Starship Asterisk*

neufer wrote:So someone remind me again why we are so adamant about humans out to explore other planets? ...

All of the reasons you might get in response can be boiled down to just one. It's fun.

Rob

Habitable by what? Creatures certainly inhabit some moons already, like those moons composed of water and covered by layers of ice, that ice cracking and spraying geysers. Where there is liquid water, there will be life. I think we have to remember that humans are not the only habitants of this uni...

It reminded me of the story in the US early in the 1900's the radio station acting out the Mars Invasion, "The Worlds at War" where people started packing and moving houses in the middle of the night. The War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells' novel as adapted by Orson Welles. http://en.wikipedi...

Looking at this 36mb file of the Omega cluster, I have to wonder why the Red Giant stars have a Tripled diffraction spike appearance while even the Largest (brightest) Blue stars only have singular diffraction spikes? Could it be something structural in the filter itself? Perhaps the filter that cr...

Truth is stranger than fiction!

Rob

That has been done in the USA with many ballons holding up a chair. No, that was an Australian movie a few years back called Danny Deckchair . But the movie may have been based on Larry Lawnchair from L.A., if his story isn't apocryphal. [ There's a scene in Danny Deckchair where he scans the heave...

When I first read it I thought the reference to a teapot was just another in joke. But today, with the ongoing discussion, I decided to try it. POP! Out popped a teapot.

Oddly it won't work if I'm not wearing my reading glasses. Must be some sort of virtual focal length thing.

Rob

Is not this site English Only? ..... Sorry I do not know Latin... There are many Latin and Latin-root words commonly used in English, as there are French and German and ... ... . Most fairly well educated English speakers -- in other words, most of the denizens of this forum -- will understand the ...

In case Harry's answer didn't cause immediate illumination, you might want to try this Wikipedia article, as a starting point. ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation

Rob

I can't even get myself to see those craters as craters and not bumps even though I know they're not bumps so I don't think I'll be able to find any fuel tanks. After I downloaded the full image, I had to flip it 180° to get them to become innies instead of outies. But I still haven't found anythin...

... its such a weird question that I am unable to word it the way I am thinking it. ... Perhaps three questions ... If the ring plane of each planet is thought of as a plane extending out without limit, is there a single point in time/space where the three planes meet. -- I suspect the answer would...

Ah! There it is. Thanks Harry. Let's see what happens when I copy and paste it... 3.8M⊙ and 6M⊙ Nice. :D I just checked the web page at arxiv and here. This forum uses UTF8 encoding on the pages, and arxiv has no encoding specified. I'll bet that's why the odot symbol is coming across as code. Rob

$3.8M_{\odot}$ I'm sure that was meaningful when it was input by the original author in their original application, but for some reason arxiv outputs this sort of symbology instead. Perhaps they need to adjust the encoding of their web pages or some such. But in the meantime, can someone offer a tr...

$3.8M_{\odot}$ I'm sure that was meaningful when it was input by the original author in their original application, but for some reason arxiv outputs this sort of symbology instead. Perhaps they need to adjust the encoding of their web pages or some such. But in the meantime, can someone offer a tr...

... I guess in the Universe there may be at least 1 galaxy for each of us! :) I think that it is more like a dozen galaxies. That should be quite enough for each of us! :) You never know; we might want to experiment a bit. "Let there be, er, um, ... light? No, no, that's already been done. Umm...

I think not. You must watch what you say. As the story goes, René Descartes was on an airplane when the flight attendant asked him if he'd like cream in his coffee. When he replied, "I think not," he vanished in a puff of logic. :lol: --- Special relativity is only for inertial reference ...

harry wrote:The Twin Paradox has been dicussed for over 100 yrs.

Indeed.

harry wrote:What is your opinion on the matter?

There is no paradox.

harry wrote:Was Einstein wrong?

Since he agrees with me, I think not.

Rob

An ion rocket (aka, plasma engine) has been used on at least 8 different space missions, so far. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_rocket A mass driver is a well understood method of propelling masses along a rail to move them quickly from point A to point B. Not sure if it's ever been used for m...

apodman wrote:

THX1138 wrote:our Children’s, children’s children

Sounds like you're talking about a question of balance on the threshold of a dream.

The Eyes of a Child may not see Beyond the references, and will miss the Higher and Higher meaning. But never mind, the Sun is Still Shining.

Rob

The fact that there actually are poor people shows that something else is going on besides simple availability of resources. I know this music :) sounds very similar to one conspiracy theory or two ;) ;) No conspiracy needed. There are many systemic reasons why food and other resources aren't getti...

I can't speak for Art, but I interpreted his question mark as a reference to the birthday being Apr. 21st, 2009 and your post coming on Aug. 18th, 2009.

What day is it in your universe, Harry?

Rob

If the US stops spending the money required to send humans into orbit, others will pick up the flag and fly it. So in the long run, it matters not for humanity. It'll just be a loss for the US. Of course, the obvious answer is to spread out the cost across the whole human race, but as a species we'r...

It ain't easy to find out, but I managed to track down a group rate registration form in PDF format. It says (remember, these are group rates and are therefore discounted from the regular rates, I presume) that an adult tour fare is $10, seniors $9, and for ages 6-17, $6. Sounds reasonable in 2009 d...

You folks exhibit a paucity of imagination. Think long time scale; think tens of millions of years, perhaps as much as a billion. Imagine the rock reaching, as they said, terminal velocity and then falling into a large, thick sand dune, or maybe a deep mud puddle if Mars happened to be wetter then. ...

From the wikipedia page on the Barringer Meteor Crater... The object that excavated the crater was a nickel-iron meteorite about 50 meters (54 yards) across, which impacted the plain at a speed of several kilometers per second. And from the wikipedia page named Impact event... Objects of diameters o...