In other news today...
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While Popular Mechanics is far from a reliable source, TFA does link to an article in a (purportedly) reputable, peer-reviewed scientific journal.
"Even closer" and "conventional physics" are a bit misleading. It still requires an energy input 1030x any available source. And it's based in esoteric quantum phenomena that are "conventional" only for a very broad definition of that word, but apparently it doesn't require forms of matter and energy that are pure conjecture.
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@HardwareGeek By the time we have access to that amount of power we could probably convert the Earth into a spaceship, Wandering Earth-style.
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@Rhywden It might not require that much energy.
“Fortunately, several energy-saving mechanisms have been proposed in earlier research that can potentially lower the energy required by nearly 60 orders of magnitude,” he said.
But still just so much speculation.
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60 orders of magnitude
Ah yes, just the small hurdle of reducing energy usage to 1/1060
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@hungrier said in In other news today...:
60 orders of magnitude
Ah yes, just the small hurdle of reducing energy usage to 1/1060
The Chinese tried. But then we locked down and found some vaccines...
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The colloquial term “warp drive” comes from science fiction, most famously Star Trek. The Federation’s FTL warp drive works by colliding matter and antimatter and converting the explosive energy to propulsion. Star Trek suggests this extraordinary power alone pushes the ship at FTL speeds.
Really? I’ve never looked into Trek physics of FTL travel but I assumed it would be more exotic sci-fi mumbo jumbo than just annihilation+propulsion, which we definitely know doesn’t work. I mean, for sub-FTL travel they use the “impulse engine” which works with classical propulsion, so it stands to reason that’s because FTL propulsion would require infinite impulse in the Trek universe too.
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
The colloquial term “warp drive” comes from science fiction, most famously Star Trek. The Federation’s FTL warp drive works by colliding matter and antimatter and converting the explosive energy to propulsion. Star Trek suggests this extraordinary power alone pushes the ship at FTL speeds.
Really? I’ve never looked into Trek physics of FTL travel but I assumed it would be more exotic sci-fi mumbo jumbo than just annihilation+propulsion, which we definitely know doesn’t work. I mean, for sub-FTL travel they use the “impulse engine” which works with classical propulsion, so it stands to reason that’s because FTL propulsion would require infinite impulse in the Trek universe too.
I sometimes find myself wondering if transporter (and food replicator?) technology operates instantaneously or is limited by the speed of light. After allowing for the shimmering effect, of course.
(Yeah, Shat, I know. Get a life.)
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
The colloquial term “warp drive” comes from science fiction, most famously Star Trek. The Federation’s FTL warp drive works by colliding matter and antimatter and converting the explosive energy to propulsion. Star Trek suggests this extraordinary power alone pushes the ship at FTL speeds.
Really? I’ve never looked into Trek physics of FTL travel but I assumed it would be more exotic sci-fi mumbo jumbo than just annihilation+propulsion, which we definitely know doesn’t work. I mean, for sub-FTL travel they use the “impulse engine” which works with classical propulsion, so it stands to reason that’s because FTL propulsion would require infinite impulse in the Trek universe too.
I wouldn't trust Popular Mechanics to be expert on Star Trek physics any more than I would expect them to be expert on IRL physics. I never got the impression it was just propulsion. My understanding has long been that annihilation was the source of the vast amount of energy required (and dilithium crystals somehow play an important part in this), but warp and impulse propulsion are fundamentally different in a way that involves a lot of (very high energy) hand-waving. IIRC (and I may not), even First Contact, in which Zefram Cochrane's invention/discovery of the warp field is the central plot point, doesn't make
sany real attempt to do more than vaguely hand-wave at its function.
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
Really? I’ve never looked into Trek physics of FTL travel but I assumed it would be more exotic sci-fi mumbo jumbo than just annihilation+propulsion, which we definitely know doesn’t work.
(Need to find my copy again.)
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
The colloquial term “warp drive” comes from science fiction, most famously Star Trek. The Federation’s FTL warp drive works by colliding matter and antimatter and converting the explosive energy to propulsion. Star Trek suggests this extraordinary power alone pushes the ship at FTL speeds.
