WestAir

Unless that mass was rigid with great tensile strength. Like whatever Kerbalnauts build station docking ports out of. A planet made of that would never spin apart. Or you could build it out of tightly packed neutrons. Apparently entire neutron stars can rotate several hundred times per second and not break apart...

3 mile. It convinced us to stop investing in clean energy and to keep up the coal plants. EDIT: Read your question wrong. I thought you were asking us to name a disaster WORSE than Fukushima and Chernobyl. I say Chernobyl was worse.

DNA. DNA can only survive feasibly given certain circumstances the habitat zone provides. Very few elements have the properties of DNA that allow for protein construction, sequencing, and what not. As you know, DNA is the code that makes us... us. All life, even on-life like viruses have DNA. We've yet to observe a life form on Earth without DNA, and Earth has had several billion years to work on it. Outside of that, it may be theoretically possible for life to exist without DNA - I've read some concepts of plasma or hydrogen gas based life-forms being possible, but I digress.

Lake Mead grows back a little in the last two (years) shots. It's still getting larger. Most impressive is Dubai. Anyone know why there were hundreds of little "craters" in the middle section for 3-4 years?

Another interesting implication of the speed of light is the jump in causality and the break of entropy caused by the mere existence of force carrier particles. I'm not as knowledgeable as Sochasty or K^2, so maybe they'll have a more sensible retort, but picture this: All the forces in the Universe (Weak, Strong, Gravity, Electromagnetic) propogate along with specific force carrier particles. Not all of those particles are mass-less, and not all of them travel at C, but all of them are strictly limited to C as a maximum velocity. So, when gravity bends space and time to a point where a photon sphere, and an event horizon are formed, it becomes impossible for any particle to escape the event horizon on any outward trajectory, because (from the perspective of all particles within the event horizon), there is no speed or trajectory that points away from the singularity. Visually, it would be as if the singulairty was actually a spherical wall surrounding particles, constantly closing in and getting closer. That in mind, a question I had a while back was that for the force carrier particle for gravity (gravitons) to convey the gravity of a black hole to any outside particles or observers, and for the gravity waves to propagate away from the singularity to suck anything else in, it apparently must escape the event horizon to convey its force to particles outside the event horizon. That means a graviton has to violate causality and entropy because it has to travel faster than C to convey its force to particles outside the event horizon. While we don't know how gravitons or gravity works, the fact is that space and time are looped into a (from an interior observers perspective) closed universe within that event horizon. No vector line within an event horizon leads out. Since black holes do have gravity, the question I have to ask is... how? A second question I have is: If gravitons can escape, then can't we also invent FTL communication by wiggling some mass around and using a detector to detect it at what must be faster than light speeds, allowing us to send messages faster than C?

Yes and no. Yes, if you don't plan to decelerate. Once you begin to decelerate, the distance to your destination gets further as lengths expand, as opposed to contracting.

Acceleration makes distances shorter, yes. I think it's called length contraction. The faster you go, the shorter the distances between you and objects in-front of you become. When you reach the speed of light, the distance to infinity reaches zero - in essence you're everywhere at once relative to you because the universe will have contracted into an infinitely small point before you. That's, apparently, how photons see the Universe.

Thin atmosphere with extreme cold. I'm not sure how that would turn out. All that matters to a wing is pressure altitude when it comes to the coefficient of lift attributed by the atmosphere. If that pressure altitude translates to anything close to Earths 29.92 inches of barometric pressure at Earths sea level, you should be fine. The higher the pressure altitude (the less molecules per square inch) the less effective wings will become, and the LARGER your wings will have to be (OR faster) to have the same lift. But it's not an exact science due to all the different types of drag that comes with more speed or more weight. In my (un)professional opinion, I'd personally say an airplane would be a lot less efficient on Mars, but I don't know how the weaker gravity and colder air will affect a wings ability to lift an aircraft.

In the aircraft I fly, I believe the limits were 2.5 positive G's, -1.0 negative G's in a clean configuration (no flaps). Honestly, it's extremely extremely easy to pull higher G's the heavier an aircraft becomes. That said, I absolutely hate G forces. At something as low as 2 G's I already feel like I want to curl up into a ball. Those Red Bull pilots pulling 12+ G's earn my utmost respect.

So the expansion of space is forcing the Universe to literally "expand" into... itself? As in, an infinitely sized Universe is expanding to become even more infinite? That no matter how far back in time we look, up to but not including infinity, the "infant" Universe a quark time after the Big Bang is still infinite in physical size?

The whole "proton decay" thing never really stuck with me. I thought conservation of energy made it impossible for every bit of matter in the Universe to decay and reach its lowest possible energy state. I thought the COE meant that, despite the amount of time that has passed, since the Universe will in of itself always be a closed system, the energy introduced during the big bang will bounce around for eternity. The theory of universal cold death suggests that the Universe will spread so thin energy can't transfer between particles and every single proton will find itself stuck in its own empty observable universe. I like to think the Universe isn't so horribly designed.

Would life be worthwhile in a perpetual simulated reality? If all our senses were 100% augmented to this new reality, making it impossible to differentiate it from reality, would it become more important than reality to our society?

Most likely I'd say. Wings don't require fuel to keep things afloat, they let objects move at a wide range of speeds from 20 mph to hypersonic, they work at any altitude from the ground to several hundred thousand feet. Any new or old technology (like baloons or anti-gravity) would be hard pressed to match the epic capabilities of a wing. Lift ftw.

In this instance, it was a wider attack on a large group of webpages across the net. That said, the hacking group Anonymous is attempting, they said, to cripple all of the internet to protest... something... I can't seem to remember what it was. I always wondered what type of enjoyment hackers and virus creators get out of their hobby. Unlike other troll-centric or malicious activities, hackers and virus makers never get to see the surprised/depressed/angry faces of their victims. They never get to hear the conversations made about their hours of hard work. Really, it seems to me like these guys spend countless hours every day writing malicious code or attacking countless websites to never see what happens next. Sure, a hacker can go to a website they brought down and see a big "ERROR" message pop up - but is that really gratification? They could just as easily see that same message by typing in a web address that doesn't exist. It's surely not rewarding in any way for hours of hard work. I'll never understand this breed of people, and personally, I view them in the same category as thugs and criminals who have no idea what empathy, altruism, or being human really means. As an aside, my account got nuked Too lazy to rebuild my old signature/avatar. Going to stay empty. /end rant