padren

I'll say 40 cuz it sounds like one of those trick questions designed to sound like a trick question and mess you up, when its actually not a trick question.

If I recall, one nice factor is that most anything that is a source of combustion (spark, burning tire, anything really) would be on or close to the ground, and leaking hydrogen will go straight up in a real hurry. Its the liquid and denser than air gas combustables that are really dangerous when there is a leak. That said about cars...heating your house with a hydrogen tank in your basement would be very bad if it leaked.

it is true if you look at the range of temperatures that matter is found at, from absolute zero up to the point where atoms start to fly apart, then yeah, we are riiiight above the absolute freezing point percentage wise. It is kinda cool, but it also makes sense. Hotter systems become more chaotic, and it would be hard to concieve of life evolving within a sun or that mutating self replicating patterns (of matter and/or energy) could maintain their integrity long enough within any high tempurature volatile system to evolve. So, it does make sense we find ourselves right where we are.

Ah, that makes a lot more sense. I was pretty sure whatever they did, was pretty low energy, which is why I was curious. If fish could break apart water they wouldn't need those tubes in aquariums or the flapping treasure chests.

I think the question sort of boils down to: If you took a gallon of gasoline, and used it in a car to do Work in the Newtonian sense, then took a gallon of gasoline, used it to make as much hydrogen as you could with that gallon, then used the hydrogen in a hydrogen engine car to do Work...which would do more work? I think that is the apples to apples comparison, but it ends up more complicated since most hydrogen production is often done with many different technologies and on different scales. You can produce hydrogen with nuclear power, but cannot produce gasoline with nuclear power, so the latter is effectively "0%" effecient and the ability to compare "apples to apples" breaks down. How you use gasoline to produce hydrogen for the direct comparison can vary too, and since you can use a centralized plant that does not need to fit in a car for that portion of production, I can only imagine it would be done more effeciently than an auto engine ever could.

I am just a bit curious about the gills process in fish, they must do something like electrolysis to extract the O from the H2 in water, and I can only imagine that considering how long gilled creatures have existed and been evolving, that they must have some effeciency tricks that if applied, could make industrial H2 production easier, as least as it pertains to electrolysis. I don't mean bio-systems for extracting hydrogen from water, but anything they do that gives them an edge could probably be built mechanically into a system. Does anyone know if this has been looked into and, if fish are actually less effecient than our own current mechanical methods or are they better? I am also a bit curious about algae and such, anything that "breathes" in water needs to break down the O from the H2, and algae can be wonderfully self automated.

Well, here is a modification of that, which I wouldn't doubt was asked before but I didn't see it in the other thread so: If you were driving at half the speed of light to planet Cruton, which is stationary, and you flashed your headlights as you passed a lamp post that just flicked on for a moment at the same time, what would happen with the light? 1) I assume, the light from both your head lights and the lamp would reach Cruton at the same time. 2) Someone at the lamp post would see both lights due to arrive at the planet twice as fast as you would, and if you were one light year from the planet, then it would take one year for the light and two for you. 3) From your reference, both flashes of light are putting distance between you and them at the rate of c. This distance you see, is identical to the distance seen by the person at the lamp post between them and the light, and they see the distance between you and the light as a smaller distance than you see. Additionally, you see the light as going to arrive sooner at the planet, since its traveling at light speed relative to your half light speed velocity. I don't understand how to resolve the contradictions in 2/3 and I think its probably a common hiccup in trying to understand relatively. How is this resolved?

I'd revolt, violently if nessesary. If I want to over eat, under eat, or consume large amounts of alcohol etc, I don't want to have to do it behind the backs of a prying federal body. Also, people tend to be crippled by being told what to do. Without being part of their own life or death decision making process, they may as well be domestic animals. I am not a libertarian, but I am closer to that way of thinking. Why can't I spend all my time and money on some invention, eating nothing but ramen noddles and living in a shack off the scaps I make, if that is what I believe in doing? If the process leaves me sick and I die, its my life and my risk to take. I don't want to have to convince a government body that my work is "worthy" of exemption from the mainstream labor options, since its none of their business to begin with. I also don't think many in academia are really the best people to make decisions for those who are not. When it comes to laws, I'd rather know someone who understands the value of doing shots of tequila till 5 in the morning is in the process, than some biologist who only knows the science of it all.

Its just so much easier to convince people to support you than educate them. If you educate them, they may make points that actually help your opponent. We need the general public to be educated and savvy enough and (most important) have the spare time to evaluate what politicians say, that it becomes uneconomical for them to use such watered down tactics to sway public opinion. Perhaps teachers starting teaching politically what they thought was right at some point, instead of teaching students how to evaluate what they think is right in a critical way, and things went down hill from there. Its a convinent explination, though I have no idea how likely it is to be accurate.

If we dropped the fat cat big government regulations even more, we could probably get all 15 top slots, if we just legalized crack, heroine and the like. I am glad to see Clinton get some long overdue respect for his work in economics, especially coming out of the Reagan era, but can you argue that Walmart is an example of what is right with this country? Or that we measure our national health by whether we obsess over productivity more than every other nation, instead of our time with our families? If the US moved from say, a 40 hour work week average to a 35, would be a bad sign or a good sign? Would it improve the average American's life, and that of their kids, or be a sign of a suffering GNP? Also, can we really say there is an honest measure of business success in the US, when so many corporations get government money that comes from national debt loans out of Asia? If I get a massive debilitating loan I can probably pay my employees more than any other company in my industry. I am glad it points out that much of US productivity is due to management processes, not just working more hours. I liked this section too: All in all, I am glad to see articles that point out the pro end of US business, when there are enough bad ones too, so I am glad you pointed it out. It still deserves to be picked at and critizied as much as any anti-business article of course.

