3:...blatantly absurd...
No, it's a theory which fits all the facts we have.
...at the very edge of the visible Universe...
quasars from Nasa Extragalactic Database, these are quite close as the visible universe goes.
3C 405, redshift 0.056
3C 273, redshift 0.158
Not to mention that the distinction between quasar and active galactic nucleus is essentially one of luminosity, and Centaurus A is only at redshift of 0.001825, ~4 megaparsecs.
How the most distant quasars (redshift 6.4 = 1 billion years after the big bang, unless I'm out of date) formed so quickly is not yet known, but I don't know any reason why it'd be impossible to make one in a billion years.
4:...evaporate...
Yes, they don't evaporate that quickly. That's irrelevant. The energy we observe from quasars comes from infalling matter.
...the size of a typical Quasar would need to be absolutely gigantic...
A typical quasar mass is 10^8 or so Solar Masses, as has been measured quite accurately by reverberation mapping, gas kinematics and water maser studies. The event horizon of a quasar of this mass is comparable in size to the Solar System. Yes, it won't evaporate.
5:...NO quasars closer than 5 billion light-years away...
See above.
...If Quasars were galaxy seeds...
How would you make a galaxy out of a Black Hole? You certainly wouldn't manage it in the lifetime of the Universe. The formation processes of quasars and galaxies is complicated and the two can interact in interesting ways. Quasars form in the centre of galaxies.
7:...If a Quasar were powered by a Black Hole, it would be typically 100,000 times more massive than the Black Hole at the Black Hole at the center of our own galaxy...
Sagitarrius A* mass: 2.6*10^6 Solar Masses
Typical quasar: 10^8 Solar Masses
So it's more like a factor of 100. A few quasars have masses up to 10^10, so at most a factor of 10,000.
I think I'll stop here, you're making up numbers that are easy to find in google.
Well, that was my explanation for 16 year olds, it glosses over a lot. Quadraginta is entirely right that there are plenty of emission lines from atoms and ions in the X-ray band - neutral iron for instance is at 6.4 keV (kilo-electron-volts) which is quite a high-energy X-ray. You're quite right that atomic emission isn't the whole story, emission from plasma (seperated electrons and nuclei) often dominates the spectrum. This emits by synchrotron radiation, Compton up-scattering of ultraviolet light from further out in the disc, and plain thermal emission. Thermal emission from a plasma doesn't involve emission lines, it's just electrons scattering off each other therefore accelerating and radiating in the process. X-ray hot plasmas are perfectly possible. The gravitational tidal forces aren't what cause the plasma, it's all the heating from friction/compression. Tidal forces (outside the event horizon) are really small on the scale of atoms - you can approximately calculate it without too much difficulty comparing Newton's and Coloumbs laws.
Nothing can escape from "inside" a black hole, from within inside the event horizon. But as matter falls into the black hole it heats up, the gravitational potential energy gets turned into heat through friction-type processes (this also happens in waterfalls, the bottom is warmer). Hot stuff glows, and the gravity near a black hole is so strong that the matter does not just get red or white hot, it gets X-ray hot. And a lot of the X-rays, since they're generated outside the event horizon but still very near the black hole, escape so we can see them.
Most stuff doesn't generate much in the way of X-rays, so it's very easy to pick out the X-rays coming from the quasar. That's not so true of visible light - no doubt visible light also escapes from right next to the black hole, but it's drowned out by the outer regions of the quasar (which are visible-light hot instead of X-ray hot) and the galaxy the quasar is in.
HL1 also wasn't released for the DC, though they ported it (but didn't finish debugging) and you can find an almost-entirely-working version (including Blue Shift) on various P2P services.
I'm not sure it really is a niche I'm in, everyone I know with a console plays PC games as well (though my friends probably aren't very representative), and only a few buy every console. I suspect the number of gamers who like fighters but don't have a PS2 is significant enough to warrant porting it.
