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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: October 6th, 2023

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  • That’s exactly it. There are a lot of ways to design a fixed wing aircraft, a lot of viable wing configurations. But this particular configuration dominates most of aviation because there’s a huge advantage to having all your control surfaces way in back on the end of a long lever.

    There are notable exceptions of course, flying wings like the B2 stealth bomber, delta wings with canards like the Erofighter. But both of those configurations are certainly less aerodynamically stable than the traditional arrangement. You really need to have some very important reason to design a plane differently, in those previous examples the reasons are stealth and speed.








  • Cocodapuf@lemmy.worldtoxkcd@lemmy.worldxkcd #3238: Soniferous Aether
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    17 days ago

    That is not the speed of light through fiber. That is the speed of light bouncing at diagonal angles as it travels through fiber.

    It appears to travel slower because it’s not traveling in a straight line. But I promise, every individual photon is traveling at exactly c. Photons emmited simultaneously will not all arrive at a destination at the same time, but this isn’t because they’re traveling at different speeds, it’s because they’re taking different paths, reflecting and refracting slightly differently.



  • Our moon is definitely the most important body in the solar system after the sun and earth. There’s a good chance life is only possible on earth because of the moon.

    The thing is, here on earth, we have this wealth of life and diversity, but we only have this diversity because we have a diversity of elements to work with. On most planets, we don’t see this diversity of elements, the same proportion of heavy elements have to be there somewhere, but we don’t see them on the surface. We’re pretty sure that this is because on other planets we don’t see plate tectonics. The process of plate tectonics churns and mixes the earth, it brings heavier elements that would normally be trapped underground back up to the surface.

    The crazy part, is that we’re not 100% sure why we have plate tectonics, and why all the other planets in our solar system don’t. But a leading theory is that plate tectonics are sustained by the tidal forces of a very large moon.

    If this interpretation is accurate, we really owe so much to the moon. Its continued gravitational force on the earth is what has made everything (life, intelligence, society, technology) possible.

    Also, in a Drake equation/Fermi Paradox context, the perfect moon may very well be the extremely rare event that makes the earth truly special.




  • You should consider taking it apart and seeing how the buttons work, things like how large the spring is, what the actual electrical contact mechanism looks like, if there are guide tracks on the side of the button that allow it to press down evenly instead of tilting to one side or jamming.

    If you know how it works, then even if you don’t find the exact same part from the exact same manufacturer, you’ll still be able to find something that works the same way and feels just the same, you may even find it cheaper or locally.

    I’m a strong proponent of taking things apart.