Mike vs Stewie

Stewart at SDI · Post by **Stewart at SDI** » 2004-02-10 02:41pm

Dear Darth Wong;

I hearby accept your chalenge and as our first topic use the following data to refute your density argument.

In one of the replies above, a link to a chart was included that showed the density of air Vs. altitude. ( I think it was one of Connor MacCleod's. ) It showed that the atmosphere is less than one millionth as dense at 100Km altitude as at sea level, or more than six orders of magnatude differance. Less than one billionth as dence at 200 Km or between nine and ten orders of magnatude less than sea level. That the curve beguins to flaten out about 130Km thereafter decreasing very slowly untill it bottoms out near 800Km. From this chart, two conclusions could be made.

1. that the density of atmosphere above 200Km is insignificant when compaired to that below 30 Km. In the slowly declinning portion of the graph between +-130 Km and that point were it becomes flat just before 800 Km, It looses +-five orders of magnatude. This sounds like a huge differance, but the fact is that when dealing with insignificant amounts and less significant amounts the differance may be many orders of magnatude, but they are still insignificant. In real numbers at 400 Km the air density is less than 0.000000000012 Kilograms per cubic meter while interplanetary and interstelar space varies greatly depending on location and other factors, but is never less than 0.00000000000001 Kilograms per cubic meter. That is about three orders of magnatude differance but the larger figure is still insignificant when compaired to the density of the vaporised asteroid which acording to standard formula would be about 1.2 kilograms per cubic meter, (= sea level) after 298.8 M. radius of expansion, or eleven orders of magnatude greater than the surrounding medium.

2. The density of the air at 400 Km altitude is well into the insignificant portion of the curv. The KH-11 reconassence satilite is routeenly lowered from it's typical 500 Km orbit to as low as 130Km when they want a close look at something in particular. This is not done often as it uses a lot of fuel to regain the normal operational altitude. The satilite can only stay there for less than a week before the "atmospheric drag" causes too much degridation of the orbit before the onboard fuel is not sufficiant to regain it's normal hight.

That the Arora Borialis is visable to the naked eye at densities more than three orders of magnatude less than the air at 400Km at "temperatures of 1,200 to 1,500K should be proof that the effects seen have nothing to do with density at these levels of atmosphere. At 2,000 K the mythical 20-25M, 32,000 ton asteroid would have to expand to a radius of 3*10 to the 13th Kilometers just to equal the density of the Arora, but would still be 5-800K hotter, assuming 2,000K to start, and be just as visable.

If the gas from the vaporisation were to expand at any significant speed in excess of a few hundred Km/S, it's kinettic heat of motion would be millions of degrees not thousands. The rate of expansion is porportional to it's temperature. The argument that density would be a significant factor is planely false on it's face value, since we know that ionised gas is clearly visable to the eye at densities much lower than that in question. The effects of that and other detonations well above any significant portion of the atmosphere all lasted many seconds, precluding any relationship to the event depicted on screen. Remember that the bomb debries them selves must expand to many miles (dozzens) in diamiter to lower the density to equal that of the "atmosphere" around it.

Finnaly, all of the above does not coincide with the evidence on film. The explosion clearly lasts 8-10 fraims. Beguins with an apperant change in texture and or albedo, but no blinding flash of light, turns into a small, 2-4 times the size of the origional asteriod, iregular puff of visable smoke that lingers for between .25 and .33 seconds which then fades from view, with out ever assumeing a spherical shape. None of the effects seen on screen are consistant with the release of large quantities of energy. Therefore we must conclude that there was no large quantity of energy released.

This brings us back to the origional statement that I made; That the effects as seen on film can best be explained by the following scenario.

1. An invisable beam hits the asteroid causing shockwave surface effects that change the albedo so that it appears to change collor from brown to white, but without the heat that would be betraied by visable light.

2. A fraction of a second later (1-2 fraims) the visible "bolt" traveling at some minor velosity impacts the target.

3. In the next fraim, the asteroid explodes and is replaced by a small puff of smoke, that developes for one or two more fraims, untill it is 2-3 times as large as the origional asteroid.

4. The smoke fades from view, by getting darker without changing shape, in only one or two fraims.

5. Fragments of the asteroid disperse but most are not visable to the naked eye because of either poor ilumination or failure of the camera to capture the fast moving debries.

6. In some of the sequences depicted, some fragments are visable in the first or second fraim of the explosion trailing wisps of smoke as if they were draging the smoke threw the atmosphere like a conventional black powder blast. ( That we all know it was on film, but is not a fair argument based on the equal suspension of disbelife factor.)

None of the effects depicted on film bear any resemblance to any form of large yeald energy release and can only be explained by much lower levels of energy. That the origional clowd of gas is irregular and appiers to escape in two primary directions would to me at least, show gas venting threw major fractures not vaporisation.

The mass of the origional asteroid would have to expand into a sphere 394M. in diamiter just to reach 1 kilogram per cubic meter density or 14 orders of magnatude higher density than the Arora Borialis, that we can all plainly see with our naked eyes, negates the density argument compleetly. To expand to the same density as the eminently visable Arora, the asteroid would have to expand to 4^13 Km in diamiter. Even at realitivistic velosities, that expansion would take more time that was shown on film and it would be visable for much longer the farther out in space the point of observation was due to lower ambient light conditions.

In any case your argument is defective.

Sincerely, Stewart.

P. S. I would post my degrees but it would obviously not matter to those on the board who like to insult out of hand and make attacks rather than argue the points on thier merrits.

Post by **Ghost Rider** » 2004-02-10 04:32pm

All comments here

Okay for everyone but the two involved in big letters

Post commentary in the link above thread

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-02-10 08:53pm

Stewart from SDI wrote:Dear Darth Wong;

I hearby accept your chalenge and as our first topic use the following data to refute your density argument.

In one of the replies above, a link to a chart was included that showed the density of air Vs. altitude. ( I think it was one of Connor MacCleod's. ) It showed that the atmosphere is less than one millionth as dense at 100Km altitude as at sea level, or more than six orders of magnatude differance. Less than one billionth as dence at 200 Km or between nine and ten orders of magnatude less than sea level. That the curve beguins to flaten out about 130Km thereafter decreasing very slowly untill it bottoms out near 800Km. From this chart, two conclusions could be made.

1. that the density of atmosphere above 200Km is insignificant when compaired to that below 30 Km.

News flash: the Hoth asteroid was not in sea-level atmosphere. It was in interplanetary space.

In the slowly declinning portion of the graph between +-130 Km and that point were it becomes flat just before 800 Km, It looses +-five orders of magnatude. This sounds like a huge differance, but the fact is that when dealing with insignificant amounts and less significant amounts the differance may be many orders of magnatude, but they are still insignificant. In real numbers at 400 Km the air density is less than 0.000000000012 Kilograms per cubic meter while interplanetary and interstelar space varies greatly depending on location and other factors, but is never less than 0.00000000000001 Kilograms per cubic meter.

Please use scientific notation next time. And note that despite your claims of its "insignificant" nature, we can observe the effects of this difference in density: the Aurora Borealis is caused by collisions of solar wind particles with ionosphere particles, but that same solar wind does not visibly interact with interplanetary space. Obviously, this "insignificant" density difference is enough to make a huge difference in visible interactivity with the solar wind, despite your claims to the contrary.

That is about three orders of magnatude differance but the larger figure is still insignificant when compaired to the density of the vaporised asteroid which acording to standard formula would be about 1.2 kilograms per cubic meter, (= sea level) after 298.8 M. radius of expansion, or eleven orders of magnatude greater than the surrounding medium.

So? It will also be expanding without hitting anything, since there's no atmosphere. The solar wind is at millions of K and it doesn't glow until it hits something, fool.

2. The density of the air at 400 Km altitude is well into the insignificant portion of the curv.

Insignificant by whose standard? Yours? And how do you decide that it is insignificant, when it is obviously significant enough to interact visibly with the solar wind and create the Aurora Borealis effect, while interplanetary gas does not?

The KH-11 reconassence satilite is routeenly lowered from it's typical 500 Km orbit to as low as 130Km when they want a close look at something in particular. This is not done often as it uses a lot of fuel to regain the normal operational altitude. The satilite can only stay there for less than a week before the "atmospheric drag" causes too much degridation of the orbit before the onboard fuel is not sufficiant to regain it's normal hight.

Yes, there's less atmospheric drag at 500km than at 130km. Please explain how this substantiates your claim that the Earth's ionosphere density is not significantly different than that of the interplanetary medium, despite measurement showing a difference of three orders of magnitude and observed visible particle interactions between it and the solar wind.

And how does any of this substantiate your claim that the atmosphere is not dense enough to glow visibly when irradiated by the immense energies of a nuclear blast, even though it is dense enough to glow visibly when excited by the relatively weak solar wind?

In case you hadn't noticed, your entire argument is that a 400km nuclear detonation will not interact significantly with the surrounding atmosphere, hence all visible effects must be totally independent of atmospheric interactions. In short, you are claiming that an energy release with billions of times greater intensity than the solar wind will not interact with the Earth's ionosphere.

That the Arora Borialis is visable to the naked eye at densities more than three orders of magnatude less than the air at 400Km at "temperatures of 1,200 to 1,500K should be proof that the effects seen have nothing to do with density at these levels of atmosphere.

Those effects are caused by particle collisions with the solar wind, fool. Not by temperature alone. Just try to use your brain for once in your life. If the Aurora Borealis were caused by the ionosphere's normal temperature alone, then it would always be visible, wouldn't it? I can't believe I actually need to explain this to you.

At 2,000 K the mythical 20-25M, 32,000 ton asteroid would have to expand to a radius of 3*10 to the 13th Kilometers just to equal the density of the Arora, but would still be 5-800K hotter, assuming 2,000K to start, and be just as visable.

Wrong, for two reasons:

Your "halo" will be outside the frame boundary once it expands beyond a radius of roughly 400 metres.
The aurora borealis is not created by the ionosphere's normal temperature of 1200K to 1500K, you imbecile. Otherwise, it would be visible all the time! The glowing effect is created by energy released from collisions of solar wind particles with ionosphere particles

If the gas from the vaporisation were to expand at any significant speed in excess of a few hundred Km/S, it's kinettic heat of motion would be millions of degrees not thousands.

It's amazing how you manage to shoehorn in these arguments which not only ignore the major issue but also waste time on pointless exaggerations. In order to expand beyond the frame boundaries in 1/24 second, your halo need only travel at 9 km/s. Moreover, the solar wind is at millions of K. By your moronic logic in which visible luminosity is directly tied to temperature irrespective of all other conditions, it should be filling up the night sky with its glow.

The rate of expansion is porportional to it's temperature. The argument that density would be a significant factor is planely false on it's face value, since we know that ionised gas is clearly visable to the eye at densities much lower than that in question.

Something which you simply assume to be caused by its temperature rather than any other factor such as particle collisions which cause excitation and subsequent photon emission. Tell me, what do you think causes an electron to emit a photon? Magic? It just figures it's carrying too much energy and decides to dump some for no other reason? Yet again, you demonstrate for the audience why someone with no real scientific background should not attempt to involve himself in scientific debates.

Let me make this very clear for you: density and temperature and particle interactions govern the luminosity of a high-temperature gas. Far from your simpleton's assumption of a one-dimensional relationship to temperature, it is a combination of all three. Yes, believe it or not, science is more complicated than finding a single variable and sticking to it.

The effects of that and other detonations well above any significant portion of the atmosphere all lasted many seconds, precluding any relationship to the event depicted on screen. Remember that the bomb debries them selves must expand to many miles (dozzens) in diamiter to lower the density to equal that of the "atmosphere" around it.

Man, I'd love to see you "analyze" the gases coming out of an oxy-acetylene torch. By your logic, the air exposed to the 3000K flame should be glowing visibly, and for quite a while even after you shut off the valve.

Finnaly, all of the above does not coincide with the evidence on film. The explosion clearly lasts 8-10 fraims. Beguins with an apperant change in texture and or albedo, but no blinding flash of light, turns into a small, 2-4 times the size of the origional asteriod, iregular puff of visable smoke that lingers for between .25 and .33 seconds which then fades from view, with out ever assumeing a spherical shape. None of the effects seen on screen are consistant with the release of large quantities of energy. Therefore we must conclude that there was no large quantity of energy released.

Wrong; none of the effects seen onscreen are consistent with the release of large quantities of energy in Earth's upper atmosphere. Small detail you forgot.

This brings us back to the origional statement that I made; That the effects as seen on film can best be explained by the following scenario.

1. An invisable beam hits the asteroid causing shockwave surface effects that change the albedo so that it appears to change collor from brown to white, but without the heat that would be betraied by visable light.

I guess it didn't occur to you that for a shockwave to traverse a 40m wide asteroid in less than 1/24 second means that it was travelling at nearly 1000 m/s. That's pretty fast for a low-energy shockwave, and in fact, a mechanical shock front that moves at supersonic speed through a solid mass can only indicate extreme high-energy disruption. Besides, your description is bullshit; it does not turn into a dull non-glowing white; it expands and glows brightly enough to saturate the camera, like so:

2. A fraction of a second later (1-2 fraims) the visible "bolt" traveling at some minor velosity impacts the target.

More bullshit. By the next frame, the bolt is already mostly into the asteroid, and much of the asteroid's mass is already gone.

