Instead of Black May, Glorious May
In May 1943, the Allies won the Battle of the Atlantic. Aided by codebreaking, huffduf and radar, their escorts and aircraft destroyed 37 German submarines (accidents raised the total loss to 41). The Germans had little to show for their sacrifices. Worldwide, in May 1943, they wrecked only 45 Allied merchantmen. In the North Atlantic, U-boats sank only 18 ships. Of the 450 merchant vessels in eastbound convoys (i.e. laden with cargoes for Britain) only 5--or about 1%--were sunk. No wonder the Germans called it "Black May."
Was the German disaster inevitable? Most historians would answer in the affirmative. I, however, suggest in May 1943 the Reich could've won a spectacular victory. And in the very place where defeat occurred--the critical North Atlantic run. The key to success was effective use of surface vessels as well as submarines.
It was unfortunate that the big ships of the Kriegsmarine had fallen out of favor by 1943. Scarcity of oil had idled Tirpitz, Scharnhorst and other large warships. Considering the vessels useless scrap iron, Hitler wanted to decomission them. The warships survived only because of their role in tying down British naval assets. They might, in fact, have accomplished much more.
As the May disaster showed, it was fallacious to think U-boats could carry on the sea war unassisted. Given stronger escort forces, they needed the help of the big ships. Tirpitz etc might've caused Allied convoys to scatter so U-boats could sink merchantmen without fear of escorts. That was achieved the previous July during the fight against convoy PQ17. The success might've been replicated in the Atlantic. The Germans, however, could've been even more ambitious. Consider this alternate scenario:
- First, in late April 1943, the Germans abandon the hunt for convoy ONs 5. Instead, all available Type VII boats form a patrol line running south of Greenland (or perhaps two parallel north-south lines) with a 150km gap between the northernmost boat(s) and the Greenland ice sheet. Able to determine U-boat dispositions, the Allies route their convoys through this gap.
- In the stormy weather at the end of April, a German flotilla consisting of Tirpitz, Scharnhorst, Luetzow and a few other warships sorties from Norway, undetected by Allied aircraft, then grounded in bad weather. Maintaining radio silence, and sailing at low speed to conserve fuel, the flotilla heads for the Denmark strait. The allies are unaware that German ships pass through the Denmark strait and enter the Atlantic.
- Consisting of 46 ships, convoy HX 237 departs New York on May 1, and sets course for the Greenland gap, which it reaches around May 9. By then the German flotilla is deployed in the gap, waiting for it. Tirpitz and its companions surround the convoy and demand that all merchant crews abandon ship. Any ships that attempt to flee are hit a few times to stop them. To conserve ammunition, however, the warships usually don't sink them. They summon about 20 of the northernmost VIIs to finish off most of the stopped vessels. But the U-boats are ordered not to torpedo any tankers unless authorized. Tirpitz and others determine which tankers are carrying oil suitable for warships, put prize crews on them and sail away a certain distance to refuel from them. Except for a few escapees (mostly stragglers sailing behind the encircled, main body of ships), the rest of HX 237 is wiped out. Total allied losses to this point are 43 merchant ships (the convoy escorts fled).
- After the HX 237 disaster, the Allies halt further convoy sailings until they can either destroy the German ships or provide sufficient warship escorts. Convoy SC 128 had already passed through the gap before the flotilla arrived there, and SC 129 was routed through the new gap caused by the movement of 20 U-boats northward. After that, however, the Allies form a superconvoy, consisting of HX 238 (45 ships) HX 239 (42 ships) and SC 130 (37 ships), guarded by two battleships and five cruisers, plus the usual destroyer etc escort. The big convoy sails around May 20. By then the Germans, with many U-boats including several fresh from Kiel, have established a new patrol line without a gap, extending from Greenland to a point well to the south. To evade the U-boats, a convoy will have to pass south of the patrol line.
- Anticipating that the allies would strengthen convoy defenses, the flotilla attempts to trick the escort into abandoning the big convoy. The Germans send a U-boat far to the south, to the Middle Atlantic area. The boat sends a message announcing that, due to mechanical problems, it can no longer escort one of the captured tankers, then in the area. To strengthen the ruse, the flotilla also sends a cruiser, low on ammunition, south where it can be spotted by a middle Atlantic convoy.
