We Live in the Rarest Type of Planetary System

[Glitch]

Yours is not science its far right politics.

Of course it is science, but your AGW religion won't let you believe otherwise.

 

[iguanaman]

Exactly.
And if they could, the idea they'd come here to dick around in corn fields or drop a body off at area51, or help the skinwalkers and skinwalker ranch, is just crazy on top.
I know people..like..family of friends, who watch this stuff on TV and believe it all. They are normal otherwise..had careers, intelligent, but completely and totally bought into this stuff. It is amazing, and unfortunate.

Yes the network does list Skinwalker Ranch as science fiction but people still believe it is real.

 

[Oozlefinch]

Eventually becoming a Black Dwarf, the ultimate stage of stellar evolution

Which is only theoretical. Because it is estimated that it would take close to 14 billion years for a white dwarf to become a black dwarf.

 

[Glitch]

NASA's Moon Working Group availed itself of Cray's latest incarnation, the Cray Super II. For a little military/nuclear trivia, the US was able to take the data it had gained from nuclear weapons testing prior to the test bans and use the Cray Super II to model nuclear weapons designs. That's how we got the football and that's how we were able to create the new 8"/203 mm AFAP, plus the warhead for the Pershing II, and also the ERW warheads for the 8"/203 mm AFAPs and Lance Missile System, plus the warheads for the ACLMs, GCLMs, and SLCMs, and also design those cruise missiles themselves.

You can always tell the difference between experts and non-starters like Pukipedia hacks. I once verbally abused a professor for falsely claiming the Soviets had cruise missiles. They did not. They had non-ballistic missiles which are not the same thing as cruise missiles because cruise missiles fly nap-of-the-Earth; have forward and downward looking radars to avoid objects not in its internal mapping system; can change speeds; can be redirected in-flight; and can be re-targeted in-flight. Non-ballistic missiles cannot. To create a cruise missile, you must have a Cray Super II or its equivalent, and the Soviets did not, at least not until Clinton gave them two Cray Super IIs in the late 1990s.

In the early 1970s there were three theories for Moon:

1) Pinch Theory: Cray Super II flatly rejected that silly theory as if Earth could actually have an axial spin rapid enough to propel anything at speeds greater than 25,000 MPH

2) Capture Theory: In every simulation, Moon either sailed on by or crashed into Earth so that was rejected

3) Dual Coalescent Theory: Cray's Super II rejected that, too, which left scientists stymied.

Fast-forward 20 years and we have Cray's newest bestest super computer, the Big Red rivaling IBM's Big Blue which is why Clinton gave the Russians two Super IIs since we didn't need them.

...

It will also at least partially fill in the Pacific Ocean Basin and sea levels will permanently rise leaving a bunch of "island continents" and ultimately, assuming there's enough time before Sun becomes a Red Giant, Earth will be nothing but ocean with no land masses. There'll be nothing but a few scattered island chains.

That is a pretty good trick considering the Cray II was not released until 1985.

I attended the University of Minnesota in 1980, where Seymour Cray was an alumni, and I worked with his Cray I. Unfortunately, I graduated before he completed his Cray II.

The impact hypothesis is also much older than you think. George Darwin (the fifth child of Charles Darwin) proposed in 1898 that Earth and the moon were one body originally until a giant impact occurred. He further calculated, using Newtonian mechanics, that the moon would be drifting away from Earth - which was confirmed 70 years later by both the US and Russia.

The Earth was never in the asteroid belt. Earth has been closer to the sun than it is now, but not further away. Both Mars and Jupiter were also much closer to the sun than they are now. Jupiter is the reason why Mars is so small, but that is a whole other story. Both Mars and Mercury also experienced giant impacts during their past. Venus may have experienced a giant impact in its distant past as well, which would explain its retroactive rotation, but there is no visible evidence that we've been able to detect thus far.

 

[Glitch]

And not just for us. Any other intelligent life out there could never have the means to get here either. The fantasy about "Alien visitors" is just that. I cannot believe how many gullible people subscribe to this notion.

That is because I don't think they are aware of just how vast the distances are between stars. Astronomers use AU, light years, and parsecs to make the huge numbers more manageable.

