Sisyphus

All propulsion involves pushing mass backwards in order to move forwards. There's no way around this. When you walk you're pushing off of the ground (and actually moving the entire Earth a tiny, tiny amount), when you fly a plane you're sucking in and throwing backwards the air around you. In space, there is nothing to "push off" of, so you have to take your own mass with you as fuel. This is what a rocket is: an explosion that throws mass behind you so you move forward. The effect of this is that you have to carry a whole lot of mass with you to go anywhere, and the more mass you have the more fuel you need, the more fuel you have the more mass you have, etc. This is why when the space shuttle flies into orbit, most of the weight is actually just fuel, and almost all of it gets used up just getting into space.

500 meters? Bullets? I thought we were talking about classroom demonstrations. Washers getting knocked off desks with rulers.

The point is that realistically, the curvature of the Earth is going to be far less than the irregularities in the floor itself, the degree to which you can control release times, etc. You can't be a superscientist until you learn about margin of error. But yeah, in a perfect experiment, on an infinitely smooth Earth, it wins by a nose. But as long as we're being pedantic, the Earth has been known to be round for thousands of years, not just since 1492. And if it hadn't of been, nothing that happened in 1492 would have proved it to be so, unless you believe the Bahamas really are in India.

An Islamic charity that gave aid to victims of Islamic terrorism might be good for PR, but they shouldn't call it "reparations."

We wouldn't be transporting "ourselves" there, we would be transporting very few people. If the population of Mars is ever more than a few people, it will be through reproduction, not immigration. And of course there are reasons for doing so, but they're mostly very "big picture" reasons. Survival of the species, etc. I will say that I find the "we shouldn't send people into space until we fix all the problems on Earth" argument extremely silly. Anyway, things like thin atmosphere and no magnetic field are obstacles to unprotected life on the surface, but I would have to assume that any kind of terraforming effort would be extremely long term compared with living in self-contained habitats, anyway.

Islam has a negative image in much of America and Europe, that's for sure. In Europe in particular it seems to be the focus of most xenophobic/anti-immigration sentiment, with stuff like Switzerland banning minarets. In the U.S. it's less about immigration, but the Muslim=terrorist meme is possibly even more prevalent, with stuff like iNow's relatives. Also, something like 12% of Americans somehow believe Barack Obama is a Muslim, so, you know, just try and unpack that. Anyway, I agree that it's hardly the responsibility of some Muslim in Indonesia to befriend iNow's relatives or something, but the question might be rephrased as how Islamophobia might be mitigated in general. And I think the answer is probably just integration and moderation. In America, Catholics were once a similarly hated and feared group, but that was unsustainable given the level of integration. The average person isn't going to hate and fear a group that includes their next door neighbor who's an alright dude.

There is no "up the evolutionary tree," and there is no goal of evolution (unless you count propagation), let alone an "ultimate goal." You shouldn't think in those terms, because nature doesn't work that way. (And if it did, why assume it's us? Maybe we're halfway "there." Or rather, squid are halfway there, and we're a dead end. Or horseshoe crabs are the ultimate goal, since they've been around so long without needing to change. Or whatever.) As for what "separates" humans? I think you pretty much covered it. There's nothing important all that different between us and, say, chimps, except our somewhat larger brains. Where those came from, I guess is kind of a runaway reaction from a series of chance occurences. The more we can communicate with each other and the better tools we can make, the more use for problem solving and social skills, the bigger brains we get, the more we can communicate and build better tools, and so forth. We're descended from tree climbers so we have a good grip, and we have hands free to use for other things because various pressures pushed us out of the trees into a more upright existence, so to speak. And probably a bunch of other minor factors as well, I don't know. But no magic bullet. And yes, chimps have culture too.

There was a canine flu a few years ago. It pretty much only spread among racing dogs (dogs that actually mix with a large population of other dogs), and didn't jump to anything else. But why just influenza? There can be and have been diseases that can infect both humans and common house pets. For example, rabies. But then, most pets are vaccinated against these diseases, and have very limited contact with other dogs/cats (at least, in North America and Europe), so epidemics are unlikely. With farm animals crammed in giant disease pits, yeah, you're going to see more problems...

