The first time someone explained the  to me (referring to  -not spacetime) they drew a picture of a  and used the analogy of starships traveling through subspace at warp speed.   When ships are traveling at warp, are they traveling through  in the fourth dimension?
Triggered by a  I was wondering what actually would happen to a ship (e.g. the Enterprise-D NCC-1701) that collides with a stationary object such as a) another ship of a similar configuration or b) a gigantic structure like a moon or even a planet.  We know the deflector is supposed to keep interstellar dust (not to be confused with ordinary dust, which is a different thing) from ripping large holes in the ship.  At first, one thinks "Obvious. ." But does it really? Would the deflector manage to actually deflect both masses? If not, where is the threshold of what a deflector can handle? Would the ship maybe tunnel right through the object, because of wibbly-wobbly space wobblification by the warp field? It does do some weird things to the space right in front and behind the vessel.  Important remark: We cannot approach this with what we know about physics at all. For all intents and purposes, both ships must measure the other ship travelling faster than light, resulting in it having infinite (or rather undefined) mass and by extension momentum. If we start with that reasoning any ship jumping to warp would suck in the entire universe (it takes a moment, but think about it). So, obviously we cannot apply our intuition (even our relativistic intuition) here.
Photons acting as carriers of both attractive and repulsive forces I understand, in basic terms, how a photon, whilst not being electrically charged itself, is viewed as creating electrical repulsion by means of positive momomentum transfer between two negatively charged electrons.  In most introductory quantum mechanics and basic quantum field theory textbooks this repulsive momementum transfer picture is almost always used as a (in classical terms) billiard ball type illustration for electrical repulsion, the Compton effect and so on.  As a photon is a photon is a photon..... I would like to know how it also has the ability to produce atttraction and how negative momentum transfer (such as that between a positively charged object, say a positron and an electron) is explained in any sort of visualisable picture. I'm guessing this may involve Feymann diagrams and the use of time reversal but I'm on shaky ground from there on. Why is it "come" rather than "go" ? Log out button illogical placement In the previous version the logout button is under your username, which it can be found by clicking the down arrow. However, in the new version, after a couple minutes of searching, it is under the "site-switcher" button:        This is really illogical since the logout button is usually under your username, including Google and Yahoo! services.  I suggest bringing back the  which will definitely benefit new users and even old users. When are attributive nouns plural? Why should I use the keyword "final" on a method parameter in Java? I can't understand where the final keyword is really handy when it is used on method parameters.    If we exclude the usage of anonymous classes, readability and intent declaration then it seems almost worthless to me.   Enforcing that some data remains constant is not as strong as it seems.    If the parameter is a primitive then it will have no effect since the parameter is passed to the method as a value and changing it will have no effect outside the scope.  If we are passing a parameter by reference, then the reference itself is a local variable and if the reference is changed from within the method, that would not have any effect from outside of the method scope.    Consider the simple test example below. This test passes although the method changed the value of the reference given to it, it has no effect.  public void testNullify() {     Collection&lt;Integer&gt; c  = new ArrayList&lt;Integer&gt;();           nullify(c);     assertNotNull(c);            final Collection&lt;Integer&gt; c1 = c;     assertTrue(c1.equals(c));     change(c);     assertTrue(c1.equals(c)); }  private void change(Collection&lt;Integer&gt; c) {     c = new ArrayList&lt;Integer&gt;(); }  public void nullify(Collection&lt;?&gt; t) {     t = null; } Why is Tony Stark in the Iron Man suit unaffected by G-forces, inertia and blunt force trauma? Tony's suit is an engineering marvel, and they explain many facets of the technology to help give legitimacy to the special powers, abilities and weapons it has.  