3. In the next fraim, the asteroid explodes and is replaced by a small puff of smoke, that developes for one or two more fraims, untill it is 2-3 times as large as the origional asteroid.
4. The smoke fades from view, by getting darker without changing shape, in only one or two fraims.

More bullshit. This "small puff of smoke" is the expanding gaseous remnant of an asteroid which is already gone. If it is solid fragmentary debris, then it should continue to glow for much longer than that.

5. Fragments of the asteroid disperse but most are not visable to the naked eye because of either poor ilumination ...

So let me get this straight: the entire asteroid is glowing white-hot in frame 2, but 0.2 seconds later in frame 7 it is invisible against the backdrop of space due to "poor illumination?"

And how, pray tell, did these fragments eliminate their energy so quickly?

or failure of the camera to capture the fast moving debries.

So the camera can fail to capture fast-moving debris, but it can't possibly fail to capture fast-moving gases? Your argument gets funnier all the time. OK, let us assume that the debris was accelerated so quickly that it shot out of frame too quickly to be captured by the camera, as per your hypothesis. This means it must have happened between frames, which gives us 1/24 second. This means that it must have been accelerated to around 10 km/s, which ... takes more energy than simply vapourizing it. Sorry, you lose yet again.

6. In some of the sequences depicted, some fragments are visable in the first or second fraim of the explosion trailing wisps of smoke as if they were draging the smoke threw the atmosphere like a conventional black powder blast. ( That we all know it was on film, but is not a fair argument based on the equal suspension of disbelife factor.)

Oh really? Which "fragments" are "trailing wisps of smoke"? I have presented the complete frame sequence here for your viewing pleasure, and guess what: it proves that you're lying.

None of the effects depicted on film bear any resemblance to any form of large yeald energy release and can only be explained by much lower levels of energy. That the origional clowd of gas is irregular and appiers to escape in two primary directions would to me at least, show gas venting threw major fractures not vaporisation.

And how do you explain what happened to the mass of the asteroid, then? According to you, it was barely given enough energy to fracture, and its debris somehow moved away too quickly to be seen, without being given the necessary energy to accelerate to the requisite velocity. Where did it go?

The mass of the origional asteroid would have to expand into a sphere 394M. in diamiter just to reach 1 kilogram per cubic meter density or 14 orders of magnatude higher density than the Arora Borialis, that we can all plainly see with our naked eyes, negates the density argument compleetly.

I like the way you assume that gas luminosity is either 100% density or 100% temperature, not a combination of the two in conjunction with the presence of particle interactions. Nice false-dilemma fallacy, not to mention yet another amusing display of your abject scientific ignorance.

To expand to the same density as the eminently visable Arora, the asteroid would have to expand to 4^13 Km in diamiter. Even at realitivistic velosities, that expansion would take more time that was shown on film and it would be visable for much longer the farther out in space the point of observation was due to lower ambient light conditions.

See above.

In any case your argument is defective.

See above.

Sincerely, Stewart.

P. S. I would post my degrees but it would obviously not matter to those on the board who like to insult out of hand and make attacks rather than argue the points on thier merrits.

*cough*bullshit*cough*

Stewart at SDI · Post by **Stewart at SDI** » 2004-02-12 02:47am

News flash: the Hoth asteroid was not in sea-level atmosphere. It was in interplanetary space.

Why do you think that Sea level has ever had anything to do with my argument?

Why do you think that the density of the Hoth asteroid field is less than that at 400 Km above Earth, since there are huge diferances in the dencity of interplanetary space easily larger than the dencities we are arguing about?

Please use scientific notation next time. And note that despite your claims of its "insignificant" nature, we can observe the effects of this difference in density: the Aurora Borealis is caused by collisions of solar wind particles with ionosphere particles, but that same solar wind does not visibly interact with interplanetary space.

Which interstelar space? Solar wind certainly does interact with some interstelar space just not that much near earth.

Obviously, this "insignificant" density difference is enough to make a huge difference in visible interactivity with the solar wind, despite your claims to the contrary. So? It will also be expanding without hitting anything, since there's no atmosphere. The solar wind is at millions of K and it doesn't glow until it hits something, fool.

Like the residue of an asteroid just vaporised?

Insignificant by whose standard?

I wonder if the 9 to 10 orders of magnatude diferance between a suposidly vaporised asteroid and any value for "inter planetary space" would have any differance in the effect?

And how do you decide that it is insignificant, when it is obviously billions or trillions of times as high dencity as any part of any interplanetary space?

Please explain how this substantiates your claim that the Earth's ionosphere density is not significantly different than that of the interplanetary medium, despite measurement showing a difference of three orders of magnitude and observed visible particle interactions between it and the solar wind.

Do you think that a dencity of 1^-11 to 1^-14 kilos per M^3 is a significant differance between the highest and lowest observed densities for interplanetary space?

And how does any of this substantiate your claim that the atmosphere is not dense enough to glow visibly when irradiated by the immense energies and dencities of a nuclear blast, even though it is dense enough to glow visibly when excited by the relatively weak solar wind?

Why would the vaporisation of an asteroid which would be billions of times dencer than any bomb residue not interact with any particle always presant?

In case you hadn't noticed, your entire argument is that a 400km nuclear detonation will not interact significantly with the surrounding atmosphere, hence all visible effects must be totally independent of atmospheric interactions.

Wrong. My argument has alwas been that the effects would be similar to those witnessed in that shot, regardless of the dencity of interplanetary space.

Why do you think that a vacume dencity of 1 to the -14 kilos per M^3 would change the effects of a energy release equal to one third of a megaton from that of a detonation at 1 to the -11th?

Are you claiming that an energy release with billions of times greater intensity and dencity than the solar wind will not interact with interplanetary space and if so at what dencity will the effects manifest them selves?

Those effects are caused by particle collisions with the solar wind, Not by temperature alone. If the Aurora Borealis were caused by the ionosphere's normal temperature alone, then it would always be visible

Your "halo" will be outside the frame boundary once it expands beyond a radius of roughly 400 metres.

Wrong. The expanding cloud of gas would be moving both directly to and from the point of view for many seconds and should be visable the entire time.

How do you know what the fraim dimentions are, at what distance from the point of view?

It's amazing how you manage to shoehorn in these arguments which not only ignore the major issue but also waste time on pointless exaggerations. In order to expand beyond the frame boundaries in 1/24 second, your halo need only travel at 9 km/s. Moreover, the solar wind is at millions of K. By your moronic logic in which visible luminosity is directly tied to temperature irrespective of all other conditions, it should be filling up the night sky with its glow.

What exagerations?

At 9KM/S the kinetic temperature of the expanding gas would be millions of degrees K. Why would it not be visable regardless of interaction with any interplanetary medium?

I have never claimed that temperature was the only effector. First you raised the dencity issue that gas at 1^-11th was less important than gas at 1^-14th. I claimed that next to the dencity of the asteroid debries the differance was insignificant. Then you raised the temperature question that the asteroid vapor at vaporisation temp and pressure would not glow or other wise be visable at dencities millions of times dencer than the Starfish shot's residue. All I have done is point out the true nature of those opinions.

Yet again, you demonstrate for the audience why someone with no real scientific background should not attempt to involve himself in scientific debates.

What are your scientific credentials?

Let me make this very clear for you: density and temperature and particle interactions govern the luminosity of a high-temperature gas.

If you belive that my origional argument was one dimentional why didn't you raise all three points at first?

If you knew this why did you dispute that those same conditions would prevent the asteroid vapors from glowing visibly?

Man, I'd love to see you "analyze" the gases coming out of an oxy-acetylene torch. By your logic, the air exposed to the 3000K flame should be glowing visibly, and for quite a while even after you shut off the valve.

It does glow and if it heated a million M^3 of air it would glow for minutes not seconds untill it cooled.

Do you disagree with that point too?

Wrong; none of the effects seen onscreen are consistent with the release of large quantities of energy in Earth's upper atmosphere.

Why did you incert the "in the earths atmosphere" coment into my point?

Why did you assume that the speed of sound was less than 1000M/S in any rock?

I've never heard of a speed of sound in rock that low. I thought it was typicaly much higher.

More bullshit. By the next frame, the bolt is already mostly into the asteroid, and much of the asteroid's mass is already gone.

I said one or two fraims so why is your statement above more valid than mine?

Where did the mass go? None of it is visable leaving the vicinity and if it was that energetic, it would certainly be glowing by your own statements and logic.

More bullshit. This "small puff of smoke" is the expanding gaseous remnant of an asteroid which is already gone. If it is solid fragmentary debris, then it should continue to glow for much longer than that.

Wrong again. the small puff of smoke does not expand any appreciatable amount. Therefore it must not be gas at all or it would expand to fill the vacume. But it appiers to shrink in size and just fade from view. This would be consistant with the dust theory I postulated before.

In addition, the cloud you say is gas, is expanding minutely but asymetricaly. Why would it do that in space?

Sorry for erasing part of your reply that I wanted to quote. You know the one where I lied because I said 8-10 fraims, but you only showed 7.

How many differant asteroids were shot by the Star ship in that movie?

How many fraims of film were in each sequince?

Did you count the fraims that were used in the calculations in the "Turbo Laser Comentaries"?

So let me get this straight: the entire asteroid is glowing white-hot in frame 2, but 0.2 seconds later in frame 7 it is invisible against the backdrop of space due to "poor illumination?" And how, pray tell, did these fragments eliminate their energy so quickly?
In my argument I never claimed they were hot at all but meerly fragments of a much smaller yeald explosion. I also claimed that a change in the objects albedo could acount for what we see.

Why did you twist my argument and add your own assumptions to it?

So the camera can fail to capture fast-moving debris, but it can't possibly fail to capture fast-moving gases? Your argument gets funnier all the time. OK, let us assume that the debris was accelerated so quickly that it shot out of frame too quickly to be captured by the camera, as per your hypothesis. This means it must have happened between frames, which gives us 1/24 second. This means that it must have been accelerated to around 10 km/s, which ... takes more energy than simply vapourizing it. Sorry, you lose yet again.
I never claimed that they were accelerated. I just said that they were not cought on film. I also said on an earlier post that the reason had to do with resolution not speed. The fragments are simply to small to be seen at that range. The glowing cloud of gas on the other hand should fill the fraim for many seconds.

Why do you inject you hypothisis into my arguments?

Why did you avoid my idea by setting up a "straw man argument" that I never used?

Again, How far away is the point of view? What is the angle of view? and What is the resolution of the rendering device?. It certainly does not show much detail on the ship close behind.

All of the above questions can be shown to relate to both of our hypothosis and have major effects to both.

What are the specific distances and dimentions that you assume pertain to the film clip you incerted into this debate?

Oh really? Which "fragments" are "trailing wisps of smoke"? I have presented the complete frame sequence here for your viewing pleasure, and guess what: it proves that you're lying.
How does it prove that I am lying?
The gas produced it clearly asymetrical with at least two points that resemble the effects I mentioned. In fact it clearly does more to prove my point than yours, since it does not behave like any cloud of incandesant gas that I or anyone else has ever seen or heard of.

Since I lack the neccessary skills to do the following, would you please greatly enlarge the portion of the picture containing the explosion and the surrounding aria say twice as large as the longest dimention for me? The points that I cite would be abundantly clear to all and in the interest of a fair debate would seem to be a small enough request.

And how do you explain what happened to the mass of the asteroid, then? According to you, it was barely given enough energy to fracture, and its debris somehow moved away too quickly to be seen, without being given the necessary energy to accelerate to the requisite velocity. Where did it go?
The same argument as above. The mass is scatered by the blast. If you have ever watched any quary blasting you would know that even a realitivly small charge as a function of the mass of rock to be shattered, will fracture a very large mass or rock. Some ratio's as high as a million to one or more.

I like the way you assume that gas luminosity is either 100% density or 100% temperature, not a combination of the two in conjunction with the presence of particle interactions. Nice false-dilemma fallacy, not to mention yet another amusing display of your abject scientific ignorance.
I never said that you did. You raised the dencity and temperature points one at a time and I answered them that way.

Why do you claim that the products of vaporisation would not glow when every other example of like fenomonon does?

Why do you claim that the asteroid is glowing at fraim one but cools by fraim three?

What mechanism could cause this sudden loss of temperature since the cloud is clearly visable after the heating and shows no evidence of expansion?

To expand to the same density as the eminently visable Arora, the asteroid would have to expand to 4^13 Km in diamiter. Even at realitivistic velosities, that expansion would take more time that was shown on film and it would be visable for much longer the farther out in space the point of observation was due to lower ambient light conditions.

See above.

See above.
Why did you avoid adressing the points of this parragraph by saying see above?

Were you afraid that they just might make some sence?

P. S. I would post my degrees but it would obviously not matter to those on the board who like to insult out of hand and make attacks rather than argue the points on thier merrits.
*cough*bullshit*cough*

Why do you feel the need for ad hominem attacks against me personaly as opposed to debaiting my arguments on their own merrits?

Again I ask. What are your degrees and qualifications?
I have posted a synopsis of my life for all to see, but I have no clue as to your supposed qualifications. It is only fair that you do the same for me.

Sincerely, Stewart.

P.S. will return on monday or tuesday next week.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-02-12 04:34am

Stewart at SDI wrote:Why do you think that Sea level has ever had anything to do with my argument?

Because you're comparing ionosphere density with sea-level air density. Your red-herring, not mine.

