Recent content by phyzguy

  1. phyzguy

    NASA Currently trying to build a rocket to launch into space

    If you're going to launch a rocket to even 10 km, you're potentially going to cross paths of commercial aircraft. I suspect that the last thing you want to do is shoot down a commercial aircraft and kill several hundred people.
  2. phyzguy

    Astronomy Looking for a book on the effects of orbits on celestial observations

    AAS (the American Astronomical Society) has a free introductory astronomy textbook available online at the link below. If, after reading about the topics you listed, you still have questions, please come back and ask. https://aas.org/posts/news/2021/09/astronomy-free-online-astro-101-textbook
  3. phyzguy

    NASA Currently trying to build a rocket to launch into space

    And yet still no punctuation nor capitalization of the second sentence.
  4. phyzguy

    I Before the Big Bang

    Polaris is "up" from the north pole. North is a direction along the surface of the Earth.
  5. phyzguy

    I Before the Big Bang

    One possibility, known as the Hartle-Hawking no boundary proposal, is that if you go backward in time towards the big bang, you reach a point where space and time cease to exist. In this proposal, asking, "What was there before the big bang?" is similar to asking "What is north of the north...
  6. phyzguy

    I Are There Two Suns? Exploring the Phenomenon of Sun Dogs

    It's called a sun dog: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_dog
  7. phyzguy

    Red Dwarf Star Systems -- Could they support life?

    There are a lot of red dwarfs out there, and they live for a very long time. The flares tend to decrease as the stars age. Given the probably hundreds of billions of red dwarfs out there in our galaxy, I don't think you can categorically write them off by saying, "Planets around red dwarf...
  8. phyzguy

    AI Consciousness?

    In what sense are current Large Language Models (LLMs), which are based on Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), algorithmic? Do you think your brain is algorithmic? If not, why would you think ANNs are algorithmic?
  9. phyzguy

    Red Dwarf Star Systems -- Could they support life?

    I've never understood why people say this. Depending how far the planet is from the red dwarf star, the temperature on the side facing the star could be perfectly hospitable. Why does it have to "roasting"? I could imagine life that evolved on such a planet saying, "A planet like Earth is...
  10. phyzguy

    A Could gamma-ray bursts have an intragalactic origin?

    So, @Line_112 , are you just going to ignore the many redshift measurements of GRBs that have been made? These measurements firmly place them at cosmological distances. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/astronomy-and-space-sciences/articles/10.3389/fspas.2023.1124317/full
  11. phyzguy

    A Could gamma-ray bursts have an intragalactic origin?

    Why do you think this? It is an equal area projection. So dots of the same area will cover the same area of the sphere.
  12. phyzguy

    A Could gamma-ray bursts have an intragalactic origin?

    Here is an equal area projection map of the Earth, similar to the GRB map. Areas are not distorted, but of course shapes are. It's not possible to map a spherical globe on to a flat sheet of paper without distorting something. But these equal area projections have the advantage that area is...
  13. phyzguy

    A Could gamma-ray bursts have an intragalactic origin?

    What's your point? It's well known that gamma ray bursts are extra-galactic. Look at the Wikipedia page, which says, "In gamma-ray astronomy, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are extremely energetic events occurring in distant galaxies which represent the brightest and most powerful class of...
  14. phyzguy

    Flesh-eating New World Screwworm re-occurrence in US

    What is done here is to release a huge number of sterile male flies. The females then mate with the sterile males and lay unfertilized eggs, which don't hatch. Eventually the screwworm files are all wiped out, at least in a region. What did you want to use this technique on, besides "mere...
  15. phyzguy

    Flesh-eating New World Screwworm re-occurrence in US

    We're building a new factory in Texas with the capability to produce 300 million sterile male screwworm flies per week. This is how we eradicated this pest before, and it should work again...