bascule

My favorite electric propulsion idea is Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion, which basically operates on the same idea as solar sails, but surrounds a ship in its own mini-magnetosphere which protects the ship and its occupants from stray radiation and other particles in space.

I don't know. You'll have to ask someone who actually knows what they're talking about.

Yes, they, do, and that as I understand is one of the key differences between String Theory and Loop Quantum Gravity. String Theory appears to predict all of the various kinds of matter and energy that lie inside spacetime, as well as gravity. As I understand it, in Loop Quantum Gravity these values are just taken from the Standard Model.

I just want to say that Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson is a stupid hypocritical bitch... From above: (What, like the $70 million Ken Starr wasted investigating Clinton's blowjob?) http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/10/24/plame/ Let's see, how did Kay Bailey Hutchinson vote in the perjury charge against Clinton? I mean, she clearly sounds like she's against trying to convict someone for just a "technicality" like perjury... http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/02/12/senate.vote/ Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) - GUILTY http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/24/122929/29

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/24/politics/24leak.html?hp&ex=1130126400&en=5b13878cbd9535b7&ei=5094&partner=homepage

http://www.bestadsontv.com/ad_details.php?id=634 Awesome

As far as welding our brains onto digital information networks, here's a (2 year old) article on neuroprosthetics: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3488 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2843099.stm The article is about a prosthetic replacement for the hippocampus, but since they've created a mathematical model of how the hippocampus works, it isn't too much of a stretch to imagine this model being used to "inject" data into our short term memory.

Attempts at democratizing ICANN have been a joke (I'm an ICANN@Large member... a lot of good that did!) They have been slow to add TLDs to keep up with demand and bow to a sort of puritanical ethos present in the US but noticibly absent from the EU and elsewhere (hence no .xxx TLD) The bottom line is that the Internet is an international network and being as such I believe that control should be leveraged by an international body.

http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=0300108656 Will this shut the IDiots up? I'm guessing no, even though it appears to answer the majority of their questions.

I see greater potential for enhancing cognitive ability by linking the brain to information system than I do through the use of drugs. Both are going to happen, and perhaps the latter will precipitate the former... But the bottom line is that we can't look at trends in scientific/technological advancement as continuing at the present (exponentially increasing) rates; the rates will increase with available brainpower and accessibility to information. We are going to start evolving much much faster very very soon.

I think causing the moon's orbit to decay and thus make it come crashing down into earth would be the single most cataclysmic event in the history of our planet... And among other problems, if you built up enormous negative potential in the moon like that, then as soon as it far enough into our atmosphere it would all be released in the form of an enormous lightning bolt the likes of which we have never seen. A better use for the moon: Send self-replicating nanorobots to cover the entire surface of the moon with photovoltaic arrays. Use microwaves to beam all of this energy back to earth. That'd take care of our energy problems for awhile. And hey, as long as we have the technology to do that, we can build a supercollider which spans the entire circumference of the moon. Think of what kind of high energy physics research you could do with that...

http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2005-10-21T171310Z_01_ROB160456_RTRUKOC_0_US-CONGRESS-INTERNET.xml I can't help but read U.S. lawmakers have backed the Bush administration's stance, arguing that a U.N. group would stifle innovation with excessive bureaucracy and enable repressive regimes to curtail free expression online. and be reminded of this story

Viruses that mutate quickly are RNA viruses. RNA isn't found in a double helix but a single strand, eliminating any kind of error checking/correcting process. Consequently these viruses are highly variadic.

Consciousness is made out of this awesome crazy stuff called neurons

Maybe the fact that none of these prizes have been claimed says more about the person offering the prize... There are things that cannot be falsified which are unique to your frame of reference. For example, I know for certain that I exist, because I think (Cogito ergo sum). Then there's things whose chances of being falsified are virtually nil. Do you have 10 fingers? Well, yes, unless all of reality has been an elaborate construction intended to deceive you. But that probably isn't the case. Then there's the rest. Things we can't know empirically. That's where your system of knowledge becomes riddled with assumptions. Faith is an assumption, therefore your assertions to the validity of your faiths are likewise based on the same assumptions. Sorry. You are the ultimate arbiter of what you accept to be true and what you doubt. Hence the inherent relativism of "truth" as everyone decides this differently. Reality, however, isn't particularly affected by how people interpret it. Whatever is true about reality will continue to remain so.

It can; but the concepts involved are extremely complex. Several have postulated using entanglement and the wave/particle duality to attain superluminal communication (i.e. using the distinction between waves and particles to send a 1 or 0), and the devil is in the details. The explanation as to why this doesn't work which I found filled two chapeters of a book attempting to present a purely conceptual explanation regarding the inherent causality violation. It can be explained conceptually, but it's rather difficult. I can't help and that's a kick in the ego

I went to what is, by all accounts, one of the "most haunted" places in the entire country, the Bingham Hill Cemetery, on the outskirts of an old pioneer town. It dates back to the early 19th century. Everyone talked of hearing the ghosts of dead babies crying, etc. etc. Know what I felt? Nothing... Maybe I'm just "spiritually numb" Or perhaps because I accept that ghosts do not exist, I don't see them, whereas people who accept the opposite do? If you swear off the existence of something that's real, is this likely to happen? (Hint: NO)

computer graphics...

