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I like the time machine I've been using since I was little. I can look into the past whenever I want. The only drawback is I can only look into periods of the past that I had bothered to videotape.

I have high latency no matter what. On vacation with a 2003 laptop. And say what? Google is under a DDOS attack?

Even assuming an advanced race could construct an accurate model of the entire galaxy's motion for navigational purposes... anyone want to take a guess at the amount of memory that would be required to store all of that information? Still an interesting OP question though. Voyager is expected to reach another star in about 40000 years. Now that it has reached interstellar space, the odds of it ever being intercepted before that time is greatly reduced, unless those aliens have a darned good telescope hunting for rogue objects.

They're definitely moving apart now, based on what I saw last night.

Saw them while driving tonight. Made me do a "what the heck was that?" kind of doubletake, before I remembered what it was. At the edge of my field of vision, it looked like a solid line of light pointing straight down. For a celestial event so simple, it's a really neat sight.

I think this might have actually been better off in Science Labs. Could ask a mod to be sure though, but I don't see any reason why this shoudn't be posted there.

So... who started building this in KSP already?

What I would really love to see is reaching a point where they can teach it to navigate a 3D environment. Not like game-driven AI's do, but by actually looking at the screen, only having access to the visual data that the human gamer has. Even better if it can be a game where it's playing against humans.

Isn't it normal to have a thermal camera trained on rockets to look for irregularities in temperature? Surely a freaking death ray would not have gone unnoticed. Edit: And, Frozen beat me to it.

This pretty much sums it up. Storytelling gives us the highlights of an adventure. Sure if you wanted to make "Stand By Me" you could actually document a 10-hour hike, but nobody is going to sit down for that. The same would be true for a trip to the VAB. Did it take a LONG time to get there? Yeah, but the audience doesn't care, they just want to get to the cool stuff. Therefore, the VAB is 2-minutes from Space Camp. Slightly unrelated, but as a kid, special effects used to encourage me to think like a scientist. I always knew there was a physical trick of some kind being done, which would lead to countless hours of experimentation, trying to recreate what I saw on the television. I look at the same thing now, and I just don't feel impressed. And I don't feel the notion of, "Hey, I can do that!" All I see is, "Computer. Computer. That's a computer too. And so is that. That news room isn't even there, that's a computer too." Not that I don't think CGI is cool, but there's far less creative thinking involved in creating an effect that nobody has ever seen before. I've actually become more interested in stagecraft lately for this very reason, because non-digital wizardry is still being used there.

You're SURE that drive was never used before?

Yeah, and I'm a little confused as to whether this is about realistic accuracy (which is what this thread is about) or something else. Doctor Who has never even tried to make people think it was realistic. If you accept that you're watching a show about a time-traveling phone-box, shame on you for complaining about the space suits? However, one example of mine is Armageddon. I can handle a lot of the problems the film has. But then we get to the docking scene, or the shuttles dodging cometary debris like they're jet fighters, and I feel like someone is dragging their nails across a chalkboard about two inches from my ear. Everyone who complains about the docking scene in Interstellar needs to go watch Armageddon.

You sure it was colds and not airborne allergens?

The world really needs to find alternate ways of doing things. We could end up never hearing about this thing again, for reasons that ultimately shouldn't matter. And then twenty years from now people will be talking about this the same way they do now about the "water-powered car."

Definitely sounds like simple conditioning to me. Practically from birth, we associate taking pills with getting better. So by taking a pill, we're subconsciously going to think it's helping, whether we know it's fake or not.

Ironically, this turns the value of knowledge into a very subjective topic. If the advocates gave the scientific reasons, in all likelihood it would kill the placebo effect. Just... wow. Welcome to the Matrix.

Huh. Well that fits in with my hypothesis about prayer, where the question of the supernatural may be irrelevant (as long as you're not trying to remove tumors by waving a wand). The point isn't whether or not you're contacting 'something.' The point is that you are trying to do something that maintains some feeling of control over the situation. In short: If there are no solutions, doing something that accomplishes nothing, may actually accomplish more, than doing nothing. And writing that sentence nearly made my head spin. We are not passive creatures by nature, and are ill-equipped to deal with futility even though that is the hand that many of us are dealt. Perhaps simply the illusion that we can change the outcome, can improve our body's ability to deal with an illness.

Mind-over-matter DOES work to a degree, and placebos help stimulate that. It doesn't mean the placebo itself is the cure. What it does is encourage the body to cure itself. There is plenty of research to support this. The simplest being the health-impact of positive vs. negative thinking.

LOL, I was already thinking that if this computer were fed all of the internet, any inkblot you gave it would probably come out looking like cats and pornography.

The rendering/modeling engine was still just a 'medium' though. That's like saying a paintbrush is better than a human. The modelling program is a tool. What we have here is a paintbrush creating new works without the presence of a painter.

Are you really surprised? The fact that IT can be used for marketing, probably has the most to do with why the tech has developed so rapidly in the past decade. It's all been about creating more efficient "salesmen." All the conveniences the rest of us have gotten from it is strictly secondary. It's no different from television. Television doesn't exist for the news or the entertainment. It exists for the sponsors.

I think this one 'describes' Horner the best. First song that popped into my head when I found out.

Conjunctions aren't just mentioned because of astrology, or even "because they're neat to look at." Having multiple bright objects in close proximity in the sky makes it much easier for the casual observer. Remember, some people can't even tell a planet from a star. And if you tell people that Jupiter is in constellation-X, for some that can be very hard to spot, even if they're using sky charts. But a conjunction? Just about anyone can find that.

Just going by the basis of how homeopathy is supposed to work, I can't even fathom how that would be applied to fighting a virus. Oh well. Not really relevant. But then, this thread got derailed 2 pages ago.

That doesn't even make sense from the perspective of homeopathic medicine. What are you going to do, drink a can of rhinovirus?