Steel

I've never heard of distance not affecting dark matter, could you point in the direction of some reading?

You are almost right when you say that dark matter doesn't appear to interact with ordinary matter. It doesn't interact, EXCEPT via gravitational interactions. The dark matter gravitational lensing you mention corroborates this. If we decide not to think about gravity in a Newtonian way (i.e a force) and think of it instead as the effect of mass warping space-time, then the dark matter lensing observed can only really be explained (at least without creating a dramatically new model of the universe) by the dark matter having conventional mass. AFAIK, almost all current cosmological models consider dark matter to interact gravitationally.

I'm afraid I don't have the time right now, but i'd be very surprised if it says that something other than gravity is the reason that galaxies stay together

It's still gravity, just some (read most) of the mass is not what we'd called "normal" matter.

Galaxies don't fly apart because of gravity, and i can assure you there is nothing non-physical about gravity... Besides all of this, there's one fundamental problem with this thread: The question it asks is paradoxical. If something one is present in the universe, then there is a non uniform distribution of entropy, as there must be for some form of life. Thus the act of there being something to observe the universe will mean the heat death does not occur until they stop existing.

So the real payload will be that +/- 100% or so

To be honest I'm not sure much of the design is final yet!

(t is the age of the universe) The final stars will go out at t ~ 1014 (100 trillion years), but we wont have been able to see other stars in the sky due to red shift since t ~ 2 × 1012 (so we've had 98 trillion years with an eternally black sky before the final stars actually stop burning). If we've worked out a way to survive in eternal darkness without dying of boredom then we're still fine at this point. The next problem, assuming protons and bound neutrons decay, happens when t is about 1020 times larger (i.e in one million trillion trillion years) when the atoms that make up our bodies start to decay. This is almost certainly not survivable. This period ends after a mere 10000 trillion trillion trillion years, when there are almost no more protons or neutrons. At this point there are pretty much only black holes, leptons and photons left. The black holes stick around for roughly 10000 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years before all of those evaporate. At this point we might think that, having survive the ordeal so far, that the remaining humans aren't that far away from witnessing the heat death of the universe. Unfortunately, depending on what estimate you use, the heat death is somewhere beyond t ~ 101000 years (10000 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years), or around 10900 times longer than the age of the universe when the last black hole disappears (thats one trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times longer). That is why I feel it's quite unlikely anything will survive to see it, it's just a ridiculously long time away (assuming it happens) TL;DR: Basically, unless we can find a bubble to sit in that is exempt from the laws of physics, and then wait for a very long time then there's no possible way to get the the heat death of the universe.

It's only more efficient if you have too much thrust, you have too little, so try setting that engine to 100% first. If that's not enough try more/better engines

It would happen, but IRL rockets are never going fast enough before they get out of the thicker atmosphere. It happens in KSP because orbital velocity is so low and re-entry effects are scaled accordingly

You guys will probably like this, it's a really nice resource.

Quick misconception check: It's not consciousness that affects the experiment, it's measurement, which has no requirement to be done by any thing conscious or even living

There's also an important distinction to be made between a game (I.e events can be directly influenced by the actions of a "player") and what I'd call a pure simulation, where there is no outside input after initial conditions are set

And all that required was a government willing to invest big time in a long-term skilled jobs programme that NASA represented at the time. The situation isn't the same now and so the government don't want to invest

You may have a hazmat suit, but do you have an isolated clean room with filtered air supply to stop any escaping into the wider environment, and to also a way to ensure that there is no residue left on any surfaces that you might come into contact with after removing said suit? I can't tell you whether they are legal but having had a look around, I would imagine you would need to get permission for their use and demonstrate that there is only a very small chance of leakage into the environment, as they do pose a safety risk to the wider public if not used with extreme caution.

You've also got to consider the challenges in making very efficient engines that are also small and light. I imagine the engine mass and the above mentioned drag issues would be the two main limiting factors. Also do you mean just to space or into orbit? There is a huge difference in answer between the two.

Yes, but not noticeably

Not with anything short of degenerate matter, the densities required are enormous

It will be interesting to see what the peer reviewers say about this one, but it's not every day you see an article written by the former CTO of Microsoft

If I remember correctly there was a huge thread on this a while back where the (admittedly very spammy) OP got torn to shreds for arguing this interpretation

The issue you run into there is that they are far less efficient and harder to design than reusable rocket stages

Yes. There's no requirement for a magnet in a motor to be an electromagnet. The power from a motor come from the current passing through the coils, not the magnetic field

Also even if you did manage to de-orbit the Hubble with a heat shield, I very much doubt it was built to survive a 9-12 g ballistic re-entry

And you'd be very sad to realise it would actually run slower than on a standard computer

To be honest, did anyone think this was anything genuinely philanthropic rather than an opportunity to harvest some data?