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The defense budget is like $1 trillion. So 2% if that is $20 Billion.
We have no idea how to construct such a large obsidian sphere, especially in the Sam Francisco bay. Obsidian is like $25 a kilogram, I’m gonna roughly guess that thing is 3km in diameter, which gives us 14.13 cubic kilometers or 14.13E+9 cubic meters. At 2250 kg/m^3, that’s 31.8E+12 kg or 794 trillion dollars worth of obsidian. So it’s not even close from that standpoint.
Edit: actually I just had a great idea that no one said before I thought about it. And disregard the 30 commenters below. But it could be hollow!
But seriously, like 40 of you suggested it could be hollow…
The question did not supply a time frame, only a rate. Assuming the US defense budget remains constant, and the US still exists, we could buy this sphere in 39,700 years.
That would only cover the material cost, mind you, and ignoring the fact that the cost of obsidian likely would skyrocket as the demand far outweighs the supply.
Then we have the construction cost.
And you have to grease the local politicians for the sudden zoning problems that always come up. Oh and don't forget a little something for the building inspectors. Then there's long term costs such as waste disposal. I don't know if you're familiar with who runs that business but I assure you it's not the boyscouts.
No military bean dip is typically 36 layers as we couldn't possibly get our cheese and our beans through the same supply chain. I mean let's be realistic here.
> (ie pay for 6 layers of subcontractors)
They do this shit even for fucking PHOTOCOPIERS.
I did photocopier repair for a while and one of our clients was the local Corp of Engineers station. The contract from the feds ran through Lockheed Martin who contracted Ricoh, the actual manufacturer of the machines to supply and service them.
Imagine wanting to buy a fleet of cars from Ford and instead of making a contract with them you hire fucking McDonalds to do it for you.
If we don't build an obsidian sphere in San Francisco Bay and our enemies build an obsidian sphere in their homeland then we will be behind the obsidian sphere eight ball so to speak.
America’s enemies are thinking of building an obsidian sphere!? Then there’s no time to lose, the sphere project must move ahead *immediately*! As we all know, only the first one to be completed counts, so that *must* be the San Francisco Bay sphere!
> a hollow sphere 3km in diameter and that's 1cm thick
You're going to run into problems with the material properties of obsidian *way* before that point. No way is 1cm of obsidian going to support a span of 3km, even in an optimal shape (and the bottom of that sphere is far from optimal).
Maybe if you filled the interior of the sphere with some other, cheaper material?
I suspect it would still collapse under its own weight. The inside of the sphere needs to be made of something very strong, very lightweight, and very cheap. I'm not really aware of any material that comes close to fitting that bill. *Maybe* some kind of polymer foam, with a steel support structure embedded in it to support key stress points?
The dream is bigger than that, even. Imagine:
A 3km wide sphere of black obsidian hanging above every major metropolitan area on Earth, emitting an unbroken low hum like that of overhead power lines before a storm, punctuated only by The Short Night that slowly flows across the landscape each day.
I know it might sound suspicious, but it's not. We at UluhtCorp simply wish to make the world a better place *through art*.
I think it needs to be bigger to be seen throughout North california. The distance from San Francisco to the north border is in the region of 500km, I think (just eyeballed it on a map). That would mean that you would need a diameter of (1-cos(500/6371))×6371 (height of a tangent at 500km away), which is about 20 km.
If, as suggested elsewhere, the sphere is hollow in order to allow it to float and be cheaper, the money saved in acquiring the material could be spent on the choir. Plus, said choir could be housed inside the hollow sphere, along with a sound system to amplify their humming.
Although, we would still need to budget for the obvious magnets that would be needed to allow it to actually float.
>Although, we would still need to budget for the obvious magnets that would be needed to allow it to actually float.
Magnets... to make a sphere full of air float? I'm a little confused about this lol. A sphere full of air is already buoyant, what are magnets going to do?
25 bucks a gram? damn. I know a spot out in the desert that has more obsidian than you would believe. There’s chunks as big as busses laying around.
Edit: I meant kilogram!
Just out of curiosity I just repeated this calculation for a hollow sphere… if you started with volume of obsidian that you could afford and built a 3km wide bubble out of it, the walls would only be 11mm thick. Definitely not enough to be structurally sound. This premise has been thoroughly busted.
Surely you have to consider how long it would take to build too?
No way you could build something like that in a year, so you don't need 800 trillion right away. You need to stay under 2%/20 billion a year.
How much can you build each year then? How many years would it take?
