John Cuthber

"undimensial" doesn't seem to be a word.

Did you not understand the bit about how expensive it is to get stuff into space? http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/83496-renewable-energy-source-quantum-leap-solar-panel-in-space/?p=808576

"Helping people is a good enough hook." OK, that's the problem solved then. Or are we back to talking about money?

It's possible that, if the worlds nations got together, they could pay for this. But why would they? It's easier, better and cheaper to put the solar panels on earth. The figures here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption suggest that the world currently uses something like 150000 TW Hrs of energy in a year. That's about 17 TW of power. Each square metre of the earth's surface receives about 1 KW from the sun So the Earth's power requirements are equivalent to something like 17 billion square metres of sunshine. That's roughly a square 130 Km on each side So, that's less than 1 % of this desert http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobi_Desert or this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara So, even allowing for the less than 100% conversion efficiency, we have plenty of desert. You should have done that arithmetic before you asked "How many deserts can you have on Earth?" Why didn't you?

So, you can divide by zero- as long as you don't want to use numbers. Haven't you thrown the baby out with the bathwater?

If you flood the market with doctors- for example, by buying them in from elsewhere, then the laws of supply and demand mean that the price will fall. So there will be people who previously made good money being doctors and now make rather less. The ones who are able enough will leave to make money elsewhere- as lawyers or whatever. Of course some will stay because they consider it a vocations. So what are you left with? Lots of doctors among whom, many of the brightest have left and to whom you have added lots who previously wouldn't be thought of as good enough. On average that means you end up with worse doctors. Now, if I'm ever taken ill, what I want is a good doctor rather than a bad one. Do you understand why I might not like your "solution"? There is no evidence to support the idea that you can "flood the market" without adding lots of not-very-good doctors to it. Are those NVG doctors more likely to spot the next Shipman? And, re "Their clinical practice is way more advanced than here in the UK." They have twice as much money. If you doubled the NHS budget you could improve the system considerably. Also this "If they got serious competition they would then have to lower prices and improve delivery so they wouldn't lose their customers." implies that a customer has a choice of supplier. So, after I get hit by a car, do you expect me to decline the first ambulance because it's run by the "wrong" healthcare provider? That's the problem; health care is not a market in that way (though the availability of doctors largely is).

It's possible to calculate the energy balances involved, but I don't plan to waste my time doing it. I know it's a waste of time because what you are proposing is "free energy" and that's impossible. If you insist on doing the mathematics, even though you already know it won't work, this is probably a good place to start http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debye%E2%80%93H%C3%BCckel_theory If, when you have done the maths, you think you have got more energy than you put in, do them maths again because you have made a mistake.

Well, for a start, what does the map look like?

As far as I can tell, for anything like the traditional definitions of zero ( the identity element under addition) and division (the inverse of repeated addition) division by zero will always be undefined, Essentially, it's like asking how many times I did nothing before it made a difference. Of course, if you choose different definitions for division and zero you can divide by zero- but is it still a valid use of the words?

It seems the problem there is this "He left a patient with a perforated bowel for 24 hours whilst he did private surgery on other patients and a private clinic." That's a problem with a greedy doctor prioritising work on the basis of cash rather than clinical need, not a problem with a national system. In principle, the NHS can ensure that doesn't happen by simply paying the Dr a salary which doesn't vary much with the nature of the work he does on any particular day. If he's getting paid the same whatever surgery he does, he is more likely to consider clinical need than his wallet. (Of course, he might just choose to only do the "easy" stuff, but let's credit them with some professionalism. ) The reaction of the profession to his sentence is a problem with the RCS rather than with the NHS. Do you think that, had both patients been private, the outcomes would have been very different? Do you think he would not have been found guilty, or that the profession would not have rallied round one of their own?

The simplest problem is that it's generally more expensive to launch something into space than to make it from gold. Also, it's on earth that we need power so generating it somewhere else is not ideal. Setting up panels in the deserts would be much cheaper and the maintenance is easier too.