Why do you think that the density of the Hoth asteroid field is less than that at 400 Km above Earth, since there are huge diferances in the dencity of interplanetary space easily larger than the dencities we are arguing about?

Oh really? Where is the density of interplanetary gas three to six orders of magnitude greater than normal?

Which interstelar space? Solar wind certainly does interact with some interstelar space just not that much near earth.

Not VISIBLY, dumb-ass. That's the point.

The solar wind is at millions of K and it doesn't glow until it hits something, fool.
Like the residue of an asteroid just vaporised?

I guess it didn't occur to you that Aurora Borealis only occurs during heightened periods of solar activity, and that under normal conditions, it does not make the ionosphere glow. In fact, it does not make any of the atmosphere glow.

I wonder if the 9 to 10 orders of magnatude diferance between a suposidly vaporised asteroid and any value for "inter planetary space" would have any differance in the effect?

The effect of it not hitting anything? No. An expanding particle field in vacuum will not hit anything. This isn't difficult to understand.

And how do you decide that it is insignificant, when it is obviously billions or trillions of times as high dencity as any part of any interplanetary space?

Of course the asteroid vapour is far denser than interplanetary space. But the whole point is that it's not going to run into any resistance out there! Get it?

Do you think that a dencity of 1^-11 to 1^-14 kilos per M^3 is a significant differance between the highest and lowest observed densities for interplanetary space?

Do you feel that this somehow proves that all kinds of vapours at 2000K always glow visibly for an extended duration?

And how does any of this substantiate your claim that the atmosphere is not dense enough to glow visibly when irradiated by the immense energies and dencities of a nuclear blast, even though it is dense enough to glow visibly when excited by the relatively weak solar wind?
Why would the vaporisation of an asteroid which would be billions of times dencer than any bomb residue not interact with any particle always presant?

When the density is 5 particles per cubic metre? Don't make me laugh. You're saying that the visuals will be identical when you decrease the ambient gas density by three to six orders of magnitude. Justify this claim.

Wrong. My argument has alwas been that the effects would be similar to those witnessed in that shot, regardless of the dencity of interplanetary space.

And WHY would a 3-6 order of magnitude drop in density have no effect on the interaction, dumb-ass?

Why do you think that a vacume dencity of 1 to the -14 kilos per M^3 would change the effects of a energy release equal to one third of a megaton from that of a detonation at 1 to the -11th?

Buy a clue. There are 3-6 orders of magnitude fewer particles to interact with.

Are you claiming that an energy release with billions of times greater intensity and dencity than the solar wind will not interact with interplanetary space and if so at what dencity will the effects manifest them selves?

All other things being equal, you could take this same weapons, detonate it in interplantary space, and interactions will be reduced by 3-6 orders of magnitude at a minimum, because there's that much less gas to interact with. What part of this do you not understand?

Wrong. The expanding cloud of gas would be moving both directly to and from the point of view for many seconds and should be visable the entire time.

Prove it.

How do you know what the fraim dimentions are, at what distance from the point of view?

Compare the size of the asteroid to the size of the frame, dumb-ass.

What exagerations?

At 9KM/S the kinetic temperature of the expanding gas would be millions of degrees K. Why would it not be visable regardless of interaction with any interplanetary medium?

Because gas particles do not always radiate in vacuum, dumb-ass. That's why the solar wind does not glow constantly as it moves through space. There are two specific mechanisms of gas/plasma radiative power: line radiation (electrons dropping to lower energy levels in non-ionized gas) and braking radiation (ionized particles accelerating or decelerating due to inter-particle interactions). If you completely ionized the asteroid, it would not be visible at all. If you vapourize the asteroid and ionize part of it, then small amounts of briefly glowing gas would remain.

BTW, I believe it's more like a few hundred thousand K.

I have never claimed that temperature was the only effector. First you raised the dencity issue that gas at 1^-11th was less important than gas at 1^-14th. I claimed that next to the dencity of the asteroid debries the differance was insignificant.

Which is bullshit. Visible interactions with the ambient gas will be decreased by 3-6 orders of magnitude because there's ... 3-6 orders of magnitude less gas to interact with. What part of this do you not understand?

Then you raised the temperature question that the asteroid vapor at vaporisation temp and pressure would not glow or other wise be visable at dencities millions of times dencer than the Starfish shot's residue. All I have done is point out the true nature of those opinions.

By ignoring the fact that Starfish's residue is both thousands of times hotter and interacting with local gases which are thousands to millions of times denser?

What are your scientific credentials?

Not much; just an engineering degree. What are yours? And back them up, since you have made numerous claims in this thread which defy actual scientific theory such as your assumption that high-velocity particles invariably radiate their kinetic energy away in space.

Let me make this very clear for you: density and temperature and particle interactions govern the luminosity of a high-temperature gas.
If you belive that my origional argument was one dimentional why didn't you raise all three points at first?

If you knew this why did you dispute that those same conditions would prevent the asteroid vapors from glowing visibly?

What the hell are you talking about? When did I dispute that high air density, temperature, and particle interactions would cause a visible glow? I only disputed your moronic claim that any gas at 2000K must glow.

Man, I'd love to see you "analyze" the gases coming out of an oxy-acetylene torch. By your logic, the air exposed to the 3000K flame should be glowing visibly, and for quite a while even after you shut off the valve.
It does glow and if it heated a million M^3 of air it would glow for minutes not seconds untill it cooled.

Do you disagree with that point too?

The air around the flame does not glow VISIBLY, dumb-ass. Can't you read? Everything glows; the ground glows, but you can't see it with the naked eye. As for your exaggerated example of thousands of tons of air, even such a huge volume of gas would not necessarily glow. Not unless it is confined somehow so that braking radiation becomes significant, or its it is non-ionized and in a state of electron excitation, so that line radiation becomes significant. Neither of these assumptions apply to the Hoth asteroid.

Wrong; none of the effects seen onscreen are consistent with the release of large quantities of energy in Earth's upper atmosphere.
Why did you incert the "in the earths atmosphere" coment into my point?

Because it belongs there, dumb-ass.

Why did you assume that the speed of sound was less than 1000M/S in any rock?

I've never heard of a speed of sound in rock that low. I thought it was typicaly much higher.

In a solid contiguous piece of iron, it is several kilometres per second. But what does that have to do with your "soft lumps of talc"? Are you admitting that we're talking about a well-consolidated contiguous object rather than a loose dust agglomeration?

I said one or two fraims so why is your statement above more valid than mine?

I showed that it is less than one frame, dumb-ass.

Where did the mass go? None of it is visable leaving the vicinity and if it was that energetic, it would certainly be glowing by your own statements and logic.

What? I didn't say it would glow visibly; YOU did.

Wrong again. the small puff of smoke does not expand any appreciatable amount. Therefore it must not be gas at all or it would expand to fill the vacume. But it appiers to shrink in size and just fade from view. This would be consistant with the dust theory I postulated before.

More bullshit. This "puff of smoke" happens to be glowing, dumb-ass. Low-temperature dust does not do that. Only high-temperature substances do that, and if it were solid rather than superheated liquid in the process of evapourating, it would continue to glow for quite a while.

In addition, the cloud you say is gas, is expanding minutely but asymetricaly. Why would it do that in space?

It was hit from one side and part of it vapourized first. This isn't that complicated.

Sorry for erasing part of your reply that I wanted to quote. You know the one where I lied because I said 8-10 fraims, but you only showed 7.

How many differant asteroids were shot by the Star ship in that movie?

How many fraims of film were in each sequince?

Did you count the fraims that were used in the calculations in the "Turbo Laser Comentaries"?

I grow tired of your attempts to force me to do more work when I have already provided photographs showing that which you cannot explain: that the asteroid was GLOWING white-hot.

In my argument I never claimed they were hot at all but meerly fragments of a much smaller yeald explosion. I also claimed that a change in the objects albedo could acount for what we see.

Why did you twist my argument and add your own assumptions to it?

"Assumptions?" I have shown photographic proof that the asteroid was glowing white-hot, not just changing colour as per your bullshit claim. And I am not "twisting" your argument, but demanding that you address this FACT in your argument. And a change in albedo does not account for what we see, unless you're about to claim that someone is shining a superbright spotlight on the asteroid and it's just reflecting off, complete with an expanded fuzzy boundary.

I never claimed that they were accelerated. I just said that they were not cought on film.

Then where did they go? What happened to them, since they WERE glowing white-hot just fractions of a second earlier?

I also said on an earlier post that the reason had to do with resolution not speed. The fragments are simply to small to be seen at that range. The glowing cloud of gas on the other hand should fill the fraim for many seconds.

Based on your totally false claim that high-velocity particles must spontaneously shed their kinetic energy in vacuum.

Why do you inject you hypothisis into my arguments?

Observation, not hypothesis. I have produced PROOF that the asteroid glowed white-hot. Deal with it.

Why did you avoid my idea by setting up a "straw man argument" that I never used?

I am not attributing the "white hot" claim to you; I am stating it as a demonstrated FACT thanks to the photographic evidence I have provided, and demanding that you deal with it.

Again, How far away is the point of view? What is the angle of view? and What is the resolution of the rendering device?. It certainly does not show much detail on the ship close behind.

Let me get this straight: I have to answer all of these questions or you win by default? Why?

All of the above questions can be shown to relate to both of our hypothosis and have major effects to both.

Then show this.

What are the specific distances and dimentions that you assume pertain to the film clip you incerted into this debate?

Is it THAT hard to compare the size of an asteroid to the size of the frame it's in?

Oh really? Which "fragments" are "trailing wisps of smoke"? I have presented the complete frame sequence here for your viewing pleasure, and guess what: it proves that you're lying.
How does it prove that I am lying?

By showing that there are no "fragments trailing wisps of smoke", dumb-ass. Solid fragments from a rock which was glowing white-hot just a few frames earlier would still be glowing well after the sequence ended, even if they were tiny.

The gas produced it clearly asymetrical with at least two points that resemble the effects I mentioned. In fact it clearly does more to prove my point than yours, since it does not behave like any cloud of incandesant gas that I or anyone else has ever seen or heard of.

That's because you are basing all of your arguments on atmospheric examples, dumb-ass! How many times do I have to point this out? Do you even know why things glow?

Since I lack the neccessary skills to do the following, would you please greatly enlarge the portion of the picture containing the explosion and the surrounding aria say twice as large as the longest dimention for me? The points that I cite would be abundantly clear to all and in the interest of a fair debate would seem to be a small enough request.

The pictures are more than clear enough already to show that the "smoke" is GLOWING and that the asteroid was WHITE HOT at the moment of impact, neither of which should be the case according to your theory.

The same argument as above. The mass is scatered by the blast. If you have ever watched any quary blasting you would know that even a realitivly small charge as a function of the mass of rock to be shattered, will fracture a very large mass or rock. Some ratio's as high as a million to one or more.

SO WHY CAN'T WE SEE IT? Big fragments of rock would be visible at that range unless they are well below 1/2 metre in size and cold. Yet we see the whole asteroid glowing white-hot just a few fractions of a second before!

I never said that you did. You raised the dencity and temperature points one at a time and I answered them that way.

Wrong. You claimed that the "density argument" was disproved by simply showing other examples of density without regard to particle interactions or temperature.

Why do you claim that the products of vaporisation would not glow when every other example of like fenomonon does?

Because you're simply wrong; the vast majority of space gases do not glow. Although I'll give you this: you have inadvertently shown that my original conservative energy estimates may actually be much too low. The visuals may actually match the effect of an asteroid which is mostly ionized, with only a small amount of non-ionized gas remaining.

Why do you claim that the asteroid is glowing at fraim one but cools by fraim three?

I don't, you idiot. I show that it glows in frame 1, and has obviously turned into vapour by frame 3. The only one who must explain a rapid-cooling hypothesis is you, unless you simply continue to ignore the photographic proof I have provided that the asteroid is glowing white-hot.

What mechanism could cause this sudden loss of temperature since the cloud is clearly visable after the heating and shows no evidence of expansion?

That would be your problem to explain, dumb-ass. I don't need the gas and plasma to cool, but you do need your asteroid "fragments" to cool.

Why did you avoid adressing the points of this parragraph by saying see above?

Because they were already answered above, dumb-ass.

Were you afraid that they just might make some sence?

Don't worry, they didn't.

Why do you feel the need for ad hominem attacks against me personaly as opposed to debaiting my arguments on their own merrits?

Don't accuse me of evading arguments unless you can back it up, asshole. Name one argument which I have avoided here. Do you even know what "ad hominem" means? Or do you realize that your continual references to qualifications are more of an ad hominem than any insult?

Again I ask. What are your degrees and qualifications?

I am a licensed engineer. What are your degrees and qualifications?

I have posted a synopsis of my life for all to see,

No, you have not. You have never stated what degrees you have. You have only made vague statements about the things you have "expertise in" or "experience with", and anyone who's looked at professional resumes knows how much that's worth.

but I have no clue as to your supposed qualifications. It is only fair that you do the same for me.

My qualifications are stated clearly on the website, you idiot. Engineering BASc, University of Waterloo, Class of 1993. Not to mention full licensing. So I ask again: since you keep harping on your qualifications, what is YOUR degree?

Sincerely, Stewart.

You can say you're sincere, but trust me, no one believes you.

Debate summary:

1) You believe that a change in albedo can make something expand and appear to glow white-hot. Never mind the fact that you would actually need a superbright spotlight and a polished surface to reflect it back to the camera.

