J'Dona

Sorry, I don't quite follow... what is the % actually a measurement of? I'm assuming now that it doesn't have anything to do with concentration. Do you mean that the 98% conc sulphuric is 98% dissociated, and the 50% is 50% dissociated, so that once the free protons in each are used up more will be produced by the undissociated acid molecules and you get the same number of moles of protons in the end? If that's the case they should still have the same strengths, but different pH's due to different H+ concentrations, but then they should have different strengths, and, and... *head explodes* Sorry, I've just been doing chemistry all day, maybe I'm confused here :/

Quite true... Lyme Regis in Devon isn't major but there's one wicked little shop there where you can find anything. They even had dinosaur eggs for a while (they could have been fake, I suppose, they weren't going for very much...). The mineral in the first post looks quite nice, a bit like silicon carbide but more multi-coloured. I thought it was pyrite for a moment at that angle. It's a bit small for decorating with, unless it's just for your desk or something.

But pH = -log10[H+], so dilution would affect the pH quite significantly, wouldn't it? Of course I'm thinking of "extreme" as being a few dm3 as opposed to just a few millilitres or something.

I think it would help. From a sense of looking at the science in people's fiction.

I don't know how strong the strongest alkali they've eever made is. An alkali is really just a solution with a very low H+ concentration instead of a very high one, so the principle would be the same except that the species in the solution were accepting protons instead of donating them. So if the solution were the same in principle, the OH- ions would repel and still destroy the Earth. :S I've just tried looking of Google for the strongest alkali, but I can't find anything. :/ There's something about CsOH being the strongest, though I can't confirm that, and I don't know the pH of it anyway...

Well... an alkali equivalent to the hyperacid mentioned earlier would hav a pH of about 114, which means that for just about any volume you want to choose (anything that fits into the universe anyway) you get approximately zero H+ ions. Since it only has a pH like that when it contains some water, you'd have to find some way to stop the reversible reaction where H20 becomes H+ and OH- and vice versa, then completely remove all the H2 ions from it. I suppose that water at absolute zero would be like that, as the alkali of water decreases as temperature decreases, but I thought it was theoretically impossible to get something to absolute zero, and you wouldn't be able to do anything with it even if you could. :/

My brother is just finishing his first year in a game sprogramming degree, and while he's spent the past few years before programing in C++ in his own time, they still started him off on Pascal in the first year. He ended up going through about ten of his friends's papers over MSN when he was back at our house for a bit as people desperately brought their Pascal related problems to him, even though he hates the language. In his words, Pascal "was probably found on some stone tablets somewhere". So yes, I guess they still teach Pascal, but only as a starter; they move onto C++ afterward.

Not really... I heard somewhere that there's about 1080 fundamental articles in the universe (a googol). Even a cubic micrometer of this solution contains more protons than that, so if you had any significant amount of this solution it ould be quite nasty. Actually, this thing would contain something ridiculously stupid like 1058 protons in one cubic femtometer (about the same distance as between protons in a nucleus), and at that point even the strong nuclear force would be repelling them as well as the electromagnetic. The result would be a very nasty explosion, I do believe, bearing in mind that this amount of protons has about the same mass as the Earth or thereabouts...

Ouch... a solution with a pH of -100 would be an H+ concentration of 10100 mol dm-3. At that concentration I think the protons would repel each other so much and with so much energy that the solution would explode and probably destroy the Earth with it.