A hybrid would be nice, but the speed is a concern. As long as it can hit 90mph without trouble then it could be alright. I think the opening "Yes! Today, if I could." option isn't the best way to phrase it, who wouldn't, "if they could" buy a gulfstream jet?

There are no theistic models for the creation of the universe, just various sets of unsubstantiated theistic statements. There is a big difference between a model that allows us to understand something, and a statement that simply says "it was this way."

I think a sense of invulnerability is a fair risk factor. As for the percentage of people who would not fight for western values - where did you get that idea? Or do you mean not military fighting' date=' but political fighting, such as fighting the errosion of civil liberties and the values they protect? If you mean militarily, we haven't been militarily threatened in a very long time. I agree about eliminating the causes, but how can you eradicate anything, from crime to a flu virus, without understanding it? I think you may be confusing understanding with condoning. When you say social engineers, do you mean politicians? Usually changes to the social system via changing laws and/or competition of ideas slowly modify the culture for better or worse, but don't lead to instant catastrophic failure such as in bridge construction. You can try reaganomics, then hold your head and say "wow that was a bad idea" and try something else. Even when the effects aren't gradual (such as amature mistakes during the cuban missile crisis could have been instantly catastrophic) there is the fact that in social systems, we only have completing amatures and no experts capable of providing us with the alternative of a stable bridge.

I have to agree with that largely, which is why the war on terror bugs me so much. I hate how we elevated a group of thugs to the status of our Nation's Might Opponent. It may be The Holy War of The End of Times for them, but for us, its setting our foot down and twisting our heel back and forth. I am guessing you said that party tongue in cheek, considering the irony of saying that over-reaction to threats is the greatest threat, which in itself is an over-reaction to a threat.

I don't expect there to be any grand social collapses, and alarmists tend to errantly and constantly spot them on the horizon, whether caused by oil shortages or no good teenagers. Still, I don't expect nuclear weapons to be used in any major world city, but it is a threat. Since social issues came up in another thread as a threat, it got me thinking and I think its worth a topic. Basically, modern civilization seems to be a strange mix of exceptionally adaptive intelligent individuals and at the same time a volitile act of mental focus that spans dozens of generations. We have many institutions in this country that are simply fixtures - part of its stable nature, such as the pentagon. At the same time, that is an institution that is younger than a number of people that have worked there. I am not pointing it out as something evil or anything - just as an example of what we think of as a standard fixture in the country, when its actually an example of the dynamic and changing nature of the country. I am curious what people think are the greatest social threats, including examination of how those threats either damaged past societies, or how they've been hyped as harbringers of doom and gloom since generations past. Considering the nature of the world, the strength of asian markets, the growing islamic cultural divide, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, etc, how would the US fair if we experienced another Great Depression? Is something like that even possible now, and if so, are we at risk? How long will our soaring deficit and national debt continue, how will that be resolved, given it will have to be someday? Will Grand Theft Auto lead to teens killing each other off in numbers as large as they did back when 2livecrew was making them evil?

Its not breaking science, but its pretty.

http://www.snopes.com/science/nailgrow.asp

Just an aside: I recently learned that the hair and fingernails don't grow, but the tissue shrinks with dehydration, giving the appearance of these growing.

Oh, I will say this though: Its entirely feasible that some funky brain modifications (not neurotransmitters) could allow people to hear music and play it flawlessly, or do execptionally complex math without even really thinking about it. Those skills already present themselves, I think in some cases of autism. No one really knows how the wiring is different and why it has that result, but since it already exists it should be reproduceable.

As for this actually happening according to science its highly highly highly unlikely. There are philosophies and religions that allow for that sort of thing, but we cannot even perform telekenesis with high end electronics and tractor beams will likely remain science fiction for a long time. The chances of the mind doing it is near zero unless some philosophy caught something science has really missed. Not a bad show though.

One little mistake could really change that fortune though. (I am optimistic though, and frankly I think if just about any other nation had been first it could have been um, "bad" overall) Regarding the goo, wouldn't they be suseptible to a massive EM pulse? Anything that small can't have a lot of EM shielding. I know I know, thats what they always do to fight evil nanos in sci fi shows, but wouldn't it likely work? As for built-in protections to the bots - the whole thing about adaptive bots is they adapt and overcome obstacles, including intentionally engineered limitations.

The problem is even if you had a weightless gas that was even less than helium, you need to displace 150-190 Lbs (68-86 kg) of air to lift someone of that weight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_atmosphere#Density_and_mass Air has a mass at sea level of about 1.2 kg/m^3 So, even if you had something so much lighter than Helium that its own mass in the suit was negliable, you have 81.6 m^3 to displace within the suit. I think that means, it would take more than a 13 foot by 13 foot by 13 foot cube suit to lift a light adult. (pardon my math if its off, its not the best)