Centrist, progressive, radical optimist. Geophysicist, R&D, Planetary Scientist and general nerd in Winnipeg, Canada.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Technically getting one surface flat is easy. Hell, it’s one of the first thing you learn in measurement science (three plates and perfect smoothness). However a mirror isn’t just about being flat, it is also about light reflection. And that makes it more interesting. In a perfect vacuum, you could do a silver mirror without the glass and have it be perfectly flat and not worry about oxidation. But the reality of making that mirror stay perfectly reflective means that glass or similar is usually involved. And then you move away from the perfect flatness problem (relatively easy) to perfectly parallel planes (significantly harder).

    Furthermore, keeping a plane or surface perfectly.flat after manufacture requires uniform temperatures, which are rarely present in amateur telescopes.

    The end result is almost always the introduction of additional error.






  • Unpopular opinion (largely discredited in anthropology circles): cold weather encourages resourceful behaviour and improves human cooperation. In climates where you can survive winter outdoors, homelessness is not as detrimental to continued existence. Three walls and no roof is fine in a slum in Florida, but harder to pull off in Minneapolis.

    This societal coordination which is required to survive winter leads to more orderly and more socialist civilizations. Because hairless apes have no business being in that climate. So it is human ingenuity that is selected for – and that includes development of systems of cooperation.

    If I extrapolate, our space faring descendants will face much bigger hurdles, but ideally will develop even better systems to deal with it.

    Bonus picture. Me doing arctic exploration.