MadScientist

The thread is about fantasising about what kind of shield systems we'll use in the future. We don't know how much it will cost to make shield systems. So how can we even bring cost effectiveness into the equation??

The best explanation I ever read on this phenomena was that it's a remnant from our days as tree dwelling animals. There's still a very small fear preprogrammed into our sub consciousnesses that manifests itself by telling our conscious self that we're falling even though we aren't. So we wake up and make sure we're not falling. Evolutionarily speaking it would be a very beneficial thing to inherit from your parents. Now that we don't need it, it's slowly being evolved out of us.

There is another issue RE cost effectiveness. I'm sure that what you meant to say was "Sounds like a good/bad idea but don't forget that it would cost a lot to implement and power." Which are both irrelevent anyway to this discussion. Because we're discussing what shield systems we could create, not which would be cost effective.

Nope. It's why we spend a ridiculous number of billions on creating the ultimate killing machines that have the best armour they can on them. So we can kill the enemy before they have a chance to kill us. If you simply can't create the ultimate shield systems because the knowledge isn't available yet, you have to create the ultimate weapons systems to destroy the enemies ultimate weapons systems. Think of the USA's or UK's military forces, they aren't systems for offensively invading countries to expand empires they're active defences and not passive defences like shields would be. And if we had the know how to create those ultimate shields we could save a significant number of those lost lives and an amount of money on building new weapons to replace the ones lost or outdated ones. Think about when/if we start zooming from one star to another, we can either go out there as invaders (highly unlikely IMO) or we can put active defences or passive defences on our ships. Using active defences means killing the enemy and starting war though but using passive defences lessens the chances of those happening. Shields give you a chance to ask the enemy why they're attacking, to find out whether they're just attacking out of fear of invasion. They also give you a better chance of surving in a war. Cost effective??

I'm not sure about this one Sayonara. It'll eventually come to telling the dead peoples relatives that they died because the research or manufacture of improved shield defences wasn't cost effective enough. That's pretty bad but there's another more important benefit to having better shield defences. If your ships aren't as well shielded as they could have been, like you only spent 50 billion instead of 250 billion and we lose the war because all our ships have these crap shields then you lose more than the 200 billion you saved anyway along with far more... And, there's not much point in spending 500 billion on a single ship if it's going to be destroyed when it runs into the first AI controlled alien garbage scow that has a weak automated defence system because its owners are involved in a war with another alien species. It would be better to just be over shielded against such weak attacks then you can decide to ignore the attack and find the owners of the garbage scow to see why their ship attacked or go and blindly start a war against them.

Those objects didn't travel for trillions of years because they didn't have to. Since all matter existed in the point sized universe it expanded outwards with the space but space was expanding faster than the matter could or can ever keep up with. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't matter is being dragged along by the expansion of space, imagine a car being blown along by the wind, that wind would need to be blowing damned hard to move the car and because of friction, aerodynamics and a few other things the car will never move as fast as the wind is. And the wind can't be destroyed, it's energy, so it has to go somewhere so it behaves like space but space has to create somewhere new for it to expand to. It didn't take trillions of years because of inflation theory but you're right that electromagnetic energy (it's not just light AFAIKnow) will have expanded much further outwards than any matter could have.

Just to prove the point of why weapons used against us is important, if the other side had discovered matter teleportation they could teleport a virus or a raiding party on board our ship. So we need a layer of defence against transporter signals too, some for of teleportation signal disruption energy field. Then what if they're psychic and have some level of telekenisis or other esoteric forms of attack??

The big bang unleashed a vast amount of electromagnetic energy and hydrogen, which formed a soup that held the EM energy inside. After gravity did its work the EM energy could escape and start to expand the universe. EM energy travels at the speed of light, so the universe has been expanding for 13.7 billion years at the speed of light. You could never reach the edge of the universe, unless you could outrun the speed of light and after 13 billion years of light speed it'll take some catching up. That's the way I understand things anyway, correct me if I'm wrong.

I meant in a post in here and not in any educational institution. We were talking about WMAP and someone, I'm pretty certain it was you, explained to me properly how the universe expanded.. I think my analogy was correct anyway.

Allow me to expand on what Sayonara taught me. Prior to the big bang the universe and all the matter in the universe was held in a small amount of space, after the big bang space expanded and everything moved outwards with space... Try this for a rough analogy. Think of water held in a balloon, pump in a few impurities and keep pumping in water until the balloon explodes and the water flies everywhere, the impurities held in the water don't stay in the confines of the space that the balloon provided, they get carried out with the water all around the room, don't they??

Yup but I came up with this one too. If the wiseman had said "Kill your camels, then the one whose camel dies first will win." Then they don't even have to go to the distant city, just head back home, without the loser murdering the victor of course.

