Astronomy/cosmology questions...

[Buster's Uncle]

Let me think about it a while, and see if I can come up with some outrageous bull that makes sense...

[Unorthodox]

I'm pretty sure I remember a ship losing gravity in a movie I didn't finish.  Maybe it has a clue how that happened? 

[Lorizael]

The most common system to go offline on a starship is the inertial dampers. But they never go completely offline--just like 3% offline--because otherwise you'd need new characters next week.

[Unorthodox]

From a Nasa article on trek science re: anti gravity. 

Try a web search for "levitating frog" to see how it's done

That lead me here: 

! No longer available

That lead me to some scholarly articles that they have produced 10+G with diamagnetism in extremely small scale experiments on single cell organisms.     

So, theoretically possible but stupidly insane power requirements, and a host of practical challenges to make it happen.

[Rusty Edge]

I am out of my league in this astrophysics and rocket sciences, so I probably don't have anything to contribute. My guess is that said gravity deck tech is self contained. It meets the insane power requirements by being a sort of plug-in car system that gets recharged at star base
 12 or something.

[Unorthodox]

Well, you're running a matter/antimatter reactor on the ship anyway, I don't know that power is necessarily a problem for the trek ships at that level so much as it would be for us today. 

[Geo]

Has to be some sort of self-contained or at the very least rechargeable system, otherwise the gravity would falter for sure each time the warp core is ejected.

[Unorthodox]

Has to be some sort of self-contained or at the very least rechargeable system, otherwise the gravity would falter for sure each time the warp core is ejected.

I don't see why some kind of storage system built in, recharged by the warp core is out of the question. 

Only challenge I really see is TNG saucer seperation, I don't think the saucer had a warp core? 

Maybe it runs off the impulse fusion reactors? 

[E_T]

Auxiliary Power...

[Rusty Edge]

Okay, here's a new one for me- DARK FLOW
I was following some links and found myself here-  https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327246.000-13-more-things-dark-flow/

Could you illuminate the subject for me?

[Geo]

Sure!

[E_T]

Just watched something about the (relatively) recent discovery of the "super" Crater in Northern Greenland.  Some of the hypothesis have the impact around sometime during the last major Ice-age and that the ice sheet was likely much thicker at the time.

Granted, we do have a fairly good understanding of impact energies when hitting water as well as dry land (so as to create a crater of x size).  But what about when Ice is involved, when you take into account the latent heat quotient of not just one phase change (water to vapor) but also the second phase change (ice to water) for all that Ice.

How much would that change (or muddy up if you will) the calculations of the probable size and energy of the impacting object?

And, there have been questions about ejectra from the impact (or lack there of, but most could be currently under existing ice - some conjectures about side glance hit, but still), would the rapid melt/vaporization have any possible effect of how that might get distributed?

[Geo]

And, there have been questions about ejectra from the impact (or lack there of, but most could be currently under existing ice - some conjectures about side glance hit, but still), would the rapid melt/vaporization have any possible effect of how that might get distributed?

IIRC (the article mentioned it I think), the courtyard meteor which gave the researchers the idea of looking for impact signs in this location is a part of the ejecta.

[Lorizael]

How much would that change (or muddy up if you will) the calculations of the probable size and energy of the impacting object?

Quite a bit, it would appear. The estimate given for energy/mass/speed of the impactor is based purely on the size of the crater. But if you dig into the paper, the authors acknowledge:

If ice was present and its thickness was comparable to the impactor’s diameter, then a more energetic projectile is required to produce a crater of the observed size, and the fraction of non-ice debris in the ejecta would be smaller than if the impact hit ice-free land (19).

And 19 is a reference to another paper modeling crater formation in icy layers on Mars. The abstract says:

The presence of an icy layer significantly modifies the cratering mechanics. Observable features demonstrated by the modeling include variations in crater morphometry (depth and rim height) and icy infill of the crater floor during the late stages of crater formation. In addition, an icy layer modifies the velocities, angles, and volumes of ejecta, leading to deviations of ejecta blanket thickness from the predicted power law. The dramatic changes in crater excavation are a result of both the shock impedance and the strength mismatch between layers of icy and rocky materials.

So... given that the crater they found looks pretty standard and they didn't see ejecta in the nearby ice, I'm leaning toward there not having been ice at the time. /me shrugs.

[ColdWizard]

If dark matter and dark energy are negative mass fluid and the fluid is continuously created, where does it come from?