“Why Is NASA Working So Hard To Learn How To Defend The Earth From Giant Asteroids?”

[Lynn McGuire]

“Why Is NASA Working So Hard To Learn How To Defend The Earth From Giant
Asteroids?”

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/why-nasa-working-so-hard-learn-how-defend-earth-giant-asteroids

“Did you know that NASA is going to send a spacecraft on a suicide
mission in an attempt to change the trajectory of a massive space rock?
The good news is that the space rock that NASA will be crashing this
spacecraft into is not on a collision course with Earth. It is only a
test. But why has NASA suddenly become so concerned with figuring out
how to defend the Earth from giant asteroids? Could it be possible that
there is something heading toward Earth in the future that they haven’t
told us about yet?”

Because it is their job ?

Lynn

[Dimensional Traveler]

Because Congress gave them the job some 20 plus years ago? The concern
isn't "sudden". The lead time on any space mission is _decades_. So
the planning for this launch started somewhere around the turn of the
millennium at the latest.


--
Troll, troll, troll your post gently down the thread
Angrily, angrily, angrily, the net's a nut's scream.

[Quadibloc]

On Wednesday, July 7, 2021 at 5:51:56 PM UTC-6, Dimensional Traveler wrote:
> On 7/7/2021 1:24 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:

> > Because it is their job ?

> Because Congress gave them the job some 20 plus years ago? The concern
> isn't "sudden".

This is all true enough.

However, it's easy enough to see why someone might infer a paranoid conspiracy
theory about NASA keeping a secret about a deadly asteroid about to hit Earth in
a few years from current efforts to deal with this threat.

No dinosaur-killer asteroid has hit the Earth in several thousand years of
human civilization. So, obviously, there's no rational reason to expect one to
hit us in the next few thousand years either.

Given that, unless NASA knows something it's not telling us, research to
find ways to deflect incoming asteroids is _obviously_ a complete waste of money.
Hence, because our government never wastes money on useless projects just
because they're in some influential Congressman's district, clearly NASA knows
something it's not telling us.

As it happens, though, a large asteroid-sized comet is heading for
the Sun at this moment. It won't get any closer than the orbit of Saturn...
but for it to be coming this far in from where it was, 'way out in the Oort
Cloud, not the Kuiper Belt, means that it's really just luck that it isn't heading
in to hit the Earth.

Maybe we are currently heading into a dustier part of the galaxy where incoming
bodies will be a bit more common than they have been in the last while. That
I could accept.

John Savard

[Jonathan]

It's their job and a responsibility to take
such precautions.

But to be honest in the back of my mind can't
help but wonder too about the 'unspoken'.

Seems like near-misses by smaller rocks happens
more than is comfortable.

And we live in a universe where the large
evolutionary steps takes place mostly
via catastrophes.



--
https://twitter.com/Non_Linear1

[Jonathan]

On 7/7/2021 9:02 PM, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Wednesday, July 7, 2021 at 5:51:56 PM UTC-6, Dimensional Traveler wrote:
>> On 7/7/2021 1:24 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>
>>> Because it is their job ?
>
>> Because Congress gave them the job some 20 plus years ago? The concern
>> isn't "sudden".
>
> This is all true enough.
>
> However, it's easy enough to see why someone might infer a paranoid conspiracy
> theory about NASA keeping a secret about a deadly asteroid about to hit Earth in
> a few years from current efforts to deal with this threat.
>

Maybe they are telling us, we're just not 'listening'.


What Is NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission?

The robotic mission also will demonstrate planetary defense
techniques to deflect dangerous asteroids and protect Earth
if needed in the future.

[also a place to relocate, 'if needed in the future']


Perhaps most importantly, NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission
will greatly advance NASA’s human path to Mars, testing
the capabilities needed for a crewed mission to the
Red Planet in the 2030s
https://www.nasa.gov/content/what-is-nasa-s-asteroid-redirect-mission




--
https://twitter.com/Non_Linear1

[Jonathan]

Which has apparently morphed into this program after
Trump canceled ARM, and you can be pretty sure the only
reason he canceled it is because it was an Obama program.

Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Mission

The DART spacecraft launch window begins November 24, 2021.
DART will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from
Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. After separation
from the launch vehicle and over a year of cruise it will
intercept Didymos’ moonlet in late September 2022, when
the Didymos system is within 11 million kilometers of Earth,
enabling observations by ground-based telescopes and
planetary radar to measure the change in momentum
imparted to the moonlet.


https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/dart


>
>
>


--
https://twitter.com/Non_Linear1

[Jonathan]

After watching Trump closely the last four years
you can bet the conversation over this program
took this exact form....


Trump: What's on the NASA budget?

Admin: item #8 is the ARM program

Trump: what's that?

Admin: It's the Obama program to redirect....

Trump: Obama program? Cancel it.

Admin: What?

Trump: I said cancel it asshole, are you deaf?

[Hamish Laws]

On Thursday, July 8, 2021 at 11:02:23 AM UTC+10, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Wednesday, July 7, 2021 at 5:51:56 PM UTC-6, Dimensional Traveler wrote:
> > On 7/7/2021 1:24 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>
> > > Because it is their job ?
>
> > Because Congress gave them the job some 20 plus years ago? The concern
> > isn't "sudden".
> This is all true enough.
>
> However, it's easy enough to see why someone might infer a paranoid conspiracy
> theory about NASA keeping a secret about a deadly asteroid about to hit Earth in
> a few years from current efforts to deal with this threat.
>
> No dinosaur-killer asteroid has hit the Earth in several thousand years of
> human civilization.

Something smaller than a dinosaur killer would be a massive problem, the dinosaur killer is estimated at 6-9 miles wide.
The Tunguska Event flattened trees over 830 square miles. It's estimated to be a 50-60m in size.
What happens if a 500m or 1 km rock hits the wrong spot?

>So, obviously, there's no rational reason to expect one to
> hit us in the next few thousand years either.

So you're fine with camping in a dry stream bed because it hasn't rained recently...

>
> Given that, unless NASA knows something it's not telling us, research to
> find ways to deflect incoming asteroids is _obviously_ a complete waste of money.

Life insurance is pointless, I haven't died yet so I can support the wife and kids forever...

[Wolffan]

On 2021 Jul 07, Quadibloc wrote
(in article<b9378b59-6991-4c82...@googlegroups.com>):

> On Wednesday, July 7, 2021 at 5:51:56 PM UTC-6, Dimensional Traveler wrote:
> > On 7/7/2021 1:24 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>
> > > Because it is their job ?
>
> > Because Congress gave them the job some 20 plus years ago? The concern
> > isn't "sudden".
>
> This is all true enough.
>
> However, it's easy enough to see why someone might infer a paranoid conspiracy
> theory about NASA keeping a secret about a deadly asteroid about to hit Earth
> in
> a few years from current efforts to deal with this threat.

only if you’re insane.

>
>
> No dinosaur-killer asteroid has hit the Earth in several thousand years of
> human civilization. So, obviously, there's no rational reason to expect one to
> hit us in the next few thousand years either.

actually, no it doesn’t. the odds of something big slapping the planet are
not affected by past events, or at least not in that way. And sopmething a
lot smaller than a dino-killer would be quite sufficient to make a mess. The
boys at Imperial College, London, and Purdue Uni, West Lafayette, have a nice
little site https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/ which can be used to
simulate various impacts. I did a run with a small rock:

"Distance from Impact:100.00 km ( = 62.10 miles )
Projectile diameter:500.00 meters ( = 1640.00 feet )
Projectile Density:3000 kg/m3
Impact Velocity:35.00 km per second ( = 21.70 miles per second )
Impact Angle:45 degrees
Target Density:2500 kg/m3
Target Type: Sedimentary Rock"

I used a diameter of only 500 metres, and used a density of 3 tons/cubic
metre, a.k.a. rock and a relative velocity of 35 km/s, a.k.a. probable impact
velocity given the velocity in orbit of the Earth and the velocity in orbit
of an Oort object entering the inner system. Not that 35 km/s is on the low
side, total impact velocities of double that are quite possible, and note
that kinetic energy goes up by the square of the velocity; something moving
twice as fast would have four times the energy. Note also that the angle of
impact makes a difference; too low, and the projectile burns up, or breaks up
and then burns up, in the atmosphere, while too steep and the object treats
the atmosphere as a solid and explodes.

"Energy before atmospheric entry: 1.20 x 1020Joules=2.87 x 104 MegaTons TNT
The average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth during
the last 4 billion years is 3.0 x 105years"

This is the base kinetic energy, prior to atmospheric entry.

"The projectile begins to breakup at an altitude of 65600 meters = 215000 ft
The projectile reaches the ground in a broken condition. The mass of
projectile strikes the surface at velocity 34.4 km/s = 21.3 miles/s
The impact energy is 1.16 x 1020Joules = 2.77 x 104MegaTons.
The broken projectile fragments strike the ground in an ellipse of dimension
1.08 km by 0.762 km"

This is the energy on impact. Note that the object slows from 35 km/s to 34.4
km/s on the way down. Note that the object starts to break up. An object of
lower density (comets are mostly water ice, density 1 ton/cubic meter) would
break up at a higher altitude and might not make it all the way down,
depending on angle of entry. An object of higher density (an iron meteor,
density around 8 tons/cubic meter) will both make it down in one piece and
not lose as much velocity.