It is a lot easier to write 1 AU than 149,597,870,700 meters. Which would make 1 light year 9,463,691,450,629,509 meters. Unless you keep in mind what 1 AU or 1 light year represents it is easy to lose sight of just how big the numbers are that we are talking about. The most talked about exoplanet currently in the news is K2-18b, which is just a mere 124 light years away. Just a hop, skip, and a jump right?

 

[Glitch]

It's just a question of getting there and extracting the resources.

Hopefully they do it using robots initially, and not stupidly put humans in a high radiation environment without any protection. Like what NASA has planned for Artemis III in 2025, during the peak of Solar Cycle 25.

 

[Glitch]

Which is only theoretical. Because it is estimated that it would take close to 14 billion years for a white dwarf to become a black dwarf.

White dwarfs begin their lives extremely hot, 100,000°K, but after a few million years will cool to between 10,000 and 20,000 °K. They will continue to gradually cool, reaching ~3,000°K (depending on the original mass of the white dwarf) after 10 billion years.



After 14 billion years a white dwarf will be colder than the coldest M-class star. Effectively making it a black dwarf by then. Our sun will eventually become a white dwarf with only 30% of its current mass. Which means that it will likely stay hotter than an M-class star well after 14 billion years.

This is an excellent overview on white dwarfs (although they do not take into consideration highly magnetized or rapidly rotating white dwarfs that could potentially exceed Chandrasekhar's limit):

White Dwarf - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics

www.sciencedirect.com

 

[Oozlefinch]

That is a pretty good trick considering the Cray II was not released until 1985.

Hell, the Cray I was their first computer, and that was not developed until 1975, with the first system installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976.

That is seven years after Apollo 11, four years after Apollo 17, and three years after the last time a Saturn rocket was launched for the Skylab project.

I have absolutely no idea why some people feel like they have to lie about things like that. And even about the ideas that he claims the Cray II worked on.

First, it is not the "Pinch Theory", I have never heard to it referred to as such. I only assume he is talking about the Fission Theory. But that was one of many theories and never taken seriously by the middle of the 20th century.

Capture was disproven very early on in the Apollo Program, when it was discovered that the rocks on the moon have the same oxygen isotope ratios. That could only mean the moon was not captured but somehow was made from the same matter as the Earth was. And later studies have shown that the moon is almost the same age as Earth Mark II, or just over 4.5 gy.

And yet another strange name, "Dual Coalescent Theory". I can only assume he is implying the Accretion Theory, where both the Earth and Moon developed in close proximity to each other out of the primordial accretion disk that formed all of the matter in the Solar System.

I have to admit, I am chuckling at his made up names as I had never heard of the various theories for the creation of the moon in those ways. But even by the early part of the 1970s most serious discussion was around some variant of the impact theory.

Now the impact theory was not new, it also had been around since the 19th century. However, with what modeling they had they could not figure out how such an impact could have resulted in the Moon. That is until the 1990s when cluster computers helped establish it was likely from a Mars sized planetoid that likely came in from the outer Solar System and drifted into the Earth's gravity and settled into an unstable orbit in either the L4 or L5 Lagrange point. Where the instability eventually caused a collision (some still argue if it was head on or a glancing blow). Which gave us for a time a ring system before it formed the Moon, and left us with a huge core as our own planet likely absorbed the core of Thea.

Which also explains the LLSVPs below the surface of the planet and resting on top of our core.

 

[Oozlefinch]

After 14 billion years a white dwarf will be colder than the coldest M-class star. Effectively making it a black dwarf by then.

True, but it is still only theoretical. As the time to go from White Dwarf to Black Dwarf is around 14 billion years.

A White Dwarf would need a late Population II or a Population I star, and those stars never developed, then passed into White Dwarfs in anywhere near enough time to have become Black Dwarfs yet.

I am not saying it is wrong, simply that no such stars exist at this time. But who knows, maybe in a few billion years we will start to discover them (likely by observing a White Dwarf transitioning into one).

 

[Deuce]

Bible thumpers just desperately want to believe we are alone in the universe, it’s best to ignore the absurd arguments they make.

 

[Glitch]

True, but it is still only theoretical. As the time to go from White Dwarf to Black Dwarf is around 14 billion years.

A White Dwarf would need a late Population II or a Population I star, and those stars never developed, then passed into White Dwarfs in anywhere near enough time to have become Black Dwarfs yet.

