Isaac Hayes Quits South Park

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phyco126
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Post by phyco126 »

Not really. If you build up speed at a slow enough pace up to light speed, then you would be fine. Of course, stopping would require a bit of slowing down too.

If a train traveling 100 MPH hits you while you where standing still, then it would be VERY messy with you pretty much just exploding everywhere. But if the train hits you while you where going 99.999 MPH, then you'll just trip and get run over by the train. Still messy, but it would just throw you off your balance. :P
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Post by GhaleonOne »

But if the train hits you while you where going 99.999 MPH, then you'll just trip and get run over by the train. Still messy, but it would just throw you off your balance. Razz


No, if you were running 99.999 mph and the train was going 100 mph, you'd have the time, and more importantly, the common sense to jump the friggin' hell out the way.
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Post by Werefrog »

Anyone watch tonight's South Park tonight? It was all about Chef quitting. It was hilarious, but it took things a little too far. I won't spoil it for you unless you really want to know.
Last edited by Werefrog on Thu Mar 23, 2006 3:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by phyco126 »

Well, I was originally going to say that going 99.999 would actually probably allow you to gently climb aboard the engine, depending on it's design. Beside G1, people get hit by trains everyday, even with proper time to get out of the way. So I was just going for an "Austin Powers man gets ran over with a steam roller" joke.
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Post by drumlord »

Going the speed of light wouldn't tear you apart. If you are going through space, there is no friction and nothing there to tear you apart. Given, if you were going the speed of light through a star system, you'd be screwed. But going through empty space, there just isn't anything that could tear you apart.
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Post by Kizyr »

drumlord wrote:Going the speed of light wouldn't tear you apart. If you are going through space, there is no friction and nothing there to tear you apart. Given, if you were going the speed of light through a star system, you'd be screwed. But going through empty space, there just isn't anything that could tear you apart.


No, it really would tear you apart. Think how many G's you'd be pulling at that high a speed.

The only way around it would be to create artificial gravity to pull the opposite direction. That would be the idea behind inertial dampeners at that kind of speed--they'd do just what they sound like, dampen the effect of inertia.

Even then there's probably an upper-bound on how fast we could make an object travel, given all the technology in the world. I still believe that faster-than-light travel is impossible; always has been and always will be. But even near-light speeds would be impossible, given the extra forces that'd have to be counterbalanced. KF
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Post by drumlord »

Kizyr wrote:No, it really would tear you apart. Think how many G's you'd be pulling at that high a speed.

The only way around it would be to create artificial gravity to pull the opposite direction. That would be the idea behind inertial dampeners at that kind of speed--they'd do just what they sound like, dampen the effect of inertia.

Even then there's probably an upper-bound on how fast we could make an object travel, given all the technology in the world. I still believe that faster-than-light travel is impossible; always has been and always will be. But even near-light speeds would be impossible, given the extra forces that'd have to be counterbalanced. KF


If you are flying through nothingness, then you won't feel any G's. You only feel the force of gravity in relation to something else. If you went from 0 to speed of light, your body would probably not do so well. Same thing with going the speed of light and doing a sharp turn. Your body wants to go a certain direction.

But everything you do is in relation to something else. You can't feel g force when it is in relation to nothing. I'm no physics expert of course, but this is how I understand it.

Also, to my knowledge, and keep in mind inertial dampeners don't actually exist ;) the inertial dampeners is to handle the inertia in relation to the ship, because if a ship suddenly speeds up or slows down, your body does not want to go along with it.
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Post by Dragonmaster Lou »

drumlord wrote:
Kizyr wrote:No, it really would tear you apart. Think how many G's you'd be pulling at that high a speed.

The only way around it would be to create artificial gravity to pull the opposite direction. That would be the idea behind inertial dampeners at that kind of speed--they'd do just what they sound like, dampen the effect of inertia.

Even then there's probably an upper-bound on how fast we could make an object travel, given all the technology in the world. I still believe that faster-than-light travel is impossible; always has been and always will be. But even near-light speeds would be impossible, given the extra forces that'd have to be counterbalanced. KF


If you are flying through nothingness, then you won't feel any G's. You only feel the force of gravity in relation to something else. If you went from 0 to speed of light, your body would probably not do so well. Same thing with going the speed of light and doing a sharp turn. Your body wants to go a certain direction.