2) You insist that you can reduce the ambient gas density around a blast by 3-6 orders of magnitude with no effect whatsoever on visual effects.

3) You believe that any gas at 2000K must glow visibly, despite numerous examples of gases which do not glow visibly even at millions of K.

4) You demand my qualifications but you do not provide yours (and don't give me this vague "I have experience with" bullshit).

Stewart at SDI · Post by **Stewart at SDI** » 2004-02-14 10:07pm

Debate summary:

1) You believe that a change in albedo can make something expand and appear to glow white-hot. Never mind the fact that you would actually need a superbright spotlight and a polished surface to reflect it back to the camera.

Not true, the appearant change in brightness could be a function of AGC/auto exposure or image manipulation in the viewing/recording device. You must assume that it is white hot as there is no temperature recording or indicating readout or device shown. So any one claim is as good as an other pending other contradictory evidence. The fact that it is white not bright as evidenced by the lack of artifacts in the optical system goes to proove my point.

It is the behavior of the apparent gas that works against your hypothisis. Why does it not expand in a spherical fassion? If the asteroid were vaporised the resulting gas would expand sphericaly. This clearly does not happen on film. In a vacume, the effect is most pronounced. Where is it? Why do you miss this effect if you have so much back ground in Hi Temp gas?

2) You insist that you can reduce the ambient gas density around a blast by 3-6 orders of magnitude with no effect whatsoever on visual effects.

I never claimed that you could reduce the ambient dencity by 3-6 OoM. You did. I pointed out that at 400 KM alt, the dencity was only 3 OoM more than the lowest possable dencity and that even if it were 3 OoM more it would still be insignificant compaired to the dencity of the asteroid debries, that would be 10-11 OoM greater than the higher figure and 14-17 OoM greater than the lower one.

Once again, the ambient gas above the real atmosphere, ( All Ionized at any alt above 120+- Km. which is why it is called the Ionisphere not atmosphere) is so thin as to be insignificant when compaired to the asteroid residue. It is also so thin that even at 6 OoM higher than the lowest figure from the chart on your site, or as an "absolute" hard vacume, it would still be insignificant compaired to the asteroid residue.

3) You believe that any gas at 2000K must glow visibly, despite numerous examples of gases which do not glow visibly even at millions of K.

If the color temp of that image were corect the gas would be at 6-7,000K not 2,000. But that is not the point. Why would the asteroid residue not glow when it is 10-11 OoM greater density than the examples you cite and would be at a few hundred thousand K by your estimation?

Cite any example were gas at those temp/press and dencity would not glow visably to the naked eye against a dark back ground of space.

4) You demand my qualifications but you do not provide yours (and don't give me this vague "I have experience with" bullshit).

UoNY, Regents Colledge, 1980, from the Eslingen campus at Nelligan Barriks, just outside Stutgart, Federal Republic of Germany. BS in General Science, should do for starters. ( no specialisation but more than a few hours each in physics, electronics and physics,(88 total IIRC) I was just there to find something interesting to do.) I also studied at the Max Plank Instatute for Kern Physik outside Hiedelburg, FRG. In the first case I never attended classes more than once or twice each but passed all the finals(twice, they thought I was cheeting) after reading the various books. In the second it was very interesting so I went more often.

I know how the above "admission" will open myself up to ridicule, but really do not care.

As to the fraim question, you cite that the "vapore" would disperce out of the fraim between exposures and thus not be visable. Why does the gas not expand in your model in all directions? If it did it would certainly still be in the fraim for many seconds.

In the pictures shown, the redish cloud does not disperce. Why not? If it, the asteroid, were vaporised, that cloud should obay the std gas laws and expand also. Why doesn't it do that?

What mechanizm could cause the white hot mater to turn red and fade from view in 5-6 fraims?

In youre own Occums razor article you cite several arguments that would appear to make your hypothisis invalid. Why do you avoid your own logic? How could conventional science explain the film clip you included? I do not think that your explanation can. The turbo laser cronicals seem to be unshure on the mechanizm that might explain it, how does your theory reason better than that?

My theory holds up and can explain exerything without leaps of faith. Once again just to keep the record straight.

1. Invisable beam, may be X-rays, hits asteroid and causes shock effects that disperce a small cloud of white dust/particles of high albedo.

2. Blaster bolt hits asteroid and shatters it, leaving a small redish brown cloud of dust. Indavidual asteroid fragments are to small for the viewing devices resolution and thus appear to be invisable.

3. The dust cloud disperses and fades from view. As dust, it is not bound by gas laws and disperces in a non-sphereical cloud.

Three parts to the equasion. All simple and well understood by current science and technology. I think Occum's Razor would slice this well.

Your theory;

1. Invisable beam hits asteroid and instantly heats it to vaporisation. But for some unknown reason, it does not behave like superheated gas at a dencity 10 OoM higher than a nuclear bomb residue that was visable for many seconds?

2. Bolt impacts white hot cloud of incandesant gas and the asteroid residue vanishes from view between exposures, in a maner inconsistant with observed similar events, that are more alike,(11 OoM) than differant, (3 OoM)?

3. The white hot gas vanishes from view, to be replaced by a small, irregular shaped, redish brown cloud, that also does not behave like any known gas under well known and understood laws?

4. The redish brown cloud fades from view as if it were cooling but this only takes 5-6 fraims of film. The dencity of the abouve cloud is high enough to see but after emerging from a white hot explosion it cools in a fraction of a second, also without acting like any known gas.

Did I get it all right? How would your own Occum's Razor logic aply to the above statements?

I await you reply. Sincerely, Stewart.

Stewart at SDI · Post by **Stewart at SDI** » 2004-02-14 10:41pm

The atmosphere of any planet extends to the point in space were it is no longer a homoginious mixture of all of it's normal un-ionised constituant gases and other compounds.

On Earth, this would be between 120 and +-130 Km in altitude, if I remember corectly. Even at this altitude, satilites can function for limmeted piriods and there is no significant pressure or dencity. (1.2^-9 Kg. per cubic meter)

Above this altitude, only the lighter ionised gases exist in any quantity and depending on local factors could be 6 OoM less. The dencity of intersteller space can vary by the same factor of 6 OoM from it's lowest limmet of 1^-15 Kg. per cubic meter.

As a practicle matter, space ends and the atmosphere beguins when a re-entering craft needs active heat control devices to opperate there for more than a few seconds at orbital speeds. This is typicly less than 120 kilometers of altitude. Some sources claim it's only 75 Km up for aerodynamic vehicals.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-02-18 01:46am

Well, well, well. I didn't bother checking back until today because I took the Valentine's Day weekend off and you said you wouldn't respond until Monday or Tuesday. Imagine my surprise to discover that despite your claims of having "a hot date", you posted your response at 10:00pm on Valentine's Day. I guess Valentine's Day didn't go as well for you as you'd hoped

Stewart at SDI wrote:Not true, the appearant change in brightness could be a function of AGC/auto exposure or image manipulation in the viewing/recording device. You must assume that it is white hot as there is no temperature recording or indicating readout or device shown. So any one claim is as good as an other pending other contradictory evidence. The fact that it is white not bright as evidenced by the lack of artifacts in the optical system goes to proove my point.

Oh of course, so you still insist that the following object is not glowing?

Please provide examples of cameras which make non-luminous objects look like that with no effect on the rest of the image. It would appear that your entire argument is based on the assumption of arbitrary "image manipulation" in the viewing/recording device. As for "lack of artifacts", please state what artifacts you expect to see and why they must be there, along with supporting evidence for your claims. Oh, by the way, what do auto-exposure systems react to? Oh yes, they react to ambient light, so what is causing the AGC system to react so strongly according to your theory? Nice way to disprove the production of light in this process, dumb-ass

It is the behavior of the apparent gas that works against your hypothisis. Why does it not expand in a spherical fassion? If the asteroid were vaporised the resulting gas would expand sphericaly. This clearly does not happen on film. In a vacume, the effect is most pronounced. Where is it? Why do you miss this effect if you have so much back ground in Hi Temp gas?

You honestly don't get it, do you? It is expanding spherically. It's just not visible in the next frame, because there is no surrounding atmosphere to create visible interactions and much of it is probably either ionized or accelerated to many kilometers per second.

And while we're on the subject of spherical fields, why don't we see the expanding field of debris necessitated by your theory, hmm? Your magic cameras which make a cloud of dust look like a white-hot glowing blob must have shut down, eh? And why no comment on the obvious stupidity of your "soft lumps of talc" claim even though metallic starships are shattered upon impact with them?

I never claimed that you could reduce the ambient dencity by 3-6 OoM. You did. I pointed out that at 400 KM alt, the dencity was only 3 OoM more than the lowest possable dencity and that even if it were 3 OoM more it would still be insignificant compaired to the dencity of the asteroid debries, that would be 10-11 OoM greater than the higher figure and 14-17 OoM greater than the lower one.

Once again, the ambient gas above the real atmosphere, ( All Ionized at any alt above 120+- Km. which is why it is called the Ionisphere not atmosphere) is so thin as to be insignificant when compaired to the asteroid residue. It is also so thin that even at 6 OoM higher than the lowest figure from the chart on your site, or as an "absolute" hard vacume, it would still be insignificant compaired to the asteroid residue.

You still don't get it, do you? Of course the asteroid is initially denser than the ionosphere! So what? The ionosphere is far less dense than the asteroid's environment, and we are talking about the interaction of a blast with its environment. What part of this do you not understand? For the umpteenth time, you are comparing apples to oranges when you compare an upper atmospheric blast (yes, it's considered part of the upper atmosphere according to NASA, whose word I will take over yours) to a blast in interplanetary space.

If the color temp of that image were corect the gas would be at 6-7,000K not 2,000. But that is not the point. Why would the asteroid residue not glow when it is 10-11 OoM greater density than the examples you cite and would be at a few hundred thousand K by your estimation?

Cite any example were gas at those temp/press and dencity would not glow visably to the naked eye against a dark back ground of space.

*sigh* you really need me to spell this out for you, don't you? Let's say it has a temperature distribution ranging from a few million K to a few thousand K, with the bulge somewhere in the range of a few hundred thousand K. The majority of the gases would be moving at velocities in excess of 10 km/s. Any EM radiation pulse would largely escape the blast and not interact with the environment in any significant fashion because it is interplanetary space. And by the time the next frame comes up at 24 frames per second, you would be looking at the "hole" in the "halo".

At extreme energies, you wouldn't even need to look at the hole in the halo. Individual particles would be ionized, and thus not glow. Since you obviously do not understand this, let me be the one to explain it to you: particles glow from heat when their electrons drop from outer shells to lower shells and emit a photon in the process. Ionized nuclei and free electrons do not exhibit this behaviour (only braking radiation, and that's not an issue in the absence of confinement), and very high temperature atoms emit photons whose frequency is beyond the visible range.

In short, yes. Very high temperature gases do not necessarily glow. Any more questions, Mr. Expert?

UoNY, Regents Colledge, 1980, from the Eslingen campus at Nelligan Barriks, just outside Stutgart, Federal Republic of Germany. BS in General Science, should do for starters. ( no specialisation but more than a few hours each in physics, electronics and physics,(88 total IIRC) I was just there to find something interesting to do.) I also studied at the Max Plank Instatute for Kern Physik outside Hiedelburg, FRG. In the first case I never attended classes more than once or twice each but passed all the finals(twice, they thought I was cheeting) after reading the various books. In the second it was very interesting so I went more often.

I know how the above "admission" will open myself up to ridicule, but really do not care.

So you're 54 years old and retired from SDI and you got your undergrad degree in "general science" in 1980, when you were 30 years old? You took your sweet time getting that undergrad degree, didn't you? And you passed all of the finals without attending classes, even though you have demonstrated that you don't understand the mechanisms of radiative heat transfer in gases? Does anyone else smell bullshit around here?

As to the fraim question, you cite that the "vapore" would disperce out of the fraim between exposures and thus not be visable. Why does the gas not expand in your model in all directions? If it did it would certainly still be in the fraim for many seconds.

Who said it doesn't? Yet again, I must explain that there just isn't enough gas density in the right temperature range to glow visibly, and there's nothing for it to interact with as it expands.

In the pictures shown, the redish cloud does not disperce. Why not? If it, the asteroid, were vaporised, that cloud should obay the std gas laws and expand also. Why doesn't it do that?

The reddish cloud (which is obviously the tail end of the velocity distribution) does disperse. In case you didn't notice, those frames are only 42 milliseconds apart.

What mechanizm could cause the white hot mater to turn red and fade from view in 5-6 fraims?

None, which is why it's obviously being hurled outwards at great velocity. Hint: when you're trying to win an argument, try not to make the other guy's points for him.

In youre own Occums razor article you cite several arguments that would appear to make your hypothisis invalid. Why do you avoid your own logic? How could conventional science explain the film clip you included? I do not think that your explanation can. The turbo laser cronicals seem to be unshure on the mechanizm that might explain it, how does your theory reason better than that?

"Appeal to ignorance" fallacy. Unanswered questions about turbolaser operation do not automatically favour your theory about what happened to this asteroid.

My theory holds up and can explain exerything without leaps of faith. Once again just to keep the record straight.

1. Invisable beam, may be X-rays, hits asteroid and causes shock effects that disperce a small cloud of white dust/particles of high albedo.

2. Blaster bolt hits asteroid and shatters it, leaving a small redish brown cloud of dust. Indavidual asteroid fragments are to small for the viewing devices resolution and thus appear to be invisable.

