Hypercube

No; I'm talking about writing it out like, 100000000000000000000000000............0 Just like you would write 'a million' as 1000000.

I was just wondering; is there any way, within the realm of what is practically possible, to write out the number 'googolplex' in its long form? I mean, writing it down on paper is obviously impossible; it would probably take more than a googol years to do so, no to mention that the universe isn't even close to being large enough to accommodate the amount of paper that would be required. But modern computers are capable of extraordinarily rapid calculations and the like. Is there any way for a computer to render the googolplex in its full form? Even in principle? Oh, for anyone who doesn't know, a googolplex is 10^10^100; 1 with a googol zeroes after it.

I'm really into the Mass Effect games and I'm just wondering; if Mass Effect fields really could be created, how useful would they really be? For anyone who doesn't know what a mass effect field is, it's basically a field that either reduces or increases the mass of everything within a certain volume of space; it can be used to reduce the effective mass of a spaceship to near 0. I mean it would certainly allow the colonization of the solar system and maybe even nearby star systems, but could it really allow for faster than light flight?

Fanghur is there something wrong with you, have you had a lobotomy or were you just born suicidal? If you autoclave a sealed air-tight bottle full of ether then the entire building will probably hear the aftermath; to put that in words you can understand...THE BOTTLE (AND BY EXTENSION THE AUTOCLAVE) WILL EXPLODE LIKE A BOMB!!! People will likely be killed, yourself included. I don't know how the heck you got into a lab setting; but I feel sorry for whoever you work with if you seriously considered autoclaving ether.

Is your friend out of his mind? DO NOT LET HIM ATTEMPT THIS!!!! If he wants to try sonicating a fizzy drink that hasn't been opened yet tell him to try it on a bottle of Club Soda or Coke or something else; as long as the bottle isn't made of glass. Then at least the worst thing that could happen is that he gets temporary hearing loss. Fanghur; if your friend sonicates an unopened glass bottle of champagne (or any other airtight glass container containing fizzy liquid) there is a very real chance that the end result will be something akin to a shrapnel grenade going off; at best he will be seriously injured, at worst killed. So unless you are eager to see your friend rushed to the emergency room, don't let him attempt this "experiment" on any kind of glass bottle.

I agree with Fanghur; there is no way that a shark would survive that last bite; an average size saltwater crocodile (~15 feet) has a bite force of ~5000 pounds; so a salty that's 23 feet long would have a bite force of approximately 6500 pounds. A great white shark's face is basically just cartilage, so it would be crushed when the croc bit down on it; not to mention the fact that even if the shark did survive that bite, most of its top teeth would have been broken off. As for whether they would go after each other; I'd have to say that it is unlikely, because you are correct; for the most part an animal will not attack another animal that is as large or larger than itself unless it is an animal that it knows that it can take on. Buffalo are one of a lion's primary prey, and they are larger than the lions. You are also most likely correct that even if a great white did pick a fight with a salty, it would almost certainly retreat after being bitten on its tail and after having its pectoral fin bitten off, because sharks need them in order to steer. Point is, the Saltwater Crocodile should have won that fight. Merry Christmas to you too.

I've always had a theory that there are certain things that the human mind is simply not able to have even a conception of what they are like; so far I have been able to think of three; I call them the ultimate unknowns of perception. 1) What it is like to be dead. 2) What you would "see" if you were born without eyes, optic nerves, etc. 3) Visualizing a true higher dimensional space. ie. more than 3 dimensions. Can anyone think of any more "ultimate unknowns"?

We recently did a lab involving a mixture of three proteins; two known and one unknown, and the goal is to determine the identity of the unknown. After we took the absorbances of all the fractions at three different wavelengths, we were asked to "prepare a graphof OD600 that includes all three absorbance profiles". I have absolutely no idea what OD600 is, since we did not take the absorbance at 600 nm, nor how I could put all three wavelengths on one graph. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

It talks about higher dimensions as well as parallel universes, although M-theorists usually refer to the parallel universes as "Branes".

It struck me that if M-Theory is correct about why the force of gravity is so weak compared to the other forces; namely because gravitons are able to escape our universe and phase into the multiverse, thereby diluting the strength of gravity, then the common claim that there could be an infinite number of parallel universes is actually not correct. If there were an infinite number of parallel universes then the strength of gravity would be zero, or rather "Fgravity / infinity" which is considered to be 0. Since anyone who has done dilutions in chemistry class knows that the larger the number after the colon (eg. a 1:10 dilution) the more diluted the solution is, the same principle should therefore also apply to the dilution of gravity (yes, I know this is physics not chemistry, but work with me here). That means that there has to be a finite number of other branes, not an infinite number.

Can somebody please explain to me what exactly a strangelet is? I keep reading about this ridiculous "Doomsday Lawsuit" that a couple of extremist publicity hounds are filing against CERN, claiming that the Large Hadron Collider will produce black holes, strangelets and magnetic monopoles which will , and I quote "Destroy the Earth and possibly the universe as well". I know generally what a strangelet is, but not how it could possibly wipe out the Earth. And also, how the heck would a magnetic monopole destroy the Earth? Since a monopole is basically just a magnet with only one pole (or at least analogous to).

ParanoiA, are you really gonna sit there and try and convince us that the oil industry is an innocent in this? Fine then, explain to me why YOU think that every car made today isn't a hybrid, hell, why cars don't have solar panels installed on them to help recharge their batteries, even though we certainly have the technology to do so, and have had it for decades for that matter. Please ParanoiA, enlighten us.

