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Well, scientists would have to be resourceful to even come close to anything like that.

A black hole is nothing but an object with immense density. One can actually create a black hole from a few atoms - given that these atoms are pressed sufficiently close to each other.

Creating such a black hole would have no bad effects at all: the mass is still the mass of the few atoms that were compressed together so the gravity that awakens from such a black hole would be miniscule. Such a small black hole would also evaporate very quickly - in a fraction of a second. (Black holes radiate because they have a temperature. Given enough time, a black hole can evaporate completely - a smaller black hole evaporates a lot faster.)

It would be a great step forward if physicists succeeded in creating a very small black hole - the result could confirm that black holes really exist (right now we don't know it for a fact, we just have predictions that seem to be all right.) In turn, this would confirm (again) that general relativity is correct. It would also confirm parts of quantum electrodynamics.

The fear of black holes comes from the stories regarding their gravity, but gravity is strong only for large masses - the larger the mass, the greater its gravity is. (Or the more it distorts spacetime.) If you move close enough to a black hole (crossing the event horizon), you would be torn apart and sucked down. But if you kept the distance, nothing would happen to you. Of course, keeping the distance is more difficult the closer you are.

What do you think would happen to Earth if you suddenly replaced the Sun with a black hole of equal mass?

Answer:

Spoiler

Nothing. It would be dark, of course, and cold, so it wouldn't be very comfortable for life, but nothing else would happen. Since the mass of our black hole is equal to the mass of the Sun, it'd generate the same gravity at the same distance. So Earth (and Moon, Mars, Jupiter, etc.) would keep moving in their orbit exactly as before.

[close]

On the other hand, if you'd replace the Sun with a black hole of equal size, that would be a completely different story - the mass of such a black hole would be enormous - maybe thousands of Suns (this is just a guess, I didn't actually calculate it.)

The problem with small black holes (like the ones they're trying to create at the LHC) is not really controlling but creating them. Such a tiny black hole could be controlled quite easily, since its mass is very small, but achieving the necessary density is a monumental task and requires a lot of energy.

Why would it be a bad idea?

The fact that it may increase a few degrees doen't bother me in the least bit.  I feel sorry for the poor bastards that have beach front property or live below sea level but other than that I don't see why I should give a shit.  The earth has been much hotter and much colder in the past; more than once.  We just finished a mini ice age just a few hundred years ago so is it that much of shock to learn that it is still warming up?   

Wow, this became a lot longer than I inteded.

Well, maybe it should bother you, at least a bit. When the average global temperature rises, a lot of ice will melt, as you said, so those with beach property will be probably better off selling in time . However, having higher ocean levels can have more effect than that.

Higher levels mean larger water surface which results in more water evaporating into the air. More water molecules in the air trap more heat in the lower atmosphere. An other possible effect of more water (and/or carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere that higher amounts may reflect more sunlight (more clouds are formed), so less sunlight will reach the surface. (Heat will not leave, though, because thicker clouds may reflect it back.)

More humidity and higher temperatures in the lower atmosphere might easily result in more severe weather more frequently: higher average wind speeds, more tornados and hurricanes, etc. Higher surface temperature can in itself increase evaporation, so it may become a chain reaction. Since the planet has weather patterns, changes will be different in different areas: some will warm up, but some may even cool down.

The climate shift will most definitely have an adverse effect on the ecosystem, which is very sensitive to changes. The possibility of less sunlight will cause some plants to die off which can have a cascading effect on other species. (Some others will flourish due to more CO2.) On thing to note is that places where humans grow crops may become unusable, because of changing conditions. That's something that may hit you easily, even if the rise of ocean levels won't have a direct effect on you.

I fully agree with those who say that global warming is a fact - it is, every single study shows that. It can be argued whether it's a natural process or something done by humankind, but it really doesn't matter, because the end result can be the same.

The real problem with global warming is that it happens on enormous scales, both in size and in time: if we don't act in time to counter the (possible, not sure) bad effects, we won't have a second chance if it actually goes bad, because it may become a runaway process that'll take hundreds or thousands of years to reverse. By then there may be no more humans if the change is bad enough. Life itself will likely stay around, but after the last 3 or so thousand years, it'd be nice if humans actually colonize the galaxy.

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I just added this, since evenwolf replied while I was writing.