- By May 25, the Allied escort commander is ordered to detach his battleships and cruisers from the big convoy and send them south. With just the usual escort, the big convoy continues just south of the patrol line, around May 29. There the German flotilla pounces on it. By this point the allied warships have no hope of returning in time to repel the enemy. A huge convoy of 124 ships is surrounded and defenseless. Some escape, but most comply with the German demand to stop and abandon ship. U-boats again race to the scene to massacre merchantmen. Only a few tankers, as before, are temporarily spared. After two days of slaughter, allied losses amount to 112 merchant ships. In addition, on May 31, U-boats torpedo and sink a battleship, which was searching for the flotilla. Meanwhile, other vessels rescue survivors. Its ammunition spent, the flotilla dashes back up the Denmark strait and returns to Norway.
posted by starman at 5:22 AM
38 Comments:
Hitler could have at least tried to use those surface ships to support the submarines. By not doing so, he doomed his U-boats to a certain defeat. If more surface ships had been built prior to the start of the war, Germany would have had more support for the submarines.
Wow, l never thought the kriegsmarine could've done so well so late in the war.
The Germans did do well pretty late in the war, in March 1943, but nowhere near as well as in this scenario! 134 ships, 850, 000 tons, just in the North Atlantic, in one month wow!!
Btw how well armed was the Tirpitz?
Did it stand a chance if an allied battleship caught up to it?
The Tirpitz had eight 15 inch guns. It was the sister ship of the Bismarck, which fought well against two British battleships--Hood and Prince of Wales--so it could've fought a typical Allied battleship.
Wow indeed. I just decided that 95 ships or 850,000 tons may be too conservative. Fewer than 29 ships out of 124 were likely to have escaped from the big convoy at the end of the month. In the revised scenario, only 18 ships evade destruction, and 106 are sunk. Added to the 39 sunk from HX 237 that brings the total to 145 merchantmen totaling 920,000 tons.
How might the loss 1:17million tons have affected the allied war effort?
How might the loss of 920. 000 tons on the north Atlantic run have affected Britain specifically?
If the flotilla returned safely to Norway, wouldn't Britain have given high priority to destroying it there so it couldn't sortie again?
The loss of 1.17 million tons of shipping, over 900,000 in the North Atlantic theater, probably would've caused serious delays in allied operations. The invasion of Sicily and Italy might've been postponed as supplying Britain for D-Day had priority.
Of course, after such a devastating operation, Britain would've given the highest priority to destroying the Tirpitz and other warships. The bombings of Germany would've been reduced.
Weren't the British already trying hard to sunk the Tirpitz, before May 1943?
If the flotilla had failed to capture tankers from HX 237 with oil suitable for warships wouldn't it had been stranded at sea?
Yes the British tried to sink the Tirpitz prior to May 1943. There was at least one bombing raid in 1942. They also tried hard to sink the battleship after it sortied in April 1942. Tirpitz barely evaded large numbers of torpedoes from carrier based planes, and had to waste a lot of precious fuel getting back to Norway at high speed.
The flotilla wouldn't necessarily have been stranded had it failed to capture tankers in May '43. Assuming it sailed to the Atlantic via the Denmark strait at slow speed to conserve fuel, there should have been enough for a brief operation before going back home. In fact the whole point of a gap in U-boat deployment near Greenland was to induce the enemy to come as close as possible to the Denmark strait, thereby minimizing the distance the flotilla had to travel to reach the zone of operations, and the fuel it had to consume to do so.
Did you just revise the post? Tonnage totals went up again(smile).
Yes I almost always revise a post, sometimes weeks or months after it first appears.
Tonnage totals went up, since 12 escapees out of 124 ships may be more realistic than 18, if the convoy were surrounded by intimidating big ships, and U-boats were closing in.
May 18, 2016
Hi Tim and whoever else might be here--long time since I've posted and even now I must apologize because I am going off topic while I still hope to get back to the interesting topic that I want to reread before commenting on. Anyhow I'm writing now because of concern over Hillary's big win here in California last night, she didn't just beat Bernie she pounded him into the ground 58% to 41%, a real shock because it is very different from what the opinion polls were indicating. It suggests that there may have been a lot of skullduggery chicanery at the polling stations or vote-counting machinery or somewhere, our electoral process has become corrupted not just by big donors but by electoral officials.
But that's not all; our system is even far more rotten than that, which I haven't time to go into now but one point I'd like to make is that our definition of "democracy" just doesn't do any good unless there is some broad consensus such that most people would be satisfied with the outcome of the vote whichever way it goes. We are so polarized now that whether Hillary or Trump wins in November, most people will hate that result. I am getting back to my proposal for SECESSION, what do you think of that? I had hoped that California would go for Bernie, in which case we should join with other progressive states to secede from the rest of the country if and when they vote for HRC or Trump in November, so as to form our own new nation in which we could have our own preferred form of government. This secession ought to be friendly and peaceful (unlike the 1860s) because it would also allow the conservative remainder of the country to go more their own preferred way. What do you think of this?
