Sisyphus

That wasn't a rhetorical question. I really want to know why they're trying to do this.

I think it's not so much trying to be different as trying to make some kind of point about human knowledge. Also, to annoy people.

"The Earth's force" is a phrase that doesn't mean anything. Gravity is a force BETWEEN objects, and is derived from (and proportional to) BOTH of them. Specifically, both their masses. Specifically, the product between them. The force acting on (and exerted by) a 20kg mass is twice that acting on (and exerted by) a 10kg mass because 20 is twice 10, and the Earth hasn't changed.

Groucho Marx, two hours into watching a cricket match: "Boy, this looks exciting! When does it start?"

You guys should really declare a truce. Everybody looks stupid in a flame war. ParanoiA, please don't leave. We desperately need variety of opinions.

Neither.

Errr, why?

Gravity IS measured in Newtons. The 9.8m/s^2 thing is just a shortcut approximation, when the object's mass is negligible compared with the Earth. Remember, gravity is not a case of a lone force acting on successive objects. It's a force of attraction (in Newtonian physics, that is, which is what you're dealing with) BETWEEN objects. The rock pulls on the Earth exactly as much as the Earth pulls on the rock, and that mutual force is proportional to the PRODUCT of their masses divided by the square of the distance between them. In other words, yes, it does exert twice as much force on a 20kg rock as a 10 kg rock, but that's fine, because it's the mass of the rocks that is the "source" of the force in the first place.

A monorail is just any train with a single track. I assume you're thinking of a maglev train, but that works on different principles, and is quite different from a railgun. You might be thinking of a coilgun, which IS basically just "using magnets to pull the projectile to a high velocity," with simple attractive force to successive electromagnets. That is NOT what a railgun is, however. Railguns use the force exerted on an electric current through a constant magnetic field. Also, metalstorm is not a railgun. Also, it fires 1,000,000 rounds per minute.

To my knowledge, not since he's started campaigning for President. But how long can he keep that up?

I would just like to make the general suggestion that, if one wants to be taken seriously, one should probably write in real English. This thread is kind of scary.

Typically one is pregnant in the uterus.

Yeah, g-forces would clearly be the major obstacle. It seems like you could reduce it by making a longer track? I wonder how long the railgun would have to be to reach escape velocity under reasonable acceleration. Maybe some kind of circular track?

Ok. Electrical current running in a straight line produces a circular magnet field perpendicular to it, kind of like a spiral. Two "rails" with current flowing in opposite directions will produce a powerful magnetic field in the same direction between them. Also, an electrical current running perpendicular to a magnetic field produces a force perpendicular to both of them. So, you have your two electrified rails, and join them with a conductor, producing a parallel current to both the rails and the magnetic field those rails produce. That conductor experiences a force in the direction parallel to the rails. Other uses I'm not really sure about, but I think I've heard talk of it being used as a cheap way of throwing satellites into space.

Isn't "pretty much infinite" an oxymoron?

There's a theory that every powerful nation must at some point make a choice between its principles and its empire. It would seem that the United States is currently in the era in which it must make this choice.

Giuliani can't win, though. He's basically one-note ("I was near ground zero!"), and he's probably too New York Italian to appeal to a national base once they get to know him. He's a bully, and loses his temper, and occasionally and unpredictably turns draconian when something angers his sensibilities.

I'm far from an expert on this stuff, but a couple of things occur to me. First of all, I would be more careful about assigning some kind of physical meaning to "imaginary" or "negative mass." It seems like you mean it as "gravitationally repulsive" or something, but it seems like there must be other and stranger considerations to deal with, like inertia. I'm guessing a model wherein the force holding galaxies together was partially an external "pushing" would produce very different-looking results in terms of those galaxies' shapes and motions. You would, of course, have to test all of that mathematically before considering it remotely plausible. I'd be curious to see a computer model of that sort of thing, actually. Finally, I'm not sure your "shouldn't we see them" explanation holds water. Seems like that much visible matter (?) should, like interstellar dust, at least show up as the objects behind it being dimmer than they ought to be, and probably other, stranger effects. Again, you'd have to do the math.

This is kind of an ill-formed question. It occured to me recently that most people seem to think it would be best if the entire world spread adopted their own political idealogies. This includes ideas as broad or narrow as democracy, communism, Christian theocracy, secular libertarianism, etc. I, personally, don't really understand this, and it would be very strange to me if one political solution could be applied to any people, time, or situation. I want to live in a secular, liberal, capitalistic democracy, but I don't think that everybody should have to. There can be good monarchies, and if a country can make socialism work for them, I say more power to them. I mentioned this today and got kind of an outraged response from a democracy-worshipper. Am I as alone as it seems like I am?

Yes, I have an interest in it, and I certainly think it's possible and will happen, though I think it's premature to guess how close we are to such a thing. I don't think we have any "experts" here, but I know it's one of bascule's pet subjects, and I've had a lot of experience debating various metaphysical, ethical, and legal implications of true AI.

In other words, it's just in the wrong units, which is not really important. Just replace the "equals" sign with a "varies as" sign and it's correct.

But we've never actually used ICBMs, have we? And when was the last time there was an open conflict between big powers? Nobel wasn't really wrong, he just overestimated how quickly civilization would catch on. Wars today are pursued by desperate people with nothing to lose, by people who WANT to die in some kind of holy war, or by nations with such great advantages that it's not all that horrific for THEM at all. [/OT]

It's dependant on the ratio and amount of pheomelanin and eumelanin. Pheomelanin is reddish brown, and eumelanin is dark drown. Those are the only human skin pigments, and you won't see any natural skin color that's not some combination of those. Good article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_pigment

Small caveat: It's assumed all matter has gravitational pull, otherwise all the theories are wrong. However, it's such a weak force, there's no way you could ever actually measure any effects of the gravitational effect of, say, a single atom. However, you could easily measure how it was effected BY gravity.

I agree. It seems like tool use would have had to preceed higher intelligence. Which in turn would be preceeded by opposable thumbs, the ability to stand upright, and enough intelligence to use basic tools in the first place. Lots of factors had to come together before intelligence was possible and worth it. I remember reading somewhere the idea that climate change led to diet change which led to a different, less powerful jaw, which meant the jaw muscles didn't need as much anchorage on the top of the skull, which meant the skull was free to get larger and have more room for brains. So what might at the time have seemed like "de-evolution" from disuse into a less straightforwardly formidable animal actually was one of the necessary conditions for the development of our super-ape brains.