And it's not the plug-and-play nature so much as the fact that developers could depend on a standard PC joypad, where they know there are a set number of buttons and triggers, rumble features and dual analog sticks, so they can design games around that. And they could start including co-op play as well, since the system would easily support multiple players. I don't really see this happening, but if Microsoft convinced system sellers like Dell into bundling their mid-range and up systems with a joypad - or just included one in the Windows Vista box - then PC gaming would have that interface option for developers to use and we'd hopefully see more cross-platform games on PC.
Come on, wouldn't you love Radiant Silvergun on PC? Higher resolution graphics, never any slowdown... I'd buy it, but I don't own a Saturn, and I'm unlikely to ever get round to importing/modding one (I'm in the EU, where it didn't get released) just for that game - unless I figure out how to get rich and retire within a couple of years.
FTFA: "X360 controllers working on the PC is just frosting."
I can't see that. This is potentially huge. We can finally get beat-em-ups, platformers and several other genres on PC, where they've been pretty scarce before. If it's taken up by developers it means I won't need a console again, and can go back to just having one box. Of course, Microsoft isn't that likely to marginalise the console industry now it's a player in it, so there must be some kind of catch.
P.S. yes, I already have a USB doodad for using my controllers on my PC. What I don't have is a PC version of Tekken 4 or Super Monkey Ball.
The GP to this post mentioned Red vs Blue but doesn't mention what machinima genuinely adds to video fiction that nothing else can: gaming in-jokes.
Other than that it is a bit pointless, especially to someone who isn't impressed with interesting hacks (which it was when it started out) or giving the public wider access to creating entertainment.
Why is it all the "switch off your TV" rants end with a suggestion to go for a walk? I find going for a walk *really boring*. I live here, I've seen it before, seeing it again just isn't fun. Travelling somewhere else to go walking is also generally not very exciting.
So why not suggest something more like play StepMania, read Slashdot, write a novel, talk to a friend (OK, you can do this while walking if you really like), drink till you start spontaneously giggling, learn to skateboard, write to your representative in parliament, make a UT2004 mod, play basketball...?
kinetic energy = 0.5*mv^2 = 0.5*1.67e-27*(150000)^2 = 2e-17 joules i.e. not very much.
Hydrogen at that speed isn't going to blow a hole in your spaceship, though of course it could at highly relativistic speeds. Interestingly 2e-17 J is not far off being enough to ionise an atom, so if you have a ceramic hull I guess it might degrade it. But as far as kinetic energy goes dust is more of a problem.
A spaceship can accelerate forever, and the stuff outside the windows will keep going past faster if you keep accelerating. When you get near light speed stuff comes at you at just under the speed of light, but the more accelerating you do the more length contraction occurs so you can i.e. cross the galaxy in less subjective time. It's just that for someone on Earth you'll take the same time to cross the galaxy whether it takes 500 subjective years or 500 subjective seconds.
No, it's because space ships don't have a top speed! There's no friction to slow them down, they can accelerate forever; or at least until they run out of fuel.
Yes - under the doctrine of falsifiability you shouldn't invite someone to prove something impossible. You can only prove something is possible, by providing an example. You can't prove it's impossible that custard wrote the previous drxray post. I can't prove it's possible, though that doesn't mean it's not. So, as science, it's not very useful.
The light speed limit is a prediction of relativity, a theory that works extremely well in the many situations it's applied. People who think it's fundamental are on vastly stronger ground than flat-Earthers or people who claimed high-speed travel was impossible for humans. Just for fun, note also that the Fermi paradox argues against it somewhat.
It still might be wrong, of course (and the problems with reconciling relativity and quantum mechanics means that it probably is wrong, at least in some details), but many scientists today who are understand the history and philosophy of science and are aware of all the times people have been bitten by stupid statements in the past are still often convinced that faster than light spaceships is impossible.
