[HN Gopher] What if I were 1% charged? (2013)
___________________________________________________________________
What if I were 1% charged? (2013)
Author : lanna
Score : 236 points
Date : 2021-09-09 13:13 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gravityandlevity.wordpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gravityandlevity.wordpress.com)
| modeless wrote:
| I've wondered for a while why we don't use electrostatic forces
| more. Electrostatic motors and electrostatic speakers do exist
| but they are very rare compared to the ubiquitous magnetic types.
| It seems like it should be possible to make a really good
| electrostatic muscle for robots. I know that there has been some
| work in this direction like
| https://www.artimusrobotics.com/technology, but what makes it so
| much harder and less developed than regular magnetic electric
| motor technology?
| npwr wrote:
| Constraining the electrons apart would require a very serious
| insulator. The muscle would just arc between its two ends.
|
| To make it work you have to distribute electrical potential
| along all the "motor". Just like biological muscles do with
| protein configurations. We just aren't technogically advanced
| enough to build such metamaterials ourselves.
| modeless wrote:
| If you charge two halves of a muscle oppositely so they
| attract, you would get arcing between them without a strong
| insulator in between. But if you charge two halves both
| negative or both positive there would be no arcing between
| them. They would still strongly repel and it seems like you
| could use that to do work.
| jcims wrote:
| Electrostatics generally require high voltage (the HASEL
| muscles you linked to require 2-20kV [0]) to generate
| usable force.
|
| This creates lots of engineering and regulatory challenges
| for product development because, as the esteemed William
| Osman says, "Welcome to the world of high voltage, where
| everything's a wire and you're probably going to die" [1].
|
| [0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/advs.2
| 01900...
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/IiJAq53knwc?t=288
| adrian_b wrote:
| Even if you do not have a motor but just a single charged
| sphere, at its surface there will be an electric field
| increasing with the charge.
|
| At a certain charge value, and at a not very large one, the
| surface electric field will exceed the breakdown field of
| air and a corona discharge will start.
|
| See St. Elmo's fire.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elmo%27s_fire
|
| So unfortunately the idea of using the repulsion forces
| does not work.
|
| To prevent the discharges, the entire environment around
| the 2 charged moving parts would have to also be charged
| with the same sign, but then the repulsion forces between
| your parts would be balanced by the repulsion forces from
| the surrounding medium.
| modeless wrote:
| Thanks for the patient explanations! You could immerse
| the thing in insulating liquid, maybe inside a rubber
| pouch, would that not be enough?
| ben_w wrote:
| For a bit, but if you keep raising the voltage you find
| the electric breakdown happing on the outside surface of
| the robot (or whatever's using the electric field muscle)
| instead of where you put the insulation.
| adrian_b wrote:
| High-voltage equipment, e.g. high-voltage transformers,
| is indeed immersed in insulating fluids, either in
| special insulating oils or in the gas sulfur
| hexafluoride, which is more convenient than liquid oil.
|
| This increases several times the breakdown field compared
| to air but it is not enough to reach similar energy
| densities like with magnetic fields.
|
| To give some numbers, the air breakdown field is around 3
| MV/m, while the maximum magnetic field in a motor might
| be up to 2 Tesla.
|
| The ratio of the energy densities is the square of the
| ratio between the product of the magnetic field with the
| speed of light and the electric field, i.e. the square of
| (2 x 3 x 10^8) / (3 x 10^6), so 200 squared, i.e. 40
| thousands.
|
| Even if you increase the breakdown field 10 times, which
| is quite hard to achieve with fluids, the magnetic field
| would give forces much, much higher at a given size.
| rtkwe wrote:
| It would also want to arc to other parts of the mechanism,
| it's not just the tiny subsystem of the actuator here we
| have to consider.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| You can't create a monopole, either electrostatic or
| magnetic. If you impress a negative charge on something,
| there must be an equally strong positive charge somewhere
| nearby that you'll have to insulate somehow.
| adrian_b wrote:
| In air, a relatively small electric field will cause electric
| discharges.