I think that what they were getting at is that for it to be "science fiction", the science in your story has to be realistic or at least scientifically grounded, otherwise it would only be fantasy. Assuming that your GE humans are only splitting apart the CO2 into O2 and not actually using the CO2 to breathe with like plants, then provided you can find some way for them to do that they shouldn't be too different from normal humans as they would be using the same chemicals in their body. Otherwise their bodies would need to incorporate some way to use CO2 directly, like a form of concentrated phtotosynthesis in their lungs (although then they'd need some way to the get light onto the cells, so the cells might need to be on the outside of their body, thus altering their skin color and anatomy and causing problems of actually getting the O2 once it's produced into their lungs.) Some of the problems with living on Venus could be countered with genetic engineering in the humans as they would have. Their skin cells may have been altered to be able to withstand a greater atmospheric pressure, like on Venus, although this might mean that they can't survive in "normal" atmospheric pressure like on Earth, just as we can't survive on a planet with a similarly lower atmospheric pressure like Mars. I don't know what you could do about heat... just about all organic molecules would combust and burn at that temperature if there was oxygen in the air to let them, and if these humans used oxygen in their bodies then it would probably get it from there as they melted. Some form of space-suits might protect them from the heat and the pressure as well, but then it's not quite as natural as I believe you're trying to go for. Another problem is the abudance of nasty things like sulphuric acid in the atmosphere, mostly higher up mind you, and liquid metals on the ground. On a planet like Venus, your humans would have to contend with a certain amount of metals and acids that they'll be breathing in, so they'll need some decent way of filtering those out of their system. I don't know much about biology so I can't offer anything there. Another possibility I'm sure you may have thought of is Mars. Its temperature range is certainly more hospitable to humans (sometimes up to 20 degrees Celsius) and the atmosphere is still about 95% CO2. The atmospheric pressure is less so instead of needing humans genetically engineered to withstand 9 MPa of pressure (Venus), 8.9 MPa higher than Earth, they would just need to be able to survive under the near-vacuum conditions on Mars (only 100 kPa different from Earth). That should be easier and might provide some useful abilities later on in the story, like space-walking. Of course, the much lower atmosphere on Mars would be a problem as people would not be able to get very much oxygen from the converted CO2, so these humans might be restricted to the lowest points on Mars (like of the bottom of the Valles Marineris canyon where pressure might be a little higher). This would mean that they are unable to holdtheir breath for very long, for sure, and would probably need some form of breathing equipment to help them collect CO2. Of course, this is just for Mars and if you would rather that your humans lived on Venus, that's fine. It's certainly much more interesting than just another Martian colony! Whereas this is fiction and you can do anything you want in it, whether possible or impossible, you have to bear in mind that if you want it to be considered "science fiction" the reader has to believe that it is possible. I would recommend, though, that you continue to ask questions about any parts of the science in your story that you're uncertain about. I do some writing as well, and whereas I'm not ready to start a novel yet (though I have a fixed idea for one that I spend a LOT of time thinking about and sorting out the details in for when I do), I understand what it takes to do all the research and try to make interesting situations work out, however difficult the science behind it might be. I've heard of one case where a guy wrote a story based inside a neutron star, in a layer between the outer crust shell and the core, so gravity was similar to Earth. If someone can call that science fiction, then humans on Venus certainly can be as well. EDIT: In response to Cap'n Refsmmat's post in #2: I think it works out a little differently to that due to the different RAM's of carbon and oxygen. 95% CO2 would be more like the equivalent of (16+16)/(12+16+16) x 95% = 69.1% or so oxygen, as compared to Earth's 21%. Since Venus also has 90 times the atmospheric pressure and so - I would assume - 90 times the atmosphere at ground level, the actual oxygen they would be getting would be 90 x 69% = 622% as compared to Earth's 21%, so about 29.6 times as much oxygen as on Earth. (edited again to fix typo)

Sorry, I forgot about those... I guess I just assumed that they'd show up as a user or something. I remember now that you appear as offline when you're on Sayonara, I guess all moderators do. Is there any idea when the forums will be fully operational again? Or are they still sorting themselves out (as I assume it would be after completely transferring to another machine)? I hope you haven't had to change because of a virus attack or something. :/

It read 3 users when I logged on a few hours ago: 1 user (me) and 1 guest, which, as we all know, equals 3. Wow, my politics thread has been deleted for the second time!

Well, I came on half an hour ago and typed up a long post on a thread I made, but when I pressed post it told me that the thread was gone, and it was. Luckily I saved both posts, if I needed to. They've been disappearing all over... Looks like my post count is about 4 lower than it was an hour ago. Not that post counts matter

I personally believe that capital punishment should be banned... there may be a good reason for killing a rapist/murderer in terms of ridding the human race of them without wasting resources, but I'd rather not have government approved executions on my tax money, if I paid it yet. I'd rather that person was put into solitary confinement in a padded, dark cell for as long as their miserable life stretched out, slowly going mad (if they weren't already), and I would pay to see that end over execution. It's not murder, though it's possibly worse... I'd also like to add that I'm against abortion as well, except in the cases where it would otherwise kill both the mother and baby. Abortions because the parents can't handle the responsibility are just wrong and selfish; what's better, one happy person and a dead one, or two unhappy people? If a mother can't handle it, give up their child for adoption to someone who can. :/ Both my last posts (this and the animal rights one) have been a bit morose, um... I'm going to go do something different now. Like listen to some music. Or watch Invader Zim (on in 30 minutes).

