What happens when it's foggy or overcast?

Nuclear ICBMS > Fighter Jets.

When the pots cool below the Curie temperature, it is at that point that their magnetic fields align with the magnetic field of the Earth. Once you pick up that pot and move it, its magnetic field lines are no longer aligned with those of the Earth. Unless you know exactly how the pots have been moved since they…

If you rotate one of those pots , the direction of its magnetic field would rotate accordingly (like rotating a magnet). I too am curious about how they can glean any useful information from these pots about the magnetic field of the Earth, since presumably the pots have been used (and thus rotated and moved from the…

suddenly CAPTCHA seems much less annoying

You beat me to it

obligatory

ditto

And yet Astatine (At) is rather large on this relative abundance chart.

agreed

it doesn't look at first glance that the carrier has one of those mechanisms that "slingshots" the jet off the runway, which would make a huge difference ... but it's hard to tell from the video.

#2 is nonsensical. The whole idea of the Planck length is that it is the smallest possible unit of distance, and therefore there is no distance "less than the Planck length". It's worth pointing out that the Planck length is still entirely theoretical as humanity's most sensitive tools are orders of magnitude away…

/facepalm for messing up Phillip K. Dick's first name; when I first posted this I had just finished reading some short stories by Peter F. Hamilton, and also was somewhat inebriated - didn't realize my error until someone pointed it out ... doh.

sure I've seen the inbreeding that's occurred between the terms "sci-fi" and "fantasy", but I wasn't expecting it on io9 is all. Your comment demonstrates that you obviously know the difference. I too would say that my favorite genre is sci-fi, even though some of my favorite books are of the fantasy genre - but…

I found myself thinking that exact same thing. Bravo verziehenone!

Didn't mean to engage in stone-throwing, just was feeling a bit bewildered. Thanks for the reply Meredith.

In what universe is Game of Thrones sci-fi!?!? I am a big fan of Tolkein but The Hobbit isn't sci-fi either!

I wouldn't make that assumption; Petit said they don't necessarily know why HDDs break more frequently in space. It could be due to cosmic rays and other sorts of radiation. Are SSDs by their nature any more resistant to cosmic rays than HDDs? They use radiation-hardened stuff on interplanetary probes, but that's…

Wouldn't a mechanism like this allow digital information to travel instantaneously, by switching the light on and off? Can someone explain why this wouldn't work?