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Large-scale patterns in the polarization of CMB light, I believe.

Read the Emperor's surrender proclamation. Note how heavily the Soviet invasion weighs on his speech, and how little gravity is given to America's new weapon. Is this the same article that blatantly ignores the fact that the Hawks were well aware of the Soviet buildup along the front and acted accor...

Cutting meals is horrific in the long term. If you're seriously overeating, cutting portion sizes in half (or more) is a much better way to go.

I would assume that he would define it in a similar manner to generosity. It is not generous to throw an old book in the fireplace because you think it's worthless, and if the book is really worth a ton of money that still doesn't make it any more generous. Selling your life to achieve something wo...

I really wouldn't describe the fearlessness of being ready to die as 'courage'. It's more like the polar opposite of a night terror - wouldn't call that experience cowardice, either. About the only thing I could compare it to would be if someone meant everything to you - a child or a loved one - and...

Didn't the Navy or Air Force make something like this? Uses some ridiculous amount of energy to fire a plasma torus.

Really? This is quite surprising to me, as I didn't think there'd be any weak decay at all in the fusion, especially since the major modes of removing energy are evaporation. Can you please explain this to me, or provide a source? It sounds interesting. Not much directly from the process of fusion ...

Lord Revan wrote:hmm doesn't oxygen fusion need more energy then it produces?

No, but the majority of the energy is released as neutrinos.

There are a lot more than just the two. Hell an alternate 'you' dies half a dozen times throughout the course of the game - every time your nose bleeds. The Lutece's don't have that casual ability to waltz through time - that's what they need Elizabeth to do - otherwise they'd just go back and kill...

Bean, my reference was the thought I got at the beginning. It's still close enough in overall context, and contrary to what the hype was ("The ending is like nothing you've ever seen in a game before!" ...), other games have done this sort of theme before. Regardless there is no time loop ...

1999 is a special 'super-hard' mode that unlocks after you beat the game. That said, really early on in the game, a pretty strong clue gets dropped and I had a "Wait, this isn't going to be yet another one of those games where the main antagonist is a future version of myself and I'm going to h...

China is the new India, for IT outsourcing. Just last week I was organising some (customer provided) offshore resource for a project, and I was asked to use China if possible, because specialist skill requirements (C++ is a specialist skill apparently) could be met at much lower cost. Apparently th...

If a field star or even a field dwarf galaxy in say, the Bootes void was made of antimatter, would we actually be able to notice with current detectors? Especially since its surroundings would be even more rarefied than normal, with most of the annihilation occurring shortly at the Big Bang itself.

Positron-electron annihilation does. Sometimes. Nucleon-nucleon much less so, IIRC (I linked the paper on this forum somewhere) a minimum of 56% of the energy gets radiated as neutrinos and predictability goes only down from such an idealized reaction.

Heh. In terms of 'existential' level threats, wherein humans lose the ability to determine their own destiny, I think we can break them down into four categories, as typically described. 1) Resource exhaustion, and the effects of such waste. 2) Rent-seekers of various sorts, trying to maintain some ...

Thanks for the input. I'm something of a info-crack-addict. I'll occassionally let myself drift away in dreams like these. I still like to be optimistic and think that some of the nicer singularity-ish futures will turn out to be true. But don't get me wrong, I do try to be realistic. Perhaps we wi...

BOB? Equations I'm finding on the Internet for 'rough approximations' seem to have some rather generous interpretations of rough... linear density model gives a central density of about ~5.6 grams/cm^3 for the Sun. Quadratic is even worse (!?) Essentially defines central density to be 2.5x average d...

Well it looks like it's highly dependent on the metallicity of the star in question, so giving a general answer, outside of possibly of low mass stars, is probably not very sound. On the other hand I'm mostly looking for a range rather than specific values. I did find one document covering a .6 sola...

So, I do some math and, from raw fusion, it would seem that stars release anywhere from ~1% (proton-proton dominates) to about ~30% (high-temperature CNO) of their energy as neutrinos. Wikipedia claims that the solar energy output in neutrinos is in fact 2%, citing these neutrino graphs , but that d...

John hasn't been involved in the company named after him since 1994. He owns a number of businesses in and around Belize, two of which IIRC involved chartering flights.

Anyway, he has put up a blog for defending himself.

I just saw a post from a heartfelt, died-in-the wool Republican, who had been using language like 'lieberal' for years, vote straight Democrat, because of his daughters. I don't think Romney had a chance without the 'female' vote. I don't think the Republican party does, in the future, thinking of i...

What's in Superman's lungs is really up to author or at least character design fiat. If he breathes out a lot of hot, dry air, it'll act like any other high-pressure zone, pushing away clouds, etc.

Well, HSF versus SSF is all about competent people playing by the rules against morons who cheat. It's entirely a question of, does said stupidity exceed the edge they gain by said hax? Isn't this dependent ENTIRELY on how you're defining the terms? I mean 'hard' sci fi tends to be pretty broad in ...

Well, HSF versus SSF is all about competent people playing by the rules against morons who cheat. It's entirely a question of, does said stupidity exceed the edge they gain by said hax?

If we can figure out some means of fusion propulsion, can get to a few percent of c. Dropping a ridiculous quantity of conventional fuel in a bottom burn slingshotting around the Sun can also get to a few percent of c. Probably the only thing we'd have a hope of doing at the moment. Light-sails can ...