Possibly untrue science news

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So what did sink the Titanic?

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Lots of water getting in, and metal breaking. :stuck_out_tongue:

And those who say Covid-19 an iceberg caused those things are just fake news, trying to discredit the President, man! Insufficient bulkheads were a comorbidity!

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It suggests a solar flare. It’s quite a fact-free story. I’m pretty sure the Titanic was not using radio navigation at that time. Also, I believe the Titanic was on course. And it’s communications radio, although limited, was functioning normally.

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But how can speeding particles and radiation sink the Titanic? I seriously doubt radiation damage to metal would have been sufficient. Perhaps navigation problems led them to hit an iceberg, but that would still be the direct cause.

Not sure why you’re spoilerizing, but I continued the practice.

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The doesn’t actually say. But I might be missing it.

I didn’t want to discourage people from reading the article.

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One Hundred Million Years?!?

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There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, #2)

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This is definitely the right thread for simulation cosmology.

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Didn’t Greg Egan’s novel Distress cover a similar theme? I don’t remember it very well.

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From the book, which didn’t dwell enough on the technical details for my taste.

We have already seen evidence of the universal tendency to dehumanize across the political spectrum. As discussed in chapter 7, Ashley Jardina found that in every demographic there was a subset of white people who dehumanized black people: Republicans and Democrats, old and young, women and men, rural and urban. No social or political group is immune.41 The extreme dehumanization practiced by white supremacists has been answered by extremists who feel compelled to respond to them with violence. The “antifa”—antifascist, or anti-white-supremacist—protesters in 2017 scrawled “Death to the Klan” on a Confederate statue, burned the Confederate flag, and carried an ax to their protest. This dynamic is not unique to any political movement, culture, or time. The Cultural Revolution of China, Stalinism after World War II, anarchist terrorism, the French Revolution, the Japanese Empire—all forms of government can be co-opted for dehumanization and the ensuing violence. You only need to convince people
they are under threat. As the Nazi leader Hermann Goering said in his prison cell at Nuremberg, “The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”42 Across time, culture, and country, the underlying psychology is always the same. To initiate the cycle of dehumanization, extremists may convince their own group that they are being dehumanized by another. As the real or perceived threat level increases, even people in the middle move away from the bull’s-eye and closer to the outer circle of the target and are primed for violence against their enemies. Without a humanizing or galvanizing cause, like a moon shot or a common threat, that can be used to unite the different sides, those in the moderate middle struggle to bring extremists and ideologues back to the negotiating table.

Hare, Brian; Woods, Vanessa. Survival of the Friendliest (pp. 163-164). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

So it may be too liberal for some readers.

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