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Nonsense. Sans hard AI (which doesn't exist yet), that means that people wrote the program to analyze the essays (what essays?) and formulate the questions. The biases of the designers and implementers of the program are inevitably going to be present in the program. Congratulations, you've just turned the election over to a bunch of computer programmers! Even with hard AI, that claim of "completely unbiased" would still most likely be nonsense.

Don't know. There is no consensus on which came first of the first stars, the first supermassive black holes, or the first galaxies. One thing is definite: Those first stars had no Earth-like planets. They couldn't have. The only elements that existed back then were hydrogen, helium, and a tiny bit of lithium. The oxygen that (by weight) comprises 88.9% of the oceans' water, the oxygen, silicon, aluminum, etc. that forms our crust, the iron that comprises the bulk of the Earth's core: Not one of those elements existed when the first stars formed. Those elements formed inside stars.

I can see that you are very enamored of your idea. That doesn't make it a good one. It is a just the opposite. First and foremost, who writes the questions? Did you understand my example of "Do you think everyone deserves a fair chance? Yes No" versus "Do you think we should give money to freeloaders? Yes No"? These are the same question, just written with different intentional biases to swing people one way or the other. Whoever gets to write the questions has incredible power over the outcome of the election. We vote for people rather than ideas for a huge number of reasons. If candidate A has incredibly weak leadership skills it doesn't matter if he and I agree on everything. Those weak leadership skills means nothing I care about will be accomplished. The same goes for a candidate with no morals. The potential for abuse of power, siphoning public monies into private bank accounts, and other shenanigans means that I as a voter have to watch out for more than just which candidate best matches by views. Arrow's Impossibility Theorem is a huge issue. You rejected it by "I don't believe that anything is impossible." It's impossible to simultaneously measure position and momentum to an arbitrary degree of precision. It's impossible to go faster than the speed of light. It's impossible to use an axiomatic system to prove that that system is consistent and complete. And yes, it is impossible to have a perfect election system. A related problem is how the questions are ranked. All questions are not of equal value. Only a tiny fraction of the 100,000 questions (yikes!) on your test will be of vital interest to any one voter. For sake of argument, assume a voter cares strongly about 20 of those questions, somewhat strongly about another 80. The remaining 99,900 questions are pretty much irrelevant to that voter. Nonetheless the voter answers all 100,000 questions. Suppose candidate A matches all 100 of the voters key questions, disagrees on the 99,900 irrelevant ones. Suppose it's exactly the opposite with candidate B. Rank all questions as equal and this voter apparently prefers candidate B by an incredibly wide margin. Ask the voter which candidate she prefers and she'll almost certainly say candidate A. 100,000 questions is far too many. The above showed just one problem with a huge number of questions. What if the voter only answers those questions they care about? Those 99,900 remaining questions are still a huge problem. The more questions there are, the more likely the selected person is the person who almost any voter would deem to be unworthy of the job. There is no right number of questions. Arrow's Impossibility Theorem rears its ugly head once more. For each question that I think is of utmost importance, you can find someone else who thinks it is completely irrelevant. There's no way to keep bias out of the system, there's no way to make the questions fair.

This is a rehash of that tired and never taught alternative to special relativity called Lorentz Ether Theory. This has been debated countless times at this and other fringe science sites. Beloved by anti-relativistic crackpots, it is nonetheless experimentally indistinguishable from special relativity. Physicists don't bother with LET at all. It never gained traction for three key reasons. One is aesthetics. LET is an ugly theory compared to special relativity. LET makes a number of ad hoc assumptions; special relativity on the other hand, only makes a small number of simple assumptions. Another is that many of these ad hoc assumptions, most notably yours, is untestable. It's metaphysics, not physics. Finally, the key motivating factor behind LET, that electromagnetic radiation is a wave phenomenon and therefore needs a medium, died with quantum mechanics. Photons are particles. They don't need a medium to travel through empty space.

