problemecium

Tiny bump for status update: The mission is currently on hiatus due to a large workload IRL. I intend to continue it, just not right now. Sorry about that. My fingers are crossed that 1.1 won't break the save.

It wasn't exactly today, but just recently I learned that the universe's Event Horizon is closer than the Particle Horizon. The upshot is that we can theoretically see parts of the universe today that we literally have no hope of ever visiting even in an infinite amount of time (barring FTL travel). Sobering.

wut/10 ... is that a person in the upper left?

My warthog is better. It can do that and still be drivable afterward ;P

-35 yes

It is if you turn the settings up, but I'll give you that SE is painfully slow about that, at least on consumer-grade computers. I'm actually suspicious that Infinity's test rigs are souped up way beyond the specs of the computers people would use to play the game.

Short answer: Yes, but it isn't practical. At least it isn't as impractical as Minecraft would be xD Substances do exist with higher densities than those calculable from the planets' sizes and gravities. An example is degenerate matter, the substance comprising white dwarfs. While composed of atomic nuclei and electrons, it doesn't form full atoms because the pressure is too high for electrons to leave their lowest energy states (as a result, white dwarfs exhibit an odd phenomenon where increasing their mass makes them smaller). This stuff isn't as dense as solid neutrons, but it is many times denser than "normal" matter. That said, it's actually too dense, if I recall correctly. However, as we all know, mixtures of substances have a density between those of the densest and least dense constituents. It is my general hypothesis that Kerbol is not a G-class star, but rather a white dwarf of class D-something-9 (look up white dwarf classes for details). Such stars tend to be very, very old and thus cooler than the stereotypical white dwarf, leading to a yellow (in the case of Kerbol) or red color (which has yet to be discovered due presumably to the limited age of the universe). The Kerbolar system is probably in the far future, tens of billions of years from now, after some event occurred which caused the original "Kerbol" to partially break up. Most of its mass remained in the center, but due to the reduction in mass the star grew larger. The lost mass collected into small globules at varying distances from the star and, over millions or billions of years, accreted mass from interstellar dust to form the surfaces of the present-day planets and moons.

Jool. I've never been to Eeloo xP

TBH, the biggest change I'd make is to make all the planets bigger so as to have believable densities (pun not entirely intended).

Yes, it is possible. That basic concept is the same as the one behind the helicopters people have been building. Is it practical? PFSSHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHH AHA HA HAH. ha. no. pfft.

0/10 for killing the thread and making me have to double-post.

Luckily I have spares.

-29 For Team Zero!

TBH, about that "playing catch-up"... - EVE Online's planets look just as pretty, admittedly from orbit but still. - Space Engine Space Engine Space Engine Space Engine Space Engine. Everyone is playing catch-up to Space Engine. The Infinity engine was impressive two (three?) years ago when they first brought it up, but nowadays they're not the only fish in the sea any more, and seamless space-planetside-space transitions are commonplace. Even KSP has 'em.

Any color is possible. On Earth we have this, assuming I remembered everything correctly: - Red in humans - Clear in antarctic fish - Light green in arthropods - And some creature has blue, but I forgot which.

I don't remember TNG too well, but I do recall this: - In one episode, they detached the "saucer section" and attempted an emergency crash-landing. The crew survived, but I don't think the ship did. - In the remakes (yes I know it's not TNG, but still), impulse drive was enough to lift the ship vertically.

"We have to get there before the Kerbals..." "To learn more, there's some very serious rocket science in this episode about farts." "JAAAAAHHHHHHH" I like this guy xD

Probably Coca-cola.

The article is just using unscientific language. As we all should know, in the absence of anything but tiny traces of oxygen, nothing can burn in the conventional sense. What I think they meant was that as the stars become luminous (and begin a process many casually describe as "burning"), their light will make the nebula look as if the Coal in its Sack has caught fire. Also, the Sun doesn't really have any light to be reflecting. Earth would be black, too, if it were in interstellar space. Stars should, theoretically, reflect light from more luminous companions, so if you stuck a class B, for example, right next to the Sun, the Sun would be seen (through an appropriately strong dimming filter) to reflect the blue light on one side.

I still don't fully understand this "no necro under any circumstances ever" policy. If a topic becomes irrelevant and the thread dies, then the topic becomes relevant again, isn't it more convenient to use the existing thread wherein we can see and respond to people's old posts? That and I feel like it keeps the forum marginally neater.

That mention of the Oort Cloud has me wondering what the Sun would look like from there. - Would the Oort Cloud be obscuring its light irregularly like a huge mysterious megastructure? In that case, perhaps this star has one too. Why should we be special? - Would the Oort Cloud completely block the Sun, giving any extraterrestrials (from that star or elsewhere) no reason to bother sending probes here where there doesn't seem to be anything worth probing?

I hadn't read this, so at least they're doing some good. In any case, PB, I think your threads would be more successful if you included a bit more commentary at the top and/or a picture from the article.

This is relevant:

Heh, I should have known it was only a matter of time before this ended up in The Science Labs. First things first, to address Mr. Shifty's and Kryten's disagreement, explosions in space don't preferentially form planes. If anything, most of the explosions we can see from here (supernovae, gamma ray bursts, T Tauri mass ejections, etc.) seem to prefer polarized jet shapes. The reason debris would form a plane is because it would not be gravitationally bound (hence debris, rather than one big block) and because the pieces are all in slightly different orbits, they'd spread out as they circle the parent body to form a ring system, as is common with clouds of debris in KSP for instance. On the topic of the purported megastructure, I don't want to jump to conclusions either, but I do hope they find more compelling evidence because the Fermi Paradox has dogged our civilization for uncomfortably long at this point.

http://parameciumkid.tumblr.com/post/131205877076/headowardo-orignal-post-x-i-forgot-to-like I was going to post something marginally more relevant, but I couldn't find it :\