[QUOTE=bcp19;293390]Known factors: 500' vertical shaft, Steel lid 4" thick weighing some 900kg. For calculation purposes, using FEMA's Unit Weights of Common Building Materials, Steel is listed at 496 pounds per cubic foot. This gives you roughly 4 cubic feet of steel in the lid, ~12 square feet of surface for the lid gives you a diameter of a little under 4 feet. The area of the shaft then would be roughly 6000 cubic feet.[/QUOTE]

And an atom bomb at the bottom, transferring huge amounts of radiation into the plate, probably significantly weakening it and heating it. However, remember that a meteorite generally doesn't come straight in...and this plate was headed straight out, so it doesn't have to survive for long, maybe 2 seconds (using ~14mi as the depth of the atmosphere and only really being worried if I have the right number of zeros, since the rest of the data is equally sparse)

What is needed is what the radars saw -- that plate would leave a very radar-visible ion trail and a plume if it was still solid, and do so well above the atmosphere if it "survived".

[QUOTE=Christenson;294228]However, remember that a meteorite generally doesn't come straight in...and this plate was headed straight out, so it doesn't have to survive for long, maybe 2 seconds (using ~14mi as the depth of the atmosphere and only really being worried if I have the right number of zeros, since the rest of the data is equally sparse)[/QUOTE]It started out going straight up. A flat plate would start tumbling instantly, as I noted earlier.

14 miles (25km say) is gross underestimate of the thickness of the atmosphere. Metors generally start serious ablation up at around 100km where the air is [b]much[/b] thinner than the plate would experience when it first takes off at about 70km/s. Meteors rarely travel much faster than half that speed and undergo much less resistance, and hence thermal shock than the plate would endure.

[YOUTUBE]yVkdfJ9PkRQ[/YOUTUBE]

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;294761]...[/QUOTE]
beautiful! Can it be used for factoring? :smile: I think it should not be so difficult...

[url]http://hint.fm/wind/[/url]

I thought I got this from here, but I can't find it anywhere... so here it is (again?).

[url]http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1[/url]

[quote]According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US.[/quote]
0_o

Found this comment on an ebay listing:

[FONT=Arial]You are bidding on a [/FONT]GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P43 ATX Intel Motherboard Comes in original box and was my wifes. I recently upgraded her so I am selling this.

Makes it sound like he upgraded his wife lol.

[QUOTE=bcp19;295178]Found this comment on an ebay listing:

[FONT=Arial]You are bidding on a [/FONT]GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P43 ATX Intel Motherboard Comes in original box and was my wifes. I recently upgraded her so I am selling this.

Makes it sound like he upgraded his wife lol.[/QUOTE]
He may well have meant exactly that.

[QUOTE=99.94;295192]He may well have meant exactly that.[/QUOTE]
It is still a better deal than
[FONT=Georgia]"You are bidding on the laptop that I shot repeatedly while making a youtube video to make a lesson for my daughter and the likes of her of the twitterati generation."[/FONT]
[FONT=Georgia] [/FONT]

[QUOTE=Batalov;295201]It is still a better deal than
[FONT=Georgia]"You are bidding on the laptop that I shot repeatedly while making a youtube video to make a lesson for my daughter and the likes of her of the twitterati generation."[/FONT]
[FONT=Georgia] [/FONT][/QUOTE]
Actually, if you had a way to prove it, that laptop could be worth more shot up than in good condition. That video got A LOT of views. I can imagine it getting put in a tech museum in New York City. Or maybe some tech company would want it as a souvenir.

For budding web programmers ...
 

[url]http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/[/url]