[HN Gopher] Flies keep landing on North Sea oil rigs
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Flies keep landing on North Sea oil rigs
Author : speckx
Score : 217 points
Date : 2025-10-10 14:07 UTC (6 days ago)
(HTM) web link (theconversation.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theconversation.com)
| bcraven wrote:
| Just like birds, some species of hoverfly migrate with the
| seasons. They move to southern Spain in the early autumn and then
| as far north as Norway in spring (the northern leg is less well
| understood, and seems to take place over several generations,
| since each fly only actually lives for a few weeks).
|
| _This paragraph becomes more astonishing as it goes on_
| jcattle wrote:
| Same, that was the first time I've heard of this. I mean, it
| kind of makes sense. "Just" go where flowers bloom. But still,
| this seems like madness.
| whynotminot wrote:
| I wonder if that's how we'll eventually travel the universe.
| Generations living their whole lives onboard a ship migrating
| through space.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| If there is a need for it, probably, but we'd need to be able
| to keep people alive for that long first. To date, the
| longest anyone has been in space has been 14 months. To make
| it work you'd need to produce food, artificial gravity, etc.
| rubyfan wrote:
| So maybe we'd see sustainable colonies orbiting the earth
| first?
| 2cynykyl wrote:
| We should start with a sustainable colony _on_ earth as a
| proof of concept. :-)
| prerok wrote:
| Nah, not needed. Let's just go straight to Mars. Real men
| test in production. /s
| pjc50 wrote:
| Only a madman would get onto a generation ship on a one-
| way non-abandonable non-rescuable trip without seeing the
| proof of a sustainable colony orbiting the earth first.
|
| Given the acceleration and (eco)system bring-up
| challenges, I suspect it would take more than one
| generation from "keel laying" to the ship first leaving
| the solar system. You'd have a generation living in a
| partly-constructed colony ship while building the rest of
| it.
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| So everyone that founded the US and especially Hawaii?
| pjc50 wrote:
| If we do, we'll need to have mastered perfect sustainability
| and 100% recycling. And/or bring a surprisingly large chunk
| of ecosystem along with us, also living out their
| generations.
|
| The flies are perhaps more like nomadic humans in the pre-
| agriculture era. Moving from one seasonal food source to the
| other.
| xattt wrote:
| Nomadic humans travelled in a single generation. These
| flies need to be DTF in order to finish their journey.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| The Biosphere 2 project was an attempt to see what the
| smallest self-sustaining ecosystem (that would feed humans
| and recycle air/water) would be. For a crew of 8 people,
| the area of plants, crops & wetland covered 3.14 acres.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2
| mcv wrote:
| If I recall correctly, it ran into a number of problems,
| and they abandoned it when oxygen levels dropped too
| much. So I don't think this counts as having mastered it.
| rtkwe wrote:
| They were also quite naturalistic though too, they could
| have packed more into a smaller area with vertical
| aeroponics etc to decrease the area.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Not necessarily what you really need is enough excess mass
| of critical elemental components to make up for any gaps in
| the recycling loop(s) between stars where you can resupply
| from asteroids.
| tocs3 wrote:
| Made me start wondering if supplies could be picked up in
| route. The oort cloud
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud) extends most of
| the way to the next star and presumably extends a similar
| distance away from the next star. Missions would need to be
| sent out in advance of the ship to start collecting and
| making fuel. It could then be accelerated up to catch the
| generation ship. It seams easily plausible in a science
| fiction sort of way.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Generation ships can't slow down. They don't have the
| fuel to slow down and start back up, only to stop at the
| end.
|
| Also, the supplies should be available in the home
| system. It costs just as much to send out probes and
| accelerate the supplies as it does to send the supplies
| with the ship.
|
| The only exception is that don't have water as fuel, and
| could travel slowly to the closest icy object, and then
| do the full burn to speed. It would add years though.
| frutiger wrote:
| Not sure if this was the intended joke, but that's how we are
| _already_ travelling the universe.
| fhdkweig wrote:
| If you want to steer the solar system in a new direction,
| you can use a Shkadov thruster. Why leave home behind when
| you can just carry it with you?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_engine
| Hendrikto wrote:
| In this context, it is also interesting to think about
| alignment.
