mam"MATT"us

Check out this book Worlds Without End: Exploration of Planets Known and Unknown by John S. Lewis Talks about how planets gas and terrestrial planets form. For instance if the Earth was larger it would be hoter and more covered by oceans. Smaller and like Mars. A little short but covers the subject in great detail.

Only attributes that increase the number of times you reproduce, success rate, survival of offspring are evolution. For example there is no evolutionary advantage to living to be 200 if you are for some reason unable to reproduce after say 60.

Wouldn't hear the sound waves through the vacuum of space surrounding the black hole. Maybe if there was an acretion disk spiraling into the black hole the sound waves could travel through that. Then again the acretion disk would probably be revolving too fast.

future weapon - negatively charged strange quark clump. Not sure if it's possible though.

Time travel in the future is easy just travel fast. Into the past is not. Maybe with a worm-hole but I don't think you could go back to before the worm-hole was created. Besides it is debateable if worm-holes are practicle even possible.

I would say that nutshell was okay. It was a little light. It was good when explaing relativity. I guess it is fine for physics intro but there are better books for superstring/m-theory aka Elegant Universe. I still haven't found a "great" quantum book. A shortcut through time was about quantum computers and I would say that did a better job then any other book I've read. I just started 3 Roads to Quantum Gravity good so far. Nutshell's pictures are pretty good though. PS any quantum book recommendations

Either fuel cells or batteries will start being used once oil supplies start to dwindle. The energy to take the hydrogen out of water or some sort of fossil fuel still requires energy from power plants. This reduces pollution in cities and along roads. In the US natural gas will probably be done as a fuel for power plants around the same time as gas stops being used in cars, coal will likely stick around, also nuclear, hydro, solar, other. A big ion engine or nuclear engines would only be used to carry people if there was a big space infrastructure like bases on the moon/mars or for probes going to the outer planets. Chemical rockets aren't that bad for the first manned missions to Mars. Escape pods would only work in earth orbit. THey wouldn't be bad though. Nanotechnology is more of a field. There are still some more foundational advancements before we reap the true benefits of nanotechnology. If there was some new invention that allowed us to cheaply manufacture stuff on the molecular scale that would blow the other 3 out of the water. That would lead to carbon nano-tubes and other carbon structures, these could superconduct and remove heat extremely well this would be a boon for electronics. If molecular machines could be developed that would be a ground breaking advancement too. The aplications and benefits of mature nano-tech would take us very far.

Spectral lines are a pretty easy to see example

I used to subscibe to Discover and Popular Science but I found Scientific American and the articles have much more depth. This months article on quantum gravity was especially interesting.

Different civilizations are likely to have have different base mathmatics. I don't know it could be different beyond that but it might be.