# Tag Info

## New answers tagged science

18

I am NOT (not, not not) fluent in celestial mechanics, so if I'm wrong, let me know and I'll delete this answer. But... Our favorite supervillain, Gru, has asked his most trusted scientist, Dr. Nefario, to build him a black hole gun! From Wikipedia we find... t_{ev} \approx 2.1\times10^{67}\left(\frac{M}{M_{\odot}}\right)^3\;\text{years} = 6.623\times10^{...

0

How about a semi-disposable system? There have been plenty of answers about limits on how far you can push a CPU that basically preclude what you're after. Lets try a different tactic: Go with the massively parallel approach we see in GPUs. You can get an awful lot more instructions per second this way--I believe there are graphics cards now that can get ...

1

Yes, it is often possible to run a CPU above its temperature limit as specified in documentation. This may result unreliable work and shorter life span of the CPU but it does not crash immediately. Different individual CPUs from even the same series are likely to have varying ability to work "under stress". For instance, my i7-3960X CPU has the ...

2

Based on my experience having designed lots of digital logic over the past couple decades, you can make faster chips. But you can't do it by just running existing chips faster than they were designed to work. You have to come up with faster transistors and circuit designs. You can't do it by just running existing chips faster The heat produced by a modern ...

3

Allow me to introduce the ultimate laptop. Current computing hardware is sadly extremely limited by the fact that most of its energy is locked up in the mass of the hardware, leaving a mere trifle available for computation. Efficiencies are made worse by using billions and billions of electrons to represent a single bit. Not so for the best mages! By ...

1

The great think about magic is that it can do whatever you want it to do. To make today's CPUs run faster, your magic needs to affect physics to: Remove or at least greatly reduce production of heat. Speed up the switching time of the transistors. If you can locally affect how physics work, then both should be possible. Lets say that once the spell is over,...

2

As OnoSendai alluded, cloud computing is the answer. Unlike they implied, stealing it is not necessary. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, or any number of lesser-known cloud computing providers, will sell you all the instantaneous computing power you can afford, today, with very little preparation. Exclusive machines not shared with other customers are more ...

2

There was a story on the net, many years ago. (Usenet era, I think.) A group decided to see how far they could overclock a 25MHz 486 (or maybe 386). They put the unit in a freezer, and started turning up the speed. It kept working. I don't remember how far they got it stable, but.... At one point, they accidentally pulled all the jumpers and turned it ...

2

Yes, but also no, but also yes. Can you design a piece of computing hardware that's designed to run processors until they burn out, at which point you return them? Absolutely. Can you do this for processing-heavy tasks? Yes. But it won't be a CPU. A CPU is a central processing unit. Its main job isn't to do intensive processing, but to do central processing -...

4

Quantum Computers This is the basic principle behind quantum computers. They are much much faster than a normal processor at solving for certain kinds of problems, but also much more sensitive to introducing errors over time. Quantum computers can do certain tasks billions of times as fast as the world's strongest super computers using traditional processors....

2

In terms of regular CPU's that are created today, not exactly. Today's CPU's can be overclocked either until the point the heat generated by them will fry the CPU or up to the theoretical maximum performance for any given unit of time due to the clock speeds. This also assumes the other hardware in the computer is functioning as fast as the processor. There ...

7

In many cases, the limiting factor for CPU speeds is not the fact that they will melt if run too fast, but rather that circuits take a certain amount of time to switch, and if some of the switches that need to switch before some event occurs fail to do so, the CPU will likely produce erroneous results. Additionally, if a circuit that needs to switch off ...

7

With a twist? Sure. Let's call it... Zeus' Wish. You pray to the god of clouds, rain, thunder and lightning, and he gives you some valid burner cloud computing credentials. These allow you to utilize AWS server farms on all regions around the globe at 100% processor usage until your credentials are revoked. Best used with algorithms highly customized for ...

10

Based on your comment to JBH it sounds like you want a once-off computational device with a real-world analogue that can be offered to eldritch creatures in exchange for a short term power (i.e. magic). To me it sounds like you want to look into measurement based quantum computing (also know as one-way quantum computing). The way this works is that to ...

15

The simple fact is that the best CPUs today can't do much more than 8GHz for a top clock speed even if you invest insane amounts of energy in getting rid of the heat they produce, because heat is only part of the problem (it's the only part that actually destroys the CPU though). That's roughly double the clock speed of most modern CPUs, but that actually ...

0

Yes, but... Most micros are constructed to be able to theoretically run at substantially more than their rated clock speed. What limits that speed is the micro's construction, and manufacturers actually have little (or at least limited) control over that. On the production line, manufacturers actually test micros to see what speed they can manage, and then ...

20

Yes and no Modern CPUs already do what you're suggesting and that's called boost mode, but there are limits that will result in diminishing returns. You will not get 10X as someone else posted. There are multiple failure mechanisms that can cause the CPU to age, which result in reduced performance or outright failure: Electromigration, Temperature-Dependant-...

