ZetaX

Which brings me back to a).

Why exactly do you all seem to a) think he is serious, believe that he really knows it was gold (if he just sold it off, it could have been any golden metal)¿

After the above comment, I claim the part quoted below to be just dishonest. You are doing inadequate nitpicking on something he didn't even say. All he said was that _regardless_ of power, the energy is not enough (and unlike you seem to imply: no power level, not even 10^100 Watts, will be enough to melt a ton of gold with a single Joule). Nothing more, nothing less.

Watch Mars of Destruction ;-)

That would be funny if it weren't so sad.

ISPs are actually a rather good example of a monopoly. In a lot of areas you do not, unlike you seem to claim, get to choose your ISP; there often is just one or maybe two that give reasonable coverage and speed. So in the end, they indeed can force you to take their offer or have nothing. And that's where net neutrality shines: it forces them to behave instead of monetizing on this. The very simplified model where you respond on there being too high prizes (say due to an [almost] monopoly) by opening your own business is simply wrong. There are many reasons: a) Huge companies have entirely different ways of doing things (look up how amazon forces publishers to comply) Huge companies are the only ones capable of doing things on a large scale (ISPs, world-wide shiping, air trafficing all fall in this category) c) There often is only enough demand for a single provider; so a second one might lower the prizes, but then neither of them would be profitable (then a huge company will prevail because they can simply wait until the small one goes bankrupt)

Why do you expect a single carbon nucleus at 99% the speed of light to be dangerous¿ Thats about 10^-8 Joules of energy, which is pretty irrelevant unless it causes an unlucky mutation ending in cancer (which also has a very miniscule chance).

If you go as nitpicky as that: the actual reason is that the sun would be between Venus and Earth. Not true. 50% happens at the maximal elongations, yes, but it goes over 50% beyond that. That doesn't mean it's brighter (because it will be further away) or better to observe (because it will appear closer to the sun).

To determine which is brighter, you measure the amount of light from these objects that hit a given area (e.g. your eye). The apparent magnitude is somewhat stupid for introducing several random variables (0 is vega under good conditions and the scale is logarithmic with a totally random factor of 100^(1/5)), but you could calculate the magnitude from the light received (take the logarithm for that base and add an appropriate constant). But why would you expect the ISS to be brighter than venus¿ Brightness depends on size, distance and albedo (i.e. how well it reflects). Venus obviously 'wins' by a lot in regard to size, looses by a lot for distance and should have a slightly worse albedo (not sure on the latter, but number's surely exist on the internet). But in the end, it could be easily possible that the distance of venus is not far enough away to cancel out it's 'advantage' in size.

Yes. It is called the theory of relativity.

Apart from you ignoring a lot of established facts about relativity: how the heck is that quote supposed to work.

You have a wrong understanding on how massive a star is. Also, hurdling a few asteroids towards something coming in faster that solar escape velocity is... really really difficult. Especially as it should hit decades before the star reaches earth.

Look up what corruption means before making such silly claims. Or even if you find a version that includes yours: it's not like there was a short- or mid-term alternative that wouldn't let the system crumble to ashes.

Such a long response and that line, yet you still have not responded to the quite obvious fact that your "process" is violating thermodynamics (especially conservation of energy). All you do is calling it "nullify" and then acting like that is an accepted concept in physics; it is not, it is pure quackery.

While your analysis in general is correct and agrees with the objections I mentioned earlier, the following two are completely missing the point just for the sake of being nitpicky: Ever heard of the term "thought experiment"¿ It is not inherently impossible for such a thing to exist, or for an entire universe filled with water to exist. Even if, then that question would still be well-defined: use classical thermodynamics and such in an universe full of water; or similiar assumptions that are purely of mathematical nature. As the OP was not talking about energy becoming zero, but only about temperature, this is simply irrelevant. Also, instead of citing the non-existence of such particles, why ignoring the bigger elephant in the room: conservation of energy¿

No, it is based on your misunderstanding of laser cooling. Laser cooling does not violate conservation of energy (the energy is re-emitted) and momentum. What you suggest violates that as the energy would need to go somewhere (laser cooling is not a closed system, your suggestion is). So it's simply not a thing. You also completely ignored my inquiry on what "nullifying energy" is supposed to be. Next time instead of answering "it violates one of the most fundamental laws we know" with "I have some vague memory of this being related to something else, thus it works", please do some fact checking first. Especially: citation needed (not for laser cooling, but for your claim).

http://existentialcomics.com/comic/1

Casimir does not break conservation of momentum. It also does not produce thrust in the usual meaning of the word. It simply causes a force between two objects.

You are simply violating conservation of energy here. You call it "nullifying" energy, but that's not a thing; where would it go anyway¿

Not necessarily (but see the next paragraph). Superconductors are stable when floating, meaning that every (not too big) disturbance will be counteracted; but if you ignore everything (mostly inductive effects and friction) then it would keep swinging back and forth. In reality, it stops moving after some seconds. One can by the way float things at room temperature using diamagnetism; it even works with permanent magnets when using sufficiently diagmagnetic materials (pyrolithic graphite, bismuth). On the other side, there is a mathematical theorem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earnshaw%27s_theorem) that forbids stable and non-moving configurations of objects influenced by gravity and/or "usual" magnetism; the relevant part is that you only allow repulsion via dipoles, i.e. charges and magnetic poles, but not that some weird materials are repelled by both poles. You can cheat the system by e.g. using rotating objects as they are not counted as non-moving. Or you realise that electromagnetism allows for diamagnetism or even superconductors, rendering the assumption on the forces moot. Thus (because the assumptions are almost true in most settings) that theorem still says that what you say is correct more often than not: most stable configurations need to move.

Has it ever appeared to you that helping them does not just mean what you describe¿ Instead, help them to get the infrastructure, political stability and such to be self-sustaining and richer in the future. And that requires mones, lots of it. It also requires forethought and indeed politics. But it isn't politics alone; having the tech already is not enough, you need to deploy it, teach people to use it, and stabilize the areas to some degree. Some of these come hand in hand, but neither are "throw more money at it" nor "politics/people (both ours or their's) just need to want a better system". It's a complicated system that requires a lot of attention of all kinds to solve it.

People claim it works in true vacuum (or how else should it work as interstellar drive as many suggested¿). People ignore that their supposed explanations don't match current understandings of physics. Also, I would not call it a hoax; that would probably require people at eagleworks etc. faking things. Instead, people are just blinded by their expectations. We have seen that many times before.

You swap between it working in near vacuum only (which it might and violates nothing, and I never disputed that) and it working in true vacuum (which probably is false). Choose one. Whatever you choose, point to where I actually said anything contradictory to that (and don't quote me out of context).

It does not definitely require power to hover. See those examples I gave. Hovering by pushing air/gases around requires power because you also create moving gasses. But that does not mean that every methode does so, we just don't know a better one in some conditions.

Physics, as in the science. Not to be confused with reality. That they break cons. of mom. is exactly what I talked about above. And that's why all those that claim that the usual explanations (be it pushing of quantum stuff, magnetic resonance whatevers, ...) are just believing technobabble. I don't understand to what of the things I said you are actually objecting to... Please read my post again/try to get what I am actually talking about.