LN400

And now, the Holy Hand Grenade and off topic: What's the deal with the short system where one billion is 1000^3, a trillion is 1000^4, a quadrillion is 1000^5 and so on. Does it make more sense or as much sense as the long system where a billion is 1,000,000^2, a trillion is 1,000,000^3, a quadrillion is 1,000,000^4 and so on? (sorry, guys, couldn't help myself carry on)

Nothing to add to that, it's all very true other than luckily KSP has a mod scene that keeps blowing me away and I'm sure the trigger happies have or will get their mod of choice for battles, which is totally fine by me.

You could say I don't care. The way I didn't care when I lost all interest in Mount&Blade the moment they abandoned the one idea that set it apart from every other game it could compare to, by introducing guns. I don't play M&B now and it doesn't bother me at all. As long as I can have a game where the point isn't to shoot and blow up everything, I'll keep playing KSP. Turn it into just another space shooter and I'll be out of here looking for a game that interests me.

This is too cool. Congrats!

Personally, I think I found my winner: "WW2 never happened". And now... I have a headache.

Currently studying at Østfold University College, Norway, for a bachelor in EE.

Oh dear.... I tried so hard to like that game. I really did. I loved Morrowind and Daggerfall and gave O a good go but I just couldn't like it one bit. Stripped down to below minimum. The number of skills were cut down to a Mario Bro's level, the variations of genuine characters went from whatever you want to be (in Daggerfall) to fighter, thief or mage? The leveling system is attrocious where it becomes close to utterly pointless to level up at all. Magic is crippled to a backyard amateur illusion talent competition thing. All in all a bloated beast that pretty much killed my interests in TES after Morrowind.

2 games immediately leaps to mind: TIE Fighter (all about pew pewing rebel scum) and X:Tension (as one of the X games, it's a mix of trading and pew pewing but you decide on that mix. Don't know about X3 but the others above do).

My pure and wild guess is, the industrial backbone needed for war and the population needed for that industrial level would come long after the colonists' descendants have started identified themselves as people of whatever planet they live on. Whether they would, after countless generations, form multiple nations on that planet is another story entirely but then the people there would most likely identify themselves as citizen of their home country.

I haven't been able to play so much I got to other planets other than orbiting around one of Duna's moons with a probe but I would say my greatest accomplishment was to get my very first ship into Kerbin orbit. Greatest as in the one moment that gave me the greatest rush. I've been to Mun and Minmus several times but still yeah, the first Kerbin orbit is the one event that gave me the greatest rush. A lot like my first nervous hover with an rc helicopter. I've come some way since then but those firsts are what sticks. Technically, one of my Saturn V-ish trips to Mun where I was able to pinpoint my landing site from orbit and do a stock IVA landing but again, those firsts are hard to beat.

No pic as I never made a screenshot but I think it must have been a Saturn V style beast using KW's 5m parts. It weighted in at, iirc, about 180 tons and cost half a million credits. Needless to say that never made it out of sandbox and into career mode.

Is that a probable fact? (The pants wearing people from around the 6th century BC would like to say something about that.) (That's how we got non-Euclidean geometry, by renouncing Euclid's 5th axiom about parallell lines) Fun fact: The word 'factoid' originally meant an unsubstantiated or false statement believed to be true only because it's been repeated many times. It later got a secondary meaning of being a trivial fact which indicates the meaning of the word factoid has become a factoid.

If history has taught us anything, then the most likely scenario would be the growth of independent states, just like we have independent states here on Earth. Beside, there is a number of problems with the idea itself, that there should be a government here on Earth running the whole show everywhere. Should we have a World Government akin of the United Nations where all nations have a saying? Or should one of the nearly 200 independent governments here run the whole show and in which case, which one of the nearly 200 governments should it be? Luckily, the chance is very low we will see a nightmare like One Government to Rule Them All. I think human nature will put a stop to any plans of that, like human nature has put a stop to it all throughout history.

That is very true and a not so fun fact to realize too late. (that sum is in fact true and it can be shown. It is also true that it is being used in physics. What's more, all the facts I have posted, how weird they might sound, are indeed facts ) Fun fact: There is more than one set of rules in maths and if you follow some basic rules of logic, you can pretty much come up with your own set of rules that are as valid as any other accepted set of rules.

As for childish name suggestions. The one coming up with the name Pluto, for that ex-planet, was a girl 9 years old at the time. Anyway, we're running out of Greek/Roman gods unless we want to name the rocket after some God of Healthy Bowel Movement. The Greeks and Romans had a myriad of deities but few of them were something you'd associate with huge rockets and exploration. Saturn, Mercury, these names make sense. Titan too. Ares on the other hand is not a name NASA would want to use in peaceful space exploration. Dionysus is right out. We should perhaps look beyond Greek/Roman mythology and Old Norse or Hindu mythology generally don't catch the public's enthusiastic approval to the same degree as Saturn does. Perhaps have a look at the mythology found in North America. Look around, ask around. Surely there must be some awesome name to be found that can be used. EDIT: If you think that's far fetched, think about how the military helicopters in the US are named after North American tribes.