Problem solved? You barely made a half-hearted attempt at hand-waving the problems away, let alone solving them. The first thing to realize is that there is no perfect system for selecting our elected officials. A perfect system cannot exist. Anyone who wishes to change the electoral system had better fully understand the nastiness of Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. The next thing to realize is that any new system has to pass muster with those already in power. They control the gates. The only way to change that is to vote the bastards out, which does happen on occasion. Of course, if that does happen, you have a brand new set of bastards to deal with. Your proposed system doesn't improve one thing that is currently wrong. It only makes matters worse. Far, far worse. I've seen lots of proposed election systems. I haven't seen a single one that is anywhere near as bad as is this one. We elect people, not ideas (your quiz). Your quiz is fine as the basis for questions for a candidate debate or a "meet the candidates" forum. It is horrendous as the basis for an election. Time to go back to the drawing board.

I'll answer your last question first. It's highly questionable whether intelligent life could arise close to the center of a galaxy. There are just too many chances for disaster: a close encounter with a nearby star that ejects the planet from its solar system, a nearby star going supernova or undergoing a gamma-ray burst and eradicate life on the planet, etc. Intelligent life, at least on Earth, took 4.6 billion years to arise after the Earth first formed. That long a time span mandates some sense of stability, something that doesn't exist near the galactic center. A lot of people have a misconception about black holes, that they act like interstellar vacuum machines that suck up everything and anything that comes even close to them. For the most part that's not true. Suppose that our Sun is magically replaced with a one solar mass black hole. The Earth would not be sucked into this hypothetical sun replacement. It would instead orbit this black hole, exactly as it currently orbits the Sun. That said, black holes can feed. Objects that pass too close are torn apart by the massive tidal forces that exist close to a black hole. The dust that results collides with other stuff, slowing it down a bit. The dust is now orbiting very close to the black hole. Thermodynamic and relativistic effects now come into play. It loses energy through electromagnetic radiation and gravitational waves. The dust spirals in toward the black hole and eventually does fall into it. This is happening right now with the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy but it is rather subdued. That black hole is growing very slowly. That's how the black holes at the centers of most galaxies behave nowadays. They aren't currently "active". That's not how things have always been. Our galaxy most likely was actively feeding at a ferocious rate when it was young. It was an "active galactic nucleus" (google that term). Astronomers can still see those active galactic nuclei, but that's because looking at very far away objects is essentially looking back in time. So how did our supermassive black hole first form? That's a good question; nobody knows the right answer. One thing is certain: It did not form from a solar mass sized black hole. One explanation is that these supermassive black holes formed when the first stars died a violent death. Those first stars were very different from the stars we see around us. Some were incredibly massive, 100, maybe even 1000 times as massive as our Sun. The stellar black holes that resulted from these first hypernova (supernova isn't the right term for a 1000 solar mass star) might have formed the seeds from which our galaxy's supermassive black hole eventually formed. Another explanation is that these supermassive black holes formed on their own, no need for stars going supernova or hypernova. Per this explanation, those supermassive black holes preceded the first stars, maybe even the first galaxies. AFIAK, there is no consensus over which of these two leading explanations is the right one.

For one thing, it's easily gamed. "Do you think everyone deserves a fair chance? Yes No" versus "Do you think we should give money to freeloaders? Yes No". Who decides what the quiz questions are, how they are phrased? For another, this runs smack dab into the problems raised by Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, but now there's a problem even with only two candidates. Suppose that in the campaign of Smith versus Jones, the quiz results weakly favor Jones. That doesn't mean that Jones is the preferable candidate. If the people had had the choice of voting for the candidates, a sizable majority might well have voted for Smith. It might be that Smith is by far the stronger candidate, the one more likely to get things done. Or it might be that most of the voters only care deeply about a subset the quiz questions, and Smith is the winner on those. Jones just happened to be a better match on things the voters don't care about. Add Taylor and Brown to the list of candidates and we have a complete mess. The answer is no, but your assertion of bias is not necessarily true. It's akin to the proponent of a new theory of everything who posts his theory on this site and rejects physicists' critiques on the grounds that they are biased.

Sorry, but that's not possible by Arrows Impossibility Theorem. Your quiz scheme appears to me far, far worse than what we currently have (flawed as it is).

No, they don't necessarily have equal energy. Yes, they have an intrinsic mass of 0. No, no, and no. Massless particles always travel at c. Massive particles always travel at less than c.