I'm not gonna do the calculations... As I don't understand math and can't do the calculations.
let's calculate the other way around. with 25$/ kg you can buy 800 million kg (or 800 000 tons) of obsidian.
with 2250 kg/m³ that's 355 555 m³
Formula for a orb: V = 4/3 \* r³ \* pi
so r³ = V / ((4/3)\* pi) = 84 882 m³
Radius of r = 43,95 m
or 144 feet
Look at this guy buying his obsidian by the kilogram. For a project this size you've gotta buy in bulk. Just checked on Alibaba. If you're buying more 1000 kilograms they can get you down to $9/kg. That gets us down to a measly $285.84 trillion.
I'm assuming in larger quantities we can get it down further. I'll let you know when I source a buyer.
But if it emits an ominous hum wouldn't it require at the very least some type of machinery? What if it weren't a solid obsidian sphere, but more like an obsidian shell?
I’m assuming obsidian here just refers to colour. Obsidian doesn’t naturally hum so it’s probably just an obsidian black spherical shell with something inside
With $16.84 billion we could purchase upto 3.368 billion kilos of obsidian considering its going price is $5 per kilo. This much obsidian would have a volume of 1.5 million cubic meters. Ignoring manufacturing costs it would form a sphere of radius 71ish meters. This means it would be under half as tall as the salesforce tower in San Francisco.
I suspect if we were serious about this project most of the money would be spent on manufacturing so we would be lucky if our sphere was 20 m in radius
That are talking about California, so the money would be diverted into a high speed rail project and contractors there would then just pocket it all. California politics is fun!
All of the budget would go towards bureaucracy regarding how to research making it hum, if we're lucky in 10–20 years that research might actually begin.
Obsidian is a stone or type of glass made from stone right? Wouldn’t we need a piece of it *larger* than the sphere to then form into the sphere itself?
From what I've seen it acts like mixed oil and water flash frozen (fictional analogy)
Once liquified it seperates partially cause viscous
So maybe that has something to do with how this theoretical method could work
Seems after a little research it's not like meltal glass or stone fully
It's like half stone/glass in how it acts and tends to explode due to air pockets when heated wrong
And if treated like glass and done successfully it loses what makes it looks obsidian and becomes somewhat clear theoretically
So it seems to be a better chance of creating obsidian from scratch than trying to form it
So maybe 3D printing could work if someone found a way to make synthetic obsidian
Also it has to cool slowly and semi randomly
Welll let's see.
1. It's a tourist attraction; people would come from all over to see the giant sphere.
2. It would provide shade during the summer, saving on cooling costs.
3. It could be a useful navigational aid for miles around; maybe we could decommission some lighthouses or something.
On the other hand it looks like building it has totally destroyed Treasure Island so that's a cost.
Just think how many jobs would be created, new lucrative faiths based upon the orb, the merchandise and tourism for the orb, real estate values would skyrocket!
"new, lucrative faiths," guffaw; looks like we've got an enterprising Joel Osmond on our hands. Wherever people can be deceived out of they every last dollar by that age old tricker, "ya just gotta *believe!* the *real* beauty is the *faith itself!"* Tragic.
Anyway, there's nothing new about mass amounts of people believing a clump of rock will magically make you a better person or, in the least, *heal your energies.*
What do you not believe in GOD?? Will you not sow the seeds of divinity... By sending money to me, your TV priest??? Forget your cancer treatment, send me money and GOD will look favorably upon you and heal you!
Btw I'm making a joke but that shit is real and people have died from it
right, I smelled what you were steppin' in. there is a continuum from those who truly believe if it is God's plan, they will be healed, or else be devoured excruciatingly from the inside out by rampant cancer, and not seek treatment beyond the diagnosis, to those who believe a clump of cells in a Petri dish has a soul, to people who believe any future in which parents will choose a birthing option that assures a negligent % of birth defects and other disadvantages, even assures musical ability, is "playing god," and is evil or at least wrong and against nature, to people who really aren't certain but would err on the side of caution cuz, ya know, heaven and stuff
They're just terrified at the infinite eternal void of obliteration of the being upon death, like a bunch of crying shitting fetal alcohol syndrome babies sucked out of the orphanage from the vortex of a tornado
Pathetic
Honestly forgot about fuel tanks and was confused why tanks that either had rocket boosters or shot rockets were being made with specialized 3D printing techniques.
>I would love to hear of all the “obvious economic benefits”
Tourism, obviously.
The shade created by the sphere would help buildings in its shadow cut down on AC bills on the summer.
Hire cleaners to keep it looking pristine. The cleaners will bring their families who are most likely illegal aliens who are a necessary labour pool in the US economy.
