insane_alien

yep, to a gamma photon even a lead brick is a few sparse particles in space. to an alpha particle a paper sheet is like a brick wall to us. in the former case its unlikely to hit something in the latter it is very likely to hit something.

So, you propose we wall off half the universe everytime we want to get somewhere? interesting....

oh they're perfectly capable of ionization, its just that they whizz through pretty much everything without coming close enough to an electron to interact with it. this is due to their extraordinarily short wavelength which means it requires and almost direct hit to remove it from an atom. with particle radiation there isn't a need for a direct hit it can just pass close by and ionize something. and is more likely to ionize a material it is passing through.

the big problem is the atmosphere. you'll have to have enough momentum and structural integrity to get through the extreme drag and stresses from friction with the atmosphere. a large ablative heatshield wouldn't go amiss either.

well it would be eroded(possibly quite fast) and start disintigrating as well.

no, i said the article is from 1996. i never said all aircraft stopped using cylinders i'm just saying there a lot of smaller aircraft which use turbines instead of piston engines. turbine based small aircraft were common even before 1996. i really don't get what you are trying to achieve here. the most commonly used aircraft fuels(A and A-1 jet fuel) doesn't contain lead. and the number of engines that run on leaded fuel is decreasing as leaded fuel poisons catalytic converters.

superconductivity was first observed in mercury not fullerenes. fullerine superconductivity was not observed until much much later.

no, there are no stages. its just a gradual change from generation to generation.

that was 1996. and no, jet engines do not have cylinders. jets are a subsection of aircraft. a lot of smaller aircraft use jets as well although they are labelled 'gas turbines' and are geared to the propeller to provide thrust rather than directly producing thrust. they use jet fuel too.

yes, it is quite easy to speed up the process of boiling potatoes. you use a pressure cooker. unlike boiling the potatoes in an open pot, the pressure cooker prevents the steam from escaping into the atmosphere. this causes the pressure to build up although it does have a relief valve to prevent too much pressure which could turn it into a bomb. the reason more pressure allows for faster cooking is that when you increase the pressure, the boiling point of water will increase. when the pressure is twice that of the atmosphere water boils at ~120*C. because the temperature is higher, the cooking process proceeds at greater rate. a rule of thumb is that a reaction doubles in rate for every 10*C i'm not sure how well this applies to boiling potatoes but if we assume this holds true then an increase of 20*C causes the time required to boil them to be only a quarter of the time needed under the usual conditions. if you need anymore clarification i'll be happy to expand on this.

appendices have evolved to fill a different niche. they aren't vital to human survival but can be quite important. they'll reboot your intestinal bacteria should you encounter a 'clear out' so to speak. be it intentional(laxatives) or diarrhea from an infection.

you don't write an algorithm, nor can you 100% positively identify a chemical from colour/odour alone. what you'd do is perform a number of experiments. IR spectroscopy and mass spectroscopy would be useful but may not be available so chemical methods may be required.

i wonder if i can use this as an excuse to buy my own weight in M&M's

helium-3 is a 'must have' because it has a lot of uses in fusion power. helium-3 is roughly 10 times more expensive by weight than gold at the moment.

einstein said and did a lot of things that were just flat out wrong. he didn't believe in quantum mechanics and spent a lot of his latter years trying to get rid of it. just because he did some astounding work on GR and SR does not make him infallible. what you have to do is take the good stuff and bin the crap stuff as you'd do from the work of every scientist.

no, i don't have any first hand experience, but my mum is currently doing a distance learning degree in child development from the same university i attend(she'll even graduate the same time i do). All the relevant course material is found on an online learning environment accessed through the web. this includes lecture notes and videos of lectures. correspondance with lecturers is done either via email, a forum on the website or going to the uni and talking to the lecturer. she only needs to physically turn up a few times per year. the rest can be handled virtually. again, go to a university website, grab a copy of the prospectus and look for distance learning opportunities. the chances of you getting a legitimate degree are then 100%

mm, my coffee table is missing a leg after my last party. those books look like they could be stacked to the missing length of leg.

no, no lead. jet engines do not require leaded fuel as there can be no cylinder knocking as there are no cylinders. i have some jet fuel(A-1) in my garage. there is absolutely no lead in there.

well, technically chemtrails ARE real, its just the chemical is water.

the tinfoil thickness of outer skin wasn't even near a pressurised section of the craft. it was on the decent module while the astronauts were in the ascent stage while not on moon walks. which was pretty soild. yes, if there was a coronal mass ejection then they'd have been screwed. but there wasn't one pointed at them so they were fine. normal radiation levels aren't that bad up there. about 4 times what you get from flying at 30000 ft. no massive amounts of shielding required. as to the retro reflector, most of the laser pulse doesn't hit it because the spot on the moon is much larger than that(deliberately due to accuracy issues like you said) but there IS a signal return that is far above the noise level exactly where it should be if there was a retro reflector on the moon. you can't see star because(i don't know if you've noticed this) the moon is bright. you know how if you're out at night and someone shines a torch in your face and suddenly you can't see a thing? well same thing happens to cameras and it happened on the moon. and not all the images are clear and perfect. the ones commonly shown in media are only a few tens of photographs out of THOUSANDS that were taken. why these ones? they're the good ones. newspapers wouldn't sell if they showed you the one thats all blurry and chops an astronuats head off because the guy taking the photo fell over. as for being able to see things in shadow, the moon reflects light. (its white/grey ffs) go outside, you can see stuff that in shadow, why? REFLECTION

thanks gdg, that one was puzzling me.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=HBTU&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

This came up in the IRC channel, BoTox is botulinum toxin with an LD50 in the range of 1ng/kg and is the most toxic substance produced in nature. obviously not something people would pay to have injected into their face... oh wait... so, bearing in mind its toxicity, how much is actually in one of the injections? i tried the obligatory google but was overwhelmed by the guff of beauty sites that make less sense than ydoaps after he's been juggling nuclear waste for too long while eating bags of sugar.

it would be theoretically possible but there are no cameras fast enough to capture this. you'll just have to stick to traditional methods of proving light takes time to travel(like bouncing it off the retroreflectors on the moon) or looking at the conversations with astronauts in lunar orbit/on the moon. big gaps from the delay.

right, you do know that PCl3 is HIGHLY toxic(600ppm will kill you) and that it is also quite corrosive. and seeing as you are planning on using sub par reagents and don't know how to obtain the proper reagents, i'd advise against it. your knowledge and experience are obviously somewhat lacking so you are likely to harm yourself or more importantly others in making this. you admit yourself the chemical is controlled as a chemical weapon so that kind of indicates the harm it can do. due to hazmat rules we cannot inform you of the synthesis.