Post Difficult Questions Here

Well, if we're going to be technical about it, not always. Only if the result of all the forces working on the object is non-zero.
So, what would really happen is, the immovable object will go Newton's Third on whatever is transferring the unstoppable force at it.

Unstoppable force acting on an immovable object produces an unimaginable result.

BenKenobi said:

Excel.

So, it is possible to create inter-file link.
How to create variable interfile link?

As in - cell D2:" =[1.xlsx]SOMETHING!$G$30}"

I want it to take text value from A2 and put in place of 1 (as in 1 in 1.xlsx).

So when A2: "ABC", then D: "=[ABC.xlsx]SOMETHING!$G$30}"

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You can concatenate the path to the folder (with a slash at the end), cell ref and extension to use the link formula after that.

MadVader said:

Unstoppable force acting on an immovable object produces an unimaginable result.

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Infinity meets infinity in a way after all.

Pharaoh X Llandy said:

What really does happen when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?

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"They surrender" - Superman, for some reason.

So as I said in another thread, I just watched the 113 year old film 'A Trip to the Moon' for the first time. In the short movie, the French 'astronauts' are shot to the moon in a metal capsule from a large artillery piece. Upon arriving at the moon, they simply exit the capsule and take a short nap with blankets. While they were napping, I started wondering how familiar people were with the difficulties of space travel by 1902. Obviously the common man not so much, but the scientists and scholars of the age. Did they have any understanding of vacuum and that extensive equipment would be required to breath?

I tried searching this but in general it's much easier to find information on the physics and facts regarding space travel than it is to find history regarding the early understanding of space travel.

I imagine they had some theories at least. I mean, I imagine it was known that higher altitude = thinner air. So there may have been that connection taken to its logical conclusion of really high altitude  = no air.

Although I imagine most of the understanding of early space travel was brought about during the Cold War for... obvious reasons.

In Verne's De la terre à la lune and Autour de la Lune the spaceship (basically a cannon projectile with rocket engines) has its own oxygen life support system.

The air supply proved also to be quite satisfactory. The Reiset and Regnault apparatus for producing oxygen contained a supply of chlorate of potash sufficient for two months. As the productive material had to be maintained at a temperature of between 7 and 8 hundred degrees Fahr., a steady consumption of gas was required; but here too the supply far exceeded the demand. The whole arrangement worked charmingly, requiring only an odd glance now and then. The high temperature changing the chlorate into a chloride, the oxygen was disengaged gradually but abundantly, every eighteen pounds of chlorate of potash, furnishing the seven pounds of oxygen necessary for the daily consumption of the inmates of the Projectile.

Still—as the reader need hardly be reminded—it was not sufficient to renew the exhausted oxygen; the complete purification of the air required the absorption of the carbonic acid, exhaled from the lungs. For nearly 12 hours the atmosphere had been gradually becoming more and more charged with this deleterious gas, produced from the combustion of the blood by the inspired oxygen.

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They later have a discussion about launching a satellite, but their problem is that to do that, they need to open the window. Verne is quite right about its aspects, except that he is ignoring the rapid decompression that would happen. Whenever they open the window, they lose some air and feel cold, but there is no Hollywood Alien-4 decompression sucking them off, nor any real one for that matter.

"We manufacture air only partly, friend Michael," replied Barbican. "We manufacture only oxygen; we can't supply nitrogen—By the bye, Ardan, won't you watch the apparatus carefully every now and then to see that the oxygen is not generated too freely. Very serious consequences would attend an immoderate supply of oxygen—No, we can't manufacture nitrogen, which is so absolutely necessary for our air and which might escape readily through the open windows."

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Yes, the Sun heats our Projectile, but it does not heat the vacuum through which we are now floating. Where there is no air there can neither be heat nor light; just as wherever the rays of the Sun do not arrive directly, it must be both cold and dark. The temperature around us, if there be anything that can be called temperature, is produced solely by stellar radiation. I need not say how low that is in the scale, or that it would be the temperature to which our Earth should fall, if the Sun were suddenly extinguished."

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He also described that there is no drag in the space.

