Airbrush

Does anyone have an opinion of the subject of colloidal liquid minerals? The famous or infamous Joel Wallach was promoting liquid minerals from his web site. He is known for his tape recording "Dead Doctors Don't Lie". "There are 90 nutrients essential to human health. A common recommendation made by most medical doctors is that in order to get all the nutrients necessary to maintain health you must, on a daily basis, eat food from each of the four basic food groups. Dr. Joel Wallach challenges this belief and highlights the reasons why it is practically impossible to get all the nutrients necessary to achieve and maintain opitimal health by eating food from the four food groups. Therefore you must supplement!" He may be a con man, and he makes a lot of incredible claims, but I believe many health problems come from nutrient deficiency. Mass produced agriculture is short of the nutrients from chemical fertilizers. If colloidal minerals does indeed contain 60 or more minerals that may be valuable to the body, then why not?

The light that left galaxies Millions of years ago tell us the universe WAS expanding. The light that left galaxies Billions of years ago also tell us the universe WAS expanding. The light from galaxies everywhere in between (Millions and Billions of years ago) tell us the SAME thing. You propose a departure from a long-standing trend and nothing to support that. I base my opinion on the opinion of the experts. They know better and I trust their judgment. If a scientist came up with evidence to the contrary, supporting your proposition, it would be VERY exciting among most scientists who would get busy trying to reconcile the new evidence.

Interesting explanation SH3RLOCK. I suppose a cold dead star would be solid all the way to the core. That is hard to visualize, but it must be so. As for where do they find hydrogen for a fusion reactor? Space will always be full of hydrogen gas and other kinds of dust that never gets compacted into stars. Not all matter gets pulled together into stars. They would need to sweep thru space collecting free hydrogen, and that supply of free hydrogen atoms is everywhere in the universe, nearly limitless. I believe that there is more gas and dust in the universe than all the stars, black holes, planets, asteroid, and comets combined.

Darkness is merely the absence of light, but if you set up a lazor on the Moon, focused on a sensor here on Earth, and turned it on and off at regular intervals, let's say three seconds on, three seconds off, the darkness between the light pulses would arrive at exactly the same speed as the light. Darkness is an aspect of light, so it follows the rules of light.

I find it hard to believe that a dead star will ever become cool all the way to its' core. There will always be pressure, and therefore heat energy. That is why mines get hotter the deeper they dig. Intelligent beings that are still living Trillions of years from now could dig tunnels into dead stars to mine the heat energy. Or they could build a fusion reactor that never cools. All they need to do is add a little hydrogen to it now and then. E=mc^2. Energy could always be extracted from matter, as long as there is matter in the universe.

I agree. If astronomers can get together to decide Pluto is no longer a planet, but rather a "dwarf planet" then why can't cosmologists get together and rename the Big Bang? It would be a newsworthy story. I don't know a more appropriate term, but how about "Cosmic Expansion"?

Does not gravity itself generate heat energy just from the pressure? How can that heat pressure ever decay to a non-energetic state? After all the red dwarf stars have burned out and cool, there will still be places deep inside massive objects that will eternally create heat from pressure.

It's like fighting fire with fire. You intentionally cause a dormant volcano to erupt by digging tunnels into the magma chamber, so it will let off pressure and not explode. This is done by a series of explosions burrowing down creating a magma channel. All the while some master the fine art of digging tunnels others are studying the composition and formation of our greatest challenge for survival, Yellowstone. Detailed maps must be created to know precisely where and how to tunnel. Yet they must first be sure they won't accidentally set off the Big eruption. That is our ultimate challenge.

Words used in titles of books should not be taken so seriously. Michio, like Carl Sagan before him, is good at presenting science to a general audience. "Impossible" in this context only means currently impossible or improbable in the near future, but in the more distant future that could change.

If there is evidence for an intentional shortage of health care workers, to inflate their wages, that would be interesting news! Let's hear it.

We can measure expansion all along a continuum from near to far. Over that range of over 10 Billion years there WAS expansion of various consistent rates including inflated rates. So probably expansion continues.

