moth

but morality changes over time and religion is claimed to be everlasting truth. there is quite a bit in the christian bible about how to treat your slaves/wives, and who to murder for their offensiveness to "god", things that would be considered immoral today.

maybe Hooke's law? F=-kx to get started http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooke's_law

i don't know anything about lagrangians(a song by zz top wasn't it?) but i've had a couple beers and you said "any ideas" if you picture the slinky sitting on a flat surface in an inverted "U" configuration with more slinky on one side than the other, the side with less coils will try to pull some coils off the side with more coils.the motion will (eventually )stop when there is an equal mass of slinky on both sides of the "U". on a ramp or on steps as you pointed out, the slinky gains momentum from going downhill which allows it to pull all the coils off the upper side of the "U",flip the upper coil over the top of the lower coil, and continue down the slope. the problem seems to be about equilibrium in a spring.

in a series curciut the voltages add, so if the top of a button was the + pole and the bottom was the - pole, stacking them would give you 3x the voltage. if you wired them so the + poles were all connected and the - poles were all connected you get 3x the amperage.

maybe a parabolic reflector with the light at the focus. if the maximum diameter of the reflector is larger than the beam you want,you can use a square mask that should stay somewhat collimated.

i've never looked at the BIOS on a toshiba, but the screen with the disk info is usually one of the first you'll see(along with time/date and stuff) when entering the BIOS setup. if you can find your C drive on the list, just look to see if the size listed is correct. if the C drive shows up, but is the wrong size or something, make sure the disk type is set to auto . if the C drive doesn't show up in the BIOS (or you can't find it) you could try running setup (boot from the cd/dvd) and look for an option to partition the drive. if your C drive isn't on that list or in the BIOS, your hard drive may have been damaged, that could explain why it was running so slow. replacing a drive is not too difficult(unless its a laptop) you can find everything you need online.

time is related to distance, in some way, by the speed of light. there is a least amount of time anything can take to move a distance.maybe you could think of it as a physical manifestation of a mathematical "reality" maybe it's from being near the edge of 3-d space(getting close to 2-d area) sounds interesting

it sounds like your computer can't find the hard disk and is trying to load an operating system over the network(i'm pretty sure that's what PXE is anyway). depending on how comfortable you are working on your computer, you might see if the hard drive is listed in the BIOS, maybe boot from the cd/dvd (if you have a bootable disk)and run scandisk to see if that finds any troubles. do you back up your data much?

some of our genes will still be in the pool, but probably in a creature as different from us as we are from voles. don't we share genes with most living creatures? if i remember even yeast have quite a few genes in common with humans. maybe the genetic info matters more than body type.

chief pony wrangler at pseudoscience forums - cool:D

every bit would help. if there was a paint that could be switched from absorbing heat to reflecting it the piston could still be driven in either direction. i looked at an equation for pressure that involves heat, but the entropy term scared me. and the 10 mBar a week estimate was from looking at a weather map(barometric records are not free) but i imagine the "random walk" of the pressure might add up to quite a bit more.i read in wikipedia the atmosphere has lunar tides so you also get a little bump twice a day. still, as CaptainPanic pointed out i might as well just use a windmill(the neighbors won't mind, they're too far away)

thanks for looking at this CaptainPanic. it seems similar to high voltage with no amperage. half a mm per week is like going nowhere. i just wanted to know if i could come up with an answer.

i thought it was interesting because the bacteria were just along for the ride. they hadn't been selected to try and survive, but they did. if a random species of bacteria can survive at all(even dormant), chances are some other bacteria could do better. not to stray too far from the topic, but in a system where you have a body of water interfacing with space on a regular basis - like Europa, maybe organisms could evolve to survive in space(if there are any critters in Europa)

i know you're talking animals in space, but maybe the next best thing? http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast01sep98_1.htm it's an old story, but it's proof that single cells could survive unprotected, so multi-celled organisms may not be too unimaginable.

i need a new card. should i talk to swansont?

thank you for your reply CaptainPanic, i imagine watching paint dry would accomplish more than watching this contraption. i was focusing on the huge pressure available more than the motion. for a 10' diameter piston and a moderate change in the barometer, i think a ton or two of force would be generated. maybe i could translate the force to one more suitable for the power requirements of some task, like running a flywheel/generator or something .

if you had a tube with a piston in the center,and you put valves at each end of the tube so when the barometer is high air is allowed in one end of the tube and out of the other end when the barometer is low, would the piston move?

here's something i came across yesterday about producing positrons. http://focus.aps.org/story/v23/st8 they don't seem to be trying to store the anti-matter, just detect it by it's annihilation. maybe these guys could store some for a little while. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6991030.stm

good point - i forgot negative numbers.my algebra has 20+ years of dust on it. but a has to equal b or - b, not b and -b, right?

when you get to [math](a+b)(a-b)=0[/math] you could say a=1 or a = -1 but not both at the same time. since b=a a can't equal -b unless they're 0. i'm pretty sure if [math] a^2 = b^2 [/math] then [math] a = b[/math]

is this what you're looking for? http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/handbook/howgeneswork/genelocation

if you imagine the energy being released over several seconds and smeared across the sky as a quick burst, it would add up to an explosion of that size. if it hit the seafloor, you could split the energy into three parts, air water, and ground since they all have different densities. the numbers from before are just the impact on the ground, ignoring the air.

that's encouraging, if you can look up a number that's close, i may not be too far off. the main thing (as mr.Skeptic said) is to keep all the units straight. the 6.5 megatons t.n.t. of energy to the atmosphere was probably given off as sound and light(heat) i guess?

for a 50 meter solid iron meteor traveling at 12 km/sec the volume is [math] \frac{4}{3}*pi*2500^3 = 65449846949.787cm^3[/math] the mass is about [math]volume*7.5\frac{g}{cm^3}= 490873852123.4grams[/math] the kinetic energy is [math] \frac{mv^2}{2}=\frac{490873852.1234kilograms*(12000\frac{m}{s})^2}{2}=35,342,917,352,885,173.9joules[/math] i think:confused:

not to be a nitpicker, but doesn't gravity affect time not effect it? i just think the difference leads to misunderstanding.