Really? I’ve never looked into Trek physics of FTL travel but I assumed it would be more exotic sci-fi mumbo jumbo than just annihilation+propulsion, which we definitely know doesn’t work. I mean, for sub-FTL travel they use the “impulse engine” which works with classical propulsion, so it stands to reason that’s because FTL propulsion would require infinite impulse in the Trek universe too.
The basic concept is that the warp engine uses a "warp field" to mess with the ship's inertial mass so that it doesn't become infinite at lightspeed, making it possible for the heavy amounts of energy generated by antimatter annihilation to propel the ship up to FTL.
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
Really? I’ve never looked into Trek physics of FTL travel but I assumed it would be more exotic sci-fi mumbo jumbo than just annihilation+propulsion, which we definitely know doesn’t work.
Yeah, from my recollection the antimatter reaction was to generate power which is used to generate the warp bubble that folds space around the ship and causes it to locate in a particular direction, and the higher warp was mostly enhancing the effect through finer tuning of the bubble so it would slide better/faster/stronger.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in In other news today...:
@topspin said in In other news today...:
The colloquial term “warp drive” comes from science fiction, most famously Star Trek. The Federation’s FTL warp drive works by colliding matter and antimatter and converting the explosive energy to propulsion. Star Trek suggests this extraordinary power alone pushes the ship at FTL speeds.
Really? I’ve never looked into Trek physics of FTL travel but I assumed it would be more exotic sci-fi mumbo jumbo than just annihilation+propulsion, which we definitely know doesn’t work. I mean, for sub-FTL travel they use the “impulse engine” which works with classical propulsion, so it stands to reason that’s because FTL propulsion would require infinite impulse in the Trek universe too.
The basic concept is that the warp engine uses a "warp field" to mess with the ship's inertial mass so that it doesn't become infinite at lightspeed, making it possible for the heavy amounts of energy generated by antimatter annihilation to propel the ship up to FTL.
My recollection is apparently flawed.
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@Tsaukpaetra I would not be surprised if the hand-waving wasn't entirely consistent throughout the history of the franchise. Your recollection is fairly consistent with mine.
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@HardwareGeek said in In other news today...:
propulsion [...] involves a lot of (very high energy) hand-waving.
I think they call that "flapping wings" and it doesn't work great for humans
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
I mean, for sub-FTL travel they use the “impulse engine” which works with classical propulsion, so it stands to reason that’s because FTL propulsion would require infinite impulse in the Trek universe too.
You'll never ever do FTL with conventional propulsion because it takes infinite energy to accelerate any non-zero mass to the speed of light in a vacuum. The requirement for that comes straight out of the equations for Special Relativity, and in ways that require no advanced maths; it's a trivial conclusion from Lorentz contraction. For a warp drive to work, something else has to give. For example, moving or deforming space itself (the core principle behind the Alcubierre drive) as that's totally not subject to the speed-of-light limit. But we don't really know any workable ways to do that…
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@dkf said in In other news today...:
no advanced maths; it's a trivial conclusion from Lorentz contraction
Puhshaw. Everyone can see that.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in In other news today...:
@topspin said in In other news today...:
The colloquial term “warp drive” comes from science fiction, most famously Star Trek. The Federation’s FTL warp drive works by colliding matter and antimatter and converting the explosive energy to propulsion. Star Trek suggests this extraordinary power alone pushes the ship at FTL speeds.
Really? I’ve never looked into Trek physics of FTL travel but I assumed it would be more exotic sci-fi mumbo jumbo than just annihilation+propulsion, which we definitely know doesn’t work. I mean, for sub-FTL travel they use the “impulse engine” which works with classical propulsion, so it stands to reason that’s because FTL propulsion would require infinite impulse in the Trek universe too.
The basic concept is that the warp engine uses a "warp field" to mess with the ship's inertial mass so that it doesn't become infinite at lightspeed, making it possible for the heavy amounts of energy generated by antimatter annihilation to propel the ship up to FTL.
So basically the sentence
Star Trek suggests this extraordinary power alone pushes the ship at FTL speeds
is wrong, not even "technically correct". Thought so.
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@Zecc said in In other news today...:
Puhshaw. Everyone can see that.