There's only one sign of the singularity that you need to look for... when human brains are electronically rendered directly capible of exchanging abstract information across computer networks. That's when things go nuts.

So many zeroes... I'm linking this press release from a Democratic Congressman as it is presently the ONLY story I can find about this on Google News, despite the fact that the debt topped $8 trillion on tuesday. Wonder how long until anyone in the press anywhere picks up on this. http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=55402

I'd suggest reading The Elegant Universe and Fabric of the Cosmos if you'd really like to get a good layman's grasp of these things. The NOVA special seemed like a big excuse to do a bunch of fancy CG. Some of the interviews were cool but the overall majority of the information presented in the book was lost in the translation to TV. It's really hard to compress a 500 page novel into a 3 hour TV series.

First, this is completely irrelevant. We don't need fossils to demonstrate the common ancestry of man and apes, because we have an immaculately preserved history in the form of our genes. You'll want to take a look at this thread for a detailed analysis of human common ancestry as evidenced by genetic similarities: http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=9484 Secondly, there are a large number of fossils which allow us to trace the evolution of man. I suggest you pick up Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale if you'd like to read a detailed account of these. They are too numerous for me to look up and list here (although I'm sure upon request, someone will if you continue to question their existence) They show an overall trend of an increase in brain size, starting at the size of our common ancestor with chimps and gradually growing to its present size (or larger, in the case of Neanderthals) We also see changes in the shape of skulls that show a gradual transition from an ape-like to a man-like configuration. Just because you've never bothered to research these fossils doesn't mean they don't exist. They most certainly do, they are numerous, and they fully corroborate evolution.

Epicman, those comments weren't directed at you. However: 1. You're still yet to provide an answer to the immense genetic (and therefore physical) similarities between man and apes 2. How can all species on earth have evolved from a common ancestor except man, when all the properties of man lead you to inevitably conclude that man descended from the same common ancestor? 3. How do you reconcile the fact that the molecular clock for the Y chromosome (which is passed down the male -> male -> male lineage much like a surname) and mitochondrial RNA (which is passed down the female -> female -> female lineage) would place the respective male and female ancestors from which we inherited these things as living tens of thousands of years apart? 4. How do you explain all the other very human-like hominids (e.g. Neanderthals) living contemporaneously with early humans? Would these have been descended from your conjectured inital breeding pair, or would these have descended from apes? How about all the more ape-like hominids? Would these have descended from apes or not? As Mokele suggested, the defects in the offspring of a single breeding pair would make them virtually defenseless against other hominids of the time. If you ascribe to natural selection then the retards which would be born to Adam and Eve would be... naturally selected out.

Like the Catholics just did? "Christians" as a whole seem to be far more sensible than the radical fundamental/evangelistic fringe groups who comprise the creationists/IDiots.

So, yeah, I've come out of the woodwork just like all the "I have a theory of the universe!" people pitching my crazy ideas which are totally disconnected random thoughts of my own which really have nothing to do with reality, just the patterns I put together as I see them. Of course, this is all a house of cards built on assumptions, and in pitching them to people with experience in the field, I see they quickly fall apart. And when I ask for explanations, people are reluctant to give them to me, most likely because I lack the background to understand them and therefore such explanations would fill a novel. As I read these forums more it has become painfully clear to me that it's pretty much impossible for those with only a conceptual knowledge of physics to provide any useful contributions to the field, for, as I have found time and time again, what makes sense at a conceptual level thoroughly and completely breaks down when you approach it mathematically (such as my superluminal communication scheme, which I can't take credit for because it seems thousands of other yokels have had the exact same idea. I think the problem is the math and overall conceptual understanding involved with understanding things like quantum field theory/quantum gravity is so damn complicated that those of us who approach physics at only a conceptual level yearn for a more simple underlying system in which the math involved is more our level. I've tried to avoid what seems to be a relatively common trap of translating this frustration into a contempt for modern science (as exhibited by this guy among others), instead trying to develop my own models which do not in any way contradict modern science, but are not mathematically/reality based and thus are, well, fundamentally wrong. So what should I do? Give up any hope of deeper understanding? Learn the math? I work primarily in the business of information sorting (which is why I'm so obsessed with memes, ontologies, discrete-time stochaic sorting algorithms, etc) and what I'd really like to do is find some way to solve the accessibility problem and find some way to help those like me who are working on physics at a purely conceptual level somehow provide useful contributions. But I think the majority of scientists here will feel that's fundamentally impossible...