"Crater shape is normal in spite of atmospheric crushing; fragments are not
significantly dispersed.

Transient Crater
(https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/ImpactEffects/craterglos.html#transie
nt)Diameter:8.4 km ( = 5.21 miles )
Transient Crater Depth:2.97 km ( = 1.84 miles )

Final Crater
(https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/ImpactEffects/craterglos.html#final)D
iameter:11.1 km ( = 6.92 miles )
Final Crater Depth:611 meters ( = 2010 feet )
The crater formed is acomplex crater
(https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/ImpactEffects/craterglos.html#complex
).
The volume of the target melted or vaporized is 0.729 km3= 0.175 miles3
Roughly half the melt remains in the crater, where its average thickness
is13.2 meters ( = 43.2 feet )."

the crater would be normal, and would be 11.1 km in diameter. Note that this
means that if the object hit an urban area, kiss that urban area buh-bye,
it’s gone.

"Time for maximum radiation:284 millisecondsafter impact

Visible fireball radius:8.96 km ( = 5.57 miles )
The fireball appears20.4times larger than the sun
Thermal Exposure:4.97 x 106Joules/m2
Duration of Irradiation:2.11 minutes
Radiant flux (relative to the sun):39.2

Effects of Thermal Radiation:

Much of the body suffers third degree burns

Newspaper ignites

Plywood flames

Deciduous trees ignite

Grass ignites"

Above are the thermal radiation effects at 100 km, the distance I specified.
Note that the blast is causing serious burns and fires at a range of 100 km.
If this object landed in Central Park in New York, then New York City is
gone, and New Jersey and Connecticut are going to feel real pain.

"The major seismic shaking will arrive approximately 20 secondsafter impact.
Richter Scale Magnitude:7.6
Mercalli Scale Intensity at a distance of 100 km:

VI. Felt by all, many frightened. Some heavy furniture moved; a few instances
of fallen plaster. Damage slight.

VII. Damage negligible in buildings of good design and construction; slight
to moderate in well-built ordinary structures; considerable damage in poorly
built or badly designed structures; some chimneys broken."

Above are the seismic effects, at 100 km range. Kiss any trailer parks
goodbye. Properly constructed buildings may be on fire, but won’t have
damage due to the initial shock.

"The air blast will arrive approximately5.05 minutesafter impact.
Peak Overpressure:58100 Pa = 0.581 bars = 8.24 psi
Max wind velocity:112 m/s = 250 mph
Sound Intensity:95 dB(May cause ear pain)
Damage Description:

Multistory wall-bearing buildings will collapse.

Wood frame buildings will almost completely collapse.

Glass windows may shatter.

Glass windows will shatter.

Up to 90 percent of trees blown down; remainder stripped of branches and
leaves."

Oops. Here’s the secondary blast. We got trouble in River City. Those
burning buildings which didn’t have much damage from the initial shock are
now collapsed. Add Pennsylvania to the areas which will feel pain.

Remember, this is a small rock, moving relatively slowly. Bigger, faster,
rocks will be much worse. I had it hit sedimentary rock; a water impact would
have been much worse. A water impact would generate tsunamis, and the wave
from a water impact near New York would cross the Atlantic.

>
>
> Given that, unless NASA knows something it's not telling us, research to
> find ways to deflect incoming asteroids is _obviously_ a complete waste of
> money.
> Hence, because our government never wastes money on useless projects just
> because they're in some influential Congressman's district, clearly NASA knows
> something it's not telling us.

Given the destruction that even a small rock can do, taking precautions is a
Good Idea (™).

>
>
> As it happens, though, a large asteroid-sized comet is heading for
> the Sun at this moment. It won't get any closer than the orbit of Saturn...
> but for it to be coming this far in from where it was, 'way out in the Oort
> Cloud, not the Kuiper Belt, means that it's really just luck that it isn't
> heading
> in to hit the Earth.
>
> Maybe we are currently heading into a dustier part of the galaxy where
> incoming
> bodies will be a bit more common than they have been in the last while. That
> I could accept.

all we need is one...
>
>
> John Savard

[Quadibloc]

On Friday, July 9, 2021 at 7:01:36 AM UTC-6, Hamish Laws wrote:
> On Thursday, July 8, 2021 at 11:02:23 AM UTC+10, Quadibloc wrote:

> >So, obviously, there's no rational reason to expect one to
> > hit us in the next few thousand years either.

> So you're fine with camping in a dry stream bed because it hasn't rained recently...

No, but the people I was talking about apparently are.

Evidently I'll have to do something more to trigger your detectors for irony and or
sarcasm. But I began by explaining "It is easy to see why someone...", which should
have been sufficient to see I was explaining how some other people might think,
not what I myself believed.

John Savard

[Quadibloc]

On Friday, July 9, 2021 at 9:12:07 AM UTC-6, Wolffan wrote:
> On 2021 Jul 07, Quadibloc wrote

> > No dinosaur-killer asteroid has hit the Earth in several thousand years of
> > human civilization. So, obviously, there's no rational reason to expect one to
> > hit us in the next few thousand years either.

> actually, no it doesn’t. the odds of something big slapping the planet are
> not affected by past events, or at least not in that way.

While I was describing a fallacious process of reasoning, the _portion_ of it
which you are criticizing here does not contain the fallacy you cite, and is
indeed not fallacious at all.

It certainly is true that past events don't change probabilities - in the sense that
a run of luck changes the probabilities for the next throw of the dice.

But when the probability of an event is unknown - it doesn't come packaged
neatly from dice with sides you can count - that probability can validly be
_inferred_ from past events. If something happened a lot, it must be likely;
if something hardly ever happens, it must be unlikely. This is the basic idea
known as "Bayesian statistics", and because the possibility of a run of really
good luck or really bad luck can't be completely excluded, there is some
controversy associated with it - it doesn't have rock-solid theoretical
foundations, even if it still qualifies as common sense.

So someone can indeed infer that if a dinosaur-killer asteroid hasn't come by
in thousands of years, they must not come by all that often. The problem with the
reasoning involved has to do with the fact that 'not all that often' isn't 'never',
and given how serious the consequences of one are, even every 25 million years or
so is bad enough to be a serious problem. (Tunguska-like events, as some replies
have also cited, are also a valid point.)

John Savard

[Quadibloc]

On Friday, July 9, 2021 at 9:12:07 AM UTC-6, Wolffan wrote:

> On 2021 Jul 07, Quadibloc wrote

> > However, it's easy enough to see why someone might infer a paranoid conspiracy
> > theory about NASA keeping a secret about a deadly asteroid about to hit Earth
> > in
> > a few years from current efforts to deal with this threat.

> only if you’re insane.

And? Paranoia is a form of insanity.

John Savard

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <e010fa5f-c0bc-4b8e...@googlegroups.com>,

We have the same problem with earthquakes and the occasional
volcano; we can look of records of when and how often, for
example, the Hayward Fault let off its last humongous quake in
1868, but when I asked Hal for that date, he began by saying,
"Small ones? About two weeks ago."

So the Hayward is, so to speak, due to cut loose any time now.
But we don't know when that will actually be, and we keep the
seismometers active, looking for foreshocks.

--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
Www.kithrup.com/~djheydt/

[Lynn McGuire]

On 7/7/2021 8:02 PM, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Wednesday, July 7, 2021 at 5:51:56 PM UTC-6, Dimensional Traveler wrote:
>> On 7/7/2021 1:24 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>
>>> Because it is their job ?
>
>> Because Congress gave them the job some 20 plus years ago? The concern
>> isn't "sudden".
>
> This is all true enough.
>
> However, it's easy enough to see why someone might infer a paranoid conspiracy
> theory about NASA keeping a secret about a deadly asteroid about to hit Earth in
> a few years from current efforts to deal with this threat.
>
> No dinosaur-killer asteroid has hit the Earth in several thousand years of
> human civilization. So, obviously, there's no rational reason to expect one to
> hit us in the next few thousand years either.
>
> Given that, unless NASA knows something it's not telling us, research to
> find ways to deflect incoming asteroids is _obviously_ a complete waste of money.
> Hence, because our government never wastes money on useless projects just
> because they're in some influential Congressman's district, clearly NASA knows
> something it's not telling us.

Wow, another prognostication by Quaddie, a Canadian, telling the USA
what to do with its resources. And, representing himself as a USA
citizen yet again.

Yet, should a city-killer or a continent-killer asteroid appear, I am
fairly sure that Quaddie will join the voices of criticism against the
USA, "why did you not do anything ?'.

Lynn

[Quadibloc]

On Friday, July 9, 2021 at 11:26:15 AM UTC-6, Lynn McGuire wrote:
> On 7/7/2021 8:02 PM, Quadibloc wrote:

> Wow, another prognostication by Quaddie, a Canadian, telling the USA
> what to do with its resources. And, representing himself as a USA
> citizen yet again.

I was wondering when someone would read far enough to make that complaint.