...then it probably is a duck. But ducks don't recognize their own reflections.

Oh, they'll "get it," they just won't think it applies to them. "Haha, aren't those crackpots ridiculous? So distracting from MY new theory." On that not-at-all-ironic note, I happen to have a philosophy degree. And with all due respect to Randy, I don't think we're the ones coming up with crackpottery, because we (are supposed to) know how ideas work, and know what we (don't) know. Just from SFN, it seems like most of them are either kids or non-scientist technical people. But I'm guessing he had a specific person in mind when he drew that.

This is helpful in spotting vampires.

I lurk there from time to time. It definitely is a better place to go if you have straightforward, non-basic technical questions about physics or engineering and want a quick response. However, if you want a casual and enlightening explanation for why your photosynthesis-powered submarine is probably a non-starter, this is the place to be. I like that we're a bit more casual and allow for broader discussions, and I like that we're small enough that I feel like I know most of the regulars, on what subjects to take them seriously, what is going to piss them off, etc. Community, damnit. Plus, I secretly kind of love crackpots, and having a name as generic as "science forums" attracts everyone trying to send an angry letter to the Mayor of Science demanding to know why we aren't using Tesla's flying lightning cars.

He means number of bosons, of which photons are one kind. In other words, it doesn't have to go anywhere, it simply no longer exists. Usually you say it is "absorbed," which basically just means that its energy has been transferred to whatever it "hit." And that's how you would detect it.

Welcome to the internet?

My opinion is that most of this thread is a silly argument.

Indeed. In fact, I'm guessing more than married heterosexual couples, on average, since it's a lot more trouble, and not just expected as a matter of course. Plus, no shotgun weddings.

So there's a shortage of humans? It seems to me that quality of life, prosperity, etc. tend to be inversely proportional to birth rates.

I suppose in the case of non-deterministic events, that would be true. Maybe. In a classical system I'm pretty sure you would be seeing the unbreaking teacups. I have to think about this.

"Mother subject to be?" So... pregnant? Is this a "words mean their etymological roots" argument? If so, would you agree that the word "trivia" only means a road intersection?

There's no way a bee's DNA could contain everything it would later have to successfully navigate. It just has tools for dealing with it. As do humans, though our tools are far more complex. My doubt is that there is a non-arbitrary line to be drawn. I think that's problematic, because we mean a specific phenomenon by "consciousness" already, so simply defining it as "complexity" leads to a false equivocation. Case in point: the universe as a whole contains everything else, thus must necessarily be the most complex entity in existence, therefore must not only be conscious but the "most conscious." I know, what you really mean is complexity in the brain, which is narrower but still not sufficient. Why does complexity in the brain = "amount of consciousness." Measuring complexity in the brain is only measuring complexity in the brain, unless you demonstrate it directly corresponds with something else.

I think it just depends on how loosely you define "instinct." Specific behaviors for specific circumstances vs. tools for developing behaviors for novel situations. But there isn't really a clear line between them, I don't think, as any action of any animal would seem to have elements of both.

How do you measure consciousness?

But you must have some reason for suggesting it. And the suggestion is, rephrased, that the strong force is responsible for some time-asymmetrical process. What process?

They are weird because they are astronomically unlikely in the ordinary sense, because they are examples of negative entropy on the macroscopic scale. However, such events do not actually violate any physical laws on the microscopic scale, and are "possible" (though extremely, extremely unlikely) without changing the behaviors of any forces. This is why I think "time reversal" should focus on what entropy means, and why it increases. Which I think is closely related to the question of why entropy was so low in the "initial conditions" of the universe. But I'm rather out of my depth. Well surely common sense can be employed, as with gravity. If the strong force suddenly and permanently became repulsive throughout the universe, what events would occur? Have similar events in reverse order just occured in the immediate past? I think not. Charge, on the other hand, is rather different. If every positive charge simultaneously became negative and vice versa, would there be any way to detect that? (Non-rhetorical question.)

So you object to teachers acknowledging that homosexuality exists? Because you're afraid that will lead to lots of anal sex?