The Dragon of the Eastern Sea
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Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you
Because the momentum and energy of the two balls are equal but with opposite sign for each ball. Thus the net energy and momentum will always be 0 no matter how fast they are - so as long as they have exactly the same mass but with opposite sign.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
The Dragon of the Eastern Sea
No, I get the math just fine
but
what does that look like
Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you
ππ©π―ππ°π
π‘π
Like one mass is an axe wielding maniac. 
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
The negative ball chasing after the positive ball.
I'm a bit confused by one implication of negative mass matter. For two particles of negative mass, the strong interaction would be repulsive, instead of attractive. That means negative mass quarks couldn't combine to form hadrons. However, quarks cannot exist in isolation
... What gives?
edited 19th Apr '17 1:40:43 PM by Aetol
Worldbuilding is fun, writing is a chore
Well, for starters the "confinement" is because of the attractive force. If the force is not attracting, confinement may not apply.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Laugh and grow dank!
Recent talk on the possible discovery of "negative mass" has led me to go on a bit of a google binge trying to read up on the subject, and during this I happened to stumble upon a video that I think you all might be interested in.
This is footage of the 2016 Breakthrough Propulsion Workshop- very recent- in which Professor Martin Tajmar discusses some of his thoughts on negative mass and it's potential to enable the creation of a FTL propulsion system/"Warp Drive". Some of the terms from the recent rubidium atom experiment shows up in his talk, I believe- "effective negative mass" among them.
The relevant section starts 7:00 minutes in.
I have a considerable interest in this subject myself, for fairly obvious reasons. As such, I'd be edified if I could encourage as much discussion of this in the thread as possible.
edited 24th Apr '17 6:08:42 AM by Gault
yey
So quarks are weird, and I don't understand the strong force enough to tell how they would behave.
On the other hand, negative-mass electrons... they would gather (same-sign charges attract when mass is negative) and, I suppose, form singularities. Electric black hole, in other words. Any positive-mass matter would have its negative and positive particles ripped from each other, the former expelled away and the latter absorbed. Or maybe put in orbit around the singularity, since they would still repulse each other.
Worldbuilding is fun, writing is a chore
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
What would it take to have a human being / human-sized creature be able to shoot streams of water from its mouth with enough force to act as a water jet cutter capable of slicing wood, flesh and steel with ease akin to a hot knife cutting through butter?
Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?
I'm not at all qualified to answer that...
More [This is real?] weirdness: Multiverse: have astronomers found evidence of parallel universes?
The cold spot was first glimpsed by NASAβs WMAP satellite in 2004, and then confirmed by ESAβs Planck mission in 2013. It is supremely puzzling. Most astronomers and cosmologists believe that it is highly unlikely to have been produced by the birth of the universe as it is mathematically difficult for the leading theory β which is called inflation β to explain.
This latest study claims to rule out a last-ditch prosaic explanation: that the cold spot is an optical illusion produced by a lack of intervening galaxies.
One of the studyβs authors, Professor Tom Shanks of Durham University, told the RAS, βWe canβt entirely rule out that the Spot is caused by an unlikely fluctuation explained by the standard [theory of the Big Bang]. But if that isnβt the answer, then there are more exotic explanations. Perhaps the most exciting of these is that the Cold Spot was caused by a collision between our universe and another bubble universe. If further, more detailed, analysis β¦ proves this to be the case then the Cold Spot might be taken as the first evidence for the multiverse.β Advertisement
Heady stuff. But the irony is that if there is a multiverse, scientists will have to accept that the ultimate goal of physics β to explain why our universe is the way it is β could be forever out of reach.
Just as there are an infinite number of similar yet slightly different universes (like the one in which you have written this column not me), there will also be an infinite number in which the basic laws of physics are different.
So, every possible combination of physics is tried out across the multiverse. Inevitably then, by nothing more than blind luck, at least one will have the conditions we see around us today. Itβs just a big old accident, and that hardly seems very satisfying.
It's Official: Time Crystals Are a New State of Matter, And Now We Can Create Them
These things confuse me.
Direct all enquiries to Jamie B Good
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
... Someone please translate that Techno Babble into Layman's Terms.
edited 17th Jun '17 11:03:15 AM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
My poor, aching occipital cortices. I do not have the processing to make those words I recognize make sense together!