> Yet, should a city-killer or a continent-killer asteroid appear, I am
> fairly sure that Quaddie will join the voices of criticism against the
> USA, "why did you not do anything ?'.

As I thought I had made clear, I wasn't against the U.S. working to
defend the planet from the asteroid threat, far from it.

Rather, I was explaining why someone would leap to the conclusion
that there must be an asteroid on the way in which NASA is keeping
secret.

The irrational deduction process that would lead to that conclusion
was, as I outlined:

1) We haven't had any asteroid impacts lately, so obviously there
is no reason to take them seriously as a threat.

2) Thus, if NASA is spending money on protecting us from asteroid
impacts, there are only two possibilities:

- they're wasting money, or
- they know something we don't.

3) The government never wastes money, hence there's an asteroid on
the way and they're keeping it secret.

I mean, really, I didn't think my post was so hard to understand.

John Savard

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <sca0rj$kqs$1...@dont-email.me>,

Lynn McGuire <lynnmc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On 7/7/2021 8:02 PM, Quadibloc wrote:
>> On Wednesday, July 7, 2021 at 5:51:56 PM UTC-6, Dimensional Traveler wrote:
>>> On 7/7/2021 1:24 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>>
>>>> Because it is their job ?
>>
>>> Because Congress gave them the job some 20 plus years ago? The concern
>>> isn't "sudden".
>>
>> This is all true enough.
>>
>> However, it's easy enough to see why someone might infer a paranoid conspiracy
>> theory about NASA keeping a secret about a deadly asteroid about to
>hit Earth in
>> a few years from current efforts to deal with this threat.
>>
>> No dinosaur-killer asteroid has hit the Earth in several thousand years of
>> human civilization. So, obviously, there's no rational reason to expect one to
>> hit us in the next few thousand years either.
>>
>> Given that, unless NASA knows something it's not telling us, research to
>> find ways to deflect incoming asteroids is _obviously_ a complete
>waste of money.
>> Hence, because our government never wastes money on useless projects just
>> because they're in some influential Congressman's district, clearly NASA knows
>> something it's not telling us.
>
>Wow, another prognostication by Quaddie, a Canadian, telling the USA
>what to do with its resources. And, representing himself as a USA
>citizen yet again.

Does he, by any chance, live in the US? That would give him a
certain interest, though not a vote.

>Yet, should a city-killer or a continent-killer asteroid appear, I am
>fairly sure that Quaddie will join the voices of criticism against the
>USA, "why did you not do anything ?'.

[Jonathan]

On 7/9/2021 11:47 AM, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Friday, July 9, 2021 at 7:01:36 AM UTC-6, Hamish Laws wrote:
>> On Thursday, July 8, 2021 at 11:02:23 AM UTC+10, Quadibloc wrote:
>
>>> So, obviously, there's no rational reason to expect one to
>>> hit us in the next few thousand years either.
>
>> So you're fine with camping in a dry stream bed because it hasn't rained recently...
>
> No, but the people I was talking about apparently are.
>
> Evidently I'll have to do something more to trigger your detectors for irony and or
> sarcasm.

I've found the only way is to first insert these...


<sarcasm alert>
.
.
.
<end sarcasm alert>

But I began by explaining "It is easy to see why someone...", which should
> have been sufficient to see I was explaining how some other people might think,
> not what I myself believed.
>
> John Savard
>

--
https://twitter.com/Non_Linear1

[Jonathan]

On 7/9/2021 1:32 PM, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Friday, July 9, 2021 at 11:26:15 AM UTC-6, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>> On 7/7/2021 8:02 PM, Quadibloc wrote:
>
>> Wow, another prognostication by Quaddie, a Canadian, telling the USA
>> what to do with its resources. And, representing himself as a USA
>> citizen yet again.
>
> I was wondering when someone would read far enough to make that complaint.
>
>> Yet, should a city-killer or a continent-killer asteroid appear, I am
>> fairly sure that Quaddie will join the voices of criticism against the
>> USA, "why did you not do anything ?'.
>
> As I thought I had made clear, I wasn't against the U.S. working to
> defend the planet from the asteroid threat, far from it.
>
> Rather, I was explaining why someone would leap to the conclusion
> that there must be an asteroid on the way in which NASA is keeping
> secret.
>

Well, the current state of asteroid hunting doesn't
paint a very pretty picture. Right now NASA is
only looking to find over 90% of objects more than
460 feet in diameter.

And of the 17,000 already catalogued they've lost
track of about 10% of them, 900 of them.
https://www.space.com/33576-asteroid-defense.html


A 300 foot asteroid could easily take us by surprise
and do plenty of damage. Tunguska was some 200 feet
and not all that long ago, I might add.

> The irrational deduction process that would lead to that conclusion
> was, as I outlined:
>
> 1) We haven't had any asteroid impacts lately, so obviously there
> is no reason to take them seriously as a threat.
>
> 2) Thus, if NASA is spending money on protecting us from asteroid
> impacts, there are only two possibilities:
>
> - they're wasting money, or
> - they know something we don't.
>
> 3) The government never wastes money, hence there's an asteroid on
> the way and they're keeping it secret.
>
> I mean, really, I didn't think my post was so hard to understand.
>
> John Savard
>

--
https://twitter.com/Non_Linear1

[Quadibloc]

On Friday, July 9, 2021 at 12:25:03 PM UTC-6, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:

> Does he, by any chance, live in the US? That would give him a
> certain interest, though not a vote.

I live in Edmonton, Alberta, where I can't even recieve U.S. television stations
over the air without cable.

It's just that sometimes I avoid clumsy phrasing by writing my comment
as an American would.

John Savard

[pete...@gmail.com]

This is called 'misleading people'. It's kind of offensive, hence the frequent
complaints.

Pt

[Quadibloc]

On Friday, July 9, 2021 at 5:47:16 PM UTC-6, Quadibloc wrote:

> I live in Edmonton, Alberta, where I can't even recieve U.S. television stations
> over the air without cable.

In fact, I just checked, and Saskatoon is at latitude 52 degrees North, while
Edmonton is at latitude 53 degrees North. Therefore, of all of Canada's
major cities, Edmonton is the one that is farthest from the U.S. border.

This is not to say that I have anything against the United States.

Its leadership in technology and the defense of liberty are things
for which the rest of the world should be profoundly grateful.

At present, however, it looks like the Biden Administration will not
succeed in putting through adequate electoral reforms prior to
the 2024 Presidential electiions, and thus either Donald J. Trump
will be elected President at that time, or someone else from the
Republican Party who espouses similar policies.

I do not expect either Canada or Australia to respond in an adequate
manner to such an event by taking greater responsibility for the defense
of their own freedom against the threats posed by Russia and China.
Britain and France will have all they can do to defend their own existence
in the world this may create.

ObSF: 1984, Chung Kuo, We, If This Goes On...

John Savard

[Dimensional Traveler]

Well, and the gawdawfully STUPID things he posts that have no connection
to reality.

[Michael F. Stemper]

On 09/07/2021 08.01, Hamish Laws wrote:
> On Thursday, July 8, 2021 at 11:02:23 AM UTC+10, Quadibloc wrote:

>> However, it's easy enough to see why someone might infer a paranoid conspiracy
>> theory about NASA keeping a secret about a deadly asteroid about to hit Earth in
>> a few years from current efforts to deal with this threat.
>>
>> No dinosaur-killer asteroid has hit the Earth in several thousand years of
>> human civilization.
>
> Something smaller than a dinosaur killer would be a massive problem, the dinosaur killer is estimated at 6-9 miles wide.
> The Tunguska Event flattened trees over 830 square miles. It's estimated to be a 50-60m in size.
> What happens if a 500m or 1 km rock hits the wrong spot?

Veritasium produced a nice video on this topic back in November:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Wrc4fHSCpw>

--
Michael F. Stemper
The name of the story is "A Sound of Thunder".
It was written by Ray Bradbury. You're welcome.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <sccf70$23r$1...@dont-email.me>,

Michael F. Stemper <michael...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On 09/07/2021 08.01, Hamish Laws wrote:
>> On Thursday, July 8, 2021 at 11:02:23 AM UTC+10, Quadibloc wrote:
>
>>> However, it's easy enough to see why someone might infer a paranoid
>conspiracy
>>> theory about NASA keeping a secret about a deadly asteroid about to
>hit Earth in
>>> a few years from current efforts to deal with this threat.
>>>
>>> No dinosaur-killer asteroid has hit the Earth in several thousand years of
>>> human civilization.

Which *could* mean we're due.

>> Something smaller than a dinosaur killer would be a massive problem,
>the dinosaur killer is estimated at 6-9 miles wide.
>> The Tunguska Event flattened trees over 830 square miles. It's
>estimated to be a 50-60m in size.
>> What happens if a 500m or 1 km rock hits the wrong spot?
>
>Veritasium produced a nice video on this topic back in November:
>
><https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Wrc4fHSCpw>

The astronomer got it right. The journalist, however, said
"Well, if a Chicxulub-sized meteor hits the Earth only once in
$NUMBER million years, then we don't need to worry about one in
our lifetimes." But that doesn't mean that after a mere 65KY
after Chicxulub, we couldn't get another next Tuesday.

In the midst of life we are in death.