|
| Will people still care about "the mission" 5 generations and
| billions of kilometers from earth? Will the goal we set even
| be relevant or make sense at all?
|
| Would you still follow through on a mission Ferdinand II of
| Aragon sent your grand grand grand grand grand grandfather on
| in 1498? I probably wouldn't. These goal would likely not
| even make much sense to me anymore, or be completely
| irrelevant in today's world.
| boringg wrote:
| Depends if you are the stone facer.
| prerok wrote:
| I'm not getting the reference. Did you mean wallfacer?
| boringg wrote:
| Yes!
| churchill wrote:
| >Will people still care about "the mission" 5 generations
| and billions of kilometers from earth?
|
| How could you not? At whatever point a crew member become
| disillusioned, it'll likely be too late to turnaround.
| There'll be a high incidences of interplanetary
| depression/psychosis as people struggle to deal with
| leaving the Blue Dot behind, esp. when they see footage
| from the earth, rainforests, etc. But, nothing counselling
| won't be able to take care of.
|
| Right now, state propaganda is powerful enough to make
| young people line up to kill and be killed. So, a little
| interplanetary panic can be taken care of. In extreme
| cases, you can have protocols for any crew members who
| attempts to munity to euthanatized to guarantee the success
| of the mission.
|
| My .02.
| close04 wrote:
| > people struggle to deal with leaving the Blue Dot
| behind, esp. when they see footage from the earth,
| rainforests, etc.
|
| 5 generations on, the people on the ship didn't leave
| anything behind. They were born and will die on the ship,
| and that will be their baseline. Even in places where
| life is the hardest here on Earth, in the middle of
| scorching or freezing deserts, people don't get depressed
| en-masse seeing nice pictures from elsewhere.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I enjoyed reading Peter Watts' "The Freeze-Frame
| Revolution" (and the accompanying online short stories
| "Hotshot"[1] and "The Island"[2]) about a sublight
| interstellar ship and its crew - in that example, they
| have cryogenic storage that allows the same crew that
| left Earth to live in short spurts and then sleep for
| eons, but the struggle with disillusionment with the
| mission is central to the plot.
|
| It also features something like "state propaganda" in the
| form of the ship's AI which is also programmed to carry
| out the mission, but it needs the help of the crew. I
| won't spoil more, but it's one of my favorites!
|
| [1]:
| http://rifters.com/real/shorts/PeterWatts_Hotshot.pdf
|
| [2]:
| https://rifters.com/real/shorts/PeterWatts_TheIsland.pdf
| andrewflnr wrote:
| It had been a while since I read Hotshot. Thanks. Freeze
| Frame Revolution is one of my favorite Watts works,
| probably right after Blindsight.
| tocs3 wrote:
| It might be best to show lots of videos f mosquitos,
| leaches, bear attacks, earthquakes, tornadoes, etc.
| wongarsu wrote:
| A good case study for these kinds of multi-generation
| missions are colonies and outposts. Especially the "put
| some settlers on an empty island to establish a claim" kind
| of colony. In that case the most obvious thing to do for
| each new generation is to continue living there, which
| aligns well with the goal of the mission. Even if they
| eventually demand independence the goal that the island
| doesn't fall into the hands of the French is still met, so
| that's at least partial success.
| withinboredom wrote:
| The problem comes when it's time to decelerate the ship.
| If my great-great-grandfather told me to push this
| mystical button that'll change my entire world for my
| grandchildren ... would I even want to push it? Would my
| grandchildren even understand what was happening?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Leaving aside the question of automation (does HAL 9000
| get to push the button?), there really isn't any
| alternative. The mission as a whole is fighting the
| Poisson distribution of encountering random objects in
| space. The probability of hitting one is very low but not
| zero. Unless the system is magnetic-ramjet powered, the
| fuel is finite. Ultimately the choice is between stopping
| at your predetermined destination or waiting until a rock
| turns your entire world into a sparse cloud of floating
| debris. It's like the "what do we do if Earth gets hit by
| a meteor" question but much, much more acute.
| angiolillo wrote:
| Perhaps "the mission" is a set of resources and guidelines.
