Common misconception, that's the Rankine calendar. The Kelvin calendar would have had it in the year 11228.

I agree. If we can have spaceflight accessible enough to test out low probability, bat-crap crazy ideas on the regular then eventually one of those out there ideas will pay off. Not this one, probably not the next 100 or so, but eventually. And that's where science gets REALLY exciting.

Umm...wheels on a car ARE propellantless thrusters. They push you forward using friction instead of by ejecting reaction mass. Pushing off of Earth's magnetic field similarly doesn't use propellant, which is great because reaction mass dramatically increases the cost of spacecraft launch and maneuvering.

Airplanes are a different story though. Airplane engines effectively use air as reaction mass that they opportunistically gather and eject on the fly. Heck, even their exhaust contributes a bit there.

In other words, if you want to consider a magnetic torquer to be using the Earth as reaction mass, then you could extend the concept even to an exotic idea like the one in the article by saying that the fabric of spacetime is the "reaction mass" being pushed against.

That might not work as well as you think. Depending on where that baby was born, life expectancy can vary wildly. Plus there's any number of chance things that can cut that way short. I think it's just weirdly worded because English grammar is ambiguous in many instances. The way I interpreted the *intent* of the poll is more like:

"Of the universe represented by all humans in existence at the time of posting of this poll, and given rapid advances in medical care and technology, what do you believe will be the maximum duration of life which will be achieved in the future by a member of that group?"

I kind of think there's nitpicks there too, but it's more precise.

You could actually have fun with it and make a symbolic logic problem out of it, and translate the poll results into symbology. Good exercise for an intro course.

Don't worry, once the sun is out of the way, the atmosphere will slowly condense until it completely liquifies and/or sublimates into space and you'll have a perfectly clear view as long as you space suit and habitat enclosure hold out.

I got the PlayStation VR specifically because of Skyrim VR, and I was not disappointed. Fighting dragons in VR was AWESOME. Doom VFR was a lot of fun too. It's a bit niche as far as uniquely fun things to play on it, but when it connects it's well worth it.

It helps that I never get motion sickness, for some people VR is basically unusable.

They're not required to intervene when observing a situation, but they have a duty to their employer to follow lawful directives given. That may not be a criminal act, but it would 100% justify firing them.

I would put Windows 8.1 on that list. It fixed a lot of the issues with the original Windows 8, and I would personally slot it between Windows 10 and Windows 98. It was at least functional. And Windows 98 SE was actually pretty stable (for a consumer edition of Windows at least). And Windows NT 3.51 was super buggy and wonky. NT 4.0 really didn't get working right until around SP4. Then SP5 was fine, but 6a was a dumpster fire of diapers.

For folks born in the 70's we have an interesting hands on experience with the evolution of these products through our work years. The generation from the 90's and 2000's isn't going to have this kind of deep background info. There's no real documenting that experience, and it's going to be lost in about 30ish years as our generation retires. Maybe by then it won't matter as much, but it feels like a loss to me =/

The nice thing about selection pressure for viruses is that it doesn't select for deadliness. It selects for survivability and transmissibility. If it's more or less deadly is a side-effect that is irrelevant for evolutionary survival. To an extent there's negative selection pressure for deadliness since that reduces its ability to transmit, but that's limited since there's an incubation and infectious period where it can spread regardless. We tend to anthropomorphize the virus by describing what it "wants" but really that's just selection in action. It would not surprise me in the slightest if Omicron was more transmissible while being less deadly since that would make perfect sense in the context of evolutionary biology. Of course there's always the possibility that it's deadlier, but there's nothing pushing it in that direction is all.

Well, I mean kind of. Even the most advanced and well understood scientific endeavors are not absolutely true. They always have been and always will be the best understanding we currently have. Studying Newton's Law of Gravitation is still good to do because, even though it was superseded by General Relativity, it still works for most purposes. It remains "good enough" to compute gravitational slingshots, basic orbital mechanics, trips to the moon, LaGrange points and many other tasks. Where precision is essential, as with GPS constellations, you have to break out GR to dial it precisely. But for most applications Newton is vastly simpler and works just as well for what we're trying to accomplish.

So studying things that are not generally used by scientists isn't a waste of time, it's useful for the basics, and if you find yourself needing more advanced or more precise scientific utilities to accomplish a particular task, then you can either research it or hire an expert who already has studied it. Engineering, and modern technology in general, are about using the most appropriate tool in the science toolbox for the job at hand.

Like, if you have an 8mm bolt to screw in, and you only have your 5/16" socket handy, are you going to spend 20 minutes fishing up your metric sockets or just drive the bolt with a slightly off-size but still functional socket you have in hand? The main difference is literally nothing in science is a perfect fit. You just have varying degrees of closeness of fit. And usually the one that's least close that still gets the job done is the simplest to work with.

Burn Notice, Season 1, Episode 1 from Spy Wisdom:

It stands to reason that evading authorities in general is about messing with the signal to noise ratio. Practice bad data hygiene in public and eventually you end up getting AARP mailers in your late 30's because no one has a real single clue what your actual birthday is except for governments and banks.

GP very specifically said "assault rifles" are outranked by stabbing in number of homicides. And GP is correct. Generally, knives and other pointy things kill more people than rifles of all types. When you include handguns, then guns overall come out on top. The reason being, most people won't try to rob a store with a rifle. It's hard to wield in anything less than clear open spaces, and it's hard to conceal so you lose the element of surprise. As such, yes, handguns are the most popular weapon for homicides.

It's weird to me when people focus on banning "assault rifles" and then leave alone the "featureless" versions with a wood stock and standard grip. They fire the same bullets, at the same rate of fire, with the same capacity for mayhem. It feels rather disingenuous to say that a rifle is "more dangerous" because it looks vaguely scary when its same ammo firing cousin is fine because it doesn't "look military-ish".

It's a fictitious, or virtual, or apparent force, similar to how centripetal force works. It is real enough in a given reference frame, which is why we experience near constant acceleration on the surface of Earth. So while it's not a force per se, it can be treated as one for most purposes. Newtonian gravitational theory is "good enough" for most orbital mechanics computations, and vastly simpler than solving Einstein's field equations for space flights and such. You need Einstein for things like the precession of Mercury and accurately keeping GPS satellite clocks in sync, but not so much for launching up to the ISS.

I always felt that a good way to permanently dispose of nuclear waste would be to build a giant railgun and sling it on an orbital trajectory into the Sun. Sure, there's safety concerns about accelerating dangerous materials to orbital velocity, and the power requirements and land area needed for such an apparatus, but those are just engineering problems. Come on armchair Slashdot scientists, let's get cracking!

We don't really see black holes under a certain mass because gravitational effects aren't enough to overcome neutron degeneracy pressure. So, they don't form under normal conditions at that size. The open question is, are there lower mass primordial black holes out there that we haven't detected? Remember that we had a heck of a time identifying regular black holes until technology caught up to what theory told us should be out there.