Lots of things blow up near planets in Star Wars (Coruscant in Episode III being an obvious example). Why doesn't this end up more like the movie Gravity?
I was recently watching Episode 3 and a few clone wars episodes, and I found myself thinking during the opening battle between the Republic and General Grievous' forces above Coruscant, on a planet so densely populated where potentially thousands of inhabitants can be killed from a drifting capital class ship with a decaying orbit during space battles what defenses are in place?  Is there any instances of some form of emergency services that tractor beam chunks of debris to safe landing places or repulsor towers that can slow or suspend it until it can be taken apart safely? Even disintegration lasers or emergency force field generators like the types deployed on Hoth as they must have the energy output capable of sustaining it. This IS the galactic capital so must have some advanced tech at its deposal. Even now in our own development humans have certain preventative measures for all types of threats and ways of tracking them, plus responses or fall back plans.
Is there any meaningful distinction between:  class A(object):     foo = 5   # some default value   vs.  class B(object):     def __init__(self, foo=5):         self.foo = foo   If you're creating a lot of instances, is there any difference in performance or space requirements for the two styles? When you read the code, do you consider the meaning of the two styles to be significantly different? How to correctly enable Desktop Cube in Unity 3D? I have read several questions regarding how to fix an already enabled desktop cube or the problems it had in 11.04. But in 11.10, how can I correctly enable desktop cube in Unity 3D? Creating compressed GeoTIFF with QGIS Clipper tool? A union of two subspaces not equal to the vector space. Already awarded bounty refunded on question migration? In March 2011 I offered a 500 bounty on one of my StackOverflow questions () and awarded it to Filip de Vos.   This question was later migrated to Database Administrators and has the following messages on it.     migrated to dba.stackexchange.com by Will♦ Dec 28 '11 at 12:25      This   question belongs on our site for database professionals who wish to   improve their database skills and learn from others in the community.   .     deleted Dec 31 '11 at 1:01   I appear to have been   on whereas Filip .  Is this a bug? Definitely doesn't seem fair or correct to me. The question still shows up in both our bounty tabs despite the migration. I would have hoped that the previously awarded bounty reputation points could still be honoured in this situation. I'm a physics teacher and I would like to find a simulation software that could be used to give exact numerical answers to high school level problems in Newtonian mechanics.  I want the students to first calcultate a numerical answer to a physics problem and then use the simulator to visualize the problem in order to understand it better and verify that the simlator gives the same answer that they got when doing the calculation themselves.  Here are some examples of what kind of problems I want the students to be able to solve with the simulator:   A slope with a specific angle of inclination and a ball starts rolling at a certain point. Determine the speed, angular momentum and total mechanical energy of the ball after a specific time t. A ladder of known mass and length is leaning against the wall at a specific angle. The contact between the ladder and the wall is frictionless. Calcultate the x and y components of the force between the floor and the ladder.   I would like the software to have the following features:  - Simulation in 2D. No 3D simulations are necessary and the software should at least have the option of doing simulations only in 2D.  - Position all objects exactly by writing numbers (just positioning the objects using the mouse is not precise enough).  - Show animations of the time evolution of the system.  - Show forces, velocities and accelerations as arrows.  - Give exact numerical results so that the students can use the software to verify their calculation.  Ideally the software would have a graphical user interface, but if no suitable software with graphical interface exixts, I could also consider a software with text-based inputs. I would consider both free and commercial software.  My question is: Is there any software that would meet these requirements and if there is, where could I get it? Most efficient way to see if an ArrayList contains an object in Java I have an ArrayList of objects in Java.  The objects have four fields, two of which I'd use to consider the object equal to another.  I'm looking for the most efficient way, given those two fields, to see if the array contains that object.  The wrench is that these classes are generated based on XSD objects, so I can't modify the classes themselves to overwrite the .equals.    Is there any better way than just looping through and manually comparing the two fields for each object and then breaking when found?  That just seems so messy, looking for a better way.  Edit: the ArrayList comes from a SOAP response that is unmarshalled into objects. Prove $\gcd(a+b,a^2+b^2)$ is $1$ or $2$ if $\gcd(a,b) = 1$ Assuming that $\gcd(a,b) = 1$, prove that $\gcd(a+b,a^2+b^2) = 1$ or $2$.   I tried this problem and ended up with $$d\mid 2a^2,\quad d\mid 2b^2$$ where $d = \gcd(a+b,a^2+b^2)$, but then I am stuck; by these two conclusions how can I conclude $d=1$ or $2$?  And also is there any other way of proving this result? Is 512 bits a more secure hashing than 256 bits? 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Prove the following integral inequality: $\int_{0}^{1}f(g(x))dx\le\int_{0}^{1}f(x)dx+\int_{0}^{1}g(x)dx$ Suppose $f(x)$ and $g(x)$ are continuous function from $[0,1]\rightarrow [0,1]$, and $f$ is monotone increasing, then how to prove the following inequality: $$\int_{0}^{1}f(g(x))dx\le\int_{0}^{1}f(x)dx+\int_{0}^{1}g(x)dx$$ C++ single template specialisation with multiple template parameters