| To be successful, each generation will need to be able to
| make meaningful decisions about how to structure
| themselves, make decisions, manage resources, allocate
| work, collaborate, and direct the ship(s).
|
| A single generation ship might leave for Alpha Centauri and
| arrive six thousand years later as a cloud of ships
| comprising a new nomadic civilization.
| et-al wrote:
| I think with a lot of these missions, you had the
| commanders who were idealists, or those seeking fame and
| fortune, and then you have the all workers who just didn't
| have better options.
|
| We'd like to think of our military as volunteer service-
| people, but the reality is that it's a pathway out of
| poverty for many. So how much "choice" to believe in the
| mission is there?
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> it's a pathway out of poverty for many
|
| I agree with your sentiment, but military service -
| around the world - is more of an alternative to povery
| vs. a path out. And we can't build a corporation with a
| goal more than two quarters out, or a government more
| than the next midterm election; what are the odds we find
| 5+ generations of commanders who can stay aligned?
| psunavy03 wrote:
| From an American perspective, this is flat-out not the
| case. The majority of American servicemembers come from
| the middle three quintiles of income - it is literally a
| middle-class institution. It IS an alternative means to
| acquire a college education for the lower middle class,
| but the bottom quintile, the truly poor, generally do not
| qualify to serve.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >And we can't build a corporation with a goal more than
| two quarters out
|
| Yet that is what all the corporations at the top of the
| market cap lists have done over the previous 30 years.
| You think Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet,
| Meta, TSMC, and a multitude of others only have goals 2
| quarters out?
|
| Pharmaceutical businesses where the trials take 5 and 10+
| years to bring a medicine to market don't have long term
| goals? Oil businesses that need a decade to build and
| cultivate an offshore field. There are so many other
| examples.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Remember that we're talking about a generation ship -
| after a very short fraction of the mission time, everyone
| will have been born on the ship.
|
| (Does the ship have a class system? Is the ship
| structured as a commune? Do people "own" bits of it, or
| is it more of a feudal tenure system? Can you maintain a
| multigenerational society on a military command structure
| when there is no external enemy other than the vastness
| of space? Would you want to?)
| acegopher wrote:
| I wonder if the "generational problem" is a potential
| reason for the Fermi Paradox. If it is extremely difficult
| for a species to expend resources on multi-generational
| projects, then the species horizon is only that which can
| be spanned in some fraction of a lifetime of that species.
| GCUMstlyHarmls wrote:
| I think this is a particularly human-centric perspective
| on the idea. Do you think ants have the same issue now?
| oneseven wrote:
| Or, concretely, migrating hoverflies. Interestingly they
| don't appear to be colonial.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| Not really human-centric, but intelligent life-centric.
| Given that the discussion (by this point) was about
| intelligent life communicating across the universe, ants
| aren't very relevant, unless you think they're about to
| start building spaceships.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Self-replicating robots are enough to substantiate
| (motivate? create?) the Fermi paradox, and those can
| probably be achieved in a reasonable fraction of a
| reasonable species' lifetime, from foundations that can
| all be motivated by short term concerns. Humans will be
| there in a couple centuries, if we don't destroy
| civilization on the way (but that's the boring resolution
| to the FP).
| acegopher wrote:
| I've read the Bobiverse series too :-). Maybe the
| question then is, do intelligent species have the will to
| invest the capital and labor required when there is no
| payoff in those decision-makers lifetimes? I think there
| are individuals who do, but I think it's an open question
| if societies can.
| plqz wrote:
| That's called the percolation hypothesis:
| https://www.universetoday.com/articles/beyond-fermis-
| paradox...
| cmsj wrote:
| Americans are still largely following the mission of their
| ancestors -\\_(tsu)_/-
| pjc50 wrote:
| An even longer-lasting example: Israel.
| dhosek wrote:
| Depends on to what extent you value continuity of the
| idea. The idea of returning to Palestine without the
| precursor of the arrival of the Messiah is a relatively
| young idea, dating back only to the 19th century. This
| leaves a pretty big gap between the 613 revolt against
| Heraclitus to Theodore Herzl. I suppose one could count
| "next year in Jerusalem" as part of the aspiration. I'm
| not an expert and could be wrong (or maybe probably I am)
| but it seems a stretch to me.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> These goal would likely not even make much sense to me
| anymore, or be completely irrelevant in today's world.
