Thanks Edward, that makes more sense. I mean the rounds' 2600 km/h velocity combined with the aircraft's 900 km/h velocity has the rounds leaving the aircraft at a minimum of 3500 km/h. Catching up to those rounds in an aircraft whose top speed is 1200 km/h seems difficult enough (even taking into account the rounds' deceleration and any facilitating arc)and then breaking ahead of them ... geez.
Okay has this been debunked? Catching up to your own rounds under these conditions seems plausible. What seems implausible is the relative velocities of aircraft and rounds on interception that would enable the rounds to penetrate the aircraft. It seems that the decay in projectile velocity combined with the speed the aircraft had to reach to overtake them would render relative velocities that wouldn't allow the rounds to penetrate. Does anyone know about this?
When Michael Shermer showed the gorilla video at a Skeptics meeting it was astonishing how many members of the audience made a show of laughing really loud when the gorilla walked out - to convey, "Hey look! A gorilla! And I've never seen this before!" Let's get a grant to study that ancient gem.
It's funny that the U.N Office of Outer Space Affairs would think an astrophysicist would be a good ambassador to an alien race. I guess the logic is that the race is from another planet and astrophysicists study... er... planets - or something like that. It reminds me of the myopia that created the Pioneer Plaque. I vote that Shackamaxon and Gareth replace the U.N in deciding who should do the talking.
@archibot - science does tell us that things are true to high degrees of probability. In a different context you would emphasize this. Your rhetorical move (where the tentativeness of inquiry is pitched as its defining virtue) is only wheeled out when responding to lulu's good point - which is just that despite lip-service paid to this tentativeness, at any given moment the vonskippys of the world don't let the open-endedness of inquiry temper their habit of badmouthing folk who believe things which don't match the present state of inquiry. Lulu is right, vonskippies believes what they're told and then take undue intellectual credit for having done so. Their ontology is welded to research trajectories and funding councils. Their self-image as "smart" is achieved by comparing themselves to fortune tellers, flat-earthers, astrologers, creationists, Kirlian photographers and (probably) Alan Sokal's impressions of postmodernists.
That being said, the real vonskippy (not the generic vonskippy I'm talking about above) is one of the funniest and wittiest posters on Neatorama, and I'm a fan.
That being said, the real vonskippy (not the generic vonskippy I'm talking about above) is one of the funniest and wittiest posters on Neatorama, and I'm a fan.