The question is how fast can we progress at investigating smaller volcanos first, as a poster above proposed? They would need to practice ways of blasting huge tunnels, using both conventional and small nuclear explosives, in small volcanos to let magma flow into a safe area which would be totally covered by volcanic material. But they need to be ever mindful of the fact they could accidentally trigger a disaster! If we don't do anything, then when the day comes, either next year or after another ten thousand years, Yellowstone WILL go off big time, and the USA will be laid to waste and a long-term nuclear winter WILL cause mass extinctions, maybe even humans. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedI'm no geologist, but it seems to me it could be possible to dig giant tunnels into small volcanos to create a pressure valve. Whenever magma builds up the volcano will erupt, but in a controlled fashion. It would look like a giant gyser of magma that periodically blasts like a cannon shot out of an artificial volcanic crater, whenever the pressure goes up. There would be heat energy collection stations all around the magma pile that would turn steam turbines, generating clean electricity.

That sounds right to me. Good question. Is it only because it is improbable for something that is seen to be expanding at an increasing rate to abruptly slow down, stop, and reverse? That reversing process seems unlikely, and would take a long, long time. It will be interesting to hear comments.

Great info above thank you all. That was a fascinating lecture by George Smoot. Sometimes his enthusiasm for his subject brought me to tears. Hahaha. I love the subject of dark matter. Strictly speaking we are baryonic dark matter to someone in another galaxy who can only detect our Sun, but never caught Earth transiting our sun. But the interesting dark matter is nonbaryonic which they believe to be the vast majority of DM. Anyone know what percentage of DM is nonbaryonic dark matter(NBDM)? The universe is like our Earth in that the greatest proportion of animal or plant bio-mass in our oceans is also the smallest, plankton. Among animals isn't it something like the termite or ant, or even a microbe?) that makes up the greatest bio-mass of animals? DM is so rarified. What kind of numbers per cubic meter to account for its' gravitational effects? I believe they estimated the average density of the universe as one atom per cubic meter. Does that include all matter in the universe, including stars, planets, and black holes? Does that include DM? Or is that the average density of interstellar space? Or are they about the same? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedIf DM particles were about the size of neutrinos then how many particles of DM would it take per cubic centimeter? That is at DM average density in and around a galaxy to account for its' gravitational effect. Now I recall an Astronomy magazine discussed the density of atoms in outer space. It ranged from rather dense, many atoms per cubic meter in the region between Earth and the Moon. But in the middle of the great voids between superclusters the density was very low, about one atom per cubic meter. Then from another source I believe they estimated the average density of the universe at about one atom per cubic meter. What is it really?

Darkness is simply the absence of light. Light moves at light speed and when it is gone darkness replaces it at light speed. Light comes and goes at light speed, and so does darkness.

One major component to rising health care costs is the fact that people are generally less responsible for healthy living habits. Junk foods should be taxed to discourage people from their junk food, overeating, nonexercising life styles. People cling to their bad habits and then go to a doctor to "fix them". Emphasis should switch to preventative practices. People need to be constantly reminded to eat right, cut out cigarettes and booze, and exercise.

Baryonic dark matter CAN be seen, but because it is difficult to see it is called dark matter. In general, I believe, dark matter is any matter that cannot currently be detected other than gravitational effects, but it is possible to detect it. The term "dark matter" generally means nonbaryonic dark matter which is far more elusive, like neutrinos. Some black holes should be detectable because of accretion disks, but probably most have not yet been detected, and therefore the ones not yet detected fall into the category of dark matter. So much for baryonic dark matter. Most dark matter is nonbaryonic. I like your explanation for why galaxies over time will take a flattened shape. Very nice.

