Thread 16743308

It's time to put these asteroid mining ideas to the capeshit trashcan, isn't it?

>>16743308 (OP)
>it only works with gold
>no millions of tons of iron per year
>gravity well

Interesting idea, but (a) it requires filling experiments that already have a lot of chemical, pressure, and radiation risks and throws heavy metal toxicity into the mix by requiring the chamber to be surrounded by mercury, and (b) while it gets you some gold, it ultimately fails to solve the problem of free neutrons... the transmutation just leaves you with a slightly lower energy neutron.

>>16743401
mercury isnt exactly that toxic or hard to work with. might as well get some free gold out of it.

Did something new happen or are we still talking about that experiment from the 1940's where all the gold was radioactive?

>>16743308 (OP)
>asteroid mining ideas to the capeshit trashcan
Gold from fusion is even more absurd than gold from asteroids thoughbeit.

>>16743707
Think rare elements that the capeshitters think we'll mine in space.

>>16743707
doesn't gold need a super-nova to form?
how the fuck they doing a super-nova in a lab?

>>16743789
Yeah. Fusion is probably not the way to do it.
It's been done via neutron bombardment but the isotopes produced were radioactive and the process is more expensive than the gold itself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_of_precious_metals

>>16743308 (OP)
Odd. I expected her to fixate on gold. And here she is, fixating on gold. What could have caused this?

>>16743308 (OP)
We really shouldn't mine asteroids.

Unfortunately we share the planet with thinly veiled neopagans called "environmentalists" who will bar us from mining the artic due to some unscientific romantic ideas about its untouched sanctity, even though launching a commercial mining space industry is 100x worse than digging a few pits in the least habitable spot on earth.

>>16743544
>mercury isnt exactly that toxic

>>16744015
Red mercury =/= mercury, numbnuts.

Is Hossenfelder a hack or just autist?

>>16744003
>mining space industry is 100x worse
How so?

>>16744776
She's a legit autist. As all true scientists.

Seems like less work to send a probe into space and to fly a gold asteroid in with parachutes

>>16744780
He probably just means expensive, though 100x is still off by several orders of magnitude. That or he misinterpreted some popsci about Kessler syndrome

>>16744796
>parachutes
This is why you're posting on 4chan instead of making important scientific decisions.

>>16743603
We're talking about making SLIGHTLY less radioactive gold with it costing a few pennies less while it still costs more than the gold.