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A biographical podcast (I think it was this episode of the Cosmic Perspective) about Newton suggested that he made his calculus notation so difficult so that other people would have a hard time understanding it. This was because someone had criticized some his previous work. He figured if people couldn't understand his work they wouldn't be as likely to come up with a detailed criticism of it.

the astronomical definition of ice, which doesn't mean frozen water or even solid

Citation? I found this which means solid to me:

Technically ice is the same sort of thing as rock and metal, in that all of those as the solid phase of whatever is being described. In planetary science/astronomy circles, "ice" is basically "frozen volatiles". Usually it's prefaced by what it's the frozen form of - i.e. water ice, methane ice, ammonia ice.

. . . and re-use the mass to create something akin to an Dyson Sphere. I'd suggest a Ringworld, but the mechanical properties of Niven's "scrith" simply aren't possible, at least with any level of material science we currently have or are likely to have. . .

I'd add a somewhat affiliated podcast to that: 365 Days of Astronomy. There is an episode almost every day, with a wide variety of podcasters contributing.

Sweet :-) Download link here.
Caption from the first photo: "This is what a test firing should look like. Note the mach diamonds in the exhaust stream."
Thanks for the idea of searching for a download, I'm looking forward to reading this.

Using toaster-size satellites, I very much doubt so.

I seem to remember that doing so is impossible using 'normal' optics due simple physics. IIRC there is a limit to the resolution (expressed in radians) you can get for a given frequency for a given lens . Given the distance above our head these things fly this means there is a 'hard' maximum resolution these have and given what I remember from the article it was quite a bit above the ability to read the screen on your phone. The same /article/ (for the love of god I can't remember whether it was in print or some blog or something) stipulated that those pictures you see where they show you the playing-cards a man is holding are actually aerial pictures taken from specialised planes who happen to fly a LOT lower to the ground and also can carry big (heavy) lenses more easily.

PS: I mention 'normal optics' because apparently (same long forgotten source) it should be possible to get much higher resolution by combining different satellites looking at the same target but flying some distance apart and combining their 'view' using some fancy mathematics.

Doing some googling I stumble upon this that seems to conform the above : http://cosmoquest.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-2500.html

Just think of it as nerd humor.

Note - Fermi detected a 94 GeV photon from Gamma Ray Burst GRB 130427A (over 1/2 the Higgs energy), and many photons in the GeV range, which bodes well for quantum gravity constraints.

That photon had a wavelength of ~ 10^-17 meters, or 10 million yoctometers

I wrote up a short summary of the observational details for one of my classes -- you can find it at

http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/phys443/lectures/grb130427a/grb130427a.html

You can also follow a nice summary of the latest results by following Don Alexander's thread on the Cosmoquest forum:

http://cosmoquest.org/forum/showthread.php?143754-GRB-130427A-burst-of-the-(quarter)-century

Dark Matter is not like the luminiferous aether. That was the title of a podcast I made three years ago -- here it is: http://cosmoquest.org/blog/365daysofastronomy/2010/06/26/june-26th-dark-matter-not-like-the-luminiferous-ether/

The luminiferous aether was a theory developed to explain a discrepancy... as was dark matter. The difference is, there are LOTS of different lines of evidence to point towards dark matter. With the luminiferous aether, the theory was tested, and it didn't stand up. With Dark Matter, the theory has been tested, and it DID stand up.

So let it be written, so let it be done. CosmoQuest

I don't pretend to understand but from the little I've read gravity can be considered negative energy. http://cosmoquest.org/forum/showthread.php/105781-Gravity-and-Negative-Energy etc. no idea if this helps.

Read this very informative thread on the topic.

Short version? That idea is so wrong it'd be funny, if it weren't held by so many "space enthusiasts" with no excuse.