TV/Movies Megathread

[Savonarola]

It's decided, the villain of the next script I write will be an engineer.

Always the goat.   

[Ideologue]

It's a pretty great joke.

I think the science behind picking up TV broadcasts has been pretty thoroughly debunked though.  You'd need a receiver dish the size of the moon or something.

That's an interesting question...

Free space path loss is:  20Log(d)+20Log(f)-147.55 where d is distance in m and f is frequency in Hz.  The lowest frequency (and therefore lowest loss) frequency in North America is about 55 KHz.  The nearest star is Proxima Centauri at 4.243 LY (4x10^16 m) away.  So the loss is 279 dB.

In North America maximum power is 100 KW; converted to dB scale that's 80 dBm, so received strength at Proxima Centauri would be 80-279 dBm or -199 dBm.

A television receiver would have a theoretical minimum reception sensitivity of the noise floor which is 10Log(f*t*B) where f is bandwidth in Hz, t is temperature in Kelvin and B is the Boltzmann constant.  Television channels in North America are 6 MHz wide.  Assuming a temperature of 3 K in space the radio would need a reception sensitivity of -128 dBm.

The difference between the received signal strength and sensitivity is the gain the antenna needs; a gain of 71 dB is needed.

The size of a parabolic dish determines it's gain where G=10Log(Pi^2*d^2/lambda^2)*Ea where d is the diameter of the dish, lambda is wavelength in m (5450 for 55 KHz) and Ea is a dimensionless antenna efficiency.  Assuming perfect efficiency (Ea=1) the dish would need to be six million meters in diameter.

The moon is 3.4 million meters in diameter; so even at our closest neighbor (and under highly idealized conditions) a receiver dish would have to be about twice the diameter of the moon (and be pointed directly at earth.)

You're a treasure, you know that?

[Admiral Yi]

Did Proxima Centauri used to be called Alpha Centauri?

[Malthus]

It's decided, the villain of the next script I write will be an engineer.

Always the goat.   

Is it better if engineers get to be super-villains?

[HVC]

It's decided, the villain of the next script I write will be an engineer.

Always the goat.   

better a goat in his script than brains

[Valmy]

Prepare to face the power of my fully armed and operational pocket protector.

[Malthus]

It's decided, the villain of the next script I write will be an engineer.

Always the goat.   

better a goat in his script than brains

Either an apostrophe is missing here ... or the alternate script calls for Sav to be a disembodied set of brains. 

[Savonarola]

Did Proxima Centauri used to be called Alpha Centauri?

Proxima Centauri is sometimes called Alpha Centauri C; and is probably part of the Alpha Centauri system:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri

[Savonarola]

It's decided, the villain of the next script I write will be an engineer.

Always the goat.   

Is it better if engineers get to be super-villains?

I assumed that's what Celedhring meant; rather than an MC Ren style villain. 

The more punks I smoke yo my code gets bigger!

[Savonarola]

It's decided, the villain of the next script I write will be an engineer.

Always the goat.   

better a goat in his script than brains

Either an apostrophe is missing here ... or the alternate script calls for Sav to be a disembodied set of brains. 

And that calls for a new avatar.

[Iormlund]

It's decided, the villain of the next script I write will be an engineer.

Don't see how you can do this and still have a happy ending.

Anyone can devise a mad plan. Engineers carry those out for a living.

[Ideologue]

It's decided, the villain of the next script I write will be an engineer.

Always the goat.   

better a goat in his script than brains

Either an apostrophe is missing here ... or the alternate script calls for Sav to be a disembodied set of brains. 

And that calls for a new avatar.

John Agar made a great engineer.

[garbon]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/tabathaleggett/how-well-do-you-know-sex-and-the-city

I got all of them right.

[Valmy]

Damn garbon.  I have seen every episode of that show but only got 8 of 18.

[Barrister]

I got 9 of 18...