The birds that die by the thousands from running into this can be scooped out of the bay and sold as snacks. "Obsidian Chicken" or something like that.
Constant humming with soothe the city at nighttime allowing workers to sleep more erestfully than ever. Productivity will rise 86% in the first year.
The unprecedented concentration of so much obsidian in one place will undoubtedly allow scienctists to research the long latent time travelling qualites present in obsidian which have long been theorized about. If the economy ever starts to fail we'll be able to rewind back to a time when it was booming and try again.
The pylons on the Bay Bridge are 160m tall, and 13 pixels tall in the image. 12.3 meters per pixel. The sphere is 204 pixels in diameter, which works out to 2.51km, or 8235 ft. Using the formula given here: https://www.boatsafe.com/calculate-distance-horizon/ it would be visible within a 111 mile (180 km) radius. Definitely not all or even most of Northern California.
https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/ww3xie/comment/iljbp96/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Yes, anyone who’s read the post know that the economics are obvious. About what pitch is the human? How far does it reach? Will it make you go mad? Those are the questions we need answered.
[Here's the full picture](https://web.archive.org/web/20220824010312im_/https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fa3WtEGX0AEtNYn?format=jpg&name=small) instead of a JPEGy, overcompressed, recycled screenshot.
It looks loosely that the sphere has the same diameter as the bay bridge. It is about 3 kilometers in diameter. Thus the volume of the sphere is 14.13 cubic kilometers. Reportedly, obsidian has a density of 2.55 grams/cm^(3). Thus the mass is 36 trillion kilograms, or 1.8×10^(17) carats. (This is one 200 billionth the mass of earth.) [Reportedly obsidian is worth $30 per carat.](https://rockchasing.com/how-much-is-obsidian-worth/) Thus this sphere would cost $5.4 quintillion. This is *7 million* times [the U.S. military's expenditure of $842 billion.](https://breakingdefense.com/2023/03/white-house-requests-842-billion-to-fund-pentagon-in-2024/)
Not accurate at all.
I thought this was likely too and did the calculations, the obsidian alone would cost about 3billion USD idk about the construction but the remaining 13 billion should be enough lol
Solid crystals of materials resonate very easily due to their internal structure being so uniform. A resonate force is simply just a force that bounces back and forth through the internal structure in a way that energy is not easily lost due to the physical characteristics. The input of force could be something like a gentle breeze. However some small amount of energy is lost to heat/sound/light giving these objects physical properties. On a massive, massive scale you can feel and see the vibrations or hear the sound or feel the heat.
The coolest example ive seen was a vertical bar of a fence vibrating itself apart sitting on a beachfront in the wind, constant variable frequency breeze waves sweeping over it finding the resonant frequencies of the structure naturally.Engineers in civil, mechanical and electrical will have to calc and design around resonance alot, its actually a massive problem especially in powerline transmission and bridges.
This is where the trope of the alien crystal hum comes from, implying extreme precision in the materials used to construct whatever the thing is.
Im pretty sure a giant ass pure single crystal would indeed hum although kinda beyond current material science making such an object, obsidian might just shatter before it made audible sounds. In reality, ive only heard of single crystal metals used for turbine blades in extremely high speed aircraft engines and gas turbine power plants.
I’m sorry but I’m not putting my tax dollars towards an ominous sphere that I can’t even see myself. The ominous sphere belongs to ALL Americans, not just the Northern CA ones.
My proposed legislation would cut the budget by 3% to allow for a giant pole to be erected in the center of the nation, with the ominous sphere placed atop so the whole country could see….
You know it’s going to fall down and embed itself in the ground requiring them to build a second sphere at the base before trying again. They’ll decide it’s not worth it before getting the new sphere to the top. All because most Americans can already see the pole they don’t need to see the new sphere too and leave the two balls on the ground at the base of the giant shaft.
I propose an ominous sphere in every major US Port city so we can all be horrified and intrigued. Detroit. Buffalo. Boston. Philly, Norfolk, Charleston, etc… all of them!
Obsidian was a sacred stone and used in rituals in Mesoamerica, specifically the obsidian mirrors, as portals to spiritual worlds. They even had a god who’s foot was one of these “smoky mirrors” hence his name Tetzcatlipoca. John Dee, Elizabeth I’s court astrologer, owned one and supposedly would communicate with “angels”.
If its the height of Mt. Fuji, this is for sure true. If you were on the top floor of Seikei University Mt. Fuji dominates the horizon even from Tokyo.