3. The dust cloud disperses and fades from view. As dust, it is not bound by gas laws and disperces in a non-sphereical cloud.

Three parts to the equasion. All simple and well understood by current science and technology. I think Occum's Razor would slice this well.

And all of this is totally contingent upon the claim that this object is not glowing:

It's rare that an opponent puts up an argument so weak that one can make it look foolish by simply showing a picture. Thank you.

BTW, do you even know what albedo is? It's just reflectivity, and even solid hard-packed snow (with an albedo approaching 1.0) does not look like the above picture. Never mind what it looks like when it's pulverized into a cloud. Anybody who lives in a snowy environment is quite familiar with one of the highest-albedo substances in existence, and it doesn't look like that at our orbit, never mind going much farther away from the Sun.

Your theory;

1. Invisable beam hits asteroid and instantly heats it to vaporisation. But for some unknown reason, it does not behave like superheated gas at a dencity 10 OoM higher than a nuclear bomb residue that was visable for many seconds?

2. Bolt impacts white hot cloud of incandesant gas and the asteroid residue vanishes from view between exposures, in a maner inconsistant with observed similar events, that are more alike,(11 OoM) than differant, (3 OoM)?

I'm sure all of the readers are quite familiar by now with your refusal to accept that a nuclear detonation in the upper atmosphere need not necessarily look like any and all high-energy events in space.

3. The white hot gas vanishes from view, to be replaced by a small, irregular shaped, redish brown cloud, that also does not behave like any known gas under well known and understood laws?

Except that it does.

4. The redish brown cloud fades from view as if it were cooling but this only takes 5-6 fraims of film. The dencity of the abouve cloud is high enough to see but after emerging from a white hot explosion it cools in a fraction of a second, also without acting like any known gas.

It does not "fade from view"; it flies away. For the umpteenth time, there's nothing in its way, you tin-plated imbecile.

Did I get it all right?

No.

How would your own Occum's Razor logic aply to the above statements?

You haven't got a clue how Occam's Razor works, do you? Occam would point out that my theory correctly accounts for the white-hot glowing appearance of the asteroid upon impact, while yours does not. Hence, Occam's Razor is unnecessary; a theory which contradicts observation can be dismissed before we need it.

The atmosphere of any planet extends to the point in space were it is no longer a homoginious mixture of all of it's normal un-ionised constituant gases and other compounds.

On Earth, this would be between 120 and +-130 Km in altitude, if I remember corectly. Even at this altitude, satilites can function for limmeted piriods and there is no significant pressure or dencity. (1.2^-9 Kg. per cubic meter)

Above this altitude, only the lighter ionised gases exist in any quantity and depending on local factors could be 6 OoM less. The dencity of intersteller space can vary by the same factor of 6 OoM from it's lowest limmet of 1^-15 Kg. per cubic meter.

As a practicle matter, space ends and the atmosphere beguins when a re-entering craft needs active heat control devices to opperate there for more than a few seconds at orbital speeds. This is typicly less than 120 kilometers of altitude. Some sources claim it's only 75 Km up for aerodynamic vehicals.

"Red herring" fallacy. The air density required to threaten the safety of a spacecraft with air friction is far greater than the air density required to produce noticeable interactions with a 1.4 megaton nuclear blast. Try again, foolish one.

Stewart at SDI · Post by **Stewart at SDI** » 2004-02-20 02:46pm

Darth Wong wrote:Imagine my surprise to discover that despite your claims of having "a hot date", you posted your response at 10:00pm on Valentine's Day. I guess Valentine's Day didn't go as well for you as you'd hoped

Yes it did, better than I hade hoped.

wrote:Oh of course, so you still insist that the following object is not glowing? Please provide examples of cameras which make non-luminous objects look like that with no effect on the rest of the image.

I propose to use and ordinary auto exposure 110 camera, photographing an ordinary rubber ball, in ordinary sun light, to duplicate the effects seen.

It would appear that your entire argument is based on the assumption of arbitrary "image manipulation" in the viewing/recording device.

Why do you say this? My arguments are broad based with many facets. The above is simply one possable explanation of the effects seen on film. Why should your apparent lack of photographic knowledge detract from my explanation? I took courses in both still and cini photography and given some time to find them can prove it. Acording to your own rules, it is your job to disprove my theory, just as you state it is mine to do in your's.

As for "lack of artifacts", please state what artifacts you expect to see and why they must be there, along with supporting evidence for your claims. Oh, by the way, what do auto-exposure systems react to? Oh yes, they react to ambient light, so what is causing the AGC system to react so strongly according to your theory? Nice way to disprove the production of light in this process, dumb-ass

When a bright light is transmited threw any lens or system of lenses, minute reflections, the artifacts above, are generated from each surface of each lens. Except at the very center of the optical axis, those reflections are bent farther from the axis by the curvature of the lens(s). They thus appear to form a serries of false images that radiate from the source outward on the radial from the center of the fraim.

The reason that auto exposure systems cause problems for your argument is their inherant time lag. The system see's the dark background of space and opens the iris or increases the exposure time, or both, to adequately render it. (The dark space.) This causes sudenly bright objects, like the flash from the vaporised asteroid, to appear very much brighter than they are. Then the flash of bright light fools the AES into thinking there is more light than there is in the total fraim and it then closes the iris, shortens the exposure time or both and the rest of the picture then goes dark. This causes the starship to appear much darker in porportion to the total light from the flash. In other words, if the flash were very bright, as we would expect from the release of large amounts of energy, then the rest of the fraim would be come very dark. Because the mechanisms for these effects are the same in all fraims we can argue that there is no large release of energy. Read any book on photography.

You honestly don't get it, do you? It is expanding spherically. It's just not visible in the next frame, because there is no surrounding atmosphere to create visible interactions and much of it is probably either ionized or accelerated to many kilometers per second.

It's not the interactions that I seek, but the gas from the asteroid it self. Tens of thousands of tons of incandesant gas, interacting with it self as it expands and sheddind the heat incured durring the vaporisation proccess, irrespective of it's kinetic energy, should be visable for many seconds, no mater how fast it is going tword or away from the camera. Your failure to accept this fact is incredable to my reasoning.

And while we're on the subject of spherical fields, why don't we see the expanding field of debris necessitated by your theory, hmm? Your magic cameras which make a cloud of dust look like a white-hot glowing blob must have shut down, eh?

You have continued to ignore my explanation of this threwout this discussion. You have never assaulted it's assumptions or disputed it's points as stated. The cloud of dust has a significant surface aria in relation to it's mass, but the larger debries do not. Look at your own nanobots arguments to understand this better.

And why no comment on the obvious stupidity of your "soft lumps of talc" claim even though metallic starships are shattered upon impact with them?

Have you ever seen the famous picture, published durring the Star Wars erra, of a aluminium block with a 5" O.D. by 3.5" deep, hole blown in it, that was caused by a one gram lump of lexan? Well, if a piece of plastic the size of a pencil erraser can do that to aluminium armor, then 32,000 tons of asteroid should be able to wreck a ship.

You still don't get it, do you? Of course the asteroid is initially denser than the ionosphere! So what? The ionosphere is far less dense than the asteroid's environment, and we are talking about the interaction of a blast with its environment. What part of this do you not understand?

No I am not. I am talking about the blast it self. The interaction that I cite has nothing to do with the environment, just the asteroid it self is enough to cause the effecxts that are clearly missing from the event as depicted. As I cited before the asteroid debries would have to expand to many millions of kilometers to expand enough to reach the dencity of the upper atmospher little own the dencity of interplanetary space that you cite.

How many asteroids are vaporised in the film sequences shown? In all of those instances, not one event shows the effects that we would expect to see from a blast of the magnatude as your hypothisis requires.

For the umpteenth time, you are comparing apples to oranges when you compare an upper atmospheric blast (yes, it's considered part of the upper atmosphere according to NASA, whose word I will take over yours) to a blast in interplanetary space.

No I am not. It is your duty to show that the interplanetary space in that asteroid field is any less than that were the bomb went off and that it would have any different effects that those seen by tens of thousands in my example.

The dencity of matter in that field is many orders of magnatude higher than the density of interplanetary space as evidenced by the many asteroids very close together as depicted in the film.

*sigh* you really need me to spell this out for you, don't you? Let's say it has a temperature distribution ranging from a few million K to a few thousand K, with the bulge somewhere in the range of a few hundred thousand K. The majority of the gases would be moving at velocities in excess of 10 km/s. Any EM radiation pulse would largely escape the blast and not interact with the environment in any significant fashion because it is interplanetary space. And by the time the next frame comes up at 24 frames per second, you would be looking at the "hole" in the "halo".

You obviously do not understand how movie or vidio cameras work. The time between fraims is insignificant compaired to the exposure time in which the photo was taken. Of the 41.7 ms between fraims, 32ms are the exposure and less than 10ms are the transport time, in a film camera. In vidio cameras there is no transport time and the interfraim time is the scan rate of the vidicon tube or CCD. This time is typicly substancialy less than 1/10th ms.

Therefore, for the events to happen as your hypothisis requres, the asteroid vapore expands only 25% more than it's origional diamiter durring the 32ms exposure and then durring the <10ms interfraim time it must expand to millions of times that size? Then leave no visable trace durring the next 32ms exposure? Right!

At extreme energies, you wouldn't even need to look at the hole in the halo. Individual particles would be ionized, and thus not glow. Since you obviously do not understand this, let me be the one to explain it to you: particles glow from heat when their electrons drop from outer shells to lower shells and emit a photon in the process. Ionized nuclei and free electrons do not exhibit this behaviour (only braking radiation, and that's not an issue in the absence of confinement), and very high temperature atoms emit photons whose frequency is beyond the visible range.

Why would there be residue in the form of the redish brown cloud if the energies were so high? Of the tens of thousands of tons of stuff why would so little of it not glow if it were heated as you say?

In short, yes. Very high temperature gases do not necessarily glow. Any more questions, Mr. Expert?

I am still waiting for any example of the fenominon you describe that ever occured in nature.

So you're 54 years old and retired from SDI and you got your undergrad degree in "general science" in 1980, when you were 30 years old? You took your sweet time getting that undergrad degree, didn't you? And you passed all of the finals without attending classes, even though you have demonstrated that you don't understand the mechanisms of radiative heat transfer in gases? Does anyone else smell bullshit around here?

I needed the promotion points to go with my third child, as I had already maxed out on all other factors in a time of reduction in force that was in effect then. The only avenue open to me was "Civilian Education", where I could add up to 125 points out of 1000 possable. My only other aria that was not maxed out was "Awards and Decorations" only 50 possable, and I had some of those already. (VNS, Purple Heart, Good Conduct(3) and Presidential Unit Citation, asbout 24-25 total IIRC) My high school diploma was worth practicly nothing on the CE scale but a "colledge degree" was worth 75 points, more than enough to boost me over the promotion threshold at that time.

My boss sent me to the Education center because he did not want to loose me to the civilian side of the house. I took the "CLEP" test over lunch that first day and passed my first year of "colledge" over lunch hour. They thought that I was cheating when the scores came back, since no one in the history of the test had ever taken it in less than 6 hours. Durring the next three weeks I audited classes, read books and took exams, all durring the half day off at the ed center that my boss granted. Those 88 hours, plus the thirty from the CLEP test and 26 more given as credit for my MOS skils as certified by my Battalion Commander and the year long Avionics cource that I was Honor Graduate from Ft. Gordon, U.S. Army Signal School, qualified me for a degree in "General Science". When I joined the civilian side of the house six months later and discovered how easy it is to add income to your pocket by adding degrees to your resume, I repeated the process several more times.

Yet again, I must explain that there just isn't enough gas density in the right temperature range to glow visibly, and there's nothing for it to interact with as it expands.

Why not? Tens of thousands of tons of stuff all inonised and not visable but that tinny redish brown cloud. Right again!

The reddish cloud (which is obviously the tail end of the velocity distribution) does disperse. In case you didn't notice, those frames are only 42 milliseconds apart.

Yet it lingers for more than a quarter of a second. At the energies you need for your argument to work, this is clearly not the right or logical explanation. Again why?

None, which is why it's obviously being hurled outwards at great velocity. Hint: when you're trying to win an argument, try not to make the other guy's points for him.

How can it be hurled outwards at great velocity if it's still in the fraim and does not appear to move?

And all of this is totally contingent upon the claim that this object is not glowing:

It's rare that an opponent puts up an argument so weak that one can make it look foolish by simply showing a picture. Thank you.

How does this picture prove your point when it does not show any of the effects that honest people could expect to see from such a large release of energy?

BTW, do you even know what albedo is? It's just reflectivity, and even solid hard-packed snow (with an albedo approaching 1.0) does not look like the above picture. Never mind what it looks like when it's pulverized into a cloud. Anybody who lives in a snowy environment is quite familiar with one of the highest-albedo substances in existence, and it doesn't look like that at our orbit, never mind going much farther away from the Sun.

Not to the human eye but certainly to the camera. I winter in Park City, Utah for 9 of the last 10 years, so I know more than a little bit about how it photographs, which clearly you do not. Again I propose to use a 110 camera to duplicate the image you cite. I will mail the origional negitive and prints to you to prove my point.

I'm sure all of the readers are quite familiar by now with your refusal to accept that a nuclear detonation in the upper atmosphere need not necessarily look like any and all high-energy events in space

Why not?