And of course the "you can't prove that it's impossible" argument applies to everything; by that argument I could be a sentient bowl of cinammon custard, but it's not productive to consider that idea.
One more point: slower than light galactic civilisations would be totally possible for lifeforms who live for tens of thousands of years and don't mind the odd century of lightspeed delay.
I'm completely with you there, as far as single-player games go. With multiplayer, it's different - you need people to play against, and you need them to be at your skill level. So if you wait till the game you want hits the bargain bin there won't be many people online, and they'll all know every trick of the game - unless you like losing all the time you won't have fun.
DOSBox for your retro DOS gaming needs. Sound should work fine, no need to get dusty.
Alternatively, there were Windows 95 compatible Direct3D accelerated versions of Tie Fighter and X-wing, which I'd recommend getting - the antialiasing really improves the graphics.
Cronenburg's The Fly - it's about meddling with forces you don't understand. It could only work as science fiction or with magic (sufficently advanced technology = magic...).
There's more to science fiction than robots and spaceships, but most films are very shallow. However, that makes the argument into one about definitions, i.e. pointless.
The rocks are thrown into space by the impact of meteors. This is how they can hit Phobos or Earth.
If you've ever looked at the Moon through a telescope (recommended, it's beautiful!), you'll see huge lines of material converging on the craters, this is called "ejecta" and it's the debris thrown out from impacts. Some of the lines cross decent fractions of the Moon's surface, so it's pretty easy to imagine that some of the rock made it all the way out of orbit, and that the same process can operate almost as easily on Mars.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it's a theory which fits all the facts we have.
quasars from Nasa Extragalactic Database, these are quite close as the visible universe goes.
3C 405, redshift 0.056
3C 273, redshift 0.158
Not to mention that the distinction between quasar and active galactic nucleus is essentially one of luminosity, and Centaurus A is only at redshift of 0.001825, ~4 megaparsecs.
How the most distant quasars (redshift 6.4 = 1 billion years after the big bang, unless I'm out of date) formed so quickly is not yet known, but I don't know any reason why it'd be impossible to make one in a billion years.
4: ...evaporate...
Yes, they don't evaporate that quickly. That's irrelevant. The energy we observe from quasars comes from infalling matter.
A typical quasar mass is 10^8 or so Solar Masses, as has been measured quite accurately by reverberation mapping, gas kinematics and water maser studies. The event horizon of a quasar of this mass is comparable in size to the Solar System. Yes, it won't evaporate.
5: ...NO quasars closer than 5 billion light-years away...
See above.
How would you make a galaxy out of a Black Hole? You certainly wouldn't manage it in the lifetime of the Universe. The formation processes of quasars and galaxies is complicated and the two can interact in interesting ways. Quasars form in the centre of galaxies.
7:...If a Quasar were powered by a Black Hole, it would be typically 100,000 times more massive than the Black Hole at the Black Hole at the center of our own galaxy...
Sagitarrius A* mass: 2.6*10^6 Solar Masses
Typical quasar: 10^8 Solar Masses
So it's more like a factor of 100. A few quasars have masses up to 10^10, so at most a factor of 10,000.
I think I'll stop here, you're making up numbers that are easy to find in google.
Well, that was my explanation for 16 year olds, it glosses over a lot. Quadraginta is entirely right that there are plenty of emission lines from atoms and ions in the X-ray band - neutral iron for instance is at 6.4 keV (kilo-electron-volts) which is quite a high-energy X-ray.
You're quite right that atomic emission isn't the whole story, emission from plasma (seperated electrons and nuclei) often dominates the spectrum. This emits by synchrotron radiation, Compton up-scattering of ultraviolet light from further out in the disc, and plain thermal emission. Thermal emission from a plasma doesn't involve emission lines, it's just electrons scattering off each other therefore accelerating and radiating in the process. X-ray hot plasmas are perfectly possible.