I call BS. You apparently are using this to justify your own irrational beliefs that global warming doesn't exist, and if it does that humans are not the cause of it. Two wrongs don't make a right. Whether this guy is capable of rational thinking is completely irrelevant. His irrational far left ideology does not justify your irrational beliefs. One more time, two wrongs don't make a right. No, you are disagreeing with the points I made earlier. That irrational beliefs are universal means that every single one of us needs to be ever vigilant against our own irrationality. You are using the irrational beliefs of others to justify your own. Sorry, that illogic doesn't fly.

I sincerely hope that is a joke, I'm talking about the distance of the moon from the only planet we know of inhabited in this solar system with a single object in orbit around it that we call "the moon", there is no reason why you should assume otherwise, we have been talking about comets hitting Earth this entire time, the fact that you misinterpreted such a basic, easily understandable part of my post must suggest you aren't reading what I am saying very seriously, which would explain previous misconceptions you had that I pointed out. No, Sam, it wasn't a joke. Look at that huge run-on sentence you just wrote. Parse it, please. To forestall criticism that I too am guilty of writing huge run-on sentences: Yes, I am. However, I'm quite aware of the fact that I sometimes do write long Germanic-style sentences. I'll rewrite it when someone tells me that what I wrote doesn't parse. The reason I asked for the rewrite was because I did not know whether you were writing two sentences about a single scenario or two sentences about two separate scenarios. So which is it? I think the second sentence was the addressing a scenario in which the comet is hit with nukes when it has closed to within a few lunar radii of the Earth. I couldn't tell whether the first sentence was a prelude to that or was talking about something completely different. That other interpretation involves hitting the comet with nukes when it is well removed from the Earth, but having the nukes explode at a distance of a few lunar radii of the comet. So which is it, one scenario or two distinct ones? Waiting to do something to a comet on a collision course with the Earth until the comet is within a few lunar radii of the Earth is useless. It is equivalent to bringing coal to Newcastle, owls to Athens, tea to China, ice to Eskimos, sand to the beach. The collision is inevitable and won't reduce the damage one iota. Using nukes is worse than useless. It gives a brand new meaning to the term "dirty snowball".

That doesn't make a bit of sense, Sam. You appear to be thinking that there is some extra-special barrier that separates closed orbits (circles and ellipses) from open ones (parabolas and hyperbolas). There isn't.

Not exactly. Think of a rocket. Changing the orbit -- thats exactly what rockets do. Comets are rockets. Not very controlled ones, but rockets nonetheless.

This doesn't make sense. Try typing this again. Within a few moon orbits of what? If this is what you were writing about, I understood exactly what you typed. This is nonsense. A long period comet such as C/2012 S1 (ISON) will have a closing velocity well in excess of 50 km/second with respect to the Earth. The people of the Earth have eight hours or less to live life as they know it if nothing is done until the comet reaches four lunar orbit radii from Earth. The only reasonable action at this late hour is to bend over and kiss one's rear end goodbye. Sans some magical teleportation device that could move the comet from here to there, there is *no* avoiding the collision. It is inevitable.

This is the game I watch: Let's not forget the ladies: Sandwich! Note well: A soccer ball did not cause the above injury. What stats? The bogus ones in the article cited by john5746? Those are bogus for two reasons: One is that they don't jibe with other statistics I've read. Soccer does have a problem with brain injuries, but it's not number one in girls sports. Basketball and perhaps softball top soccer. None of them is as dangerous as cheerleading. The other reason those stats are bogus is because the article implies that heading the ball is the cause of those concussions. That's false reporting. Headers are way down the list of causes of concussions in soccer. Number one by far is head to body. Head to ground, head to goal post, inadvertent head to ball make up almost all of the rest. Banning heading won't fix the problem of concussions in soccer.

That's nonsense, Sam. If we have less than a couple of months, the only thing we can do for a large (but not too large) impactor is to figure out what part of the Earth will suffer damage from the impact and evacuate them. A couple of months is a reasonable amount of time to evacuate everyone from the affected areas. It is far too little time to prevent the catastrophe from happening. If we don't see it until it's within a few lunar orbits of us we don't even have time to do that. The collision will occur in a few hours in the case of a comet.