Based on that description, it seems like we are talking of a string that oscillates forever.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
... OK, but how did they get around the fact that "oscillating forever" requires either "energy source that lasts forever" or "the object's material does not lose kinetic energy when it's regularly oscillating"?
edited 17th Jun '17 3:34:41 PM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Maybe the original paper is clearer.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
It's mostly over my head but from what I could make out it seems to makes use of the latter, in that the oscillation does not occur by physical movement but by some sort of quantum effect due to entanglement.
Oscillating forever isn't that weird. A frictionless pendulum would oscillate forever. What's novel here is that these "time crystals" oscillate in their lowest state of energy.
Also, yes, the article talks about flip-flopping spins rather than physical oscillation, but I guess the same principles apply.
Worldbuilding is fun, writing is a chore
Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar
So I just finished A Brief History of Time.
I knew I was in for a hard time when it started to get into the relationship between and time and light, and shit, I still really don't understand. I think I kinda got the bit about nothing can go faster than light because infinite mass, infinite energy and stuff, so I guess that's a start. XP
I'm more of a humanities guy so I had a very hard time reading this and I'm pretty sure I didn't understand at least half of the content. That said, I don't regret it because whatever I did understand was pretty damn cool. ![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_up_emoticon_3268.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?
The 2017 Nobel Prize in physics goes to the discovery of gravitational waves
A hundred years ago, Albert Einstein predicted that such a massive collision would distort the very fabric of space and time itself. Like a stone cast into a pond, the cataclysmic disturbance would ripple outward at the speed of light, filling the ocean of the universe with gravitational waves. Einstein, however, never thought it would be possible to detect such waves.
In a massive achievement of human ingenuity and patience, scientists announced in 2016 that they had detected these waves as they slid through the Earth. (Since then, theyβve detected them three more times.) And Tuesday, their effort to record gravitational waves for the first time β a decades-long collaboration involving thousands of scientists around the globe β has been awarded the Nobel Prize in physics.
...
Right now our telescopes can only see objects that emit electromagnetic radiation β visible light, X-rays, gamma rays, and so on. But some objects, like colliding black holes or the smoking gun of the Big Bang, don't emit any electromagnetic radiation. Instead, they emit gravity. And that's why, with gravitational wave astronomy, hard-to-detect objects in the universe β like black holes and neutron stars β may soon come into clearer focus.
βWe now witness the dawn of a new field: gravitational wave astronomy,β Nils MΓ₯rtensson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said at the announcement Tuesday. βThis will teach us about the most violent processes in the universe, and it will lead to new insights into the nature of extreme gravity.β
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
I'm trying to figure out how to make a Horde of Insectoid Aliens pose an existential threat to modern-day Earth's militaries — whether still split into national militaries like RL or united under the banner of an Empowered United Nations — without them possessing advanced technology (mechanical or organic) or Functional Magic note .
With that in mind, where on the Mohs Scale Of Science Fiction Hardness would be having these aliens be capable of producing powerful sounds of such high frequency and intensity that they can generate what amount to "sonic barriers" that modern-day missiles and most other projectiles prove incapable of penetrating, simply because the resulting vibrations would either cause the projectiles' physical structures to rapidly disintegrate under the extreme stress or essentially deflect the projectiles away from their intended targets? And would that be capable of destroying a nuclear warhead-equipped missile mid-flight without setting off the warhead in question?
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
The Dragon of the Eastern Sea
It would take some colossal sound to tear apart metal. The kind of energy it would take to do that would likely tear apart the structure emitting it long before it affects a target at range, since sound dissipates in the medium it travels in.
Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Let's assume there's Applied Phlebotinum in the Insectoid Aliens that protects them from that. Also, just for clarity, it doesn't have to more or less vaporize the incoming missiles; tearing them apart at their seams (i.e. the parts that are welded/screwed together), both inside and outside ones, does the job well enough.
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Oh, bother.
One would presume they have to have some advanced tech if they were able to reach Earth in the first place. Unless you're going the Invading Refugees route, with their ships on their last legs.
Disgusted, but not surprised
Yes, and if you have two balls of equal mass but opposite sign, the negative mass will accelerate towards the positive one thanks to the gravity between the two and the positive one will accelerate away from it, forever. All this without violating either conservation of momentum or conservation of energy.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman