Your post deserves a much better answer than what you have received thus far. Unfortunately I am not a physicist and my communication skills are terrible, but I will give it a try. Hopefully someone else will come along and give a much better explanation.
As I understand it, destructive power comes from energy impacted by the projectile. One way to achieve that energy is to have the projectile explode (bombs, artillery shells, nuclear explosions) or just using the kinetic energy (bullets). It is the later type that is being pointed to.
The damage of the kinetic projectile is (I think) based on the mass of the projectile and the amount of force used to propel it forth. Essentially the more dense the projectile and the more force is used to launch it, the more energy it will transfer on impact. Given large enough values, it is possible that a pure kinetic projectile can transfer more energy than a nuclear explosion.
The premise of the post is the assumption that a projectile (rocks and rods) simply thrown from a satelite towards the surface of the Earth, has enough potential energy to achieve this level of destruction.
Or to put it another way. Imagine you are on a train. The faster the train goes, the more energy it'll have if it were to impact. A train going 5 miles a hour might put a dent in a car, but it wouldn't be a disaster. A bullet train moving at 300 miles a hour suddenly hitting a inexplicably appearing car will be on international news. Now, Imagine a titanium rod 10 feet thick being accelerated to escape velocity from the moon. It'll experience minimal slowdown to the almost non-existent lunar atmosphere. As it begins to re-enter the earths atmosphere, it continues to absorb energy. The faster it moves, the bigger the amount of potential energy it'll have. By the time it arrives at it's target, the forward momentum will be translated into a large amount of energy. I am in no way qualified to state how much energy, but I'd imagine that anyone in a 3 block radius MINIMUM will have to adjust to the idea their flowers are now a pile of ashes. As well as the people themselves. And the buildings. I'm going to say you'll need to fill in a rather large crater now.
Seems like a no-brainer to me. Why go out and dig up fossils when you can just print up a dino-bone. Gap in the fossil record? No problem. Just print up the missing link using a 3d morphing tool and be famous.
Except, you know, carbon dating, Mineral analysis, etc.
In a world slowly making people comfortably numb, even this would be over the top. If you want an autonomous car where you can check mail and send texts on your way to work, you can have it right now. It's called a bus.
Perhaps, but then you have to sit next to people. People that could potentially do you harm when your situational awareness is fairly low. Also, who wants to listen to babies crying and mentally unbalanced people complain about things only they can see?
Nope, no room for that, even in the "science" community.
Conform or be squelched.
Could you point out a scientific study for your hypothesis?
It's gonna take a mighty big shark to carry around that kind of firepower . .
Don't give the Sci-Fi -- I mean SyFy (sigh) -- channel any ideas. Sharknado was bad enough.
Here's another terrible idea: Antalanche >.>
Yes. At the inauguration for one. Unless you're suggesting that one of them was a replicant...
No, the meeting was to engage the body swapping equipment. I mean, When was the last time you heard G.W. Bush SAY anything.
Maybe modern ones, but if you go back a few generations your chances of it existing drop drastically. so what you do for high security....
1 - rely on OLDER hardware. Stuff from before the past two administrations would have a significantly higher chance of not having government back doors. Clinton era computers to start with.
2 - use a completely different architecture. ARM is your best friend here or SPARC. The chances of SPARC having this are insanely small
3 - Get processors from your countries "enemy" Russians dont use Intel processors for their KGB and Government operations. If they did they would be the biggest morons on the planet. Find out what they use and try to source them through the black or grey market channels.
Welcome to the new world of underground computer science. Oh and keep your mouths shut. Don't do stupid shit like bragging as to what you have and where you got it. I'd say "hack the planet" but the safest thing is to go off the net and transfer data via offline means for the highest security.
You forgot a 4th option. If you were TRULY paranoid, you could write your own CPU and emulate in a FPGA. You would also have to design the fpga on a wire wrapped CPU, which would suck, but it's possible.
Anyone who uses a 'best interests of the children' argument should be immediately shipped to an island populated entirely by other people just like them.
Yeah, let's send all the evil people to a nice island with a secret base inside a volcano. I see no way this brilliant plan could possibly backfire, no sir. Certainly they wouldn't spend their time and resources plotting and building moon lasers.
You are AGAINST moon lasers? If they were able to do this, they would have been able to accomplish what over 50 years and every government on this planet has failed to do. Hell, I'd VOTE for them if they not only were able to figure out a viable power source, support systems and tracking technology for this. Sure, they'd be evil. And I'd probably die in some horrific way. BUT COME ON! MOON LASERS!
The moon is made of green cheese. -- John Heywood
