pavelcherepan

Wait a few more days and then maybe you won't need to guess.

Just out of curiosity, why did you decide to build the thing in Antarctica? If you're supposed to use it to transport people into space then starting in Antarctica you'll end up with people on some orbit around Earth with an inclination close to 90o. Where are they supposed to go afterwards? Other planets? Just stay in orbit? If it's the former then such an orbit is quite awful as most other planets' orbits are close to ecliptic and inclination change maneuvers of this magnitude are extremely costly, for example for a circular low-earth orbit with a velocity of 7700 m/s the delta-v required to change inclination by 90o is approximately 10889 m/s which is more than required to get from LEO (zero inclination) to orbit around Neptune (approx. 8560 m/s).

The formula gives the escape velocity, not the velocity of a massive body. Escape velocity can be higher than the speed of light, no problem. I guess, only to some extent. As object approaches the event horizon of a black hole it would be expected to be moving at a very high velocity where you just can't ignore relativistic effects. The formula for Scharzschild radius was derived from GR so IMO it's more of a remarkable coincidink than the fact that Newtonian mechanics can be used for objects near black holes.

I think thermal expansion of water is less of a worry than melting of land ice. Say, heating water from 4oC (maximum density) by 6 degrees only results in decrease in density by 0.02%. And 6 degrees is a lot given the total amount of water in oceans. I've seen graphs for worst-case scenario of water level rise due to thermal expansion (see below) and it was just around 0.5 m by the year 2250. On the other hand, melting of Greenland glaciers can result in water level rise of several meters.

I don't think there ever was much confusion regarding Dimetrodon in particular within the scientific community simply because it's a Permian creature and dinosaurs as a distinct group didn't appear until early-mid Triassic. It's only in popular media it could've been dubbed as a dinosaur simply because it sort of looks like one. Also some confusion arises from the fact that many Permian synapsids have the -saurus suffix in their names. But if reptiles have evolved from amphibians wouldn't that mean that early reptiles would have had alpha-keratin too (before beta-keratin had evolved)?

I'm a bit confused about this one. What do you mean by "generally identified as dinosaurs"? Is there any evidence of fossil preservation of different types of keratin? Or is the assumption based on genetical dating?

I thought that the main difference was in the jaw bones arrangement. I can't remember anything about keratin from paleontology classes. Of course, you might be right but jaw bones are a better tool for classification anyway, simply because they preserve better.

I have read a bloody interesting study done in Russian army (I'll try and find a link when I'm back at my computer) which found that commands given using cuss words tend to be some 20% shorter than using normal terms and as such are preferrable in combat situations.

I think it's a good thing that immigrants are doing science, no?

I guess that it might happen if you keep opening new topics with no discussion points whatsoever.

Like what?

It's not that. Rather that people always preferred settling along sea coasts and rivers and by the cruel joke of nature subduction zones and volcanoes associated with those are on the coast too (take Pacific or Mediterranean coasts for example)

Hence in post #3 I said - what is your frame of reference! This is exactly what you're talking about! And no. This is totally wrong. You can use Lorentz factor at any velocity and in any inertial FoR.

Same here. Gamma in all formulas relating to relativity is always the same: [latex]\gamma = \frac{1}{\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}}[/latex] EDIT: Forgot square root in the formula

It seems more like you're trying to confuse yourself, really... You can use gamma at any speed you want. It's just that at low speeds gamma would essentially be 1. Only when an object is at rest. In most FoRs that you might choose either Moon, Earth or both would be in motion. So it doesn't apply to your question.

[latex]m_0[/latex] is just the sum of rest masses of Earth and Moon. Mass of the Earth is [latex]5.97*10^{24}kg[/latex] and mass of the Moon is [latex]0.073*10^{24}kg[/latex] so the [latex]m_0 = 6.043*10^{24}kg[/latex].

