John Cuthber

I'm confused (often the way) Are you talking about some clever mathematical trick I don't really understand or are you thinking of something analogous to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humbucker where the interfering signal is measured and automatically subtracted from the signal? Things like cosmic events would affect the two test masses equally but local effects would affect the test mass more because it's less well decoupled from the ground.

If I put my feet against the wall with my knees bent then straighten them quickly (as if I was jumping on Earth) then I can exert a force on the wall that more than my weight. I would accelerate away from the wall much faster than I would move if I jumped on Earth because I would only be putting effort into accelerating whereas on earth I also have to do work against gravity. After all, I can do it on Earth, why not in space? Also, here's a stupid example, but it illustrates the point. Imagine there are two of us in space and one of us kicks the other. That kick can generate a lot more force than someone's weight.

Do you understand that there is no reason why life on Mars (it it ever existed) would in any way resemble life on Earth?

Well, this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lux suggests that 100,000 lux is pretty much as bright as sunlight gets and the page Studiot cited earlier says that's about 1KW/m^2. Without a lot of complicated measurements and calculations (like how much infrared gets through the lens) you are not going to get a more accurate figure Full sunlight would deliver something like 470 Watts to your system. You should also take account of how much heat is delivered to the system by the stirrer and how much is lost or gained from the surroundings.

people have used toothpaste for many years. If it harmed people we would have noticed.

Studiot, I suspect that SolarGraphene did his experiment in day time. In that case the figure you cite (0.25KW/m^2) is the wrong value. The actual value depends on the season and time. It might be as high as about 1Kw/m^2 As I explained his value will be wrong by a factor of 18.8 or so. Correcting for that gives about 0.4KW/m^2 Without knowing the time, etc when he did the experiment, you can't rule out the idea that his measured value (0.4 Kw/m^2) is better than your cited value of 0.25 Kw/m^2.

Iwonderaboutthing Imagine that somewhere in the Universe is a planet very much like ours. There are just two notable differences. Firstly they happen to have 8 fingers on each hand, so they calculate in base 16 and secondly, some time in their equivalent of our 18th century they decided to use a seconds pendulum as the basis for their definition of the metre. Does the existence of these people make any difference to us at all? Clearly no. In the same way, that their decision to use a seconds pendulum doesn't affect our bit of the universe nor does our decision not to use that definition. The Universe doesn't care. Incidentally, in their measurement system, the coincidences about the digit 6 simply don't happen because they don't use base 10. So there can not be anything fundamentally important about those sixes. It's just a result of our arbitrary choice to count in base 10.

A single observation, no matter by whom, nor how well documented is an anecdote. As such it carries a lot less weight than a study that looks at many observations.

"1 degree C temperature rise in °F = 33.8°F" No it isn't 1 degree C change is equivalent to a 1.8 degree F change.

everything averages to a circle, so that doesn't tell us anything. If you tried to make that rim shape with spokes they wouldn't be in simple tension since that would twist the wheel more or less out of shape. If it takes more material (and it does) there's no surprise that it lasts longer.

At first glance I think all of these records involve people exerting forces greater (sometimes a lot greater) than their own weight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_records_in_weightlifting

"Unless you have established you philosophy for living with no contact with, or knowledge of, the Bible your "laws" are at least in part based on it as they are on all of your experiences. Everything, including the Bible, that has been part of your culture has influenced you in some way." Indisputably. The Bible has taught me to be very skeptical of authority and to make up my own mind about things. But I don't follow its teachings, in many cases I actively reject them. "Is a citizen of Uganda subject to the laws of Canada?" No. And yet many people would try to say that the laws of both countries are based on the Bible. Well that's plainly not possible, because it's the same book in both cases, yet the outcomes are different. There may, of course, be some influence from it (and from other philosophies) but the laws are independent of the scriptures. We make up our minds about what is right and wrong in spite of the Book- not because of it. The further civilisation advances, the less we look to old books for guidance.

