Not exactly. First, a GPU can't run a pixel shader against EVERY pixel simultaneously. A typical screen might have about two million pixels, while GPUs max out at a few thousand concurrent 'threads of execution' i.e. it effectively draws in chunks of a few thousand pixels at a time. Second, the GPU doesn't need to run pixel shaders against a whole screen, it's capable of running shaders against any arbitrary shape you like using triangles. So the efficient way to draw a line is to send the GPU two triangles that match the line geometry that you want, and then only run the pixel shader on the pixels that the triangles overlap. Much more efficient.
Yes, the color of every pixel is ultimately determined by a shader program, but as you might expect it's more complicated then that.
There is what is referred to as a graphics pipeline consisting of a mix of fixed-function hardware stages and programmable stages. At a high level, it does the following: 1) the GPU accepts a set of 3D triangles from the CPU, 2) a 'vertex' shader program transforms (flattens) the 3D triangle vertices into 2D triangle vertices with pixel coordinates, 3) the GPU rasterizes the 2D triangles to determine exactly which pixels the triangles cover, 4) a 'pixel' shader program is run for each covered pixel to determine the color of the pixel, 5) the resulting pixel color is stored in a frame buffer (which may involve blending it with the existing color). This 'pipeline' is then repeated many times (with different triangle meshes and shaders) until the whole frame is drawn.
You're right that there could be multiple things which separately explain the things that dark matter explains (not just the two you listed, but the others as well: gravitational lensing, galaxy cluster motion, etc). But the strength of the dark matter model is that it can explain all of these phenomena; which is why most physicists prefer dark matter over other theories. It's very easy to come up with a theory which explains a single phenomena, but very hard to come up with one that simultaneously explains multiple phenomena.
To play devil's advocate, the strength of a model alone is not sufficient: I could say: Well, how can we be certain "gravitational waves" detected by LIGO aren't random dark matter density ripples and not GW from events we haven't correlated (n=1 on independent correlations). In other words, the dark matter model is too strong, because there is a arbitrarily parametrizable density field... Hell, there are people postulating Sagittarius A* is a very dense ball of DM and not a black hole. At that rate you can explain anything with dark matter. I have no logical or philosophical basis for this but in general when this sort of thing starts happening I start doubting the validity of a concept, not gaining confidence in it.
You're right. The Big Bang theory really only concerns itself with what happens starting at around 10^−43 seconds after the presumed singularity that started the universe. That presumed singularity is just a consequence of running General Relativity backwards, and we know that quantum effects are also important at these kinds of insane energy densities, so the singularity can be thought of as a placeholder, until something better comes along. (A complete theory of Quantum Gravity would help a lot.)
No, the Rayleigh Criterion is still correct, you just have to consider the "aperture size" to be the size of the combined multi-telescope device (which would be the size of the Earth if the telescopes are on the opposite sides of the Earth). In practice to get the best quality image you need a telescope every X meters (I'm not sure the exact distance required) but even a 2x2 telescope array over a large distance would still give you significantly more resolving power than just a single telescope on it's own.
I totally agree that lockdowns are super expensive, and should only be used as a last resort, but I think you're missing the purpose of lockdowns. The purpose is not to save the lives of <however many people are dying right now>. The purpose is to bring the R number <https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52473523> below one, so that the number of sick people doesn't increase to the point where the health care system is overwhelmed (which would lead to a substantially increased death rate).
Taiwan is an example of a country that managed to eliminate covid-19 without lockdowns, so it is possible, but part of their success is likely due to the fact that the authorities acted very early to impose strict quarantine rules and contact tracing (when there were fewer than 10 new cases per day!) AFAIK every other country that has managed to eliminate community transmission has done so via lockdowns.
The purpose of lockdowns and other methods to fight with covid-19 was to keep old people alive for few more months.
'The observed temporary excess mortality likely arises because people in vulnerable groups die weeks or months earlier than they would otherwise, due to the timing and severity of the unusual external event.'
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.11.20229708v...
That is not the point and never was ! When your hospital is saturated by people that ultimately will survive but need 3 to 4 weeks to recover, you're going to die from anything but covid.
You're in a car crash? To bad hospital is saturated.
You got 4th degree burn in a burning building? To bad hospital is saturated.
Sweden did not need lockdown because, like Asia, people there were more disciplined. Numbers show road traffic dropped significantly during the first semester : people stayed home without being ordered to. Some culture will never do that by themselves.
Youngers are less affected but some absolutely do need hospitalization. Reality is not as black or white as you're making it.
The situation is like that in Poland ... and the solution is geronticide ?
If you include the ejected mass, then momentum is conserved in that system. The ejected mass goes one way, the rocket goes the other. The momentum of the rocket is equal and opposite to the momentum of the ejected fuel.
The force cannot possibly depend on the drive's kinetic energy, because the kinetic energy is based on the velocity, which is relative to the frame of reference you use to measure it. If your frame of reference is the drive itself, then the kinetic energy is always zero, and conversely it's always possible to use a remote galaxy as a frame of reference, which makes the kinetic energy (and velocity) absurdly high.
When you do the math, in order to extract infinite free energy as per OP's argument, you have to get the drive up to a certain speed (think of a y=x line intersecting with a y=x^2 parabolic curve). The required speed depends on the performance of the drive (i.e. the N/kW figure), with a higher performance drive meaning a lower required speed before you can start extracting energy. For a photon drive, the speed you need to reach to extract infinite free energy is... the speed of light. Which you can't get to. So OP's argument only applies to drives which perform better than a photon drive, which naturally includes the EmDrive.
It's pretty simple. You can use the known laws of gravitation and the visible distribution of matter in a galaxy to predict how fast stars at the edge of the galaxy should move. But when we do this we find that the stars are moving much faster than expected. So EITHER the formula for gravity is wrong OR there is extra matter there which we can't see, i.e. dark matter. Dark matter is currently the preferred explanation because it also explains a bunch of other, unrelated, phonenomena, but it has as yet never been directly detected or measured.
