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I still can’t believe that there exists rocks on this world that will make a room glow blue and kill everyone in the room if the rocks are brought close togethe
by mensetmanusman 2y ago
I still can’t believe that there exists rocks on this world that will make a room glow blue and kill everyone in the room if the rocks are brought close together.
- lm28469 2y agoHeavily processed rocks that very few nations can produce. A bit like your cpu is just sand, heavily processed sand
- jayrot 2y agoRight? Also there are an awful lot more totally boring and simple things that “if brought together” make exciting stuff happen. Sodium and Chlorine? Potassium and water?
- BobaFloutist 2y agoSodium and chlorine are kind of the opposite, they're two very exciting things that if brought together, after some chaos, make something pretty boring.
- vanderZwan 2y agoHonestly, we don't spend enough time feeling appropriately amazed at the processed sand we're using to communicate right now either.
- giraffe_lady 2y ago"A computer is a rock we tricked into thinking."
- krisoft 2y agoI likewise “can’t believe” we have CPUs. The two things are equally wild to me. Sometimes i imagine how I would explain our current tech to someone clever and curious from the past. Like what would Jules Verne, Edison or John von Neumann do if you took your iphone out of your pocket and show them as you unlock it with your face, click youtube and search their name. (Just as an example of something super pedestrian and mundane which might just blow their minds.) We are trully living in an age of wonders.
- rocqua 2y agoI think a transistor, etching, and photolithography should all be explainable to these geniuses. If you get those, and then hand wave 'but now a lot more and precise' they will have about an average understanding of the process for HN I would wager.
- krisoft 2y ago> I think a transistor, etching, and photolithography should all be explainable to these geniuses. No doubt! But i’m also not sure if the compute would be the most interesting part to them. The screen itself might fascinate them. Or the touch interface. Or they might ask how is it powered, or how does it store all those videos in that little slab. And if we tell them it is connected to other machines with radiowaves, they might ask many questions about that. They might notice that even though the music they hear “came over the radio” it is exceptionally crisp and without any distortion, so they would ask about that, which could lead us chatting about digital error correction codes or compression algorithms. Or maybe they would be fascinated by the camera and take pictures of themselves, or ask about other features the phone has. It is one thing to understand that a transistor is just an electronic switch, and if you connect many of them you can have complex electronic circuits. It is an entirely different thing to experience that you can touch one of the tiny images on the slab and then it shows a colourful birds eye view picture of the buildings around us, and with two fingers you can move around to seemingly anywhere else on Earth and see what is there. We know that the second is just a bunch of transistors appropriately organised but there is a few “wait what? How is that possible?” along the path from understanding transistors to experiencing google earth. And then of course the biggest magic of it all: this device they are seeing is not some rare wonder which only governments or militaries can afford in few numbers. Not something only specialist can use in laboratories of higher learning. It is a common item anyone can buy. The cost of purchasing this device is comparable to the rent one pays for a modest abode for a month. That is the real magic. That it is available and affordable to the masses.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y agoI tend to think that Von Neumann would be disappointed that computing is still using his architecture.
- willis936 2y agoWell, a determined individual could make a few grams a year, but they'd likely be told to stop early on by one of those few nations.
- dragonwriter 2y ago> Heavily processed rocks that very few nations can produce. “Are allowed to” is probably more accurate than “can”, given that the main constraint is other nations looking for signs that you are doing it and... reacting negatively if they see them.
- caf 2y agoFifteen nations that currently do so, if anyone is interested: Russia, United States, France, United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, China, Japan, Argentina, Brazil, India, Pakistan, Iran, Israel, and North Korea.
- N19PEDL2 2y agoSome of those countries don't have nuclear weapons. What do they produce plutonium for?
- saagarjha 2y agoReactors?
- caf 2y agoThey don't all produce separated plutonium, this also includes those that produce enriched uranium, which is also fissile. The three reasons to produce fissile material are weapons, non-explosive military uses and civilian power reactors. Even many of the weapons states aren't producing new fissile material for weapons these days, they have more than enough.
- Gazoche 2y agoReminds me of this XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2115/ https://xkcd.com/2115/
- SoftTalker 2y agoOrigin of the idea for the Loc-Nar?
- dllthomas 2y agoPlutonium is heavy metal.
- ndileas 2y agoThe alchemists are still with us, more powerful then they ever could have imagined.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- layer8 2y agoIt’s because “rocks” aren’t the fundamental nature of our reality. There are also ugly giant bags of mostly water posting comments in this very thread.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoWater bags and HN brought together!