I'm not quite sure what you're asking here, so I'll try to interpret your question in multiple ways. 1. What laws of physics change to make an orbiting body obey x^2+y^2=1 on one hand versus x^2-y^2=1 on the other? The laws of physics are one and the same. This apparent change is just a result of trying to describe the behavior kinematically in Cartesian coordinates. A perhaps better way to look at things is in terms of polar coordinates, where the kinematic description of the motion becomes [imath]r(1+e\cos\theta) = p[/imath]. Here, r and θ are the polar coordinates, e is the eccentricity (a constant), and p is the semi latus rectum (another constant). A circular trajectory results if e=0, elliptical for 0<e<1, parabolic for e=1, and hyperbolic for e>1. 2. What physical condition distinguishes elliptical orbits from hyperbolic trajectories? Energy. With gravitational potential energy [imath]\Phi[/imath] defined such that [imath]\Phi®[/imath] goes to zero as r tends to infinity, mechanical energy is negative for elliptical and circular orbits, zero for parabolic trajectories, and positive for hyperbolic trajectories. 3. How can an orbit be changed from elliptical to hyperbolic? Simple: Increase the energy (i.e., increase the velocity) so that the total mechanical energy becomes positive. 4. What makes comets have hyperbolic trajectories? This question is a bit trickier. Some of those long-periodic comets truly are on a hyperbolic trajectory. We have one chance to see those comets. After that one passage close to the Sun they exit the solar system, never to be seen again. Other comets have a reported eccentricity that is just slightly over one, yet these comets may well be seen again (perhaps thousands of years later, or longer). So what gives? The answer lies in how orbital elements are calculated. For an object inside Jupiter's orbit, orbital elements are calculated from that object's heliocentric Cartesian position and velocity using the mass of the Sun only as the central body. For an object outside Jupiter's orbit, orbital elements are calculated from that object's heliocentric Cartesian position and velocity using the combined mass of the Sun and Jupiter (plus that of other giant planets orbiting inside the object's radial distance) as the central body. To understand why this convention is used, the first thing to realize is that the very concept of Keplerian orbital elements is not quite valid for objects in our solar system. Orbital elements are valid for two isolated bodies subject to Newtonian gravity. Our solar system is not a two body, Newtonian gravity system. Orbital elements are a useful fiction. This apparently weird way of calculating orbital element works quite nicely for an object whose orbit lies entirely inside or outside of Jupiter's orbit. For objects inside Jupiter's orbit, the giant planets have very little impact on the object's period. The primary effect is to cause the object's orbit to precess. The orbital elements for these inner solar system objects are best calculated by ignoring the presence of the outer planets. For objects outside of Jupiter's orbit, the primary impact of Jupiter is to increase the object's mean motion. Thus it's best to include Jupiter's mass when calculating orbital elements for those more remote objects. What this means is that a comet's reported eccentricity can go from slightly more than one to slightly less than one as the comet crosses Jupiter's orbit on its outbound leg. There's nothing physical going on here. It's just a consequence of how astronomers compute eccentricity.

Why do you persist in bringing up the wrongs committed by people who you dislike as if that somehow justifies the wrongs you commit? It doesn't. Weren't you taught that two wrongs don't make a right? Bzzzt, wrong. The skeptical side of global warming is largely grounded in fiction. The arguments by the rejectionist side of global warming are 100% pure fiction. is particularly true of those who reject global warming. Bzzt, wrong again. Get your facts straight! "We now suppress wildfires in our local forests while restricting thinning of insect damage trees." -- That was the policy of the Forest Service up until the 1960s. It was liberal environmentalism that drove the change from fire prevention to fire management. Fire prevention does remain the policy in non-wilderness areas. In those areas where the Forest Service does have a policy of fire prevention, it's conservative economics rather than liberal environmentalism that drives this policy. Those trees are valuable assets to lumber companies. The fire prevention policies exist to protect lumber companies, not the environment.