That is debatable. Fun fact: The sum of 1+2+3+.... = -1/12 has its use in physics.

Haven't thought about that but you're right! Fun fact: Even the most sincere smile is superficial.

That's correct and the reason why you shouldn't bite a dog. It might be lethal. Fun fact: In Indiana, the legislators were at one point one step away from deciding that pi = 3.2 by law.

On a slight side note, some intriguing ideas here http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150602-how-will-the-universe-end Mind you, this article is not scientific, it is not written by scientists, but it is a layman's report on some rather strange ideas coming from science. Alan Guth, one who is quoted in this article is not a who's that? in the science community.

Unfortunately, the way science is taught in schools, that's a pretty accurate picture of how it's presented. At least on lower levels. God/Newton The Pope/Einstein The Cardinals/The Science All Stars Team The Bishops/The uni professors The priests/The teachers The Congregation/The students There is a difference though. The scientific method.

No. You start with an observation. You come up with a hypothesis that tries to explain the observation. There are rules to how the hypothesis can not have inconsistencies or contradictions and so on. You device experiments to test the hypothesis. IF the results from the experiments support the hypothesis, you can go on. If not, then you need to either modify the hypothesis or discard it. Now the tricky bit: Others reading your paper will do the same experiments, or device new experiments. These peers will scrutinize your findings and if only one proof is found against the hypothesis then back to the previous point. IF the hypothesis survives the scrutiny and more experiments, IF the hypothesis is not contradicted by observations, IF it survives, it is accepted as a theory. It follows that you can never, not even theoretically, prove any theory to be absolutely true, that it explains nature exactly as it is. You can always disprove a theory by finding a single counter example that the theory is false. Any evidence for is an indication the theory might be true and you can add up the evidence to strenghten a theory. Any evidence against is the one nail in the coffin you need to know the theory is either wrong or flawed.

You can not simply _think_ science is wrong. If you want to prove established science wrong then you absolutely need to prove it. Through experiments done in such a way that it is reproducable, meaning anyone with access to the same equipment can do the exact same experiment and get the same result as you got.

To whoever think time dilation is purely theoretical or not true. The experiment linked to above and many others is a major reason why the theories of relativity are accepted by science. The theories not only explain, they allow us to predict future events. When a theory predicts a future event and that event, when it finally happens, agrees with the prediction, then that's evidence in favour of the said theory. That's how theories are accepted. Are these theories flawless? Not a chance. We know for a fact they are not flawless but: They are the best we've got so far, alongside quantum theories. They have shown themselves to be the most reliable, most useful theories we have come up with. Physicists are still looking for even better theories. In fact, that's a job that is not likely to end. Confirmation is evidence but not proof. Only kind of proof that is accepted by science is counter proof, proof a theory is flat out wrong, that it completely fails to explain, utterly fails to predict, that the observation can not possibly be if the theory is right. That's when the theory is thrown out the window for good. Again, the theories of relativity are not perfect, they have their shortcomings but they have still given us predictions of events that were indeed observed as described by the theories, with an accuracy no other theory has done better. So until a better theory comes along, they're the ones we go with. They are still looking for a G.U.T. which would unite the most groundbreaking and important theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. If they find it, you bet the old theories are gone and no physicist will shed a tear.

One problem here is that you say "dark matter/dark energy/aether/space pressure call it as you like". It is a lot like saying "car, walking, yellow, ghost, call it as you like". Dark matter =\= dark energy. Aether plays no part in any science. Space pressure is not a scientific term. In short, it's a potpourri of terms, half of them scientific, the other half not scientific and none of first 3 refer to the same thing. The 4th I'm not sure has any meaning at all. As for the photon, it's neither strictly a particle nor strictly a wave. It is both, at the same time. http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150302/ncomms7407/full/ncomms7407.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr And what's this idea about a grid? Any link to a scientific theory that describes such a grid?

Best: Ultima Underworld, hands down. The mood, the 3D environment (back then it was a huge thing), the gameplay, game mechanics, the sense of exploration, it was a massively impressive game and still is one I wouldn't mind playing,, if I had the time. Worst: I really don't want to remember these but Jaws Unleashed was jawdroppingly terrible. I don't want to think of it any further... Oh and this text adventure on my old C64 where they forgot to include move commands, leaving you stuck in the starting location...