>That's what I thought, until I added the mass of 4 Hydrogen atoms
>and found it to be greater than the mass of one Helium atom. THinking
>about it, a single hydrogen atom could be converted into a neutron
>(neutron = proton + electron), so on paper, you could get a helium
>atom from 4 hydrogen atoms. I doubt it's so in real life.
If you're a star, it's very possible. You can also get a neutron from a proton
by positron emission. There are lots of things that can happen. And, yes,
neutrinos do play a role in energy conservation and such. We still haven't
totally resolved the issue of neutrinos coming from the sun. (Remember that
neutrino deficit people keep talking about? It's real, and only now people are
trying to explain it away by "neutrino oscillation," that is, the mixing of
"flavors" of neutrinos. This, incidentally, has an impact on the detection of
neutrinos. If the physics is right, then detectible neutrinos should be
converted to undetectible types with greater and greater probability as the
distance from the source increases. This should probably play a role in the
TDR rules, just to put a limitation on the range of neutrino scanners that is
"realistic.")
By the way, things like Jump Drive and such work just fine if you specify that
they only work in ONE reference frame. A standard out -- hand waving wise --
is to use the reference frame at rest with respect to the cosmic background
radiation. That way, you avoid messy stuff like time travel, and you can
always detect microwaves, so it's not as though you're ever "blind" -- they're
everywhere! I imagine in TDR that a standard piece of equipment in the sensor
suite of a ship is some kind of "Big Bang microwave detector" which must be
used to align the ship with the proper ref. frame. If damaged, the ship might
misjump or even (gasp!) be sent into never-never land. Literally.
Robert P. Poole [email removed]
[address removed] MIT Course VIII
311B Bexley Hall "We make Idols of our concepts, but
[address removed] wisdom is born of wonder."
-- St. Gregory the Illuminator