{quote] You haven't got a clue how Occam's Razor works, do you? Occam would point out that my theory correctly accounts for the white-hot glowing appearance of the asteroid upon impact, while yours does not. [/quote]

True, my argument holds for a non-incandesant event.

Hence, Occam's Razor is unnecessary; a theory which contradicts observation can be dismissed before we need it.

Why not, my aregument is valid if the gas does not glow?

"Red herring" fallacy. The air density required to threaten the safety of a spacecraft with air friction is far greater than the air density required to produce noticeable interactions with a 1.4 megaton nuclear blast. Try again, foolish one.

No it is not! The diferance you cite is less than three OoM. While that that I cite is 10-11 OoM. Does this seem strange to the readers that such a large differance can be explained away so trivialy? Again how do we know that the region of space were the asteroids are being blasted is any different than that were the nuc test cited in my argument is? What evidence can you show that the dencity there is any differant than the starfish shot? Everything in your argument is based on a supposition that the dencity of space there is 3 OoM less than that of the starfish shot and that the differance is enough to make the results substantialy different than that event. Yet the dencity of asteroids is +-122 OoM higher than in the highest dencity region of this solar system. (Between Mars and Jupiter) Why is the dencity of that space then less than 3 OoM more than the least dence interstellar space?

You have avoided this part of my argument in the past. Why not address it now along with why the blast effects shown should be 2 OoM differant than that which we have also seen in the starfish shot?

Without both of thease assumptions being good your argument falls apart. In addition, your argument requires that in all the asteroid events portraid that none show the fireball that would be associated with such a large release of energy. Take the number of events times the interfraim fraction not recorded and the fact that no fireball is shown in any of them leads me to belive that it thus did not happen. That is why Occum's Razor applies. None of the many asumptions that your argument needs are required for mine to work. You are deffeeted by your own logical rules as published in the Occam's Razor article.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-02-20 05:40pm

Oh look, you're back, and you have not added one single solitary new idea. You're just repeating yourself now.

Stewart from SDI wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:Imagine my surprise to discover that despite your claims of having "a hot date", you posted your response at 10:00pm on Valentine's Day. I guess Valentine's Day didn't go as well for you as you'd hoped
Yes it did, better than I hade hoped.

And that's why you were posting Star Trek arguments at 10:00pm that evening? Obviously, your idea of a good Valentine's Day evening is considerably different from mine.

I propose to use and ordinary auto exposure 110 camera, photographing an ordinary rubber ball, in ordinary sun light, to duplicate the effects seen.

You mean this?

With dim sunlight shining from the side in a continuous shot where only one frame in a continuous-video feed at 24 frames per second demonstrates this bright flash while the rest of the frame is intact? Please, by all means, go ahead and provide your proof.

Why do you say this? My arguments are broad based with many facets. The above is simply one possable explanation of the effects seen on film. Why should your apparent lack of photographic knowledge detract from my explanation? I took courses in both still and cini photography and given some time to find them can prove it. Acording to your own rules, it is your job to disprove my theory, just as you state it is mine to do in your's.

...

When a bright light is transmited threw any lens or system of lenses, minute reflections, the artifacts above, are generated from each surface of each lens. Except at the very center of the optical axis, those reflections are bent farther from the axis by the curvature of the lens(s). They thus appear to form a serries of false images that radiate from the source outward on the radial from the center of the fraim.

You still don't get it, do you? I have already provided my evidence. In case you missed it, here it is again:

If you claim that you can duplicate the effect of an object looking like that when dimly lit from the side, then go ahead and do it, instead of blabbering about your nonexistent authority and claims to superior knowledge which no one will believe anyway.

The reason that auto exposure systems cause problems for your argument is their inherant time lag. The system see's the dark background of space and opens the iris or increases the exposure time, or both, to adequately render it. (The dark space.) This causes sudenly bright objects, like the flash from the vaporised asteroid, to appear very much brighter than they are.

Concession accepted, fool. You just admitted that the asteroid created a flash of light, after previously claiming that it was not glowing at all.

Then the flash of bright light fools the AES into thinking there is more light than there is in the total fraim and it then closes the iris, shortens the exposure time or both and the rest of the picture then goes dark. This causes the starship to appear much darker in porportion to the total light from the flash. In other words, if the flash were very bright, as we would expect from the release of large amounts of energy, then the rest of the fraim would be come very dark. Because the mechanisms for these effects are the same in all fraims we can argue that there is no large release of energy. Read any book on photography.

Funny how this fails to explain why the turbolaser bolt was no brighter than normal, or how the view through the Millenium Falcon's cockpit showed roughly the same amount of ambient light as seen in the picture above, thus disproving your claims about an extremely dark ambient lighting scenario. Oops, did I let the cat out of the bag about another one of your groundless assumptions?

Let me explain something for you: you claim that the asteroid did not glow at all. But in order to prove that it was not glowing, you must invoke a series of assumptions about the particular type of camera in use, you must ignore the fact that the light exposure in the scene was the same as it was when seen through the cockpit window of the Millenium Falcon, and you must also admit that the asteroid created a "flash" of light anyway, thus defeating your entire argument. Nice going

It's not the interactions that I seek, but the gas from the asteroid it self. Tens of thousands of tons of incandesant gas, interacting with it self as it expands and sheddind the heat incured durring the vaporisation proccess, irrespective of it's kinetic energy, should be visable for many seconds, no mater how fast it is going tword or away from the camera. Your failure to accept this fact is incredable to my reasoning.

I have already explained the scientific mechanism behind gas luminescence and why it is not always visible. Please answer that point.

You have continued to ignore my explanation of this threwout this discussion. You have never assaulted it's assumptions or disputed it's points as stated. The cloud of dust has a significant surface aria in relation to it's mass, but the larger debries do not. Look at your own nanobots arguments to understand this better.

So? Tiny hot debris is still highly visible in darkness for at least a few seconds, you idiot. Don't you know what sparks are?

And why no comment on the obvious stupidity of your "soft lumps of talc" claim even though metallic starships are shattered upon impact with them?
Have you ever seen the famous picture, published durring the Star Wars erra, of a aluminium block with a 5" O.D. by 3.5" deep, hole blown in it, that was caused by a one gram lump of lexan? Well, if a piece of plastic the size of a pencil erraser can do that to aluminium armor, then 32,000 tons of asteroid should be able to wreck a ship.

Not when it's a "soft lump of talc", you idiot. And you completely failed to address the fact that the asteroid was not shattered or even deformed by the impact of a high-velocity metallic object with it. What kind of "soft lump of talc" resists deformation after being struck with a high-velocity multi-ton metallic object, moron? Do you even know what the word "soft" means?

No I am not. I am talking about the blast it self. The interaction that I cite has nothing to do with the environment, just the asteroid it self is enough to cause the effecxts that are clearly missing from the event as depicted. As I cited before the asteroid debries would have to expand to many millions of kilometers to expand enough to reach the dencity of the upper atmospher little own the dencity of interplanetary space that you cite.

Read my previous post again, this time with an interpreter to help you understand English. Gas does not need to dissipate to the density of interplanetary space in order to be invisible.

How many asteroids are vaporised in the film sequences shown? In all of those instances, not one event shows the effects that we would expect to see from a blast of the magnatude as your hypothisis requires.

Hint: you can't prove this claim by simply repeating it.

No I am not. It is your duty to show that the interplanetary space in that asteroid field is any less than that were the bomb went off and that it would have any different effects that those seen by tens of thousands in my example.

The dencity of matter in that field is many orders of magnatude higher than the density of interplanetary space as evidenced by the many asteroids very close together as depicted in the film.

Read my previous post again, this time with an interpreter to help you understand English. Gas does not need to dissipate to the density of interplanetary space in order to be invisible.

You obviously do not understand how movie or vidio cameras work. The time between fraims is insignificant compaired to the exposure time in which the photo was taken. Of the 41.7 ms between fraims, 32ms are the exposure and less than 10ms are the transport time, in a film camera. In vidio cameras there is no transport time and the interfraim time is the scan rate of the vidicon tube or CCD. This time is typicly substancialy less than 1/10th ms.

That is how a modern camera works. So what? This particular camera did not show movement blur between frames for the turbolaser bolt itself, so your assumptions about its operations are obviously false.

Therefore, for the events to happen as your hypothisis requres, the asteroid vapore expands only 25% more than it's origional diamiter durring the 32ms exposure and then durring the <10ms interfraim time it must expand to millions of times that size? Then leave no visable trace durring the next 32ms exposure? Right!

Read my previous post again, this time with an interpreter to help you understand English. Gas does not need to dissipate to the density of interplanetary space in order to be invisible.

Why would there be residue in the form of the redish brown cloud if the energies were so high? Of the tens of thousands of tons of stuff why would so little of it not glow if it were heated as you say?

Obviously, you have never heard of temperature distributions, Mr. Expert. Or perhaps you assumed that the turbolaser must have magically heated 100% of the volume of the asteroid to the exact same temperature?

Stewart from SDI wrote:I am still waiting for any example of the fenominon you describe that ever occured in nature.
Wait a minute, are you saying that you seriously dispute the fact that ionized particles do not necessarily glow, or that line radiation can exceed the visible light spectrum? You honestly need an "example" to personally accept something which is found in any first-year physics textbook, after claiming to have a degree in science?
I needed the promotion points to go with my third child, as I had already maxed out on all other factors in a time of reduction in force that was in effect then. The only avenue open to me was "Civilian Education", where I could add up to 125 points out of 1000 possable. My only other aria that was not maxed out was "Awards and Decorations" only 50 possable, and I had some of those already. (VNS, Purple Heart, Good Conduct(3) and Presidential Unit Citation, asbout 24-25 total IIRC) My high school diploma was worth practicly nothing on the CE scale but a "colledge degree" was worth 75 points, more than enough to boost me over the promotion threshold at that time.

My boss sent me to the Education center because he did not want to loose me to the civilian side of the house. I took the "CLEP" test over lunch that first day and passed my first year of "colledge" over lunch hour. They thought that I was cheating when the scores came back, since no one in the history of the test had ever taken it in less than 6 hours. Durring the next three weeks I audited classes, read books and took exams, all durring the half day off at the ed center that my boss granted. Those 88 hours, plus the thirty from the CLEP test and 26 more given as credit for my MOS skils as certified by my Battalion Commander and the year long Avionics cource that I was Honor Graduate from Ft. Gordon, U.S. Army Signal School, qualified me for a degree in "General Science". When I joined the civilian side of the house six months later and discovered how easy it is to add income to your pocket by adding degrees to your resume, I repeated the process several more times.
Wow, all of this masturbation and chest-beating over your education claims and you still manage to make a fool of yourself by denying the fact that ionized particles don't necessarily glow or that line radiation can exceed the visible spectrum of light. Here's another hint, Mr. Expert: endless bragging about your knowledge is no substitute for an actual demonstration of knowledge, and so far you have only demonstrated your ignorance.
Why not? Tens of thousands of tons of stuff all inonised and not visable but that tinny redish brown cloud. Right again!
Yes, that would be the tail end of a temperature distribution in which most of the material is either ionized or glowing at frequencies above visible wavelength while rapidly dispersing. Hardly impossible in an asteroid of presumably nonuniform internal structure and composition. What about this escapes your comprehension?
Yet it lingers for more than a quarter of a second. At the energies you need for your argument to work, this is clearly not the right or logical explanation. Again why?
Why is it possible for a temperature distribution to be something other than perfectly uniform in the aftermath of a chaotic event involving a nonuniform structure? Gee, I dunno, Mr. Science Expert. Why don't you try pondering that for a minute?
How can it be hurled outwards at great velocity if it's still in the fraim and does not appear to move?
Perhaps because you're looking at luminous gas billowing away from a few superheated liquid blobs, probably from the very core of the asteroid, which take a few tenths of a second to evapourate (particularly if there's a form of inertial confinement from surrounding gases as they expand while still too hot to glow in the visible spectrum). What's your explanation, since nobody with eyes is going to accept your claim that the asteroid was not glowing at moment of impact?
How does this picture prove your point when it does not show any of the effects that honest people could expect to see from such a large release of energy?
Effects like ... a white-hot glowing effect?

Oops, it appears to be there, doesn't it?
Not to the human eye but certainly to the camera. I winter in Park City, Utah for 9 of the last 10 years, so I know more than a little bit about how it photographs, which clearly you do not. Again I propose to use a 110 camera to duplicate the image you cite. I will mail the origional negitive and prints to you to prove my point.
Fine, why don't you give your endless "I know more than you" bullshit a rest and put your money where your mouth is? Go ahead and photograph an non-glowing object lit only by dim sunlight from the side which looks like that.
I'm sure all of the readers are quite familiar by now with your refusal to accept that a nuclear detonation in the upper atmosphere need not necessarily look like any and all high-energy events in space
Why not?
As Patrick Degan would say, sometimes the comedy just writes itself.
True, my argument holds for a non-incandesant event.
...
Why not, my aregument is valid if the gas does not glow?
Rather large problem for you then, since we're not talking about a non-incandescent event, and the asteroid does glow. We're talking about this, remember?

