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We'd need a "green" way to power the equipment. Burning diesel to do it would be counter-productive in terms of climate change.

Do you mean this? http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Extras/Einstein_ether.html (I don't see "frozen" or "photons" there.)

Surely you meant "c = Speed of light"? (Yes, it's being squared in "2MG/c²".)

How does that not contradict your own claims about clocks and life span?

Neither is anyone else. The clock doesn't affect time; time dilation affects the clock (and anything else travelling with that clock).

You have it backwards. A fundamental fact of the Universe is that light speed will always be measured to be the same (in a vacuum etc). It follows from this that time (and distance), compared between relatively moving observers, can't be the same. Clocks are just something used to measure time. They do something consistently repeatedly, and this is used to measure. It doesn't matter what the clock is, clocks will all experience the same dilation (when compared between relatively moving observers). A spaceship could have several clocks, one with a wind-up spring, another with a quartz crystal resonating, one atomic clock, a burning candle, and a drop of water into a container ... all would be equally affected by relative motion. Those clocks with their different mechanical and chemical workings are not all coincidentally affected the same way by some mundane classical physics; the relative motion doesn't cause some weird physical effect on the clocks, it's a consequence of the constant speed of light, on time itself. So, your objection "Your body is not a machine wired to a clock, it is organic." is irrelevant. The spaceship pilot is him or herself another one of the clocks on the spaceship! The biological and chemical processes in the pilot are just another thing that is affected by the passage of time. A generation ship (i.e. a colonisation spaceship) could be sent out with a new-born baby on board. When that baby teethes, when they experience puberty, when they experience menopause, when they die, could all be used a milestones of time. They'd "agree" with the on-board clocks (and calendars) of the spaceship, and be just as "time dilated" from the point of view of a relatively moving observer. Relativity, from the constant speed of light, shows that time dilation will occur. There is no specification in relativity of what type of clock is "being dilated", as it's not a mundane physical, chemical or biological effect on the clock.

Speed just doesn't work that way, as was figured out from the consequence of light speed being the same for all observers. The correct way to add speeds is: v3 = ( v1 + v2 ) / ( 1 + ( ( v1 x v2 ) / ( c x c ) ) ) e.g. A sees B moving at v1, B sees C moving at v2, A sees C moving at v3. This may not match your idea of "common sense", but that's because you live in a World where speeds are low. Where v1 and v2 are small compared to c, we get: v3 = ( v1 + v2 ) / ( 1 + ( ( small x small ) / ( c x c ) ) ) v3 = ( v1 + v2 ) / ( 1 + ( very small / very big ) ) v3 = ( v1 + v2 ) / ( 1 + (almost zero ) ) v3 = ( v1 + v2 ) / ( pretty much just 1 ) v3 = pretty much just ( v1 + v2 ) ... i.e. v1 + v2, as you'd expect from "common sense". Someone in a car moving at 100 km/h throws a ball forward at 100 km/h and everyone thinks that ball is moving at pretty much 200 km/h. (It's actually 199.999999 km/h or so, but nobody notices.) On the other hand, where v1 and v2 are closer to c, we get this: v3 = ( v1 + v2 ) / ( 1 + ( ( almost c x almost c ) / ( c x c ) ) ) v3 = ( v1 + v2 ) / ( 1 + ( almost c squared / c squared ) ) v3 = ( v1 + v2 ) / ( 1 + ( almost one ) ) v3 = ( v1 + v2 ) / ( almost 2 ) v3 = pretty much half of ( v1 + v2 ) So say a spaceship going almost c away from Earth has it's own shuttle leave it at almost c. Does earth see the shuttle going nearly twice c? No. Only nearly c. (The spaceship would consider the distance between Earth and the shuttle to be increasing at almost twice c, because from the spaceship point of view Earth is going one way at almost c and the shuttle is going the other way at almost c: but nobody here will see anybody else actually moving faster than c.)

Amazingly, the latest publicised attack is apparently spread though the clicking-on-a-dodgy-link-in-an-email mechanism. (Once inside a network, it then spreads itself, but that's apparently how it first gets in.) ... and, up-to-date patched machines would not have been vulnerable. So there's good advice in the OP on making sure backups exist, but there's also some basic education and procedures that need to be attended to.

Large fonts are proof of something.

Please see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world

Bit of a side point, really, but laser light also spreads more than many expect. e.g. firing a laser at the Moon to determine distance, the laser beam is 6.5 km wide by the time it reaches the Moon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment So at any distance, little of the laser light is going to hit the target probe. (Also, there'd be few choices in direction.)

First done in 1959. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_3 58 years ago.

Seven.

That's the thing, it's relative. From the point of view of A and C, B contracts. It's not just some visual illusion. But according to B, they're their normal length - no change to their stress etc. (According to B it's A and C that contract). The Universe is weird. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length_contraction http://www.rafimoor.com/english/SRE.htm#Length%20Contraction

B Maybe take a step back, and explain what YOU think length contraction is.

It wouldn't make sense for length contraction to work the way you expect, because it's relative. Say A considers B moving at speed X. And C considers B moving at speed Y (different to X). First up: B does not consider their own view of space as contracted (e.g. if their own spaceship was 50 m long before launch, they still think it's 50 m long). Secondly: as X and Y are different, A and C will have different views of the contraction of B.

Was that Pink Floyd?

If I were to guess, I'd think he's trying to make a point about the "balloon analogy" for aspects of expansion of the Universe. (And missing the point that it's an analogy intended to illustrate aspects.)

That light is slowed in a medium isn't speculation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light#In_a_medium As for the "Hmmmmmmm?": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance#Argument_from_incredulity.2FLack_of_imagination

Why do you always put an apostrophe in the word "does"?

As soon as you bring rockets into it, you're really talking about something quite different to the apparent motion of galaxies due to expansion. Please stop mixing your metaphors; please be more precise.

You sneaky sneaky thing, you! Don't you remember:

Mass is one of the factors in terminal velocity. So the weighted ball will get faster than the unweighted ball. (Been trying to find a good worked example. For a start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_velocity#Derivation_for_terminal_velocity )

Not when dropped in air. Air causes drag. Drag is a force. The different masses of the pin pong ball and ping pong ball full of water then makes a difference. ( Extreme example: a parachutist vs a parachutist whose chute didn't open - same mass, different rate of fall. Of course, the two ping pong balls have the same shape, but ... ) https://www.quora.com/If-we-drop-different-weights-from-same-height-which-will-fall-first-to-ground

( ...and on the Moon: )