--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
Www.kithrup.com/~djheydt/

[James Nicoll]

In article <qw1KB...@kithrup.com>,

Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
>
>The astronomer got it right. The journalist, however, said
>"Well, if a Chicxulub-sized meteor hits the Earth only once in
>$NUMBER million years, then we don't need to worry about one in
>our lifetimes." But that doesn't mean that after a mere 65KY
>after Chicxulub, we couldn't get another next Tuesday.
>

It does means the odds are pretty low.

Astronomers have been methodically inventorying asteriods, and our
understanding of where objects of various sizes are is much better
than it used to, with the plot-hostile result that if we are indeed
very unlucky and a big rock is headerd our way, it is quite possible
we'll have decades of warning. Which makes it more of a robot armed
with a can of spray paint problem than a hastily built rocket with
A list or former A list stars on board.

(plus we now have a long list of rocks we can steer into the Earth
if some town decides not to pay its anti-asteroid fee)
--
My reviews can be found at http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/
My tor pieces at https://www.tor.com/author/james-davis-nicoll/
My Dreamwidth at https://james-davis-nicoll.dreamwidth.org/
My patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/jamesdnicoll

[pete...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, July 10, 2021 at 3:26:59 PM UTC-4, James Nicoll wrote:
> In article <qw1KB...@kithrup.com>,
> Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
> >
> >The astronomer got it right. The journalist, however, said
> >"Well, if a Chicxulub-sized meteor hits the Earth only once in
> >$NUMBER million years, then we don't need to worry about one in
> >our lifetimes." But that doesn't mean that after a mere 65KY
> >after Chicxulub, we couldn't get another next Tuesday.
> >
> It does means the odds are pretty low.

The odds of it happening in any given year are low, but the impact
when it does (potentially extinction of the human race) is very high.
Thus, the risk to human life averaged over time between events remains
significant.

Pt

[Paul S Person]

Note: once again I must modify the subject because of non-ASCII
characters, which Eternal September rejects

Up here, we have two clearly forseeable disasters:
1) Another really big earthquake. The last big one was ...
catastrophic, and they seem come every few centuries.
2) Mt Rainier erupts again. This is even more spread out, but, since
Mt St Helens blew its top 40 years or so ago, it's been taken more
seriously.

For the earthquake, which, if it follows the usual spacing, should be
about 200 years off, we appear to be upgrading the building standards
to increase earthquake survivability. This might actually be helpful,
if it takes 200 years, because by then /almost all buildings will
probably have been replaced with new ones up to the new standards/.
Provided the standards work, of course.

For the volcano, what can you do? A heck of a lot of people are living
in the nice, easy-to-build-on, sloping plain that the lava (or maybe a
lahar, I forget which) scoured after the last eruption on its way to
Puget Sound, and as there is no reason to believe that an alternate
route exists, repetition seems likely if it erupts again. There is a
certain interest in trying to predict an eruption, but whether an
evacuation can be done that will get people far enough away fast
enough remains to (hopefully, of course, never) be seen.

As to the asteroid threat -- it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to
see what it would take to shift a Very Large Space Rock out of a path
that, if not changed, would cause it to collide with the Earth.

You never know when that sort of technology might turn out to be
useful.
--
"I begin to envy Petronius."
"I have envied him long since."

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <m46megtt8grti1pdq...@4ax.com>,

Paul S Person <pspe...@ix.netcom.invalid> wrote:
>Note: once again I must modify the subject because of non-ASCII
>characters, which Eternal September rejects
>

Oh, yes.

Ideally, there could be technology that would not only move the
rock away from the earth, but to dump it into the sun where it
never would be missed. I don't think I'll live to see it.

[Dimensional Traveler]

Why would you want to incinerate all that valuable ore, water and carbon?

[J. Clarke]

We really just need to learn how to move them around--that technology
is going to be crucial to terraforming, assuming we can find enough
ice in the Oort to actually make a difference on Mars.

[Quadibloc]

If one did want to have an asteroid crash into something, so that it would
never, ever pose a threat of hitting Earth, and was not concerned about asteroid
mining, I'd say crash it into Venus or Mars. That would require a lot less energy
than trying to make it fall into the Sun.

John Savard

[James Nicoll]

In article <qw3Ds...@kithrup.com>,

Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:

It takes more delta vee to drop objects into the sun than it does to cast
them into deepest space.

[Lawrence Watt-Evans]

On Sun, 11 Jul 2021 09:14:34 -0700, Paul S Person
<pspe...@ix.netcom.invalid> wrote:

>Note: once again I must modify the subject because of non-ASCII
>characters, which Eternal September rejects
>

>Up here, we have two clearly forseeable disasters:
>1) Another really big earthquake. The last big one was ...
>catastrophic, and they seem come every few centuries.
>2) Mt Rainier erupts again. This is even more spread out, but, since
>Mt St Helens blew its top 40 years or so ago, it's been taken more
>seriously.
>
>For the earthquake, which, if it follows the usual spacing, should be
>about 200 years off, we appear to be upgrading the building standards
>to increase earthquake survivability. This might actually be helpful,
>if it takes 200 years, because by then /almost all buildings will
>probably have been replaced with new ones up to the new standards/.
>Provided the standards work, of course.

And how big the quake is. It's possible to get one that simply isn't
survivable, period. We'll see.

>For the volcano, what can you do? A heck of a lot of people are living
>in the nice, easy-to-build-on, sloping plain that the lava (or maybe a
>lahar, I forget which) scoured after the last eruption on its way to

>Puget Sound...

It was a lahar.

>...and as there is no reason to believe that an alternate

>route exists, repetition seems likely if it erupts again.

Of course an alternate route exists; there are lahars on several
sides. Ashford, Randle, and Carbonado are built on three different
lahars. They all eventually turn west, of course; Puyallup and Tacoma
are probably doomed no matter what.

> There is a
>certain interest in trying to predict an eruption, but whether an
>evacuation can be done that will get people far enough away fast
>enough remains to (hopefully, of course, never) be seen.
>
>As to the asteroid threat -- it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to
>see what it would take to shift a Very Large Space Rock out of a path
>that, if not changed, would cause it to collide with the Earth.
>
>You never know when that sort of technology might turn out to be
>useful.
--

My webpage is at http://www.watt-evans.com
My latest novel is Tom Derringer & the Steam-Powered Saurians.

[Robert Carnegie]

It might be valuable if we can access it, but if it's
headed at, or preferably past Earth at pretty high
speed, what can we do with that? Place a colony
on it? Or a prison?

One or more stories where a space habitat sets off
on a cometary orbit leaving behind angry creditors...

[Robert Carnegie]

Superman seems to prefer to drop hazards into the
sun, though. So should I trust you or trust Superman...

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <m1gmeghtborri6m68...@4ax.com>,

Let's not try to hydrate Mars till we can figure out how to
restart its magnetic field. (In the space opera I'm currently
playing with, this was done something more than fifteen hundred
Standard years before the time of the action, and nobody knows
how.)

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <scff93$v2n$1...@dont-email.me>,

Well, if you can think of a way of landing it on earth *gently*,
go ahead.

(where are you going to put it?)

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <scfgli$mvi$1...@reader1.panix.com>,

So they become somebody else's problem?

[Dimensional Traveler]

Doesn't it require the ability to access it to alter its orbit?

[Dimensional Traveler]

Depends on what color Kryptonite he's been exposed to this week....

[Dimensional Traveler]

You don't "land it on Earth". Those resources are much more useful "up
there". You just put it in a safe, parking orbit!

[Dimensional Traveler]

Its the human way. :D

[Robert Carnegie]

I'm thinking that if people didn't want to come
home for a while or f we didn't want them to, then
we could fire a small crew capsule at a large passing
planetoid, more easily than actually moving the planetoid.
They then would use "local" resources - otherwise there's
not much point in using the planetoid in this experiment -
and, I dunno, do useful jobs in the outer Solar System.
I haven't yet decided what.

_Space: 1999_ is re-running where I am, a sci fi
TV series in which an unlikely explosion at a
radioactive waste dump on the moon flings it
out of earth orbit, to the dismay of the moderately
large crew of Moon Base Alpha. With unlikely
frequency they then pass a series of planets
which can be reached with their "Eagle" shuttles.
The Moon Base does not have resources to
survive indefinitely, so they survey each planet
as fast as possible to assess whether to transfer
the whole crew to the planet instead.

Technically, one idea for a near earth object is
to shoot one side of it with a big laser beam.
The vapourised mass will push the remainder
of the rock in a desired direction. So you don't
have to be on board to do that. I think anyone
who is on board the asteroid would be nervous.

[Michael F. Stemper]

It depends on what kind of reviews Supie writes.

--
Michael F. Stemper
Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding;
Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind.

[Paul S Person]

Apart from the economic concerns addressed elsewhere ...
suppose it caused the Sun to burp ...
and cause a few problems on this planet?

[Michael F. Stemper]

When I read comic books (mid-1960s) one of the colors was gold.
It was always said that if a Kryptonian was exposed to gold
Kryptonite, they'd lose all of their superpowers. Permanently.

Does anybody know how/if this was established in-universe? It
couldn't have been Kal-el or Lara, and they're the only Kryptonians
that I ever heard of running around on the Earth.

