At weapon levels, mirrors effectively become opaque to laser beams due to the energies involved - they'll just soak up the beam and explode like any other material. Your only real hope against weapon lasers is to either not be where it is, or have enough ablative armour (pray they're not using anything harder than UV) and structural strength to get out of the way before it drills through it or pounds the ship to bits (pulse lasers are unpleasant).
If the attacker is using x-ray lasers, odds are the umbrellas aren't going to save you. I'm a bit dubious that a puff of air is going to do terrible much to a weaponized laser in space either, honestly - you'll never get a dense-enough region of gas to meaningfully deflect the beam. Not to mention your attacker is going to be random-walking along with you to avoid return fire, which is going to make it pretty hard for the interceptor drone to be in the right place at the right time...
Space combat will probably be kinetic missile bombardment at exceptionally long range, while ships continuously manoeuvre to take advantage of the lightspeed delay in signal times to avoid incoming fire. Medium-range fighting might include lasers (particularly x-ray lasers if they can be made feasible) or particle beams out to a few light seconds, but kinetics will still rule. Not really sure if it would make sense to armour space warcraft; at space combat velocities, any kinetic weapon impact would likely mission-kill any target. It's possible I guess to try to armour against beams/lasers, maybe hide the crew module deep inside the fuel or something.
Planetary defense will be tricky, since anything in a predictable orbit is a sitting duck at practically any range, especially the planet itself. Massive orbital swarms of small defensive weapons, maybe? I'd sure hate to be living on a planet in a hot space war.:(
No stealth, no fighter/bombers; both are pretty much unfeasible in space. Stealth just can't meaningfully be done, and fighters are better replaced with missiles or drone missile-buses.
Eh, a decent modern reactor with modern safeguards isn't going to see those sorts of problems, or at least they become much less likely. Fukushima was an old design and the company responsible for it never bothered to apply the recommended safety upgrades.
Well, the energy required to mass-scatter the Earth against it's own gravitational binding energy is around 4e32J, or about 11 days of the Sun's total output. Which is insignificant compared to the power of the Force, but still nothing to sneeze at.
If you are compelled to give them the cleartext, and they already have the cyphertext, then you have also effectively been compelled to give them your encryption key, which contravenes the 5th Amendment.:)
Not that the whole thing isn't looney, but a directed radio beam from Earth is going to be a lot brighter than the Sun in radio waves. You could probably do a fair bit of damage to the satellite infrastructure with a decent-sized dish and enough watts.
Yes, America, with the world economy teetering on a knife-edge, this is the perfect time to provoke a nation you've been fucking with for decades to shut down one of the most economically important shipping routes on the planet.
And yeah, sanctions. Great idea. Starve the very people in Iran who don't hate you.
That does rather point to the predictive ability of the models they're using, now doesn't it.:)
Often, when someone 'invents' a new particle, they're not really inventing anything, but rather taking existing models and examining them for solutions that match or can explain their observations. Trying to shoehorn in something completely new, while it might explain the new observation, could very easily make a mess of everything else, which wouldn't make a terribly good extension to a theory.:)
And bear in mind that whenever someone comes up with a theory explaining something, there's going to be everyone else in their field trying to tear down their theory to try to advance their own. This isn't going to guarantee that you end up with the 'right' answer, but it certainly does help to weed out the wrong ones.
Not really. The group is basically extrapolating the known behaviour of Bose-Einstein condensates (known to form from helium) in the conditions that may be present inside a helium white dwarf. The fact that you think they're just throwing their hands in the air and making things up out of whole cloth I find rather disturbing.
Uh... religion and science ARE fundamentally at odds. One is based on empirical study, the other is the rejection of the empirical in favour of what is effectively make-believe. And it's nice to quote Einstein, but just because he's famous and was a brilliant scientist doesn't mean that nugget of his wisdom is particularly correct.
There's no evidence that it is physiologically addictive. Psychological addiction isn't related to the substance in question, but rather the person and their response to it.
I dunno, the US could do something sane like a massive Federal tax increase (aimed mostly at the wealthy) and spend the money guaranteeing all their citizenry who want it a post-secondary education. Oh wait, what am I saying, that has never worked for any nation in the history of mankind, right?
Of course humans are expendable. You just can't shove it in the public's faces like the Challenger incident (I dunno that 'disaster' is the appropriate word) did.
Slashdot Mirror
So... other than "experts" (nice fear quotes), who should they be listening to? The layman who doesn't know any better?
Kind of a waste of time, though, isn't it? I'd be cheaper and just as effective to throw high velocity normal matter at the target.
At weapon levels, mirrors effectively become opaque to laser beams due to the energies involved - they'll just soak up the beam and explode like any other material. Your only real hope against weapon lasers is to either not be where it is, or have enough ablative armour (pray they're not using anything harder than UV) and structural strength to get out of the way before it drills through it or pounds the ship to bits (pulse lasers are unpleasant).