|
| They won't have a choice in destination. The challenge will
| be maintaining an orderly society on the ship. If that life
| is all they have then they'll have to deal with it. If they
| have books, video, or VR of like on a planet they might
| have any number of reactions...
| prepend wrote:
| Would they know the mission?
|
| I think the best way for these 100 or 10000 generation
| voyages is just to bake the motive into something boring
| like procreation or farming or religion or something.
|
| I think there's some sci-fi books where humans are doing
| one of these voyages and our dna is just aliens parking
| some bitcoin 4 billion years ago.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| The problem is that you have to un-bake it at the end.
| toast0 wrote:
| If you're in a middle generation, what's the alternative?
|
| If you're in the middle of a long, slow interstellar
| journey, there's no chance of a survivable exit from the
| ship, so reversing course doesn't help you, although it may
| or may not help your successors. I expect most first wave
| journeys wouldn't have sufficient fuel to reverse course
| anyway, so trying to would probably be certain doom for
| your successors instead of meerly probable doom.
|
| Anybody planning a mission on the timescale of interstellar
| journies is going to have to accept that they won't have
| much control of the result. You can pick the destination,
| and you can provide the initial conditions, and whatever
| happens, happens. The colony would have to be independent
| and self-sufficient by necessity, there can't be an
| expectation of sending spoils of colonization back home.
|
| Even if we got up to 10% of the speed of light, transit
| time is too long for close coordination.
| jlarocco wrote:
| The hoverflies definitely have an advantage in that
| respect.
|
| They're not consciously thinking about "the mission", just
| following their instincts.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > Will people still care about "the mission" 5 generations
| and billions of kilometers from earth? Will the goal we set
| even be relevant or make sense at all?
|
| That's an interesting point. I have noticed that often
| ideologically motivated parents don't always produce the
| same ideologically motivated offspring. They'll have to
| have very strict rules and some kind of brutal
| indoctrination to ensure the next generation follows the
| same path. But the more brutal and severe it is, the more
| likely it will cause rebellions.
|
| I can already see a tragi-comedic scenario: the new
| generation overthrows the old guard, slams on the brakes,
| ship takes years to slow down from almost light speed.
| Decades later they are finally going back to earth at full
| speed. Now the next generation looks back at the mess their
| parents made, rebel, overthrow the old guard, slam on the
| brakes, decades later they are back flying to the original
| destination. But not until the next generation decides to
| bring back the fire of the revolution and turn things
| around... It all ends with them running out of fuel.
|
| The pessimistic view is that we'll just have to let ChatGPT
| drive the ship and knock everyone out in cryosleep so they
| don't mess with the ship.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| The odds of the counter revolution deciding to go exactly
| back on their grandparents original course, out of what
| is honestly quite a large space is possibilities, seems
| quite low to me. And even that's assuming the original
| revolutionaries don't plainly see the cost of turning
| around; I think it will be pretty obvious. And the first
| generation of people born in the starship won't exactly
| be yearning for an Earth they've never known.
|
| Once you're on a starship with just enough fuel to reach
| the destination, the only real question is what the
| political organization will be at the end.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > The odds of the counter revolution deciding to go
| exactly back on their grandparents original course, out
| of what is honestly quite a large space is possibilities,
| seems quite low to me
|
| Not if those are the only two known destinations known to
| support life! Then the choice is binary really - go to
| destination or go back.
|
| > And the first generation of people born in the starship
| won't exactly be yearning for an Earth they've never
| known.
|
| I think they would. I've seen this in second generation
| immigrants. One would expect they'd completely embrace
| the new country, culture, environment, but I often see
| them idealizing or yearning for some mythical version of
| their old country, even if the parents have already
| adapted and moved on in the current culture. There are
| two mechanisms at work there, I think, one is rebellion
| against the old generation, and also if things are not
| going perfectly well, yearning for an alternative ("the
| grass is always greener on the other planet" principle).
