That's actually a pretty good concept, if the engineers agree. A battery built for fast charge that is good enough for a regular commute and a battery built for max energy density.
Of course, if you're heading off on a 2000 km trip you're probably not going to like having to stop every 100 km after the first half of the trip.
Well, first of all, hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, and carbon makes up something like 0.5% of the total observed mass of the universe (it's the fourth most common element), so along with other trace elements like sodium, phosphorus and the like, we're simply looking for places where there is sufficient energy to create the necessary reactions to produce organic compounds. No lack of energetic sources, in particular stellar system formation. Indeed many comets and asteroids host a lot of precursors, indicating that some fairly sophisticated organic chemistry was going on early in the solar system's development.
Panspermia would require that life itself was raining down on the terrestrial planets. Precursors would simply indicate there were a lot of strange and complex organic compounds falling on to the surfaces of planets like Earth, Mars and Venus, and were also likely constituents of bodies like Europa and Titan (well, we know Titan is covered in a literal hydrocarbon stew). What this discovery indicates, at the very least, is there was indeed a lot of organic compound in the early solar system and these organic compounds, at least on Earth, led to abiogenesis. Panspermia would advocate abiogenesis happened at some undetermined point further back.
If we find other life in the solar system, such as in Europa's or Ganymede's oceans, and it has DNA or some very close relative, with similar translation and transcription systems as we find in archaea and bacteria on Earth, then that would be a very strong argument that life in the solar system had a common origin. If however, there is no clear relationship between the two populations; say, they use something similar to DNA, but the genetic codes are different (all extant life on Earth uses the same canonical genetic code mapping codons to amino acids, strongly suggested the canonical code evolved prior to the Last Universal Common Ancestor), then we're very likely looking at an example of convergent evolution, and not in fact at two related populations.
I once convinced my landlady I wasn't going to try and sacrifice her and her son in an effort to summon Satan after she found out I played D&D.
OK, she wasn't terrified or anything, but she was seriously concerned for a few minutes until I managed to explain the game to her.
Is a new functional economic system that rewards useful work without the runaway conditions that lead to billionaires.
Unfortunately, they're well entrenched and will actively resist changes to the current system.
Wheels, at least macroscopic scales, are probably impossible for evolution to produce. Anything that has to freely rotate, in fact.
But it would be fun if that weren't true - I'd expect to see fish with propellers for tails.
The best concept I've seen involved a robot with knee and toe wheels. When presented with a smooth surface, it knelt and could travel at high speed. It only used legs when obstacles required the extra flexibility.
Arguably, you left out Canada and Mexico. And Venezuela and Cuba and Iran. Maybe Denmark.
>What would you spend all the money on if you knew we'd all be gone in 50 years?
I think this is one of those really character revealing questions if you can get an honest answer from someone. Most of us will be dead in 50 years no matter what, but you're probably not living like that's all that matters. Even while you're alive, you should probably give a shit about your fellow human beings and the quality of their lives.
If you're response is, "what the hell, let's burn it all down" then you're probably not a great person to know. I'd like to keep things going at least as nice as they are until I'm gone, and I think it's not the worst idea to try and help others have a decent life too.
On the other hand, if your response is, "Well, we probably shouldn't invest in anything that takes more that 50 years to return value", that I can get behind.
Pretty much anything past the frost line starts requiring prohibitive amounts of solar panel to get decent power, and Voyager is much, much further than that.
If you could send a refueling mission, it would be for sentimental reasons only. Any vessel you send that could catch up to Voyager would be much better utilized simply carrying a new and improved instrumentation and communications package.
If you give up your nuclear weapons, the next greedy sociopath to lead a neighboring nuclear power is going to kill you.
If you have nuclear weapons and are self-sufficient in critical areas, and you don't go around making enemies every time you open your mouth, you're fine.
Pakistan and India haven't nuked each other, because the people in control of the weapons want to live. If only one of them had nukes, the other would be gone by now.
This isn't a Val Kilmer performance, it's an AI performance wearing Val Kilmer's skin and using his voice. There's a difference, even if it's just in the viewer's head.
A little cameo in a series to show the writers haven't forgotten the past work of an actor is nice to see. A hour of screen time is ghoulish exploitation of his legacy by the family.
Why would you dedicate any storage to permanent GPS logs in a car? The way to monetize that data is to actually have it, which means periodically sending it back to the company's servers.
Car manufacturers will often make choices to save fractions of a cent per car, so why would you have them put any more storage capacity in them than the bare minimum?
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