Was it some random person from the Phantom Zone? Kandor?

--
Michael F. Stemper
87.3% of all statistics are made up by the person giving them.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <21roegteabb58eseb...@4ax.com>,

Do some searches and find out how minuscule an asteroid is
compared to the mass of the sun. You could lose the earth itself
in a sunspot.

Things on the sun that cause problems on this planet are on a
much larger scale.

[Lynn McGuire]

Sol is almost 900,000 miles in diameter. Earth is less than 8,000 miles
in diameter. Even if Earth returned to the sun, the mass would not make
a noticeable difference to Sol.

Lynn

[Michael F. Stemper]

Nothing to worry about. Take a lump of iron with radius of 100 km.
Calculate its mass, using a density of 7873 kg m^-3. Compare to the
mass of the Sun, and find out that the Sun is ten orders of magnitude
more massive:

>>> from math import pi,log10
>>> from Astronomy.Solar import Mass as SolarMass
>>> rho = 7873 # kg m^-3
>>> radius = 100000 # 100 km
>>> volume = 4.0/3.0*pi*radius**3
>>> RockMass = rho*volume
>>> log10(SolarMass/RockMass)
10.780405922379982
>>>

(Okay, nearly eleven orders of magnitude)

The Sun will never notice.

--
Michael F. Stemper
Psalm 82:1-4

[Scott Lurndal]

Indeed. However it takes much less Delta V just to nudge the
rock into a solar orbit that will never intersect the earth's
solar orbit.

[Jibini Kula Tumbili Kujisalimisha]

sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote in news:zJ%GI.10245
$qk6....@fx36.iad:

Well, that depends on just what its initial trajectory is. It could,
for instance, be headed straight for the sun to begin with. Also,
does it really need to be in a solar orbit? As long as it goes
somewhere that it won't come near Earth again, we're good.

The devil is always in the details.

--
Terry Austin

Proof that Alan Baker is a liar and a fool, and even stupider than
Lynn:
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration
(May 2019 total for people arrested for entering the United States
illegally is over 132,000 for just the southwest border.)

Vacation photos from Iceland:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/QaXQkB

[Quadibloc]

On Monday, July 12, 2021 at 10:37:44 AM UTC-6, Michael F. Stemper wrote:

> Does anybody know how/if this was established in-universe? It
> couldn't have been Kal-el or Lara, and they're the only Kryptonians
> that I ever heard of running around on the Earth.
>
> Was it some random person from the Phantom Zone? Kandor?

During the Silver Age, one individual from the Phantom Zone did indeed
lose his super-powers permanently through exposure to Gold Kryptonite.

It was Quex-Ul, in Superman #157. It turned out that he was innocent of
the crime for which he was sent to the Phantom Zone, but he didn't know it,
because of an elaborate plot by the real criminals on Krypton.

John Savard

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <schv5d$ita$1...@dont-email.me>,

What I said, with the supplement of numbers.

[Scott Lurndal]

Jibini Kula Tumbili Kujisalimisha <taus...@gmail.com> writes:
>sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote in news:zJ%GI.10245
>$qk6....@fx36.iad:
>
>> djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) writes:
>>>In article <21roegteabb58eseb...@4ax.com>,
>>>Paul S Person <pspe...@ix.netcom.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>>>>Ideally, there could be technology that would not only move the
>>>>>rock away from the earth, but to dump it into the sun where it
>>>>>never would be missed. I don't think I'll live to see it.
>>>>
>>>>Apart from the economic concerns addressed elsewhere ...
>>>>suppose it caused the Sun to burp ...
>>>>and cause a few problems on this planet?
>>>
>>>Do some searches and find out how minuscule an asteroid is
>>>compared to the mass of the sun. You could lose the earth itself
>>>in a sunspot.
>>
>> Indeed. However it takes much less Delta V just to nudge the
>> rock into a solar orbit that will never intersect the earth's
>> solar orbit.
>>
>Well, that depends on just what its initial trajectory is. It could,
>for instance, be headed straight for the sun to begin with. Also,
>does it really need to be in a solar orbit? As long as it goes
>somewhere that it won't come near Earth again, we're good.

True, but it's nice to stash it nearby in case it is needed to
build the dyson shell some day :-).

[Kevrob]

Gold K was introduced in a Superboy story, in ADVENTURE COMICS,
#299, cover date AUG 1962 (released 28 June.)

https://www.comics.org/issue/17105/cover/4/

But that story was an "imaginary" one - it didn't count in the
main Silver Age continuity.

By September, Kal-El was confronting ex-Zoner Quex-Ul,
who was planning a Gold K revenge against the son of
Jor-El.

https://www.comics.org/issue/17250/cover/4/

[SUPERMAN #157, cover date Nov 1962.]

This was reprinted in a GIANT, though only a "68-pager,"
not the classic 80-page version.

https://www.comics.org/issue/23556/cover/4/

[SUPERMAN #227/G-72 June-July, 1970.]

If I were playing "warden," I think I'd have built a spacecraft
that would have allowed me to release the prisoner on a world
with high gravity, a red sun and no access to space travel.
Supes was in the Justice League by then, so he might've
asked his Thanagarian buddy Hawkman for a lift, or asked
Green Lantern for assistance. Unca Mort didn't like Supes
to interact much with the other DC heroes.

Supes had yet to visit the world later known as Lexor,
but Q-U wouldn't have powers there.

https://www.comics.org/issue/17933/cover/4/

[SUPERMAN #164, OCT, 1963 ]

Reprinted in a 64-page GIANT:

[SUPERMAN #239/G-84, JUN-JUL, 1971]

https://www.comics.org/issue/23556/cover/4/

I think I read both of these when they came out,
probably waiting to get my crew cut trimmed at
Larry's Barber Shop. I might have bought the
reprints.

--
Kevin R

[Michael F. Stemper]

On 12/07/2021 14.12, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Monday, July 12, 2021 at 10:37:44 AM UTC-6, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
>
>> Does anybody know how/if this was established in-universe? It
>> couldn't have been Kal-el or Lara, and they're the only Kryptonians
>> that I ever heard of running around on the Earth.
>>
>> Was it some random person from the Phantom Zone? Kandor?
>
> During the Silver Age, one individual from the Phantom Zone did indeed
> lose his super-powers permanently through exposure to Gold Kryptonite.

Okay, thanks for the info. This always vaguely bothered me. I didn't
think of the Phantom Zone or Kandor until I wrote that post.

> It was Quex-Ul, in Superman #157. It turned out that he was innocent of
> the crime for which he was sent to the Phantom Zone, but he didn't know it,

He was innocent but didn't know it? Wow.

--
Michael F. Stemper
Deuteronomy 10:18-19

[Kevrob]

Story summary:

http://supermanica.superman.nu/index.php/Quex-Ul

--
Kevin R

[Michael F. Stemper]

On 12/07/2021 16.20, Kevrob wrote:
> On Monday, July 12, 2021 at 12:37:44 PM UTC-4, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
>> On 11/07/2021 19.25, Dimensional Traveler wrote:

>>> Depends on what color Kryptonite he's been exposed to this week....
>> When I read comic books (mid-1960s) one of the colors was gold.
>> It was always said that if a Kryptonian was exposed to gold
>> Kryptonite, they'd lose all of their superpowers. Permanently.
>>
>> Does anybody know how/if this was established in-universe? It
>> couldn't have been Kal-el or Lara, and they're the only Kryptonians
>> that I ever heard of running around on the Earth.
>>
>> Was it some random person from the Phantom Zone? Kandor?
>>
>> --
>
> Gold K was introduced in a Superboy story, in ADVENTURE COMICS,
> #299, cover date AUG 1962 (released 28 June.)
>
> https://www.comics.org/issue/17105/cover/4/
>
> But that story was an "imaginary" one - it didn't count in the
> main Silver Age continuity.

Yeah, imaginary stories came to my mind, but like you said, they
didn't count.

>
> By September, Kal-El was confronting ex-Zoner Quex-Ul,
> who was planning a Gold K revenge against the son of
> Jor-El.
>
> https://www.comics.org/issue/17250/cover/4/

Ah, the linked summary explains how he couldn't know that he
was innocent.

> I think I read both of these when they came out,
> probably waiting to get my crew cut trimmed at
> Larry's Barber Shop.

Comic books at the barber shop? Cool. Rhodee's in Cooney
only had stuff like _Sports Illustrated_.

[Kevrob]

Larry's was brilliantly situated. It was a good quarter mile from
our town's Main Street, on the avenue that intersected it, making
it "downtown." But, it was in walking distance of the parochial
school I went to, which was across the street from the district's
junior high school. Many a young head old enough to be trusted
to actually follow instructions got haircuts there. It was also
quite close to the Long Island Railroad Station, so guys heading
into the City or coming back could get clipped before or after
they were in Dashing Dan* mode.

There was a pharmacy with a good newsstand near the barber and
the railroad tracks. Larry or a minion would get everything they thought
the locals wanted to read while waiting: all the Long Island and New York
City newspapers, SI, Sport, The Sporting News, hunting and fishing mags,
ones about cars, the newsmagazines, (Time, Newsweek, etc) and all sorts
of comics (DCs, Marvels, Dells or Gold Keys, Archies, Harveys) I'm pretty
sure I saw "The Police Gazette," but was told to leave that be.