| SlightlyLeftPad wrote:
| This is exactly why I found the society of Wool (Silo)
| fascinating. It explores that brutal indoctrination
| required for a mission like this.
| dingnuts wrote:
| >that we'll just have to let ChatGPT drive the ship and
| knock everyone out in cryosleep so they don't mess with
| the ship.
|
| "Ah! It's good to be awake, Chat! Turn on the outside
| view so I can see where we are!"
|
| _display turns on.. nothing but space to be seen_
|
| "Uh, Chat, we seem to be in the wrong place. I can't see
| the planet we were traveling to!"
|
| ....
|
| ChatGPT: "You're absolutely right!"
| NortySpock wrote:
| anti-aging / life-extension medicine might make a dent in
| the number of generations you need to get somewhere.
|
| Plus, thinking you need to live near a star, on a planet,
| is merely a bias for "free" fusion power and gravity that
| you don't need to maintain.
|
| I'm sure once we get artificial fusion working, the options
| for living in a community in a big, multi-story, 2
| gigatonne, 500k population O'Neil cylinder tethered to a
| Kuiper belt iceball will look like "a big town with a
| nightlife, farmland, and a stable climate, with cheap trade
| and transit options for 'nearby' cylinders"
|
| At which point you can colonize any frozen rock bigger than
| Rhode Island between here and Wolf 359 'easily' (slowly)
| whenever you want to move your O'Neill cylinder.
| dhosek wrote:
| It would require not merely anti-aging, but being able to
| produce resilient offspring at a later age, otherwise,
| anti-aging would be detrimental to the project since in
| the intermediate stages of the journey, non-reproducing
| adults would be a resource drain.
| NortySpock wrote:
| Or you have your kids early, raise them, and then focus
| on community tasks (like running the ship) after that.
|
| I don't think I regarded my kind, wise, and friendly
| grandmother as a 'non-reproducing adult resource
| drain'... Seems like a cruel way to describe one's golden
| years.
| blar wrote:
| Kim Stanley Robinson's thesis in Aurora was: no. Subsequent
| generations would _not_ be happy with their ancestors'
| choices.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(novel)
| marcosdumay wrote:
| At some point, some of your ancestors made the choice to
| migrate and force your family to be born in a different
| place.
|
| Do you resent them?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| No - but I can also, in turn, choose to migrate
| elsewhere. People born on a generation ship don't have
| that choice.
| dotancohen wrote:
| My forefathers were expelled from our lands in the first
| century AD, and returned just about a century ago. Over
| 1800 years in exile. During all that time, every generation
| longed to return, and 1800 times we as a nation prayed for
| return.
|
| We did it. It took almost two millennia, but we kept our
| goals and we kept our customs and we kept our values.
|
| Perhaps a similar social structure will help humans inhabit
| other star systems on generational ships.
| gcanyon wrote:
| Kurzgesagt proposes moving the entire solar system, so the
| generations and kilometers question becomes moot:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3y8AIEX_dU
| jjk166 wrote:
| If "the mission" is survive, then yeah probably. I doubt
| the colonists would hold any loyalty to Earth, but they'ed
| definitely set up a colony for their own sake.
|
| Also we do have plenty of institutions which have to some
| degree or another stuck to the mission many lifetimes after
| their founding. Religious institutions like the catholic
| church come to mind - obviously much has changed and plenty
| would argue about how well current behavior matches the
| founders' intent, but thousands of years later there is
| still an organization of people working towards a broadly
| similar goal. Less controversial examples include some
| construction projects which took centuries, like the
| Cologne Cathedral.
|
| It should be noted that while none of the original crew
| would survive the journey, there would be an unbroken chain
| of people raising new crew members, educating them to the
| mission, and their adoption of the existing crew's values
| as their own, and propagating them forward, would be
| necessary for both their own well being and the group's.
| There would be little if any outside influence to cause the
| group to diverge from its mission, and no realistic
| alternative they would be able to pursue even if they
| wanted to. There might be ideological drift, but it would
| probably be a lot less than people who have been free to do
| whatever they want for the same period of time.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Will people still care about "the mission" 5 generations
| and billions of kilometers from earth?
|
| Believing in the mission will be akin to people's belief in
| God/religion these days. You will have "atheists" who will
| say "You really think there was an Earth?"
| bombcar wrote:
| We _are_ on a generation ship traveling through space ...