Actually, Gs aren't necessarily gravity -- though they can "feel" like gravity. Gs are units of acceleration relative to the acceleration due to gravity. An acceration of 1 G would be equal to the acceration you'd feel if you fell off the leaning tower of Piza, 9.8 m/2^2. Doesn't matter if gravity's causing that accleration or if you're in completely empty space and your rocket is accelerating you at 9.8 m/s^2 -- you're still acclerating at 1 G. Oh, and I'm using the vector definition of acceleration here, meaning that a change of direction without a change in linear speed also counts as acceleration.

Now, assuming you're immortal (since this would take insanely long) and could accelerate relatively gently, say at 1 or 2 Gs, to the speed of light (or if we want to be really technical, 99.999999999% of the speed of light), you wouldn't get squished or anything because the squishing is caused by the accleration, not the speed. As long as you don't suddenly speed up, slow down, or make a sharp change in direction, you'll be just fine.

It's like the old line -- it's not falling out of an airplane that kills you, it's the sudden stop when you hit the ground that kills you.
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Post by phyco126 »

My view is simple. Even if you where in the nothingness of space outside the galaxy, if you where going Mach 1 your body would still be going Mach 1. But if the ship suddenly increased to Mach 20, your body would still be going Mach 1 inside the ship, and the ship would run you over in a sense.

Of course, that is speculating that the atmosphere in the ship doesn't act as a buffer, allowing your body to increase to Mach 20 in line with the ship, without any stress (you wouldn't feel it, aside from maybe a slight pressure increase.)

All physics and stuff, which I never did in school, so this is all off my own theories or thoughts of what I know already.

As for going faster than the speed of light, I think it is possible. Currently, our technology can get us to the speed of light, but that would take thousands of years without running into any trouble. Remember, in Star Trek, they arn't technically traveling in space while going in Warp. They are in some sort of other space, allowing them to travel well past the speed of light. It was explained that the warp field allows them to travel in a straight line, without crashing into planets, astroids, and other debree. Then again, warp theory is just that, a theory based on a fictional work.
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Post by Kizyr »

drumlord wrote:Also, to my knowledge, and keep in mind inertial dampeners don't actually exist ;) the inertial dampeners is to handle the inertia in relation to the ship, because if a ship suddenly speeds up or slows down, your body does not want to go along with it.


DM Lou already explained this part more than I need to. But yeah, G's aren't gravity, though they're measured in terms of Earth gravity being 1G. I was thinking of quickly accelerating up to sub-light speeds, in which case, yeah, the G's from the acceleration (taking DM Lou's correction) would kill you.

And yep, inertial dampeners are still science-fiction, as far as I know, just like artificial gravity. But I think we'll need to find ways to control gravity if we're to develop that sort of technology for high-end inertial dampeners.

And photon torpedoes would be cool, too.

DM Lou wrote:Now, assuming you're immortal (since this would take insanely long) and could accelerate relatively gently, say at 1 or 2 Gs, to the speed of light (or if we want to be really technical, 99.999999999% of the speed of light), you wouldn't get squished or anything because the squishing is caused by the accleration, not the speed. As long as you don't suddenly speed up, slow down, or make a sharp change in direction, you'll be just fine.


Yeah, I'll defer to you on that. Acceleration, not speed, then.

phyco wrote:As for going faster than the speed of light, I think it is possible. Currently, our technology can get us to the speed of light, but that would take thousands of years without running into any trouble. Remember, in Star Trek, they arn't technically traveling in space while going in Warp. They are in some sort of other space, allowing them to travel well past the speed of light.


Yeah, subspace was their idea for faster-than-light travel. But, I don't believe subspace, hyperspace, or any of that exists outside of science-fiction.

