Cap'n Refsmmat

With the setup we're going for, you'd get a commenting system on your blog so people could ask questions about specific posts. However, to blog, you have to be a forum member, so the people should be able to accept questions about their posts on the forums. (It would be easier to put it on the blog, but if someone posts about, say, string theory, a thread could be opened on the forums for people to discuss whatever aspect of string theory was mentioned. If you only want to say "that's neat" in response to the post, it would be far more appropriate to use the comment system.)

ATP is potential energy. It is not equivalent to kinetic energy. When you drink Red Bull, you're gaining potential energy in the form of chemical bonds.

Depends on the size of the room they're in and how tall they are. You could take a can around with you and take whiffs occasionally.

It's not a "point in an infinite void of space." It's a point. That's all there is. The entire universe expanded, with all the light in it - not just the cloud of atoms, the entire universe. Space itself expanded. An atom could be in that small cloud of atoms in the beginning and never move - yet end up thousands of light-years away from the rest.

Members could sign up to have their own blog hosted (free) on SFN, where they could post science-related articles, comments, and general blog-stuff. SFN staff would worry about the technical details (blog software, server stuff, etc.) so the bloggers don't have to mess with it all.

It would be awesome for people in cubicles. Cubicle Defense SystemTM

You'd need a smart computer to know when there are larger objects in the way, and also I suppose frying a bug would be a lot easier than frying you. But it would still be irritating to throw a paperclip across the room and have it catch fire in mid-air.

I don't know how many actively publishing members there are here at SFN. Blog system, on the other hand, is an idea we like, and which could serve the same purpose.

Clearly they need to find some Texas wasps. I swear, the things are two inches long... You could probably do it acoustically with an array of microphones, using the phase shifts in signals from different mics to pinpoint the exact location of the wasp, but it would take some serious talent to get working. I sometimes hope it would be possible to use a phased-array high-frequency radar set that could detect the insects and then fry them by concentrating its beam on them. Would make for fun watching.

A factor is the .5 in .5c. There are scientists on this forum. Swansont has a PhD in atomic physics (meaning he's Dr. Swansont). Klaynos is currently working toward a physics degree. And those are just the two I can think of right now. Now, let me explain some relativity. This is not a direct answer to your question, but it should help. The trouble with numbers in relativity is that they, quite simply, don't add up. Let's say you have a gun that can shoot bullets at half the speed of light, or .5c. Then you go flying along in your spaceship at .5c and shoot the gun. You'd expect .5 + .5 to make 1c, and thus mean that the bullet will fly at the speed of light. But that's not what happens. The bullet will launch ahead at maybe .8c. This is not because your gun is broken, it's because the faster you travel, the more mass you have, and therefore the more energy it takes to go faster. (This also leads to the rule that means you can't reach the speed of light - the closer you get to it, the harder it is to go faster, so you might be able to get to .99999c, but you'll never get to 1c.) That also means that your question just wouldn't work, because your bullet could not go at 1.5c relative to you, or in fact 1c relative to anybody. (Note that light always travels at c, because it does not have mass at all.) Example: You're travelling at .5c in your shiny spaceship. You point your flashlight ahead and turn it on. You see the light go blasting ahead at 1c relative to you. So you'd think someone standing on the side of the hyperspace express route would see you flash past at .5c, with a flashlight beam travelling at 1.5c. Instead, what (confusingly) happens is that they see the light shooting ahead at 1c, and you at .5c -- meaning the light is only going .5c faster than you are. So who's right? It obviously cannot be going 1c faster than you (from your perspective) and .5c faster than you (from their perspective) at the same time. The answer is that both of you are right. This seems like a contradiction, but it all works out in the end. The reason is time dilation. When you travel at .5c, time dilates -- time goes half as fast for you. You wouldn't notice -- everything seems normal to you -- but some guy with a really nice camera looking through the window on your spaceship would see your clock going half as fast. This means that the speeds work out (remember that speeds are in units per second, and if your second is different from someone else's second, your speeds may look different...). And I'm very probably wrong somewhere or another in that explanation. That's how I understand it, anyway. Hope it helps.

Photons are interacting with you all the time - it's how you see. It's not quite "touching," though. Photons can be absorbed by other particles (like the ones that make up the inside of your eyeball) and give their energy to whatever it is that absorbs them.

And don't be daunted by big words - pause and take the time to work things out. I often find that when reading a book on physics, it's worth it to stop every once and a while and try to explain things to yourself to make sure you really understand what's going on. I'd recommend the book Fabric of the Cosmos, by Brian Greene, for a decent introduction into relativity and quantum physics. If you come into the chatroom (you might find that few people actually talk at times, but try a few times and you'll find someone who will explain things) we can try to help there too.

Not if the script can get access to the unencrypted data being displayed in your browser. The other problem is bank websites that only encrypt the login page, and not the rest of the site. And that a lot of people will use their bank website even if the little lock security icon doesn't show up, because the site's actually a phishing website that managed to sneak in.

Immaturity could easily be banned from the P&R forum. That's the point: that we can take a new approach to moderation where we just silence the irritating and immature people.

What relevance does this have to the discussion at hand?

I'm not a scientist (though I'm not female, either) by any means, and I've become part of the staff and a top poster. Credentials aren't everything.

If it still happens, something is wrong.

It's pretty hard to say one college is specifically better than all the rest at something.

And the guy's not even bothering to us different IPs for each account. Well, I suppose it just makes it easier.

Time to write a letter to my congressman demanding that photos uploaded to Flickr are screened by advanced stenography-detecting algorithm, then.

First and foremost, I'd like to point out that we (as in all of the members of this forum) are not doctors (except a few, perhaps), we have never seen you in person, and we are otherwise completely unqualified to make any suggestions for you. Do not take the advice of random people on a forum over a medical professional. That being said, I have a suggestion. It seems to me that you don't have confidence in the doctors that treat you. That by itself is a problem. If you can't trust the people that are trying to help you (whether it be because they're incompetent or you just don't like them), your treatment will be inhibited. You need to find a doctor that you can trust and confide in, one who won't just say "ah, a psychotic. To the shock therapy!" (stereotype, but you get what I mean) but who will actually take the time to work out your problems. Do that and you will find your progress greatly facilitated.

"Many people" is likely an overstatement. Only very few can get away with it.

When you're browsing the Internet, a hardware firewall will do absolutely nothing to stop attacks in Web pages or programs you download. The key here is the security of your browser and the websites you visit. If someone compromises your bank's website with XSS, they can easily collect your bank number and PIN as you log in, and there's no way you could know besides inspecting the page source code before you log in. There are also things such as DNS poisoning, which could fool computers into believing they're connected to the bank's website when in fact they're not, various browser vulnerabilities that allow attackers to steal stored passwords, man-in-the-middle attacks where someone intercepts your Internet connection and steals data or manipulates the stream, and much, much more. None of the things (besides the browser problem) are problems you can stop with a firewall or software update.

That's a browser problem. The answer should be "no", unless there is a vulnerability in the specific webbrowser you use. I'd worry more about other possible attack vectors.

The Theory of Organizational Relativity: What appears to be a mess to one person is a perfectly normal organized system to another.