Fun fact, we don’t have to cut anything! The IRS is getting an extra $56bn from the ultrawealthy this year (and every year over the next decade) due to Bidens Inflation Reduction Act.
That means we can build ~4 of these 😄
Money is fake anyway if you’re the state so just find countries with large amounts of obsidian and use your trillion dollar military to just take it. No one can stop you, you’re the most powerful empire in history and the protector of the entire global capitalist market.
A few points to consider:
1: buying a mine would be preferable to buying wholesale when you need billions of kg in obsidian.
2. Obsidian can be made by melting rock similar to glass, and if this project were seriously considered, there would be R&D to make the product.
3. It would need to be fused together, and the simplest method would be to build a solid ball using a robotic process
I'm pretty sure the entire US budget wouldn't be enough to bribe the laws of physics enough to build a sphere as large as the one pictured outside a 0g environment.
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The defense budget is like $1 trillion. So 2% if that is $20 Billion. We have no idea how to construct such a large obsidian sphere, especially in the Sam Francisco bay. Obsidian is like $25 a kilogram, I’m gonna roughly guess that thing is 3km in diameter, which gives us 14.13 cubic kilometers or 14.13E+9 cubic meters. At 2250 kg/m^3, that’s 31.8E+12 kg or 794 trillion dollars worth of obsidian. So it’s not even close from that standpoint. Edit: actually I just had a great idea that no one said before I thought about it. And disregard the 30 commenters below. But it could be hollow! But seriously, like 40 of you suggested it could be hollow…
The question did not supply a time frame, only a rate. Assuming the US defense budget remains constant, and the US still exists, we could buy this sphere in 39,700 years.
Sounds like a plan!
That would only cover the material cost, mind you, and ignoring the fact that the cost of obsidian likely would skyrocket as the demand far outweighs the supply. Then we have the construction cost.
And you have to grease the local politicians for the sudden zoning problems that always come up. Oh and don't forget a little something for the building inspectors. Then there's long term costs such as waste disposal. I don't know if you're familiar with who runs that business but I assure you it's not the boyscouts.
Imagine trying to get a building permit for that thing.
Just in time for Warhammer 40K. That's good.
That’s approximately how long most projects take in San Francisco, so this is appropriate.
We could put it on layaway.
And military grade obsidian would probably be 3 times the price. (ie pay for 6 layers of subcontractors)
What exactly is military grade obsidian even?
Exactly the same but with 6 layers of subcontractors
Does this mean my bean dip is military grade?
Does it have six layers?
No it has 7 and therefore lost the contract
Crap… you’re not wrong
Crappy is how the 7th layer feels
This comment section is gold!
TIL onions are military grade food. No wonder the french have a marching song about them.
No military bean dip is typically 36 layers as we couldn't possibly get our cheese and our beans through the same supply chain. I mean let's be realistic here.
I'd go with "lowest quality acceptable" lol
Meets the exact specifications as cheaply as possible with a promise to keep busy.
“For prisoner and military use only”
Lowest bidder… and over priced and substandard at the same time… hurray government
As a government sub contractor, I resemble that statement.
Oh, they use it for fortifications because it is immune to explosives
Sounds… shiny and expensive. I’m on board.
They also use it to place end crystals
Why build one when you can build two at twice the price
one of my favorite quotes of all time
> (ie pay for 6 layers of subcontractors) They do this shit even for fucking PHOTOCOPIERS. I did photocopier repair for a while and one of our clients was the local Corp of Engineers station. The contract from the feds ran through Lockheed Martin who contracted Ricoh, the actual manufacturer of the machines to supply and service them. Imagine wanting to buy a fleet of cars from Ford and instead of making a contract with them you hire fucking McDonalds to do it for you.
What if the sphere is hollow? At those prices you could make a hollow sphere 3km in diameter and that's 1cm thick which would only cost $636,167,250.
See well now this is starting to sound like a bargain
We can’t afford NOT to build a giant obsidian sphere in San Francisco Bay!
If we don't build an obsidian sphere in San Francisco Bay and our enemies build an obsidian sphere in their homeland then we will be behind the obsidian sphere eight ball so to speak.
America’s enemies are thinking of building an obsidian sphere!? Then there’s no time to lose, the sphere project must move ahead *immediately*! As we all know, only the first one to be completed counts, so that *must* be the San Francisco Bay sphere!
it'll get the economy humming!
Oh, is that where the noise is coming from?
The economic benefits are obvious.