I never read the Iron Man comics, but in the movie they really don't have a technological explanation for how he miraculously seems to be unaffected by crushing G-forces of sudden acceleration, the inertia of sudden stops and hair-pin turns, and especially the blunt force trauma from getting smashed in the face with Thor's hammer.  Certainly it appears the suit takes punishment, but Tony always remains unscatched, never a collapsed lung, broken bone or even a bloody nose.  In my infantile understanding of theoretical physics, the same technology that would be used to counter G-forces and sudden blunt force trauma to the body inside would be the very same technology used for  which in my honest opinion would be a much more stunning technological achievement than his heralded Arc Reactor.  Was their ever an explanation proferred for this and if so was it indeed attributed to Anti-Gravity? Combining the second elements of a set of ordered pairs based on their first element I am writing a bash script that needs to know which desktop environment (XFCE, Unity, KDE, LXDE, Mate, Cinnamon, GNOME2, GNOME3,... ) is running.  How can I obtain that information? How do I search events between two set dates inside WP? solution for apex cpu time limit exceeded exception Reverse Triangle Inequality in vector space I have already proved Triangle Inequality $\lVert v+w\rVert \le \lVert v \rVert+\lVert w \rVert$ in vector space $\mathbb{R}^n$. However, I'm having difficulties proving the Reverse Triangle Inequality in the vector space.  I have started with   $$\lVert v \rVert^2=v \cdot v-w\cdot w+w\cdot w \le \lVert v-w \rVert+\lVert w \rVert^2$$ $$\lVert w \rVert^2=w \cdot w-v\cdot v+v\cdot v \le \lVert w-v \rVert+\lVert v \rVert^2$$  based on the Triangle Inequality but I don't know if it is correct. If this is right, I think I can go on with proving it the same way I would the normal Reverse Triangle Inequality. How should I parse user input in a text adventure game? Parsing user commands in a text adventure is a spectrum from 's simple "go north" to some mind-bogglingly clever ones in .  I seem to remember reading nice how-tos in computer magazines back in the 80s, but now I find almost nothing on the 'net except a .  How would you do it?    Update: I went with the simplest approach possible in . C-3PO frequently speaks of “the Maker.” Is this a true droid religion, or is this a religious reverence by droids for their specific creators (in this case, Anakin, even though C-3PO has forgotten who he is)? Is this even a droid thing or is it just C-3PO? What else do we know about this “Maker”-worship? If $X$ is separated over $\operatorname{Spec} \Bbb Z$, is it separated over any other scheme? Is there a combination of "LIKE" and "IN" in SQL? "Unable to locate package" while trying to install packages with APT When I try to install any package through the command line, I get an error.   $ sudo apt-get install &lt;package&gt; Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree        Reading state information... Done E: Unable to locate package &lt;package&gt;   Can anyone help me on this? I have a custom xmodmap file I use, including useful multi-language diacriticals, english quotes, dashes &amp;c. I want to use this map with kmscon, so I need to create a xkb configuration from it. Is there an automated method to do it? Or even a straightforward manual process, since I won't need to do this frequently? Unexpected gaps in IDENTITY column I try to initialize an array in bash-4.2 next way:  ring=() ls -las | tail -n +4 | while read line &gt; do &gt; ring+=("$line") &gt; echo ${ring[-1]} &gt; done 3924 -rw-r--r-- 1 username group 4015716 Mar 23 15:14 script.jar 4 -rw-r--r-- 1 username group 9 Feb 29 12:40 rec.lst 5541 -rw-r--r-- 1 username group 5674226917 Mar 28 15:25 debug.out 8 -rw-r--r-- 1 username group 6135 Mar 25 12:16 script.class 8 -rw-r--r-- 1 username group 6377 Mar 25 11:57 script.java 8 -rwxr-xr-x 1 username group 4930 Mar 8 15:21 script-0.0.0.sh 8 -rwxr-xr-x 1 username group 6361 Mar 28 15:27 script-0.0.1.sh echo ${ring[0]}  echo "${ring[0]}"  echo "${ring[@]}"   What is wrong, why i get empty array after the finish of the loop? How to disable battery charging? From the pmset man page:     POWER SOURCE ARGUMENTS      -g with a 'batt' or 'ps' argument will show the state of all attached power sources.      […] Certain Apple battery calibration tools may temporarily disable   battery charging, even though your Apple portable is plugged into AC   power.      Such tools will never surprise you with this behavior; you will know   it's happening. This state will be reflected in an additional line of   output to 'batt' or 'ps' readings, including the pid of the app   inducing this behavior.       'ChargeInhibit':    1432    So, does any piece of publicly available software exist to force the battery not to charge?