My Dad would take my brothers and I every couple of weeks to get
our hair cut. (1 Dad, 4 boys) One could read a good stack of comics
while we all waited our turn. Larry must have retired as the 1970s
started up and I started high school. I was spacing the haircuts a
little farther apart by then, but buying my comics with money earned
from doing odd jobs. I don't remember if the new, much smaller
barber shop I frequented had any comics to read while waiting.
The new guy didn't seem to attract many families. The moppets
all seemed to wear their hair like John Denver, or Cousin Oliver from
"The Brady Bunch." I went to the local Catholic High school, and if
you wore your hair much longer than John Davidson† you got crap
from the Dean of Men./Head Football Coach.

* https://envisioningtheamericandream.com/2017/08/08/americas-trains-derailed-lirr-dashing-dan-and-the-the-summer-from-hell/

† The actor, not the hockey player.

ObSFTV: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_with_Something_Extra

--
Kevin R

[pete...@gmail.com]

Possibly not necessary. While it's true that Mars lost its volatiles to the
solar wind, it took 100s of millions or billions of years. If we can drop enough water
on Mars to terraform it, we can top it up as needed.

Pt

[J. Clarke]

Until we run out of water to drop on it.

I think moving it to be a moon of Venus might be more fruitful--get
magnetic fields and plate tectonics going on both of them.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <2e562496-d890-4fe9...@googlegroups.com>,

Not quite. It happened billions of years ago,

https://depts.washington.edu/astron/old_port/TJO/newsletter/spr-2016/xinyu.pdf

and I can't at the moment the article I saw saying Mars lost its
magnetic field to a massive meteorite strike.

Anyway, in the space opera the Martians (descendants of Terrans
who were marooned there when spaceflight was lost) sing songs
about how the magician Hlaak smote the heart of Mars and made it
beat again.

What really happened, some time before the thousand-or-so-year
Interregnum, nobody knows; so I didn't have to figure out how it
happened.

--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
Www.kithrup.com/~djheydt/

[J. Clarke]

On Tue, 13 Jul 2021 03:55:52 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J

The article you link says that Mars lost its volatiles over a period
of 500 million years, which certainly qualifies as "100s of millions".

As for losing its magnetic field to a meteor strike, I would love to
know the mechanism by which a meteor strike that did not destroy the
planet would permanently halt rotation of the outer core.

However there is more to this story than "solar wind removes
volatiles". If it were that simple then Venus would look like
Mars--Venus doesn't have a magnetic field either but it has a rather
dense atmosphere (and anybody who goes off on an irrelevant tangent
about how it's not as dense as a gas giant gets plonked). Apparently
there is some sort of atmospheric interaction that creates a
magnetopause--I'm not sure that anyone really understands the details
though. And it seems that Mars to some extent may do the same.

[Michael F. Stemper]

I have another idea:
REORBIT VENUS INTO A NEAR EARTH-LIKE ORBIT TO CREATE A BORN AGAIN
EARTH (1990).

[Quadibloc]

On Tuesday, July 13, 2021 at 5:02:08 AM UTC-6, J. Clarke wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Jul 2021 03:55:52 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
> Heydt) wrote:

> >and I can't at the moment the article I saw saying Mars lost its
> >magnetic field to a massive meteorite strike.

> The article you link says that Mars lost its volatiles over a period
> of 500 million years, which certainly qualifies as "100s of millions".

> As for losing its magnetic field to a meteor strike, I would love to
> know the mechanism by which a meteor strike that did not destroy the
> planet would permanently halt rotation of the outer core.

I found this,

https://www.universetoday.com/145976/when-did-mars-lose-its-global-magnetic-field/

which describes a new finding that Mars still had a magnetic field 3.7 billion years ago,
when it was previously thought to have been gone 3.9 billion years ago. But this doesn't
describe a mechanism.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2009/04/did-marss-magnetic-field-die-whimper-or-bang

however does discuss the asteroid hypothesis.

Since Theia hit the Earth without destroying it to produce the Moon, something analogous
happening on Mars to kill its magnetic field that early in the development of the Solar
System doesn't seem too far-fetched to me.

Earth getting a large moon, which helped the development of life, and Mars losing its
magnetic field, which hindered the development of life. Aside from suggesting greater
variety for imaginary solar systems in science fiction, it also suggests exoplanets may
be more diverse than we expect.

John Savard

[Quadibloc]

On Tuesday, July 13, 2021 at 8:17:42 AM UTC-6, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 13, 2021 at 5:02:08 AM UTC-6, J. Clarke wrote:

> > As for losing its magnetic field to a meteor strike, I would love to
> > know the mechanism by which a meteor strike that did not destroy the
> > planet would permanently halt rotation of the outer core.

> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2009/04/did-marss-magnetic-field-die-whimper-or-bang

> however does discuss the asteroid hypothesis.

And, indeed, it gives the mechanism.

Essentially, the magnetic dynamo in a planet occurs because of _convection_ between
the inner core and the mantle. Hot magma rises from the outer surface of the inner core,
hits the mantle, cools off, and falls down.

The asteroid impact caused the mantle to melt - so it was no longer cold, hence there
was no temperature difference and no energy input to stimulate convection.

That's a mechanism that can clearly _temporarily_ shut off convection. But the surface
of Mars isn't molten now.

Ah, but how does a dynamo work without a permanent magnet in it? So once there is
no magnetic field, convection can restart, but now no electric currents are induced by
a pre-existing magnetic field in the moving conductors... so you have plate tectonics,
but until the Sun's magnetic field gradually increases the planet's own magnetic field,
you may not have much of a magnetic field on the planet.

Also, in the absence of convection, there may have been a tendency for viscosity
to lead to the core and the crust rotating together instead of differently relative to
one another?

John Savard

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <sck2vq$qt2$1...@dont-email.me>,

Michael F. Stemper <michael...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On 12/07/2021 21.48, J. Clarke wrote:
>> On Mon, 12 Jul 2021 19:24:52 -0700 (PDT), "pete...@gmail.com"
>> <pete...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Sunday, July 11, 2021 at 7:45:03 PM UTC-4, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>
>>>> Let's not try to hydrate Mars till we can figure out how to
>>>> restart its magnetic field. (In the space opera I'm currently
>>>> playing with, this was done something more than fifteen hundred
>>>> Standard years before the time of the action, and nobody knows
>>>> how.)
>>>
>>> Possibly not necessary. While it's true that Mars lost its volatiles to the
>>> solar wind, it took 100s of millions or billions of years. If we can
>drop enough water
>>> on Mars to terraform it, we can top it up as needed.
>>
>> Until we run out of water to drop on it.
>>
>> I think moving it to be a moon of Venus might be more fruitful--get
>> magnetic fields and plate tectonics going on both of them.

Sounds great, but you'd still need water. There's a lot of water
in this universe, you just have to find it and move it.

>I have another idea:
> REORBIT VENUS INTO A NEAR EARTH-LIKE ORBIT TO CREATE A BORN AGAIN
> EARTH (1990).

Okay, what's the reference? Book? Film? TV series?

You'd still have to give it a massive satellite--or hit it with a
sizable planetesimal--to strip most of the atmosphere away from it.
Then introduce green algae to turn its reducing atmosphere into an
oxidizing atmosphere. Hey, it worked for Earth.

Thanks for the idea, though. If I ever get to book three, in the
year 560 AR (After the Reunion), they'll be speculating that
something like that might have happened before the Interregnum.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <9orqegtk7kr9qge0a...@4ax.com>,

If I can find the reference, I'll post it. Don't hold your
breath waiting.

>
>However there is more to this story than "solar wind removes
>volatiles". If it were that simple then Venus would look like
>Mars--Venus doesn't have a magnetic field either but it has a rather
>dense atmosphere (and anybody who goes off on an irrelevant tangent
>about how it's not as dense as a gas giant gets plonked). Apparently
>there is some sort of atmospheric interaction that creates a
>magnetopause--I'm not sure that anyone really understands the details
>though. And it seems that Mars to some extent may do the same.

Hmmmm.

[Michael F. Stemper]

On 13/07/2021 09.27, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> In article <sck2vq$qt2$1...@dont-email.me>,
> Michael F. Stemper <michael...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 12/07/2021 21.48, J. Clarke wrote:

>>> Until we run out of water to drop on it.
>>>
>>> I think moving it to be a moon of Venus might be more fruitful--get
>>> magnetic fields and plate tectonics going on both of them.
>
> Sounds great, but you'd still need water. There's a lot of water
> in this universe, you just have to find it and move it.
>
>> I have another idea:
>> REORBIT VENUS INTO A NEAR EARTH-LIKE ORBIT TO CREATE A BORN AGAIN
>> EARTH (1990).
>
> Okay, what's the reference? Book? Film? TV series?

Renowned Usenet kook, the late Alexander Abian:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Abian>

--
Michael F. Stemper
UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT Information
is ENCOURAGED, ESPECIALLY to COMPUTER BULLETIN BOARDS.