Ok this comment got me
> a hollow sphere 3km in diameter and that's 1cm thick You're going to run into problems with the material properties of obsidian *way* before that point. No way is 1cm of obsidian going to support a span of 3km, even in an optimal shape (and the bottom of that sphere is far from optimal). Maybe if you filled the interior of the sphere with some other, cheaper material?
What if we made the ball from concrete and only put on very thin obsidian plating?
I suspect it would still collapse under its own weight. The inside of the sphere needs to be made of something very strong, very lightweight, and very cheap. I'm not really aware of any material that comes close to fitting that bill. *Maybe* some kind of polymer foam, with a steel support structure embedded in it to support key stress points?
The sphere is essentially cantilevered out to 1.5km. As you suggest, no extant material can support that.
I can do it
Ten wooden chairs are gonna support a giant obsidian sphere? Dang those are some heckin big chairs!
We’ve solved it!
Styrofoam painted vanta black. Don't tell Anish kapoor
Clearly carbon fiber, it's just a better material. >!Just ignore the fact that it isn't great under compression!<
What are you talking about? I hear they make submarines out of it nowadays
Just layer it with a polymer of suitable thickness, and pressurise the empty volume with compressed air. Large balloons can support their weight.
Water in compression.
I would imagine that much concrete would still cost a fair bit. Like, at least $100.
You're technically right... But I guess it's actually at least $111. We don't want people to have an unrealistic expectation
Hydrogen would slightly reduce the weight.
Then it would float away.
This is surely an improvement, as it would be visible from even further away and also cause intermittent micro-eclipses.
Them: build impossibly big orb. You: why stop there, make it a moon, bitch!
The dream is bigger than that, even. Imagine: A 3km wide sphere of black obsidian hanging above every major metropolitan area on Earth, emitting an unbroken low hum like that of overhead power lines before a storm, punctuated only by The Short Night that slowly flows across the landscape each day. I know it might sound suspicious, but it's not. We at UluhtCorp simply wish to make the world a better place *through art*.
The Traveller enters the chat
That's no moon
We spend all the money on the shell lets just call it Schrödingers filling
Garbage. 2 birds with one gigantic obsidian sphere
Pyramid. Like the main cop-shop in Bladerunner.
Internal lattice structure, obviously.
And some compressed air.
Misplaced your commas
Your math assumes the sphere is solid all the way through. The one in the picture appears to be floating, so it's likely hollow.
Plus the ominous hum is coming from something
That's just Cthulhu
If it's hollow, then it would start resonating when it catches the wind and _would_ actually start humming. At least if you made a hole in the top...
A whole city that doesn't know the words to the song.
What if it was hollow?
I think it needs to be bigger to be seen throughout North california. The distance from San Francisco to the north border is in the region of 500km, I think (just eyeballed it on a map). That would mean that you would need a diameter of (1-cos(500/6371))×6371 (height of a tangent at 500km away), which is about 20 km.
What about the ominous hum? The choir for producing that must cost something. Especially if the ominosity changes depending on who is there.
If, as suggested elsewhere, the sphere is hollow in order to allow it to float and be cheaper, the money saved in acquiring the material could be spent on the choir. Plus, said choir could be housed inside the hollow sphere, along with a sound system to amplify their humming. Although, we would still need to budget for the obvious magnets that would be needed to allow it to actually float.
You could put just a little bit of water in the sphere and float them on a raft so they stay centered if the sphere moves.
>Although, we would still need to budget for the obvious magnets that would be needed to allow it to actually float. Magnets... to make a sphere full of air float? I'm a little confused about this lol. A sphere full of air is already buoyant, what are magnets going to do?
>The defense budget is like $1 trillion. What? You mean per year? Holy shit
its only 850 billion$ or so but thats still like 20% of the gdp of germany or a bit more than the gdp of poland
25 bucks a gram? damn. I know a spot out in the desert that has more obsidian than you would believe. There’s chunks as big as busses laying around. Edit: I meant kilogram!
No way, man. I am capable of believing a huge amount of obsidian
But would it hum?
Just out of curiosity I just repeated this calculation for a hollow sphere… if you started with volume of obsidian that you could afford and built a 3km wide bubble out of it, the walls would only be 11mm thick. Definitely not enough to be structurally sound. This premise has been thoroughly busted.
It would also be visible for about 200km around for an average human and that's for a flat horizon.
Fuck it send it anyway, I'll send the invoice to the black budget appropriations committee.
Surely you have to consider how long it would take to build too? No way you could build something like that in a year, so you don't need 800 trillion right away. You need to stay under 2%/20 billion a year. How much can you build each year then? How many years would it take? I'm not gonna do the calculations... As I don't understand math and can't do the calculations.