Warp drives, teleporters / transporters, and sentient robots are three things I believe we'll never even approach within 500 years. That's not to say that the next 500, or even the next 50, years will see some incredible technological achievements; just those three won't be among them. Even if they are, the technology likely won't be practical (e.g., why spend the vast amounts of energy to transport something, when you could much more easily ship it via conventional means?).

I like these kinds of discussions. This is getting to be fun. KF
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Post by phyco126 »

Funny how a topic about south park turning into a physics discussion...

Teleporters, warp drives, or sentient robots eh? Well certainly even if they where possible the technology to make those things happen won't be around for another couple hundred years, easily.

However, we are getting close to some technological breakthroughs that some people said would never happen. Heck, we even managed to produce antimatter (main fuel source in Star Trek.) Fusion power is just around the corner, which if successfull, could really power our stuff safely for many many many years.

As for artificial gravity, I think it's possible to reproduce it, to some extent. Even if it's enough to just barely keep you on the deck of a space station or star ship.
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Post by drumlord »

Kizyr wrote:And yep, inertial dampeners are still science-fiction, as far as I know, just like artificial gravity. But I think we'll need to find ways to control gravity if we're to develop that sort of technology for high-end inertial dampeners.


The Ender series talks about that briefly. Once you have control of gravity, it makes possible a ton of things. Transportation, gravity in ships, weapons, etc. Of course, it's also one of the best series ever written ;)

Kizyr wrote:sentient robots are three things I believe we'll never even approach within 500 years. That's not to say that the next 500, or even the next 50, years will see some incredible technological achievements; just those three won't be among them.

That depends on how you define sentient. Obviously, programs can simulate speech and conversations. And for years, there have been programs that can learn. The most fascinating ones are the ones that can not only speak in natural language, but learn new words and constructs! The technology has a ways to go, but it's amazing. When I was doing AI in my computer science days, I decided to code a natural language program. It was EXTREMELY basic, but already very difficult to do.

But I think by 2010 you'll have programs that you wouldn't be able to tell are human or not by IMing them. Whether that meets your definition of sentience is a different story.

I think the most important difference between a human's "intelligence" and a robot's "artificial intelligence" is that a human desires things. A robot will never desire something unless it is programmed to do so. A robot can only ever simulate human behavior because it simply is not human. It's best not to harp on it though, because understanding the truth about AI can make all those sci-fi evil robot movies a lot less entertaining ;)

Kizyr wrote:I like these kinds of discussions. This is getting to be fun. KF

And just imagine, without scientology this discussion wouldn't have happened ;)
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Post by Dragonmaster Lou »

Kizyr wrote:Yeah, subspace was their idea for faster-than-light travel. But, I don't believe subspace, hyperspace, or any of that exists outside of science-fiction.

Warp drives, teleporters / transporters, and sentient robots are three things I believe we'll never even approach within 500 years. That's not to say that the next 500, or even the next 50, years will see some incredible technological achievements; just those three won't be among them. Even if they are, the technology likely won't be practical (e.g., why spend the vast amounts of energy to transport something, when you could much more easily ship it via conventional means?).


Actually, there are a few at least semi-valid FTL theories out there. The best known one is wormholes -- apparently these are fully legit according to General Relativity -- it's just that no one has discovered a naturally occuring one, nor have they figured out exactly how to create an artificial one (it requires some material to "hold it open" called "exotic matter," but no one knows exactly what "exotic matter" is).

There is also a fairly well renowned Mexican physicist by the name of Miguel Alcubierre who came up with a warp drive that should work given the currently known laws of physics. It is also flawed, however, as it requires far more massive amounts of energy that we know how to produce in order to work. Interestingly, this warp drive kind of works similar to the Star Trek one -- it shrinks space in front of the ship while expanding it behind the ship, meaning that while the space around the ship travels FTL (and carries the ship along with it), the ship itself never exceeds light speed.
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Post by DeathBeforeDenial »

Here's the episode "The Return of Chef" where they pieced bits of Chef's dialogue from pre-existing sound clips.

http://www.scientomogy.com/chef_returns ... park_1.php

The messsage in the end is beautiful BTW.

And an obvious poke at Scientology for all 25 minutes.

Warning, some naughty language, but nothing beyond what is normally on South Park.

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