Sisyphus

The author says T^4 = L/(D^2), where T is planetary temperature, L is solar luminosity, and D is orbital radius. This is more or less what I think you want, already. Rearrange to get D = sqrt[L/(T^4)], or D = sqrt(L)/T^2, if it helps. Thus you have radius as a function of temperature. Plug in the upper and lower extremes for temperature to get the inner and outer radii for the limits of the habitable zone. (Diameters, obviously, are just twice the radii.)

I have to assume the first post is a joke...

Neat! And oddly creepy. Anyone else seen Les Yeux Sans Visage? A mere 46 years ago (in France, no less), such a thing was science fiction horror. Great movie, incidentally...

That is basically correct, yes. Nothing is inherently superior or more evolved than anything else. Natural selection is just the tendency for those traits which lead to more children to be passed on. It's very intuitive when you think about it - nothing magic about it. In an environment where an organism doesn't need strength to rpocure food, mate, or protect its young, big muscles just become wasted resources. In our society, where intelligence has a minimum effect on survival value and no effect on ability to procure a mate, high intelligence is no advantage, because it doesn't result in more offspring. In fact, it's actually a disadvantage, evolutionarily speaking, since more intelligent people tend to find reasons NOT to have children.

The problem is we don't all agree that improving the human race is a good thing. The questions are: who's doing the improving? On what criteria? And who gave them the right to dictate reproduction. Don't get me wrong - I'm not absolutely opposed to it, and obviously it is possible for a culture to accept such an idea, since cultures have in the past. Sparta is an example that ought to be free of the negative connotations Nazism brought to the whole concept. It's just important to remember that there are ethical as well as technical issues, as Mokele makes clear.

Those two examples though are not really fallacies as they're described, though. You don't think you got sick because of the chili merely because it happened afterwards - you think so because you have some knowledge of what happens when you consume overly decayed food. Thus it's a stronger argument, but not proof. Similarly, you have other reasons for believing the supposed "slippery slope" argument that you mentioned. If you believed that were the case merely because you thought it were a principle that more extreme actions always follow from less extreme actions, that would be the real fallacy, I think. I do agree completely, however, that one should disregard entire arguments just because they seem to contain fallacies at first glance. I was being somewhat facetious in the comment you quoted.

If our knowledge of the nature of half-lives of radioactive materials was inaccurate, all of the technologies that utilize such knowledge would not work, and neither would any of the repeatable experiments confirming such knowledge. I don't know what more you could ask for. There's no such thing as "more evolved." Like I said in my previous post, that is a misunderstanding of natural selection. Evolution does not make organisms "better." It just makes them more capable of having surviving offspring in a given environment, which itself is changing constantly. Also, "humans evolved from apes" is a misleading representation of the theory. We did not evolve from the apes that are currently around, for example. Humans and the other currently existing primates merely have a common ancestor (an ape-like one), that is much more recent than the common ancestor between, say, a human and a goldfish. But we are NOT, I repeat, NOT "more evolved" than the other primates. That statement has no meaning. We merely evolved along different paths to take advantage of different ecological niches.

I don't really feel like getting involved with the general argument, but I would like to ask Agnostic what he means by "degeneration and decay." What do those words even mean in the context of evolution? Do you mean to say that species are becoming "less evolved?" If so, that indicates a misunderstanding of what evolution actually means. It's not a process for forming a "better" organism, if "better" is meant as more advanced. It does not have an end. It is merely the process by which those individuals who have more offspring pass on some of their traits to the next generation, whatever those traits might be. Therefore, whatever helps an individual survive and makes it reproduce in a given environment tends to get passed on. So really, it makes no sense to say that one organism, say, a human, is "more evolved" than another. It's just a continuous process of change that has no end. Currently, those human beings who are less intelligent are statistically more likely to have larger numbers of offspring, and so the human race is evolving to be less intelligent. There's no such thing as "degeneration."

Perhaps there's just no definite boundary between gas and plasma, and that how it is labelled often depends merely on what properties one is speaking of. It might be something as vague as "if it conducts electricity, it's plasma," despite the fact that it could be a better or worse conductor depending on ionization levels.

The only problem with cold water that I know of is that it doesn't work as fast to quench thirst and rehydrate the body. This is because water has to be heated up to body temperature anyway before it can be absorbed, so by chilling the water you just delay relief, and make your body work harder as well. It's also better (I've heard) to pour cool rather than cold water on yourself if you're overheated, since cold water will just constrict the blood vessels in the skin and actually trap heat inside. I'm not sure if this is also the case for drinking it, but it seems like it should be - more constricted blood vessels in the stomach means less heat should be transferred to the water, meaning your body is cooled down slower. However, more heat can be transferred overall with cold water, so I really don't know.