[J. Clarke]

On Tue, 13 Jul 2021 14:27:53 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
Heydt) wrote:

>In article <sck2vq$qt2$1...@dont-email.me>,
>Michael F. Stemper <michael...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>On 12/07/2021 21.48, J. Clarke wrote:
>>> On Mon, 12 Jul 2021 19:24:52 -0700 (PDT), "pete...@gmail.com"
>>> <pete...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On Sunday, July 11, 2021 at 7:45:03 PM UTC-4, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>
>>>>> Let's not try to hydrate Mars till we can figure out how to
>>>>> restart its magnetic field. (In the space opera I'm currently
>>>>> playing with, this was done something more than fifteen hundred
>>>>> Standard years before the time of the action, and nobody knows
>>>>> how.)
>>>>
>>>> Possibly not necessary. While it's true that Mars lost its volatiles to the
>>>> solar wind, it took 100s of millions or billions of years. If we can
>>drop enough water
>>>> on Mars to terraform it, we can top it up as needed.
>>>
>>> Until we run out of water to drop on it.
>>>
>>> I think moving it to be a moon of Venus might be more fruitful--get
>>> magnetic fields and plate tectonics going on both of them.
>
>Sounds great, but you'd still need water. There's a lot of water
>in this universe, you just have to find it and move it.

Venus has a lot of atmosphere--move some of it to mars. Yeah, it's
mostly CO2, add water from asteroids and introduce algae and wait.

[Jonathan]

That's not entirely true, much of the surface water
on Mars eons ago went underground, not all of it
was lost to the atmosphere.

Did you know the soul of almost the entire northern
hemisphere of Mars is up to 50% water ice just
meters below the surface? There's even a currently
existing frozen ocean the size of the north sea
on the surface of Mars that's around 5 million
years old, yet the frozen water is still on the
surface, protected from sublimation by dust.


Evidence for a frozen ocean on Mars
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2005/pdf/1741.pdf


Mars Has Much More Water Than Previously Known
But There's a Catch

At least, that’s the long-accepted view. But according
to a study published Mar. 16 in Science by a team of
researchers at the California Institute of Technology,
that scenario might be all wrong. Mars is dry, alright—
or at least it appears to be. But the researchers say
much of its water—from 30% to a staggering 99% of it—
is still there. It simply retreated into the
martian rocks and clay rather than escaping
into space.

https://time.com/5947142/water-on-mars/#:~:text=16%20in%20Science%20by%20a,of%20it%E2%80%94is%20still%20there.

> Not quite. It happened billions of years ago,
>
> https://depts.washington.edu/astron/old_port/TJO/newsletter/spr-2016/xinyu.pdf
>
> and I can't at the moment the article I saw saying Mars lost its
> magnetic field to a massive meteorite strike.
>
> Anyway, in the space opera the Martians (descendants of Terrans
> who were marooned there when spaceflight was lost) sing songs
> about how the magician Hlaak smote the heart of Mars and made it
> beat again.
>
> What really happened, some time before the thousand-or-so-year
> Interregnum, nobody knows; so I didn't have to figure out how it
> happened.
>


--

https://twitter.com/Non_Linear1

[J. Clarke]

Lot of unknowns.
>
>John Savard

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <sck9gq$kis$1...@dont-email.me>,

Michael F. Stemper <michael...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On 13/07/2021 09.27, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>> In article <sck2vq$qt2$1...@dont-email.me>,
>> Michael F. Stemper <michael...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 12/07/2021 21.48, J. Clarke wrote:
>
>>>> Until we run out of water to drop on it.
>>>>
>>>> I think moving it to be a moon of Venus might be more fruitful--get
>>>> magnetic fields and plate tectonics going on both of them.
>>
>> Sounds great, but you'd still need water. There's a lot of water
>> in this universe, you just have to find it and move it.
>>
>>> I have another idea:
>>> REORBIT VENUS INTO A NEAR EARTH-LIKE ORBIT TO CREATE A BORN AGAIN
>>> EARTH (1990).
>>
>> Okay, what's the reference? Book? Film? TV series?
>
>Renowned Usenet kook, the late Alexander Abian:
><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Abian>
>

Oh, dear me.

Date, 1991.

Anybody have any idea whether he'd ever read Williamson's _The
Legion of Space_ (1934, revised 1947)? In that story the moon
was destroyed in the course of war; in later volumes it was
replaced by an orbital casino.

[Paul S Person]

So, how large would it have to be for the Sun to notice?
--
"I begin to envy Petronius."
"I have envied him long since."

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <1OednZfXYKMULnD9...@giganews.com>,

Uh, I think you meant "soil"?

But you're still giving me ideas. :)

>hemisphere of Mars is up to 50% water ice just
>meters below the surface? There's even a currently
>existing frozen ocean the size of the north sea
>on the surface of Mars that's around 5 million
>years old, yet the frozen water is still on the
>surface, protected from sublimation by dust.
>
>
>Evidence for a frozen ocean on Mars
>https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2005/pdf/1741.pdf
>
>
>Mars Has Much More Water Than Previously Known
>But There's a Catch
>
>At least, that’s the long-accepted view. But according
>to a study published Mar. 16 in Science by a team of
>researchers at the California Institute of Technology,
>that scenario might be all wrong. Mars is dry, alright—
>or at least it appears to be. But the researchers say
>much of its water—from 30% to a staggering 99% of it—
>is still there. It simply retreated into the
>martian rocks and clay rather than escaping
>into space.
>
>https://time.com/5947142/water-on-mars/#:~:text=16%20in%20Science%20by%20a,of%20it%E2%80%94is%20still%20there.
>

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <7gfregdv25bodjge1...@4ax.com>,

Paul S Person <pspe...@ix.netcom.invalid> wrote:

Larger, I think, than Jupiter. You'd need another star.

[Jibini Kula Tumbili Kujisalimisha]

djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote in
news:qw6zH...@kithrup.com:

According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter)

"It (Jupiter) is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half
times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined,
but slightly less than one-thousandth the mass of the Sun."

So I'd say you're probably right. Especially since it's largely
made of the same stuff - hydrogen.

--
Terry Austin

Proof that Alan Baker is a liar and a fool, and even stupider than
Lynn:
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration
(May 2019 total for people arrested for entering the United States
illegally is over 132,000 for just the southwest border.)

Vacation photos from Iceland:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/QaXQkB

[Michael F. Stemper]

On 13/07/2021 10.38, Jonathan wrote:

How the f--- did you climb out of my kill-file?

--
Michael F. Stemper
I feel more like I do now than I did when I came in.

[Jay E. Morris]

On 7/13/2021 12:14 PM, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
> On 13/07/2021 10.38, Jonathan wrote:
>
> How the f--- did you climb out of my kill-file?
>

Looks like an email address change.

[Jonathan]

Yes it was a typo, and when the wrongly typed word
just happens to be correctly spelled it gets through
the spell-checker.

It should give you ideas. I've been studying Mars
ever since the first rover and the picture painted
is there has to be life there.

Most astrobiologists would be shocked to find
little to no life. The incredible enthusiasm and
belief life is on Mars from the astrobiology
community can be seen with this one click
of the last conference.

Have you even seen so many papers being presented
for one subject? Literally the race is on to be
the first to make the big discovery.

Click here, you won't believe it...
2017 Abscicon Author list (A-K)
https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/abscicon2017/authorindex.cfm

The field didn't explode like this after the rovers
by accident, they know what they found


And let me explain exactly why there is so much
excitement over the possibility of life.

Like I said almost the entire northern half
of Mars has as much as 50% water ice in
the near subsurface.

But it gets better, as you go deeper the temperatures
warm and the protection from solar radiation
increases too.

And since Martian soil is heavy is microbe loving
iron, silicon, potassium and sulfur logically
as you go steadily deeper a water zone MUST be
present.

Not just warm wet soil, but nutrient rich and well
protected from solar radiation. Almost the exact
same hydrothermal environment from which first life
on Earth is thought to have evolved.

You have to picture how the biosphere on Earth
and the potential biosphere on Mars differs.

On Earth of course the biosphere is mostly
the interaction between the ground and
the atmosphere.

On Mars the lack of atmosphere means the
potential biosphere has shifted to the interaction
between the ground and the subsurface.
Residing in vast lakes of underground water.

Let me show you the sea-floor of just such
an underground shallow sea. At Meridiani
there once was an shallow underground sea
or wet-sand environment. As ice-ages on Mars
wax and wane the underground pool of water
finally dried up. And after thousands of years
wind erosion uncovered this underground
sea floor for all to see.

Here's a picture of it, notice that the horizon
is absolutely /razor flat/ ONLY a recent body
of water or ice can create that flat horizon.

This is a Martian sea-floor, exposed by erosion.
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/405/tn/1P164131978EFF5000P2663L5M1_L4L5L5L5L6.jpg.html

Can you even find a single rock anywhere?

And guess what they found on the now exposed
sea-floor. Countless billions of these things.
The highly uniform sizes and vast numbers are
a hallmark of...life, microbial life, not
geology that specializes in one unique form
after another.