My mom did a degree last year in wildlife photography, and one of the main projects that she did was on vivisection and other animal testing. I saw some of the images (not hers, I don't think she got any, they were from other photographers). Things like tied-down rabbits with L'Oréal shampoo in their eyes until they were puffed up and red and bleeding, and chimpanzees with electrode skullcaps screwed into their heads, with all the wires hanging out the top. I don't have links to them if she put them online, nor would I if she did, but those were two examples out of a selected dozen or so on one side of A4 she showed us. Whereas Glider is right that we can't prove as such that these animals are suffering, just think about what these animals are going through to ensure that the words "dermatologically tested" get on L'Oréal shampoo bottles, and then consider that the probability of these animals feeling pain is, realistically, about 1. Is it really worth it, you think? Obviously there are certain areas of research that couldn't go vrey far without some form of experimentation. For example, people might still think that the brain was a cooling device for the body like they did centuries ago if it weren't for people sticking their fingers in it (so to speak). It's just that now people use electrodes to stimulate areas of rat brains to remotely control them. In a large number of cases the need for experimentation is small or should be completely outweighed by the suffering it causes. And yet the cat food company Iams has killed hundred of cats in experiments, the end result being that they can now justifiably claim that their cat food is good for cats's livers, hence a rise in profits. Also, some researchers have to do a certain about of experimentation to keep their research grants, even if that experimentation is unneeded. These are my personal beliefs now, but I don't actually think that there is such a thing as conciousness, at least not in the sense that it's either there or not (as MishMish pointed out). If you think about it, the idea of a "conciousness" was probably invented a long time ago as a way of placing humans above animals as the God-given rulers of the Earth or something, and it's something which continues to influence the scientific community even today. There is no way to determine whether certain animals (dolphins, say) are "self-aware" in the sense that people think of, and since we can only communicate with other humans it's only other humans that we can say are actually self-aware (though there's no solid definition of the word). I wonder what would happen if/when we make contact with an alien species but couldn't understand them. By science's current rules we couldn't classify them as intelligent (except for the spaceships their sending out being evidence). The funny thing is that every species on Earth is exactly the same, minus the spaceships. If there's a person who's stranded on a desert island as a child and is alone their whole life, speaks no language and lives alone, are they self-aware? They probably wouldn't think about themsleves in that way too much, and nor would animals in the wild that people capture to conduct tests on. People in society today probably do because it's practically a pasttime, and it makes us feel better than regular animals because such confidence and need for security is basic psychology, according to science. That way we can justify our actions and more comfortably secure the survival of our species, otherwise we'd have qualms about killing something, and cavemen wouldn't have gotten very far with that attitude. But by that logic we shouldn't have a problem with killing anything that's not a human (as most do not), and then we'd have to say that there's nothing wrong with animal testing because they're not human. There's this funny single-frame comic I once saw in a book... in it there are two dolphins swimming through the ocean, and one says to the other: "Although humans make sounds with their mouths and occasionally look at each other, there is no solid evidence that they actually communicate amongst themselves." Oh dear, I've gone off-topic now, haven't I? Okay, to answer the thread name clearly, I do think animal testing is wrong.

Just going to test the code: [math]e^{j\pi} + 1 = 0[/math] Sweet, thanks dave! This'll make things a little easier By the way, I had no idea that: [math]\int_{-\infty}^{\infty}e^{-x^2} = \sqrt{\pi}[/math] I'll have to remember that.

Hmmm, what forms of advertising? Obviously a magazine ad would be too expensive, but what about notes on the bulletin boards of college halls, posting on other forums, or even word of mouth? Unless you were to ask only professors and such, advertising would generally draw in quite a few undesirable people with little or no understanding of science (posting an ad on a certain other gaming forum, the first that comes to my mind, would possibly double the members and half the intelligence of SFN). But if we specifically asked professors, there would be even less going on here, as most "debates" would end in minutes. Some of the more, ahem, interesting posts would be smacked down so hard that it might even scare some people off, and there would be less debating, although people would get more hard information out of it. I could put up notes for some professors or students at my college, and they could certainly contribute if they were interested, but is that what we want?