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| >Would you still follow through on a mission Ferdinand II
| of Aragon sent your grand grand grand grand grand
| grandfather on in 1498? I probably wouldn't. These goal
| would likely not even make much sense to me anymore, or be
| completely irrelevant in today's world.
|
| If you are on a ship in the middle of an endless ocean, or
| interstellar space, with many decades or centuries before
| reaching somewhere safe then truly what choice do you have?
| rendx wrote:
| Obviously you would set up a computer system to rule them
| all. Disobey and there goes your oxygen.
| Arrath wrote:
| Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson dealt with a generation ship
| and the implications of the mission on subsequent
| generations born on the ship who had no say in signing up
| for it. Great book!
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Here is a great and terrible rabbit hole to fall down:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniara
| z3t4 wrote:
| There's a movie too with the same name. It does not have
| good graphical effects, but besides that a very good movie.
| gcanyon wrote:
| You might enjoy Kurzgesagt's video on moving the Sun (and
| with it the whole solar system) they propose a method that
| would theoretically let us colonize the galaxy in a
| reasonable (but not trivial) time frame.
|
| To your exact point though, since we're moving the whole
| solar system, everyone would be living their whole lives on
| the/a ship.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3y8AIEX_dU
| kulahan wrote:
| It's becoming more and more clear that exceeding the speed of
| light is not possible. This is almost certainly going to be
| the only real way to make it to distant locations.
| zamalek wrote:
| What completely and utterly boggles my mind is how these tiny
| things carry enough energy to make that trip (or each leg).
| It's absurd.
| flave wrote:
| Oil Rigs seem to be, counterintuitively, very good for a bunch of
| species.
|
| In the Gulf of Texas there's been ongoing fights between
| environmentalists (helping species who live under and around the
| rigs) and environmentalists (protecting the landscape from ugly
| metal towers).
| whazor wrote:
| Can we use raw oil 100% without burning/wasting it?
|
| How much percent recyclable plastic could we extract out of raw
| oil? Like real recyclable plastic, where it is worth money to
| do so.
|
| Maybe making more bitumen/asphalt for roads/roofs, or graphite
| for batteries?
| lmm wrote:
| > Can we use raw oil 100% without burning/wasting it?
|
| Burning it isn't wasting it, we get a lot of value out of
| that.
|
| > How much percent recyclable plastic could we extract out of
| raw oil? Like real recyclable plastic, where it is worth
| money to do so.
|
| 0. There's no such thing as real recyclable plastic, unless
| you count burning it for heat/power generation.
|
| > Maybe making more bitumen/asphalt for roads/roofs, or
| graphite for batteries?
|
| Every fraction of oil has _some_ use. But you 're unlikely to
| get perfectly balanced demand for every single thing you can
| pull out of it.
| Ferret7446 wrote:
| > Every fraction of oil has some use. But you're unlikely
| to get perfectly balanced demand for every single thing you
| can pull out of it.
|
| Oh God not Factorio again
| pjc50 wrote:
| Instead of saying "wasting", OP should have said "emitting
| CO2 to the atmosphere", which is the real problem here.
| Including from refinery flare stacks, and emissions of non-
| CO2 GHGs like methane from leaks.
|
| Unbalanced fractions aren't so much of a problem as they
| can be cracked.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| To be pedantic, assuming the fuel is used in a combustion
| engine, there will always be a percentage of the fuel
| wasted as heat energy. This depends on the thermodynamic
| efficiency of the engine and various other conditions, of
| course.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Oil is not part of the dispute parent is talking about.
| Abandoned rigs provides shelter for a multitude of species
| and helps marine diversity. On the other hand, they are
| manmade structures and essentially ocean trash.
| defrost wrote:
| On the third hand, coral reefs are polypmade structues and
| essentially ocean poop and excreta.
|
| It's not so much the manmade _structures_ that are
| problematic, more the associated toxic sludges still
| residual within structures.