It just seems like strange matter falls under that same description...

Actually, I believe the first person to speak of a straight line as the circumference of an infinite circle was Galileo. He spoke at great length of that sort of infinity, the kind that comes from increasing the finite indefinitely, through a kind of motion (infinitely divisible, but not divided, thus sidestepping Zeno's paradoxes). This was most definitely a precursor to calculus and the work of Newton and Leibniz.

Isn't it odd that black holes aren't on the list? Is it just because their matter is no longer considered to exist?

Like RyanJ said, it's basically just ionized gas. Heat or some other energy is applied to the gas, and some atoms lose electrons, meaning there are positively charged atoms and free electrons. When this happens in enough atoms to noticeably affect its properties, it's called plasma. This means that plasma behaves just like gas except for a few differences, like the ability to conduct electricity and to generate magnetic fields. All gases become plasma if you make them hot enough - the sun is plasma, as well as 99% of matter in the universe.

I'd just like to reiterate that that is already illegal, and constitutes a search without warrant. Also, that "it's only a problem if you commit a crime" has always been the defense of totalitarians. There's a major difference between public cameras and surveillance of private property, and it's a line that won't easily be crossed.

Well as long as we've clarified what we're talking about. I'll take your word for it that it can't possibly work - I don't know much about such things. I'm also in agreement that it probably shouldn't be done in any case, but I'm not as sure about it as you seem to be. Why is freedom of reproduction an inalienable right? I know this a different (but related) issue, but I've often wondered if the world wouldn't be better if people had to prove basic competence (in parenting, if nothing else) before they could have children. After all, you don't just have the parent to consider, but the child as well. You have to weigh the state's responsibility to protect the parent's rights against its responsibility to protect that parent's children and the well-being of the state. Maybe both responsibilities are imaginary, I don't know....

Yes, inbreeding causes problems. Is that the issue, then? That it doesn't work? That it harms the genetic stock instead of helping it? If so, then isn't that also just eugenics? Selecting a policy because it's better for the gene pool? If there were a way to employ eugenics such that the populace became more healthy with no negative side-effects, would you still be against it? How about if it also made the average person smarter, longer-living, etc.? That's what I mean by separating the science and the ethics. There are two questions: 1) Does it work, or how can it be made to work? and 2) If it did work perfectly, should it be done?

As long as they don't change the law, we should be fine. Cameras in public are fine; it's no different from having a police presence. Many urban areas are already on film, if not totally than at least in large part, like every intersection, subway station, etc. A government camera on private property, on the other hand, would most definitely constitute a search without warrant, and is therefore already very illegal. Just don't change the law, or else the slope does begin to look a little slippery... The Patriot Act makes me very nervous for just that reason. The argument, "if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about," is a common defense of said act, and one used by totalitarians everywhere.

I doubt there will be another cold war, just because both China and the United States have far too much to lose economically for there to be even Vietnam-like indirect military conflicts. Also, China is becoming more friendly to the West, not less, albeit very slowly. Rivalry is inevitable, just like between any two nations, but conflict is not. That being said, the major east Asian powers (China, Japan, Taiwan, North and South Korea) are clearly in a very delicate balance, which could be catastrophic if upset too much. However, it's quite clear that nobody wants war (not even N. Korea), and all will go to great lengths to avoid it.

Two things: Don't you think we should draw a distinction between what is factually true and what isn't? Sure, "pauperism" is obviously not passed on. But also obvious is that some things are, or else there would be no such science as genetics. "Eugenics," defined as intentional cultivation of traits through selective breeding, has been used successfully and continuously for thousands of years, and that's why there's differences between domesticated and wild plants and animals. Just because someone made wrong assumptions in the past doesn't discredit the whole science. Yes, environment has an effect on everything. So what? Also, be careful not to confuse the scientific issues with the ethical ones, as it seems like most people are doing. Are there ethical issues? Of course (although I don't think it's as black and white as everyone else seems to). Does that have anything whatsoever to do with scientific merit? No, not at all.

Does anybody have any links to studies of what the actual impact would be for this? Obviously it has to do with proximity, but aside from that, how much shielding would the atmosphere actually provide?

Your method is incorrect because you're not solving for relevant information.

There's the Bussard ramjet, which is probably how the first interstellar spacecraft will be propelled. It involves using a magnetic field to "scoop" the ionized molecules of interstellar hydrogen into a fusion engine, converting it to helium and providing thrust. It would have to already be moving very fast in order for it to sustain a reaction, but once its going, the fuel source is unlimited, and acceleration only increases as it gets faster. Google "bussard ramjet" for more info. http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/I/interstellar_ramjet.html