Radical Edward

or even if there is an answer to 'why the universe came into existance'

vitruvian man does, though I doubt this is always the case.

you are in a gravitational field when you are orbiting a planet.

well I don't know specifically about the materials that you are talking about since my work is in the optical rather than the solid state properties of the media. I took the crystalline stacking as a reasonable assumption to make, but I guess it looks like this isn't (at least) always the case. I would still guess that the arrangement of the molecules because of their shape has something to do with it, and also the ways in which the molecule is allowed to actually vibrate when in an excited state. Just as a point of interest, is emitted light (rather than transmitted) from these material polarised at all? I'd look into it, but I don't have access to journals for a couple of weeks.

no delete button

machines will rule. what would be the morality behind having a human leader or organiser who would mess up our lives, when we could have a machine that was a million times beter and do a far better job?

oops.

that is a pretty invalid assumption to make. I suggest you read The Emperor's New Mind. I thought she was accused of this before she was beheaded.

how do we know that everything isn't an illusion*? *this is a rhetorical question.

that's post synaptic, and I would be interested to know how a binary AP would be translated into the release of different neurotransmitters. dunno about cortisol though.

do you have a solution to the three body problem to hand then?

I think so actually, I did a course on this.

the issue here is as follows: do we have enough understanding of physics to really understand the processes which cause the mind to com into being. Personally I say we don't, and I expect that there is something fundamental about physics that we do not yet know which will shed light on this interesting topic.

the crystalline structures will set up structures that have differing refractive indices along different axes. the opposite chiral material will have the refractive indices arranged differently, and hence the rotation would be different too. whether a material rotates the plane of polarisation will depend on the arrangement of molecules, as I mentioned, sellotape does.

I guess you didn't read what I said then.

quantum mechanics has nothing to do with black holes. In fact quantum mechanics absolutely hates the idea of a black hole. furthermore,you can actually get inside a black hole and survive, however it would be one of the supermassive ones found in the centre of galaxies. you wouldn't suffer the effect of tidal forces immediately on entering the event horizon, but that's pretty academic anyway, since you would never get out.

the individual travelling quickly doesn't ever experience this one dimensionality, however from his point of view, the universe does. remember relativity is relative, everythin seems perfectly normal to you, just everything else is whizzing by at great rate of knots, as can be summed up conscisely by Einstein's phrase 'when will oxford arrive at the train' (it could be cambridge so I said oxford to annoy MrL)

typically the synapse only deals with one sort of neurotransmitter, this is pretty expected since the actual impulse itself is binary. there are exceptions I believe, but these are pretty rare.

mathematically, it reverses, which is something else entirely. just because the mathematics says something will happen, this doesn't mean that theoretically it will happen. there are many things that are ignored in 'theoretical' terms, since they are purely unphysical, and just a result of the fact that we are (probably) dealing with a subjective view of an objective universe. furthermore, determinism is the assertation that everything is completely determined already, and this does not agree with chaos entirely, since determinism works under the assumption that our knowledge of physics is complete enough to say that everything can be determined from rules. however as I have pointed out in another thread, this is an invalid assumption, as we do not know physics in a complete enough sense to say whether things really are deterministic, or computable, in the way that classical mechanics is.

this implies total knowledge of physical laws, and the assumption that all of physics is computable, which is arrogant, and most likely incorrect.

I don't know... I doubt anyone really does, especially when one considers the border between the quantum and classical world, and the nature of the fields. Neutrinos are effectively discountable since their interactions are only weak, and very rare. When considering something like super kamiokande, then neutrinos aren't insignificant of course, or it wouldn't be there.

no

yeap.... contradictory to popular opinion, it is actually a very very weak and slow process. the thing is, there is an awful lot of sun, and so alot of energy is stored in it, nevertheless, pound for pound, the human body emits and produces more energy than the sun does.

I think alot of it is that the US seems to suffer from having a media run government, as opposed to it's enemies, who have government run media.

pretty poor ones though. stars actually generate less energy than people do, by mass.