| kingkawn wrote:
| Are there residual devastating toxic sludges in any non-
| human structures in the ocean
| defrost wrote:
| Yes. (Black smokers, white smokers, other discharge
| points for hydrocarbons .. like tar pits on land, only
| underwater)
|
| There are also human structures in the ocean that lack
| toxic sludges.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The volcanic vents are interesting in that, while toxic
| to most life, separate species have evolved that _only_
| live in toxic hot sludge.
| defrost wrote:
| There are many types of toxic sludge, the fact that rare
| organics can live within them not only points to the
| possibility of life off planet earth, it also hints at
| potential uses in remediation of human created toxic
| wastes (binding to heavy metals in wetlands capturing
| industrial run off, etc.).
| flave wrote:
| My comment wasn't clear - I'm talking about abandoned rigs.
| So the well is sealed.
|
| Some of the more extreme "environmentalist" (in my opinion
| extreme) also demand that the ocean floor near the well is
| scrubbed clean to 'leave no trade' which is good in theory
| but in practice will wipe out the fish and plant life which
| has grown up around it.
| withinboredom wrote:
| > So the well is sealed.
|
| Sometimes. Not all the time though.
| teekert wrote:
| If it helps species cross oceans where previously they could
| not, it is also going to be bad for a bunch of species (those
| that see their niches invaded at the other side of the ocean,
| or whatever barrier the rigs help cross).
|
| If so, I'd say that overall, this is bad.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| There's plenty of space not touched by oil-rigs for the open
| ocean species to live.
| dhosek wrote:
| Read the post again, it's not about the species along the
| way, but the species living in places that have become open
| for colonization by the creatures taking advantage of oil
| rigs for cross-oceanic migration that wasn't possible
| before. Kind of like how trans-oceanic navigation turned
| out great for the Europeans and not so much great for the
| Native Americans.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Gulf of Texas?
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| Aka gulf of Cuba
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| I guess they're talking about "Texas Gulf Coast"? Would be
| strange to put rigs so close to land though...
| nozzlegear wrote:
| This is getting out of hand, now there are three of them!
| m0llusk wrote:
| The main environmental problem is not the rigs themselves, but
| the wells and transportation pipeline network of which they
| were a part. Systems for making sure wells are safely capped at
| end of life are not robust. Pipelines have similar problems
| with inspection and end of life closure.
| driggs wrote:
| Islands are good for organisms.
|
| Oil rigs are the worst type of island.
| myrmidon wrote:
| I never knew that insects are capable of crossing oceans...
|
| Seeing close-up pictures of them is always a very humbling
| experience to me, because it is very obvious how "huge" and
| complex they are in terms of individual cells. A very visceral
| experience of Feynmans "there is plenty of room at the bottom"
| notion.
| rwky wrote:
| Here's a paper on the painted lady migration described in the
| article https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49079-2
| meindnoch wrote:
| I can't imagine the efficiency that makes such long flights
| possible in such a tiny form factor. Compared to our drones, it
| must be multiple orders of magnitude more efficient.
| danparsonson wrote:
| It helps to be extremely lightweight and small - the smaller
| you get, the less effort you need to put into just staying
| aloft.
| vintermann wrote:
| What happens when we start making drones that small, I
| wonder.
| easygenes wrote:
| "Flies Aren't Real"
| withinboredom wrote:
| Haven't you noticed fewer birds than you saw when you
| were younger?
| Tepix wrote:
| It's called smart dust. Check Sci-Fi bookshelves.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Not to mention they're much more influenced by wind currents.
| driggs wrote:
| The smaller you are, the less energy you can store.
|
| Efficiency is a maximization of these ratios.
| Terr_ wrote:
| They go high too.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/06/01/128389587/l...
| slightwinder wrote:
| Not sure whether is a matter of efficiency. Efficiency is more
| about the desired outcome. Insects are small and very low
| weight. So I would assume wind will give them more push and can
| carry them for much longer distances even without doing
| anything on their own. But the price is a lack of control; they
| have probably little to no influence where they will end up.
| ljf wrote:
| Indeed - and let's not forget that these are the ones that
| successfully landed _somewhere_ - many many others will have
| landed in the sea, or otherwise died before they could reach
| a suitable spot.