I am not saying it is wrong, simply that no such stars exist at this time. But who knows, maybe in a few billion years we will start to discover them (likely by observing a White Dwarf transitioning into one).

White dwarfs are determined by the mass of their star. How much metal is involved with the star has nothing to do with whether or not it will form a white dwarf. All main sequence stars with a mass of less than 3 solar masses will become white dwarfs. Stars with an initial mass between 3 and 10 solar masses become neutron stars. Any star with an initial mass greater than 10 solar masses but less than ~100 solar masses becomes a black hole.

All M- and K-class stars will eventually become white dwarfs, although it may take them a trillion years or more before they reach that point. No M-class star that has ever existed has come close to dying yet.

G- and F-class stars can get quite large, although not as big as O, B, and A-class stars. For example, HD 179821 is a G4 0-Ia hypergiant with a mass between 19 and 30 solar masses. While F-class hypergiants, like IRC+10420 which is classified as an F8Ia+, has ~10 solar masses. Both of these stars are examples of G- and F-class stars eventually becoming black holes (or possibly a neutron star).

Population II stars are less likely to produce white dwarfs because they were typically much more massive (and shorter lived) than population I stars.

 

[Glitch]

Hell, the Cray I was their first computer, and that was not developed until 1975, with the first system installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976.

That is seven years after Apollo 11, four years after Apollo 17, and three years after the last time a Saturn rocket was launched for the Skylab project.

I have absolutely no idea why some people feel like they have to lie about things like that. And even about the ideas that he claims the Cray II worked on.

First, it is not the "Pinch Theory", I have never heard to it referred to as such. I only assume he is talking about the Fission Theory. But that was one of many theories and never taken seriously by the middle of the 20th century.

Capture was disproven very early on in the Apollo Program, when it was discovered that the rocks on the moon have the same oxygen isotope ratios. That could only mean the moon was not captured but somehow was made from the same matter as the Earth was. And later studies have shown that the moon is almost the same age as Earth Mark II, or just over 4.5 gy.

And yet another strange name, "Dual Coalescent Theory". I can only assume he is implying the Accretion Theory, where both the Earth and Moon developed in close proximity to each other out of the primordial accretion disk that formed all of the matter in the Solar System.

I have to admit, I am chuckling at his made up names as I had never heard of the various theories for the creation of the moon in those ways. But even by the early part of the 1970s most serious discussion was around some variant of the impact theory.

Now the impact theory was not new, it also had been around since the 19th century. However, with what modeling they had they could not figure out how such an impact could have resulted in the Moon. That is until the 1990s when cluster computers helped establish it was likely from a Mars sized planetoid that likely came in from the outer Solar System and drifted into the Earth's gravity and settled into an unstable orbit in either the L4 or L5 Lagrange point. Where the instability eventually caused a collision (some still argue if it was head on or a glancing blow). Which gave us for a time a ring system before it formed the Moon, and left us with a huge core as our own planet likely absorbed the core of Thea.

Which also explains the LLSVPs below the surface of the planet and resting on top of our core.

For some strange reason the University of Minnesota had an aversion to IBM. We had Control Data Computers, DEC/VAX computers, PDP-11s, even a Cray I that Seymour Cray donated to his alma mater, but not a single IBM computer anywhere on campus.

Theories can be kicked around for decades. With scientific consensus waxing and waning over the evidence presented. The capture theory only gained popularity before we understood what space was. We were still thinking it was some kind of "aether." That belief originated with the ancient Greeks but persisted well into the 19th century. Even Newton described space as "luminiferous ether."

With regard to Earth's Lagrange Points, L1, L2, and L3 are unstable and requires the expenditure of energy to stay in those locations. Whereas L4 and L5 are stable Lagrange Points and do not require the expenditure of energy to remain in those locations. There are currently two asteroids located in Earth's L4, and one asteroid located in Earth's L5. Only the ESA have scheduled one satellite (Vigil), to be launched in 2029 for Earth's L5.

It had to be more than just a glancing blow because Theia left its iron core with Earth.

 

[Oozlefinch]

White dwarfs are determined by the mass of their star.

Population II stars are less likely to produce white dwarfs because they were typically much more massive (and shorter lived) than population I stars.

