insane_alien

ahem, dark matter is not necessary for the big bang to be explained. (infact it sort of opposes it) dark matter is necessary because of the rotation of galaxies. we have even made some very detailed 3D maps of darkmatter. it DOES exist. we are just not to sure of the details of its nature. could be slow neutrinos, could be something else. we're working on it. if the universe is not expanding then a lot of galaxies are travelling at multiples of c. we have lots of evidence in favour of dark matter, dark energy and expansion of the universe, where is your evidence?

prove it.

ah so you are saying direct observations are wrong and that we should instead trust someone who shows little math skills or even consistency in their ideas? stick to what science actually says in this thread jeff. its not about your own little pet idea that should have been put down long ago.

does it really matter if suicidal people feel better after a while, they aren't going to feel better in the time it takes to commit suicide by most methods(be it gun, hanging or other). as has been said before, taking guns away isn't going to dramatically decrease the suicide rate. if a person really wants to kill themselves, then they will succeed. to remove all chance of someone commiting suicide you would need to ban EVERYTHING then add layers of padding. though i'm sure you could smother yourself on the padding if you tried.

i suspect that any method of extracting energy would quickly nullify this, especially if the generation system operates at any sort of efficiency at all. i like the idea though. then again, with the state of the roads round here they wouldn't last very long. i nearly broke my suspension on a pothole today.

you should be fine in chem eng, i went into without having done any research programme and i've just finished my third year. not sure whether cambridge or UCL is better though.

gah, i just wentt and reread my source, it was something else entirely. whoopsie.

you're body temperature is more than 80*centigrade??? how are you living? do you notice people burning themselves when they shake your hand? i think you missed the *C part in swansonts post. that and we tend to use SI here, not imperial.

considering the universe, hydrogen is actually the most abundant, with around 99% of the universe being composed of it. on earth however, it is oxygen. it is not just in the atmosphere, it is in the water and solids of the earth. infact nearly ALL ores we get metals from are oxides of the particular metal. sand has oxygen, rocks have oxygen. its everywhere. nitrogen is mainly in the atmosphere. the atmosphere is only a small part of the earth.

did you bash it or heat it up a lot? that can cause them to lose power. theres no way to recharge them without melting them down and resolidifying in a strong magnetic field.

I agree, scientists love change. they would love nothing more to overturn some well established theory. science changes its theories to fit the data, people who are pretending to do science(like the guys promoting expanding earth) change the data to fit their own 'theories'.

it is impossible to see atoms with visible light, the wavelength is simply too long. i'm guessing something is up with your eyes. as skeptic said, do they move around when you move your eyes? i'm guessing floaters.

i thought you knew how to read a phase diagram. it HAS A LIQUID PHASE BELOW 1 ATM. i do not have any substantial amounts of iodine so cannot make a video of it and have had no luck finding one on the net. probably because it is an entirely unabnormal phenomenon. wikipedia states this specifically under its sublimation article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublimation_(chemistry))

Jdurg, while john is being a bit of a prat he is right, iodine has a liquid phase at standard pressure. see the phase diagram here -> http://radio.weblogs.com/0101365/2004/06/04.html but you are right that if left on an open surface that is not heated it will sublime because it is below the melting point.

yes they do. this is exploited to make neutron bombs. as i said, there are many many factors involved. there are probably many more i would never think of as well. i only know the basics of nuclear bomb design(i.e, get a supercritical mass and hold it together as long as possible)

John, while your post was correcting jdurg was technically correct you could do with getting off your high horse as if you had never made even the slightest error in your life. it makes you sound like a pompous ass.

well, as the fissioning U-238 will produce even more fast neutrons i would think that the limit would be a direct product of how much pressure the primary stage can dump onto the secondary stage to initiate fusion. i think the correct answer here is : not enough information to make a sensible answer. i think it would be affected by all sorts of details about the bombs geometry and design, i mean , there are probably better designs in use today than the typical teller-ulam design. they may be able to better utilise the fission-fusion-fission route.

do you still want the sodium hydroxide to be in its small pellets?

yeah, i know its not the same but its the closest thing i could think of, at least a semi decent analogy.

casimir effect.

yes actually, as i have said before, we have evidence of it by observing protosolar systems around other stars. solar systems start out as a cloud of dust and rock and gases which soon collapses into a disc because of collisions and preservation of angular momentum. collisions take place within the disc and larger lumps form. the heat of collision makes them liquid. over time these larger lumps will clear out their orbits of debris and when the collision rate becomes low enough, the planet will cool as it radiates more heat than it gets from collisions. a crust forms from lighter chemicals floating to the top cooling and solidifying. given enough time the mantle and core would cool down enough to solidify. i can't post all the evidence we have because there is too much of it. we can look at the moon and measure the age of craters which tells us that there were a LOT more collisions a few billion years ago, hence more stuff on the planetary plane. we can look inside our own planet and tell its structure and how hot it is. the evidence is stacked against you, unless you can think of a new way to explain EVERY observation then your idea that the earth is alive is wrong. similarities do not prove anything. my cousins kid has a book shaped like a digger. is it a digger? no. does the kid really wish it was a digger? yep.

not really no, as you can just increase the number of stages. there is no theoretical limit to the size of a thermonuclear bomb, just the fission primary.

hey and welcome to the forums. werple, i noticed you came on the IRC chat but only stuck around for less than a minute. if you stay on it a bit longer you'll probably see someone active.

no, it doesn't work. appart from hydrocarbons only having the normal diamagnetic effect that every compound has they are not magnetic. magnetic fields will not align them nor would alignment have any effect on the completeness of combustion. to affect that you would have to alter the fuel to oxygen ratio.