There are 2 kinds of dark matter, baryonic and nonbaryonic. Baryonic matter is normal matter made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons, but nonbaryonic matter is not, but rather strange particles like neutrinos. Baryonic dark matter is normal matter that we cannot see which can include all kinds of small objects like dust, rocks, even black holes. Dark matter, which they say is mostly nonbaryonic, is noticed only on galactic scales. We would not notice its' effects within our solar system. It seems to cluster all around each galaxy in a spherical shape, not the flattened shape that most visible matter in galaxies seem to take. I don't think you will find much of it between galaxies. That is about all I know about dark matter. Maybe someone can help us out. Martin?

The fly will feel the car's acceleration very little compared to the wind resistance of stationary air inside the car. If you stand in a high wind, along with a fly, the wind will blow the fly away but the wind will not budge you.

Considering the unimaginably vast volume of space, even small densities of nonbaryonic matter will add up to large masses over cosmic scales. Nonbaryonic matter, such as neutrinos, may be denser far away from normal matter. Even though galaxies are flattened shaped, the dark matter exists in a spherical shape centered on the galaxy center. One example of nonbaryonic matter are neutrinos, which move close to light speed, and more than 50 trillion solar electron neutrinos pass through the human body every second. No wonder that kind of stuff is hard to detect. There is far more gas and dust in the universe than all stars, black holes, planets, asteroids, comets, etc combined. The finer the material the more there is of it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino They think dark matter is mostly nonbaryonic (not normal) matter because of this: "The total amount of baryonic dark matter can be calculated from big bang nucleosynthesis, and observations of the cosmic microwave background. Both indicate that the amount of baryonic dark matter is much smaller than the total amount of dark matter. "In the case of big bang nucleosynthesis, the problem is that large amounts of ordinary matter means a denser early universe, more efficient conversion of matter to helium-4 and less unburned deuterium that can remain. If one assumes that all of the dark matter in the universe consists of baryons, then there is far too much deuterium in the universe. This could be resolved if there were some means of generating deuterium, but large efforts in the 1970s failed to come up with plausible mechanisms for this to occur. For instance, MACHOs, which include, for example, brown dwarfs (balls of hydrogen and helium with masses ), never begin nuclear fusion of hydrogen [1] but they do burn deuterium. Other possibilities that were examined include "Jupiters", which are similar to brown dwarfs but have smaller masses and do not burn anything, and white dwarfs. Actually, objects with masses around or below the hydrogen-burning limit could be baryonic dark matter." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baryonic_dark_matter

Yes that is true, but another eruption is inevitable. Geologic records show they happen periodically, not as regular as buses, but on the average every 600,000 years. The hot spot has migrated because of the motion of the North American plate. Now it is building up steam under Yellowstone. A History Channel special about it says the ground is rising at an accelerating rate.

Yellowstone is 40,000 years overdue. It must go off again within, what?, about another few tens of thousands of years, or it can start going off next year! Is there any defense against a supervolcano? All I can think of is allowing it to release pressure so the BIG eruption won't happen. The theory is to extend the amount of time over which the inevitable eruption occurs. It could be something like a mega-gyser of magma that blasts half a mile high over a period of months, and covers the Yellowstone state park area with mega-ash, but in so doing saves humanity from near-extinction. Losing a beautiful state park is a small price to pay for the survival of humanity.

Releasing too much pressure could cause areas to collapse. So they need to regulate the pressure over many square miles to keep it optimal according to any buildup of pressure. Excess pressure gets released and used to generate electricity. Maybe there is a way to do phased caldera collapses, so the entire supervolcano does not go off, only little sections. When Yellowstone explodes it will destroy a large portion of the USA and start a nuclear winter. We want to prevent an explosion.

I think the only way to curve a bullet is if the bullet has a spherical shape. How do you put spin on the bullet as it passes down the barrel, like with a curve ball in baseball, or a soccer ball?

Yes, Metal Halides and HPS create a LOT of heat and therefore a a hazard for indoor growing. They can start a fire if you don't vent the heat properly with electric fans. Not for beginners. Flourescents remain cool to the touch even after hours of use. I purchased a 250w MH and a 250w HPS many years ago and never actually used them because I've come to prefer the simplicity of good old-fashioned sunshine in my back yard.