Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 13:14:07 -0400
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Take that Darth Vader, thwack! , was  Sith and
  before

At 11:45 AM 6/16/05 -0400, Ted White wrote:

>I'm not going to turn this into another long pointless argument.

Glad to hear that...since you apparently can't read very well for
understanding anyway:

> You're right, Mike:  Sound really *does* travel through space.

I never said that.  If you think I did, please quote where you think that was.

Outer Space is not a perfect vacuum (closer in space even less so)...if it
was, the Bussard Ramjet would be total fantasy, and the guy who was doing
studies of shockwave propagation in intersteller media (resulting from
large explosions, such as nova and supernova events) out at NRL about 20
years ago would have been wasting his time.  The density is very low
(perhaps as low as one hydrogen atom per liter), and in space no-one can
hear you mumble, but that doesn't mean that with enough speed you won't
notice it, or that if you move fast enough you can't collect a fair bit of
mass ahead of you, or that if that mass impacts on your hull at very high
speeds it won't transfer enough kinetic energy to cause compression waves
in the air inside and make eardrums signal an event...unless you've done
the math to show that this can't happen?

-- Mike B.
--
Mind like a steel trap: once it closes, nothing gets in!