"Have you sat these medical exams? They are multiple choice." No, but the last time I heard, they used negative marking in those multiple choice tests. So, you get 1 mark for a correct answer but -5 marks for a wrong one. Under those conditions 50% is a very high standard to live up to. Incidentally, re "it's because it requires very little scientific acumen." Yep, there''s not a lot of science in medicine, it's largely a massive memory test. So what's wrong with accepting people who are not scientists? Incidentally, nothing we say about the UK's NHS has a lot to do with the topic so I think we had probably better keep quiet now, before the Mods notice.

"Does the NHS work in the UK?" Yes, rather well. For example it costs roughly hale what the Americans pay, and yet we have a better life expectancy. I don't want to start a "ours is better than yours" argument, but it's clear that the NHS is far from being a failure. For the benefit of our cousins across the pond the Daily mail has a reputation for telling sensationalised versions of stories. Also, when you say "anyone who gets over 50% in any degree (no science needed) can become a doctor in 4 years here." you seem to overlook the fact that they will have to study a lot during those 4 years and, if they don't pass the exams they don't get to be a doctor. Then you fail to mention the requirement for doctors here to undertake ongoing exams and tests. The biggest problem I see with our NHS is that recent governments (about the last 15 years or so) have been trying to make it more like the system in the US. They think it should be a business and make a profit. So they brought in a whole lot of management consultants and such. The absurd state of affairs is that the NHS now employs more management consultants than clinical consultants. That's the sort of thing that happens when you try to expose a de facto monopoly to artificial competition.

By whom would these results be known? Unless they are known they are not knowledge. Since thereis a limit to the number of people, there is a limit to knowledge.

'Knowledge is infinite as there can be no end to our questions' Non sequiteur. There may well be a limit to the answers. Also, in a finite universe there's only so much stuff to know. the amount might be huge, but it's finite. Also, with a finite number of people each knowing a finite amount (with their finite brains) there's no possibility for infinite knowledge.

Have you studied the principle of the conservation of momentum? Essentially, you can't push the ship forward without throwing something out of the back. You accelerate the Xe along the first pipe L to R and that produces a reaction force to the left which acts on the probe to move it to the left. However you have forgotten to take account of the fact that when the Xe hits the right hand end where the first and recycling pipes meet, the Xe pushes on that joint . That tends to move the craft to the right. The two forces will exactly cancel out and the ship won't move (strictly speaking it will spin about an axis perpendicular to the drawing but that's not very helpful) This thread http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/82875-non-mass-expulsion-type-thruster/?hl=dijinj#entry803224 was based on a similar idea. Unfortunately the guy who came up with it refused to listen to reason and tried to insist that it would work. For what it's worth, there's some maths that proves it is impossible, but he wasn't convinced by that so the thread went on wasting time for ages.

Then don't.

I think NASA are well enough acquainted with the laws of physics to know that your idea will not (and can never) work.

It depends on the circumstances. It's true in the gas phase, but not in solution. Anyway, you can't get free energy out of it so there's no point in talking about that and, as hypervalent iodine says, derailing the thread.

If you need to spend much time wondering about the addition of a comma, change the sentence.

The fundamental issue is that the samples are made of things that are similar to the things that make up the experimenter. The materials that will demineralise or deproteinise the sample will do exactly the same to the person doing the experiment. So the "aforementioned chemicals for the process is an old art, and is unfortunately quite hazardous." for a reason.

"Are such philosophical problems the sort of thing which has any place in a science forum?" Well, you introduced the question when you asked "Yep, so?" "In case you are not aware we change the world by all of our actions. So?" And it's better to be aware of the consequences of those actions- for example the damage to the environment brought about by fossil fuel use. "Since the increase in CO2 means that plants grow better is this not actually a good thing?" That's debatable. In many of the places where we grow our food, the temperature rise, and the unpredictable weather changes will offset the increased growth due to higher CO2 so the net effect will be less food. "These real problems of which you speak, without any detail as to what those are, are they worse than billions of people dying from lack of food due to not using fossil fuel for agriculture?" If the only people using fossil fuels were in agriculture, then that argument would stand up. They are not. It does not. Odd as you may think this, I'm not advocating abandoning farming etc. That's another of the strawmen for which you risk getting banned. I'm suggesting that we find a less polluting energy supply.

What if your memory doesn't serve?

Care to try that again, but keeping a better inventory of the electrons this time?

A rich beautiful mathematics that I totally don't understand. However, I suspect you still can't divide by zero.