YT2095

agreed, C cannot be exceeded rellative to imediate surroundings, but if the surounds are moving also then the combined speed may well exceed c. the space surrounding a black hole travels at near c, if you in your ship traveled at near c IN this space, no rules would be broken and your velocity would indeed exceed c to the outermost observer

IIRC, it charges a bank of capacitors over about 20 mins. then somehow bumps the voltage up several millions of times using an array of what I imagine would be stepup transformers. and then releases all of this power in a fraction of a nano second to a point smaller than a needle, the power generated is used in non nuclear nuclear testing (yeah sounds odd) but some non nuclear treaty/agreement forbids the testing of real nukes, and this machine simulates a nuke blast in a chamber on a small scale. imagine all the power being used in every country at the same time being used in a nano sec or less! that`s what this Z machine boasts. lol, and I thought my Tesla coil was groovy

yeah, the original Hydrogen tanks do date back quite a bit, in fact the ref I got was from one of my old Chemistry/Physics data books circa 1964 there is however a new tank being built in Canada somewhere, it`s a sperical design covered in an array of special photo detectors (1000s of them). the tank is then filled with heavy water (on loan as it very expensive) and the whole arrangement is many hundreds of meters underground too. If I rem correctly, I think it`s to do with Neutrinos or some such subatomic particle, that emit a blue flash when they collide with the nucleus or something particular about heavy water. are you talking about the Zed Machine too? I`ve seen a little bit about that, and it looks fascinating! I want one!

You`ve made a good choice There`s strength in numbers... eat at least one calculator a day

Great it was worth the headache afterall then. I wasn`t sure wether I`de; A) solved it. B) restated the same problem more clearly. c) just made matters worse!

well Amino acids are known to be on certain asteroids, so I guess if the right combinations hit us at the right time and place, it could be feasible that life could get a foot hold perhaps?

Know for sure! I don`t think we do yet in all honesty. but there IS ideas that it may have arrived via asteroid or commet courier.

yeah, I hear that 7Hz can be quite nasty if not fatal at sufficient power oh well, back to the drawing board )

Ok, for instance, one of my 1`st attempts at A.I was a simple cursor on a screen, it`s objective was to get from the top left of the screen to the bottom right. the screen would generate a random maze however, making it more difficult obviously. and because it was random, occasionaly there was no way it could reach it`s goal, but each time it did a maze succesfull it would store it`s number sequence and patern problems and success failure at each juncture. Untill one day it did something TOTALY BIZARE! it reached an Impase, it couldn1`t reverse because that would A, be against it`s goal, and B,get it nowhere. so it jumped out of screen mem parameters, into the free mem of the computer itself and performed a "wrap round" !!! a bit like how your cursor jumps back to the left of the screen on a new line. it was NEVER taught to do this or even how, infact it was against it`s original parameters set from the 1`st time i ran it. but it altered itself. that RND(time) decider seed kicked in and it "saw" that off screen it could still "survive" AND bring it closer to its goal. In effect, It Cheated! I was in hysterics laughing at it with my jaw part on the floor too, I couldn`t beleive it and that was on a 6502 based BBC micro with only 32k ram

good point actualy with regards to the vocal bit. I calculate at 50kph and 100 strips per meter 231.48 Hz would be the best you`de get but the brain wave patern to stimulate alertness might work?

I`ve done a little work with Neural Cybernetics (but am NO expert). for a start your program would need masses of memory, and it should be able to write to this memeory as it "sees fit" to update itself (a bit like neural nets the more hits the stronger the bond) like on Google ) secondly you`ll need something akin to possitive and negative reinforcement, Good result/Bad result from which it "judges" it`s activities. these are then writen to memeory and so it will slowly "evolve" and become more "inteligent". now the progs I used to write used an Int RND(time)*1 backup when both possibilities were equal (machines "lockup" at this point without a "decider") if in the case of a Robot however, you could use external stimuli as the "decider" until it builds such a database as to "think" for itself, you`de be quite surprised however the amount of times your initial prog will reach an impase tho! (hence the need for something to swing the descision). it`ll also need to be Goal orientated! as for "feelings"? who can say? hope that helps a little?

answering a question in the "pre-echo" thread, I came upon an interesting idea/invention, allow me to try it out on ya`ll have you ever been driving down a Motorway/highway/Autoban an encountered those rumble strips, like mini speed bumps that vibrate the hell out of your car? well applying the same principal as used in the grooves of a record, these strips could be lain in such a way so as to not only just vibrate, but give an audible/vocal message as well! the closer the strips the higher the pitch and furter appart the lower the pitch and so on. a "STAY AWAKE" or "Sharp bend approaching" etc.. message could be embeded into these bumps, a bit like a bar code. now It wouldn`t suit ALL circumstances sure, wet weather, radio on etc... but if it elliminated say 20% of accidents in a trouble spot, it would be worth it, and wouldn`t cost that much to do with a computer and a strip laying machine Subliminal effects could be used ti mimik brain patterns to stimulate alertness if you didn`t want to go the audio/vocal path. I III II IIII I III I I IIII II = Eat at Joes any thoughts?