True, however the Population III stars were all supermassive as they only had hydrogen. All were super massive and all appear to have ended their life as black holes, red dwarfs, or brown dwarfs.

And the early Population II stars were little different than the Population III stars, other than they had hydrogen as well as helium, as well as oxygen. And those likely also became black holes, red dwarfs, or brown dwarfs.

However, the late Population II stars started to become smaller, and have heavier metals in their composition. There is little difference really between a late Population II star and a Population I star, other than the latter has even more metals as the material that it is composed of has been through the "Galactic Cooker" more times.

And I did say "late Population II stars", which were very different in composition from a Population III star, or even an early Population II star. That includes stars like HD 122563 in the Bootes constellation. As even though it is confirmed to be Population II by the spectrographic signature, it is less than 1 solar mass and is currently in its red giant phase. And it will become a white dwarf as out own sun will as it lacks the mass to become anything else. Another is Sneden's Star in Aquarius. It also is a later Population II star, of only 1.1 solar masses, and is also expected to become a white dwarf.

 

[Oozlefinch]

Whereas L4 and L5 are stable Lagrange Points and do not require the expenditure of energy to remain in those locations. There are currently two asteroids located in Earth's L4, and one asteroid located in Earth's L5.

All true. But Thea (how it was spelled in the 1990s when I first heard the theory) was a capture that rested in the L4 or L5, but was not stable as it had a sizeable mass that was both pulling the Earth and causing the Earth to be pulled in kind. Plus as it was likely a capture, it still had some of it's own momentum which did not keep it perfectly in that location. But it was close enough that after millions of years it finally got pulled out of there and collided with Earth.

And yes, asteroids and satellites do indeed reside in the Lagrange points. But they are not Mars sized objects with their own considerable gravitational pull. As that would have been enough mass for the two to attempt to pull towards each other, and the more massive Earth would have eventually pulled it in. Most estimates plot it at about 25 million years between capture and collision.

And that same documentary also explained it as a glancing blow, and used the terms "Earth Mark I" for our planet before the collision, and "Earth Mark II" for where we live today. Terms you might notice that I still use to describe our planet before or after the collision.

 

[Oozlefinch]

For some strange reason the University of Minnesota had an aversion to IBM. We had Control Data Computers, DEC/VAX computers, PDP-11s, even a Cray I that Seymour Cray donated to his alma mater, but not a single IBM computer anywhere on campus.

And that actually depended on many things. But a lot of colleges when they were first computerized tended to pick one flavor and stick with it. CDC were common, as well as DEC with all their variants of PDP, Sperry-UNIVAC, and others. And as many did not have the money for something like a System 360, they would often simply timeshare them if they really needed one.

I guess I was lucky in a way, as my mom was a systems analyst for a major construction firm. And I often would "play" on the 360 at her work if she had to do something on the weekends. And when I took a COBOL class in High School it was before the "PC Revolution", so we submitted all programs on keypunch cards that were run through the 360 at Boise State. They likely jumped into IBM when they became a University, as some of the major corporations in the area like Idaho Power, Boise-Cascade and Morrison-Knudsen were already IBM shops. So if they wanted their alumni to get jobs locally they had to cater to that in their curriculum.

And the same was often true in the military and corporations. Many used the various DEC models and their clones, as they were plentiful and cheap. I know the military used both System 360 and PDP, depending on what the need was. In the late 1980s and in some places into the early 1990s our Maintenance Management system was still mostly being handled by PDP systems, I had one on my desk. A big green monster, that I sent and received all updates for on 8" floppy disks every day. It was even considered to be "portable", as the entire thing only weighed around 200 pounds (without printer).

 

[Glitch]

True, however the Population III stars were all supermassive as they only had hydrogen. All were super massive and all appear to have ended their life as black holes, red dwarfs, or brown dwarfs.

And the early Population II stars were little different than the Population III stars, other than they had hydrogen as well as helium, as well as oxygen. And those likely also became black holes, red dwarfs, or brown dwarfs.

However, the late Population II stars started to become smaller, and have heavier metals in their composition. There is little difference really between a late Population II star and a Population I star, other than the latter has even more metals as the material that it is composed of has been through the "Galactic Cooker" more times.

