Recent content by Ken Fabian

'We would weigh around 20lbs' But would it be? As a novelty, for a short time maybe. Longer term probably increasingly uncomfortable - stomach in mouth, burp and fart only with care, helmets or padded ceilings recommended indoors, muscle and bone deterioration.

Artificial habitats make conditions just right. Gravity is just one of the potential constraints, but with rotation is readily solvable in space. I suspect planets - where artificial habitats of some sort would very likely be needed anyway - would be more difficult to exploit, not less. A...

No reason to think they are artificial and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - but making them increases the views and clicks without any such requirement. Stone and nickel-iron in very large pieces seem possible and mixed rubble bound together with ice is too. Not sure how...

I think real world experience suggests lots of humans are quite willing to reduce their birthrates and choose small family sizes - and that being economically secure and moderately prosperous with ready availability of contraception can lead to reduced birthrates without any overarching societal...

When several times the mass of an asteroid is needed for reaction mass just to push an asteroid to modest delta-v such as moving around within the solar system requires it doesn't sound feasible for any kind of space travel, let alone interstellar travel. Any excess mass is problematic... even...

Coming in on this a bit late to manage a point by point discussion, but I am of the pessimistic persuasion in this. At the most basic level of motivations I think sufficient 'need' has not been demonstrated. If saving humanity from major disasters were a priority I expect we would start with...

Seems dependent on a big enough 'soup' and a long enough time - My own take on the odds of life originating by chance alone is to look at the scales of things - 1.3 billion cubic kilometres of liquid water (on Earth ie one planet, that has a lot of precursor chemicals in it.) =...

Thinking about this, (without referencing any experts sources) it seems that vacuum is an absolute limit on the suction side but there are no hard limits to the compression. I don't know to what extent a fan can disperse air non-directionally at low velocity rather than make a fast stream of air

Ground based lasers fired up the butt, to superheat air or vaporise an onboard (non-flammable) propellant is another hypothetical launch method. I seem to recall that being used in a novel by Donald Kingsbury, along with an orbital rail gun style 'station' that could capture them and relaunch...

There is ongoing evaluation of batteries with grid forming inverters for providing synthetic inertia; Tesla Motors Australia (that does Tesla batteries) has been urging more use of batteries with GFI's for system strength and inertia, as well as support for a specific market ie payment for such...

The detector response, prior to digging it out to see, could have been for something metal - it has nickel-iron inclusions. Could by why it was high density - felt heavy. Not familiar with them myself so not sure how the detectors react to gold bearing stones with gold as inclusions rather...

Did sound like Einstein found time for 'womanising' and was not monagamous. I don't relate well to/with religious fanatics. I can imagine having cordial conversation with Einstein. Not with Newton.

Since the question asks 'favorite' rather than greatest contribution or significance to science I have to say Herr Einstein. A nice guy, apparently approachable and helpful to students, colleagues and the ordinary person. A bit irresponsible when it came to women and marital relationships...

I've had a recent resurgence of appreciation for Yes and just bought a package of 5 cd's covering the period after I'd lost track of their releases. Was listening to them as this topic came up. For all that I like Yes musically, a lot, I've never been as impressed by their lyrics - close to the...

Glad Pinball put up some Yes. Not to everyone's taste but they've been a favorite of mine. The late Chris Squire is my all time favorite bass player - as often as not playing it as a 'lead' instrument as a rhythm one; in his hands that distinction broke down. He took it places and gave it...