What is crazy now is that California might still consider going ahead and seceding if Trump wins in Nov. because Calif is projected to vote for Hillary by 60 to 30 or somesuch. Just crazy but still possibly a worthwhile idea I guess maybe.
Really I am so disappointed disgusted, the only thing that gives me hope now is that I believe that the economy is starting to disintegrate and will be in full-blown decline by this fall, which should wake up a lot of people to the fact of how badly the gov't is mismanaging the economy so then hopefully they will start to vote for change I hope I hope!
Anyhow I look forward to hearing from you on your thoughts about all this
Hi progrev,
Always great to hear from you.
First, notice I haven't written a new post this month. I was considering writing one on NGC 6496. That's a globular cluster with stars of high metallicity considering their great (c 12.5 billion year) age. NGC 6496 seemed interesting, because an abundance of heavier elements, including carbon, raises the possibility of life arising 6 billion years before it did here. But higher than average metallicity for a globular cluster could still be far short of the amount needed for life.
We've really gone off-topic this time, lol.
Maybe Clinton won big because Sanders's supporters had lost hope. The delegate math was all against them. Is there a serious movement calling for secession over there? Do polls indicate widespread support for such a notion? I'd be very surprised if they did; talk about drastic...
I don't think it matters who wins in November. Clinton is most likely to win. Just 8 years after the first black president, we'll see the first woman. That may make the US look progressive but as I've said so many times, the present system is inherently flawed and just can't deliver.
I look forward to hearing more about NGC 6496, like do they have any numbers on how much carbon etc. it has vs how much the Solar System has? Globular clusters are far smaller than galaxies, I think, so it surprises me if we could see one from such a great distance?
No, there's no movement for secession yet but once the economy falls apart maybe there will be when the central gov't fails to do anything about it. As you say, the present system just can't deliver. I do like Trump's slogan, make America great again, but most people I've talked to seem to have only a very vague notion of what that might mean but to me it refers back to WW II when we were second only to the USSR in defeating the Nazis and Japanese empire-attempt, which was one (two) gigantic feat(s) even though I disagree with much of the effort. We had rapid growth with more equality and full employment. What does the slogan mean to you, and I wonder what it means to Trump?
I saw some information online about iron abundances in NGC 6496 stars, relative to the sun. If memory serves, they have almost an order of magnitude less iron. I don't know about other elements like carbon, the key ingredient of life. But I think they're too rare even if they're more common than in the typical globular cluster, formed of old stars which existed before nucleosynthesis could produce ample heavy elements.
Sure globular clusters are far smaller than galaxies and there are many around the edges of our Milky Way. Seeing them is no problem because they're composed of many stars often packed tightly together.
"Make America great again" is a great election year slogan. I don't know what exactly it's supposed to mean, but Trump wants people to think he can bring back jobs from overseas, and the "good old days" of Leave it to Beaver. The slogan will achieve its real goal-winning votes, but probably not enough.
I wrote a long comment Friday but it got canceled due to a "bad connection" after the robot quiz, frustrating so this time I'm going to test it first
ok hopefully this one will come through! I am really surprised that our own galaxy would have such ancient stars in it. Do you know if this is very common? I mean I thought galaxies formed mainly by condensing out of giant gas and dust clouds but it seems that they just as often or maybe mostly grow by swallowing other galaxies or star clusters?
The main thing that "Make America great again" means to me is WW II, when we were second only to the USSR in defeating the Nazis and Japan, a colossal feat even though I disagree with a lot of the war effort, I suppose I have already commented on maybe a long time ago on how I believe that Germany and Japan could have been dealt with better with less war. I think it's interesting that you-- and I suppose many people --think instead of the "Golden Age" the 30 postwar years when the rising tide was lifting all boats in the '50s and '60s, that to me was a HAPPY time more than a GREAT time, maybe it's the fact that I am older than most people or more well-read in history that makes me more aware of WW II than most although I guess you are more well read of history than I am
June 13, 2016
I was wondering why I didn't hear from you yesterday. I appreciate your persistence.:)
I assume all or most galaxies have ancient stars. Galaxies (whirlpools of stars) formed soon after the Universe arose c 13.7 billion years ago. Surely you've hears the terms Population I and Population II. The latter refers to the older galactic stars, formed from the outset to about 9 or so billion years ago. Since they were formed first, before nucleosynthesis could produce ample heavy elements to add to hydrogen and helium--the main ingredients of star/star system formation--they tend to be "metal poor" i.e. have relatively small quantities of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. Galaxies do swallow others.
