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You know, you'd think so. But after spending a few years in competitive robotics during High School, I've stopped making assumptions like this. There's always something that's going to go wrong and will require human operation. But yeah, it can probably be automated a great deal. For the most part. So long as someone's watching and can hit a big red "abort" button.

Short answer, no. The more detailed answer would say that, yes, you can boost the power a bit, but your limitation will be in power you can deliver, and temperature your rocket engine can withstand. So you are better off just bringing more fuel along in any realistic scenario.

These are legal limits, but it has not been the "typical" strength in my experience. If I can get strong signal from Wi-Fi to begin with, I might experience quality drop, but not a total loss of connection. Keep in mind that it isn't just about power ratios. A receiver can operate in pretty bad S/N with a lower rate. But yeah, it certainly doesn't imply dangerous levels of RF. There are plenty of harmless sources that can kill your Wi-Fi. And even if microwave causes that, it doesn't automatically mean that it is dangerous. All I'm saying is that in my experience, if the MW oven was functioning well, interference was not that bad. And the only time I've seen a MW oven that flat-out kills Wi-Fi has been with a significant leak due to mechanical damage of the oven. Not standing close to a microwave that is causing that much interference, you know, just in case, just seems like a good idea.

Stability is simply a question of aligning axis of rotation with one of principle axes of the satellite. That will be part of the design process, and part of the reason I want a working simulation. I'm more worried about being able to correct for any developing tumble with electronics. I would limit serious expectations to 1G 1m/s². Maybe Moon's gravity if you are feeling risky. And if data we get post initial spin-up suggests we can go further, we can try pushing it further. I just don't want to make it part of the firm goals.

String theory suggests a multi-brane, which is close enough, I guess. And yes, predictions of string theory are almost safe to ignore at this point. Though, it remains a useful tool in understanding some QFT phenomena. That still doesn't mean that there isn't a multiverse. Just that there is nothing to support a notion that there is. The guy's a technicolor theorist. His paper basically states that the particle might be TC-Higgs, and not an SM-Higgs. Again, the resonance CERN found matches branching fractions predicted by Higgs mechanism. Yes, we would all like to have more data to have better confidence of spin-0 and some other features, but at this point, we are talking about one in many thousands odds that it is something different than what we expect it to be. And again, your claim doesn't rest on a possibility that it might be something else. You outright say that it cannot be Higgs. And on that, you are full of sh*t. It does not. You are confusing Standard Model with Super Symmetry for the second time in this thread. Standard model works with particles we have discovered so far. That's why it is the Standard Model. It consists of the six quark fields, six lepton fields, symmetries, and corresponding gauge fields - one per generator of the group. Which accounts for every single particle we know of and predicts no new particles. No, it's because of God. The fact that we haven't found heavier particles is because God. That's basically the quality of your argument. Not to mention that Dark Energy / Dark Matter have nothing to do with existence of heavier particle. Yeah, some people have suggested that heavy particles predicted by SS contribute to dark matter, but that's merely wishful thinking from some people. It is neither a prediction nor a requirement of Standard Model or Standard Cosmology. You seriously shouldn't be arguing about these things when your extent of knowledge is things you've picked up from Discovery Channel. Do you understand, at least, the difference between systematic errors and random errors? Noise filters help reduce statistical errors. Something like Kalman filter can be used, for example, to give you a very precise and consistent speed reading on your GPS despite significant fluctuations in position estimates. Dilation errors are systematic. They cannot be fixed by filtering. They have to be fixed by corrections in the model. I don't know if this works to impress children, but using words like "Tensor Calculus" when you don't know what it's used for in GR doesn't help you make a stronger case. And yeah, GPS doesn't need to be aware of GR. It needs to be as simple and cheap as possible. It is the circuit that converts signals from Cesium clock on the GPS satellite that already bakes in corrections for gravitational and relative velocity time dilations. And that doesn't do any tensor calculus either. It's a fixed offset pre-computed for the particular orbit. Even that is incorrect. Experiments on frame dragging conducted in Earth's orbit have found the effect. However, they failed to distinguish between linear effects predicted by gravitomagnetic effect, which is basically the Special Relativity version of frame dragging, and the non-linear effect due to General Relativity. They have, however, confirmed precession due to non-Newtonian interaction. That's because you've never studied GR, so you don't know where to look. Here. I don't expect you to grasp the details, but the measurements from this object confirm GR to 12 orders of magnitude. Which makes it, along with Quantum Electrodynamics (search for anomalous magnetic moment), the most precisely tested theories we have. Which, with both of them being Gauge Theories, is really not surprising.