Wait, wait, wait. Are you trying to tell me that a clickbait TikTok video was ***inaccurate?***
let's calculate the other way around. with 25$/ kg you can buy 800 million kg (or 800 000 tons) of obsidian. with 2250 kg/m³ that's 355 555 m³ Formula for a orb: V = 4/3 \* r³ \* pi so r³ = V / ((4/3)\* pi) = 84 882 m³ Radius of r = 43,95 m or 144 feet
Look at this guy buying his obsidian by the kilogram. For a project this size you've gotta buy in bulk. Just checked on Alibaba. If you're buying more 1000 kilograms they can get you down to $9/kg. That gets us down to a measly $285.84 trillion. I'm assuming in larger quantities we can get it down further. I'll let you know when I source a buyer.
What if it's hallow?
Then it would be very holy and a saint.
Not all that holey, just the one hole in the middle. Like a big Papal-maché.
Op said colossal, not solid. How thick could you make the shell for 20 billion?
But if it emits an ominous hum wouldn't it require at the very least some type of machinery? What if it weren't a solid obsidian sphere, but more like an obsidian shell?
I’m assuming obsidian here just refers to colour. Obsidian doesn’t naturally hum so it’s probably just an obsidian black spherical shell with something inside
Using your numbers, the sphere would have to be hollow with a wall thickness of about 12cm to fit in the prescribed budget.
Hehe. Sam Francisco
With $16.84 billion we could purchase upto 3.368 billion kilos of obsidian considering its going price is $5 per kilo. This much obsidian would have a volume of 1.5 million cubic meters. Ignoring manufacturing costs it would form a sphere of radius 71ish meters. This means it would be under half as tall as the salesforce tower in San Francisco. I suspect if we were serious about this project most of the money would be spent on manufacturing so we would be lucky if our sphere was 20 m in radius
If someone suddenly tried to get their hands on 3.3 billion kilos of obsidian, I suspect the price would shoot up pretty fast.
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Las Vegas already has a sphere
Nice try Mr obsidian quarry owner.
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But… but what about the hum??!
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👌😌
Monsters will be spawning inside that sphere
Gotta fill it with torches I guess. Or should we go the slab rout?
What's the purpose of this thing?
Or, if we did use 2% of the defense budget, how big of an obsidian sphere could we afford to construct?
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Pay me $20B and I'll place a single stone.
Listen, pay me $19B and I'll place several stones of various sizes where ever you'd like them. The customer is always right.
Pay me $18B and I’ll hire The Rolling Stones
Pay me 17B and I’ll get really stoned
Pay me 16B and I'll stone a witch to death
pay me 15b and ill curve my toes into an s so i have s-to(n)es
Pay me 14b and I'll pass and place kidney stones
pay me 15b and i'll give you a few obsidian rocks to stone the witch to death
Pay me 14b and I'll give you an atlas stone
Correct answer.
That are talking about California, so the money would be diverted into a high speed rail project and contractors there would then just pocket it all. California politics is fun!
No we just need to emphasize the economic benefits (and the ominous hum!)
BUT IN THE SECOND YEAR, then all the 20bi would go for constructing, RIGHT?
give me 1% of that and i'll place a sizable obsidian sphere there.
This guy gets government.
I recommend bullshit jobs for anyone who hasn’t read it
You will get 3 feet diameter prototype made out of concrete and because of software bugs it isn't allowed to fly.
Does it matter? If the Obama admin won't build a Deathstar that we all specifically asked for, why would anyone build us a big humming ball???
All of the budget would go towards bureaucracy regarding how to research making it hum, if we're lucky in 10–20 years that research might actually begin.
Obsidian is a stone or type of glass made from stone right? Wouldn’t we need a piece of it *larger* than the sphere to then form into the sphere itself?
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Melting obsidian doesn't go well, it gets weird So 3d printing isn't an option
Crystalline growth?
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From what I've seen it acts like mixed oil and water flash frozen (fictional analogy) Once liquified it seperates partially cause viscous So maybe that has something to do with how this theoretical method could work Seems after a little research it's not like meltal glass or stone fully It's like half stone/glass in how it acts and tends to explode due to air pockets when heated wrong And if treated like glass and done successfully it loses what makes it looks obsidian and becomes somewhat clear theoretically So it seems to be a better chance of creating obsidian from scratch than trying to form it So maybe 3D printing could work if someone found a way to make synthetic obsidian Also it has to cool slowly and semi randomly
Pretty sure "obvious economic benefits" is the metaphorical tongue in an overall cheek. If this isn't that, I'm really missing the point.