Instead of "make America great again" I'd rather "make America greater than ever" with a better system and leadership, acting decisively to unify the planet, rectify its environmental problems, end conflict and inaugurate a real Space Age.
Yes, I am familiar with Populations I and II stars (but weren't the FORMER the first to form?) There is still something that is puzzling me, which is the way that the farther out we look into space the older the galaxies we see are even though we see them at younger and younger stages in their lives. Maybe I just have to contemplate that more because I must have assumed that it implied that the older a bunch of stars is the farther away it must be or have been. The other thing that I must have wrongly assumed was that stars didn't form in a galaxy until after the galaxy itself formed. I mean it seemed to me that the galactic whirlpool had to condense before the smaller bunches of stars, "star nurseries" or individual stars could form. In other words, I suspect that such an old globular cluster older than the Milky Way, must have or probably did originate in some older galaxy. I mean in general that an original universal cloud of hydrogen would have condensed out into galaxies well before it could have condensed still further to the density needed to form stars. I wonder whether there could be any truth to that supposition or whether it was all just my imagination, have you ever read anything like this?
Yeah, "Make America greater than ever" would be super but I would add to your list that we would have to also solve poverty and create good jobs for the world's destitute billions who could be helping build the better world. I mean as I see it that solving environmental problems, ending war and inaugurating the real Space Age are all for the purpose of making the world a better place, we should make it better in all ways
Oh, I just reread your msg and I see you say that galaxies--do you mean ALL galaxies??--formed soon after the Big Bang? I assumed that many of them had formed far more recently, like I thought the MW was only 6 or 7 B years old but now I can't remember where I read that or why I thought so, do you know? Right now I am wondering whether the MW condensed out of original hydrogen or out of maybe dust and gas clouds that formed in previous galaxies. A startling new idea for me although one of my favorite thoughts is how the Sun and solar system probably formed out of matter that had previously been inside of supernovae that had "lived" in our same neighborhood and that were, I assumed, still younger than the MW--and that it is even possible that those earlier stars might have even had planets that had life on them! I think that's an exciting and beautiful concept
June 15, 2016
Population II refers to the older generations of stars. The Milky Way must have formed not long after the start of the Universe. At least one star in it is 13.2 to 13.4 billion years old. Few known stars approach the age of the galaxy because most of the oldest have run out of fuel and died (often as novae). It doesn't seem likely for a globular cluster to be older than the MW. Many younger stars formed out of hydrogen and some residue from dying, exploded stars. Sure, the Sun is an example.
Most galaxies are billions of years old but one is as young as 500 million years. I guess there's still enough hydrogen for new ones albeit not many.
Yes the future accomplishments of a World Government should make the world a much better place. I don't know if there will be many jobs for billions of people given increasing automation and AI, though.
I just read something more about that star whose ID I recognize only by its beginning with KIC and ending with 52, it is also called "Tabby's star"; the news to me was that it has been GRADUALLY dimming over the last century by about 16%! While I guess that the recent 15-22% dimmings were the only such sharp sudden dimmings on record. Oops now my time is up,more tomorrow
There's been gradual as well as aperiodic dimming? That might be interpreted as a Dyson sphere under construction or just an influx of cometary material, perhaps hurled its way by the gravity of its companion star.
