Yes, it would be much lower. But that "much lower" would still be expected to be well above escape velocity. I mean the difference between 0.999...c (say 290,000 km/s) and 12 km/s is HUGE. (And I rounded the speed of the particle down, and escape velocity up.)
Even a 99.99% cancellation of velocities would still be well above escape velocity. It's true, though, a 99.999% cancellation would be below escape velocity. That kind of efficiency after a collision seems (to me) unlikely.

Are you sure? ISTM that it would initially prefer either electrons or protons, and when it had swallowed a couple of them it would repell any more. (Electrons are smaller, so it might prefer them, but they are also more uncertain as to their position, so it might prefer a proton.)

So say it swallowed an iron nucleus. This would give it a strong positive charge, so it would repell any additional nucleus. The question is could it also swallow electrons, or would they go into orbit around it?

*My* guess says that it would need to be sufficiently larger that gravitational effects would dominate over electromagnetic effects. OTOH, since 6 picometers is around 1000 times the size of an iron nucleus perhaps I'm overestimating the problem. That said, what's going to slow it down? This is an accelerator, so even if it created something with the mass of Mt. Everest, it wouldn't be at rest, and would, in fact, be moving far above escape velocity.

Given how bad many issued patents are, I feel that it's the presumption of validity that is the mistake. And that the baby being thrown out is a baby predator...which we would be vastly better off if it were killed.

There actually *is* a good case to be made for certain patents, but for such a small percentage that with the current system even eliminating all patents would be a net gain.

How could anyone possibly smear George Bush? (And which one?)

Mind you, the Democrats have been autocratic manipulators, but still... I can't guess either what you are considering a smear, or which George Bush you think it was applied to.

Sorry, but you fall afoul of the problem of "What constitutes reasonable proof?" This is a serious problem, as if we are Bayesian reasoners, then what consititues reasonable proof is highly sensitive to our priors. It is also provable that for certain sets of priors there is *NO* evidence that could possibly switch one from one set of beliefs to the other.

You outline what you are currently considering a set of proofs, but that means that you think they would suffice to convince anyone. This is not true. And "Creationist" is not a single set of priors, but rather several such sets, so even if an argument would suffice to convince one particular "Creationist" it might well fail on others. Now flip this around. Would you really change your opinions if they produced what they considered was good evidence? I truly doubt that. You are just certain that they can't produce what *YOU* consider good evidence. But be aware that you, also, cannot produce what they consider as good evidence.

What we call "reality" isn't what we sense, it's what we believe about what we sense. And that's all the reality we can ever know. And this is mathematically provable if you assume that we are Bayesian reasoners. (It's probably true anyway, but you can't prove it without the assumption.)

Sargon was significant as the tale of Noah and the flood was an edited steal from Babylonian myth...and they (probably) got it from the Sumerians. (IIRC, Sargon was also found floating in a small boat by a princess, like Moses...but I suspect the Moses story came from Egypt rather than from Akkad.)

It could be the name of a punk rock band. (Is that even around anymore?)

Population growth is much more sensitive to the fertility of the females than to that of the males.

Higher energy photons are distinct from lower energy photons in having a shorter wavelength. They both travel at (about) the same speed. Presumably in a true vacum they would travel at exactly the same speed.

Thus blue light is more energetic than red light, and has a shorter wave length. You measure the energy of the photons by absorbing a certain number and measuring the change in velocity or temperature of the thing that absorbed them. (Usually this is done by some sort of photocell arrangement were the absorbtion translates into electron volts, and that's what you actually measure. I believe that this has been done down to the single photon level, but I'm not sure.)

Correction:
This is how we know the Sun is^W made^W of^W contains some Helium. (And what proportion.)

We not only got rain, but hail. It worked out fine.

Why not use silicon dioxide? IIUC that's what they used to use, and it's a cheap industrial chemical. AND it's heavier than water.

Money is not equivalent to free speech, no matter how you twist things. I do not accept your arguments.

It is worth noting that one of the arguments which I read to be against the "free press" is the statement "The power of the press belongs to the man who owns one.". I don't fee this is sufficient grounds to be against freedom of the press, but it certainly highlights the limitations on its desirability. It's a way that only empowers the wealthy, as opposed to free speech which is available to the eloquent, whether rich or poor. And that highlights a limitation on the desirability of free speech. But the constitution made the best of things, but requiring *both* free speech and the free press. It would be reasonable to equate money with the free press, but not with free speech.

A large impact in a shallow ocean area might well in every human dying within a decade. Most immediately. It would also first steam clean the planet, and then set an ice age in motion.

Now I'll grant that this is unlikely in any century, less likely by far, in fact, than that we'll do the same thing to ourselves via war or some other means. (War seems the most likely, but it's not the only contender. An escape from a biological warfare lab is a possibility. I'm not counting natural evolution as "doing it to ourselves", but it's happened to other species. In fact it is currently happening to a large number of amphibian species, some of which have already gone extinct.)

But I do consider asteroid impacts worth worrying about. Not worth obsessing about, however, as they are a bit down the ladder when it comes to humanity exterminators.

I also question his method of assigning proper degree of concern. And the reliability of his assertions. E.g. he claims that only one person has ever been hit by a meteor, but there's no evidence that that's true. He should have said only one person is known to have been hit by a meteor. But how many people in remote areas of the planet could have been hit and the reason for death, or even the fact of death, not officially acknowledged? And clearly nobody could cite an instance before around 1700, as even the existence of meteors was denied. So you need to ask what is the probability of someone being hit by a meteor and the fact being officially recognized. This is a quite different question. He performs the same type of factual manipulation (less obviously) in a few other places.

That said, it's not a major concern while other concerns rate higher. But a species ending event is worthy of particular concern over and above the concern over the individual lives lost, as you also need to consider the future lost, and not just a few personal futures, but all human futures.

Who decided? Who decided that corporations were legal persons? It sure wasn't the voters.