Because, my dear Captain, we are moving through a vacuum, and because all bodies fall or move—the same thing—with equal velocity through a vacuum, no matter what may be their shape or their specific gravity. It is the air alone that makes a difference of weight. Produce an artificial vacuum in a glass tube and you will see that all objects whatever falling through, whether bits of feather or grains of shot, move with precisely the same rapidity. Up here, in space, like cause and like effect.

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Now, this is 1870s. And Verne is no scientist. Lot of Ciolkovskij's work has been done by 1902. Basically, Georges Mélies was a Michael Bay of the era.

But Verne was also ahead of his time in some aspects. In the same time period, some people still advocated for the existence of aether, the fifth element, and postulated that aether was the force that kept planets and stars in place.

MadVader said:

Unstoppable force acting on an immovable object produces an unimaginable result.

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This. There really is neither unstoppable force nor an immovable object.

Well, yes. But as I understood it, the question was basically if they thought it is possible to breath in space. The aether was more about the "god" substance or something along these lines - that is does with light conduct and you mentioned celestial movement, but I do not think anyone ever thought that aether was breathable. Basically, I think they were pretty sure that they knew it is not possible to breath in space.

And yes, Verne is cool 

Difficult question for you guys.

Why am i an idiot?

Huh, thanks for the extra bit of context there, Ben, appreciate it.

I'm still curious about, I guess, the first experiments and more solid theories to 'confirm' what space conditions were/are like, but again I just don't know what to search for to learn about it.

Well, I think that "there is kinda nothing like what we have on Earth in space" idea was basically proven as early as Newton came up with his Gravity law, applied it to the movement of other planets than he derived it from and it kinda worked. Atmospheric drag in space would not make that possible.

It was understood rather confidently by the 1860s that the moon had no atmosphere, by failing to conform to the effects of the Lomonosov effect (itself going back even further to 1761), that is, it possessed none of the lensing effects Venus does when it passes in front of the sun or other bright stars in the sky.

In Nasmyth and Carpenter's The Moon: Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite, published in 1874, there's a chapter entitled "On the existence or non-existence of a lunar atmosphere", which argues strongly against its existence.

Aether permeating all throughout space and producing otherwise unexplained effects is still a theory in practice today, but it is given the less mystical but equally meaningless name "dark matter".

Where can I get this software? I used to have it but now all I have is

RabbleKnight said:

Difficult question for you guys.

Why am i an idiot?

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It could involve many factors like the environment in which you grew up, people that you were influenced by, the overall experiences that you went through, perhaps even biology. It is indeed a complicated question and I suspect you would refuse to sacrifice so much of your time to take part in the investigation. But who knows, there is a possibility(slim as it might be) that you are not an idiot. We don't know of a single creature that can infallibly judge one's conduct. Not other humans, not even yourself.  Don't lose hope. I'm with you, brother.

Let's imagine a pseudo-medieval setting, with two ships out at sea. A trading cog is being boarded by the piratey crew of a small caravel. The cog's defenders allegedly consist of twenty-something-maybe-thirtyish sailors, most of whom aren't used to fighting, and about thirty more professional soldiers. The pirate crew consists of maybe fifty to sixty sailors (and moderately experienced fighters, I guess), all of which are assailing the cog. The defenders win at the end, because of equipment discrepancies and other reasons, but probably with 30-50% casualties.
Now, my difficult question is as follows: How much blood is likely to be sp(l)attered around the deck at the end? Not that much? A fair bit? Loads? And more importantly, how does one clean the deck of a sailing ship after a boarding fight? I don't remember any mention of this in any of the adventuring books I read when I was a kid.
As a bonus question, what would the average fighter's attire look like at the end, presuming the fighter survived in good condition, but probably suffered a few minor cuts here and there? If I've got to be honest, I've really got no idea of how bloody (not as in "casualties", which Google seems to think I want, but as in actual blood) such a mêlée would bring about one's clothing, and my characters have to drop off the ship and go about their business when the cog arrives at its destination in a couple of days, and they can't really do that if their clothes are all bloody.

