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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • In terms of common consumer products?

    Dryer sheets, which are typically made from polymer fibers. Use wool dryer balls instead.

    Single-use water bottles - just buy a water bottle.

    Ziplock bags for food storage - buy some solid, washable food containers with rubber seals. They’ll keep food better for longer.

    Also stop using the plastic bags in the produce section at the grocery store - get some reusable produce bags instead. The ones I have are thin mesh that doesn’t block the barcode scanner at the checkout. The only produce I don’t recommend this for is stuff that is typically wet like lettuce.

    Basically try to avoid single-use plastics, many are unrecyclable (soft plastics like bags frequently just end up in landfill) or just dump extra plastic fibers into the environment (like dryer sheets). There are good reusable options for most of them.










  • One of the biggest problems they would have is just pointing their communications equipment in the right direction. The Voyager probes have a complicated guidance system (AACS) which takes input from a three-axis gyroscope and several other reference instruments to keep the 3.7m antenna pointed at Earth. If the antenna goes out of alignment then the radio beam will not hit Earth and will not be received.

    The only reason this works is that the Deep Space Network on Earth is actively listening for the signal from the probes, and the people operating it know exactly what direction to point the receiving antennae to get the signal from the probes. If you don’t have very precise targeting you probably won’t get the signal.

    Next year Voyager 1 will reach a distance of one light-day from Earth and it’s already a very difficult problem that is only solvable because it was planned for extensively prior to launch, so never mind trying to accomplish this at a distance of hundreds of light-years with no planning.


  • This ^. You can think about a radio source just like a visible light source. It fades out over distance because the energy emission is spreading out. If there are other light sources that are of similar or greater strength between you and that light, it will be basically impossible to distinguish the one light that you care about from everything else.