Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Uranium is a metal

And this particular piece is weapons-grade.


Moving to Mars?

If you are 5-20 years old, in 20 years, you'll be 25-40: just about the right age to start up a new life on Mars. Elon Musk, who made a fortune on Paypal has been building SpaceX, a private space exploration agency. Now he says his goal is to start a colony on mars. He says he'll charge about $500,000. More detail here.

Jan'16: Here are more details - or at least speculation - on the Musk plan, including a Mars-Earth ferrying spaceship, deep sleep for the colonists to reduce consumption during the flight and terraforming assisted by thermonuclear detonations at the poles.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Want to travel at the speed of light?

OK, previous post notwithstanding, you can't. But MIT has a game out where you can see what it would be like to walk at nearly the speed of light. They don't make you walk really fast; instead they make light go really slowly. Popular Science has a description here.



MIT wants people to go beyond. What they are making is the game engine. That is, they do the hard work of the relativistic effects. You can then program your own game in their relativistic world.