Yes and I had another thought too, which is that Dyson spheres should be built at large distances from the Sun or star. With regard to the absence of the infrared radiation that you would expect to see coming from an inhabited or inhabitable sphere. Which is that, as I imagine it, the construction of the sphere takes place in extreme cold, the 50 or so Kelvins that prevail out there; and that if the construction takes place over a period of several centuries, it might take another century or so before the sphere has warmed up to habitable levels. Oops I suddenly seem to find that there's a fallacy in there because I haven't figured out exactly HOW it would warm up, have to think about that some more. I apologize for "thinking out loud" even as I write instead of having it all figured out beforehand. Anyhow, my other thoughts were (1) that the construction might have occurred with amazing swiftness once the Solar System economy had reached the level at which we could even BEGIN to build the thing, maybe we could build an Earth-sized Dyson in a half-century, I haven't done the math yet though, I will try to do that soon; and (2) maybe they started gradually building the thing, as a great sphere centered on the star, accounting for the century-long slow diming as they built the skeleton frame perhaps, but then they catastrophically discovered some new type of instability that no model could have predicted, maybe that doesn't even begin to appear until a sphere is already millions of miles across, resulting in the devastating self-fragmentation of the framework. What kind of instability might that be? What pops into my mind is some unexpected interaction between chemical and magnetic fields hmmmm something to write a sci-fi story about :)
June 22, 2016
I don't know if it would be possible to build a Dyson sphere far from a star. The farther out it is, the bigger it must be, to capture the same amount of radiation. There may not be enough material available; it would probably be too tough to build one even at Mercury's distance. As for instability, you've heard of the Roche limit--the point where gravity from a larger body destroys a smaller one. Soon after Dyson first proposed his sphere concept, readers pointed out that gravity from the star would tear it apart so the fragments would orbit in the equatorial plane of the star, similar to Saturn's rings. A Dyson sphere in the strict sense may never be feasible but there could be all kinds of orbiting energy collectors and transmitters.
very interesting, I have been trying to figure out something about the instabilities that would occur with giant hollow spheres. Presumably the force of gravity would be counterbalanced by internal gas pressure to keep it from collapsing. I don't see how the Roche limit would apply, because it is caused by the differential pull of gravity on the near vs the far side of the sphere, but if the sphere is built around the Sun, the gravity would be equal everywhere, while if the sphere were built way far out, again the differential would be low. Might it not work if enough material could be obtained? I suspect that Jupiter, with 330 Earth-masses, might contain a rocky or metallic core that might contain as much as 10 to 40 Earth-masses--maybe we'll find out from the upcoming encounter with Juno on July 4. Maybe with H-bombs or controlled fusion we could even lift that matter up out of Jupiter's gravity-well. I'm just thinking that if we could construct a sphere with 30 Earth-diameters, and one Earth-mass, its shell might be only a few miles thick. It does seem as if it would be destroyed by centrifugal forces if it were to rotate, but if it didn't rotate, what kind of instability would it have, if any? I think it could be built a couple of billion miles out; the weakness of solar radiation out there could be counteracted by focusing mirrors orbiting Mercury at it, but also I think that part--maybe indeed all--of the solution would be to conserve, hold in, store and concentrate what radiation the sphere would receive naturally. That would depend on how large a population the sphere would hold, and how energetic (which is to say, prosperous or rich) the inhabitants are. Just thinking out loud . . . .
If you built a sphere of 30 Earth diameters, centered on the sun, it would be only about 120,000 miles from the sun. Even if 10--40 Earth masses were enough for that (or a thicker shell than what you indicated) wouldn't intense solar heat destroy it? Unless you could somehow convert ordinary materials--silicon, iron etc--into something capable of withstanding, absorbing and storing all that energy.
O yeah, I wouldn't build such a "small" sphere around the Sun (in fact it would be all INSIDE the sun--I do believe that the day will come when we will be able to travel around and even dwell and construct habitats inside the Sun but that would seem to be immensely harder than building even gigantic spheres)! I'd put the sphere billions of miles out. I do believe that we will invent new ways of creating super-materials some day, but I am more interested in trying to imagine what could be accomplished with known or currently developable materials, I have the impression that we are on the verge of discovering amazing capabilities with nanotubes buckyballs of carbon, or ceramics or composites, I haven't tried to keep up with that branch of science though. I think, though, that the main reason we hear so little about the "space elevator" concept is that they don't yet have materials strong enough, although the just plain cost of the things might also be prohibitive unless we start taxing the rich!
LOL--I totally overlooked the sun's huge dimensions!! Thanks for mentioning it.
If the sphere is billions of miles out, it's hard to imagine there being enough material to construct it. Dismantling the whole solar system wouldn't provide enough, would it? I doubt there'd be enough at half of Mercury's distance--roughly 20 million miles from the sun. Have you done any calculations on that?
I've also heard of great strides in composite materials etc. The main issue though, may be quantity of material.
