DC’s comics, on the whole, have never been dark and humorless, though. Even Batman. The best - and I realize that’s subjective, but - the best portrayals of Batman over the years have not painted him as a psychopath who will force feed you your own fucking kneecaps. His approach has nearly always been brains first,…

Well, its not entirely clear how far such a system can be optimized. But, lets assume that it runs on large, but not ridiculous, amounts of electricity to generate a useful thrust. In space, electricity can be generated most easily by solar panels, RTG (radio thermal generators, essentially running on the heat…

This is absolutely, positively, completely untrue.

This may be the cozy narrative of science (and history) that we love - that it’s the work of a few lone geniuses who ignored all the haters and forged onward in a solo crusade - but if you drill into any one of those stories, you’ll find an entire field of study and…

No. He wasn’t

New claims, same concerns. A scientist showing up on a forum post declaring, “Nah, we got this.” with no data I can review doesn’t do anything at all to reassure me this is real and not sloppy benchwork.

Speaking as a scientist, I do. I really, really do.

The problem with Shawyer’s theory behind the EM drive is that it doesn’t make any sense to physicists as it violates conservation of momentum.

The EM drive is just a reactionless thruster, about as efficient as a standard ion thruster. It will get us places just as fast as current technology. What’s exciting is that it doesn’t need fuel or reaction mass — just electricity, which we can get from sunlight.

Meh. In defense of, well, the entire physics community, they’re under constant siege by kooks of all stripes. Scientists tend to harsh, authoritative language to bring order to the proceedings. Remember Climategate and how everybody flipped a shit about - GASP - renowned researchers not having kind words for kooks and…

Correct me if I’m wrong, but nobody at NASA or Sawyer himself said anything to the effect this works by folding space. If I understand the randomly capitalized hypothesis of the head researcher right, it’s supposed to work through quantum effects.

I remain a wet-blanket skeptic: we’re basically saying that you can literally fly by yanking yourself up by your own bootstraps. If someone can come up with a reasonable explanation to this that’s backed up by measurements, I’ll be happy.

Did you expect some massive mustache maybe? :D

Except Apple doesn’t dominate any of those markets anymore.... and several of them, they never dominated in the first place.

because of one gif? Seriously? Unsubscribe from a website I’ve been following for years and really enjoy and leave because of one gif in one article? Unsubscribe and leave instead of voice my concerns about something being inappropriate? Seriously?

Mr. Sagan never said “Billions and billions.”

It’s not entirely clear why Sagan was blackballed

To be completely fair, if it wasn’t for a lifetime work of some scientists that were inducted in NAS and whose names (sadly) no one remembers - there would be nothing for Carl Sagan to present.

You should probably stop setting your DVR and read a fucking book.

You seem unable to distinguish one-time events with lifetime achievements, so this conversation is over.

Which would you rather have - a popular tv show and several popular books - or your name in some journal that no one reads?