Terminus Est

Gwern Branwen · 02 Jul 2008, 22:17 · from 2008-July.txt.gz

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From: gwern0 at gmail.com (Gwern Branwen)
Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 18:17:33 -0400
Subject: (urth) Terminus Est
In-Reply-To: <486BFA89.4090502 at io.com>
References: <E996FA34C7F44E36B8E9D07A5EF78292@StuartPC>
	<882309C4-25D3-4485-8DB6-35242CED6A08 at gmail.com>
	<486B973C.2080904 at oreb.net> <486BFA89.4090502 at io.com>
Message-ID: <20080702221733.GA13533@craft>

On 2008.07.02 17:00:41 -0500, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> scribbled 0.2K characters:
> Gary wrote:
> And I'm very willing to assume they can make a "perfect" seal around a
> sufficient vaccuum using some arcane machine.

Honestly, I think everyone is overcomplicating Terminus Est.

Everything about its construction is explicable through simple mechanisms.

It has a channel running down the center but is still strong? Simple, it has an I-beam shape and one void is covered up to make a channel.

It requires an exotic method of forging which creates a vaccuum in it to let the mercury slosh around? Well, why do we need a vacuum at all, when we could just have air in it like normal and avoid displacement problems by making our channel a circular tube.

(This suggestion leads to a nice design where we have two channels, one on either side of the I-beam, and they are linked by a hole at the top and bottom; even better, a double-channel design would hide the I-beam shape and make it basically the flat rectangular prism shape we expect of a sword of justice.)

--
gwern
Hutsul Fox Abbas COSMOS Macintosh Ansar supercomputer Stego HAARP LABLINK
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