If you'd purely travel through time and go back ten seconds, you'd see the Earth 297.7 kilometers away just before you the vacuum of space kills you.

Separating time and space travel makes for some very boring science-fiction.

If I were offered one free one-way trip to the past, I'd go back 2000-2500 years and help Greek or Roman civilization a bit. If possible and/or allowed, I'd bring a book such as Fundamentals of Physics, along with a high quality ruler and quartz watch. After learning the language, you could start giving lectures about physics and all the great inventions and discoveries that changed our world since then - of course, without giving their real inventors credit. After all, they don't exist.

You could discover steam engines and steel, and use that to build trains and giant ships. You could build crossbows, trebuchets, perhaps discover gunpowder, and conquer the world. You could save millions of lives by building sewers and introducing basic hygiene. You could draw a map of the world and send out ships to discover new and uncolonized lands and continents.

You could do a million things, each of which might make you the richest and most powerful man on earth. And you could do them all.

Then again, by going back in time and just investing in the right things you could be the richest man on earth in today's world as we know it, which may be more exciting.

I don't like to nitpick*, but that chart mentions Saudi Arabia 13% + Iraq 6% + Kuwait 2% = Middle East 21%.

* That was a lie. I love to nitpick.

You cannot reach infinity, therefore you can't reach the end of the series, therefore you can't reach the 1 at the end of the series. Which means you can't use the 1 at the end of the series to disprove the proof.

The whole point of "infinity" is that there IS no end. You can't say "but suppose there is" and use that to prove something.

You're comparing cycling to swimming here. You can go on for a few hundred meters without pedaling on your bike, but you'll be still in the water after a few meters if you stop swimming.

Depending on the size and speed of the ship, without engine power you'll be dead in the water after a few miles. Ships most definitely use their engines 100% of the time at sea.

Your math seems solid, but taking the Emma Maersk as an example doesn't quite work.

Container ships carry time-critical goods, meaning they have to be fast. The Emma Maersk is among the fastest cargo ships in the world, doing 25.5 knots. Tankers sail much slower, for example the Hellespont Alhambra does 16.5 knots, which is quite fast for a tanker. Lower speed means you need less engine power, which means you consume less fuel. While the Emma Maersk has an 80MW main engine and five auxiliary engines of 6MW each (totaling 110MW), the Hellespont Alhambra makes do with a main engine of 36.9MW along with three auxiliary engines generating 1.5MW each (totaling around 41.5MW).

Another difference is that containers have a very low density, meaning container ships have a relatively low deadweight tonnage (carrying capacity). The Emma Maersk can carry 156,907 tonnes, the Hellespont Alhambra can carry 442,470 tonnes.

This means the Hellespont Alhambra carries 2.82 times the amount of cargo, using only 37.7% of the Emma Maersk's fuel while running at 64.7% of the Emma's speed. This means it is (2.82*0.647/0.377) 4.84 times as efficient as the Emma Maersk.

Napkin math aside, they'd use smaller tankers for this, since Alaska doesn't have any ports that can accommodate supertankers with their 24m (80ft) draft.

They probably wouldn't use crude oil carriers, more likely product carriers which usually carry stuff like gasoline or gasoil. These products are much easier to clean than crude oil, a high pressure fresh water/detergent mixture would probably do the trick. A couple more fresh water rinses would get all the detergent out.

Lining the tanks with rubber isn't feasible. Tankers have on-board cargo pumps located just above the keel (the lowest possible location). Cargo pumps have to be at this level to be effective, otherwise you'd never get a high enough pressure at the pump inlet, causing all sorts of problems such as cavitation. For more information, check out Wikipedia's page on Net Positive Suction Head.

Lining the tanks with rubber would block the pipes going to the cargo pumps, and since you can't use shore-based pumps to unload the cargo, there'd be no way to unload except with a pump lowered into the tank through one of the manholes. That would only allow for very small pumps to be used (they'd have to fit through a manhole), meaning it would take weeks or months to fully unload the ship.

Sure, you could worry about that, but do you think the world would be a better place if nobody was doing this research?

I understand what you're saying, I just think it's weird. Seperately, almost all of Google's projects would receive near universal praise (exceptions being, among others, privacy nuts and the whole wi-fi data collecting scandal). Yet somehow a lot of people are criticizing them just because they're all being done by Google.

No, I'm not wearing a Google T-shirt while writing this. It's in the laundry.

I don't follow that line of thinking. This kind of development will

(1) improve quality of life for everyone using it, because they can do other things while driving
(2) increase fuel efficiency and therefore save money for everyone using it, while reducing fuel demand and reducing fuel prices for everyone
(3) cause less accidents, saving money on hospitals and insurance
(4) lower transport costs, saving everyone money

So you end up with a streamlined economy with the same production as before, and on average everyone has more money. The problem is the "on average" part: you'd probably have a large number of unemployed people. However, all that added money has to go somewhere, and there will be increased demand in other sectors such as housekeeping, gardening and entertainment. In general, less time and money spent on things that are necessary and more time and money spent on things that make life better.

The same thing has happened countless times in history: when people figured out how to use animals to plow fields, they didn't need 95% of their population working in agriculture anymore. And so some people took up pottery. And when they made a machine to make pots faster, some people started making wine. And a few centuries later, with mechanical wine presses, slashdot was born.

Long story short: people adapt.

And started thinking about what size a gnome must be in order to not be a gnome.

Of course we'll never have enough, that's basic human nature. There is, however, significant room for improvement. From the Wikipedia article on solar energy:

Take a look at this picture. If we manage to capture the solar energy hitting the combined area of those black dots (or capture 50% of the energy hitting an area twice that size, which is probably more realistic), we've got enough electricity to replace all other energy sources - not just those used for generating electricity, but fuel used for transportation, coal used in steel mills, etc.

We might go through a major energy crisis before we get there, but there's enough energy to go around. We just have to capture it.

If we have an abundant supply of energy, the second part is no longer necessary. We could just synthesize hydrogen gas or gasoline and use technology we have today.

Of course, higher density energy storage would be nice, but if fuel is essentially free (and with hydrogen gas, environmentally friendly) it's no big problem to spend more energy on lugging around extra fuel.

I think you're underestimating the evolution of technology. 200 years is a long time, especially considering the fact that the Wright Brothers' first flight was only 107 years ago. Think of how far we've come since then.

Too bad they never made any sequels.

Just because "Anti Gravity" isn't possible doesn't mean things can't fly. We have propellor and jet engines that can keep a helicopter or an airplane in the air for as long as it has energy (aka fuel). When energy becomes cheap enough and we have the ability to store it compactly (think superbatteries or even synthetic hydrocarbons), little else is stopping us from mass-manufacturing and using small helicopters the way we manufacture and use cars today.

Following Leslie White's line of thought, all scientific revolutions in history were driven by cheaper or more efficient energy. Using animal energy led to a revolution in agriculture and transportation. Using coal led to steam turbines. The discovery and understanding of electricity allowed us to transport and distribute energy more efficiently.

All major breakthroughs in science or technology were driven by a breakthrough in energy. I don't know when the next step will come or exactly what it will be, but I'm confident there will be one.

So I'm optimistic about flying cars. Of course, we (as people) might not live to see the day, but We (as a people) probably will.