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[palsch]

I'm pretty sure Science will hire mercenaries to assassinate you with extreme prejudice if you start posting science from Science in a public place.

Haven't just yet.

The piracy levels of scientific articles are astoundingly high and generally just accepted as how things work. In physics, what with the arXiv and every PhD student and post-doc having at least a basic personal page with publication lists (often with pre-prints or even final versions attached), it's just assumed that any paper written will be freely available somewhere. And if it isn't it's assumed a polite request to someone with access (ideally an original author) will result in a copy in your inbox.

There even have been a number of high visibility, high seniority scientists who have blegged (begged on their blog) for a particular obscure paper they don't have access to, often eventually hosting and linking the copy when they write about it.

Huh. My college's network gives me auto-access to that journal.

As the others said, any college worth the letters should give access to the whole PR* family, but that particular paper is open access anyway. All CERN papers went OA a couple of years ago, with the cooperation of all journals they publish in. Even the one Nature Communications paper I'm aware of is open to even plebs like myself without institutional access.

[Scoops Novel]

Whats the word?

[Darvi]

Dammit Novel, I was expecting something relevant! D:<

[ChairmanPoo]

The piracy levels of scientific articles are astoundingly high and generally just accepted as how things work.

so... tangentially related, have you heard of open access scientific publishing?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access

I think it's a neat initiative.

Of course all the cool journals are closed access as of now (barring the "freebies of the month"). But still, here's to hoping it gains momentum.

[Osmosis Jones]

Yeah... I really didn't live up to that last post of mine, did I?

Anyway, tangentially related again, is the sad story of Aaron Swartz, who was facing 50 year jail terms for scraping over a million journals through MIT's subscription. 

[MaximumZero]

Real life tractor beam. http://phys.org/news/2013-01-star-trek-tractor-miniature.html

And...discuss the implications of such a device!

[Osmosis Jones]

Sadly, it's microscale only; If we could make it larger, though...

It would go well with our impellor drives.

Basically, it's a paper from NASA's propulsion labs and talks about two things; one is the Alcubierre style warp drive that a few of you probably heard about (potentially insanely cool, but kind of needs some matter that has never been proven to exist).

The other is a propellant-less thruster that has experimental evidence backing it up AND could potentially one day lead to 35-day Earth-Jupiter transit times.

Yep.

[Euld]

So we have warp drive and impulse drive in the works, excellent.

[USEC_OFFICER]

The other is a propellant-less thruster that has experimental evidence backing it up AND could potentially one day lead to 35-day Earth-Jupiter transit times.

Am I hearing that right? 35 days from Jupiter to Earth? Fudging the numbers gives me... 926841 km an hour. Of course It can be more/less then that depending on the two planets orbits, but damn...

[MaximumZero]

What if we add more power? I mean, is it even remotely feasible to get to Andromeda or Alpha Centauri within a human lifetime? What happens when we stop measuring power output in Megawatts and instead go to Gigawatts? Terawatts? Exawatts? What would we even need to make that leap in power output?

It's an exciting time to be studying SciFi (yes, I have a real college course in SciFi. I'll be bringing this topic up tomorrow.)

[Putnam]

[MaximumZero]

That's what I was trying to hit on, thank you.

[Osmosis Jones]

The other is a propellant-less thruster that has experimental evidence backing it up AND could potentially one day lead to 35-day Earth-Jupiter transit times.

Am I hearing that right? 35 days from Jupiter to Earth? Fudging the numbers gives me... 926841 km an hour. Of course It can be more/less then that depending on the two planets orbits, but damn...

You're thinking about it like it's on Earth (e.g. in an atmosphere); in a vacuum, the only speed limit is light, all other speeds are arbitrary (just depending on your chosen reference frame). What is more important is the rate of acceleration, as basically it just accelerates full tilt to the half way point, flips around, and starts deaccelerating.

What if we add more power? I mean, is it even remotely feasible to get to Andromeda or Alpha Centauri within a human lifetime? What happens when we stop measuring power output in Megawatts and instead go to Gigawatts? Terawatts? Exawatts? What would we even need to make that leap in power output?

It's an exciting time to be studying SciFi (yes, I have a real college course in SciFi. I'll be bringing this topic up tomorrow.)

Basically, our frail human bodies are limited to maybe only 2G's (I'm spitballing, I would appreciate any real studies) of sustained acceleration, tops. That means Andromeda is a biiiiig nope.

Alpha Centauri is possible, if you don't mind waiting a number of decades though; of course, it already was with Project Orion style propulsion (IIRC 70 years was the rough estimate given, using 1950's tech).

Also be sure to actually print off the article; it's pretty out there sounding stuff, so it's handy to be able to point to a source.

Also, remember, this is a PROPELLANT-less drive (much as a light sail would be), not a reactionless one (that's impossible).

[Scelly9]

Basically, our frail human bodies are limited to maybe only 2G's (I'm spitballing, I would appreciate any real studies) of sustained acceleration, tops. That means Andromeda is a biiiiig nope.

Wikipedia disagrees.

Early experiments showed that untrained humans were able to tolerate 17 g eyeballs-in (compared to 12 g eyeballs-out) for several minutes without loss of consciousness or apparent long-term harm.[14] The record for peak experimental horizontal g-force tolerance is held by acceleration pioneer John Stapp, in a series of rocket sled deceleration experiments culminating in a late 1954 test in which he was clocked in a little over a second from a land speed of Mach 0.9. He survived a peak "eyeballs-out" force of 46.2 times the force of gravity, and more than 25 g for 1.1 sec, proving that the human body is capable of this. Stapp lived another 45 years to age 89, but suffered lifelong damage to his vision from this last test.[15]
...
Short term shocks may be caused by impacts, drops, earthquake, or explosion. Shock is a short-term transient excitiation and is often measured as an acceleration. Very short duration shocks of 100 g have been survivable in racing car crashes.[16]

[Osmosis Jones]

Basically, our frail human bodies are limited to maybe only 2G's (I'm spitballing, I would appreciate any real studies) of sustained acceleration, tops. That means Andromeda is a biiiiig nope.

Wikipedia disagrees.

-snop-

Uhhhh, I'm talking years here, not seconds; this is for a slow ship to another star system, and being immobile and crushed at 17g's for the entire trip, even if it was remotely survivable, would be a special kind of hell. I would like to see anyone last even a day at a relatively measly 5g, let alone 50+ years.