|
| A magnetic field can have very large intensities without
| creating problems, so that is the reason why we use
| electromagnetic motors and not electrostatic motors.
|
| The maximum magnetic field in a motor is normally limited by
| the saturation of the ferromagnetic materials at values where
| the density of energy in the space between the stator and the
| rotor is many times higher than the density of energy at which
| an electric field would cause electrical discharges.
|
| Electrostatic motors can be useful (and they are actually used
| in certain devices) only at microscopic sizes.
| modeless wrote:
| Hmm, so I guess you would have to fabricate an array of
| millions of microscopic electrostatic motors. Which is kind
| of like what biological muscles are in a way, right?
| icapybara wrote:
| On top of the arcing issue already mentioned, it's a lot easier
| to control a current than to control a charge distribution. So
| electromagnets win.
| ben_ wrote:
| Excellent read, I'd recommend anyone that likes this to check out
| 'What If' by Randall Munroe (XKCD)
| Symmetry wrote:
| Would the mass from all that potential energy be enough to create
| a black hole?
| ben_w wrote:
| Not even close. My (excessive) estimate in another thread is
| 1e33 J, which would have a Schwarzschild radius of about 16
| picometers, and something (I don't really understand it)
| happens if a black hole is charged which makes the event
| horizon radius smaller than the Schwarzschild radius.
|
| Now I'm wondering what would happen if you tried to create a
| black hole purely from the energy density of an electric field.
| Do you asymptotically approach an extremal charged black hole?
| Or do you make a super-extremal black hole? I've heard
| conflicting claims about if super-extremal is even possible.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| > At 8:16 a.m. on August 6, 1945, a fission weapon containing
| sixty-four kilograms of uranium detonated 580 meters above the
| Japanese city of Hiroshima, and Einstein's equation proved
| mercilessly accurate. The bomb itself was extremely inefficient:
| just one kilogram of the uranium underwent fission, and only
| seven hundred milligrams of mass--the weight of a butterfly--was
| converted into energy. But it was enough to obliterate an entire
| city in a fraction of a second.
|
| This reminded me of this quote from "Midnight in Chernobyl".
| Quite amazing to thing of such small amounts of mass being
| converted into such extraordinary amounts of energy.
| [deleted]
| mrtnmcc wrote:
| Guess this is saying that the one kilogram of uranium is
| converted to fission products which are slightly lighter--one
| kilogram minus a butterfly--and the amount of energy released
| from this difference is e=(mass of butterfly)*c^2
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Yeah, the mass-energy relationship is at scales that are hard
| to wrap a human brain around.
|
| A charged laptop battery gains about 2 picograms of mass.
| mrtnmcc wrote:
| Wait is that right? I thought charging a lithium battery
| was simply displacing electrons from cathode to anode, but
| the total number of electrons in the whole battery is
| conserved (and hence mass). Or is this converting that
| electric potential into an equivalent mass? Does this
| actually manifest as a difference on a scale?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The total particle count is conserved.
|
| ... But the total mass of a molecule is also affected by
| the energy in the chemical configuration; the chemistry
| of the charged battery has more energy than the uncharged
| battery.
|
| https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/195696/do-
| chemic...
| mrtnmcc wrote:
| Interesting, so in the context of this broader
| discussion, if you displaced 1% of electrons in your body
| by a centimeter, you would weigh 10x more than you did
| originally. (Both gravitational mass and inertial mass
| increase)
| p1mrx wrote:
| Assuming that you displaced all the electrons in the same
| direction, you'd produce a 1 cm electron cloud on one
| side of your body, and 1 cm of electron-deficient matter
| on the other side.
|
| If you could somehow maintain that configuration, you'd
| have a capacitor storing an enormous amount of energy, so
| it makes sense that the mass would increase.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| And then you would die, instantly, and so would the
| surrounding countryside.
| da_chicken wrote:
| Yeah, this is also why an empty hard drive should have
| less mass than a full one. It's an immeasurable amount,
| but it should be there. Adding energy to a system should
| increase it's mass.
|
| https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/31326/is-a-
| hard-...