This isn't meant to be directed at Coquinas post, I realise you were talking about the show of force being enough to stop the bullies but I was thinking what happens if those retaliating escalated their behaviour against the bullies and used violence against them when they repeat offended a few days later?? Since these bullies are stupid enough to adopt the behaviour in the first place would they be clever enough to get the message the first time. How many times do we all have to be told to severely change our ways or else before it finally sinks in that we do have to change our ways?? IOWords, how easy would it be for the good kids to change into being bullies?? They wouldn't want to, just as the bullies wouldn't want to. Of those bullies there'll be a number of them who are used to be being beaten up by bigger bullies. So ganging up on them and enacting violent revenge will only serve to get those bullies to pick the retaliators off one by one in an even more violent way than before... You'd fix some of them but probably not all of them. You could try a two pronged attack and get the remaining bullies by using mental torture, find out their psychological weak spots and hit them there but that only leaves the same problem, some of those bullies will be used to that too. Then those pick off the retaliators again.. Now you've got to find the remaining bullies and why they're still bullies and a method of getting them to stop and if you don't get all the remaining bullies to stop you're in for a 3rd beating.. Then somewhere along the lines you risk the chance of ending up in a gang warfare situation. Because what happens when the bullies gang up on the retaliators and start picking them off when they're alone?? So now you've got two gangs, granted one is on the side of justice but power corrupts, how long before they start picking on others?? First they start defending the younger kids by getting the younger bullies but they'll start adopting the attitude of "Let me past you in the lunch queue because I stick up for you!!" and then that becomes "Give me your dinner money because I've forgot mine and I do stick up for you!!" and then just "Give me your dinner money!!" I know that's a bleak outlook but it's a plausible one. Wouldn't it be safer for the adults to sort them out so the kids don't even have a chance of any of that happening?? It is about time bullying was taken more seriously. Think about this!! If you went into a school full of kids right now and watched their behaviour, don't you think you could spot the bullies and those who were being bullied?? I'm pretty damn certain I could pick out almost all the victims and then through watching them find out who's responsible for them being victims. So why the f#%! didn't my teachers spot that I was a victim or the other kids that would also obviously be victims to me today?? Because back then it should have been blatently obvious to those teachers who were victims, right?? The fat kids or the shy kids, you'd spot those kids in a room straight away and wonder why they were like that and think "Hey!! Fat kids get picked on and I know shy kids must feel oppressed in some way so, I wonder if they're being bullied??" I'm not saying teachers are bad for not enacting on what's blatently obviously a possible problem at least, but there's obviously something wrong with that behaviour if some kids are managing to get bullied so much it's obvious they've got psychological problems or even so much some are comitting suicide. I just hope some teachers read this and if they're sitting there right now thinking "Christ, I know loads of kids like that, maybe I should do more to try and find out why they're like that??" that they do decide to start taking more action. Unless they feel comfortable sitting there letting innocent kids having their lives ruined. Those guys must have a very negative perception of the children they're teaching if they can't care that much about them to help them out.. They must think of kids as cattle that pass through their farm for a while Anyway, rant over.

Yup, it would be better to eat it so they couldn't put it back together though.

The only gravity sensing device I can think of is a spring scale, stick a weight on the spring and see how much force it's pulled to the earth by. Is that how we measure magnetic field strengths?? A gravity measuring device would have to be the same as a magnetic field measuring device, wouldn't it?? Obviously nothing like that could be used to detect the gravitational strengths of stars though..

Speaking of programming, when a dog brings you its lead or sits by the door crying to go out, isn't that a case of the dog programming you?? The tail wagging the dog..

Any string theorists knocking about?? I have this crazy notion that weird things happen with the parts of strings that are in other dimensions. One of those things being that they can record their states throughout time, given that some of those extra dimensions could be incredibly huge only the tip of the iceberg might poke into our dimension. And since all these fundamental particles that make up the universe right now have been here ever since the universe was first formed. One for the crazy files or not??

Wouldn't the Vomit Comet be just as effective and cheaper? If not I'll donate a couple of quid.

A young man tried to elope with a princess, but the king found out and offered him a sporting chance. The king would put two slips of paper in a box, one marked 'DEATH', the other marked 'PRINCESS.' To decide his fate, the young man was to be blindfolded and choose one paper. The young man was told the king would mark both papers 'DEATH' by a friend and he couldn't accuse the king of cheating, but he managed to win the princess despite this. HOW did he do it?

An Arab sheik tells his two sons to race their camels to a distant city to see who will inherit his fortune. The one whose camel is slower will win. The brothers, after wandering aimlessly for days, ask a wise man for advice. After hearing the advice they jump on the camels and race as fast as they can to the city. What does the wise man say?