And I did say "late Population II stars", which were very different in composition from a Population III star, or even an early Population II star. That includes stars like HD 122563 in the Bootes constellation. As even though it is confirmed to be Population II by the spectrographic signature, it is less than 1 solar mass and is currently in its red giant phase. And it will become a white dwarf as out own sun will as it lacks the mass to become anything else. Another is Sneden's Star in Aquarius. It also is a later Population II star, of only 1.1 solar masses, and is also expected to become a white dwarf.

Red dwarfs? I think you are thinking of the TV series. There are no such thing as red dwarf stars in astronomy.

Brown dwarfs are not really stars. They are very large planets with a minimum of 13 to 14 Jupiter masses, and a maximum of ~80 Jupiter masses. They also fuse deuterium, not hydrogen. Which is why they are not stars. Once they reach more than 80 Jupiter masses they start fusing hydrogen and become stars.

Also once a star get above ~80 M☉ they no longer leave behind a black hole when they die. They still have the same core-collapse as other stars in the 10 to 80 M☉ range, but instead of a supernovae they produce a hypernova and completely blow themselves apart leaving nothing behind, other than their ejecta. There is no black hole, neutron star, or white dwarf, it just ceases to exist, and population III stars were extremely massive.

I also don't think you can get M- or K-class main sequence star with population III stars. A star composed entirely of hydrogen is not going to have the density required at less than 0.5 M☉ to fuse hydrogen. I do not believe it was possible for M- and K-class stars to form until population II stars started showing up somewhere between 400 to 800 million years after the Big Bang.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was a brilliant man, but his 1931 paper on "The Maximum Mass of Ideal White Dwarfs" was based on non-rotating, non-magnetic, degenerate matter. One of the possible explanations for the super-Chandrrasekhar Type Ia supernova that we have been detecting since 2003 has been that they are either rapidly rotating, and/or highly magnetic to allow them to retain more mass before deflagration. Another possible explanation is the collision of two white dwarfs whose combined mass exceeds Chandrrasekhar's limit of 1.44 M☉.

Either way, we have detected and measured the ejecta of a super-Chandrrasekhar Type Ia supernova and it exceeded Chandrrasekhar's limit.

‘Super-Chandrasekhar’ Type Ia Supernovae at nebular epochs - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 432, Issue 4, Pages 3117–3130, July 2013 (open access)

 

[Glitch]

All true. But Thea (how it was spelled in the 1990s when I first heard the theory) was a capture that rested in the L4 or L5, but was not stable as it had a sizeable mass that was both pulling the Earth and causing the Earth to be pulled in kind. Plus as it was likely a capture, it still had some of it's own momentum which did not keep it perfectly in that location. But it was close enough that after millions of years it finally got pulled out of there and collided with Earth.

And yes, asteroids and satellites do indeed reside in the Lagrange points. But they are not Mars sized objects with their own considerable gravitational pull. As that would have been enough mass for the two to attempt to pull towards each other, and the more massive Earth would have eventually pulled it in. Most estimates plot it at about 25 million years between capture and collision.

And that same documentary also explained it as a glancing blow, and used the terms "Earth Mark I" for our planet before the collision, and "Earth Mark II" for where we live today. Terms you might notice that I still use to describe our planet before or after the collision.

During the Hadean Epoch 4.6 billion years ago there were most likely several planetesimals sharing the same orbit as Earth. All the planets were getting pummeled. Theia probably got smacked a few times before it impacted Earth.

The orbits would have been crazy 4.6 billion years ago with a lot more objects orbiting the sun. Jupiter migrated towards the sun, and was located where the asteroid belt is today at 3 AU, before sliding back out (thanks to Saturn) to its current 5 AU distance. This is why Mars is so small. Jupiter effectively robbed Mars of the mass it would have collected by moving so close to the sun.

Theia could have been captured (although if Theia was a Mars-size object then that makes capture very unlikely), or it may have always been in the same orbit as Earth and had its orbit interrupted by a giant impact. There are a number of different possible explanations for the origin of Theia. The only thing that really matters is that it impacted Earth hard enough to leave behind a large chunk, if not all, of its nickel-iron core and undoubtedly gave us our 1,000 mph rotation upon our axis.

 

[Glitch]

And that actually depended on many things. But a lot of colleges when they were first computerized tended to pick one flavor and stick with it. CDC were common, as well as DEC with all their variants of PDP, Sperry-UNIVAC, and others. And as many did not have the money for something like a System 360, they would often simply timeshare them if they really needed one.