| [deleted]
| stickfigure wrote:
| To be pedantic, I think you need to say "the act of
| writing to a hard drive adds mass". There is no reason to
| expect that writing a 1 or a 0 adds more or less mass; if
| there is a difference in energy states, it would depend
| on the encoding scheme.
| teekert wrote:
| The moment we invent the Star Trek transporter we have the
| ultimate weapon by just teleporting some electrons out of our
| enemy.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| Is it canon the transporter can operate with subatomic
| granularity?
| teekert wrote:
| Sure! Just narrow the confinement beam and boost the
| Heisenberg compensators! Maybe slap around a hyper spanner
| here and there.
|
| Edit: No, not sure it is.
| nescioquid wrote:
| Seems apt if you think that every time someone uses a
| transporter, they are really committing suicide with a new copy
| of themselves reconstituted elsewhere.
| midasuni wrote:
| If you chopped your leg off, they perfectly reattached it,
| are you dead?
|
| How about heart? What if you removed part of your brain.
|
| What if you grew a replacement part instead of reattaching?
| When does Theseus become a new person?
|
| Alternatively can you prove you were alive yesterday? Or do
| you just have the memories, and others have memories of an
| indistinguishable copy?
|
| How much of your body existed 20 years ago? Are you the same
| person?
| coryfklein wrote:
| If you made a copy of you down to the atomic level, and
| this copy appeared on a planet several kilometers away, is
| that new copy "you"?
|
| Does that new copy become "you" if you simply incinerate
| the original?
| teekert wrote:
| They will believe they are you, there is no further link
| that can change any attributes of the second you upon
| incinerating primary you, the person that already
| existed.
| andrewzah wrote:
| Depends on who you ask.
|
| If we clone A, then from A's perspective we now have
| A-Prime. A-Prime is unaware and believes they are A, who
| now presumably has been killed. If anyone didn't observe
| this happen, then A-Prime essentially -is- A. If they did
| observe it, then they know that it's technically A-Prime.
|
| So I guess the difference is being able to observe the
| gradual changes. It's more tricky when discussing an
| inanimate object like a ship that doesn't care either
| way.
| butisaidsudo wrote:
| This is a great article on this, with a bunch of thought
| experiments on what makes you, you:
| https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/12/what-makes-you-you.html
| scrumper wrote:
| That was excellent but stopped tantalizingly short - he's
| on to something. He's uncomfortable about the concept of
| a "soul", but the idea of continuity is really
| interesting. It suggests that the boundary of a conscious
| entity is not purely physical, but must also encompass a
| temporal dimension. (This is a new thought for me, I'm
| excited by it.) It's a shame he felt icky about souls
| because you don't really need that baggage.
|
| I'm not smart enough to really think it through but at a
| glance it seems to resolve those various tests and
| scenarios. In the malfunctioning teleport example (where
| the cell destroyer fails to fire), _both_ London Tim and
| Boston Tim are equally alive because they share the past:
| the teleport has succeeded in bifurcating their
| consciousness. Same with the split-brain twins (though
| you'd expect the results to be diminished).
| vkou wrote:
| If the transporter did not disassemble a person on one end,
| and instead just materialized a person on the other end
| (similar things happen a few times in Star Trek), which one
| of them is 'you'?
|
| And which one do you think we should kill off once the away
| mission is done? Should we be as sanguine about it as
| Captain Janeway was about murdering Tuvix?
| User23 wrote:
| Part of why I don't see the appeal, even if it were possible,
| of uploading your "consciousness" whatever that is, to extend
| "life." It's not you, and you're still dead.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Not if there's a transition, a migration if you will.
| User23 wrote:
| Digital metempsychosis is an interesting religious
| belief. From an anthropological perspective I find it
| fascinating how the same old ideas get reimagined as
| technology changes. Feels like how the Sidhe got replaced
| by the Greys in the abduction racket, and so on.
| teekert wrote:
| The pattern that is "the other" you will argue otherwise.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| In fact, the other you would be very grateful that you
| (both) didn't succumb to narcissism, and instead copied
| your consciousness to a better body.