The gravitational tidal forces aren't what cause the plasma, it's all the heating from friction/compression. Tidal forces (outside the event horizon) are really small on the scale of atoms - you can approximately calculate it without too much difficulty comparing Newton's and Coloumbs laws.
Nothing can escape from "inside" a black hole, from within inside the event horizon. But as matter falls into the black hole it heats up, the gravitational potential energy gets turned into heat through friction-type processes (this also happens in waterfalls, the bottom is warmer). Hot stuff glows, and the gravity near a black hole is so strong that the matter does not just get red or white hot, it gets X-ray hot. And a lot of the X-rays, since they're generated outside the event horizon but still very near the black hole, escape so we can see them.
Most stuff doesn't generate much in the way of X-rays, so it's very easy to pick out the X-rays coming from the quasar. That's not so true of visible light - no doubt visible light also escapes from right next to the black hole, but it's drowned out by the outer regions of the quasar (which are visible-light hot instead of X-ray hot) and the galaxy the quasar is in.
HL1 also wasn't released for the DC, though they ported it (but didn't finish debugging) and you can find an almost-entirely-working version (including Blue Shift) on various P2P services.
I'm not sure it really is a niche I'm in, everyone I know with a console plays PC games as well (though my friends probably aren't very representative), and only a few buy every console. I suspect the number of gamers who like fighters but don't have a PS2 is significant enough to warrant porting it.
And it's not the plug-and-play nature so much as the fact that developers could depend on a standard PC joypad, where they know there are a set number of buttons and triggers, rumble features and dual analog sticks, so they can design games around that. And they could start including co-op play as well, since the system would easily support multiple players.
I don't really see this happening, but if Microsoft convinced system sellers like Dell into bundling their mid-range and up systems with a joypad - or just included one in the Windows Vista box - then PC gaming would have that interface option for developers to use and we'd hopefully see more cross-platform games on PC.
Come on, wouldn't you love Radiant Silvergun on PC? Higher resolution graphics, never any slowdown... I'd buy it, but I don't own a Saturn, and I'm unlikely to ever get round to importing/modding one (I'm in the EU, where it didn't get released) just for that game - unless I figure out how to get rich and retire within a couple of years.
...or maybe they're just being honest - perhaps 440x330 is the only resolution you can afford to run it at.
Besides, higher resolution pictures here: IGN
FTFA: "X360 controllers working on the PC is just frosting."
I can't see that. This is potentially huge. We can finally get beat-em-ups, platformers and several other genres on PC, where they've been pretty scarce before. If it's taken up by developers it means I won't need a console again, and can go back to just having one box.
Of course, Microsoft isn't that likely to marginalise the console industry now it's a player in it, so there must be some kind of catch.
P.S. yes, I already have a USB doodad for using my controllers on my PC. What I don't have is a PC version of Tekken 4 or Super Monkey Ball.
Damn, how do I do a tesseract in ASCII art?
Kilomiles per second? Wow...
Also, that formula takes kilograms for the mass. So 1.67e-27 kg (1 atomic mass unit) is right (here).
I'll have a go at the rest if I get bored at work.
The GP to this post mentioned Red vs Blue but doesn't mention what machinima genuinely adds to video fiction that nothing else can: gaming in-jokes.
Other than that it is a bit pointless, especially to someone who isn't impressed with interesting hacks (which it was when it started out) or giving the public wider access to creating entertainment.
Why is it all the "switch off your TV" rants end with a suggestion to go for a walk? I find going for a walk *really boring*. I live here, I've seen it before, seeing it again just isn't fun. Travelling somewhere else to go walking is also generally not very exciting.
So why not suggest something more like play StepMania, read Slashdot, write a novel, talk to a friend (OK, you can do this while walking if you really like), drink till you start spontaneously giggling, learn to skateboard, write to your representative in parliament, make a UT2004 mod, play basketball...?
kinetic energy = 0.5*mv^2 = 0.5*1.67e-27*(150000)^2 = 2e-17 joules i.e. not very much.