The relatively few large office buildings are much less of a problem than poorly built apartment buildings. The building that I live in (apartment in Texas) couldn't be sold/rented in many European countries, it's so badly built. And this is not a worn-down building, it's in good shape - at least from what I've seen when I was looking for a place to rent. Here are some of the problems, that are mostly there in other apartments:

• Painted in a dark color, so during summer it heats up more easily (I have to run more AC to keep any tolerable temperature) and during winter it cools down faster (again, more AC needed to keep it somewhat warm. During summers I keep ~28 C, during winter ~21 C.)
• Windows and doors are so low quality that in winter the whole place cools down from 25 C to ~19 C in less than an hour. There are gaps all over the place, I had to put sealing tape around every frame.
  
  I have actually seen places where there were gaps between the window edge and the wall, that you could see through. When I asked the aparment lady who showed me the place about it she said that it was one of the reasons they had it on sale. They offered me the place for $800 a month - a 1 bedroom hole. I don't know if they fixed it eventually.

Most large office buildings are actually very efficient, and they're becoming more and more so. (Sure there are bad ones, but most companies are not willing to pay higher rates for heating, water, etc., so the owners are forced to fix the buildings.) There are a lot more leaky apartments out there, all over the world (I didn't mean to bash only on American ones, the same s true for many buildings in Hungary, where I'm from. The problem is that people don't have much of a choice, since you either buy a house or rent and both depend on your wallet: if you cannot/not willing to pay a *lot* more, the building will not be energy efficient because the builder is not forced by anyone: one must live somewhere so even poorly built buildings can be rented.)

Did you use any dependent DLLs? If you did, those must be available in the path on every computer where your plugin is used.

Thanks, CJ, VS 2005 works well. 

Thanks, Steve!

Thanks a bunch, guys.   The link is indeed working now.

CJ: the images on the editor plugin page are missing, you may want to take a look. The text is still understandable even without the images, though. Here is the link: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/accomplug.htm

On a somewhat related note: CJ, can I use VC++ 2005 to write a plugin or do I have to use VS6?

Guys,

I tried downloading the latest agsplugin116.zip file from http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/acplugin.htm but it ends up 404. Is there any other place where I could get it from until CJ tweaks it? I had a previous version, but deleted it when I saw that 116 is out.  :

Thanks,
Traveler

Check the BIOS again - I haven't seen a motherboard where you couldn't turn this off. I hate these stupid logos, as they hide important information about the computer.

Look for an option like "Show logo at boot" or something similar. You can also try uploading a screenshot of the BIOS, if you have a digital camera, that way we could take a peek and see if it's there. Normally this option is under Startup or Boot or something similar.

I agree w/ LimpingFish. TLJ was a massive pain to finish. I like talkie games, but the amount of talking was sooo much in TLJ that it gave me a headache. And in many cases, the story was very linear. I, for one, will definitely skip Dreamfall, because I almost hated every character in TLJ.

I, too, think it's getting waaay overcomplicated - a single vote would be enough. When I enter BB, I do it to win . If I don't win, I post my image to CL to see why people didn't vote for it.

Crits Lounge is exactly for people to write what they think about an image. And even if there is just a single vote, nothing prevents people from commenting on each image individually, if they want to.

I feel ashamed, but I must admit, when I vote I don't carefully weight composition against mood and technique - I simply settle for an image that I like most. If there are more than one candidates, I scratch my head and still settle for one, because eventually only one image will win - only one person can host the next BB.

I, too, think that the many categories were a bit overboard - having a few may be good, but 10?!  :o  I wanted to vote but then I changed my mind, because I didn't have time to write down all the reasoning for my votes; I also didn't want to write that much.

In my opinion, a single vote per voter would be enough, since there is only a single winner. Having comments in the categories you set up is a good idea, but all the voting still results in a single winner.

As an alternative, images that did not win should probably be posted all together in Crits Lounge to see why they got less votes, how to make them better - that way voting would be about voting and people could still write longer comments about the images, maybe in all the 10 categories that you set up.

CMK2901, try using a lightdome instead, if you can. (Be prepared, though, that it'll take a lot longer to render than with a single light source.)

I don't know if Blender supports automatically creating a lightdome, but you can do it manually. (I don't use Blender because I always get upset when I try to find some setting   - for me, it's very counterintuitive.)

