Are you familiar with Avogadro's number? 6.022 x 10e23. This means that there are nearly a trillion trillion carbon atoms in a 6-gram chunk of graphite. A steel container several kilograms in mass could lose a few million to screw up your vacuum and still be strong as ever.
Good point. Which means a ship with such abilities would be able to radically redesign its 'aerodynamic' profile as needed. Would near-c speeds introduce design requirements that aerospace engineers would find familiar? Would we actually have to worry about the effects of producing shock waves in the interstellar near-vacuum?
No, something travelling _at_ the speed of light has infinite kinetic energy, which is what prevents us from accelerating any sublight matter to or past that boundary. Theoretical particles like tachyons which only travel at speeds greater than c would have a set of rules that prevented them from slowing down to lightspeed.
Technically, yes. But bear in mind that the thickest nebula you're likely to find Out There is still a harder vacuum than any laboratory chamber can produce. Interstellar space is at most 10 atoms per cubic meter. You try to get down to even 100x that density and your chief problem will not be keeping air out but preventing the very material your chamber is made out of from evaporating.
What gave you the idea it ever stopped? There was a whopping 4 years between the 21st ammendment and the passing of the Harrison Marijuana Tax Act, which effectively outlawed it. The Constiution has been in effect for over two centuries and we only this year got the right to shag whomever we want without government approval. This government has a long history of addiction (oh the irony!) to prohibition and suffers from a perpetual optimism that it will ever work as intended.
Of course, we really have no one to blame but ourselves. Democracies invariably get exactly the government they deserve.
Oh, so if it matters that little, you won't mind having the phrase removed? Or replaced with "under Allah", or "under Zeus", or better yet "under no god because none exist"?
Adding "under god" turns a "simple pledge directed at a flag to our nation" into a statement proclaiming this to be a theocracy, one whose secular laws are secondary to the whims of imaginary deities.
What's the major problem with using nukes on icy snowball asteroids and comets? It's harder to push it entirely out of the way, sure, but lots of energy will still be imparted from the blasts. The flash-vaporized material is still going to be pushed into the rest of the mass and/or fly away at high speed, imparting lots of force. If you manage to shatter the thing it's even better because then you can detonate further nukes inside the slowly expanding cluster which not only speeds up the expansion, but more energy from the detonations is applied directly to the mass of the asteroid, instead of only half from a surface blast. By the time you're done, you've got a giant cloud of boulder-sized pieces of ice (instead of a solid chunk kilometers wide) which occupies a volume many times larger than it was before. What parts of it actually manage to fall into the gravity well are orders of magnitude more likely to burn up in their entirety.
Now if we were trying to drag a comet into orbit to use it, then this approach would not work. On second thought, if a comet is headed our way and we've got enough time to move it, we might as well try to capture it in a high orbit, so forget about this whole shattering business.
Can you imagine what we could do after that? Gigatons of volatiles just sitting there, ripe for use. Fuel for inter-planetary vehicles, air and water for stations. Cubic kilometers of the stuff!
Not according to George Bush Sr. He thinks atheists shouldn't even be citizens. Real nice guy. I'm guess he'd been happiest if he'd been able to have me and the other 40 million non-religious people deported to Canada or something. I'm just so terribly glad his sons are governor of my state and the president of the country.
They've done some work with speec recognition by looking for phonemes rather than whole words. This is a much simpler task and computers can do it with greater reliability. This stream of syllables would be just as bandwidth-saving as word recognition and be even more reliable on the text-to-speech side.
I figure, if the FBI has a warrant, I've no problem with them trying to wiretap my phone. But if they think for one second that I am required by law to make it easy for them, they've got another thing coming.
Wasn't there a/. posting about a very comprehensive survey of accents in the US? Would show a list of multiple pronunciations of various words or phrases and then give a map of the distribution of each?
Heh. I recall hearing about some clueless congresscritter or industry exec talking about how digital-analog-converters needed to made controlled devices.
Gotta remember, these aren't rational people making these decisions. They're scared, panicky, and not very knowledgable to begin with. They'll make stupid choices, which would be fine but for the illegal status they are trying to attach to all other options.
You can't even operate a website discussing the things the Nazis belived at the time..
Now that's really fucking brilliant. So in another 2 or 3 generations, when nearly everyone who was alive within 20 years of WW2 is dead, nobody in France will have any clear idea of just what these Nazi characters were all about? And if they ever get a schmuck preaching "National Socialism for the superior French race", nobody'll really have any idea what the eventual outcome of such demagoguery is.
I think the saying needs some work. "Those who make a point of not learning from history deserve whatever the hell it is they do to themselves."
Same here, but I figure that if I've already lost a minute by answering it in the first place (no per-second billing), I might as well use the remaining 55 seconds to give them a piece of my mind and make vague legal threats about what would happen if they called the cell again. I memorized the relevant references in the US legal code and it comes in handy when I need to ream a tele-marketroid out.
