@SenorElChimpo: You absorb far more (and more dangerous) electromagnetic radiation through lighting (artificial and natural), than through artificial RF and microwave sources. Visible light and its friends are all electromagnetic radiation.

@Agagulba: Eh, no. Incident electromagnetic fields induce charge distributions on conductive surfaces. Changing electromagnetic fields (such as found inside a microwave oven) induce changing charge distributions, which in turn induces current. Any conductive material will experience resistive heating in a microwave…

@RenRen: Photons don't work that way.

I don't know what they'd be paying him, but given HP's performance under Hurd's reign, I bet it'd be a bargain at twice the price.

@the dog: Hurd didn't walk away, he was fired, under circumstances that seemed motivated far more by corporate politics than the financial best interests of the company.

It strikes me that you're going to get far more torque than force, out of a current-carrying tether. And all the solutions that I can think of seem impractical.

@CaptainJack: I imagine the reason is one of precision. The force you get from a tether acting against the earth's magnetic field is likely far too small to be measured on any 'ordinary' accelerometer. It's probably much easier to just track the satellite from the ground; any acceleration will show up as a change in…

@Dacker: It's a satellite. You can get a better measure of its acceleration by monitoring the change in its orbit from the ground, than an on-board accelerometer.

This sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

I was hoping this would be a rebirth of pulsed plasma propulsion (e.g., lightcraft), but it's remarkably boring.

@hackalope: Indeed, perhaps they have collected empirical evidence. But there's no evidence for that in the article either ("no scientific study").

Wait, are they? There are several people who claim that they encourage gambling, but with no suggested mechanism ("somehow encourages"), and no scientific study. So if I am to follow the logic, it goes: "All the carpets in Vegas are horrible and we don't know why. But hey, it's Vegas, so it's probably to encourage…

@Tim Gee: This platform will be in the center of an oil field. There's probably a dozen or so wells surrounding it, feeding it with oil via undersea pipelines. The platform's purpose is likely to collect product from those wells, separate out water and methane, and then transfer the oil to a waiting tanker for…

@MauricioHavok: Which still doesn't make it any more valid. No matter what you believe, it's all just unfounded speculation.

@Sunburn_summer: It's a Douglas Adams quote :).

If we are to take just this statement, and follow it, we can conclude that gravity causes toasters! Which is pretty awesome, but at the same time... no. Even if you provide a space with certain time-evolution behavior, you still have to have some initial conditions. Do these initial conditions cause themselves?

@lpranal: The weak anthropomorphic principle can satisfy your questions, albeit in a remarkably unsatisfying way.

@MauricioHavok: The only catch is, this is a statement of metaphysics, not physics. It sounds like Hawking is stepping into the waters of philosophy. And while Hawking is smart, he's not the only smart man to have pontificated on the subject over the millenia.

@Hugoku: Time is an illusion.

@XJRSS: I don't think the military is the appropriate institution to deal with white collar crime. Unless you want them to bomb Wall Street, which I admit has its appeal...