I just checked - Sun is there, so you could try with that, too. If you want to set the mood to be dark, put a tree (or something else) in front of the window (outside), to cast shadows. To me (just a personal opinion), the current lighting is very unrealistic. (Unless you have a huge, brightly glowing UFO landing in front of the window, in which case you nailed it.    )

CMK2901,

If this is supposed to be a day shot, then your lighting is waaaay off. It's very obvious that you use a single point light, not far from the window outside - it's obvious from the perspective lines produced by the window frame shadows.

I don't know what you use for rendering (didn't read the whole thread, just skimmed it through), but you should consider using a large rectangular light (if your renderer supports it), that emits paralel light rays. It'd be even better to use a Sun lightsource (again, if supported), because that would produce really paralel rays.

Right now it looks like the light is coming from a strong spotlight (maybe a car), about at the level of the horizontal crossbeam of the window frame. You cannot possibly have a shadow from the sun on the ceiling like you have in the image.

Lighting aside, nice image. What do you use for modeling/rendering?

HTH

Dave/ProgZmax,

I don't have anything against making your game commercial and making money off of it. I'm not even going to advertise it anywhere, that there was a free version, because I don't want to intentionally cause you harm. You did a good job, you deserve to reap the rewards, I wish you good luck with it.

However, Dave released the original game as free and that was his conscious decision - nobody asked him to do it. I'm greatful that he did, but he didn't have to. So when someone asks for the free game right here where it was announced (after all, this *is* the game thread), I think it's wrong not to pass it over, at least for professional courtesy. You're not going to lose anything over it, because the guy is *not* a potential customer.

That's how I see it. I wouldn't ever go to the official game forum and advertise it but I see nothing wrong about that here. Just my two cents. I'm not going to write about this anymore, because I don't want to hijack the thead any more. But again, good luck with the game.

Maybe he is not interested enough to pay for it but would still play the orginal (free) game? What's wrong with that? To play the deluxe version, even if he's actually interested, he'd have to pay for it. Maybe he doesn't want that or thinks that it's not worth the price.

Typo, drop me a pm and I'll send it to you in some way. If you cannot pm, send an email to xxbbcc a t freemail do t hu. Make sure you clearly mark the topic because I routinely delete mail from unknown people without reading.

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I actually find it quite rude that nobody helps him. The original game was released free, if he wants that, I don't understand why it's so hard to pass it to him.

What Mr. Colossal said about the public is unfortunately true. Many people will see this reclassifying as an act of incompetence and this is magnified by the media. You see all the "poor Pluto" stories because it's summer and nothing happens, so reporters have to make a big story about nothing.

Science makes progress by reevaluating known facts to see if they can be organized into a more logical system. This involves reclassifying things, like it happened to Pluto. But in that sense Nikolas is right - it's not as big a deal as the media pushes it down our throats. But as I (and others, on these forums and elsewhere) said: Pluto is not going anywhere, it'll still be a *named* part of the Solar system and it'll still be investigated to extract more information about it.

As a matter of fact, I don't really care, if Pluto is a planet or not. What I care about is that now there is a clear, logical (and wonderfully simple) definition for what a planet is. I'm such a geek that I'm actually glad about this.

...Traveler, you've provided the best reasons that I've seen so far.

Thank you, I'm glad to be of help.

Simply having too many planets seems like a bad reason, because than any distinction we make to keep the number down will be arbitrary.

Keep in mind, that the definition of a planet (or any other celestial body) will necessarily be arbitrary. Nature itself doesn't care about classifications: these bodies simply exist. The need to classify them is a human need, so we introduce categories.

The reason for the definition being arbitrary is simple: celestial objects come in all sizes (the range is continous, like the range of rational numbers), while we want just a few distinct categories. Pluto was not excluded because astronomers wanted to exclude it - it got excluded because the rule that we use to determine if an object is a planet doesn't apply to it.

One of the requirements is for a planet to have "cleared its orbit of other objects," and Pluto is eliminated because it overlaps with Neptune. But doesn't the door swing both ways? Can't we say Neptune hasn't cleared Pluto from it's orbit, and therefore isn't a planet either?

"Clearing its orbit" means that the planet must stand out. This is not a quantitative measure, but one can say by looking if an object stands out. Pluto is really part of a set of other objects (maybe part of the Kuiper belt), which orbit the Sun beyond the orbit of Neptune. Pluto (and the other objects in that area) are just too small to generate enough gravity to attract all other small bodies from the region - so they cannot stand out, they appear as part of a crowd.

