imatfaal

Why does it need to end? I have no problem with choosing new words when the use of old words has - completely naturally - become offensive. Would we really prefer to risk offence and demeaning others purely to preserve a language which we know changes fluidly and without pause anyway - it does not matter if my use of a term has no intention whatsoever to hurt someone, if it does hurt them then I am happy to paraphrase and reparaphrase

+1 In Politics cos putting it in the lounge seemed flippant - and I knew a political discussion / debate / rant would ensue

http://www.eoht.info/page/William+Sheehan "each square based on the element's relative abundance on the Earth's surface" https://magazine.scu.edu/summer2008/memoriam.cfm

Belgian Beer and cycling is a marriage made in heaven and consummated every weekend in the low countries. I think it is the fact that we know it will not be ideal is the reason that it is difficult to grok the correct solution

Cos about half the world's population (to some extent or another) are religious people follow who monotheistic religions in the Abrahamic tradition. The largest non-abrahamic monotheistic is I guess Sikhism which is at least 2 orders of magnitude smaller

Cannot say about the USA - but in the UK college courses are made available to all mature students and more often than not there is no need to go through school qualifications first. Some universities / specific courses insist on a minimum level of competence in certain areas (mathematics for example on science course, written english on a law course) but if you do fall short of their requirements there are general foundation courses which are taken prior to the more specialised course. To do a biological science / medical science / nutrition course you may be asked to do a science foundation course - but this would be fun and interesting anyway so no problem/ I did two degrees in my 30s - and the entry requirements were just basic english (law degrees); many of my colleagues had literally no school age qualifications yet got good degrees. The attrition rate is very high - we lost 3/4 of the students over the period of the under-graduate degree; but no one was left behind if they were willing to put the hours in - those that fell by the wayside just could not manage the hours required. I hope the situation is the same in the USA and that you get signed up at a community college / mature-student / part-time university very soon - it was one of the best decisions I ever made

No we could not tell - but that still goes against my instinct (which incidentally is why science works - finding out stuff that common sense says is the other way around). Some things follow how we guess they should - others, even very simple mechanics, do not; fat tyres do not help you stop quicker if you are riding on a normal road - this is a favourite of mine that very very few people believe even when they are shown data

This.

v - when it is standing for the velocity of a massive object - never reaches c. It approaches c but a massive object can not travel at the speed of light. This is very much why the whole thing works. What is always worth bearing in mind is that everything in one's own frame of reference remains normal, AND that the speed of light is always invariant; if you put these together then special relativity is almost the only possible answer and it is by far the simplest with the fewest additional assumptions.

I think you might find that more of them fly than drive reliably Still a work of absolute beauty though - in the flesh they were the most striking and beautiful cars at the whole of the motorshow (cannot remember which year but I went with big bro and was on strict instructions to hold onto his hand at all times*) *so that would have made me 22 I think. Actually 6-7 I think

Just heard the horrific and heart-rending news from Orlando. Thoughts and all my commiserations go out to the families and loved ones of those killed, and best wishes for a speedy recovery for those hurt.

No it is not how all neutrons are formed. Just as a single counter example that you will already be aware of - Positron Emission (as in PET scan) This is when a proton decays into neutron, a positron and an electron neutrino: [latex] p \rightarrow n + v_e + e^+ [/latex] This is however a poor example in that it is very very similar to the initial example (the absence of an electron IS the existence of a positron) - but it is one that crops up in everyday life through the medical application. I am not sure if we truly understand the part of baryogenesis in which the bulk of the universe's neutron and protons (and the antiparticles) are formed a fraction of a second after the big bang - we definitely do not understand where all the antiparticles went to. We do think that the reason we have so many neutrons (which should otherwise have rapidly decayed) is that they can form deuterons (a proton and a neutron - ie a deuterium nucleus) which are stable in the prevalent conditions at the time

I am with Phi for the "intelligent" reason - many groups of Christians hold other groups in the greatest disgust; solo bible study has often been a low-church protestant cure for the pagentry and mysticism of high-church anglicanism and catholicism. But I am with Dan Dennett - on the whole; cluelessness