If the attacker is using x-ray lasers, odds are the umbrellas aren't going to save you. I'm a bit dubious that a puff of air is going to do terrible much to a weaponized laser in space either, honestly - you'll never get a dense-enough region of gas to meaningfully deflect the beam. Not to mention your attacker is going to be random-walking along with you to avoid return fire, which is going to make it pretty hard for the interceptor drone to be in the right place at the right time...
Space combat will probably be kinetic missile bombardment at exceptionally long range, while ships continuously manoeuvre to take advantage of the lightspeed delay in signal times to avoid incoming fire. Medium-range fighting might include lasers (particularly x-ray lasers if they can be made feasible) or particle beams out to a few light seconds, but kinetics will still rule. Not really sure if it would make sense to armour space warcraft; at space combat velocities, any kinetic weapon impact would likely mission-kill any target. It's possible I guess to try to armour against beams/lasers, maybe hide the crew module deep inside the fuel or something.
Planetary defense will be tricky, since anything in a predictable orbit is a sitting duck at practically any range, especially the planet itself. Massive orbital swarms of small defensive weapons, maybe? I'd sure hate to be living on a planet in a hot space war. :(
No stealth, no fighter/bombers; both are pretty much unfeasible in space. Stealth just can't meaningfully be done, and fighters are better replaced with missiles or drone missile-buses.
Then again, the Heartland Institute are already known liars, which certainly tends to bias my view of their side of things.
Eh, a decent modern reactor with modern safeguards isn't going to see those sorts of problems, or at least they become much less likely. Fukushima was an old design and the company responsible for it never bothered to apply the recommended safety upgrades.
Engage NIMBYism in 3... 2... 1...
1+1=10 is entirely equivalent to 1+1=2, you're simply using another number system to represent it. It has nothing to do with opinion.
Opinion in this case would be 'binary is superior to decimal'.
Can't be a standard torus. You forgot about the nostrils.
Well, the energy required to mass-scatter the Earth against it's own gravitational binding energy is around 4e32J, or about 11 days of the Sun's total output. Which is insignificant compared to the power of the Force, but still nothing to sneeze at.
If you are compelled to give them the cleartext, and they already have the cyphertext, then you have also effectively been compelled to give them your encryption key, which contravenes the 5th Amendment. :)
Nono, that defense is reserved for important people, don't be silly!
... it's biotechnology as usual, only this time the public got to hear about it and now, being utterly ignorant of anything, they're in a panic.
Not that the whole thing isn't looney, but a directed radio beam from Earth is going to be a lot brighter than the Sun in radio waves. You could probably do a fair bit of damage to the satellite infrastructure with a decent-sized dish and enough watts.
2051? As if there won't be an unlimited number of copyright extensions before then. The Public Domain is just a fossilized stratum now.
Yes, America, with the world economy teetering on a knife-edge, this is the perfect time to provoke a nation you've been fucking with for decades to shut down one of the most economically important shipping routes on the planet.
And yeah, sanctions. Great idea. Starve the very people in Iran who don't hate you.
What could possibly go wrong with this plan!?
That does rather point to the predictive ability of the models they're using, now doesn't it. :)
Often, when someone 'invents' a new particle, they're not really inventing anything, but rather taking existing models and examining them for solutions that match or can explain their observations. Trying to shoehorn in something completely new, while it might explain the new observation, could very easily make a mess of everything else, which wouldn't make a terribly good extension to a theory. :)
And bear in mind that whenever someone comes up with a theory explaining something, there's going to be everyone else in their field trying to tear down their theory to try to advance their own. This isn't going to guarantee that you end up with the 'right' answer, but it certainly does help to weed out the wrong ones.
Not really. The group is basically extrapolating the known behaviour of Bose-Einstein condensates (known to form from helium) in the conditions that may be present inside a helium white dwarf. The fact that you think they're just throwing their hands in the air and making things up out of whole cloth I find rather disturbing.
Uh... religion and science ARE fundamentally at odds. One is based on empirical study, the other is the rejection of the empirical in favour of what is effectively make-believe. And it's nice to quote Einstein, but just because he's famous and was a brilliant scientist doesn't mean that nugget of his wisdom is particularly correct.
There's no evidence that it is physiologically addictive. Psychological addiction isn't related to the substance in question, but rather the person and their response to it.
I dunno, the US could do something sane like a massive Federal tax increase (aimed mostly at the wealthy) and spend the money guaranteeing all their citizenry who want it a post-secondary education. Oh wait, what am I saying, that has never worked for any nation in the history of mankind, right?
Of course humans are expendable. You just can't shove it in the public's faces like the Challenger incident (I dunno that 'disaster' is the appropriate word) did.
I dunno, "burned hand teaches best" I've always heard said. Maybe you lot *should* elect the Tea Party, just to get it over with...
Go for a walk on a trampoline sometime.