EDIT: No guns of any sort are involved, be it gunpowder, jeweller's rouge, or magic-based, just some bows and arrows, chiefly before the actual boarding started.

Depends on the weapons, depends on the armour, depends on how close (literally, i.e. proximity-wise) the fight is. But most importantly it depends on the clothing the people are wearing. People who get shot or stabbed usually have huge blood stains on their clothes but very little of it ends up on the ground. Think about how much sweat ends up on the floor, even if you lose up to a litre of the stuff, compared to the amount soaked into your clothes.

However, people who get shot or stabbed in arteries would probably end up spraying blood everywhere, which is why I say weapons are important. If they're all carrying axes and sabres and other cutting weapons there are likely to be a few partially-severed limbs. But if they're all using rapiers and spears the blood is going to end up mostly on their own clothes.

Even if arteries do get cut and the blood sprays out, there's still a chance it'll end up on other people's clothes if the fight is crowded.

Of course this is all speculation for obvious reasons, but I'm very accustomed to seeing blood interact with clothing (i have a lot of nosebleeds, plus people used to get beaten pretty badly in fights in my school). Clothing absorbs a great deal of it before it can hit the ground.

I would imagine the fighters on both sides would be carrying swords, axes and daggerlike weapons(I don't think that spears would be very suitable to a boarding action). And both sides would probably not be to heavily armored, maybe leather and the very occasional mail maybe? So there would be some where between 20-30 casualties on the defending side and 40-60 casualties for the pirates, which would mean there are somewhere between 60-90 cut up corpes on both ships and in the water. All of which have wounds inflicted by cutty, choppy weapons, so I would imagine that there is a lot of blood on the ship. (Every corpse probably spilled a litre of blood atleast? I imagine that wounds in this situation are pretty bloody, I am in no way an expert on this so I actually have not a very good idea.)

Edit: forgot that clothing absorbs probably quite a bit, a pointed out above.

I imagine (and describe some of) the fighters to be using edged weapons exclusively, yes, namely regular swords, daggers, and a few axes. The professional soldiers will be moderately armoured, as they've got their gear around, and the others are chiefly unarmoured; most of the pirates are described as having leather chestpieces, whilst others are also unarmoured, so yeah, leather and some mail sounds fitting for the armoured blokes. And yes, the fight is very crowded, as all those people are on the cog's deck, and the pirates attempt to "push back" and separate the defenders as much as possible, given that some of the defenders are better-equipped.
(Let's ignore the probability of that sort of equipment being used when caravels were widespread.)

Exactly the thought of blood absorption by clothing is what makes me conflicted about the subject. In a previous swordfight with only a dozen or so guys on each side, where everyone had manoeuvring ground and the numbers were almost equal, I didn't really think about this at all. But now, because we're talking about lots of corpses on the deck, and choppy wounds to major blood vessels, I don't know how it'd look. Sure, a severed artery would lead to exsanguination, but I doubt that the blood would gush out with enough momentum to spill all over the place, and I also doubt that it'd spurt sideways, creating a bigger mess, instead of just flowing down the victim's body.
But then again, I've never experimented with cutting living people's arteries, so I wouldn't know for certain.

Maybe a reasonable conclusion would be a very filthy deck, but with a lot of the blood still on the corpses, and only a little spatter here and there on combatants, each one being more affected from his own personal wounds than from any potential outside source? Except those unscathed, of course.

Since you're using this for a novel and this is an issue nobody can properly verify, it would probably be better to add blood regardless. Your readers are going to expect blood after any battle even if they're lindybeige, so saying "there was no blood on the decks because it was all on their shirts" is going to sound clunky unless you phrase it really subtly. Perhaps there's a battle-unaccustomed protagonist who is surprised along with the audience that there isn't much blood on the deck. But once again you'll have to make it subtle or it'll look like "look at all this research I dun did!"

I come across lots of issues like this when I'm writing (primarily speculative futurism), but I usually just put my autism aside for a moment and describe an event how the audience is going to expect it, unless I want to surprise them somehow without appearing like a pretentious tosspot.