Yeah, the sun is amazingly huge, one comparison I like is that the moon's distance from Earth is only a little more (10% more about) than a quarter of the Sun's diameter. But also I wouldn't dream of building a sphere centered at the sun with its surface a billion miles out, although I did write a novel about an artificial planet GGGG (the "Great Galactic Gathering Ground") whose [advanced!] builders (the "Mbehelvjarhruum") gave us Earthlings a plot of ground 40 million miles square i.e., with an area of 1600 trillion square miles (1.6 quadrillion sq mi) I just love land! I think I figured that they could do this for humans as well as dozens of other worlds' intelligent evolving life forms if the sphere's radius were 93 million miles. To gather enough material to build GGGG, the hero of my novel figures that they must have stolen the cores of all the large planets from hundreds of solar systems--when this dawns on him, he exclaims in horror--while the other humans are heedlessly celebrating our huge new land--"Why, it's the Crime of the Century!" Their assignment to us was to evolve biologically, intellectually, technologically, and culturally spiritually morally until we were qualified to join their Galactic Federation. That might take 100,000 years as just a wild guess. But before we could construct a GGGG, I had in mind P10E, a world with 10 Earth masses and 10 Earth diameters, and when I tried to figure out where to put it, I figured it would be best to put it way out beyond Neptune and Pluto, so that we could completely control its surface climates without them being controlled by the Sun; e.g., we would certainly want to provide different places on it with diurnal and seasonal periods independent of its rotation and revolution.
But I don't think quantity of material should be the limiting factor of space elevators although I haven't done the calculations let's see, if each elevator is 62,000 miles by 100 feet by 10 feet, how many tons of steel or nylon or Kevlar or composite buckyballs or whatever would that be? And are those anywhere near the correct dimensions? I don't know, do you?
July 6, 2016
Wouldn't a world of ten Earth masses have too high a gravitational pull? Or, would ten Earth diameters negate the effect of 10x the mass?
How could you warm the planet sufficiently that far out with no solar heating? Also, if it's beyond Pluto, wouldn't it be in the midst of the Oort cloud, hence subject to threat of bombardment?
I don't know about space elevator construction....
yes, surface gravity is proportional to density times radius DxR, so with 10 times the diameter, P10E would have 1,000 times Earth's volume, so with 10 times its mass, it would have an average density equal to 1/100 of Earth's average density (due to being hollow); then with 10X Earth's radius, D x R = 1/100 x 10 = 1/10, so it would have just 1/10 of Earth's surface gravity. The DxR formula is why the Moon with 2/3 of Earth's density x 1/4 its radius has 1/6 its gravity; and the sun, with 1/4 Earth's density and 112 x its radius has 28 times its gravity. But bear in mind too that by "gravity" here I mean merely surface gravity...for example, the sun's total gravitational field is FAR greater than 28 times Earth's field, and similarly P10E's total gravitational field is far greater than 1/10 Earth's--so that, for example, P10E could hold an immense atmosphere perhaps 1000 times as great as Earth's which would have only the same surface air pressure! But since I don't think there exists that much oxygen in the SS, I guess it would have to have a smaller atmosphere held down tight to the surface by tarps or domes or other structures...
I'm dreaming that P10E could be heated and powered by He3 (nuclear energy), though I haven't kept up with that, I have heard that the solar wind contains much He3 which might have AFAIK accumulated in various cold spots in the solar system although it seems to me that I might have heard that they haven't found much of it on the Moon, have you heard anything about that?
Oops I hadn't given any thought to the bombardment problem; don't know how bad that might be. If getting hit by a say 10-km wide Oort comet were to damage only the particular part of the shell that were hit, then it should not be too much of a problem; but if the impact were to cause leakage or instability ripples in the hollow shell, it might destroy it and I don't know how to find out which scenario is truest although it does seem like in this WWW era it should be possible to get answers for questions like this?
Meanwhile in the real world, the allies have retaken Fallujah which I disagree with because it just caused more suffering, what do you think? And their next target seems to be Mosul, I think that will be a great disaster, what do you think of this I think it's going to become another quagmire like Vietnam only far worse and even Bernie Sanders isn't trying to stop it as far as I've heard...maybe you could blog about this?
July 14, 2016
OK thanks for the info on calculating gravity. I've heard He3 may be a fuel source for fusion someday, and once suggested it is abundant on Mercury.
As for Fallujah and ISIS, there was a report yesterday that they may be preparing to abandon their caliphate. No wonder. Militarily they're at a serious disadvantage with US etc airpower paving the way for Abadi's troops. It's possible ISIS will go underground and resort to terror. Big blasts in Baghdad recently may herald this shift. IMO the whole anti-sunni effort may be futile. Without US airpower, it's possible the sunnis would've taken all of Iraq. They were masters before under Saddam, and could be again someday. I'm not sure what the solution is, but Iraq may need a great statesman who can reach out to the sunnis, and share power with them in exchange for national unity.
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