If nobody knows how it works, how did the guy invent it?
LOTS of stuff gets invented without the inventor knowing HOW it works, underlying physics wise. All that's necessary is to notice THAT it works, work out some details of "if you do this much of this you get that much of that", and engineer a practical gadget.
As they say, most fundamental discoveries don't go "Eureka!", they go "That's odd
this gem
"... whether it is possible for a spacecraft traveling at conventional speeds to achieve effective superluminal speed by contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it.
They've been playing at that for a while. It would allegedly work by creating a condition of cosmic expansion behind the craft and its converse in front of it, so the spacecraft is in a bubble where it's running slower than lightspeed (i.e. stopped) but the cosmic expansion and contraction regions behind and ahead of it each total to the opposite sides retreating or advancing faster than light (which is allowable).
I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to fall out of this - or anything. Effective superluminal translates to "Sending messaages into the past." and "Violating causality." if you pick your reference frames correctly. So I expect flies to appear in this ointment at some point: Like something broken about what happens at the sides, needing big-bang energy levels (and not being able to transfer them between the front and back so they're free), or not being able to set up the condition in front because the agency making it happen must involve actual superluminal signal propagation.
Nevertheless, an "electric motor" that works by pushing against virtual particle-antiparticle pairs (or the total mass of the matter in the universe, or of an inverse-square weighting-by-distance of it so it's mostly the local stuff, or dark matter, or the neutrino background, or whatever), instead of ejected exhaust, is just DANDY! Let's see if they can make it work for real at human-palpable, nontrivial, efficiencies and power levels.
At our house, electricity usage goes UP in the winter -- We heat with a geothermal heat pump with resistance heat as the back-up for very cold days.
I had a heat pump once...was a bit of a shock to find my electric bills in the winter were about the same as in the summer, having moved from a condo with gas heat where the combined bills were lower in the winter than in the summer. I'll never have electric heat (whether heat pump or otherwise) again if I can avoid it. The difference in cost between it and gas heat is ridiculous.
When the rubber meets the road, people like Rand Paul are not actually in favor of downsizing the government. They just want to eliminate restrictions on business and aid to the poor.
You have the liberty movement confused with their arch enimies the neocons.
Thanks!
Brian Webb isn't listing this on his Vandenberg AFB Launch Schedule yet. I think he's going to wait until someone official tells him a date.
A) The rules are already there and need no new legislation. They just need willpower in the agencies involved.
B) Though not as idealistic as his father, Rand has substantial libertarian leanings - and is a major figure in the Liberty Movement. As such his main goals are to downsize the government and free the people
Downsizing the government means you DON'T add new restrictions to "fix" every new manifestation of a political issue. Doing that keeps the government growing. Instead you:
1) Oppose ANY INCREASE in the government's power and limitations on what people can do.
2) Look for ways to "solve" problems by REMOVING government power and meddling where possible, or just use the EXISTING powers in the ways they were intended when a "solve by downsizing" isn't feasible.
With some optimism that might only be thousands of years rather than hundreds of Millions.
But it's only necessary for Earth to be uninhabitable for a short time to end the Human race. And that can happen due to man or nature, today. If people aren't somewhere else during that process, that's the end.
Even if Iran had ICBMs and nukes on a scale of the US or Russia they would not attack anyone with them. That is the whole concept of M.A.D. If Iran nuked Israel the nukes from the US, UK, France and the distributed nukes of Israel would completely destroy Iran within days.
MAD only works when dealing with rational actors. The Russians were rational enough. Iran? Not so much.
In theory, the FCC shouldn't need to regulate the internet at all, but because other government has created a wholly fucked up system, I agree that it's necessary at this point for them to step in.
If any branch of government should step into this, it's the FTC and the Justice Department, not the FCC.
Network Neutrality conflates two issues: Traffic management and anticompetitive behavior. Some packets SHOULD be treated differently than others, in order to make diverse services "play well together". (Example: Streaming vs. File Download.)
The problem arises when an ISP uses the tools to penalize the competition to its own company's and partners' services, extort extra fees, and otherwise engage in non-technical nastiness through technical means.
The proper regulatory regimes are antitrust and consumer fraud. These are the province of the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission, not the FCC.
The FCC is using this as a power-grab on the Internet, in direct contravention of Congress' authorization. THAT is what Rand Paul is opposing.
What the gods would destroy they first submit to an IEEE standards committee.
