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A comment on Robin Warren, pathologist who rewrote the science on ulcers, dies at 87. Parent comment

Re:Robin Warren, pathologist who rewrote the science on ulce... by trhway on Friday August 02, 2024 @05:31PM (#41142856)
well, may be civilization would be much better off if we went straight to electrified industrial society using wind and hydro energy bypassing burning of dinosauruses - windmills and watermills were known for millennia, one only had to add copper winding and some magnetic iron, the things available for the last 2000+ years.

> We either become an interplanetary species or this planet eventually becomes our tomb.

Yes, only my version of the "tomb" is that it would be our planetary scale ant city/colony as we become totally connected and our societies naturally become highly totalitarian (not necessarily due to some ideology, you'd just naturally have less and less space/resources/opportunities for your private endeavors). Some ant colonies exist uninterrupted for several thousand years, no progress, just happy busy ants doing their happy stuff. Only few of us who'd get off that planet will have a chance to continue the civilizational progress. Kind of bifurcation of our species. Interesting that Musk advances our civilization in both directions - neural implants as well as SpaceX.

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Re:Robin Warren, pathologist who rewrote the science on ulce... by MobiusHorizons on Saturday August 03, 2024 @03:01AM (#41145094)
How do you get the prerequisites for solar without access to large amounts of energy? Solar cells are made from silicon wafers which must be refined and doped to work. Maybe we could build windmills if we salvage copper and magnets, but refining even copper would be challenging without access to high heat fossil fuels. I guess you would have to bootstrap using charcoal, which would be very labor intensive.
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Re:Robin Warren, pathologist who rewrote the science on ulce... by OkayPhysicist on Saturday August 03, 2024 @04:14PM (#41148941)
Photovoltaics are not the only form of solar electricity production. Concentrated thermal solar power can easily get into the hundreds of megawatts range.
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Re:Robin Warren, pathologist who rewrote the science on ulce... by MobiusHorizons on Monday August 05, 2024 @05:07PM (#41165619)
Good point! I guess that requires mirrors, but those can be made of less hard to refine materials.
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