It's to do with gravity. If you want zero-G without the (dis)advantages of being near Earth (e.g. the radiation belts etc) you put your space station between the Earth and the Moon so that the gravitational attractions from the pair of them cancel out.
Consider Your Source. The WCS is a political pressure group, so anything that gets their green agenda in the public eye - no matter if it is misleading, ambiguous or just plain wrong - anything at all is a Good Thing to them.
Read between the lines of your news reports - it's amazing how much organizations try to hoodwink us. Think: The average Joe Sixpack thinks Microsoft are a fine example of an American corporation, and only those who know it's true self can speak the truth of it.
If you imagine that the Earth was a perfect sphere (it's not, but just for the sake of argument let's say it is) and that the equator was the rubber band. See how it slices the Earth into two bits?
Start sliding the equator up towards the geographical north pole.
Keep sliding. See how the total length of the "equator" has shrunk? See how there is one slice of the Earth that's bigger than the other? Imagine taking the top off of a boiled egg, if that helps... Slide some more.
Stop right there! You're just about to reach the north pole. Push it perfectly onto the north pole...
See? It is still on the Earth, but the "slice" of the Earth formed by the "equator" here is so thin that the "equator" now has zero length, and the second slice has no volume.
This, of course, requires a degree of perfection mere humans could neverachieve. I'm talking perfect perfection here. Not one merest of iota away from where it should be. Hey, it is theoretical...
Move the "equator" back anywhere near where it should be...
and it gets a non-zero length again. Push it even slightly further than the north pole...
And it is no longer on the Earth.
Congratulations on pinging the "equator" at the Sun, by the way. You've just annoyed every geographer on the planet. It looks like you've hurt the Sun as well... oh dear, it's going supernova! We're all going to die!
Blunkett has no time for libertairians. He is achieving everything the Tories can only dream of.
Remember, this is the man who is trying to remove the right to trial by jury. This is the man who is thinking of revealing a defendant's past convictions, which will bias the court even further against the unfortunate. This is the man who persecutes people crossing the channel with their car boots (trunks?) yet allows big corporations to get away with tax evation and theft on a colossal scale.
Surely all any wily criminal would do would be to leave his mobile phone at home? Surely any well-planned and well-financed terrorist operation would, knowing of this, just use those radios where what you say is encrypted and transmitted in a single, short, burst?
I'm not entirely sure how they work, though. I think you have to type your message in, although you should get some preset messages like "arrgh! the englander have shot me in the goolies!" and such.
Anyways, I don't have a mobile phone as I'm not entirely convinced having an emitter of EM radiation kept on standby near my testicles is an entirely good idea. Would keep them warm on those cold winter nights, though...
"Well, you see black holes compress matter- it's like a thick-spot in space, since a mass the size of Jupiter can fit into the size of a strawberry. Imagine for a moment how many thousands of alien civilizations could fit inside these black holss..."
Black holes are singularities - that is, a single point in space with an infinite density. Nothing can live there, as everything is shredded into it's component sub-atomic particles before they even get there. They are formed by the collapse of massive bodies in on themselves - a favourite is when white dwarfs (the still-beating hearts of dead stars) accrete too much matter and go over a critical limit (something like 1.6 solar masses. I'm not too sure on this, and my textbooks are so far away...) leading to them collapsing in on themselves and a black hole forming. You can't get closer to a black hole and return from it than it's event horizon, the surface around it where the escape velocity is >= the speed of light. Well, you can, but you won't be around to tell the tale! If a hole is rotating there is a region known as the ergosphere where it is possible to get the universes most impressive gravitational slingshot from.
Even a small black hole takes around 10^60 years to evaporate. The universe is about 1.4x10^9 years old. It's gonna be a long time until the black holes start disappearing, never mind the supermassive ones at the heart of galaxies.
Physics is great.
Slashdot Mirror
It's to do with gravity. If you want zero-G without the (dis)advantages of being near Earth (e.g. the radiation belts etc) you put your space station between the Earth and the Moon so that the gravitational attractions from the pair of them cancel out.
Makes it a pain to get to, as well.
Consider Your Source. The WCS is a political pressure group, so anything that gets their green agenda in the public eye - no matter if it is misleading, ambiguous or just plain wrong - anything at all is a Good Thing to them.
Read between the lines of your news reports - it's amazing how much organizations try to hoodwink us. Think: The average Joe Sixpack thinks Microsoft are a fine example of an American corporation, and only those who know it's true self can speak the truth of it.
If you imagine that the Earth was a perfect sphere (it's not, but just for the sake of argument let's say it is) and that the equator was the rubber band. See how it slices the Earth into two bits?
Start sliding the equator up towards the geographical north pole.
Keep sliding. See how the total length of the "equator" has shrunk? See how there is one slice of the Earth that's bigger than the other? Imagine taking the top off of a boiled egg, if that helps... Slide some more.
Stop right there! You're just about to reach the north pole. Push it perfectly onto the north pole...
See? It is still on the Earth, but the "slice" of the Earth formed by the "equator" here is so thin that the "equator" now has zero length, and the second slice has no volume.
This, of course, requires a degree of perfection mere humans could neverachieve. I'm talking perfect perfection here. Not one merest of iota away from where it should be. Hey, it is theoretical...
Move the "equator" back anywhere near where it should be...
and it gets a non-zero length again. Push it even slightly further than the north pole...
And it is no longer on the Earth.
Congratulations on pinging the "equator" at the Sun, by the way. You've just annoyed every geographer on the planet. It looks like you've hurt the Sun as well... oh dear, it's going supernova! We're all going to die!
Blunkett has no time for libertairians. He is achieving everything the Tories can only dream of.
Remember, this is the man who is trying to remove the right to trial by jury. This is the man who is thinking of revealing a defendant's past convictions, which will bias the court even further against the unfortunate. This is the man who persecutes people crossing the channel with their car boots (trunks?) yet allows big corporations to get away with tax evation and theft on a colossal scale.
"New Labour - Same Old Tories"
Surely all any wily criminal would do would be to leave his mobile phone at home? Surely any well-planned and well-financed terrorist operation would, knowing of this, just use those radios where what you say is encrypted and transmitted in a single, short, burst?
I'm not entirely sure how they work, though. I think you have to type your message in, although you should get some preset messages like "arrgh! the englander have shot me in the goolies!" and such.
Anyways, I don't have a mobile phone as I'm not entirely convinced having an emitter of EM radiation kept on standby near my testicles is an entirely good idea. Would keep them warm on those cold winter nights, though...
"Well, you see black holes compress matter- it's like a thick-spot in space, since a mass the size of Jupiter can fit into the size of a strawberry. Imagine for a moment how many thousands of alien civilizations could fit inside these black holss..." Black holes are singularities - that is, a single point in space with an infinite density. Nothing can live there, as everything is shredded into it's component sub-atomic particles before they even get there. They are formed by the collapse of massive bodies in on themselves - a favourite is when white dwarfs (the still-beating hearts of dead stars) accrete too much matter and go over a critical limit (something like 1.6 solar masses. I'm not too sure on this, and my textbooks are so far away...) leading to them collapsing in on themselves and a black hole forming. You can't get closer to a black hole and return from it than it's event horizon, the surface around it where the escape velocity is >= the speed of light. Well, you can, but you won't be around to tell the tale! If a hole is rotating there is a region known as the ergosphere where it is possible to get the universes most impressive gravitational slingshot from. Even a small black hole takes around 10^60 years to evaporate. The universe is about 1.4x10^9 years old. It's gonna be a long time until the black holes start disappearing, never mind the supermassive ones at the heart of galaxies. Physics is great.