Thank you both for your informative replies. I've not had any quantum mechanics classes. My wife and I have been quite impressed that the pervasive growth of internet communications tech has led to the ability to ask serious questions of learned people with minimal overhead costs. The fact...
Two Questions about fundamental forces:
1. Gravity is attractive, Electromagnetics is attractive and repulsive, Strong nuclear is attractive only (?) ... Is the weak nuclear force repulsive only ? Wikipedia is _vague_ on this. Also, I'm remembering that gravity increase with the square of...
A good model might be (extemporaneous thoughts here...) a high-tilt planet. These have high heat loads at one end, cold opposite poles, and high winds between equalizing things. I would recommend something - an actual experiment.
* Obtain a lathe.
* Obtain two small sheets of...
Also, spinning at 1 g puts a lot of stress on the framework. i'd suggest generating 1/2 G of force. It's enough to stave off bone loss and serious medical problems. it will also greatly reduce the mass requirement of building it to handle high centripetal forces.
You're describing something different from Clarke's Rama, which I've not read in a long time, but does give ideas.
* Coriolis Effects (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_effect): If you're standing on the inside of a rotating cylinder, and throwing a ball to a person either fore or aft...
Question: Stimulate Beta Decay
As an engineering problem, I'm trying to figure out if it is possible to stimulate beta decay in a nucleus (of, say, a Lithium 7, a relatively stable and abundant isotope). The natural decay path would be to Beryllium, but giving off an electron, we could...
F=MA
M=mass of moon.
A=change in velocity per second.
Thus, to push the moon into the earth, 1 Newton of force applied over nearly infinite time would yield nearly infinite acceleration.
The right question is how much energy would be required. Express this in Newton-meters per...