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Odd thought: suppose we could create an artificial gravity wave by some yet to discover method - could a craft then surf that wave at the speed of light?
Ok, ok, I'll stick with the APOD... 
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I'm working on expanding my own gravity field as we speak. nom nom nom[^]
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I'm not buying it. This whole gravitational wave thing. You watch. A few years and they'll be admitting that it was a burping camel in Ethiopia that set it off. It's all far too pat.
But anyway, no. If they do exist they make such a tiny perturbation with such a weak force that the only thing that could surf on it would be a hydrogen atom or two. If the output from the collision of two black holes (a likely story!) is required to produce a wave of subatomic magnitude then it's pretty limited as a means of propulsion wouldn't you say (especially as the mass of any object would increase to near infinity at the speed of light!)
I am not a number. I am a ... no, wait!
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9082365 wrote: But anyway, no. If they do exist they make such a tiny perturbation with such a weak force that the only thing that could surf on it would be a hydrogen atom or two. If the output from the collision of two black holes (a likely story!) is required to produce a wave of subatomic magnitude then it's pretty limited as a means of propulsion wouldn't you say (especially as the mass of any object would increase to near infinity at the speed of light!)
Oh well, another idea blown to smithereens! (I knew about the infinite mass but wondered if using the wave would allow that to be circumvented in some fashion. Hmm; now I think about it some more...)
Anyway, what makes you think it's all hokum?
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9082365 wrote: If they do exist they make such a tiny perturbation with such a weak force that the only thing that could surf on it would be a hydrogen atom or two.
How do you know? Are you a theoretical physicist, or are you paraphrasing what you read somewhere?
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Slacker007 wrote: How do you know?
He felt a disturbance in the force.
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Duncan Edwards Jones wrote: He felt a disturbance in the force.
I bet he did. 
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Slacker007 wrote: Are you a theoretical physicist, or are you paraphrasing what you read somewhere?
Well:
The gravitational waves that rippled through the LIGO detectors created a signal equivalent to the waves distorting spacetime within LIGO’s arms by 10^–21 metres, or one one-thousandth of the diameter of a proton.
Now, anything that creates a distortion one one-thousandth the width of proton, well, you'd need a pretty small surfboard to surf that.
More[^]
Marc
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I find the title of that article very offensive on so many levels. 
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Well, at least it's better than:
"Social waves found emerging from imminent unicorn mergers."
Marc
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Well there is always one who spoils the fun by using intellect.
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9082365 wrote: If the output from the collision of two black holes (a likely story!) is required to produce a wave of subatomic magnitude
The amplitude of the wave here was 10-21 meters, from a signal source 1.3 billion light years away. A little attenuation with distance is to be expected, no?
Software Zen: delete this;
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Gary Wheeler wrote: A little attenuation with distance is to be expected
Of course. But the theoretical maximum amplitude of gravitational waves, such as those emitted in the Big Bang itself, is only 10-5. It is, as you might expect from the generally weak force that gravity is, a very small effect requiring an inconceivably large source event. Any attempt to produce a gravitational wave intentionally without destroying at least a couple of star systems would result in one no better than trillions of times weaker still.
I am not a number. I am a ... no, wait!
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If you've got folks in your neighborhood who's idea of fun is to toss stellar mass black holes at each other and see what happens... it's time to move.
Software Zen: delete this;
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What if that 'gravitational' wave (yet to be created) turns out to be longitudinal instead of transverse? Would such a wave propagate at speed 'c'?
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Why can I add images to questions like you could do for articles? Please see this question.
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Because the spammers would start posting all sorts of inappropriate content, and it would be too difficult to police.
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This gets raised by new users every few weeks, and the answer is always the same: If we allowed images in questions, then we'd have to put every single question and every single answer through a rigorous moderation process. If we didn't, we'd get idiots posting inappropriate images, and almost every user would get blocked from accessing the site.
There are barely enough trusted moderators to cope with the current workload, without dumping a massive pile of extra work on them for no good reason.
If you can't explain your question in words, then 90% of the time, a picture isn't going to help. For those rare occasions when a picture is required, you can upload it to one of the many free image hosting sites around, and post a link to the image. But don't expect people to follow the link.
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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If you want to use images to help illustrate your problem, just put them on a public image host site (imgur...) and add link to them in your question.
I've done it a few times (using flickr).
I'd rather be phishing!
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To add to what the others say, all articles, tips, and blogs are moderated before publication, so we can weed out inappropriate material before it "goes public". We can't moderate questions and answers, there aren't enough volunteer moderators to go round!
And we get a lot of spammers, trolls, and general purpose idiots here - for whom the temptation to post inappropriate images would be far too high. (We have one member who creates new accounts every few weeks to post serious abusive messages involving people appendages and caprine rectums for example. Can you image what kind of images he would post if he could?)
It wouldn't take too many of such images for corporate network blacklists to pick us up as "non-work related" and then the site would not be available to the people we all try to help.
It's a pain. But only a small pain!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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isnt such guy a case for the police?
Press F1 for help or google it.
Greetings from Germany
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Which police?
Canadian, where the site is based?
The USA where it's IP is registered?
The country of the user the message is posted to?
The country of the user that posted the message?
The country of the other users that see it?
And we can only say with any certainty the first two: all the others could be behind proxies, spoofed, or generally lied about!
And let's be honest - the UK police would give you a very flat look if you tried to report anything like that to them, and I suspect most other forces would do the same.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Yes. A picture is worth a thousand words. But ...
When you start writing those thousand words, you'll find that you can express the question in less than fifty words. This way, your writing skills get improved.
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Porn and poop pics? As in, if allowed to post images to areas of the site with no moderation, users may post porn and/or poop pics.
modified 12-Feb-16 14:41pm.
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