Hydrogen at that speed isn't going to blow a hole in your spaceship, though of course it could at highly relativistic speeds. Interestingly 2e-17 J is not far off being enough to ionise an atom, so if you have a ceramic hull I guess it might degrade it. But as far as kinetic energy goes dust is more of a problem.
But, yeah, OK, there is some friction in space.
"Einstein disagrees with you ;)"
A spaceship can accelerate forever, and the stuff outside the windows will keep going past faster if you keep accelerating. When you get near light speed stuff comes at you at just under the speed of light, but the more accelerating you do the more length contraction occurs so you can i.e. cross the galaxy in less subjective time. It's just that for someone on Earth you'll take the same time to cross the galaxy whether it takes 500 subjective years or 500 subjective seconds.
No, it's because space ships don't have a top speed! There's no friction to slow them down, they can accelerate forever; or at least until they run out of fuel.
"Nature already does it."
Sorry, what do you mean? Living creatures replicate themselves but there are no general purpose programmable replicators in nature that I'm aware of.
Yes - under the doctrine of falsifiability you shouldn't invite someone to prove something impossible. You can only prove something is possible, by providing an example.
You can't prove it's impossible that custard wrote the previous drxray post. I can't prove it's possible, though that doesn't mean it's not. So, as science, it's not very useful.
The light speed limit is a prediction of relativity, a theory that works extremely well in the many situations it's applied. People who think it's fundamental are on vastly stronger ground than flat-Earthers or people who claimed high-speed travel was impossible for humans.
Just for fun, note also that the Fermi paradox argues against it somewhat.
It still might be wrong, of course (and the problems with reconciling relativity and quantum mechanics means that it probably is wrong, at least in some details), but many scientists today who are understand the history and philosophy of science and are aware of all the times people have been bitten by stupid statements in the past are still often convinced that faster than light spaceships is impossible.
And of course the "you can't prove that it's impossible" argument applies to everything; by that argument I could be a sentient bowl of cinammon custard, but it's not productive to consider that idea.
One more point: slower than light galactic civilisations would be totally possible for lifeforms who live for tens of thousands of years and don't mind the odd century of lightspeed delay.
Most of the London suicide bombers were British (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4676861.stm), so it could happen in the US too.
Giving it to them is fine. Giving them a copy is breaking copyright law (it's not theft, it is illegal, it's often unethical*).
*subjective
I'm completely with you there, as far as single-player games go. With multiplayer, it's different - you need people to play against, and you need them to be at your skill level. So if you wait till the game you want hits the bargain bin there won't be many people online, and they'll all know every trick of the game - unless you like losing all the time you won't have fun.
So, which of you two was the player?
DOSBox for your retro DOS gaming needs. Sound should work fine, no need to get dusty.
Alternatively, there were Windows 95 compatible Direct3D accelerated versions of Tie Fighter and X-wing, which I'd recommend getting - the antialiasing really improves the graphics.
Midway are going to publish the next Unreal Tournament.
Does this mean we'll have to pimp our leviathans?
I suppose playing against people using celebrity skins could be quite fun though - oops, I flakked Britney again...
Cronenburg's The Fly - it's about meddling with forces you don't understand. It could only work as science fiction or with magic (sufficently advanced technology = magic...).
There's more to science fiction than robots and spaceships, but most films are very shallow. However, that makes the argument into one about definitions, i.e. pointless.
The rocks are thrown into space by the impact of meteors. This is how they can hit Phobos or Earth.
If you've ever looked at the Moon through a telescope (recommended, it's beautiful!), you'll see huge lines of material converging on the craters, this is called "ejecta" and it's the debris thrown out from impacts. Some of the lines cross decent fractions of the Moon's surface, so it's pretty easy to imagine that some of the rock made it all the way out of orbit, and that the same process can operate almost as easily on Mars.