That said. If you are a CEO of a major corporation, you need to be careful. That is good advice. If I was CEO of Intel, I would be just as careful in the US as in China.

If lots of hydrogen works well, specifically what material are you referring to? For instance, is water good? Methane?
How much would it take to stop something such as 5 MeV protons?

Please detail what you mean by "small storm shelter".

About the Magnetic field. You should be able to deflect high energy charged particles as long as you have a strong enough magnetic field. Small and powerful or larger and weaker would work. If the ship has any computers, a powerful magnetic field might cause problems. I have played with ion trap mass spectrometers. For a big trap ( maybe 10cm in diameter ), the magnet to generate 2 or 3 T (tesla) is scary big and powerful. It _will_ eat your cell phone.

This problem could make a manned trip to Mars impossible. The radiation in open space from one solar flare would fry a bunch of astronauts. Sending people to Mars becomes a gamble on the odds of a solar event occurring. Worse yet. There is no technology within reach that can protect astronauts from this type of radiation. A few feet of lead shielding might help some, but the weight would be too much to get into space. Plus, try slowing down all that mass when you arrive at Mars. Perhaps a nuclear powered wire loop ( super conducting??? ) with a circumference of a mile or two? Something with enough kick to deflect super high speed charged particles a few meters - enough to keep them away from the crew?...
I don't see any way to get people to mars with an acceptably high probability of survival.

My guess is the x-rays travel at 299,792,458 m/s - just like every other photon.

Perhaps the poster's meaning is "pulse with the shortest duration"

Can the handset makers put their foot down? Can they simply say: we only support this list of 5 major frequencies that are used worldwide? Phones would be smaller if they didn't have to be 5-band (or more).

Seriously, all these frequencies is stupid. People need phones that work world wide.

If I was Samsung and Verizon wants a phone for their LTE network, I would tell them. 1) you must promise now to buy x ( 1 million? ) at an inflated price. 2) You must pay Y million ( 50 million? ) today to cover our development costs to build a phone that works on only your stupid network. 3) We have the right to make it a one band phone. If your network coverage is bad, it will not be able to switch over to another network.

ok. 100 people a year. 10 years. I sincerely doubt the "terrorists" could kill 1000 people in 10 years on US soil.

Perhaps the terrorists are actually hyper intelligent beings who knew all along that if they could only trick us into radiating ourselves out of fear of them and we would do their job for them while they kick back and enjoy some of that great Mideast sun and sand. 1000 dead and all they had to do was say "Boo!"

You are missing the whole point.

If I can get 80,000 in loans canceled, that is 80,000 in after tax cash saved over the next few years. I can buy the BMW with cash. I didn't run up that much debt to get a degree in art history.

Oh how I wish this had been an option. The day after graduation, I would have filed for bankruptcy. It would have saved me from having to work my butt off for years. I could have bought a nice BMW and saved for a house.

Good to see the Democratics acting as a counterbalance to the Republicans.

What is next? Open season on the baby seals in Monterey Bay?

I'm sure prosecutors will say that he could have caused massive destruction and killed scores of people.

I wonder how he would get the plastic explosive to go off at precisely the right moment. Assume this thing is going 100mpg, if you are a millisecond too early, it explodes harmlessly in the air. If you are a millisecond too late, the plastic explosive will go splat and detonator will go flying into pieces. Let's not even get into making a proper shaped charge.

Remember the NYC firecracker bomber who put some natural gas canisters in a car in Times Square? Getting natural gas to explode is tricky. The best he could have hoped for was to break the windows of the car. I sincerely doubt he could even created an explosion strong enough to break the windows. Prosecutors claimed he could have killed dozens. I don't think they will let the truth get in their way when they go after this airplane bomber.

There are two issues here. One is the desire to kill and attempting to kill. The other is the actual threat level. It seems this guy wanted to kill. But the threat level doesn't seem to be high enough to cause concern.

There seems to be a desire to describe the enemy as very very dangerous. If the enemy is extremely dangerous, then we need a massive force of people - all with high paying jobs that come with huge retirement parachutes. Unless these people find and stop plots to kill 100's of 1000's of people, why are we paying them and going broke in the process? 35,000 people die in car accidents a year and we get excited about that. How many people have been killed on US soil by terrorists since 2002? How many actual plots that would have resulted in actual fatalities have been stopped?