It ends up with doing a divide by zero in the formula, giving an infinity. It's seriously “well that's obvious” territory, even for high-school students. It's the physical consequences of the formulæ that are hard to comprehend; the maths for Special Relativity isn't too bad.
General Relativity is Different™!
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@dkf The math gets insane quickly, but you can still understand the qualitative effects fairly well by just applying the basic postulate (uniform gravity is equivalent to accelerating reference frame).
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@Bulb said in In other news today...:
@dkf The math gets insane quickly, but you can still understand the qualitative effects fairly well by just applying the basic postulate (uniform gravity is equivalent to accelerating reference frame).
As long as you only care about the very simple qualitative effects. <Shudders in memory of the GR class I took as a grad student>
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@dkf said in In other news today...:
@Zecc said in In other news today...:
Puhshaw. Everyone can see that.
It ends up with doing a divide by zero in the formula, giving an infinity. It's seriously “well that's obvious” territory, even for high-school students. It's the physical consequences of the formulæ that are hard to comprehend; the maths for Special Relativity isn't too bad.
General Relativity is Different™!
It's always seemed odd to me that Special Relativity is the simple one that everyone knows about, and General Relativity is the weird, extra-complicated one. Intuitively, you'd think it should be the other way around, right?
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@Mason_Wheeler said in In other news today...:
@dkf said in In other news today...:
@Zecc said in In other news today...:
Puhshaw. Everyone can see that.
It ends up with doing a divide by zero in the formula, giving an infinity. It's seriously “well that's obvious” territory, even for high-school students. It's the physical consequences of the formulæ that are hard to comprehend; the maths for Special Relativity isn't too bad.
General Relativity is Different™!
It's always seemed odd to me that Special Relativity is the simple one that everyone knows about, and General Relativity is the weird, extra-complicated one. Intuitively, you'd think it should be the other way around, right?
Intuition is, well, unreliable. SR is a special case of GR. Hence "special".
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@Mason_Wheeler said in In other news today...:
It's always seemed odd to me that Special Relativity is the simple one that everyone knows about, and General Relativity is the weird, extra-complicated one.
I suspect it isn't too bad if you can compute with complicated differential equations of tensors in your head.
I definitely can't! I know just enough to know that I don't want to touch it. (OTOH I'm doing things with simulating large groups of neurons, which is also potentially computationally ferocious, so...)
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@dkf said in In other news today...:
differential equations of tensors in your head
Either lay off the drugs or find a better supplier, because that's a bad trip, man.
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@HardwareGeek said in In other news today...:
@dkf said in In other news today...:
differential equations of tensors in your head
Either lay off the drugs or find a better supplier, because that's a bad trip, man.
Yeah. Most of us call them tensor-valued differential equations.
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@dkf said in In other news today...:
if you can compute with complicated differential equations of tensors in your head.
Bruh, I have a hard enough time tracking five numeric registers, you're asking a bit much!
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@Tsaukpaetra said in In other news today...:
@dkf said in In other news today...:
if you can compute with complicated differential equations of tensors in your head.
Bruh, I have a hard enough time tracking five numeric registers, you're asking a bit much!
That's okay, there's an implementation for 5 registers. You have scratch space, right? Most people use the top of their head.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in In other news today...:
Bruh, I have a hard enough time tracking
five numeric registersposts that I have read, you're asking a bit much!FTFY
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@TimeBandit said in In other news today...:
@Tsaukpaetra said in In other news today...:
Bruh, I have a hard enough time tracking
five numeric registersposts that I have read, you're asking a bit much!FTFY
Correct. My memory index of posts seen has long been assumed corrupted, thus tracking externalized.
My password index is next up, though since I've switched to algorithmic generation (hope nobody figures out that the key is my now-hardcoded original password!) that won't be too big of a problem...
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@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
That actually makes some sense, we can assume he wouldn't be able to pay for that car otherwise. Now this one is clearly an overkill:
Sadly, I've been able to find only one English article so far: https://praguemonitor.com/news/national/14/02/2020/2020-02-14-czech-robs-bank-switzerland-later-found-police-having-beer-local-pub/
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@Kamil-Podlesak Apparently he never paid for his beer.
Rob a bank and still can't afford to pay for a beer? Sounds like Switzerland alright.