Sorry about that. The diagrams (only the lower one is to scale) are by a French astronomer Lucien Rudaux and taken from the below website: http://io9.com/is-the-moon-a-planet-1064356920

Fusion requires high temperatures and pressures and can only go in the center of stars. And even then the reaction is rather slow. On the other hand if you have a hypothetical star with high percentage of unstable fissionable isotopes, fission will go throughout the volume of the star and it will either quickly run out of fissionable material or if the percentage of it is high will get blown to pieces.

Yes, but it's rather hard to show it on a diagram given than the Earth would oscillate ~4700 km from the barycenter and the Moon ~380,000 km.

Hilarious! I have been working in mining industry and know a lot of dump truck drivers and yes, the obesity rates among them are huge. But some of the truckies are not obese and do you know why? After the work shift when all other guys go to the pub and sit around drinking beers and eating chips these guys go for a run, or the gym or to play some team sports. And they are in perfect shape. Also, I've been doing a lot of driving around Australia and eaten quite a few times at truck stops and on the menu they have a lot of very tasty and healthy options, but truck drivers for some reason pick the most unhealthy stuff like fish and chips and burgers, while reasonable way to keep energy levels up during long drive is to eat more carbs and long-digesting foods. Anyway, it's always easy to blame someone else for your problems, but really most obese people are obese because they are lazy, don't exercise and they eat and drink too much. Automation is not much help here. Will the said truck driver suddenly lose weight if he's out of job and sitting at home on his couch watching TV? I seriously doubt that. The video says that 60% of truck drivers are obese, but according to WHO 74% of US population are overweight. Does this mean that truck drivers are in fact better than average? EDIT: Watching the video. Some interesting quotes: 0:35s - "There's no limit. I love eating food!" 1:56 - "This right here is a heart attack in the bag and it's my favourite"

Sorry, Dima. The way question was phrased I thought you were after a more practical solution rather than the general formula, which Strange has given in the post above. Still, if you use this formula in Earth-Moon barycenter FoR and use [latex]v[/latex] for the velocity of the barycenter the momentum will be zero. Hence in this FoR the total momentum of the system is better calculated as simply the momentum of the Moon in it's orbit around the barycenter. If you get to Sun FoR, you can use the formula and get a generalised result or you can get the total momentum of the system as a vector sum of momenta of the Earth and the Moon in their orbits around the Sun. This would give a slightly different result and it will be changing over time due to the shape of Moon orbit around the Sun. There will be some slight differences both to the magnitude and the direction of total momentum compared to the generalised formula for the barycenter. So, depending on what level of accuracy you want to achieve and the FoR you want to use it in, the formula may change.

OK. Firstly, you have rather misinterpreted what I said. I wasn't trying to go all out ad ignorantiam but rather I was trying to give a reason as to why archaeological finds in the north of North America are less common. There are other reasons too. For example, mainland US is densely populated, but western Canada and Alaska are not and so while it's very normal for some farmer in the continental US to find stone tools in his paddock and call archaeologists, such situation is much less likely in Canada or Alaska. Also, see below the map of archaeological sites in North America older than 8000 years. As you can see, while there's not as many sites in the north-west the distribution of those is quite consistent with migration from Asia. Secondly, the solutrean hypothesis is based predominantly on similarity of stone tools found in Clovis, New Mexico with those found in Europe. But if you look at the map, Clovis is not what you can refer to as "east coast", actually it's location again is quite consistent with the general theory of migration from Asia to Alaska and then south-east along the Rockies. Yet again I have to ask you for some sort of evidence showing that all the oldest archaeological sites are on the east coast. I have read the links you have posted, but nowhere does it say that all of the oldest sites are in the east.

a. You'll need to provide some evidence of the above. b. The northern part of North America was cold, covered in glaciation and was not very hospitable place. I'd imagine that migrating people would quickly migrate south to some warmer and friendlier lands. c. Say, you have some artifacts left in the North on top of glaciation. What would happen with those when glaciers eventually melted?

I think only a handful of scientists consider this theory to be likely scenario of migration: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_of_the_Americas#Atlantic_coastal_model