| teekert wrote:
| What's suicide if the pattern that defines you remains?
| Anyway if you like pondering in this direction, this book is
| highly recommended:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City
| snet0 wrote:
| I can't remember who came up with this, but this realisation
| is made a lot more vivid if you imagine the "original" you
| being killed with an axe while your "teleported" you is
| happily unaware. I believe the videogame Soma has an
| analogous situation, although I haven't played it.
| [deleted]
| teekert wrote:
| I happens a lot in Altered Carbon as well.
| rnoorda wrote:
| For anyone interested in this conceit, I recommend an episode
| of _The Outer Limits_ called "Think Like a Dinosaur" dealing
| with this idea and what happens when it goes wrong.
| klyrs wrote:
| What would happen to a black hole which was charged to 1%?
| Aperocky wrote:
| It becomes a charged blackhole.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reissner%E2%80%93Nordstr%C3%B6...
| MrRadar wrote:
| This reminds me of the XKCD What If series. I wish Randall was
| still doing that.
| thanksforfish wrote:
| Agreed, very enjoyable.
|
| https://what-if.xkcd.com/
| ranger207 wrote:
| Doesn't he have a New York Times column now? I think I saw he
| had a What-If-looking article there, but I couldn't read it
| without a subscription
| rob74 wrote:
| My thoughts exactly... "this is just like Randall Munroe's What
| If, but without the funny drawings unfortunately"
| GuB-42 wrote:
| That one specifically: https://what-if.xkcd.com/140/
| jppope wrote:
| Articles like this are literally why I come to HN
| muterad_murilax wrote:
| The original HN-rewritten title "What would happen if I lost 1%
| of my electrons?" was way better imho.
| reizorc wrote:
| Would the same happen if you ate 800g of positrons?
| ben_w wrote:
| If you could somehow do that without the 140 gigacoulombs of
| charge exploding violently before you got close, approximately
| this: https://youtu.be/YtCTzbh4mNQ?t=16
|
| If you don't invoke space magic to prevent the positrons from
| exploding even before they annihilate anything, and they are
| confined into a 0.1m radius ball, the charge density energy
| overwhelms the annihilation energy and the ball of positrons
| explode with a yield of ~1e33 J, which -- without exaggeration
| -- looks more like this: https://youtu.be/KNjWpSglUOY
| jcims wrote:
| Seems like a positron beam would be a sweet weapon in space.
| Retric wrote:
| Yes, assuming all those positrons started out in your stomach,
| the actual antimatter wouldn't add significant energy in
| comparison. The charge balance stays the same when positrons
| and electrons collide. So, bigger boom than just an anti mater
| sandwich, not that you would notice the difference.
|
| Relativity actually makes this worse as the electrons are
| limited to the speed of light but the charge can keep dumping
| ever more energy into them until their far enough apart.
|
| Similar idea, just larger scale: https://what-if.xkcd.com/140/
| ISL wrote:
| Before any concerns about charge, the simple act of doing so
| would release 100000000000000000 Joules of energy.
|
| For scale, the largest nuclear weapon ever tested converted
| around 2300g of matter to energy[1].
|
| Please don't do that :).
|
| [1] https://faculty.etsu.edu/gardnerr/einstein/e_mc2.htm#:~:tex
| t....
| beefman wrote:
| Ah, the last year of the blogging era, when still it took several
| clicks to find the name of the author, and his photo was nowhere
| to be found.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > when still it took several clicks to find the name of the
| author
|
| Well, for 0 clicks the post is noted "by Brian", and for one
| click the blog's About page identifies him as "Brian Skinner[,]
| an assistant professor in theoretical condensed matter
| physics."
|
| What are you talking about?
| mrfusion wrote:
| I don't see why we can store energy with this concept. Eg getting
| even a small object to .01% charge would be a ton of energy.
|
| We could store it with something with an equal and opposite
| charge (across a large insulator) to cancel out the net pull on
| things. And encase it in even two meters of glass or plastic if
| needed.
|
| Anyone know if this has ever been researched?
