> required?  Would a simple parallel port do, or are fiber-optics more realistic?
> Anyway, thanks.

These are the very problems being researched by VR technology and neurologists.
The brain takes in massive amounts of sensory information every second.  There
have been lots of figures thrown around in some of the previous postings about
the amount of data taken in by the human eye and since I don't know anything
about that aspect, we'll let them stand.  But take that information load plus
the data from the ears (sound), data from the skin, taste, AND smell and
you have a one helavalotov raw data entering the human brain at any given 
second.  The problem lies not so much in how much or how fast data is trans-
mitted to the brain.  The real problem that *no one* has been able to figure
out yet is how all this data is interpreted into something meaningful.
We know that the human brain does not interpret ALL the data it receives.
There are apparently some kinds of filters whether physiological,
psycho-cultural or both, that reduce and pick out the necessary information 
needed by the individual to make sense of the environment.  This has been
supported in part by research of hallucinogenic drugs which disrupts this
process and cause the mind to overload and "hallucinate" as it tries
to synthesize meaning from more information than customary.
All of this is a buffer or filter between the environment and the human brain.
At this time, we don't recieve sensory input directly into the brain.  
So questions arise as to what kind of data can be received and processed by
the human brain directly, if at all possible.  Thus the hardware problem is
going to be the easy part.  The really hard part is going to be figuring out
how the human brain does what it does with only 3 pounds of organic material.

Kevin
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: tim@nijinsky.ipac.caltech.edu (Tim Conrow)
Subject: Re: Those funky mushroom planets
Organization: California Institute of Technology
	<1992Mar20.002903.8842@rigel.econ.uga.edu>
	<s01g5INNoan@agate.berkeley.edu> <1992Apr14.110825.18771@stephsf.com>
	<1992Apr15.185622.26962@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 22:29:36 GMT

In article <1992Apr15.185622.26962@watdragon.waterloo.edu> jdnicoll@watyew.uwaterloo.ca (James Davis Nicoll) writes:

   In article <1992Apr14.110825.18771@stephsf.com> wengland@stephsf.com (Bill England) writes:
   >
   >  I don't know if this applies but, I just read a news paper  article
   >  on Sunday that described the discovery of the worlds largest fungus
   >  growing underground in a North Eastern US forest.  They estimate the
   >  age of the fungus to be about 1500 years which eaisly makes it the
   >  oldest living thing known to exist on the planet.

	   I thought Joshua trees were older?

							   James Nicoll

Not J-trees, I don't think. Most folks still believe the Bristlecone Pines
of Calif. and Nevada are the oldest organisms, dating back over 2k years;
maybe to 3k?? A few slightly fringish biologists think certain creosote
bushes in the Ca. Mojave desert are older. Somewhere in the back of my mind
there are other suggestions for the record, but I can't recall them.

-- Tim
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: neufeld@helios.physics.utoronto.ca (Christopher Neufeld)
Subject: Re: Dyson Sphere
Organization: University of Toronto Physics/Astronomy/CITA
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 04:26:59 GMT

In article <1992Apr08.232317.5570@onetouch.COM> csmith@onetouch.COM (Craig Smith) writes:
>jes2x@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (John Sommerville) writes:
>
>>Could somebody tell me exactly what a Dyson sphere is, and in which books
>>one plays a large part?  I would be most grateful.
>
>I can't give any stories that actually contained a real Dyson sphere.
>
>What it is, is a hollow ball approximately one hundred million miles in
>diameter, with a star at the center. People live on the inside surface of the
>sphere.
>
   You're being a bit too restrictive here. Dyson's sphere did not
specifically say that it should be a continuous shell with people living
on one surface (the outer surface could hold people too, you know). In
fact, I think he envisioned a huge swarm of free flyers with people
living within them, effectively tapping all the Sun's radiation for use.
It was his idea of a large scale engineering project intended to make
maximum use of the star's output.

>The sphere was proposed by someone named Dyson, hence the name.
>
>A number of problems with the idea:
>   1) It requires artificial gravity (spinning the sphere doesn't work)
>
   Only if it's really a continuous shell, and only if you insist that
people live on the inside surface rather than the outside. The outside
surface doesn't have a big star hanging in space, but people from
Vancouver or San Francisco shouldn't notice the difference... (I can say
that, I was born in Vancouver).

