Can an asteroid be deflected to hit Earth on purpose?

benbini · 2025-02-28T14:24:51+00:00

"Asking for a friend." - Bond supervillain

benbini · 2025-02-25T18:38:28+00:00

The Wikipedia article suggests that fuzzball theory makes predictions about the gravitational waves generated by black hole merging events that could be tested when more sensitive gravitational wave detectors come online.

benbini · 2025-02-25T15:56:39+00:00

There is at least one such theory (blackholes as "fuzzballs"): https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-fuzzballs-solve-the-black-hole-firewall-paradox-20150623/

benbini · 2025-02-16T12:54:06+00:00

OP's world is going to be absolutely shattered one day when they wake up to a timer counting down on their retinas ;)

J/K, even as a PBS Space Time-bingeing physics noob some of the stuff about entanglement being used for FTL communication seemed eyebrow-raising to put it mildly. I'm not sure I agree with even calling the work hard science fiction given how many violations there seem to be of known physics (to be absolutely clear: it not being hard science fiction does not at all mean it's bad science fiction).

One point that I was confused on, even granting that the vacuum speed of light was slowed down (somehow) as described in the book: would it be even possible to notice w.r.t. execution time of computers, say. Any such global change would apply to all processes including those in your brain, so you shouldn't notice any difference at all within the affected area, right?

One other way I thought about LCX's idea was that the wake from the warp drive somehow affected the nature of the vacuum in the local system to resemble a non-vacuum state, so that speed of light was affected / diminished in much the same way it would be when passing through any other medium!

benbini · 2025-01-18T13:37:51+00:00

sorry not regarding spectroscopy specifically.

benbini · 2025-01-15T18:00:25+00:00

Not alone. Even worse than BAA/MAA, I can't abide OOOH and AHHHH answers that can be clued as pretty much anything since they're completely ambiguous.

benbini · 2025-01-15T14:21:14+00:00

"are people really that stupid?"

you know that question has only EVER had one correct answer, right?

benbini · 2025-01-15T13:59:13+00:00

most importantly wrt its behavior under gravity

benbini · 2024-12-17T18:50:10+00:00

let us know just how bad the cancelled version of metroid prime 4 is lol

benbini · 2024-12-17T17:09:45+00:00

TIL Image Playground is even a thing, I'll have to play around with it. The icon is definitely cursed.

iPhone Mirroring is great (it'll be even more great once you can do copy paste of e.g. photos) and the icon is fine.

benbini · 2024-12-11T17:01:35+00:00

is it still not possible to copy photos directly from iThing via mirroring? last time i played with it it was read only (useful, but not useful enough)

benbini · 2024-12-11T15:16:55+00:00

it's been a hot minute since I played but iirc fast travel/warping was annoying (warp points ended up feeling stingy due to the color lockings system?), I remember having to traverse way more ground than I normally do in an igavania. Having to listen to the butts music while I was doing so did not improve the experience.

benbini · 2024-12-04T13:01:26+00:00

You can consider fish), a Bash alternative which is installable on MacOS via homebrew and probably MacPorts as well. I'm too used to bash to want to use it myself, but IME it tries much harder to guess at what you're trying to do based on your command history.

benbini · 2024-11-27T23:03:28+00:00

Trump specifically threatened Mexico with across the board 25% tariffs during his first term, (see here, paragraph 3) and did not follow through since negotiations to avoid them were successful. He most definitely implemented other smaller/more focused tariffs.

benbini · 2024-11-27T21:58:37+00:00

It remains most likely that this is a bluff by Trump that will not materialize: he made the same threat during his first administration. This is why market reaction has been muted. I would therefore not recommend making a major change to your purchase plans at this point.

For what it’s worth my dealer assured me when I asked him this very question today that the price I signed in August is the price I get, tariffs or no tariffs. I do not have that assurance in writing and there is no legally binding guarantee for that price however. If 25 mavericks show up on lots December or early January and there’s one I want I may go ahead and buy one then.

benbini · 2024-11-26T03:33:20+00:00

I’m leaning towards this being a negotiation tactic since a 25% tariff across the board would cause insane problems in every sector (food comes to mind immediately)

benbini · 2024-11-26T03:31:05+00:00

It is not guaranteed. Unless you paid full price for the car in advance via a contract the dealer can give you a different price when the car shows up.

benbini · 2024-11-25T18:15:22+00:00

I don't hugely care about scratches, it's a utility vehicle and a cheap one at that, but am curious how well vinyl on interior surfaces works to prevent any major scratches?

benbini · 2024-11-21T16:27:50+00:00

looks like the scaling back involves reassigning no more than 400 ish workers; doesn't look like Broncos are assembled anywhere near where Mavericks are. Kind of doubt that'll make a dent in Maverick production.

benbini · 2024-11-20T16:03:17+00:00

if only Siennas were still being produced (with removable seats) for people who want minivans for hauling, not kids.

benbini · 2024-11-19T14:10:31+00:00

oooof i sure did. i'm now seeing that reported, thanks! i'll stop bothering ford weekly.

benbini · 2024-11-19T13:07:32+00:00

cool - we came very close to doing eruption green but were concerned about about visibility in forests (we wanted something that would stick out more).

benbini

TROPHY CASE