Science!

its a wonder that it took so long for such a leading light in his field to discover this when it was reported on by the space program  back in the 80's after they put people through the centrifuge .... its why so many theme parks leapt to build their own spinners (so everyone could get tossed around like an astronaut), so people putting their body through centrifugal forces having the same effect isn't exactly "breakthrough science" .....

lying on a rumble block is good for slipped discs, if gyms made giant vibro plates they could offer 5 minute sessions to cure back pain, but doctors prefer to send people off to the mri machine just ot make sure ....

oh and if your kidney stones are slightly larger it really friggin hurts after going on a rollercoster .....

Word of god right here:

 Hard Rock is good for your soul.

No. It means if your hypothisis is wrong you just get to cross it off your list and start over. It doesn't matter if your hypothisis is incorrect, it just gives you a new direction to go in. Expecting your hypothisis to be right all the time could lead you to the dangerous practice of proving your hypothisis right and manufacturing evidence to do so. True science is a process of elimination to get to the truth, not eliminating all evidence that your hypothisis is wrong.

For anyone who is interested, here are the science series on YooToob that I stumbled across a couple of months ago, and have become completely addicted to:





And the first, and best, one i found. Warning, this one will leave your brain a gibbering mess if you watch too many episodes in a short period:

As those who know me are undoubtedly aware, I dig anime. Mobile Suit Gundam most notably.

However this little post will not be detailing the concepts of giant robots and what have you or their viability in war. Instead let's focus on a little little bit of UC Gundam history. January 10th 0079 UC, Operation British. A Zeon plan to drop a depopulated space colony on to Earth and strike the Federation's general military headquarters in South America. So let us for a moment examine the scope and scale of this little scenario and if it actually occurred and what the results would be.

Well, taking the average size of a space colony to be 8 kilometers in diameter, and around 18 in length, that gives us:pi * 3.22 * 36 = 1158.117 cubic kilometers of area.
Now, all of that isn't actually solid, so we need to know the thickness of the colony walls.

Since the space colony glass seems to line up with the ground section, we can assume that they are the same thickness.According to estimates done by Mark Simmons a notable figure in the Western Gundam fandom and franchise around 50 meters. Since the endcaps of a colony are usually unique based on the colony, it is a bit harder to determine, but since they usually appear to be flat on the inside, but rounded on the outside, they are likely hemispheres with the radius of the colony.

This complicates our equations slightly. Assuming two solid hemispheres (Not accurate, but close enough) on the ends of the colony, and the sphere formula 4/3 pi r3:

The Endcaps:4/3 * pi * 3.23 = 137.26 cubic kilometers.

The Cylindrical portion, minus the 6.4 kilometers of length taken up by the spheres and accounting for the hollow center of the colony:
( pi 3.22 - pi 3.152 ) * (36 - 6.4) = 29.52 cubic kilometers of colony wall.

This is significantly less than a solid colony. Adding these two values together gives us the total volume of the solid part of the colony:
166.78 cubic kilometers of colony.

So, assuming the colony wall to be made of steel in a fashion similar to that of a submarine, based on commentary provided by the Gundam Lore Bible and Mark we can guess that the colony walls are around 50% metal, the rest being utility or transport. Given the density of steel, at 8,050 kg/m3 , this equates to:166.78 km3 = 166,780,000,000 meters cubed.

166,780,000,000/2= 83,390,000,000

83,390,000,000 m3 * 8050 kg/m3 = 6.713 * 1014 kilograms of colony.

So, now we have the weight of our object, as well as the size of the part that hits the ground. Now we need velocity. We can easily find the terminal velocity (the fastest speed an object can fall in gravity while being resisted by air) by converting the colony into a sphere, effectively removing the center area. A sphere with radius 3.2 km and weighing 6.713 * 1014 kg would have a density of:3.2 * 1000 = 3,200 m radius

4/3 * pi * 3200 ^ 3 = 137,258,000,000 cubic meters.

Since density is usually calculated in kg/m3, the density of our now-spherical colony is:
6.713 * 1014 kg / 137,258,000,000 m3 = 4890.79 kg/m3 .

The velocity of the colony is unspecified in any material I could find. In space, things don't really slow down, since there's no air. All thrust becomes acceleration, and the colony extends further than most of the atmosphere, the bulk of which is below 16 kilometers. Therefore, you could really choose any value for the speed of the colony. Therefore, we will assume that the colony is traveling at the maximum speed allowed in the generator, or 72 kilometers per second.(Though in truth the colony is likely going far faster)

So, our final calculations, simplified for the generator, are: Spherical mass with radius 3.2 kilometers, weighing 671,300,000,000,000 kg, and traveling at 72 km/s, impacting at 45 degrees to the ground.

Now, plug those values into any impact simulator on the web. The one I used was Impact: Earth, from Purdue university. Now, we'll do some values based on different distances from the impact point: 10 km away: We're inside the crater, which is 183 km wide and 1.42 km deep.




200 km away: We're still inside the fireball, which appears to be 270 times the size of the sun. Everything is burning. The shockwave reaches us 40 seconds after impact, and it feels like a magnitude 10.4 earthquake. The compressed air blows away nearly everything.1000 km away: A couple of buildings will be damaged by the seismic waves, and debris from the crater is still going to fall in our area. The fireball will still be visible, and will be about 40 times the size of the sun. For about an hour after the impact, we're pretty scared, until about 50 minutes in, when the airblast hits us, and destroys our house, and likely us.

5000 km away: We're going to be pretty good. The fireball is below the horizon, and the airblast will no longer do more than shatter windows. The earthquake will cause some disturbance, and will cause cars to rock and some windows to break. However, we are not dead, though anything within a region of 2,800 kilometers to roughly 3,500 of impact will be destroyed. Australia itself is quite evident of this fact because at the point of impact, Sydney Australia there is now a 500 kilometer crater. Or put more simply.

Its fucking ocean now, not land.

In Gundam the explosive force of this blast is loosely noted at 500 megatons, 500 metric tons of TNT detonating at once when this colony plants down and explodes outward. It will not be a world ender, but it will be closer then anything to it since the rock that killed the Dinosaurs.

Hmm that is a strange article because just last year the big deal was that measles was making a comeback because of the 'I shall not inoculate' crowd.

I remember that as well. I thought German Measles (rubella) was the disease making the comeback because of the lack of vaccinations. Probably wrong about that.

Edit: I was wrong about that. There were many cases in 2015. Now there are none. Very fast work, indeed.

From Kidney notes:


It's cooler not to wear underwear
www.kidneynotes.com/2005/04/hilarious-journal-articles-part-3.html

Mr. Bean is good for allergic dermatitis
www.kidneynotes.com/2006/05/hilarious-journal-articles-52-laughter.html

No one has proven that parachutes save lives
www.kidneynotes.com/2006/11/hilarious-journal-articles-65-systemic.html

Yeah, I saw the measles thing and was simultaneously thinking "awesome" and "now no one in California will vaccinate, dammit!"