Viewing profile — jswhitten

A radio telescope on the far side of the Moon would have the advantage of being shielded from all the radio interference from Earth. I'm not sure that there are any advantages to p…

No. We might have fusion power plants within a few decades, but those will use deuterium and tritium as fuels, not Helium-3. Helium-3 fusion has some advantages, but it's more diff…

Less than 1%. For every star Kepler has detected a planet around, there's a hundred more stars in its field of view with planets it can't see.

The crew would be risking something like an additional 1% chance of cancer in the next 30 years. While the radiation dose is significant, it's an acceptable risk.

Also, Gliese 581g is unconfirmed, and there is a lot of doubt about whether it exists.

The orbital plane of planets in a given system is random as far as we know, and not related to the plane of the galaxy. Our own solar system, for example, is tilted more than 60 de…

How long ago it happened is irrelevant. It really is just the distance that is keeping us safe.

Doesn't "is operating" mean it's only illegal if turned on? 27602. (a) A person shall not drive a motor vehicle if a television receiver, a video monitor, or a television or video …

It's not, it's slightly larger and more massive than the Sun. Only the outermost planet is within the habitable zone, but it's a gas giant.

Because the timescale of the universe is much longer than the timescale of human civilization or intelligence. The odds of any aliens we meet being at the exact same level of devel…

It is correct. Homo is a genus of great apes. It emerged around 2.4 million years ago. And it does include modern humans (Homo Sapiens). I'm not sure which part you're taking issue…

It would be good for people who don't have an alarm on their phone. Can you set the wakeup call for 20 years ago?

It does; you can see ice over the tip of South America. Note that the ice in the southern hemisphere extends about as far from the pole as that in the northern hemisphere. There's …

How would that modulate a gravity field? If you're thinking that the matter and antimatter have gravity and that gravity disappears when they annihilate because their mass is gone,…

There's some discussion on pages 52-54 of the PDF.

Yes, a pod would depart every 2 minutes or less, which puts about 23 miles between them.

Yes, the police can steal anything from you that they want. They do not need to arrest you or charge you with a crime, or even show evidence that a crime even occurred. The burden …

The only difference is it's almost impossible to defend yourself against these robbers.

A regime is just the government or form of government that is in power. A democratic regime is still a regime.

Another part of the problem is the faster you want to go, the more fuel you need, which makes your ship more massive.

Not for more than 100 million years or so. But then, Earth will also become uninhabitable within the next few hundred million years.