Comment by Terr_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Terr_ | Hacker News Reader

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> sterile neutrinos

It's funny when one encounters serious real-world discussion on something previously seen as sci-fi technobabble.

In this case, I'm thinking of the Destiny universe, such as this apocalyptic alert from a military AI. [0]

> Multiple distributed ISR assets report a TRANSIENT NEAR EXTRASOLAR EVENT. Event duration ZERO POINT THREE SECONDS. Event footprint includes sterile neutrino scattering and gravity waves. Omnibus analysis detects deep structure information content (nine sigma) and internal teleonomy. No hypothesis on event mechanism (FLAG ACAUSAL). Bootstrap simulation suggests event is DIRECTED and INIMICABLE (convergent q-Bayes/Monte Carlo probability approaches 1). No hypothesis on deep structure encoding (TCC/NP-HARD).

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> In the lab that houses the BEST experiment, fish serve as an early warning system about any leaking radiation.

I'm curious how this works, it looks as if there's one central underwater valve and two above-water valves, perhaps supposedly-breathable air is getting bubbled up through the tank?

> SAGE used a tank of 57 metric tons of gallium.

Some napkin-math [egregious mistake corrected] to visualize how much that is, and I get "45 oil drums".

    Line item               Amt Units
    Gallium Mass            5.70E+01    metric tons
    Gallium Mass            5.70E+04    kg
    Gallium Mass            5.70E+07    grams
    Liq. Gallium Density    6.10E+00    grams/cm3
    Gallium Vol             9.35E+06    cm3
    Oil Drum Volume         5.50E+01    gallons
    Vol Ratio               3.79E+03    gallons/cm3
    Oil Drum Volume         2.08E+05    cm3
    Gallium Volume          4.49E+01    oil drums

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[0] https://www.ishtar-collective.net/cards/ghost-fragment-darkn...

>> It's funny when one encounters serious real-world discussion on something previously seen as sci-fi technobabble.

> In this case, I'm thinking of the Destiny universe, such as this apocalyptic alert from a military AI.

To be clear, physicists have been thinking very non-fictionally about sterile neutrinos since 1968.

Google is (still) a great tool for this sort of conversion. It comes up with just under 58 barrels: https://www.google.com/search?q=57+tonnes+%2F+%286.1+g%2Fcm%...

> Google is (still) a great tool for this sort of conversion

Alas, not in this case, since Google is interpreting that as a 42-gallon "petrochemical-industry traditional abstract measuring unit of crude oil" as opposed to a 55-gallon "physical container readers may have seen and everybody actually uses." (Including to hold crude oil, in the rare cases that it's not in an enormous tank or pipeline.)

Perhaps this is an example of where "intelligent assistant" software lands in a dangerous middle-zone of "wrong, but not wrong enough that it's obvious."

Anywho, if we reword it a bit and put in a less-rounded density, it comes out the same:

https://www.google.com/search?q=57+tonnes+%2F+%286.095+g%2Fc...

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P.S.: The way it parses this small change is also amusing, where "in water barrels" isn't a change in the type of barrel, but instead introduces a non-SI unit of pressure, making everything murky indeed.

https://www.google.com/search?q=57+tonnes+%2F+%286.1+g%2Fcm%...

It is remarkable that you spotted the inaccuracy. You make a good point about it being wrong but not wrong enough.

OTOH, the correct answer by your reasoning is 44 barrels. For my purposes, 58 is right enough. I can't even visualize the difference between 44 and 58 barrels.

44 barrels is about 323 cubic feet (9.1 cubic meters). That's about the size of my bathroom.

57 tons in my tiny bathroom. Gallium is shockingly dense. Which makes sense.

Yes, it's a cube with sides of just a touch more than 2m (7ft). Remarkable.

My preference for this on the web is Wolfram Alpha: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=57+tonnes+%2F+%286.1+g%...

(note I've slightly changed the prompt to match the "drums" OP used instead of barrels. This avoids the issue other child mentions of ambiguous units, as it clearly states the volume of drum it's using and gives options for others (e.g. the international 200L instead of the US 208L/55 GAL).

Another option which I wouldn't inherently trust to get the calculation just right, but is good for explaining the process if you can fact-check it is ChatGPT-4o: https://chatgpt.com/share/ead07fff-8d55-4147-a742-6e19b26f1e...

double check that math - olympic pool is 50x25x2 meters, or 2500m3. 1 m3 of water is roughly 1 metric ton (1 g/cc = 1 kg/L = 1 t/m3) depending on temperature and such.

57000000g / 5.9 g/cc = 9661017 cc = 9.661m3

Whoops, yeah, made a few mistakes. Next time I'll do the usual and open a throwaway spreadsheet. Also, picking gallium-density from a slightly higher temperature where it's liquid.

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