No it is not! The diferance you cite is less than three OoM. While that that I cite is 10-11 OoM. Does this seem strange to the readers that such a large differance can be explained away so trivialy? Again how do we know that the region of space were the asteroids are being blasted is any different than that were the nuc test cited in my argument is? What evidence can you show that the dencity there is any differant than the starfish shot? Everything in your argument is based on a supposition that the dencity of space there is 3 OoM less than that of the starfish shot and that the differance is enough to make the results substantialy different than that event. Yet the dencity of asteroids is +-122 OoM higher than in the highest dencity region of this solar system. (Between Mars and Jupiter) Why is the dencity of that space then less than 3 OoM more than the least dence interstellar space?

You have avoided this part of my argument in the past. Why not address it now along with why the blast effects shown should be 2 OoM differant than that which we have also seen in the starfish shot?
Wow, that's an awful lot of blathering text to repeat your assumption that the expanding particles from the asteroid must interact with themselves, precisely as if they were colliding into an ambient atmosphere.

And where is your alternate theory, hmm? You have already conceded that your entire argument is based on the assumption that the event is non-luminous: an assumption easily disproven with a simple picture of the event in question. In short, you have no theory at all.
Without both of thease assumptions being good your argument falls apart.
It is just an assumption that atmospheric interactions will not be present in the absence of an atmosphere?
In addition, your argument requires that in all the asteroid events portraid that none show the fireball that would be associated with such a large release of energy. Take the number of events times the interfraim fraction not recorded and the fact that no fireball is shown in any of them leads me to belive that it thus did not happen. That is why Occum's Razor applies. None of the many asumptions that your argument needs are required for mine to work. You are deffeeted by your own logical rules as published in the Occam's Razor article.

Obviously, despite your endless claims of superior expertise, you are too ignorant to realize that a nuclear fireball is an atmospheric effect.

From http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/Histo ... uclear.htm

Code: Select all

If a nuclear weapon is exploded in a vacuum-i. e., in space-the complexion of weapon effects changes drastically:

First, in the absence of an atmosphere, blast disappears completely.

Second, thermal radiation, as usually defined, also disappears. There is no longer any air for the blast wave to heat and much higher frequency radiation is emitted from the weapon itself.

Whoops, no thermal-range EM radiation, ie- no visible fireball. But of course, they're just NASA, not your homegrown "Strategic Defense Institute" which you run out of your front lawn. What would they know about space, compared to you?

Stewart at SDI · Post by **Stewart at SDI** » 2004-02-24 10:49am

Just a quick note to explain that I will reply to your post in a week or so, after I have contacted other experts in the fields being discussed.

I noticed that you failed to quote the full text and related articles for the nasa data you cite. If you had read the whole article you would note that the effects were seen for more than 2,000 miles and for a conciderable duration. In addition the refferance is from 1957 and when the origional source for the effects of nuclear weapons is consulted, it states that bomb residue is clearly visable to the eye for many seconds after a detonation in space.

Again, what leads you to belive that the dencity of space in the Hoth asteroid field is less dence than that were the "Starfish" shot was done?

Will reply fully after consulting other experts.

Stewart at SDI · Post by **Stewart at SDI** » 2004-02-24 12:06pm

[quote]

Please send any address that I can use to mail photos and documents to you. If you do not wish to give out your home address, work or General Delivery in your or any ajasent town will do. I do not own a scanner and have no idea how to get this stuff to you otherwise. You also have my direct e-mail address to avoid letting everyone else know it.

Sincerly, Stewart.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-02-24 02:03pm

Stewart at SDI wrote:Just a quick note to explain that I will reply to your post in a week or so, after I have contacted other experts in the fields being discussed.

Nice copout, jack-ass. I thought you said you were an expert.

I noticed that you failed to quote the full text and related articles for the nasa data you cite. If you had read the whole article you would note that the effects were seen for more than 2,000 miles and for a conciderable duration.

For a pair of detonations below 100km altitude, which puts them in the lower atmosphere? No shit. They're even more irrelevant than Starfish, in case you didn't notice. Did you seriously think that part even merited comment? What part of "the atmosphere is different from space" do you not understand?

In addition the refferance is from 1957 and when the origional source for the effects of nuclear weapons is consulted, it states that bomb residue is clearly visable to the eye for many seconds after a detonation in space.

Provide the quote in context. Nobody is listening to your convenient "interpretations" of source material any more, not after your voluminous bullshit.

Again, what leads you to belive that the dencity of space in the Hoth asteroid field is less dence than that were the "Starfish" shot was done?

We've been over this. "Interplanetary space" vs "upper atmosphere", dumb-ass. Everyone gets this but you.

Will reply fully after consulting other experts.

Let me translate that for you:

Stewart from SDI wrote:[Translated from Stewart-ese into English]

I'll get back to you when I'm done extracting your boot from my ass.

If you didn't have a response (and you obviously don't), you should have been man enough to concede this argument instead of pretending that you'll run off to consult the other members of your imaginary "institute".

I think we all know what kind of institution you belong in, Stewart. It involves men with white coats, but it has nothing to do with research.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-02-24 02:16pm

Stewart at SDI wrote:Please send any address that I can use to mail photos and documents to you. If you do not wish to give out your home address, work or General Delivery in your or any ajasent town will do. I do not own a scanner and have no idea how to get this stuff to you otherwise. You also have my direct e-mail address to avoid letting everyone else know it.

Sincerly, Stewart.

Let me get this straight: you claim to run your own "strategic defense institute", which is a think-tank that charges huge amounts of money to select military clients for your world-renowned expertise (even though nobody can find it in the yellow pages, white pages, or business registrations for your area), yet you have no scanner and can't afford one?

*cue sound of violins for Stewart's poor cash-strapped "strategic defense institute"*

Let me take up a collection plate for you. No wait, on second thought, why don't you ask your parents to buy a scanner for you?

Stewart at SDI · Post by **Stewart at SDI** » 2004-03-07 10:38pm

Nice copout, jack-ass. I thought you said you were an expert.

I am, but you consistantly refuse to aknowledge my supirior training in this aria and claim that your engineering degree makes you more qualified than I am in maters relating to weapons and their effects. What part of your training qualifies you in this aria?

For a pair of detonations below 100km altitude, which puts them in the lower atmosphere? No shit.

Wrong again, three times. Yes shit!

There were three detonations that the AEC and DoD concidered to be in space as they defined it. All three were visable for many, 20-40 seconds, by all news paper accounts, from more than 2,200 miles way in Hawii. After all they, the DoD and AEC are experts in this sort of thing and they planed all three test's to determine the effects of nuclear detonations in "space"! (Read "The Secret History of U.S. Nuclear Weapons" by "Chuck Hansen" for compleat details of all three "Space" shots.)

Thirdly, for your information, since it is obiously lacking, the "Lower" atmosphere is that which is below the tropopause, IE below 11,000M. The stratisphere then extends up to ~50Km. Above this is the "Ionisphere" that contains mostly Hydrogen ions and a few "traces" of other gases Ions. NASA conciders this altitude >50Km, to be "Space" as they have awarded "Astronaught's Wings" to several X-15 pilots for flights above it!

They're even more irrelevant than Starfish, in case you didn't notice. Did you seriously think that part even merited comment?

Why are they irrelevant? Yes I did, since the people who disigned and conducted all three of the test's designated them to be in "SPACE"! Since they surely know more about these things than you do, I will defere to them. Can you cite anything credible that claims any of the three shots were not in space? After all we all know that your degree does not qualify you to have competent knowledge in this aria!

What part of "the atmosphere is different from space" do you not understand?

What part of this do you understand? NASA, the DoD and AEC all agreed that "SPACE" began at altitudes greater than 50 kilometers as far as weapons tests and some other things went. Why are you ignorant of those facts?

Provide the quote in context. Nobody is listening to your convenient "interpretations" of source material any more, not after your voluminous bullshit.

I did not interpret anything. I just recalled from my vast memory and I did provide the sources. It's just up to you to read the entire referance to get the data that you desire, or provide a quote and source that disputes my claims. Your oppinions are worth less than mine. I have training in this and related fields. You never claimed that you did have any equivalent.

I have asked repeatedly for you to quote anything that might even hint that the nuclear weapons shots in question would appear any differently than the supposed very large release of energy required to "vaporise" any asteroid. In return all you ever gave is your "oppinion" that the density of the medium surrounding the three shots and the "Starfish-Prime" shot in particular when compaired to your undefined and unspecified "Interplanetary Space" in the Hoth system would make the event as portraid vastly different than all other known similar events!

How does your engineering degree qualify you to have any valid oppinion on this subject? Why should we accept your therory that directly dissagrees with the AEC, DoD and the weaponeers who disigned and conducted the nuclear test shots in question? When they all thought the test shots were in space? Did you study Physics? Cosmotoligy? Astronomy? Aerodynamics? Or to become a aircraft pilot? Any of these subjects might give you a glimps into the reallivant knowledge, but as far as we know, you are ignorant in all of those arias.

Again, what leads you to belive that the dencity of space in the Hoth asteroid field is less dence than that were the "Starfish" shot was done?

We've been over this. "Interplanetary space" vs "upper atmosphere", dumb-ass. Everyone gets this but you.[/quote]

One last time. What is the density of "Interplanetary Space" in general and in the Hoth system in particular and how do you know that it is any different than the environment surounding the Nuclear Weapons Effects "Space" Shots in question? I've asked this question several times, but you have continued to duck the qustion.

Let me translate that for you:
"Stewart from SDI"][Translated from Stewart-ese into English]

I'll get back to you when I'm done extracting your boot from my ass.

Only in your most vivid dream fantasies could a person of your demonstraited expertise and self imagined strength ever assault by H2H, any person with my expertise and then pretend to live threw it!

If you didn't have a response (and you obviously don't), you should have been man enough to concede this argument instead of pretending that you'll run off to consult the other members of your imaginary "institute".

Since you have failed to answer my questions and ignored my expertise in this field, even after stating that your own degree was in an unrelated field, while claiming that it afforded you expert statis that is denieghed me, with a degree in "General Science" that includes hours in Physics, You have belittled my expertise in other fields, without demonstraiting that you have any knowledge what so ever in them, therefore, I am forced to consult with people who's degrees are supirior to your own. In addition, since I would never presume upon our feindships among my colegues, I am forced to go to outside sources to question Phd Physisists and Professors of Cosmotology, Astro-physics and Astronomy.

I origionaly thought to question them by E-mail but did not get a single person willing to be interviewed for an "on line" article. So I changed my tack and drove over 1,000 miles to Millwaky, Beliot, Rockford, Barrington, Chicago and four suburbs, Champainge/Urbana and the Fermi National Laboratory just 30 or 40 miles south of me.

The pitch whent like this; Hello I am Stewart Davies and I am writing an article for publication on line about the differances between science and science fiction. Whould you be willing to answer 8-10 questions over lunch that I am buying at your favorite resturant? When only five of the first twelve agreed, I started to bring a cooler with Sub-Way sandwiches, Sodas and a variety of adult beverages. I then asked if we could do lunch in thier office,if they were to buisy for a resturant, or finaly, just while we walked to were ever they were going. A total of eight Phd-plus type guys agreed to answer the questions. I first gave them prints of the film clip in it's entirety and transcripts down loaded from the debate, then told them that "exact" answers were not required, just thier best oppinions. The questions and thier answers are below. Just think, I got all this for less than $800 bucks worth of wear and tear on the car, expences and ten days of my time. What a bargain!!!:)

1. Given that the asteroid in question is between 20 and 40M long and 12 and 24M in diamiter, has a specific density between 1.5 and 8 and thus masses between <3,400 and >144,000 metric tons, is there any possability what so ever, that this film clip of less than .3 seconds, could be an accurate depiction of 4.18E12 to 4.18E15 Joules, equivilant to ONE KILOTON to ONE MEGATON of TNT'S worth of energy "Vaporising" said asteroid?

All eight answered NO!

2. Can you think of any known mechanism that would alow this film clip to accurately portray the above event?

Again all eight answered NO!

3. Given that all of the several asteroid blastings showed virtually identicle chains of events, all lasting less than 1/2rd of a second, Could the slow fraim rate of 24 per second have missed any significant event that could change you oppinion as stated previously?

All eight answered NO, Again!

4. If the asteroid in the question above were "vaporised" deep in "Interplanetary Space", How many seconds would you expect the resulting incandesant gas to be visable to the naked eye? Would the event happening at an equivilant Earth altitude of 200Km. cange the results above substantialy?

All eight answers ranged fron "a few seconds" to "several tens of seconds" When I pressed, the few seconds became 2-3, maby 10. No, the differance in dencity is not sufficiant to change the results significantly.

5. Given that the camera's possition is reallitivly close to the detonation, could the expanding gas that we would expect to see escape the view fraim durring the 10-12 Ms interfraim time between exposures? Or would it still be visable as it recieded into the distance?

After some discusion about the total number of fraims in the clip, all eight again agreed that it was not possable for the expanding cloud of incandesant gas to escape the camera's view into the distance.

6. Given the irregular, non-spherical shape of the gas/smoke or dust shown in fraim one and the reallitive lack of expansion of same in fraim two, Could the asteroid be compleatly "Vaporised" in fraim one?

All eight answered NO!

7. Given that the appirant volume of the cloud of smoke or gas is between >50,000M.E3 and <400,000M.E3, not counting the volume of the unvaporised asteroid inside, How much of the asteroid would have to be vaporised to make that cloud and what would the density be?

All eight answers ran like this. I'de only be guessing about the total mass, but the density would vary between at most 1 Kg/ME3 at the suface being vaporised to 1E-9 to E-12 Kg./ME3 at the visable edges of the cloud formation.

