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You seem to have gotten your replies mixed up. This looks like it's for the GPT "Bitcoin" thread?
No, low-background steel is mentioned in the replies. It's similar in the sense that GPT-3 generated text is going to contaminate the data we collect from now on.
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I wonder why manufacturers don't just use filtered atmospheric air in the process to create low-background steel, if it is infact valuable.
How do you suggest filtering by isotope?
In Uranium's case it's difficult because it's 235/238 = 1.28% (actually way worse - Uranium hexafluoride is used, which adds 114 units, bringing the ratio down to 0.86%)
In Oxygen's case the ratio would be at least 6.6% (15 vs 16).
Most importantly in Uranium you are interested in the tiny amount of U235, while in Oxygen you'd be interested in the huge bulk of O16, O17, O18, which are the stable isotopes. O16 alone is 99.762% of all Oxygen, and you can afford to lose half in your centrifuge if it spares you a few cycles, it's not exactly hard to come by.
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We already know what can last for literally millions of years: Life. Maybe we could encode some information in birdsong, tree rings, or the matting patterns drawn by fish in the seafloor. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpdlQae5wP8
A SF short story about a biologically encoded message from ancient aliens (written by one of the Autodesk founders): We'll Return, After This Message by John Walker https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/sftriple/gpic .
This comes up on HN every now and then, it is how I learned about low background steel. If this is new to you, you may also enjoy reading about the cesium content of wine: https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/07/19/141390/fukushima...
Is there a particular trigger for this post? Is this a case of someone stumbling into the concept and wanting to share it with the world? Is there some trend in SV around low-background steel right now? Genuinely curious about the phenomenon of posts around topics that have a great deal of understanding and aren’t necessarily trending in the general news cycle.
Low-background lead is also sought after in shipwrecks [0]. With lead it isn't contamination from nuclear tests that's the issue, but natural radioactivity that needs hundreds of years to decay. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/10/search-d...
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So salvage it from sunken ships is cheaper then?
Just cheaper for whoever salvages the ship -- somebody else had to pay for the sunken cost of building and sinking the ship.
Na remember it was war, so all the money went back to the economy :/