insane_alien

any of the things you can make on an industrial scale. and even some you can't because we haven't been able to work out how to scale it up effectively yet.

you are assuming that if you have a 100mW laser, split the beam into 3 and you'll get 3 100mW beams you will not. you will get 3 33.33mW beams also, solar sails are pretty crap at extracting power from a light beam.

actually i think we can measure the effects however, you would need to run fro several days straight before we got a useful reading.

where does it aquire the mass to reproduce? more to the point, where does it aquire the matter to replenesh the waste it will inevitable produce, you can't recycle every waste product.

i imagine there would be some interesting newtons third law reaction forces going on(BABY CANNON!). and it would be even more messy than it is on earth as you'd have all sorts of fluids floating around your nice clean spaceship. but the birth itself would be possible. the zero-g environment may have negative effects on the babies development, primarily muscular and bone development. that would be an issue. i think that births in space would be required to be performed in a simulated gravity environment(both for safety and hygene) and for studies into the development of humans in space has more study behind it.

We make them because it is fun. There are lots of nice complex reactions going on and it can be quite challenging to get it right. Also, the compounds are just as cool as the inorganic ones, there are a large number of salts and plenty of bangs and flashes if you screw up.

explosives such as that do not make good rocket fuel. nozzle geometries cannot make something with inertial mass travel at the speed of light, nor can they infinitely increase the energy output of a rocket engine. you need to go learn some relativity, chemistry and some more basic physics wouldn't go amiss either.

things with mass cannot travel at the speed of light, it would take an infinite amount of energy which is not available to anything. no information can be sent faster than light either. the experiments that the media have reported as being faster than light nothing actually goes faster than light. it is the group velocity. it basically means that the shape of a pulse of light got changed so the peak came earlier than expected.

foil won't do much. it can do stuff against thermal radiation but that is nowhere near your biggest heat loss vector. foil doesn't really help slowdown conduction and convection.

its a property of the particle, its not made of anything. its like asking what your velocity is made of.

does america have something like the CAB (Citizens Advice Bureau). because you should be able to ask them to help you find the local rules and regs governing home chemistry.

okay, so you've read that book and you must have seen that it is reffering to waste gasses from the reactor, not air conditioning. and that the gasses are passed through a scrubber to remove radioactive particles BEFORE discharge. also, just because a neutron has an effective diameter of an atom does not mean it behaves like an atom. it still won't follow pressure gradients.

i think that would break the purpose of the challenge which is to provide the best insulation rather than who can stick a heater on it.

survival mechanism. back when we were still pretty hairy and not quite past the "sharp rock" stage in our technology it was more advantageous to think there was a big monster over yonder and run away than to not notice an actual big monster and get eaten. unfortunately it has the side effect of numerology and superstition.

numerology is full of crap. this has been proved time and time again.

the atmosphere spins with the earth. the only reason planes were used is that you can travel faster and in a straighter line than you can on the ground. if the atmosphere didn't spin with the earth the equator would experience constant 1000+mph winds.

actually, the fuel gauge wasn't pointing at E as it was from a different type of aircraft so it was still registering that there was fuel in the tank. the pilot only knew he was out when the engines started sputtering. From what i've read at that point he started praying(instead of heading for the nearest airport where it is suggested he had ample time to glide to) and then decided to ditch into choppy waters. what a pilot should have done is start heading towards the airport, call in the mayday as he is doing so and ditch ONLY if it is absolutely impossible to make it, but still heading towards the shore so survivors may be able to swim to shore.

could store your disk in a metal box or filing cabinet. ground it too for extra safety. but i think the main damage comes from massive voltages generated in the massive antennas we like to call powerlines. which cause powersurges and stuff. so any equipment switched off should survive.

now the real question: cheddar or stilton?

appart from the radioactive decay of elements within the earth, the answer is that it hasn't had enough time. there isn't ver much thermal conductivity going on so only a trickle(relatively, its in the TW range iirc) of energy is being radiated from the earth. thing of it like trying to empty the hoover dam by removing a single drop of water every year

yeah, people have went to some real crazy places with 9/11 although i'm almost positive some of them started off as satire but people took it as fact. like the one that they were taken down by nuclear icbms.

i love those crisps but no, i don't eat those at the library, don't want to deafen everybody

its more of trying to apply a classical concept at the quantum level. of course it fails because you are trying to mix and match from two different regimes.

more to the point there are worse things i HAVE done in the library. including camping on the 4th floor when i was wasted and couldn't find my way home. it wasn't as if i was getting my grubby finders on any books(other than my notepad which nearly has as many stains as my labcoat.)

but it will upset the spooks(FBI, CIA, insert three letter acronymed spy agency here)