| nayuki wrote:
| That's called a capacitor. The theory is well-known and many
| different products exist. But they don't store as much energy
| as you would hope.
| mrfusion wrote:
| That's not what I mean though. Capacitors are limited by the
| breakdown voltage. But what if we make the plates separate by
| more distance and just increase the charge.
| klyrs wrote:
| Then you'll have a capacitor with a larger plate
| separation. Play with the equations!
|
| http://hyperphysics.phy-
| astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/pplate.h...
| mrfusion wrote:
| Ok now we're getting somewhere.
|
| So the equation shows that as d goes up, C goes down.
|
| But as d goes up the breakdown voltage also increases so
| my question is why can't we force more voltage on there.
| goldenkey wrote:
| You can but eventually the voltage gets so high that the
| resistance of the air isn't enough to prevent a short via
| a discharge. And in a vacuum, the resistance is even
| less. One would have to keep the capacitor in a super
| resistant gas or fluid to prevent a short.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Yeah that's what I'm trying to figure out. Maybe energy
| storage wise it's worth encasing it in a large amount of
| high insulator.
|
| I'm curious to run those numbers but I'm not quite sure
| how to approach it.
| snet0 wrote:
| That's basically increasing the breakdown voltage, no? Even
| if the "gap" between plates is 4 meters of insulation.
| jredwards wrote:
| This reminds me of Randall Monroe's "What If" blog/book. I really
| enjoy these types of questions, which are adequately described by
| Munroe's subtitle: "Serious scientific answers to absurd
| hypothetical questions."
|
| https://what-if.xkcd.com/
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time:
|
| _What if I were 1% charged? (2013)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10161497 - Sept 2015 (21
| comments)
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| The only people who ask questions like this are Physics TAs and
| children. Both are equally intimidating. The former, because they
| know how students learn, and they can ask fantastical oblique
| questions to test basic knowledge. The latter, because they have
| no prejudices about physics and ask fantastical oblique questions
| without regard for logic.
| marstall wrote:
| that escalated quickly toward the end!
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| A similar philosophical what if:
|
| What would happen to us if we were suddenly able to understand
| _anything_ with no effort ... no matter what the question, as
| soon as we thought of it, the answer appeared?
| npwr wrote:
| Then we would have to build a computer that generates the
| questions. Let's say, a computer the size of a planet..
| withinboredom wrote:
| 42
| nick238 wrote:
| If there's such a large voltage, would it discharge fast enough
| that the actual force doesn't matter that much? The extreeeeemly
| high force is probably commiserate with the extreeeeeeeeemly fast
| discharge, so you wouldn't build that much kinetic energy.
|
| There'd still be loads of energy, definitely enough to turn you
| into a cloud of plasma with the 'millions of lightning bolts' he
| references, but that seems like it's orders of magnitude short to
| destroy the entire planet.
| ben_w wrote:
| It's a thought experiment to teach physics to students rather
| than a practical idea, so this scenario magically deletes all
| the specified electrons simultaneously without a chance for the
| body to discharge gracefully.
|
| Given this wildly implausible conceit, you would explode much
| as they say.
| gigatexal wrote:
| What an amazing write up. I feel inspired to study physics now. I
| wonder how my life might be different if I sought math and
| science courses instead of bailing after calculus.
| throwaway1239Mx wrote:
| > Now, 1% may not sound like a big deal. After all, there is
| almost no reason for excitement or concern when you lose 1% of
| your total mass.
|
| I... Really? Y'all ok with just losing a randomly selected pound
| or two of flesh? I think that'd be pretty exciting, and not in a
| good way.
| curiousllama wrote:
| Doesn't say random... I lose about 1% of my mass some mornings
| in the bathroom!
| mcguire wrote:
| Most of the mass of an atom is concentrated in the nucleus. I
| don't want to dig out a calculator, but you probably couldn't
| easily measure the loss of 1% of your electrons.
|
| Aside from the ensuing cataclysm, that is.