It would be a perfect mimic of you, but it wouldn't be you.
But wouldn't it, though? If a piece of counterfeit money is absolutely, utterly indistinguishable from the Real Thing, is it still fake? If nobody, not even you, could tell the difference between yourself and your duplicate, what about the duplicate makes him a forgery?
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Are you familiar with Avogadro's number? 6.022 x 10e23. This means that there are nearly a trillion trillion carbon atoms in a 6-gram chunk of graphite. A steel container several kilograms in mass could lose a few million to screw up your vacuum and still be strong as ever.
Good point. Which means a ship with such abilities would be able to radically redesign its 'aerodynamic' profile as needed. Would near-c speeds introduce design requirements that aerospace engineers would find familiar? Would we actually have to worry about the effects of producing shock waves in the interstellar near-vacuum?
No, something travelling _at_ the speed of light has infinite kinetic energy, which is what prevents us from accelerating any sublight matter to or past that boundary. Theoretical particles like tachyons which only travel at speeds greater than c would have a set of rules that prevented them from slowing down to lightspeed.
Technically, yes. But bear in mind that the thickest nebula you're likely to find Out There is still a harder vacuum than any laboratory chamber can produce. Interstellar space is at most 10 atoms per cubic meter. You try to get down to even 100x that density and your chief problem will not be keeping air out but preventing the very material your chamber is made out of from evaporating.
Uhh, don't you mean recycling civilian nuclear waste? I'm all for conservation, but recycling civilians seems going a bit far...
Of course, we really have no one to blame but ourselves. Democracies invariably get exactly the government they deserve.
When compared to your sig, I think the entirety of your post was rather redundant. :)
I'd be happy with a PDA that worked as a phone that I could use a hands-free set with.
Adding "under god" turns a "simple pledge directed at a flag to our nation" into a statement proclaiming this to be a theocracy, one whose secular laws are secondary to the whims of imaginary deities.
Now if we were trying to drag a comet into orbit to use it, then this approach would not work. On second thought, if a comet is headed our way and we've got enough time to move it, we might as well try to capture it in a high orbit, so forget about this whole shattering business.
Can you imagine what we could do after that? Gigatons of volatiles just sitting there, ripe for use. Fuel for inter-planetary vehicles, air and water for stations. Cubic kilometers of the stuff!
Not according to George Bush Sr. He thinks atheists shouldn't even be citizens. Real nice guy. I'm guess he'd been happiest if he'd been able to have me and the other 40 million non-religious people deported to Canada or something. I'm just so terribly glad his sons are governor of my state and the president of the country.
They've done some work with speec recognition by looking for phonemes rather than whole words. This is a much simpler task and computers can do it with greater reliability. This stream of syllables would be just as bandwidth-saving as word recognition and be even more reliable on the text-to-speech side.
I figure, if the FBI has a warrant, I've no problem with them trying to wiretap my phone. But if they think for one second that I am required by law to make it easy for them, they've got another thing coming.
No, that's a laser-augmented solar sail. Operating something like this in an atmosphere and a gravity well is a different animal entirely.
Wasn't there a /. posting about a very comprehensive survey of accents in the US? Would show a list of multiple pronunciations of various words or phrases and then give a map of the distribution of each?
Gotta remember, these aren't rational people making these decisions. They're scared, panicky, and not very knowledgable to begin with. They'll make stupid choices, which would be fine but for the illegal status they are trying to attach to all other options.
Now that's really fucking brilliant. So in another 2 or 3 generations, when nearly everyone who was alive within 20 years of WW2 is dead, nobody in France will have any clear idea of just what these Nazi characters were all about? And if they ever get a schmuck preaching "National Socialism for the superior French race", nobody'll really have any idea what the eventual outcome of such demagoguery is.
I think the saying needs some work. "Those who make a point of not learning from history deserve whatever the hell it is they do to themselves."
You might also want to mention how disastrous a failure Ghandi's civil disobedience was in the story.
Sounds nifty. Got a link or a name for the airplane?
I think he means to literally redefine the meter as 1/3e8 of a ligh-second.
Ha! I solved the Unified Field Thoery using only my food processor and dishwasher!
Ahh, thank you, much appreciated.
Same here, but I figure that if I've already lost a minute by answering it in the first place (no per-second billing), I might as well use the remaining 55 seconds to give them a piece of my mind and make vague legal threats about what would happen if they called the cell again. I memorized the relevant references in the US legal code and it comes in handy when I need to ream a tele-marketroid out.
Ahh, but you forfeit the winnings if you can't revive him.
But wouldn't it, though? If a piece of counterfeit money is absolutely, utterly indistinguishable from the Real Thing, is it still fake? If nobody, not even you, could tell the difference between yourself and your duplicate, what about the duplicate makes him a forgery?