-1

A true universal translator requires omniscience, mostly because "language" is just a societal construct. Say two friends get together (say Jane and Alice) and invent a couple new words so they can communicate in secret without others knowing what they're saying: that's a language (albeit a very primitive one). For the universal translator to ...

1

With modern day technology - no. An overclocked CPU will overheat and malfunction pretty quick. But this malfunction almost certainly won't be fatal. After cooling down, CPU would be good to run again.

39

An Answer from an EE... Yes. Now, to quote one of my favorite movies... Can you launch an ICBM horizontally? Sure! Why would you want to? (The Hunt for Red October) You obviously have a purpose in mind, but without knowing that purpose we can't answer the other half of this question — does it make sense? CPUs today can run at least 10X of their posted ...

19

I have a magitech (...) Well, we live in the age of smog computing - the smog being that mythical place where computing takes place, which is actually someone else's data center. Like when you write "it shall be engraved upon the smog" in your grimoire and then you can pick the enchantment up on your crystal ball from where you left, you know? In ...

1

Yes and No Ok you have instantaneous processing power so overclocking really means squat so you build in planned obsolescence. The CPU could run for a million years so you introduce a part that will break after X amount of time or Y amount of CPU cycles. The reason for this is so the customer need to keep coming back to you for more. There's real no profit ...

-1

The answer should be Universal Meaning. Every language (even those that use pictures, splashes or thinking) have to express something meaningful - like I am hungry, Cold in here, or even much more complex thoughts. So every language should be translated into UM and after that into new language. Phycicaly, you will have to measure the sounds, body language ...

0

a Universal translator at first glance is impossible Lets say I send you a binary string "00010101" translating that to base 10 is simple. 21. But then I tell you that it is in big endian notation, and the actual answer is 168. But I actually mis-translated this because it was supposed to be in unary, so the value is 3, ect, ect. If you don't know ...

-1

Magic While it is possible to generate a translator for known languages, given a large enough database, grammar rules, some form of AI etc. there are two impossible hurdles to take for a universal translator that can also translate unknown languages. reference Given an arbitrary word from an unknown language, there is absolutely no way you can figure out ...

0

Cochlear implants and AI Normal hearing is a thing of the past. cochlear implants can catch the sound over many frequencies and be stronger than the normal ears. This can prevent hearing loss from loud noises and if they do break they can be easily replaced. cochlear implants listen to sound and then translate it to electrical stimuli which is sent down the ...

3

Excellent question, and one that's challenging to linguists and anthropologists. Adding extraterrestrials makes it even more complicated. On Earth, human languages spread, evolve, and recombine in ways that can be tracked. Languages evolve much the way organisms do, mutating and expending in complexity or simplifying and streamlining. Languages are modified ...

5

The "Babel fish", as described by Douglas Adams, is outside of realm of modern science. Translating from a previously unknown language, without any references, is an unsolvable task. The original Babel fish worked off "brain waves", not sound waves, which provided a logically conceivable way of translating the meaning of the speech. There ...

1

Regarding how they Work: Steel wire is stored inside the body (Maneuver Gear), installed in the lumbar area of the back. There are two axles, which revolve independently. The operating device has two triggers that launch the hooks, a lateral switch that aims the hooks and a brake. It also has a top piece where blades are put for combat. Thus the operating ...

2

Yes, Canadian camouflage company HyperStealth use conventional but little-known optics to make objects effectively invisible. They made a flair splash with this and the technology clearly has a lot of applications, many of which are military. There are some good videos of their tech in action online.

4

This may not be what you're looking for: Here's a video showing it in works. What is happening here is that a fresnel lens is catching ambient light. Place the object you wish to hide far enough back from the lens, and the ambient light has been bent "around" the object, effectively concealing it (very effectively in some cases). You can see, ...

2

Metamaterial Electromagnetic Cloaking Device Metamaterial cloaking is a mostly-theoretical concept which is to create a meta-material that can conduct light around it and thus be rendered 'truly invisible', or at least, undetectable by sight within certain frequencies of light. As the object is not hit by light in any way, this can be considered to be ...

1

No True invisibility isn't something achievable, at least with current science and current theoretical science. Like you say, invisibility is often confused. In the movie "tomorrow never dies", they have an invisible car that records with tiny camera's the background and projects it on the other side. Problem is perspective, elegantly explained in ...

5

You only want 233 years? Easy enough, but social development and technological development have different spurs...and sometimes advance in one may lead to regression in the other. New technologies and industries tend to develop and prosper in places with access to capital (banking), a trainable workforce (literacy/education), and reasonably fair dispute ...

2

The easiest explanation would be the Dark Ages not happening It was not a great time to be alive. The Roman Empire had fallen, the Catholic Church was in control of scientific advancement, plagues were ravaging Europe. Did I mention invaders? You've got to make up only 233 years. The Dark Ages lasted 800 or 900ish years. Some thoughts... Medieval ...

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