[Tycho?]

Either I thought this argument up on my own or I just read it somewhere and forgot where I read it. But yes, this is my main argument for the "no" answer. However, just because something does not seem to make logical sense does not mean that its not true, particularly in the strange world of relativity. Perhaps an object can actually appear to be a black hole in one frame but not in others. So, yet again I am not getting much in the way of deffinative answers. We have an object moving very close to c. Would its gravitational pull on other objects be greater than it was while it was at rest, would it be the same, or some other answer?

As far as I know no antimatter is emitted from the sun, I dont see how it would be since it would have to be created apart from any mater for it to make it away from the sun. Then if you captured it in a magnetic field you would also caputure all the normal matter charged particles of which there are many..... So no, it would not be worth it.

Here is a question I've posted on here and other forums before. I'll keep asking until I get one of the answers enough that I feel I can trust it. Ok, you accelerate a massive body to a high percentage of c. Its relativistic mass grows accordingly. Does this added mass/energy exert an extra gravitational influence on other bodies? All I'm looking for is a yes or no here. I've recieved both answers in the past, and have had both explained to me. If you know of an authoritative source that specifically states the answer, that would be useful too.

Haha, thats a pretty good line. edit: Holy **** you're actually serious!? I thought that was a joke about ID being too "complex"! Man thats exactly the kind of thing I would say sarcasticly. Man thats..... just sad. People try and say things that are blatantly false and the response is "oh, too complex for you". Funny.

No, space is just space, empty stuff. For information on these particles, http://www.wikipedia.com will help you out.

I am highly skeptical of that. But I am more skeptical of your 0 post count. Whats up with that?

This doesn't sound so much "cool" as "homework".

Instead of a conveyer belt lets use frictionless ice as an example here. Put a car on this frictionless ice. It will not move, no matter how quickly or how slowly you spin the tires. Without friction, the car will not move forward. This would be the same with a conveyer belt that negates the speed of the wheel; car remains stationary. But what happens when you have a rocket car on frictionless ice? The wheels and the ice dont matter, the rocket is propelling itself forward independantly. This is the same as if it were on the conveyer. How fast the wheels are moving does not matter, the jet or plane or whatever will move forward because it is pushing itself through the air.

Hasn't there been more than one experiment to determine that gravity does indeed seem to propegate at c? One was observing the collapse of a binary neutron star system, I dont remember what the other one was.

Interestingly that site is referenced on the wikipedia article. In the discussion for that page, someone says "As per Plasma (physics), a body of gas can be considered a plasma if any "significant" fraction of the gas molecules are ionized, even if that fraction is very low (1% or less)." Although he doesn't appear to provide a good source for that. The mystery continues.

Uh, try looking gravity up somewhere. You have some major misconceptions about how gravity works and it would take a lot of time and effort to set you straight. Why would gravity be considered negative? Why would the strength of the force have anything to do with its speed? The sun and planets DO orbit eachother, its just because the sun is so massive it doesn't really look like it. Gravity has a fixed force at a given distance. So you need to look at gravity, and newtons laws at the very least. Find a highschool physics website or something, it should help.

From that wikipedia article. Basically black holes are gravitationally powerful, and these gravitational effects are concentrated enough that they can be observed via their influence on light (gravitational lensing) or their influence on matter near them (one would observe matter orbiting what seems to be nothing). These are not observed in large enough quantities to account for Dark matter. Dark matter seems to be more uniform. Read more of that article for current ideas on what dark matter may actually be.

So light can cause direct heating then? Does this apply to all wavelenghts of EM radiation?

Ok, for quite some time I've been trying to learn about how EM radiation is emitted/absorbed. Finding details on this is actually surprisingly difficult for some reason, but thats not why I'm here. If you have a black piece of fabric out on a sunny day it will get warm, warmer than a piece of white fabric that is otherwise the same. I THINK this is why: black means most of the visible light hitting it is being absorbed, everyone knows this. So this excites the atoms/molecules. I think the warming effect is caused by the excited particles emitting radiation in the infrared spectrum, instead of the visible one. Is this correct? Or can the light directly cause movement on the molecular scale, which would cause the heat?

Ion engines are extremely efficient but provide only a small amount of thrust. A Bussard ramjet would work by collecting intersteller hydrogen with a powerful magnetic field. Space isn't totally empty, even between starts. There is about 1 hydrogen atom per cubic meter, on average. Which isn't a lot. So the ramjet projects this magnetic field to collect the hydrogen, so it can be fused and used as fuel. Basically getting your fuel while you move. But if you're collecting these atoms, it means they are also slowing you down a bit. The paper I was talking about said the drag caused when collecting the hydrogen would be greater than the thrust gained from fusing the hydrogen. This could be wrong though, I might be thinking of something else.

So is lead actually any better at stoping radio waves than any other metal? I really dont see why it could be, but it seems to be a pretty darn common belief. Well I googled this, and I assume you read it on slashdot. As far as I know, you could make an effective faraday cage out of aluminum foil. Meaning a conductive mesh or surface with no openings; such a thing blocks em waves of certain frequencies (notice the square mesh on microwave doors, its a metal mesh, keeps you from being mircowaved). I of course could be wrong, but I think aluminum should work fine, like most metals would.

Hahahaha, you're planning on producing it huh? If your asking for suggestions on just how to buid it I think saying your going to actually produce them is getting a bit ahead of yourself.

Are you joking? To melt an entire asteroid of any size big enough to live in would take an enourmous amount of energy, our lasers are just not that powerful yet.

Um, arn't they already at 90 degrees in an EM wave?

Yet actual solar energy absorbed also this varies by latitude, and possibly other factors. While I'm sure I could calculte an estimate by myeslf, I'm looking for an authoritative source for the number.

I'm looking for numbers here. Amount of solar energy that is absorbed by the earth per second, hour, year or whatever. More numbers would be best, any would be useful. Reliable sources please. And dont look this up on wikipedia. Their page on orders of magnitude of energy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_%28energy%29 is obviously incorrect, and in fact im looking these up so I can fix the page. Well I keep on finding 1370 W/m^2. However this seems to be solar energy incident on the earth, not energy that is actually absorbed. Comments, anyone?

Cannibis can bring out schizophrenia in people who have not previously displayed symptoms, but are pre-disposed to it. Several drugs can do this, LSD, some others that I can't recal can have similar effects. So if there is a lot of schizophrenia in your family, you probably shouldn't smoke weed.