insane_alien

more like when they don't work a lot more damage gets done. unless of course the objective was to do damage.

the closest thing i can find to a radioactive chimney is the windscale plant. This was one of the early plants when they didn't really have the safety measures we did now. The reactor itself was air cooled. the plant was shut down decades ago after the reactor caught fire due to the release of wigner energy in the graphite moderator. very nasty business. to show how early this was in reactor technology, they checked the fire was out by having a guy stand at an access hatch looking directly at the reactor. not a good place to be.

you can't believe that a couple hundred species have died out but you do believe that the earth is magically gaining quadrillions(ridiculously low i know) of tonnes of material every century?

hardly conclusive is it. "elevated release" could refer to a discharge on the roof which is a fairly common position for HVAC systems. and anyway, the point is moot, nuclear plants have radiation monitoring equipment EVERYWHERE if ANYTHING radioactive was being vented in such a manner someone would have found out about it.

its alright i wore a linux powered condom so i didn't catch anything.

no, the water would still freeze it just wouldn't form normal ice. infact, theree are several types of ice that are denser than liquid water. these types of ice form in exactly the situations present in the scenario, high pressure.

you have a few options to combat this. 1/you have an infeasibly strong(and expensive) pipe and valve that can withstand such forces. 2/you have a pipe and valve made from flexible materials that can accomodate the expansion, downside is that they will have unacceptable performance when in normal use (valves will not be able to fully close). 3/ you use insulation. as to your point about extrusion along the pipe, that is possible but frictive forces make the expansion very very slow. the pipe breaks before the pressure decreases sufficiently. you would also suffer from very low water pressure when the thaw comes. turning on a tap would suck air in rather than let water out.

also, considering the size of algae and the size of the pool and the voltage difference, the voltage across the algae is going to be in the microvolt region if not nanovolts.

personally, i don't think they exist. however, i am in no way qualified for that to be anymore than opinion. i would have no idea how to detect them, i doubt anybody else would either. neutrinos. and knifes cut, neutrinos don't, they just pass through it as if it wasn't there. i think its a light year of lead(approximately) to block half the flux of neutrons. it can't be seen because it doesn't interact electromagnetically but it does move. there is nothing for them to fix onto.

can you post a link describing that as an air ventilation pipe? the ventialtion system could have a discharge through that but it is unlikely that air ventilation is the sole purpose or even primary purpose of that chimney.

they've already demonstrated it. on LCD too and with current generation game consoles(PS3 and Xbox 360)

sub orbital trajectory at best.

no, a true geostationary satellite would be in orbit. a balloon in the upper atmosphere however, is not in orbit anymore than you are when you're standing still.

lead is dense, it blocks gamma rays very well and completely blocks alpha and beta radiation at the thicknesses needed to shield against gamma. its not radioactive but it is toxic if ingested.

it doesn't completely disintegrate because they designed it to withstand the forces. its not the same type of glass thats used in your own windows. The cockpit windows on an aeroplane are made of many different layers of different glasses and plastics. if it is hit by a bird on takeoff or landing it WILL break it just won't shatter inwards or let the bird through and hence kill the pilot. the window designs are tested before they can be used in jetliners. on smaller planes however, the windows will shatter if hit by a bird. they don't use the thinker windows used in larger planes because they'd be too heavy and the smaller plane wouldn't fly so well with them. and not flying well is an issue for a plane.

if the earth was a perfect sphere then yes. as it is not a perfect sphere the answer is no, although it does come pretty close. the sun and moon also throw the result off as well.

i like to think of landfill as resource depositing. landfills are a wealth of materials that, while uneconomical to exploit currently, will be essential later on in our development and unlike natural deposits, we will not need extensive exploration expeditions in order to locate the resources. there are already a number of lanfill mining pilot operations in progress. so, as it happens, i'm actually pro landfill. doesn't make sense to recycle the majority of our trash YET. but it needs to go somewhere so, why not put in a nice neat pile and wait till we are able to do it properly and then reap the rewards.

i'm with sisyphus here, it often takes more energy to recycle materials than to get some more out of the ground. thats not energy conservation, thats energy over-consumption.

well, intact and recognisable fossils in general are exceedingly rare as the conditions necessary for fossilization to occure are exceedingly rare. the older the range your looking for the less chance of finding fossils are. the oldest are cyanobacteria from 3.4billion years ago according to wikipedia.

you do realise that ozone is incredibly toxic don't you? it causes all sorts of nasty respiratory tract problems and can irritate skin and eyes.

i'd imagine its due to tectonic plate movement. the earths crust behaves a lot like a churning semimolten plastic over geological time scales. some bits get pushed up, some bits get dragged down. the top of everest is 8 km up yet it used to be a seabed seems reasonable that something could get dragged down 6km.

and then you have to consider that intelligence probably doesn't have a fixed value even during the course of a day. when i'm on top form i can come up some brilliant ideas but if i'm having an off day you wouldn't believe i'd be able to dress myself in the morning and get the right limbs in the right holes.

they can be used as a rough indicator but they are not the be all and end all of inteligence indicators. they are just the best we can do for now.

your never too old, there a guy in my class who's 45 and has worked on oilrigs most of his life, once he gets his degree he wants to design oil rigs. what can i say, the guy likes his oil rigs. but for the origional question, go for it. you may end up being the oldest in the class but so what? whats more important, a good career or a little bit of initial akwardness