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@Kamil-Podlesak said in In other news today...:
later-found-police-having-beer-local-pub
Well, at least they weren't stuffing their faces with doughnuts like (stereotypical) American police.
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@HardwareGeek said in In other news today...:
@Kamil-Podlesak said in In other news today...:
later-found-police-having-beer-local-pub
Well, at least they weren't stuffing their faces with doughnuts like (stereotypical) American police.
That's not the current stereotype.
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Eight days before Lee defeated Arizona State’s Brandon Courtney on Saturday to win his third consecutive NCAA championship, the senior tore the ACL in his left knee. Lee wrestled five matches in a three-day span on one functional leg.
“I didn’t want to tell anyone because F excuses,” Lee said after his final match when he revealed what he had to go through to win. “Excuses are for wusses. That was a tough tournament for me. I could barely wrestle. I could barely shoot. I can’t sprawl. I believed in my coaching staff and everyone that believed in me and here I am so here you guys go.”
That's just damn impressive.
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@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
That was a tough tournament for me. I could barely wrestle. I could barely shoot.
When I find out
shoot
is a wrestling term, I will be sorely disappointed. For a moment, a wonderful sport existed... I'd watch it.
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@Gribnit said in In other news today...:
@HardwareGeek said in In other news today...:
@Kamil-Podlesak said in In other news today...:
later-found-police-having-beer-local-pub
Well, at least they weren't stuffing their faces with doughnuts like (stereotypical) American police.
That's not the current stereotype.
Yeah, based on my observations, cops now hang out at Chipotle.
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@da-Doctah said in In other news today...:
@Gribnit said in In other news today...:
@HardwareGeek said in In other news today...:
@Kamil-Podlesak said in In other news today...:
later-found-police-having-beer-local-pub
Well, at least they weren't stuffing their faces with doughnuts like (stereotypical) American police.
That's not the current stereotype.
Yeah, based on my observations, cops now hang out at Chipotle.
Chipotle doesn't even have good coffee
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@Gribnit said in In other news today...:
@da-Doctah said in In other news today...:
@Gribnit said in In other news today...:
@HardwareGeek said in In other news today...:
@Kamil-Podlesak said in In other news today...:
later-found-police-having-beer-local-pub
Well, at least they weren't stuffing their faces with doughnuts like (stereotypical) American police.
That's not the current stereotype.
Yeah, based on my observations, cops now hang out at Chipotle.
Chipotle doesn't even have good coffee
They are, however, one of the places where I always fill my big stainless steel tumbler with ice when I'm picking up someone's delivery order.
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@Gribnit said in In other news today...:
@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
That was a tough tournament for me. I could barely wrestle. I could barely shoot.
When I find out
shoot
is a wrestling term, I will be sorely disappointed. For a moment, a wonderful sport existed... I'd watch it.It means to quickly dive towards your opponent while keeping your head up and chest forward. At the conclusion of a shoot, you're ideally kneeling at/next to your opponent's feet so you can grab your opponent by the leg/legs and take them to the ground.
Notably, you hit your knee on the ground REALLY FUCKING HARD, so the fact that this guy did it with a torn knee muscle is super impressive.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear thanks, yes, I am now disappointed.
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I was wondering why step-mom's phone just decided to fuck itself for no apparent reason.
Sadly, had her factory reset when apparently there was just a broken update to Chrome that broke things. Oh well...
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@Tsaukpaetra said in In other news today...:
I was wondering why step-mom's phone just decided to fuck itself for no apparent reason.
It's a smart phone. When it saw you, it decided not to wait that you do it
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I'm sure some of you have heard of the MV Ever Given and what it's been up to:
Well...
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@PJH said in In other news today...:
A ship the length of four football pitches
Gotta love imperial units.
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@PJH According to one of the comments on that article, it is common for ships to cruise in circles while they wait for their turn to go through the busy canal, and it is probably just coincidence that the plot of their course happens to resemble any particular shape.
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@Gąska said in In other news today...:
@PJH said in In other news today...:
A ship the length of four football pitches
Gotta love imperial units.
It's about 35 double-decker buses.
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@PJH
And leave it to a Brit to make a cricket reference
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Oh, here we go again...
(not bothering with a Bloomberg link - I gotta clear my cookies before I can visit them again)