I guess I was lucky in a way, as my mom was a systems analyst for a major construction firm. And I often would "play" on the 360 at her work if she had to do something on the weekends. And when I took a COBOL class in High School it was before the "PC Revolution", so we submitted all programs on keypunch cards that were run through the 360 at Boise State. They likely jumped into IBM when they became a University, as some of the major corporations in the area like Idaho Power, Boise-Cascade and Morrison-Knudsen were already IBM shops. So if they wanted their alumni to get jobs locally they had to cater to that in their curriculum.

And the same was often true in the military and corporations. Many used the various DEC models and their clones, as they were plentiful and cheap. I know the military used both System 360 and PDP, depending on what the need was. In the late 1980s and in some places into the early 1990s our Maintenance Management system was still mostly being handled by PDP systems, I had one on my desk. A big green monster, that I sent and received all updates for on 8" floppy disks every day. It was even considered to be "portable", as the entire thing only weighed around 200 pounds (without printer).

CDC, Sperry-UNIVAC, and HP were all Minnesota companies, so that makes sense. Minnesota was the Silcon Valley of the mid-west before there was a Silicon Valley. DEC with their VAX and PDP-11s were from Massachusetts. The IBM 370 became available in 1970. The overwhelming vast majority of businesses were using IBM and programming in either COBOL or FORTRAN. Not only were there no IBM's at the University of Minnesota, I only had one semester of COBOL and FORTRAN, and four years of UCSD Pascal. I had absolutely no clue what CICS was until after I received my degree and started looking for work in the real-world. Although, to be fair to the University, I did not get a real-world degree. My degree is a BSCS, specializing in data structures. So its focus was more academic than business oreintated.

I did not do any programming for the military until after I got out of the service, and that was through military contractors like Hughes Missile Division and Litton Aero Products Division. Although, having a military background helped me obtain the contract.

I haven't worked with a PDP since the early 1980s. Although I did "inherit" an IBM Displaywritter in the 1980s that took 8" floppies. I became an Apple certified developer in the early 1980s and had a wide variety of Apples, including a Lisa. However, when the powersupply on my external 5 MB harddrive failed Apple would not replace the powersupply. They wanted me to pay $1,500 to buy a whole new 5 MB external harddrive. That was in 1984, and IBM just released its PC with DOS 1.0. I promptly dumped Apple and became an IBM developer instead.

 

[Oozlefinch]

Theia could have been captured (although if Theia was a Mars-size object then that makes capture very unlikely), or it may have always been in the same orbit as Earth and had its orbit interrupted by a giant impact.

Actually, many tend to believe it is originally from the outer solar system because of the suspected composition.

The Inner Planets other than Earth are all rocky, with little water in their composition. However, Earth Mark II is unlike any of the others, as it a rocky planet that has abundant water. Both on the surface as well as below the crust in the mantle. Which is more in keeping with the outer planets, their moons (Europa, Callisto, Mimas, Ganymede, Pluto, etc, etc, etc), and Oort Cloud objects. This has led many to believe that Earth Mark II is the "melding" of a rocky inner planet, with an icy outer planet. And it would explain why we have such a high amount of water, unlike any of our neighboring inner system planets.

That is really the only way any have been able to explain the composition of our own planet now when compared to all the others in the system. At one time it was suspected that it was brought in on billions of Oort Cloud comets, until the Theia theory took hold. Now most look to that as the solution of both problems. And it would fit the puzzle if when Jupiter moved outwards, other objects or even moons might have been ejected from their orbit of the giant and moved inwards.

We know the early solar system was a violent place. Once only needs to look at Uranus to see that.

 

[Oozlefinch]

I haven't worked with a PDP since the early 1980s. Although I did "inherit" an IBM Displaywritter in the 1980s that took 8" floppies.

Wow, another oldie that the military used for ages. I was still using the Displaywriter in 1988 as an admin shop I worked in had two of them. That was also a monster, but we had to use it as the daisywheel printer was the only way we could fill out officer efficiency reports (those required the OCR font). That was also when we got the Zenith Z-286, and other than OERs we shifted almost all of our work away from the Displaywriter and to the PC with Wordstar.

