If a man walks from the cool pole of Mercury in spacesuit towards the equator, when does he experience total meltdown where temperature will cook him and how quickly does the change occur?
He would die fast, Mercury shows no mercy. Step out from behind the dark craters at the pole, where the cold hangs at minus 170 Celsius, and the…
Do carrier aircraft get washed after every flight to remove salt residue?
There were quite a few times when I was climbing into the jet, getting ready to launch off the pointy end, when the chief would tug on my…
Will people in the EU and Canada really stop buying American goods because of the tariffs?
My son works for a company that sells pumps. These are high end pumps. When Trump first announced the tariffs he received a call from a supplier in…
Why can’t the Earth just all be land?
Earth can be just all land, but we wouldn’t be here. It would be inhospitable to complex life. Surprisingly, though, there is a theory that a planet with…
How long does it take for uranium-235 to be safe?
U235 will never be safe for humans, it is a toxic heavy metal. It can cause damage to the brain, nervous system, kidneys, and other body organs if…
Why do we need an escape velocity to lift a rocket into space? Can’t a rocket just fly up at a constant low speed i.e. 60 mph and eventually reach space?
Well, in theory, you are right. In fact, your imaginary ship doesn’t need to go 60 mph, it could go 1 mph, so long as it could keep…
If you stood 100 meters from a nuclear weapon when it detonated, would you live long enough to realise what was happening?
One of the companies I worked for made test instruments that were used during nuclear tests, starting in the 1950s, to calculate device yields. Some of the instruments…
If a U.S. Navy carrier battle group cannot defeat the Houthis in Yemen, how is it going to defeat China in the South China Sea?
A question barely answerable. Well, if a US Navy carrier battle group cannot defeat the Houthis in Yemen, how is it going to defeat, what, oh, Cuba in…
If I tell you I voted for Trump, what do you think I support? Be brutally honest.
My uncle has an IQ of about 65. He “graduated” high school, aka social promotion. He has immersed himself in Fox News and Rush Limbaugh for 25 years….
Why did NASA not see Atlas (the comet that is roughly 1/2 the size of the Sun that will come within 70 million miles of the Earth) before?
First, let’s get something out of the way: comet C/2019 Y4 (sometimes called ATLAS after the telescopes that found it) is not “half the size of the sun.” The comet’s…