Now, the distance between Pluto and Neptune is really big. Pluto's orbit is tilted and the orbital cycles of Neptune and Pluto are such that when Pluto comes close to Neptune's orbit, Neptune is always far away from there.

Here comes the requirement of mass: Pluto couldn't possibly clear Neptune out of its orbit if they actually got close to each other (it's waaay too small), while Neptune could easily digest Pluto. And if you look at the general neighborhood of Neptune, you'll see that there is nothing in its path - it's really clear, just like the other planets.

Functionally these definitions may be the same, but it implies to me that, realistically, we're approaching this from different angles.

I believe the reason for this is that we know almost nothing about planets in general. We (humans) never left the Solar system and we detected only somewhat more than 100 planets in other solar systems. These are mainly gas giants, simply because a planet doesn't shine with its own light, so any smaller planets will be flooded out by their star's light. Huge planets can be detected by measuring the drop in brightness of their star when the planets periodically cross the line of sight between the telescope and the star.

On the other hand, we have a fairly good knowledge about the planets in our Solar system and the new planet definition is generic enough to use as a starting point to classify extrasolar planets.

But I'm having a hard time seeing the connection to mass, or that this is the intention of the new definition. If this is the case, it would imply the following:
1. There's a relation between how big something is and its ability to wander through space (i.e. planets can't wander).

There is no such relation. Any object in space can wander anywhere, as long as it's not under the influence of a greater mass that forces it to orbit (or fall in.) This is why I wrote that the orbit itself is irrelevant for the planet definition.

Greater mass results in greater gravity, which helps the object to attract smaller objects (thus to "clear the neighborhood" and stand out.) Attracting small objects increases the object's mass and its ability to attract other objects further.

2. Pluto's orbit doesn't match the other planets', so it must have wandered in.

But if this is our intention - to define planets as something that was originally formed in the system in which it currently orbits - why not just make that the definition?

Pluto's orbit is really just one of many similar objects at the edge of the inner Solar system. Don't forget that the Solar system doesn't end with Pluto's orbit: there are the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud out there with tens of thousands of objects of different sizes and orbits. Most of these are very far away and very small, so we never saw them, but they're still there and they all orbit the Sun.

So Pluto didn't have to wander in from outside the Solar system - it comes from a region where there are many other objects with similar sizes and orbits. (Pluto's orbit is quite typical of Kuiper belt objects. This may have been one factor in not classifying it as a planet anymore. I think, though, that the linked article is in error stating that this was the sole reason.)

Edit: some typos fixed.

Yeah, it does seem like a strange exercise. One thing that caught my attention is that this definition only applies to stuff in our solar system (since it explicity requires orbit around our Sun). This would imply that "planet"-like objects orbiting other stars have a different name, and are presumably described by a different definition. Indeed, Wikipedia describes them as "extrasolar planets" and their definition seems to depend on whether they're big enough to cause fusion (i.e. "they're not a star"). Talk about arbitrary.

Nothing is arbitrary here. The limit that a planet doesn't cause fusion is the same as saying it doesn't have its own light, so it's really the same definition. You can replace Sun with the name of the other star and you get the same definition of a planet. The mass limit that causes nuclear fusion is very well known, and nothing is arbitrary about that.

We only know of *huge* planets in other star systems, simply because planets do not have their own light and it's very complicated to detect even a really big one. For big bodies, this definition is fine and when we discover smaller planets, we can see if the entire definition is good enough to cover all things that we would "instinctively" call a planet, but not others.

It also seems strange that they're trying to classify these objects based on how they orbit the sun. It seems akin to classifing birds based on how they fly.

I think you misunderstand it - no one is classifying celestial bodies based on their orbits. They're classified based on their mass - read my previous entry. The shape of the orbit is irrelevant.

The problem with Pluto's orbit is that it crosses the ecliptic plane of the solar system - this plane is well established by the orbits of other planets. So it tells us that 4.5 billion or so years back there was a disk of material around the Sun and the planets formed from this. The 8 planets' orbits fall very nearly into the same plane, with Mercury having the greates deviation, 7 degrees. Pluto has a much greater deviation, 17 degrees, which tells us that Pluto didn't form the same way.

I would think a more "scientific" method would be some physical critera that distinguishes planets from other objects.

There isn't any. The only really distinguishing property is mass. In our solar system, planets are made of different material, they have different sizes, different densities, different rotations, etc. Mass is pretty much the only thing that can be used as a general measure.