Yeah, I'll probably reformat some time soon. That "You've got trojans!" popup every half hour is another good reason for it. Macs may be more expensive, but if they are better then that makes sense. Although they only are in certain cases, of course. It's interesting because some people might think that Macs are expensive for their speed (as guessed at by their CPU speed), although the listed speed for RISC cpu's is about half the equivalent of PC cpu's. In other words a 1 gigahertz Mac cpu is roughly equivalent to a 2 gigahertz PC cpu, I believe. Most of the new G4 models and such are dual processors too, thought some might not notice. Although it's really quite obvious why Macs are more expensive... you're paying that extra for the case.

Whether Macs or PC's are better really depends on the situation in which you're using them. Macs are better at graphics design and things like that (I believe it has something to do with the RISK cpu or something, certain commonly accessed computations are stored directly in the chip or some such), but PC's are far more easily upgradable and are better for computer games and perhaps basic word processing. You can make a PC from your own components quite easily, faster and cheaper than store bought ones, but you can't do that with Macs. How would you get the lamp case off? My sister is just finishing an art degree at the college here and all the computer they use at her campus are Macs. But if you go to the other campus where I do A-Levels, everything is on PC's (and arcane ones at that, I might add). Oh, and I don't know what system configurations you guys are graced with to have so few crashes, but I get about 3 crashes on my XP system a day. For some reason I can't play any games involving the mystical third dimension, which defeats my computer; they last for 2-3 minutes then *blue screen* arrrrgh!! I bought a new graphics card for about £120 to fix the problem (my old one was really just a collection of greasy wires) and it made no difference, although the games look absolutely wicked for the two minutes that they actually work. I've had enough Civilization 3 now to last me till the end of my presidential retirement in 2020 AD, thank you...

Haven't checked the forums in a while (chilling during half-term) but I've read this and I haven't seen anything more hilarious related to pseudoscience in my life. Oh, here's an interesting article too, relating to the Earth's magnetic field: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994985

17/m/UK Sayonara's lying. He's really older-than-any-human/Irkan/Earth

I felt guilty so I've deleted my old post and making this new, real one. My name's Jesse Garman, but if you want you can call me by my middle name. It's "A". Doesn't stand for anything, just the letter by itself. I don't usually tell people that so accept it or else I'll... edit the post. I did my GCSE's and A-Levels two years early and am currently in the process of blowing that lead on more A-Levels and a gap year, the end result being that I might actually be able to socialise with someone in university. I'm very much interested in science, particularly physics and even more particularly anything to do with space. I also like writing, and I plan to be a writier as well as a scientist in the future. Also, I love aliens, everything about them, although I don't believe they have visited the Earth and I think Star Trek's image of them is about as accurate as a milk clod is good at jetskiing (or something... but I still like Star Trek). Guess what genre of fiction I'm most likely to write about in the future? J'Dona is the name of one of the characters in a book I'm planning to write, and yes, she's an alien. I'm a liberal, and an athiest turned agnostic. I'm liberal because I'm probably too young (17) to have any idea about what it really takes to run a country, but even if I did I'd still be a liberal because, well, I'm not going into it right now, just my personal opinions (actually I'm afraid of offending blike or fafalone even though they're wrong ). I used to be an athiest but then I realised that athiests would have faith in the non-existance of god(s), which is unscientific, so agnosticism is the only logical way as far as I see it. My top four internet browser bookmarks are: - Strong Bad Emails - goats.com - 8-Bit Theater - scienceforums.net <--- see? I like moderators. Don't ban me. So, in conclusion... you should listen to your cableman. Cableman Jorje. P.S. to admiral_ju00: Sorry if this is too long or non-serious, probably should set a limit for these things and I can edit it down. :/ EDIT: Fixed it for blike.

I get a slight case of insomnia sometimes, but my father can fall asleep within 5 minutes of being in bed, and so can my brother. Obviously this is just one family and they're both not instantly falling asleep, so you can ignore it. I'd kill to be able to fall asleep instantly (in bed, of course). For people who don't have insomia ever, it's really really annoying. I think once I was in bed for five hours before I fell asleep. I wasn't ill or anything, I just couldn't fall asleep. It was starting to get light out when I managed it...

Because we need lots of women left over, so that when all the men kill themselves in war, the women can run the governments and do a better job. If there aren't any men left, well, there's that new cloning method involving two mothers and no Y-chromosone...