| [deleted]
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| > In short, if I lost 1% of my electrons, I would not be a person
| anymore. I would be a bomb. A Coulomb bomb, if you will, with an
| energy equivalent to that of ten billion (modern) atomic bombs.
| Which would surely destroy the planet. All by removing just 1 out
| of every 100 of my electrons.
|
| The Chicxulub impactor struck with the force of ten billion
| Hiroshima bombs, and while the world underwent a mass extinction
| event, the planet itself was fine.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Planets are tough things. Destroying them is hard, oh the
| things on them sure. But the whole planet no. It will just
| probably gather itself together in a while anyway...
| zaphar wrote:
| Might have a few new moons afterwords.
| lisper wrote:
| > the planet itself was fine
|
| That depends on your quality metric. I don't think the
| dinosaurs thought it was fine.
|
| IMHO, destroying all of the things that are cool and
| interesting (to me) about this planet counts as "destroying the
| planet" even if there is still a hunk of rock orbiting the sun
| afterwards.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Mercury, Venus, Mars are all planets. None have organic life
| on them. What you "consider" a planet is not what science
| calls a planet. Just ask Pluto.
| ben_w wrote:
| The spherical cow in a vacuum approximation I used in a
| different thread gave me 1e33 J, which is 4.78e15 Tsar Bomba
| nukes or 1.6e19 Little Boy nukes.
|
| This was unnecessarily compact (because the suggestion there
| was drinking antimatter) and thus high-energy, but it's 4 times
| the gravitational binding energy of planet Earth.
| datameta wrote:
| It's possible that by "(modern)" the author means hydrogen
| bombs which are 3 magnitudes more powerful than the fission
| devices used in WW2.
| lmilcin wrote:
| > In short, if I lost 1% of my electrons, I would not be a person
| anymore. I would be a bomb. A Coulomb bomb, if you will, with an
| energy equivalent to that of ten billion (modern) atomic bombs.
| Which would surely destroy the planet. All by removing just 1 out
| of every 100 of my electrons.
|
| The most energy you can extract from any type of bomb would be if
| it was converted to energy at 100% efficiency.
|
| 70kg of mass is equivalent of 1,5GT of TNT.
|
| So still a lot of bombs, but more like 1,5 thousand 1MT bombs and
| not "10 billions" of them.
|
| I am not a physicist, but I think what this shows is physical
| impossibility of having 1% of your charge removed and your body
| still considered to be body even for an infinitesimal amount of
| time. To do that you would have to add so much energy to your
| body that just the mass equivalent of energy would have to be
| many times more than your body.
| simonh wrote:
| We commonly refer to the energy released if the bomb explodes.
| If what we cared about was the relativistic mass energy of the
| matter, we wouldn't need to even refer to bombs. We'd just
| refer to the mass.
| [deleted]
| benchaney wrote:
| This is incorrect. Creating a charge gradient in a system
| increases its mass-energy. In this situation the potential
| energy is dramatically larger than the rest mass of the
| precharged person.
|
| Edit in response to your edit: what it shows is that it would
| take an extraordinary amount of energy to cause the change.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Isn't that what I wrote? That separating the charge would be
| equivalent to adding potential energy basically adding to
| mass of your 70kg body so that it no longer is 70kg?
| MauranKilom wrote:
| Yes, it takes over 70kg of "mass-energy" (e.g. mass
| converted to energy in nuclear fission) to remove 1% of all
| electrons in a person weighing 70 kg. That is not, in
| itself, contradictory.
|
| Depending on how relativistically inclined you are, this
| may affect what you consider the weight of the person. But
| this doesn't really matter for the thought experiment.
| dhimes wrote:
| He's saying that you have to include the energy you put
| into the system to remove 1% of the electrons in your
| E=mc^2 calculation.
| [deleted]
| Aperocky wrote:
| > The most energy you can extract from any type of bomb would
| be if it was converted to energy at 100% efficiency.
|
| Not true, imagine 2 positrons next to each other, the force
| these particle subject to accelerate to avoid each other is
| greater than the mass of those positrons itself.
|
| In other words, if you can get accelerated to 0.9999c, you'll
| possess far larger energy than your rest mass.
