Zeropoint

Re: Moon May Have Formed in Natural Nuclear Explosion Having the globs come out round is no trick at all: at the scale of the earth and moon, they can't be any other shape because no naturally occurring material (i.e. rock) is strong enough to support any other shape against gravity.

Re: Moon May Have Formed in Natural Nuclear Explosion This is where we cross-link to the Orion Drive thread.

Re: Sound Generator Could Kill Humans at Ten Meters But, can it match the Chrysler Air Raid Siren? Relevant quote: "The Chrysler Air Raid Siren is so powerful that it can reportedly start fires with just the sound vibrations it produces."

Re: Astronomers to find new Earth, Real Soon Now I'll upload myself into a computer and send a probe consisting of a chunk of computronium the size of a soda can, and a batch of general-purpose nanites which, when I arrive, will build the equipment to build the equipment to re-instantiate me as a physical being.

Re: Orion Drive space battleship Imperial Star Destroyers are great, but isn't it about time we joined the rest of the world and switch to Metric Star Destroyers?

Re: Moon May Have Formed in Natural Nuclear Explosion Hmm. Okay, we can ignore surface tension and viscosity for something on this scale, so all we're dealing with is gravity and centripetal acceleration. If the net force on a denser particle is such that it is pulled upward, it will clearly NOT stop at the surface and will be flung outward. I wonder, though could it have come together in the first place like that? Could you get a lump of stuff continually tearing itself apart and reforming from the material falling back in?

Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible? Realistically speaking, it would be cheaper to just put farms IN some of the buildings than to ship in food over interstellar distances.

Re: What does a Time Elemental do? I once read a story in which a skilled golemist created a time golem . . . with the result that the area from which the time was taken was trapped in stasis.

Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible? Hey, that's a good point. If they're shipping in millions of tons of food, does that mean the population is producing millions of tons of crap? What do they do with it all?

Re: Two asteroids colliding? Ah, they let an important bit of information slip there: "LIVES among the asteroids." Clearly, we are witnessing the mating of space whales. (note: physical resemblance to Earth sea life is not implied or even probable) Go space porn! I like this explanation, too! Perhaps using sophisticated technology to re-enact primitive computer games is considered terribly amusing in their culture? Do they play as the arrowhead ship, or as the flying saucers?

Re: First Contact Could Be Tomorrow! They're naked, too!

Re: Hellish Weather on Other Planets On a related subject, 1) do we have the technology to analyze an arbitrary mix of gases and determine the composition well enough to stake human lives on our belief that it's safe to breathe?, 2) how bulky and heavy would the equipment to do this need to be?, and 3) how long would it take? I know that the equipment to detect the concentrations of specific compounds can be handheld and give readings in seconds or at most tens of seconds, but that's a whole different ballgame than analyzing an atmosphere which could contain anything that's a gas. Obviously, checking for airborne pathogens is yet another complication. You know what? I'll just stay in the ship.

Re: 10 Sci-Fi Weapons That Actually Exist It's going to take more than an appeal to authority to overcome my problems with conservation of energy, but I'll wait until more data is available.

Re: Charging points for tech gear? I'm not really seeing what the problem is here. If the PCs are getting free access to high-tech gear, it must be because the stuff is commonly available, and therefore just as easily acquired by the opposition. The balance problem is resolved!

Re: 10 Sci-Fi Weapons That Actually Exist The ball is gaining kinetic energy at the expense of gravitational potential energy; this process is called "falling". I . . . I really DON'T understand why the principle of conservation of energy is so hard for people to grasp. RexMundi, you're far from the first person I've encountered who has heard of the law, but doesn't UNDERSTAND it. It doesn't matter what funky flow effects exist; the bullet cannot add energy to itself without TAKING that energy from somewhere. For that matter, IF the bullet works as described, what stops the effect? If the bullet is moving forward, and generating thrust as a result of this forward motion . . . shouldn't it simply accelerate until drag equals thrust and then keep moving at constant speed until it hits something? Why does the thrust effect fall off as the bullet moves faster? But, again, all this is irrelevant, because the real question is: where does the energy come from?

Re: 10 Sci-Fi Weapons That Actually Exist Also, jet engines (rockets are sufficiently different from what's being described that I think we can leave them out of the discussion) have a critical difference: they carry with them an energy source to compress the gas. Furthermore, we don't need to get into any discussions of aerodynamics or fluid flow, because the bullet, as described, violates conservation of energy. If the bullet is to accelerate, adding to its kinetic energy, there MUST be a corresponding loss of energy somewhere else. In a jet engine, it's the loss of chemical potential energy stored in the unburned fuel and unconsumed oxygen. As described, the bullet has nowhere to GET the energy that it adds to itself. Maybe the author got it wrong; maybe someone missed part of the description, but it simply CANNOT work as described here in this thread. RexMundi, you may not fail physics "forever", but you DO need to brush up on your basics.

Re: 10 Sci-Fi Weapons That Actually Exist RexMundi, I hesitate to use the phrase "You Fail Physics Forever", but the effect you're describing cannot possibly exist because it violates conservation of energy. The paper airplane you mention does not; it converts gravitational potential energy to kinetic energy. The hose does not; the water utility provides energy in the form of water pressure, and that provides the thrust. Compressing air takes energy. Where does the energy come from in your fuel-less bullet? There's only one possible place: the kinetic energy of the bullet. The BEST case scenario, which is only even theoretically possible if you allow for 100% efficient processes, is that the ramjet effect would not slow the bullet down. To put it more simply: if the bullet speeds up, its kinetic energy increases. Where is that energy coming from? In thermodynamics, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Re: Astronomers Say Alien Dust Is Nothing To Sneeze At Maybe it's a Dyson Sphere, as originally proposed by Dyson. Or a matrioshka brain, which is a type of Dyson sphere.

Re: First Contact Could Be Tomorrow! I THOUGHT Twinkies tasted like crap . . .

Re: What Happened to the Hominids Who Were Smarter Than Us? You're right. best to just stay on the surface and remotely put your ship into a cometary orbit around the planet and then bring it down on the site whilst simultaneously detonating all the ordnance on board and creating a catastrophic failure of the power system.

Re: The Singularity? Make it IQ 120 and you've got a deal.

Re: Math Ah, GURPS Vehicles, in which it is possible to build an airplane and when you're finished, discover that it won't fly.

Re: Transformers meets Robotech Is there any way I can get in on this campaign? It sounds awesome!

Re: Nova? I understand that the total value on the current market of all the stuff that makes up a typical metallic asteroid is somewhere in the neighborhood of $20,000,000,000,000. You'd think that would be an incentive.

Re: Lessons from Byzantium I can't remember the source, unfortunately, but I remember reading somewhere that if you go back a couple thousand years, then statistically speaking, if a person from back then hasn't had their lineage die out completely, then by now EVERYONE is descended from them. Yeah, everyone is a descendant of everyone.