You are perhaps thinking of acute brain injury. Cumulative brain injury such as that supposedly caused by heading is a subclass of traumatic brain injury. In what I call commie soccer (everyone plays, with more or less equal time per player except those players who score too much receive less playing time), yes. In competitive soccer/football, no. Soccer remains a contact sport, particularly in 50/50 ball situations.

Asteroid deflection? Yes. Comet deflection? No. Asteroids represent about 99% of the impactors, they can be detected far, far in advance (far, far = multiple decades) of collision, and they are reachable by current technology. Comets are a problem left to some future generation. Current technology means we won't even see them until a year or two prior to impact, even a big one. Current technology also means the comet is most likely unreachable. As both Ophiolite and I keep saying, you are ignoring the delta-V problem. This is completely wrong. Newton's second law is a second order differential equation. Seven parameters are needed to describe an orbit: An epoch time, a position vector at that epoch time, and a velocity vector at that epoch time. (Alternatively, an epoch time plus six orbital elements will do. Either way, the magic number is seven.) The epoch time is easy: Just pick one. That reduces the problem to six degrees of freedom. A single sighting yields but three parameters: Time, hour angle, and right ascension. In fact, a single sighting says nothing. Multiple sightings are needed so as to distinguish that comet from the background stars. These readings are inherently inaccurate; every measurement is inherently inaccurate. It takes a number of sightings, preferably from multiple sites, to overcome these inherent inaccuracies. Orbit determination is a complex problem. You can specialize in just this one problem area as an aerospace engineer graduate student. Orbit determination is particularly problematic for comets. Astronomers have very good planetary ephemerides in part because we have thousands of years of observations for the six classical planets, in part because we have lots of high precision observations spanning decades for all the planets (plus Pluto). A newly sighted comet: We have but a few months of reduced fidelity observations. Like I said, stop reading science fiction. A rail gun is going to be useless against deflection asteroids or comets, even one straight out of science fiction. Against asteroids? Yes. Against comets? No. I didn't assume that. Here's what I wrote: That, by the way, was ridiculously optimistic. I should have said tens of thousands. That's more rocket launches in a hundred days or so than we have launched, ever. That is impossible with our current technology and our current logistics trains. Let's split the problem into two parts depending on whether the comet will hit the Earth while inbound or outbound. The former isn't a problem for some future generation to solve. It's a problem for a far future generation to solve. We are triply screwed with regard to deflecting a comet that will hit us inbound. The detection problem is greatly magnified. We detect comets because we see them moving with respect to the background stars. That cross-track motion is drastically reduced for comets that will hit us while still inbound. We might not see the object as a comet until it starts outgassing. Another problem is that these inbound colliders will hit us months sooner compared to those that will hit us outbound. The final problem is that perihelion passage greatly magnifies any small delta-V that we can impart to a comet. We're just screwed if the comet is going to hit us while inbound. Suppose we wait for a comet that is going to hit us while outbound until after perihelion passage. Going back to my fly changing the trajectory of a bowling ball analogy, this is akin to a fly trying to turn a strike into a gutter ball where the bowler gets to release the ball a meter from the headpin. We have to hit the comet while it's still inbound. There are two ways to do this, the long way around and the short way. Going the long way around means launching toward the Sun. That means a C3 of at least 1000 km2/s2. We can't do that with current technology. We can't even come close. Going the short way around almost always requires an unattainably high C3. There's a brand new problem in the very, very few cases where a short way around intercept is feasible. Have you ever gone duck hunting? Shooting a duck that's coming straight at you is a lot easier than shooting one whose flight path is orthogonal to the line between you and the duck. Hitting a duck that's moving 50 km/hour across your line of sight is very hard. Now try to imagine the difficulty of hitting a duck that has a cross-track velocity of 50 km/second. That 50 km/second duck is our comet.

Come off it. You should switch from reading sci fi and astrology to learning some engineering and astronomy instead.