|
| The ones that landed here hadn't aimed for or planned to find
| the rig, they were just in the same physical location and
| found a space to land.
| muragekibicho wrote:
| The text version of the 'airplane with bullet holes' meme
| lol
| andai wrote:
| A few years ago in the Mediterranean I observed what
| initially seemed like an oil spill. Taking a closer look,
| it turned out to be millions of tiny dead insects. I guess
| sometimes they do land in the sea?
|
| At the time, I tried to find information about it online,
| and all I found was an article about it happening on the
| other side of the Atlantic several years earlier.
| justonceokay wrote:
| There's a reason most insects have thousands of offspring.
| Wikipedia states that houseflies have about 5k. Since their
| population isn't exponentially exploding, you can assume
| the chance of reproducing as a fly is something like 1/5000
| grumpy-de-sre wrote:
| I'm kind of keen to see if large electric cargo motor gliders
| might one day become a thing. Traversing great distances via
| ambient energy harvesting. Maybe even self landing at certain
| designated airfields to top up on energy and avoid bad
| weather.
|
| A migration of the machines so to say.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| Ultra-long endurance drones and balloons for remote sensing
| are a thing, but this kind of approach doesn't scale well
| to higher cargo payloads.
| grumpy-de-sre wrote:
| Most of the stratospheric approaches I've seen aren't so
| much about exploiting low altitude weather phenomenon but
| rather flying above it. Which of course is exactly what
| you want for long term remote sensing.
|
| I'm thinking systems that mostly exploit thermals and
| updrafts, engaging in a kind of bird like automated
| soaring.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-zvzOC8dzA
| Earw0rm wrote:
| If you look at the nearest survivor to flying insects'
| ancestors - the springtails - it seems that's been part of
| their strategy for a _very_ long time. With controlled flight
| being a much later addition to the basic
| "getthehellouttahere" reflex.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _they have probably little to no influence where they will
| end up_
|
| sounds like they need to organize into political parties,
| strength in numbers
| raffael_de wrote:
| Thermals and wind.
| foxyv wrote:
| I suspect that they operate similar to hot air balloons. Land
| when the wind is going the wrong direction and then maintain
| altitude when it's going the right direction.
| dvh wrote:
| What is the benefit of crossing the ocean? The lands on both
| sides are comparable.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Following the seasons, suggests the article. Insects are pretty
| temperature sensitive.
| olalonde wrote:
| Seasons change primarily North-South, not East-West, right? I
| think the question is why don't they just go from North
| American to South America instead of crossing the ocean?
| yxhuvud wrote:
| If we go by the article, because there is water between
| Norway and Denmark. They could cross further south in
| southern Sweden, but that'd mean they'd have to go around.
| The Americas is not part of the equation.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Just like birds, some species of hoverfly migrate with
| the seasons. They move to southern Spain in the early
| autumn and then as far north as Norway in spring (the
| northern leg is less well understood, and seems to take
| place over several generations, since each fly only
| actually lives for a few weeks).
|
| No Americas involved.
| arethuza wrote:
| Perhaps they were doing it before the Atlantic opened up and
| they just kept going...
| doingtheiroming wrote:
| An oily Stephen Maturin.
| christophilus wrote:
| I read the title as "Files keep landing..."
|
| And then the top comment made me think they must be sending paper
| documents to these rigs via some light weight flight mechanism.
| And then I realized I haven't had my morning coffee yet.
| jpfromlondon wrote:
| what are the longterm implications of easing the journey of a
| swarm of insects, does it reduce the attrition, and if so will
| that have an impact on pollination and predator success at the
| terminus?
|
| in what less obvious ways does it ease the journey such as energy
| stowage (in hover flies I presume they depend on their pollen
| panniers?)
| jacquesm wrote:
| Title correction: ' _Some_ flies keep landing on North Sea oil
| rigs '. I suspect for every fly that lands a very large number
| doesn't make it. These rigs are the fly equivalent of Ascension.
| mcv wrote:
| They're a bit small to tag them, unfortunately.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Birds predate on insects, so presumably some birds follow insects
| .. is it possible birds started migrating to follow escaping
| insects??
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