>   2) It requires some means of keeping the sun in the center.
>
   Admittedly a problem. With large scale energy transfer in place you
might do this by preferentially radiating the waste heat from one
hemisphere of the shell. You lose Carnot efficiency in that case. Note
that the central star is in a flat potential region, so it's not
unstable, with small perturbations amplifying, just there's no restoring
force. Of course, with free flyers they can collect reaction mass from
the solar wind and use it for orbital correction.

>   3) No night, unless a half sphere is placed around the sun.
>
   At night, go to the outside of the sphere, or spin your free flyer.

>:: Craig Smith                                         csmith@onetouch.COM ::

-- 
 Christopher Neufeld....Just a graduate student  | alien: n. a being who
 neufeld@helios.physics.utoronto.ca    Ad astra  | travels great distances
 cneufeld@terranet.cts.com                       | to molest our cattle
 "Don't edit reality for the sake of simplicity" | and trample our grain
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: mjg51721@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Michael James Gebis)
Subject: Re: Virtual reality, the brain, and high-speed modems.
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 20:05:06 GMT

nickh@CS.CMU.EDU (Nick Haines) writes:

>In article <1992Apr7.182053.27694@cs.rose-hulman.edu> kempga@NeXTwork.Rose-Hulman.Edu (Greg Kemp) writes:

>   More information than you think.  Human vision consists of ~10^8 pixels  
>   with 16 bits of color information per pixel (humans can distinguish ~14  
>   million colors).  Images are processed at about 24 per second.  This comes  
>   to about 20 gigabytes per second per person (very rough ballpark figure).   

>Ahem.

>1. Human vision does _not_ consist of as many as 10^8 pixels. Most of
>one's visual field is kept hanging around by wetware---the actual
>input is only in the fovea (with small amounts of motion detection
>(eg) in the rest of the retina).

>2. 14 million colours => 24 bits, not 16.

>3. I stand by my figure (of ~500Mb/sec).

>Nick Haines nickh@cs.cmu.edu

Just to try to get this number even lower.....
Wouldn't a more accurate number for the visual data enetering the brain come
from...
	A) The number of cones and rods on the retina
	B) The size (and therefore number of nerves) of the optical nerve?
	C) Remember, color is only really accurate in a small portion of the
	visual 'window'...away from the center, vision is probably only 8 bit or
	even lower.
And, just to be fair, and try to raise this number....
	A) It seems to me that spinal cord thickness is at least as great as 
	that of the optical nerve...indicating that quite a bit of information
	is carried on the spinal cord.  (How to estimate this???? I don't know)
Since I don't have a bio book here with me, anyone have information on any of
this?

Mike Gebis  mjg51721@uxa.cso.uiuc  OR  m-gebis@uiuc.edu
"AIM MY SMILING SKULL AT YOU"
From: 2frssprout@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Kevlar Balloon Space Station mk II
Date: 16 Apr 92 00:50:54 CDT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

To summarize the issue:  Why not use Kevlar balloons as space station hulls?

Problems:  Radiation (hard, soft, and electromagnetic), affecting both the
           Kevlar (James William Stepanek claims polymers tend to break down
           under intense UV) and the people (EM and hard stuff).  

Response:  Fix UV and EM problems by an outside layer of aluminum foil?

Another thought:  - Space is cold.  Station is warm.  Brittleness problems?
                  - Is there a real weight savings with Kevlar?  What is the
                       density vs. aluminum (or whatever we're using)?
                  - Advantage of Kevlar in flexibility during shipping,
                       possible weight saving (any other ideas)?

-- Kevin J. Rice, Univ. of Kansas, Lawrence 2frssprout@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu --
-- "Never appeal to a man's better nature.  He may not have one. Invoking his
self-interest gives you much more leverage." - Lazarus Long, aka R. Heinlein.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: tbmg9061@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Thomas B MacIukenas)
Subject: Re: Strength of skrith (sp?)
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 22:54:26 GMT

ecmtwhk@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Thomas Koenig) writes:

>That's what you get when you make a claim like that on the net without
>offering proof :-)

> ... [explains derivation of the formula F = a * M * R] ...