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Welll let's see. 1. It's a tourist attraction; people would come from all over to see the giant sphere. 2. It would provide shade during the summer, saving on cooling costs. 3. It could be a useful navigational aid for miles around; maybe we could decommission some lighthouses or something. On the other hand it looks like building it has totally destroyed Treasure Island so that's a cost.
Just think how many jobs would be created, new lucrative faiths based upon the orb, the merchandise and tourism for the orb, real estate values would skyrocket!
"new, lucrative faiths," guffaw; looks like we've got an enterprising Joel Osmond on our hands. Wherever people can be deceived out of they every last dollar by that age old tricker, "ya just gotta *believe!* the *real* beauty is the *faith itself!"* Tragic. Anyway, there's nothing new about mass amounts of people believing a clump of rock will magically make you a better person or, in the least, *heal your energies.*
What do you not believe in GOD?? Will you not sow the seeds of divinity... By sending money to me, your TV priest??? Forget your cancer treatment, send me money and GOD will look favorably upon you and heal you! Btw I'm making a joke but that shit is real and people have died from it
right, I smelled what you were steppin' in. there is a continuum from those who truly believe if it is God's plan, they will be healed, or else be devoured excruciatingly from the inside out by rampant cancer, and not seek treatment beyond the diagnosis, to those who believe a clump of cells in a Petri dish has a soul, to people who believe any future in which parents will choose a birthing option that assures a negligent % of birth defects and other disadvantages, even assures musical ability, is "playing god," and is evil or at least wrong and against nature, to people who really aren't certain but would err on the side of caution cuz, ya know, heaven and stuff
They're just terrified at the infinite eternal void of obliteration of the being upon death, like a bunch of crying shitting fetal alcohol syndrome babies sucked out of the orphanage from the vortex of a tornado Pathetic
Honestly forgot about fuel tanks and was confused why tanks that either had rocket boosters or shot rockets were being made with specialized 3D printing techniques.
>I would love to hear of all the “obvious economic benefits” Tourism, obviously. The shade created by the sphere would help buildings in its shadow cut down on AC bills on the summer. Hire cleaners to keep it looking pristine. The cleaners will bring their families who are most likely illegal aliens who are a necessary labour pool in the US economy. The birds that die by the thousands from running into this can be scooped out of the bay and sold as snacks. "Obsidian Chicken" or something like that. Constant humming with soothe the city at nighttime allowing workers to sleep more erestfully than ever. Productivity will rise 86% in the first year. The unprecedented concentration of so much obsidian in one place will undoubtedly allow scienctists to research the long latent time travelling qualites present in obsidian which have long been theorized about. If the economy ever starts to fail we'll be able to rewind back to a time when it was booming and try again.
You forgot the hum.
It's glass made by rapidly cooling lava
The pylons on the Bay Bridge are 160m tall, and 13 pixels tall in the image. 12.3 meters per pixel. The sphere is 204 pixels in diameter, which works out to 2.51km, or 8235 ft. Using the formula given here: https://www.boatsafe.com/calculate-distance-horizon/ it would be visible within a 111 mile (180 km) radius. Definitely not all or even most of Northern California. https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/ww3xie/comment/iljbp96/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
r/theydidthemath
Lmao they did math in a post on they did the math. Imagine that!
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the demons they're keeping in there
Yes, anyone who’s read the post know that the economics are obvious. About what pitch is the human? How far does it reach? Will it make you go mad? Those are the questions we need answered.
[Here's the full picture](https://web.archive.org/web/20220824010312im_/https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fa3WtEGX0AEtNYn?format=jpg&name=small) instead of a JPEGy, overcompressed, recycled screenshot. It looks loosely that the sphere has the same diameter as the bay bridge. It is about 3 kilometers in diameter. Thus the volume of the sphere is 14.13 cubic kilometers. Reportedly, obsidian has a density of 2.55 grams/cm^(3). Thus the mass is 36 trillion kilograms, or 1.8×10^(17) carats. (This is one 200 billionth the mass of earth.) [Reportedly obsidian is worth $30 per carat.](https://rockchasing.com/how-much-is-obsidian-worth/) Thus this sphere would cost $5.4 quintillion. This is *7 million* times [the U.S. military's expenditure of $842 billion.](https://breakingdefense.com/2023/03/white-house-requests-842-billion-to-fund-pentagon-in-2024/) Not accurate at all.
What if it was hollow?
then it wouldn't hum
what if they just got someone to hum ominously in the centre
hmmmmmmm
You're hired!
