Posts by Pat

British boffins perfect process to make any item '100% waterproof'

what does water proof really mean here....and waterproof electronics

I'm surprised no one has commented on this point yet, but from the sounds of it, this product's main claim is to do what cotton doesn't: not retain water. Having a material which blocks the passage of moisture and one which does not absorb moisture are two different functions. It may be that the plasma ion treatment process, when applied to say, shoe leather, makes it so difficult for water to take up residence that it is effectively permitted from navigating through the material as well. But, it could just mean that you can simply shake one of these treated materials dry but that water may still pass through freely.

Regarding electronics, they're already waterproof! No one ever complains that they have to wring out the moisture on their motherboard or that their power supply has gotten soggy again. The problem with dumping water on your electronics is the millions of new electrical circuits you've just created. With a name like "ion plasma" something tells me a surface treatment is not going to prevent flow of electrons.

Engineers write defence against aliens manual

the thing about asteroids...

It would require a ridiculous amount of energy to pluck asteroids out of the kuiper belt traveling at cosmic velocities and somehow accelerate them into a direct collision course for Earth.

It seems any society with the capability to harness and precisely use this much energy could come up with more creative ways for (1) attacking Earth or (2) solving their homeworld problems in ways that don't involve traveling billions of miles to our remote rock. Also, why hurl asteroids at Earth, why not just drag Earth back to their galaxy?

Also, mining the moon and tossing chunks towards us would still be a very work intensive activity. To do any real damage the chunks would have to be very large and you'd need to figure a way to project them such that they not only fall to Earth, but could do so at a speed similar to the Dinosaur-era asteroid. Doing any of this again requires immense amounts of energy.