Imagine the needle being in a valley made of Vinyl. that walls of this valley are uneven, as the needle moves through the gloove in the valley it creates tiny movements in it that it then transferes to a small crystal and converted to electrical signals that is then amplified. Ok back to the valley... since the edges of the valley are uneven appropriate to the sound is produces, and it also runs in a spiral, with the leading track being smooth, while the needle makes the transition from the smooth to the uneven part of the track, the outside of the valley peak will be slightly uneven too because of the pressing of the proper ridges on the other side or the peak, it`s the nature of the vinyl. a dent on the one side will be a tiny bump on the other (not much! but enough to be picked to picked up by the needle) hope that helps

the candle would indeed just go out as it consumed all the oxygen local to it, prior to this the flame would be sperical. the candle would re ignite when moved however or in a gentle draft Fire needs Fuel, heat and oxygen, remove any one and the fire goes out (in this case the local oxygen) the fuel and the heat would still be present though, eventualy however the heat would be lost as black body radiation eventualy. but not fast enough to provide some interesting results

probably the hardest part I can envisage would be controling the little critters and keeping them at least semi uniform to get some bennefit from them. there are a number of different chems that cause that luminescence(sp?) hydrogen peroxide is used to activate them (I don`t remember the name of the ester it`s mixed with though) they`re used in the glo-sticks you see at parties, I beleive the military have some also that can even be used to light up whole rooms! how about something along the lines of Zinc Sulphide though? use the sun to charge it and then it stays lit during the night (like these glow in the dark stickers). Radium used to be used MANY years ago with Zinc Suphide powder and made into a paste used to paint clock dials, they stay lit forever with or without exposure to light, sadly it was dangerous It would interesting to find out if there was something more efficient than the material used in these stickers though, make something similar to a "Light capacitor"

Ok... I`ll try again. lets use variables since I can`t draw. lets use Yt and Yv (You Time traveler) and (You Virgin) Yt gets into the time machine and goes back and meets Yv (there`s 2 ov you now) you then both move forwards in time until the date you stepped into the time machine. Yt, will continue past this date having memories of it all but CANNOT get into the original time machine, his time line carries on as normal. Yv on the other hand HAS TO get into the time machine and become Yt(new) that will occur forever sure but they will ALWAYS be seperated by the time the trip back took. there could be an infinate number of Yt(x) out there, but seperated like cars on a road all the exact same distance appart, except the distance would be time and not yards they could ONLY "fill the bucket" if time itself stopped allowing them all to catch up. a bit like the lead car crashing and the remaining cars all pilling up. Time can`t stop though, so the bucket will never get full *Phew* that`s how I see it anyway. (Im` gunna get some aspirin now)

but the 1`st time round in your time machine you wouldn`t be there, and that loop would just continue, each time you got into your machine and arrived in the past it would be the same as the very 1`st time you did it,,, because it IS the 1`st time you did it (does that make any sense to anyone other than me?, I can picture it perfectly, not sure if i can word it though )

The idea of silicon based life (other than A.I developed using current Computer technology) I find quite fascinating, I rather fancy that Boron would make an equaly good potential candidate. Doing a search a few months ago on various Borates, I was quite astonished to find the volume of different molecules it can form naturaly, mostly minerals and although rellatively simple in structure there was such a variety I`m uncertain exactly what it is that makes Carbon so special as a life (as we know it) precursor, I think it`s something to do with the amount and complexity of the bonds it can make (over simplified I`m sure) If shown a breakdown of all the chemical constituants in a Human, I`de be more inclined at 1`st glance to call us Water Based life as opposed to Carbon based. I suppose that the advantage Silicon has over Boron however is that it is also a "semiconductor" whereas Boron may make more naturaly occuring molecules than Silicon, it does have this limitation. Just thinking aloud

Unintelligence, he knows nothing about "mating" and yet many of your posts are in the thread about "Righthandedness", what do you use yours for?

Thnx guys, and you Unintelligence, I`ll sure give them a good read when I get a quiet 5

on another thread here, an interesting question occured to me, it was about the dividing line between a collection of molecules and Life. This isn`t by any means an Original question, but a search didn`t find it as a distict topic here yet. So what constitutes life? Fire seems to obey most all the qualifications to determine life and yet I for one would hesitate to call it Life (per se). and where IS the dividing line? (think sperm/egg) at what point is it "A HUMAN LIFE"? all the best

Interesting! where does the dividing line occur between that which is "alive" and that which is a collection of molecules? I can`t answer it, it`s on a par with how many arranged bricks constitutes a house. Beats me!

well as far I know now, it was mostly contained before it did what it was supposed to anyway. I personaly didn`t notice any difference myself, Symantec(sp) the guys who make ZoneAlarm I think it is, have the patch on their site bug free IF anyone is worried about it anyway All should be OK now anyway, sorry if it was a false alarm to anyone, but it could have swung either way! All the best

the OCD bit sounds about accurate though probably all ending in "dol" or "zine"

OMG! I feel so guilty now for eating! ( all those poor helpless little Amino acids, I`ll never be able to look at another multi-vit again! thnx a bunch guys!