(Since I did not want to waist my precious interview time, I made these calculations later. If the average dencity is 1E-5 Kg/ME3 then the total mass of the gas in the cloud would be between .5 and 4 kilos! If my calculations are right? Furthermore, if the total suface aria of the smaller size asteroid that we are possiting is 754 million Cm^2 then the depth of vaporisation is thus much less than .01MM, while the larger size needs less than 0.1MM of it's surface vaporised to make the visable cloud seen in the film.)

8. Is there any known mechanism that could make the incandesant gas in fraims 1 and 2 change color by fraim three? What if the gas in fraims one and two were realy smoke or dust, Could secondary or terciary reactions in ordinary high explosive account for the changes as the cloud dissipates?

All eight said yes there was, but absent the expansion required to supercool the gas between fraims, as evidenced by the film, No it's not possable. Two agreed that ordinary HE does sometimes change the color of the smoke generated as the detonation progresses.

9. Given that the ~160 kilogrames of ordinary high explosive in a nominal 750 pound bomb leaves a crater +14M. accross by +2M. deep. Could a simmilar yeald of less than 1,000 kilos of HE compleatly shatter a typical asteroid as we know them, in a manner consistant with that portaid in the film clip shown?

Six did not know, but one said certainly and the last said it probably would not take 100 kilos to get the results seen in the film, even for the largest asteroid possited. He also recomended that I get a copy of "The Blaster's Handbook" published by "E. I. Du Pont D. Namours" to find the required amount and type of explosive to shatter the loose agregate rock that is typical of most asteroids.

10. If you were a contestant in a science quiz show and had to choose one answer below for a million dollar prize, between the two compeeting theories below and highlighted in the text of the down load. Which would you choose?

A. An invisable beam "vaporises" the asteroid in fraim one. There is less than 50% expansion of the resulting gas in fraim two as some bright bolt of "plasma" impacts the incandesant cloud. It expands beyond the bounds of the camera's fraim before fraim three and then leaves a residual smoke cloud of a different color. In fraim four, it shrinks and changes color, getting darker and dimmer. It fades from view completely by fraim eight.

Or.

B. Either an invisable beam or a missile of some kind impacts between fraim 0 and fraim one, and dislodges dust from the surface visable in fraim one. The plasma bolt or missile impacts in fraim two, generating very little aditional expansion of the original cloud of smoke or dust as it detonates. The asteroid shatters in fraim three, leaving behind a cloud of dust and smoke. Larger pieces are not visable either due to poor lighting preventing adiquate exposure of the fast moving fragments or insufficiant resolution of the camera system. The cloud expands slowly over the next three or four fraims and faids from view by fraim eight.

All eight chose answer B!

One Professor reminded me that the missile could have been rocket powered as much of the exhaust is not visable in several types of rocket untill secondary and even terciary reactions take place. The exhaust is visable in fraim one but the missile could have been in the target already.

A second pointed out that if the asteroid was being tracked by a sufficiantly powerfull missile guidance illumination radar, that radar beam could have "micro-waved" the surface of the body enough to cause what little gas we see in fraims one and two to "vaporise". He also pointed out that radar energy flows over the surface of any target untill it is absorbed or hits a discontinuety to be re-radiated. It could therefore burn off mattierial from every side of the body in question.

In addition, if the radar transmision was a "half wave signal of only positive or negitive parts of the wave that a much lower power level could cause the build up of "static" electricity that would cause the dust to jump from the surface and repell it self from every other particle giving the appearance of a smoth surface. He could not think how that half wave transmitter might work but it is more likely than the vaporisation theory "A" above.

There you have it, eight Phd. Proffessors who agree with me and find your explanation untenable. Because they asked me not to publish thier names and or organisations for a variety of reasons not the least of wich was your rude and beligerant behaviour, embarasment at being associated with such trivial persuites and thier buisy schedules, therefore, I am with holding thier names, Etc. I also know you will avoid the points above and asail me for withholding the names, with some crap like I made it all up or some other specious argument, but I don't care, I can proove my sources. Can you find anyone at all with a Phd in physics who will agree with you?

To asail this data you must find equivilant Phd.s that dispute the above findings for the ten questions and ARE WILLING TO PUBLISH THIER NAMES AND INSTITUTIONS FOR PEER REVIEW! At least three of the people that I interviewed will then be willing to enter into a private online debate with your experts and then post an agreed statement.

How many of the posters on this board are willing to put up $100 U.S.D. on which answer, A or B above, that the most Physics Phd's choose? I am! We all know what they say about walk'n and talk'n, are you walk'n or are you $TALK'N$?

P.S. Will post photos tomorrow of previously discussed items.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-03-08 01:43am

It took you two weeks to come up with this drivel? Pathetic.

Stewart at SDI wrote:
Nice copout, jack-ass. I thought you said you were an expert.
I am, but you consistantly refuse to aknowledge my supirior training in this aria and claim that your engineering degree makes you more qualified than I am in maters relating to weapons and their effects. What part of your training qualifies you in this aria?

Basic physics, which is quite obviously more than you possess, all of your lies aside. Interplanetary space is not the same as the upper atmosphere.

Wrong again, three times. Yes shit!

There were three detonations that the AEC and DoD concidered to be in space as they defined it.

Oh I see, and could you provide the quote where they explicitly stated that all of the published data showing the ionosphere to be many orders of magnitude denser than interplanetary space is incorrect? Oh wait, you can't, because it doesn't exist.

All three were visable for many, 20-40 seconds, by all news paper accounts, from more than 2,200 miles way in Hawii. After all they, the DoD and AEC are experts in this sort of thing and they planed all three test's to determine the effects of nuclear detonations in "space"! (Read "The Secret History of U.S. Nuclear Weapons" by "Chuck Hansen" for compleat details of all three "Space" shots.)

Actually, NASA is generally considered the foremost authority on space-related matters. And accuracy of astrophysical terminology is not the DoD's primary interest.

Thirdly, for your information, since it is obiously lacking, the "Lower" atmosphere is that which is below the tropopause, IE below 11,000M. The stratisphere then extends up to ~50Km. Above this is the "Ionisphere" that contains mostly Hydrogen ions and a few "traces" of other gases Ions. NASA conciders this altitude >50Km, to be "Space" as they have awarded "Astronaught's Wings" to several X-15 pilots for flights above it!

And yet they state very clearly on their own website that it is part of the upper atmosphere.

They're even more irrelevant than Starfish, in case you didn't notice. Did you seriously think that part even merited comment?
Why are they irrelevant? Yes I did, since the people who disigned and conducted all three of the test's designated them to be in "SPACE"! Since they surely know more about these things than you do, I will defere to them. Can you cite anything credible that claims any of the three shots were not in space? After all we all know that your degree does not qualify you to have competent knowledge in this aria!

NASA's own website contradicts your ignorant bullshit.

What part of "the atmosphere is different from space" do you not understand?
What part of this do you understand? NASA, the DoD and AEC all agreed that "SPACE" began at altitudes greater than 50 kilometers as far as weapons tests and some other things went. Why are you ignorant of those facts?

NASA's own website contradicts your ignorant bullshit.

Provide the quote in context. Nobody is listening to your convenient "interpretations" of source material any more, not after your voluminous bullshit.
I did not interpret anything. I just recalled from my vast memory and I did provide the sources. It's just up to you to read the entire referance to get the data that you desire, or provide a quote and source that disputes my claims. Your oppinions are worth less than mine. I have training in this and related fields. You never claimed that you did have any equivalent.

Actually, I could have claimed all kinds of things, if I were as dishonest as you. Unverified claims count for precisely dick, which is why I made a point of linking to specific references. Something which you have conspicuously failed to do.

I have asked repeatedly for you to quote anything that might even hint that the nuclear weapons shots in question would appear any differently than the supposed very large release of energy required to "vaporise" any asteroid. In return all you ever gave is your "oppinion" that the density of the medium surrounding the three shots and the "Starfish-Prime" shot in particular when compaired to your undefined and unspecified "Interplanetary Space" in the Hoth system would make the event as portraid vastly different than all other known similar events!

Yes, when you change the environment of a nuclear blast, its interaction with that environment will change. This is not just my "opinion"; it is basic logic. It is also backed up by NASA itself; a fact which you conspicuously and conveniently and repeatedly ignore.

How does your engineering degree qualify you to have any valid oppinion on this subject?

I know basic physics, which is more than enough to refute your ignorant bullshit. Your claims of superior expertise are worth precisely dick, since everyone knows you have been lying through your teeth since Day One.

Why should we accept your therory that directly dissagrees with the AEC, DoD and the weaponeers who disigned and conducted the nuclear test shots in question? When they all thought the test shots were in space? Did you study Physics? Cosmotoligy? Astronomy? Aerodynamics? Or to become a aircraft pilot? Any of these subjects might give you a glimps into the reallivant knowledge, but as far as we know, you are ignorant in all of those arias.

Physics is a required subject in mechanical engineering, you idiot. Mechanical engineering is applied physics. Thanks for demonstrating yet again that your knowledge amounts to that of a high school kid.

One last time. What is the density of "Interplanetary Space" in general and in the Hoth system in particular and how do you know that it is any different than the environment surounding the Nuclear Weapons Effects "Space" Shots in question? I've asked this question several times, but you have continued to duck the qustion.

More lies. I answered this question a long time ago, to deafening silence from you. See http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 859#929859 for the details. For the umpteenth time, the density of the atmosphere at 400km altitude is between one thousand and one million times the density of interplanetary space.

Only in your most vivid dream fantasies could a person of your demonstraited expertise and self imagined strength ever assault by H2H, any person with my expertise and then pretend to live threw it!

Oooooooh, I'm soooooo scared. Didn't your Mommy ever tell you that nobody gives points in a debate for bragging about how big and strong you are?

Since you have failed to answer my questions and ignored my expertise in this field

I answered your questions with numbers, statements, a graph, and even direct quotes from NASA; you ignored it all. As for your claims of "expertise", give it a rest. No one believes you.

even after stating that your own degree was in an unrelated field, while claiming that it afforded you expert statis that is denieghed me, with a degree in "General Science" that includes hours in Physics,

"Hours in Physics"? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!

*takes breath*

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!

What kind of education did you get, where "hours in physics" was considered useful?

Oh, by the way, do you really think that anyone will be impressed by your claim of a degree in "General Science"? Most schools don't even offer such a degree, and those that do are generally low-grade tech schools, because any useful level of competence in modern science requires specialization. BTW, mechanical engineering is applied physics; something you would know if you had a real technical background.

You have belittled my expertise in other fields, without demonstraiting that you have any knowledge what so ever in them, therefore, I am forced to consult with people who's degrees are supirior to your own.

Ah yes, unnamed people for whom you can make up even more impressive imaginary credentials. I'm soooooo impressed.

In addition, since I would never presume upon our feindships among my colegues,

Of course not, since they don't exist.

I am forced to go to outside sources to question Phd Physisists and Professors of Cosmotology, Astro-physics and Astronomy.

I have occasionally consulted Curtis Saxton myself, since he has a PhD in astrophysics. Rest assured that he does not contradict NASA on the fact that the ionosphere is not equivalent to interplanetary space. There is an altitude above which people often consider the density low enough to consider "space" because it is not useful for things like jet propulsion, aerodynamic lift, etc. That does not mean it is actually functionally identical to interplanetary space, and you can whine about that fact until the cows come home but you won't be able to change it.

I origionaly thought to question them by E-mail but did not get a single person willing to be interviewed for an "on line" article. So I changed my tack and drove over 1,000 miles to Millwaky, Beliot, Rockford, Barrington, Chicago and four suburbs, Champainge/Urbana and the Fermi National Laboratory just 30 or 40 miles south of me.

Yeah, I'm sure you did. I believe you. You went and drove thousands of miles all over the northeastern United States to question a bunch of science experts (and who all made time for you even though they didn't know you from Adam, of course), all for the purpose of trying to win a "Star Wars vs Star Trek" argument. If that were really true, it would be the most pathetic thing I've ever heard. Luckily, we all know it's not true.

The pitch whent like this; Hello I am Stewart Davies and I am writing an article for publication on line about the differances between science and science fiction. Whould you be willing to answer 8-10 questions over lunch that I am buying at your favorite resturant? When only five of the first twelve agreed, I started to bring a cooler with Sub-Way sandwiches, Sodas and a variety of adult beverages. I then asked if we could do lunch in thier office,if they were to buisy for a resturant, or finaly, just while we walked to were ever they were going. A total of eight Phd-plus type guys agreed to answer the questions. I first gave them prints of the film clip in it's entirety and transcripts down loaded from the debate, then told them that "exact" answers were not required, just thier best oppinions. The questions and thier answers are below. Just think, I got all this for less than $800 bucks worth of wear and tear on the car, expences and ten days of my time. What a bargain!!!:)

You have a talent for very detailed stories. Perhaps you believe that all of this superfluous detail will convince us that your story is authentic instead of the laughable pile of obvious lies that we all know it is.

1. Given that the asteroid in question is between 20 and 40M long and 12 and 24M in diamiter, has a specific density between 1.5 and 8 and thus masses between <3,400 and >144,000 metric tons, is there any possability what so ever, that this film clip of less than .3 seconds, could be an accurate depiction of 4.18E12 to 4.18E15 Joules, equivilant to ONE KILOTON to ONE MEGATON of TNT'S worth of energy "Vaporising" said asteroid?

All eight answered NO!