"Did they have tools that could make this?" - Demonstrably they did. This is SF.N let's no go down the aliens did it route. I think it was abandoned rather than actively buried - btw. Also it is worth bearing in mind that just a few years back - in both our lifetimes - the suggestion of the existence of such a site would have been mocked by archaeologists; so when they confidently expound on the peoples who created it take it with a pinch of salt. There is much in archaeology which is cutting edge empirical science with some delightful and inspired techniques but there is also much which is pure bullshit. Without the "hard-science" techniques of radiocarbon dating and modern stratigraphy the archaeological community would not have countenanced a stone built sanctuary created by hunter-gatherers 9-10000 years BCE - it would have been and was declared impossible. We can now provide very good empirical evidence that this impossible part of prehistory actually happened - the society which created it might well remain a complete mystery; that will not stop people discoursing on the details of that society

A lovely photo tweeted by Daniel Dennett

You are suggesting that the universe is toroidal? Mordred might be able to tell us whether we have already shown that to be possible or not according to the latest ideas / measurements

I think in its own terms it is unlikely to be wrong. But I would prefer it if it were more specific - it clearly is not abundance on astronomical scales where H is about 70% by mass and 90% by atom count, nor the earth itself which is about 30%iron and 30% oxygen by mass.

They combine by reverse beta decay aka electron capture [latex]p + e^- \rightarrow n + v_e[/latex] It is energetically favourable for electrons and protons to combine to neutrons only due to the massive pressure due to the intense gravitational force - a "gas" of neutrons is higher "density" (ie more are packed in to a given volume) than the plasma of protons and electrons. This is because the electrons will resist being put too close together due to the exclusion principle - that two half spin fermion particles cannot share the same quantum space. Neutrons also resist due to the fermionic exclusion principle - but at the energy levels considered the wavelength of the neutron is much much shorter than that of the electron which very simplistically means that the space required for a neutron to be happy is much much smaller than the space for an electron to be happy. At even higher gravitational pressures the neutrons get forced together too much and it is hypothesised that they might split into their component quarks which again can be packed even tighter. Again simplifying; This does not continue - at higher gravitational pressure the matter is so dense that the mass is packed within a radius that is lower than the schwartzchild radius - and from this point you have a black hole; we cannot know what is inside a black hole as there is a one way barrier at the event horizon

On the collision type - Perhaps; definitely more inelastic than elastic On the central lesson - The acceleration may be similar but if you look at the problem from the frame of the point of impact then in the first case there is twice as much kinetic energy than in the second. In an inelastic collision this is all converted to other forms of energy - heat basically - which is manifest in a deformation of the structure of the car/cars. But conversely in the second case there are two cars which evens up the amount of energy transformed within each car. Seems wrong intuitively - but I would have to agree

! Moderator Note Capiert You need to up your game. This OP is exactly the sort of melange of guesswork, assertion, and misunderstanding that I warned you against repeating. It is clear from your every post that you do not comprehend the basics of the topics which you are seeking to revise. This is hubris of the highest order - please stop. If your next post in this thread is not more scientific then I will consider locking this thread as well - it can be seeking knowledge, asking questions of the members, or proposing new ideas; but it must not have as its foundation your naked belief that you have access to knowledge and intuition that the scientific community lacks.

Beyond my ken - although I do remember that a short and rapid production of vast amounts of the heavier elements is part of the early Type 1a Supernova; thus considering that all Type1a will have a large portion of auto-created heavier elements in their make up from a stage soon after ignition I am not sure if leached heavier elements would make a significant difference. I also think it possible that if enough heavier elements (to vary luminosity from standard candle) had leached into the white dwarf environment then this might also be enough to halt the seemingly quite well-balanced requirements for the type 1a supernova in the first place.

Could you send a jet of a gas a short distance through the vacuum and include a (very simple) sound as a modulation in the amount ejected? What gets to the astronaut has a lot less gas - but what there is is in a series of pulses which the helmet would pick up as sound

I think Type 1a Supernovae are only formed from a slowly rotating Carbon-Oxygen white Dwarfs with a significant other . White dwarfs are one of the most common stars - and only a tiny subset are primed for this form of final deflagration. Iron core white dwarfs are stable within most timescales and will just cool and go dark

Hey! I think raisin bread is tasty - I also think it is by far the best analogy as it actually works in three dimensions

! Moderator Note Back on topic please - wormholes. VelocityBoy - less of the comments impugning the character of other members please. Do not respond to this moderation within the thread