I revisited that office in 1990, and they still had one Displaywriter in use. It was only used for OERs and revising a few major documents we had done years earlier, everything else was on PC by then. I suspect however that a few were likely used into the middle of the 1990s, as the OCR fonts on dot matrix printers were always problematic. And that is likely at about the time laser printers replaced dot matrix, then eventually OCR not being needed as it went to electronic filing.

 

[Glitch]

Wow, another oldie that the military used for ages. I was still using the Displaywriter in 1988 as an admin shop I worked in had two of them. That was also a monster, but we had to use it as the daisywheel printer was the only way we could fill out officer efficiency reports (those required the OCR font). That was also when we got the Zenith Z-286, and other than OERs we shifted almost all of our work away from the Displaywriter and to the PC with Wordstar.

I revisited that office in 1990, and they still had one Displaywriter in use. It was only used for OERs and revising a few major documents we had done years earlier, everything else was on PC by then. I suspect however that a few were likely used into the middle of the 1990s, as the OCR fonts on dot matrix printers were always problematic. And that is likely at about the time laser printers replaced dot matrix, then eventually OCR not being needed as it went to electronic filing.

I moved to Alaska in 1991 and gave up my computer career in Los Angeles. However, I ended up working for the oil companies with their IBM RS/6000 and then later with their AS/400.

I always liked the OCR font. Dot matrix printers were okay in 1980s, but you couldn't use them to print carbon-copy forms (which were still a thing in the 1980s). That required either a daisywheel or a line printer. Some kind of physical force, beyond just spraying ink, was required.

WordStar also brings back memories. There was always a big rivalry between WordStar users and WordPerfect users. We still use many of the keyboard commands that WordStar first developed. Personally, I have always been a Microsoft Word fan since version 1.0. It was much more than a mere word processor and it was the very first WYSIWYG word processor.

What I liked most about the 1980s now, I hated at the time. I really liked working with first generation languages. Where you had to code absolutely every function. When you are writing an upper-case function in assembler because it can be executed faster, you gain an understanding that you can't get with subsequent generation languages. If you make a function call in most languages these days you have absolutely no idea what it is actually doing because you didn't write the function. That one function call is also likely to be layered with different functions, one dependent upon the other.

Microsoft may have developed decent office software, but their programming languages truly sucked. Nobody used Microsoft C because it was so buggy and their libraries were problematic. Borland was the way to go in the 1980s. Now everyone uses Microsoft, which is just sad.

 

[Glitch]

Actually, many tend to believe it is originally from the outer solar system because of the suspected composition.

The Inner Planets other than Earth are all rocky, with little water in their composition. However, Earth Mark II is unlike any of the others, as it a rocky planet that has abundant water. Both on the surface as well as below the crust in the mantle. Which is more in keeping with the outer planets, their moons (Europa, Callisto, Mimas, Ganymede, Pluto, etc, etc, etc), and Oort Cloud objects. This has led many to believe that Earth Mark II is the "melding" of a rocky inner planet, with an icy outer planet. And it would explain why we have such a high amount of water, unlike any of our neighboring inner system planets.

That is really the only way any have been able to explain the composition of our own planet now when compared to all the others in the system. At one time it was suspected that it was brought in on billions of Oort Cloud comets, until the Theia theory took hold. Now most look to that as the solution of both problems. And it would fit the puzzle if when Jupiter moved outwards, other objects or even moons might have been ejected from their orbit of the giant and moved inwards.

We know the early solar system was a violent place. Once only needs to look at Uranus to see that.

I would not determine the location of Theia based upon the amount of water on Earth. That water may have originated from other impacts, or it may have always been part of Earth's formation from the very beginning. Which seems to be the prevailing theory. One thing is certain, Earth had lots of water before it impacted with Theia. The fact that the moon is bone dry would suggest that Theia did not contain water, or at least not much water.

Earth does not have the same deuterium/hydrogen ratio as the outer planets or the Oort Cloud comets. The closest D/H ratio comparison would be to Mars, the asteroid belt, the Greek and Trojan asteroids in Jupiter's L4 and L5, and the Kupier Belt comets.



There are some who think that Earth's (and possibly Mars') water originated during what they call a "protosolar nebula absorption" based on the D/H ratio.