It has correct quantum numbers and couples to W and Z bosons as expected. That makes it a Higgs boson. Again, you simply have no clue what a Higgs boson is, why it needs to exist, or what would have been ramifications of not finding it. So you say stupid stuff like "mass is wrong, so it isn't Higgs." The clock rates on satellites are adjusted for time dilation due to both gravity and relative velocity. It's calibrated regularly to maintain precision, but without on-the-fly corrections, precision of GPS would be ~1km instead of the few meters that it is. Another case of you not knowing as much as you think you do. But hey, feel free to do the math. If you can. Superconductivity was. The high field superconducting magnets actually used in MRI are result of theoretical and experimental work. What's that, 3-0 now? Except, at 22nm quantum effects on junctions are already significant and taken into account in simulations. But keep going. This is entertaining.

Precession of Mercury has nothing to do with frame dragging. It was predicted for Mercury based on Schwarzschild metric, which does not include rotation. You really ought to stop talking about things you do not understand, and in fact, reject as reality. (GR is a gauge theory, which you condemn as a flop.)

That's true. There is a lot more we could be doing with robots on the Moon than we can on Mars. Anyone who ever played games with particularly bad ping will attest that 2s lag is a real pain to play with, but something you could manage with a bit of practice. So as long as no twitch response is needed, we could be running robots that are directly controlled by pilots down here on Earth.

Plasma is usually interesting as a state of matter due to an actual phase transition. This isn't what happening here. Plasma in microwave is a lot more like plasma in fluorescent lights. Except, instead of high voltage being applied between electrodes in a tube, high voltage is generated by high intensity of EM field. You do need a source of free electrons to get the ball rolling. That's what hot carbon from something burning is good for. I honestly have no idea how or why it works with a grape.

Also in tending to unicorns, yes. And I suspect, you are much better than I in flipping burgers. On the other hand, I do have a publication in cellular biology, and publication on structure of mesons is in the pipeline. And I have physics-based code running in several games out there. Because that's how real science works. It has applications. So on one hand, we have Quantum Field Theory, which predicts that Higgs Boson exists. And it does. We found it. More general field theory also predicted neutron stars and black holes long before they were discovered. And discovered they were. As for more practical applications of modern field theory, we have MRI (superconductivity is branch of Condensed Matter, which is applied QFT) and GPS satellites (which rely on General Relativity, which is another Gauge Theory.) The most recent advances in semiconductor technologies also rely on QFT. On the other hand, we have multiverse hypothesis, which gave us a lot of science fiction (some of which is admittedly good), and crackpots like you. The technological applications are exactly null. So again, give me any reason, theoretical or practical, why your point of view should be considered with any less contempt than a fart. I believe, I've been pretty open-minded about it so far. I'm looking for any benefit of this, however indirect.

We have already done that to algae as well. There isn't any reason. The question is only if we can do enough GM to make them a universal source. I'm on your side with that. I'm pretty sure we can. Again, there could be budget constraints, but I don't think there are any tech limitations.

Just for my 2c on the "orbiting stuff" point, we have a term "natural satellite". Given that, I'd recommend classifying as moons only stuff that's roughly round in shape. Same as we require for planets. Yes, I know that it'd drastically cut down on moons in the system, but that seems like a good idea with gas giants.

GMO = Genetically Modified Organism. And there are a lot of people trying to build self-replicating machines, with no success. There have been attempts to make 3D printers that can print their own parts. These came close. Also, there are milling machines that can mill their own parts. But that requires an operator, which cannot be build on a mill. As for using 3D printing on the Moon for construction, that has been suggested, and is being considered.

But you are effectively requiring an ultimate engineering problem (self-replicating machines) to be solved as prerequisite for completing an infinitely easier problem. We can build a moon base right now. Nobody seems to want to fund it, but we have the resources if people suddenly decided that it's worth funding. We can't build self-replicating machines of any relevant complexity or durability, regardless of how much money we throw at it.

It's important to let ludites know what their place is. Otherwise, things like the evolution debate in nations' school boards will keep happening.

