I wonder if the opposite is possible: build a device capable of artificially providing orientation by stimulating the nerves.

Just what we need. More teal and orange.

Towing a rocket out to see in a submarine. Why do I get the feeling this whole endeavor started when their script for the next Bond movie was rejected...

@alek2407: By that argument, Windows is UNIX.

@WilliamTheFifth: It's an equilibrium process though, as the earth gravitationally captures some of the solar wind.

@ifandbut: Gaseous hydrogen does evaporate off into space. But hydrogen likes reacting with other things, so mostly it stays trapped in heavy molecules, like water, and elephants.

@WilliamTheFifth: Solar wind is what kills Mars' atmosphere. Ours is mostly protected by the Earth's magnetic field (which Mars lacks).

@ifandbut: It's called Jeans escape. The temperature of a gas is a function of the root-mean-squared average of the gas molecules' velocity, and the mass of the molecules. Because helium is so light, molecules of helium gas at a given temperature are travelling much faster than almost everything else floating around…

@Dezerus Richardson: Yes, hypothetically you could create helium in a fusion reactor. But it would be a very small amount.

The problem with helium is there's no real helium chemistry, and no helium cycle. It doesn't naturally bond with anything, it just wants to float around as a gas. Our supply is mostly what we find trapped in the same geological formations as natural gas.

Group theory is one of those things that everybody should know, like calculus.

@alek2407: Airplanes do not run UNIX. They typically run special embedded RTOSes. For example, the A380's computers run on an OS called Integrity. Some googling suggests that this aircraft's avionics were running a special airplane OS built by Honeywell.

@LTMP: You don't. This was a maintenance system which would have grounded the airplane for unrelated reasons, had it been working. So it would have prevented the crash... by accident.

The plane crashed because the pilots forgot to set their flaps. They forgot to set their flaps because their preflight had been interrupted. Under normal circumstances, attempting to takeoff without flaps set would would trigger an alarm in the cockpit, but the alarm was disabled because it was on the same circuit…

@Synthfilker: That's just standing. The pressure exerted by someone moving around can be several times that.

@Prostate of Grace: It's more likely a problem with pressure than weight. Ever heard the factoid that a woman in high heels exerts more pressure on the ground than an elephant?

You can easily have a surface that's unsafe to walk on, atop a sound structure. The most obvious example would be a layer of paper spread across a large steel frame. That frame can easily handle heavy loads attached to it, but you wouldn't want to walk across the paper covering. In other words, in real life buildings…

@Bam Margera: I know a lot of people who embraced the 'Microsoft free' route out of anger at their business practices, and flocked to Apple ... 5-10 years ago. Today they're all 'shit, Apple's worse.'

@Bam Margera: Good idea. I'm trying to quite smoking by taking up heroin.

@Twanzio: Since you're trying to be pedantic, pencil leads have never contained actual lead. They've been graphite (or graphite mixture) since their invention.