Oops.  I misunderstood what M was.  Sorry!
-- 
___-Tom_Maciukenas_(tbmg9061@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu)_________________________________
main(){char c[159],s[159]="main(){char c[159],s[159]=@@@;strcpy(c,s);s[26]=34;s
[27]=0;s[28]=34;printf(s);printf(c);puts(&s[28]);}";strcpy(c,s);s[26]=34;s[27]=
0;s[28]=34;printf(s);printf(c);puts(&s[28]);}
From: goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu (David Goldfarb)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: Dyson Sphere
Date: 12 Apr 92 10:37:37 GMT
Article-I.D.: agate.s93thINNpoe
Reply-To: goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu (David Goldfarb)
Organization: The Sinister Icy Black Hand of Death Club
NNTP-Posting-Host: hailstorm.berkeley.edu
Originator: goldfarb@hailstorm.berkeley.edu

In article <1992Apr12.053740.10984@husc3.harvard.edu> kim3@husc10.harvard.edu (Jason Kim) writes:
)As far as problems go, the first thing that pops into my mind is:
)what about comets? Won't they puncture your pretty sphere?
)
)Jason Y. Kim   

	If you've got the technology to build a Dyson Sphere in the first
place, clearing away comets and debris for a good long ways around seems
like a fairly trivial problem. And you could probably detect and destroy
anything incoming from quite a ways off.

-- 
David Goldfarb    goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu   (Insert standard disclaimer)
"Yes, netrek is very relaxing. The beauty, the calmness. It is being used
experimentally to reduce blood pressure in patients at the Mayo Clinic."
			-- Mark Hall, on alt.games.xtrek
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: randy@rss.dl.nec.com (Randy Bullard)
Subject: Re: Dyson Sphere & Ringworlds
Organization: NEC America
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 18:02:32 GMT

In article <3427@balrog.ctron.com>, smith@ctron.com (Larry Smith) writes:
|> In article <1992Apr7.183343.18093@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, jes2x@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (John Sommerville) writes:
|> >Could somebody tell me exactly what a Dyson sphere is, and in which books
|> >one plays a large part?  I would be most grateful.

[stuff deleted...]

|> a surface area around 1e9 times the Earth's.  No novels I am aware of use
|> the idea directly, but Niven's Ringworld stories ("Ringworld" and "The
|> Ringworld Engineers") use the idea of a rotating ring surrounding the sun,

One of Robert Silverberg's earlier works "Across a Billion Years" (I think 
that's what it's called.... it's been a while).  It was quite good as I
remember.  A super race that had been extinct from the universe for around
a billion years had built one that was found towards the end of the book to
still be inhabited by the robots and machines created by the race though the
race itself was quite dead.  

As I recall the book spent a minimal amount of time explaining the sphere
but it was definitely used.

-- 
- Randy Bullard  -    Dallas, TX randy@rss.dl.nec.com
					  Home (214)750-4934
					  Work (214)907-4463

| Have you ever rubbed your thigh with number 10 sandpaper and     |
| poured Red Devil turpentine on it?  I hate it when that happens. |
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: csmith@onetouch.COM (Craig Smith)
Subject: Re: Dyson Sphere
Organization: MCS/OneTouch, Inc.
Date: Wed, 08 Apr 92 23:23:17 GMT

jes2x@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (John Sommerville) writes:

>Could somebody tell me exactly what a Dyson sphere is, and in which books
>one plays a large part?  I would be most grateful.

I can't give any stories that actually contained a real Dyson sphere.

What it is, is a hollow ball approximately one hundred million miles in
diameter, with a star at the center. People live on the inside surface of the
sphere.

The sphere was proposed by someone named Dyson, hence the name.

A number of problems with the idea:
   1) It requires artificial gravity (spinning the sphere doesn't work)
   2) It requires some means of keeping the sun in the center.
   3) No night, unless a half sphere is placed around the sun.

I think there are more problems. Anyone?

A similar (but still problematic) idea is the ringworld, but you
probably know about that.
-- 
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: Craig Smith                                         csmith@onetouch.COM ::
:: Columbus, OH                                  ...!uunet!onetouch!csmith ::
::::::::::::::: "Life is a fulltime occupation."--Gene Kalman :::::::::::::::
From: jdnicoll@watyew.uwaterloo.ca (James Davis Nicoll)
Subject: Re: Those funky mushroom planets
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 18:56:22 GMT

In article <1992Apr14.110825.18771@stephsf.com> wengland@stephsf.com (Bill England) writes:
>
>  I don't know if this applies but, I just read a news paper  article
>  on Sunday that described the discovery of the worlds largest fungus
>  growing underground in a North Eastern US forest.  They estimate the
>  age of the fungus to be about 1500 years which eaisly makes it the
>  oldest living thing known to exist on the planet.

	I thought Joshua trees were older?

	I recently read an introductory work on invertebrates, and in
the final chapter, they discussed lifespans of abysmal crustaceans. As
temperatures drop, the lifespans increase, and it is possible, although
the author thought it unlikely, that there are deep sea crustaceans as
old as tens of millenia.

	I suppose one could argue organisms which reproduce by fission
are as old as their species...

							James Nicoll
From: smith@ctron.com (Larry Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: Dyson Sphere & Ringworlds
Date: 8 Apr 92 17:14:50 GMT
Reply-To: smith@ctron.com
Organization: Cabletron Systems, Inc.

In article <1992Apr7.183343.18093@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, jes2x@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (John Sommerville) writes:
>Could somebody tell me exactly what a Dyson sphere is, and in which books
>one plays a large part?  I would be most grateful.

According to Freeman Dyson, it is a sphere of material placed around a star
to permit trapping and using it's entire energy output.  He was discussing
this in theoretical terms, assuming shields or dust, but SF writers adopted
the idea has a continuous shell with a habitable surface on the inside
(maintained by artificial gravity generators spotted around the outside) and
a surface area around 1e9 times the Earth's.  No novels I am aware of use
the idea directly, but Niven's Ringworld stories ("Ringworld" and "The
Ringworld Engineers") use the idea of a rotating ring surrounding the sun,
like a slice of a Dyson sphere, an idea that eliminates the need for gravity
generators, since it can be spun for gravity, and still leaves a world with
about 3e6 times Earth's surface area.  "Ringworld" can be read on it's own,
but "The Ringworld Engineers" doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless you
have read "Protector".

Question: Niven says that a Ringworld needs to spin at 770 miles/sec to
maintain 1g at 1au.  How strong a material is needed to support this?
Can diamond fiber do the job, or is it beyond any theoretical material?

Larry Smith (smith@ctron.com) No, I don't speak for Cabletron.
-------------------------------------------------------------
I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a "disgrace",
that two are called a "law firm", and that three or more become a "Congress".
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: moonman@camelot.bradley.edu (Craig Levin)
Subject: What if the Sun dimmed?
Organization: House of the Moss Rose
Date: 10 Apr 92 00:43:29 GMT

	I have been taking an astronomy class, and we were discussing
the issue of the solar neutrino problem-that only a third of the
expected yield of neutrinos was being observed-and I had a brainflash:
the core of the sun has cooled, and as the effects of this core
cooling percolate through the rest of the sun, the sun will radiate
less energy and cool. Have there ever been any stories about the
effects of a suddenly cooler sun, and, if not, what might these
effects be?

--
Craig\The Moonman\Levin       Lt. Pedro de Alcazar, RN (Portugal)
moonman@buhub.bradley.edu     House of the Moss Rose, Barony of
moonman@camelot.bradley.edu   Illiton, Middle Kingdom
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: cash@cbnewsm.cb.att.com (john.i.mccash)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Ringworlds & buckeytubes
Date: 9 Apr 92 20:27:18 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: AT&T

Someone earlier suggested buckeytubes as a possible ringworld foundation
material. As I understand the process of fullerene creation, it should be
possible to grow a fiber in such a way as to make it a long fullerene sheet
wound in a molecularly tight spiral. I'm not sure how to calculate the tensile
strength of such a fiber, but I'm sure it would be far in excess of any other
non-exotic (i.e. nuclear polymer, bound quarks, etc.) fiber possible. Any
chemists familiar with fullerenes care to comment?
							John
							cash@odutsa.att.com
From: dug@hpopd.pwd.hp.com (Dug Smith)
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 16:04:18 GMT
Subject: Re: Magnetic sails
Organization: Hewlett-Packard NSG-PWD, UK.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science

This sounds like a hoax to me.  What month's magazine did you say it was?