Can you explain this using only geological explanations?
It's not possible.
https://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/all/2/m/709/2M189317905EFFAL00P2956M2M1.JPG


And this exposed sea floor is coated from horizon
to horizon by the Martian spheres, all coming
in three /uniform/ sizes. Countless billions
of them like these.

http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/530/tn/1P175230555EFF5702P2456L5M1_L4L5L5L5L6.jpg.html

http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/123/tn/1P139098299EFF2809P2267L5M1_L2L5L5L6L6.jpg.html

https://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/all/opportunity_m014.html

https://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/all/1/m/105/1M137503553EFF2208P2956M2M1.HTML


You can see their process of growth due to
repeated soaking clearly in the sphere in
the...lower left...of this pic, in
the sphere that has a half shell.

https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/all/1/m/106/1M137593860EFF2208P2956M2M1.JPG



This stunning pic may show their ongoing
formation. This is a pic of a patch of soft
clay like sphere rich soil.

http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/012/tn/1P129250922EFF0224P2374L5M1_L4L5L5L5L6.jpg.html

Yes, clay on the surface of Mars. How can one
explain clay sitting out on the surface when
supposedly it's been dead and dry for billions
of years?

Easy to explain, Mars not only has plenty of
underground water/ice it also has ice-ages
where temps rise and fall. And Meridiani
shows a geologically very young site.
(no rocks means young)

>
>> hemisphere of Mars is up to 50% water ice just
>> meters below the surface? There's even a currently
>> existing frozen ocean the size of the north sea
>> on the surface of Mars that's around 5 million
>> years old, yet the frozen water is still on the
>> surface, protected from sublimation by dust.
>>
>>
>> Evidence for a frozen ocean on Mars
>> https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2005/pdf/1741.pdf
>>
>>
>> Mars Has Much More Water Than Previously Known
>> But There's a Catch
>>
>> At least, that’s the long-accepted view. But according
>> to a study published Mar. 16 in Science by a team of
>> researchers at the California Institute of Technology,
>> that scenario might be all wrong. Mars is dry, alright—
>> or at least it appears to be. But the researchers say
>> much of its water—from 30% to a staggering 99% of it—
>> is still there. It simply retreated into the
>> martian rocks and clay rather than escaping
>> into space.
>>
>> https://time.com/5947142/water-on-mars/#:~:text=16%20in%20Science%20by%20a,of%20it%E2%80%94is%20still%20there.
>>
>


--

https://twitter.com/Non_Linear1

[Jonathan]

On 7/13/2021 1:14 PM, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
> On 13/07/2021 10.38, Jonathan wrote:
>
> How the f--- did you climb out of my kill-file?
>

Kill files are for the small minded.

I mean honestly, if you can't manage
a kill file what can you do?




--
https://twitter.com/Non_Linear1

[Jonathan]

Ya I noticed it was wrong, I generally
don't put real email addresses in my posts
as with the whole identity theft thingy
it'd be STUPID to do so.




--
https://twitter.com/Non_Linear1

[pete...@gmail.com]

I've been doing so for over 40 years with zero problems.
Don't be paranoid.

Pt

[J. Clarke]

I used to be that way, then my mailbox blew up (well, actually there
was a mysterious package--I put it on a fencepost and shot it full of
holes and then it blew up).

[Jonathan]

The USPS delivers things to me all the time
that I didn't order. Usually I deliver them
myself.



--
https://twitter.com/Non_Linear1

[Jibini Kula Tumbili Kujisalimisha]

"pete...@gmail.com" <pete...@gmail.com> wrote in news:006a3687-
5f83-4188-8301...@googlegroups.com:

Given who you're taking to, I think some flavor of "not right in the
head" is a given.

[Quadibloc]

On Tuesday, July 13, 2021 at 10:32:15 PM UTC-6, pete...@gmail.com wrote:

> I've been doing so for over 40 years with zero problems.

When I first started using the Internet, I used my real E-mail address, and
it filled up with tons of spam. Now, though, so few people use real E-mail
addresses to post on Usenet that the spammers have probably given up.

So you're like an anti-vaxxer, free-riding on herd immunity!

John Savard

[Paul S Person]

On Tue, 13 Jul 2021 16:37:11 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J

I was hoping for "Michael F. Stemper" to come back with an answer.

Oh, and suppose it was made of the same "stuff" as a neutron star? How
large would /that/ have to be to produce a response?

Myself, I don't think ticking off a large nuclear furnace known
periodically to send us stuff that interferes with our electronics is
actually a good idea.

[Michael F. Stemper]

Well, it's much easier to say "X is way far away from the border" than
to give a specific location for the border. I would guess that any
significant effect would require mass of at least 0.01 M_sol, but that
is just a guess.

(You don't need to put my name in quotes since it's my real name, rather
than a nym. Also, you can just call me "Mike".)

> Oh, and suppose it was made of the same "stuff" as a neutron star? How
> large would /that/ have to be to produce a response?

The minimum mass for a neutron star is 1.44 M_sol (the Chandrasekhar
limit). It's easy to say "a mass greater than that of the sun would have
a significant effect when colliding with the sun."

Interestingly, a low-mass neutron star like this would have a
radius of about 10 km, just like my iron asteroid.

The ObSFW is, quite obviously:
<http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?54166>

> Myself, I don't think ticking off a large nuclear furnace known
> periodically to send us stuff that interferes with our electronics is
> actually a good idea.

If the sun's not gonna notice, the possibility of ticking it off is
minimal.

--
Michael F. Stemper
Disclaimer: I am not an astrophysicist.

[pete...@gmail.com]

More, its that I've been using gmail since it began, and their spam filters are
terrific. Prior to that, I did get a lot of spam.

pt

[Jay E. Morris]

Johnathon's concern is not spam so much, but that "they" will track you
down and do terrible things to your life.

[Jibini Kula Tumbili Kujisalimisha]

"Jay E. Morris" <mor...@epsilon3.comcon> wrote in
news:scnfqq$1ml$1...@dont-email.me:

Paranoid schizophrenia by proxy?

[Lynn McGuire]

On 7/14/2021 2:50 PM, pete...@gmail.com wrote:

The Postini honey pots that Gmail acquired are freaking awesome.

Lynn

[Jibini Kula Tumbili Kujisalimisha]

Lynn McGuire <lynnmc...@gmail.com> wrote in
news:scnj4v$ata$2...@dont-email.me:

We used Postini before Google bought them. Then we switched to using
Gmail instead of running our own mail server. Partly because the spam
filtering actually got better.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <scnfqq$1ml$1...@dont-email.me>,

/snark mode on

And who does he think he is, that "they" would give a damn about
him one way or the other?

/snark mode off

[Lynn McGuire]

On 7/14/2021 3:59 PM, Jibini Kula Tumbili Kujisalimisha wrote:
> Lynn McGuire <lynnmc...@gmail.com> wrote in
> news:scnj4v$ata$2...@dont-email.me:
>
>> On 7/14/2021 2:50 PM, pete...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, July 14, 2021 at 12:23:29 PM UTC-4, Quadibloc
>>> wrote:
>>>> On Tuesday, July 13, 2021 at 10:32:15 PM UTC-6,
>>>> pete...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I've been doing so for over 40 years with zero problems.
>>>> When I first started using the Internet, I used my real E-mail
>>>> address, and it filled up with tons of spam. Now, though, so
>>>> few people use real E-mail addresses to post on Usenet that
>>>> the spammers have probably given up.
>>>>
>>>> So you're like an anti-vaxxer, free-riding on herd immunity!
>>>
>>> More, its that I've been using gmail since it began, and their
>>> spam filters are terrific. Prior to that, I did get a lot of
>>> spam.
>>>
>>> pt
>>
>> The Postini honey pots that Gmail acquired are freaking awesome.
>
> We used Postini before Google bought them. Then we switched to using
> Gmail instead of running our own mail server. Partly because the spam
> filtering actually got better.

We moved our corporate email to Google at their invitation back in 2000
or so. Best thing I ever did. They still don't charge us since we were
a beta tester. But, I would pay if needful.

Lynn

[J. Clarke]

He's sufficiently an annoyance that it would not surprise me if
_somebody_ made a project out of ruining his life. All I did was dare
to be conservative on Bill Clinton's White House forum and it got me a
letter bomb.

[Dimensional Traveler]

The most important person in the universe, of course! Why else would
all these powerful people be spending so much time and resources
tracking him?

--
Troll, troll, troll your post gently down the thread
Angrily, angrily, angrily, the net's a nut's scream.

[Titus G]

I would like to help but I thought he was a disciple of some literary
freak specialising in platitudes, banalities and verisimilitudes of
heroic verbosity so had also consigned his devotions to the 'delete
before becoming aware of' bin.
I, of course, have always used my real name as the defences of
Gormenghast have so far been sufficient to repel all other malevolent
religions and philosophies.

[Titus G]

Only one? How disappointing. On behalf of the newsgroup, I really would
like to offer condolences but secretly believe that you are conspiring
to undermine Jibini's claims that Democrats are somewhat more
unforgiving and bloodthirsty than to be so casual as to send only the one.
Secondly, do you seriously believe that posting nonsense to a political
forum is as serious offence as cutting and pasting irrelevant crap to an
sf written old fogies newsgroup?