| Double_Cast wrote:
| > _The most energy you can extract from any type of bomb would
| be if it was converted to energy at 100% efficiency._
|
| Under normal circumstances, a bomb's energy is endogenous. But
| in the blog's thought-experiment, the energy is assumed to be
| exogenous. Therefore, your assumption that "the explosion is
| bounded by the mass of the person" doesn't apply to this
| scenario. Instead of TNT, imagine a rubberband.
| kabdib wrote:
| Anyone else remember Larry Niven's "slaver weapon" (a common
| weapon / digging tool from his Known Space stories)?
|
| A hand-held device that can temporarily "suppress the charge on
| the electron" seems like a really bad idea now.
| mcguire wrote:
| On the two-beam version, _do not_ pull both triggers at once!
| danShumway wrote:
| Oh, so now HN suddenly _likes_ electrons?
|
| > Because of my 40 million Coulombs, the force between myself and
| my "image self" would be something like 10^{20} tons. To give
| that some perspective, consider that 10^{20} tons is just a bit
| smaller than the weight of the entire planet earth. So the force
| pulling me toward the earth would be something like the force of
| a collision between the earth and the planet Mars.
|
| Unnecessarily heavy imo.
|
| And I'm just going to say, the person you do this to might not
| have the scientific experience to realize that _the electrons_
| are the reason why they can 't move anymore and why they've
| ripped a hole in the vacuum, but they'll still notice the effect,
| so it's inaccurate to say that they don't care.
| malwrar wrote:
| Did HN ever not like electrons? I kinda need them to dick
| around with computers, I was pretty sure most other people here
| were into that too.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| https://www.electronjs.org/
| Crisco wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's a joke about the Electron software
| framework.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| (Joke explanation ahead:)
|
| They are joking about HN not liking Electron (the framework).
| Case81 wrote:
| I'm curious how people are getting it. Is it some sort of
| HN mindset or is just the HN crowd* 24/7 on about
| programming
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| It's pretty common for someone to complain whenever some
| application uses the electron framework and gets linked
| here.
| temp0826 wrote:
| I don't get it either...especially when tfa is so ripe
| for your-mom jokes.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Thank you, I also wasn't getting the joke.
| ruined wrote:
| this website goes in a cycle. electrons bad, electrons good.
| nobody holds a real position. the current "correct" take is a
| whim based on flavor-of-the-week politics.
|
| and of course nobody here talks about the end user, or the
| social effects of electrons. please take some responsibility!!
| formerly_proven wrote:
| It's a super position, really.
| topaz0 wrote:
| Worth noting that this electron cycle is important if you
| want to have a magnetic field.
| cheschire wrote:
| You meant the "correct current take", surely.
| mholm wrote:
| HN also seems very positive about Proton. Interesting that they
| aren't always negative about electron.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Looks like HN is just full of negative people.
| stakkur wrote:
| That's a serious charge.
| akshayB wrote:
| Any biological life keeps itself alive by maintaining a steady
| state of entropy. Making even a small changes like this is never
| going to end well.
| ben_w wrote:
| I think the main point is this isn't even close to a _small_
| change.
| dekhn wrote:
| this is not a scientifically accurate statement.
| mitko wrote:
| How do you reconcile the two seemingly contradictory statements
| "it would be equivalent of getting hit by three lightnings at the
| same time" and "it would destroy the planet"
|
| Lightning happens all the time without affecting the planet, I
| doubt a triple lightning would do more than 10x the damage of a
| single lightning.
|
| To me this kind of contradiction is a sign that the initial
| assumption is impossible as lmilcin suggests here, and as the
| original author concludes at the end of the article.
|
| EDIT: 3 million, not 3. My mistake. Thanks for pointing that out.
| evan_ wrote:
| Check again- it says three MILLION lightning bolts.
| adt2bt wrote:
| Three million lightning bolts, not just three.
| mcguire wrote:
| To go further, the 3 million lightning strikes aren't really
| part of the shenanigans that destroy the planet. More of a
| side-effect, really.
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