That "will we do it in time" is a crucial part of "can we reach it". We have to reach in time or we haven't reached it. Reaching where it would be 200+ years in the future is not an option. The comet no longer exists; it collided with the Earth 200 years earlier. We have to hit it early enough so that our limited ability to impart a Δv on the comet will have the desired goal of diverting it from a collision. Suppose some astronomer discovers a small 1 km diameter comet and find that it will collide with the Earth eighteen months later. Note very well: I'm already invoking magic technology here. The technology to do this does not exist yet. We still don't know the size of C/2012 S1 (ISON), and the initial guesses at a comet's orbit are just that, initial guesses. You have eighteen months to save the world. Invoking more magic technology, you find that there's a magical nuclear device that has a mass of but 2500 kg and that can impart a Δv of up to 5 meters/second on this comet if blown up at just the right spot. The comet will still collide if you apply this small Δv a few months before impact. Suppose you find that you need to apply this Δv at least 9 months prior to impact to divert the comet from a collision. You have now have but nine months to save the world. Let's ignore all the bureaucratic problems with launching a nuclear weapon into space. Let's ignore all the logistics problems with getting everything together. Suppose that you could launch tomorrow if that would do the trick. You find that that won't do the trick. You run into a trajectory optimization problem. The problem is that for a given launch time and a given intersect time there is an optimal trajectories that minimizes the amount of energy needed to launch at that launch time and intersect the comet at that intersect time. Since neither the launch time nor the intersect time is fixed; you can optimize over these as well. Suppose that the very best trajectory that you can find has a C3 of 400 km2/s2. So you look for a launch vehicle that can supply that amount of energy. Well, there is none. The Delta IV Heavy has a C3 of 60 km2/s2for a 2500 kg payload. Is that C3 of 400 km2/s2 out of line? The answer is yes. It is unreasonably low for a comet intercept. Values in excess of 1000 are more in line with reality. You have now zero months to save the Earth. Comet deflection is something that cannot be done using present technology, or even with present technology plus magic. It's even easier with a simple wave of the magical wand. Sans that magical wand, deflecting comets is a problem for some future generation. Deflecting asteroids is something our generation can solve.

I'm not exactly sure that's true, if they know the mass of the comet, it's velocity, direction and the gravitational distortion caused by the sun they can model it's trajectory very precisely as they have done to launch probes to wiz around planets to reach other planets and explore them. Tracking every comet or asteroid that we haven't found yet is hard, but if we have enough time in advanced we have the technology to propel a weight or missile fast enough to slightly change its course based on where we think the asteroid will be at a certain time. If it is highly eccentric it could get close enough to the sun to reach a huge velocity, but that's why we would try and calculate it's path before it got to the sun. If all the planning fails we can try and use as much nukes as we have and see if that's enough. I'm not totally optimistic but I don't think we have no idea what to do either, there's definitely things we can try. You missed my point. Just because we know the trajectory doesn't mean we can reach it. The delta-V needed to merely intercept an incoming comet would most likely be beyond today's technology. You mentioned nuclear technology. That requires landing on or moving with the comet. That adds even more delta-V (an unattainably high amount) to that already unattainable intercept delta-V. NASA pretty much came to the same conclusion in their 2006 asteroid deflection study. They looked at deflecting a small one kilometer diameter comet with the action (e.g., nuclear explosions) one year prior to Earth impact. This is a very large time interval given that comets tend to be discovered about a year or so before perihelion. At the same time, this one year window represents a very short time interval in terms of deflection. It means that a huge delta-V (~5 meters/second) needs to be imparted to the comet. One nuke won't do it for our medium sized, 10 km diameter comet. Thousands will be needed, all in a very short time window. It's not possible.

The problem at hand does not qualify "from far enough away". Think of trying to deflect a comet along the lines of a fly changing the trajectory of a bowling ball from a strike to a gutter ball on a foreshortened bowling alley.

10 kilometers isn't just pretty big. It's flippin' ginormous. Could a fly change the trajectory of a bowling ball enough to change a strike into a gutter ball? That's the kind of change that is needed here. Moreover, you are assuming that the incoming comet is reachable. It's not. The best we could do with our meager technology to intercept a comet coming on in a highly inclined, highly eccentric trajectory would be to launch a few days before impact, and that of course is far too late. Diverting an asteroid of this size on an orbit somewhat similar to Earth's orbit would require a decade or so of advance warning using today's technology. Diverting a comet: We don't have the technology, period. That said, this particular comet is not going to hit us. It's not even going to come close.