Is there any material difference between North America (where the settlers went) and Europe (where they set out from)? If not then people must be just as well (or badly) adapted to one place as to the other.

To some degree, I do. Since none of them (ESP, deja vu, intuition, religion) is apparently real. Clearly, there are differences but I can happily lump them together as "mistakes the mind makes because of the way it's built".

"I'm not about to go through the Bible and make a list for you.." OK, that illustrates the problem nicely. There is no way to go through it and work out which bits are "real". As for the 10 commandments, even they are unclear. Exodus 34:12-26 King James Version (KJV) 12 Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee: 13 But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves: 14 For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God: 15 Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice; 16 And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods. 17 Thou shalt make thee no molten gods. 18 The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month Abib: for in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt. 19 All that openeth the matrix is mine; and every firstling among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male. 20 But the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou redeem him not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before me empty. 21 Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in earing time and in harvest thou shalt rest. 22 And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end. 23 Thrice in the year shall all your menchildren appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel. 24 For I will cast out the nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders: neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the Lord thy God thrice in the year. 25 Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven; neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning. 26 The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk. The whole question is a mess(more on that here) http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments#How_many_Commandments.3F and so there's no actual way of telling what bits of the Bible are the work of God and which bits are made up by people (for whatever reason) Since you don't know what bits are actually "real" i.e. the Word of God, you don't know which bits to obey. You have to make up your own mind about which bits are right and which bits are wrong. Well if you are making up your mind about right and wrong, that's fine by me. But remember- you are making the decision so it's not the work of God. You are not basing your laws on the Bible- you are deciding which bits of the Bible fit your laws.

"I wanted to hear thoughts about it before I elaborated further, thanks." OK, given this "it has many performance advantages and one disadvantage..." I come to the conclusion that the inventor is unable to count or doesn't know what constitutes a disadvantage. This may be a problem. Two obvious disadvantages are the difficulty of manufacture and the requirement for cross bracing or rigidity- you couldn't just hold it in place with spokes like an ordinary wheel. Then you can add the fact that it takes more material And the difficulty of fitting rim brakes and... So, let us know- what are the advantages?

Why assume that martian plants need potassium?

Just for the record, people were living in North America before anyone had heard of iodine, vitamin C, Vitamin D or a few other things that may have been mentioned in this thread. Our intrinsic lack of vitamin C and our variable vit D production are essentially irrelevant because we can farm things which make them for us. It's absolutely stupefyingly obvious that people are adapted to live there because the people living there are showing no signs of dying out; on the contrary, they thrive. Regarding the earlier comments about our suitability for life on the moon- "It occurs to me to wonder how many posters here would accept that event as evidence that humans are adapted to the common environments found on the moon." Well, our big brains and sense of cooperation is the reason we can get by in cold climates and also the reason we can visit the moon. I have yet to see any other animal walking on it so, compared to all the other species, yes, we are uniquely well suited to life on the moon. No other creature has done it.

Yes, that's the basis from which he made the extensions. That's what Studiot said. Does that mean you have now realised that there isn't a problem?

It's not possible to say because I don't know exactly what you are doing. But reflux makes most reactions a lot more practical because it lets you keep the mixture hot at a constant temperature for as long as the reaction takes. To some extent, it's irrelevant; you will need to distil the product and so you will need a condenser anyway.

"Are we biologically adapted to living in North America?" Are we bulletproof?

How do you think a reflux condenser would supply energy? In fact they are used to remove energy from a system.

It's also worth remembering that the production of EM radiation by effectively waving a coil in front of a magnet is possible and was used as a means to transmit radio signals before more efficient electronic systems were invented. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexanderson_alternator Unless Copernicus can show a meaningful distinction between one form of em radiation and another there's no question that light is based on the same physics that Ampere and Faraday knew about.

Yes they do, but not much. The point is that the salt can't easily get out of the sea (unlike water which can evaporate). So most of the world's salt is already in the oceans.

Run the engine at three o'clock in the morning and annoy the neighbours. (You didn't ask for useful things you could do with it)