Out of Pod Experience

Do you believe in God and if not what do you think your science and your theory of evolution will do for you when you burn for all eternity in the pits of hell?

I was hoping for some science on how you'd build a flame resistant suit or something similar, disappoint.

p.s. I like your thread.

If you believe in something as nonsensical as souls, I am disappoint.

But to answer your question, when you have solved the mathematical question of eternity, you will also figured out the heat capacity of the human soul as you supposedly spend in a eternity down there.

i thought i applied sarcasm pretty thick there XD

on the topic of souls though (i don't believe in souls) this raises interesting some questions. all of our observations seem to indicate the the communication of information is directly linked with energy exchange (which is partly why most physicists are ok with entanglement effects occurring at FTL speeds). the encoding of information in space also appears to be a process with interesting entropic consequences. a lot of these points would be answered with a physical application of information theory, but to my knowledge this has not yet been done.

Explain to me the reason for resonance peaks for neutron cross sections with relation to neutron energy with different elements. I want maths. I'll definitely understand it, but I have a hard time finding this kind of information in my books or anywhere on the web.

^ Matt Damon will be in hell, That is a very good line to use.

What is it with you and Blackholes?

I want you to name and describe every part of a Blackhole, and to do so in order of center-to-edge.

sounds interesting, thanks

there is a lot of speculation that goes into a question like this, but i think first it is important to clarify that a laser in a vacuum could travel "indefinitely" if it never interacts with matter. the real question would be how far can a laser travel before it has spread out so much that it is no longer useful. your average laser pointer spreads out quite a bit even over every day distances (i tried this with my laser pointer in the main hallway of the engineering building here (several hundred feet) and it spread out to a circle an inch or so across). this limit is in part determined by the material being fired upon; specifically the power required to ablate (vaporize) it. because of the nature of radiation, the closer the target is to the source the more damage will be done, unlike projectile weaponry

many lasers used in the physical sciences are Class IV, which means that they can cause serious damage to skin and its scattered light can even blind those who look at it. i used a Class IV Nd/YAG (neodymium-doped yttrium aluminium garnet) laser to produce catalyst coated substrates when i was doing research on carbon nanotubes my sophmore year. the safety manual (which i was quizzed on before i was even allowed near the thing) had first hand accounts from people who got hit in the eye with this class of laser. it ablated the retina and boiled the vitreous fluid of their eyes within a single pulse, causing the eyeball to explode outwards just form the pressure built up by the newly formed gas...

the Central Laser Facility in the UK is working on a laser that can achieve pulsed energy densities strong enough create particles of matter in a similar fashion as the LHC (this is done by literally tearing apart the local space-time, but it's not as bad as it sounds). when it is complete it will be the most powerful laser in the world. their current focus is on laser initiated fusion, known as Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF). one of the forerunners in laser-induced ICF was the OMEGA project at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics in Brighton New York (I had an uncle who worked there once), but this was eventually overshadowed by the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California. to my knowledge, the NIF is the current record holder for worlds most powerful laser boasting a power output of ~500 Terrawatts (the laser dumps four million Joules of energy on the fusion target in a time span of only a few billionths of a second). the laser being built at the Central Laser Facility will exceed the NIF by orders of magnitude.

i guess the short answer to your question is that i don't know without more information, but LASERS ARE COOL!! =D

Bleh trying to argue against a trekkie who proclaims some pertty stupdendous stupid ranges for lasers which you are right a laser in vacuume would should be indefinite.
Good luck finding that in space though more and more evidence says that space is pertty much crammed with stuff (as far as the universe is concerned and its quite dense with radiation gravitaitonal influence particles and mass.

Best place to start looking I say is beyond the edge of the universe next best spots that giant gap between galaxies.

I am more inclinded to belive the missile ranges over the 'phaser' ranges. The devices in question dont seem large enough or the ship produces enough power to procure such redicioulous distances. Swimming though the internet to of various bloggers the best conclusion they came up with is that to get a similar distance star trek uses would require an 8km long ship and thats without a turret system.

But thats science fiction meeting science somethings got to give.

None the less thank you for the reads


here is one for you, not space based but a weaponized laser none the less http://www.onr.navy.mil/Media-Center/Fact-Sheets/Free-Electron-Laser.aspx

another special bonus the built for production railgun here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uV1SbEuzFU&feature=youtu.be looks a hell lot more deployable than previous iterations.