[karajorma]

That was a cool film too.

[Dark_4ce]

Dark Crystal, Princess Bride and Labyrinth were some of my favorite flicks when I was young. The one word I can say about them was that they were "Magical". As if they werent really movies to me as much as good magical moments. Especially labyrinth. That film made a Bowie fan. Not anymore, but atleast I dont hate his music. Man... Now I gotta go dig up my old VHS and watch em again.

[Carl]

Originally posted by Grey Wolf
Jupiter has quite a bit of mass, and quite a few moons. Probably wouldn't be a good thing.

But as we've explained a bunch of time already, it won't change anything.

[Mongoose]

A few clarifications from a nerdy astronomy student :

Bobbaou, you said that the Moon is "millions" of miles away from the Earth; in fact, the average distance from the Earth to the Moon is around 240,000 miles.

Grey Wolf, it's true that the Moon is moving slowly away from the Earth due to tidal friction on Earth, but the rate it's moving away is so slow, it would take millions of years for anything really noticeable.  As a comparison, that same tidal friction force slowed down Earth's day from an initial time of 5 to 6 hours to the modern-day 24, but it took 4 or 5 billion years to do so.  I'm not entirely positive, but another possibility would be that the Moon and Earth would settle into a stable system, where the same side of the Earth faces the Moon at all times just as the Moon does to Earth right now.  Pluto and Charon are in such an orbital system.  However, I'm not sure if this would happen before the Moon escaped from orbit, seeing as how it's only about 1/80 the mass of the Earth.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.

[Ace]

Uggh, there's a thread like this on another forum. Some of the more... right wing people there are screaming about how dangerous and unethical this is, and how everyone talking about it not being as dangerous as it sounds is full of hubris.

...and when I read my posts there explaining things I'm sounding like Dr. Mackay

[Grey Wolf]

Carl: If it managed to get the cumulative mass of Jupiter, Mars, a few moons, and some asteroids, not to mention the different orbit, would cause some effects due to gravitational pull, with (I'm guessing) could cause some slight changes in the orbits of the surviving planets.

Mongoose: My post was more along the lines of what the effect of a black hole with less mass than the moon, due to the expulsion of matter/energy in the form of Hawking radiation, would have as it would throw off the already slightly unstable spatial relation between Earth and Luna.

[Unknown Target]

It's unethical to make a black hole....?


"AND THOUGH SHALT NOT DISCUSS QUANTUM PHYSICS!"

[Carl]

It is if it's big enough to do anything.

[SKYNET-011]

If it were used as a weapon. BLACK HOLE GUN BABY!

[Carl]

I don't even want to figure out how that would work.

As a weapon, you could put it next to your enemy, and it would eat him, but i doubt you could shoot it out of a gun.

[SKYNET-011]

Hey, a man can dream.

[aldo_14]

[Flipside]

I wouldn't consider it unethical, just, well, a bit daft. As I said before, from a scientific point of view, it's a great breakthrough, but the very very best thing about just about every suspected singularity in the known universe is that it is a very long way away. I like them there. We can't even clone a sodding sheep properly, I certainly wouldn't let us loose with the Quantum Mechanics' equivalent of an angle grinder.

[Grey Wolf]

On a vaguely related note, anyone here see the episode of Dilbert where the Gruntmeister 6000 produced a black hole?

[Carl]

Carl has.

[vyper]

I thought Bob the Bastard destroyed it?

[Deepblue]

Why does this discussion on black holes make me want to buy D3 again and play online???

[Grey Wolf]

They rebuilt it later. I believe the rebuilt one was taken by the trashman and Steven Hawkings.

[Bobboau]

Originally posted by Mongoose
A few clarifications from a nerdy astronomy student :

Bobbaou, you said that the Moon is "millions" of miles away from the Earth; in fact, the average distance from the Earth to the Moon is around 240,000 miles.

you know what i meant ...

don't make me sick my apathy bear on you.

[Mongoose]

Originally posted by Deepblue
Why does this discussion on black holes make me want to buy D3 again and play online???

Maybe because of a little thing called the Blackshark Missile?  Seriously, though, follow up on that impulse; we need all the pilots we can get.

Unless, of course, you're referring to the joke that is Doom 3; in that case, from what I've heard, don't waste your money.