Ok, lets look at it from a different perspective. Can you make any of your own predictions? Could you compute for me a mass of the heaviest neutron star? How about neutron cross-section of a nucleus? Because these are practical things that my "old timey" physics lets me compute. What can you do? What is your contribution to our technological advancement? Working a register at McDonalds does not count. Said a person who doesn't know what a Higgs boson is. And nobody cared.

Why not? Everything we need, short of some minerals, is bio-synthesized. Algae is a perfect machine for doing so. Not to mention that human body is capable of synthesizing most things anyhow. You really only need the algae to produce sugar, essential amino acids, and some vitamins.

Do you actually understand what "gauge theory" means? How about the assumptions that went into predictions of the Higgs boson mass? How about why that prediction exists in the first place? Do you know why Higgs mechanism is important? Not to mention that your argument is, "The numbers that scientists predicted don't match the ones they got. Therefore, this totally unrelated idea I have is right." How about you start by defining your multiverse? Tell me the degrees of freedom, relevant fields, and Lagrangian of the theory. Anything? No? I honestly didn't think so.

Non-ionizing just means that it won't give you cancer. Doesn't mean it can't hurt you. It is designed specifically to cook your food from the inside. What do you think a leak will do to you? Essentially, powerful microwave source can cause internal burns which you might or might not feel right away. It's extremely uncommon, and would require a number of unfortunate coincidences on top of the microwave's shielding failure, but it is a potential risk.

You are talking total nonsense. I'm telling that to you as a particle physicist.

Yeah, we all know it will take 13 colonies.

That blew out my circuit breaker every time in the old house, resulting in the trip to the basement. Eventually, my wife learned to connect the coffee pot to another circuit. But yeah, that would have other side-effects. If all that happens is a wi-fi drop, a leak is far more likely.

I just want to jump in here to cause even more confusion and question status of the Moon as an actual moon, and suggest that it is a part of the Earth-Moon double planet system instead. Now, I know that Moon fails a barycenter test, but I consider it to be a silly one, since barycenter location isn't a fixed thing. It fluctuates for any realistic orbit, and indeed, moves out further and further. And in fact, Earth-Moon's barycenter will eventually be outside of Earth's radius. But that's not a huge problem, since that won't happen for a while. However, as we are discovering more and more exoplanets, we are bound to find some that have orbits elliptic enough that barycenter moves in and out of heavier planet's radius. I do not want to have to adjust status of an object as a Moon or a Planet depending on what time of the month it is. That's silly. Is there something else that will let us distinguish moons from planets? But of course! Gravitational pull of a parent planet on the moon is always stronger than gravitational pull of the star. This is true of every moon in the Solar system. That is, except for the Moon. Indeed, Moon orbits the Sun, not the Earth. The proof positive of that is Moon's trajectory around the Sun. It is convex everywhere. In layman's terms it always accelerates towards the Sun. Never away. Unlike all other parameters, convexity of the orbit will not change, except over the-age-of-the-star-system kind of scales. Even if the orbit of the moon/planet is highly elliptical, the orbit around the star either is or is not totally convex. This is a variation on the tug-of-war definition, which uses relative distances and masses, but it is a more general one, because tug-of-war parameter can also change for elliptic orbits. Convexity is fixed. There are three possible outcomes of the convexity test, and I propose distinct names for all three. Both pass: Double planet. Both bodies orbit the star first and foremost, and they happen to stick around because of secondary attraction to each other. One passes, one fails: Planet and its moon. Not much going on here. Both fail: Binary planet. Both bodies orbit primarily each other, and as a single unit, move around the star. Based on the above definition, Earth-Moon system is a double planet, and in 1969, we put people on a planet and not a moon.

Ayup. Not to be confused with Many Worlds, however, which is an interpretation of a theory. And that's a much stronger statement. And you are an authority on the subject because? Frankly, in this case it doesn't matter, because as lajoswinkler explained, this is not a theory, but generally, when people say, "I disagree with a theory," it translates to, "I don't understand the theory." Unless you are someone doing research in the area, and you have scientific reasons for disagreement, you shouldn't be saying stuff like that.

Usually, interference from microwave is kind of a bad sign. There'll always be some, but if it's really so bad that you can't use an otherwise good wi-fi connection when microwave is running, there might be significant leaks, and that's bad. As a short-term solution, I wouldn't stand close to that microwave when it's running. In long term, I'd consider getting a new one.