:-)


Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Psychohistory
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 20:53:15 GMT
Organization: SPSS Inc.

In article <1992Apr15.162033.24449@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> abb3w@fulton.seas.Virginia.EDU 
(Arthur Bernard Byrne) writes:
>	The two positions are not mutually exclusive. Gaal Dornick was
>brought in to the Seldon Project (then to become the 51st mathematician)
>from off planet. Most, if not all, of the people capable of doing the
>work were probably gathered up by the formation of the Seldon Project,
>helping doctor Seldon and preventing anyone from accidentally interfering
>with his work. By the time he finished getting his project going, there
>may not have been anyone OUTSIDE the project capable of doing the work.
>In effect, he was the first crystalization site, and a single crystal
>precipitated.

Well, this kind of intellectual imperialism is impossible on our one
planet, to say nothing of a galactic empire.  An uncanny number of
scientific discoveries and technological innovations were thought up by
multiple people.  (I think I first became aware of this from one of
Asimov's essays.)  If the world is ripe for a particular scientific
discovery, there's no stopping it.

As for keeping scientific secrets, look at how well we're doing keeping
the atomic bomb under a hat.

Perhaps the Galactic Empire, or the Second Foundation, has such fascistic
control of every planet in the galaxy that nothing like psychohistory can
develop outside Seldon's project?  Well, one, I don't believe it, two,
such a totalitarian regime is antithetical to scientific inquiry anyway,
and three, such a regime isn't worth preserving from the dark ages.

You're making me feel like a spoilsport...  When you dissect psychohistory,
I don't think it holds up.  Fortunately, that doesn't detract from the
enjoyment of the trilogy.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: csmith@onetouch.COM (Craig Smith)
Subject: Re: Dyson Sphere & Ringworlds
Organization: MCS/OneTouch, Inc.
Date: Thu, 09 Apr 92 13:00:32 GMT

smith@ctron.com (Larry Smith) writes:

>Question: Niven says that a Ringworld needs to spin at 770 miles/sec to
>maintain 1g at 1au.  How strong a material is needed to support this?
>Can diamond fiber do the job, or is it beyond any theoretical material?

Larry Niven actually wrote an essay on the subject of the Ringworld, and
yes, diamond fiber is not strong enough.  He left the question of the
material of the Ringworld unanswered, merely describing it as somewhat
metalic-looking.
-- 
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: Craig Smith                                         csmith@onetouch.COM ::
:: Columbus, OH                                  ...!uunet!onetouch!csmith ::
::::::::::::::: "Life is a fulltime occupation."--Gene Kalman :::::::::::::::
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: Psychohistory
Date: 10 Apr 92 20:18:51 GMT
Organization: SPSS Inc.

In article <1992Apr09.160916.14693@onetouch.COM> csmith@onetouch.COM (Craig Smith) writes:
>I have a major gripe with Foundation's Psychohistory.
>
>It is based on the gas laws, which say that while the actions of a single
>atom are not predictable, a large enough quantity of gas is highly predictable.
>Asimov took this and applied it to people to make pychohistory.
>
>The problem is, that every major turning point was predicted by Harry Seldon,
>but the actual change was accomplished, not by masses of humanity, but
>by a single person!
>
>Now, while following the actions of a mass of people does not make for
>a good story, he contradicts the main point the the series by doing
>this.
>
>Actually, if we look at history as we know it now, at the center of every
>major event in history stood a single person, not a mass of people.
>
>Any refutations? comments?

Refutations: Read _War and Peace_, particularly the philosophical section
at the end.  In brief, Tolstoy argues that human events *are* caused
by masses of people.  (Of course, maybe both of you are wrong.)

Comments:

   Interviewer: Welcome to 'State your claim'!  First, we have with us
      psychohistorian Hari Seldon!

   Hari Seldon: My theory is that when you get enough people together
     history is determinate.  I say the Galactic Empire is going to
     fall apart for 30,000 years.  However, with careful management
     this can be reduced to 1000 years.

   Interviewer: But that wouldn't happen if you had never existed, 
     would it?  Isn't that a whacking big difference for one individual
     to make?

   Hari Seldon: Well, this is where my theory falls to the ground.