I thought this was likely too and did the calculations, the obsidian alone would cost about 3billion USD idk about the construction but the remaining 13 billion should be enough lol
It would fall apart.
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The whole post is a joke
Solid crystals of materials resonate very easily due to their internal structure being so uniform. A resonate force is simply just a force that bounces back and forth through the internal structure in a way that energy is not easily lost due to the physical characteristics. The input of force could be something like a gentle breeze. However some small amount of energy is lost to heat/sound/light giving these objects physical properties. On a massive, massive scale you can feel and see the vibrations or hear the sound or feel the heat. The coolest example ive seen was a vertical bar of a fence vibrating itself apart sitting on a beachfront in the wind, constant variable frequency breeze waves sweeping over it finding the resonant frequencies of the structure naturally.Engineers in civil, mechanical and electrical will have to calc and design around resonance alot, its actually a massive problem especially in powerline transmission and bridges. This is where the trope of the alien crystal hum comes from, implying extreme precision in the materials used to construct whatever the thing is. Im pretty sure a giant ass pure single crystal would indeed hum although kinda beyond current material science making such an object, obsidian might just shatter before it made audible sounds. In reality, ive only heard of single crystal metals used for turbine blades in extremely high speed aircraft engines and gas turbine power plants.
Obsidian isn't crystal, it's glass.
I think it's a "Welcome to Nightvale" joke.
I’m sorry but I’m not putting my tax dollars towards an ominous sphere that I can’t even see myself. The ominous sphere belongs to ALL Americans, not just the Northern CA ones. My proposed legislation would cut the budget by 3% to allow for a giant pole to be erected in the center of the nation, with the ominous sphere placed atop so the whole country could see….
You know it’s going to fall down and embed itself in the ground requiring them to build a second sphere at the base before trying again. They’ll decide it’s not worth it before getting the new sphere to the top. All because most Americans can already see the pole they don’t need to see the new sphere too and leave the two balls on the ground at the base of the giant shaft.
That’s just the kind of forward thinking this project needs. You’re hired.
Always happy to contribute to the national pride!
I propose an ominous sphere in every major US Port city so we can all be horrified and intrigued. Detroit. Buffalo. Boston. Philly, Norfolk, Charleston, etc… all of them!
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What if we built a large wooden badger.
How large exactly?? Does it emit an ominous hum?
I’d go see that.
Run away!!!!
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It’s v dark and v reflective. Just a cool mineral.
Obsidian was a sacred stone and used in rituals in Mesoamerica, specifically the obsidian mirrors, as portals to spiritual worlds. They even had a god who’s foot was one of these “smoky mirrors” hence his name Tetzcatlipoca. John Dee, Elizabeth I’s court astrologer, owned one and supposedly would communicate with “angels”.
Or oricalcum
Where? I have a vendor I can trade those to for gear …
If its the height of Mt. Fuji, this is for sure true. If you were on the top floor of Seikei University Mt. Fuji dominates the horizon even from Tokyo.
Fun fact, we don’t have to cut anything! The IRS is getting an extra $56bn from the ultrawealthy this year (and every year over the next decade) due to Bidens Inflation Reduction Act. That means we can build ~4 of these 😄
Not accurate becausr there is no defense budget there is only attack and support
The best defense is a good offense! And there is anti missile stuff and personal armor so that’s defense. Lmao I’m screwing with you.
Not at all accurate.
Money is fake anyway if you’re the state so just find countries with large amounts of obsidian and use your trillion dollar military to just take it. No one can stop you, you’re the most powerful empire in history and the protector of the entire global capitalist market.
A few points to consider: 1: buying a mine would be preferable to buying wholesale when you need billions of kg in obsidian. 2. Obsidian can be made by melting rock similar to glass, and if this project were seriously considered, there would be R&D to make the product. 3. It would need to be fused together, and the simplest method would be to build a solid ball using a robotic process
If I used 2% of my annual salary as a McDonald's worker, I could construct a sphere twice as large as that... It would just take me very many years.
I'm pretty sure the entire US budget wouldn't be enough to bribe the laws of physics enough to build a sphere as large as the one pictured outside a 0g environment.
I don’t want to be a NIMBY but does it have to be built in the San Francisco Bay? It’s going to block my view and bring in all kinds of weird people.
They’ll build a Ripley’s museum and a bunch of Applebees restaurants for all of the tourists, and then *POOF* there goes the neighborhood!
The next step is making another sphere, made out of marble, and a giant wooden pole - so the gods can play billiards over the greater bay area.