Evidence for primordial water in Earth’s deep mantle - Science, Volume 350, Issue 6262, pp. 795-797, 2015 (free preprint)

 

[Oozlefinch]

I always liked the OCR font. Dot matrix printers were okay in 1980s, but you couldn't use them to print carbon-copy forms (which were still a thing in the 1980s). That required either a daisywheel or a line printer. Some kind of physical force, beyond just spraying ink, was required.

Oh, you could use dot matrix with carbon copies just fine as they were still impact printers. You must be thinking of ink jet printers, not dot matrix.

In fact, some of them (like the Alps P2000) had an impressive NLQ capability that was incredible considering it only had a 9 pin head (but crossed the page 2 to 4 times).

In fact, I was surprised that into the 2010s I still saw offices in the military with those 3 decade old Alps P2000 printers in use as they were still working with carbon copy forms.

WordStar also brings back memories. There was always a big rivalry between WordStar users and WordPerfect users. We still use many of the keyboard commands that WordStar first developed. Personally, I have always been a Microsoft Word fan since version 1.0. It was much more than a mere word processor and it was the very first WYSIWYG word processor.

Yep, the MS-DOS Edit program used Wordstar commands, as did many other programs before the GUI took over.

The program of choice for the Marines however was a dog called "MultiMate". One of the first suites that did word processing, spreadsheets, and databases. It did all of them, but it did not really do any of them very well. Many of us into the middle 1990s continued to use Wordstar or Word Perfect as MultiMate was absolutely horrible. By that time the Corps transitioned to NT or 3.11 and Word for Windows.

What I liked most about the 1980s now, I hated at the time. I really liked working with first generation languages. Where you had to code absolutely every function. When you are writing an upper-case function in assembler because it can be executed faster, you gain an understanding that you can't get with subsequent generation languages. If you make a function call in most languages these days you have absolutely no idea what it is actually doing because you didn't write the function. That one function call is also likely to be layered with different functions, one dependent upon the other.

Well, I never really did any serious programming. Unlike my mother, I realized early on that I absolutely detested programming and debugging and wanted to work with the hardware. I was lucky in that during my time in the Marines the PC revolution came about, so by the time I got out I could finally work with the hardware. An EE was no longer required and the fishbowls with the raised floor was already largely a thing of the past.

 

[Oozlefinch]

Microsoft may have developed decent office software, but their programming languages truly sucked. Nobody used Microsoft C because it was so buggy and their libraries were problematic. Borland was the way to go in the 1980s. Now everyone uses Microsoft, which is just sad.

I would argue against that, as probably the most common language in use through most of the 1980s was by Microsoft.

Most people likely do not realize that the programming language and operating system built into almost every computer from the Altair and Apple II to every Commodore machine, Atari, IBM, TRS-80, Texas Instruments, and almost every home and microcomputer at the time was just a licensed and slightly modified version of Microsoft Basic. I admit that many of their higher languages sucked, but their MS Basic was solid and how tens of millions were first exposed to programming as well as actually doing our IO functions.

And it was good for the industry as the vast majority of code so long as it did not use PEEK or POKE commands was almost seamlessly transferable from one platform to another. And tens of millions of computers were built that came with Microsoft Basic as their built in language and OS.

And their newer C libraries are used by a huge number of programs today and have matured a lot. As it makes cross-platform programming easier and can be updated simply by even a complete novice. About every other time I install a game they check to see if my MS C library is current. Whatever else can be said for MS, the finally brought an end to a lot of the chaos of the late 1980s and early 1990s by setting industry standards. I still remember the era when I might have 3 or 4 different GUIs on my computer, each one largely used by a single program that I had to use. Like having GEM just so I could use Ventura Publisher and nothing else. Or Visi On for VisiCalc, NeWS for FrameMaker, OS/2, and I even used GEOS 86 as I had been a serious GEOS user when I had my C64.

By the middle of the 1990s, the only OS I had to use was some version of Windows, and the classic Mac OS. Oh, and Novell and XENIX as some places were still using that as their NOS until the start of the 2000s. I still laugh at how worthless my CNE in NetWare 3 is, and I have not used it in well over 2 decades.

The industry finally settling on Windows sure made my job a hell of a lot easier as I no longer had to support so damned many operating systems.

 

[Mircea]

That is a pretty good trick considering the Cray II was not released until 1985.

I got my Cray numbers mixed up.