If there is one thing that is abundantly clear about the human race, it's that we are under the false assumption that we are indestructible. There is evidence of this everywhere; I doubt that there is anyone in the world (infants excepted of course) who does not know about global warming and how it could potentially have devestating effects on our planet, and what are we doing to try to prevent it? NOTHING! And anyone who says otherwise is kidding themself. For example, I'm sure everyone knows about the recent jump in gas prices (where I am it's $1.35 CDN per litre at the moment), any you wanna know why the prices are soaring? I'll tell you why, because we are running out of oil, and yet what do governments do about it? They spend billions of dollars to invade other countries to steal their oil. What we should be doing is spending every cent spent in the war to come up with alternative energy sources, because there is no doubt what so ever in my mind that we could have had a breakthrough years ago. I also wouldn't be a bit surprised if there have been breakthroughs that were bought out and shelved by the oil companies, the oil industry did kill the electric car, who knows how far they will go to keep the billions of dollars from decreasing. One thing is for sure, we could have easily had present day hybrid cars 20 years ago, we certainly had the technology, we also have the technology to make every new car created a hybrid; the only explanation for why every car you see today is not a hybrid is because corporate superpowers knew that they would lose a lot of money, and therefore, they supressed the technology. In other words they don't care that they are polluting the earth, and the certainly don't stop to consider that if the earth becomes uninhabitable, all their billions of dollars will be worthless. This is one of our greatest problems; we only care about the here and now, not what will happen 10 or 100 years from now, we continually procrastinate until by the time we finally decide to take action, it's already too late. That is the human race's legacy, maybe we are not as smart as we think we are. Not everyone in the world is like this, I'm not pointing fingers at anyone in particular, but there is no question that if the human race does not pull itself together, we won't survive long enough to reach the status of type I civilation, never mind type II.

What do you guys think the implications would be if we actually did find some sort of life form on Mars or in some meteorite, and I'm not talking about UFO's or little grey men, I'm talking about any form of life not born on earth, be it viruses, bacteria, fungus, protists, etc. I mean virtually every scientific book ever written would have to be rewritten. And what if that life form was nothing like anything we've ever seen before? After all, since we've never found any sort of non-terrestrial life (at least that's what the government tells us), how could we possibly say with certainty that extraterrestrial life forms would even have DNA, of if that is to far-fetched, maybe they would just have different nucleotides. Who knows, silicon based life forms are a common theme in science fiction, but theoretically they could exist, since silicon and carbon can form virtually all the same bonds. I don't think it is too bold to say that when we're talking about extraterrestrial life forms, it is entirely possible that they evolved entirely differently than the life forms on earth. What do you guys think?

No offense Gonelli, but that statement is one of the most ridiculous analogies I've ever heard in my life. It's a huge leap to compare people thinking the earth is flat a few thousand years ago, which we now know has absolutely no scientific credence whatsoever, to calling pluto a planet. Especially since unlike the "flat-earth" hypothesis, pluto fits the definition of a planet almost perfectly; it orbits the Sun, it has a moon, it has an atmosphere (albeit a very thin one), it is sufficiently large to allow gravity to mold it into a sphere, etc. I understand that since they have found objects larger than pluto out in the kuiper Belt that it was probably inevitable that pluto would eventually be demoted, but I still think that it was a stupid to do.

I'm not debating that Pluto might be too small to be considered an actual planet, what makes it stupid to demote Pluto is the fact that every astronomy book ever written calls Pluto the ninth planet, not to mention the fact that everyone has heard of Pluto, whereas Ceres and Eris are virtually unknown to most people. Besides, Pluto has a moon, and a very thin atmosphere (at least I think it does). The point is that Pluto has always been known as the ninth planet, and I think it should still be, if for no other reason than to keep all of the books accurate.

But it is still a number divided by itself.

English guys, english. There has to be something to be nothing, and as I said, since there are numbers less than zero, zero must therefore be something and something divided by itself equals one.

Can somebody please explain to me why zero violates common sense? Every other number including infinity, divided by itself equals one, so why doesn't the same apply to zero as well? After all, since there are numbers which are less than zero, zero itself is logically a number too, and zero does go into itself once. It just seems totally counter-intuitive that 0/0 doesn't equal one. And while we're talking about counter-intuitive math, can someone also explain why a negative times a negative equals a positive, even though a positive times a positive doesn't equal a negative. Please don't use fancy terms that none but a math major could understand.

I agree, I think it was stupid to demote Pluto, but I did not start this thread to debate NASA's stupidity.

I was reading about the theories of a tenth planet or even a companion star for the Sun existing somewhere out in the Oort Cloud. And I was just wondering whether or not they could actually exist. I mean I guess that a tenth planet isn't so farfetched (or at least not impossible) when you consider that there are supposed to be trillions of objects in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud.

And the Sun can't be in the center of the solar system because why would god put man anywhere but in the center of his universe. Higher dimensions can't exist because we can't see them. Dinosaurs couldn't have existed because the Earth is less than 6000 years old. String theory has to be wrong since it doesn't involve point particles. Elvis can't be dead because after all, he's Elvis. Evolution must be wrong since humans don't have fur. Aliens can't exist since that would mean that mankind doesn't own the universe. Hydrino's can't exist since it would be counter-intuitive. May I remind you that there is nothing about Quantum Theory that isn't counter-intuitive? One particle being in two places at once, the idea that particles are zero-dimensional points yet have energy, mass, charge, and yet are not black holes. Again, the list is endless.

Have you ever stopped to think that maybe the reason that theories like hydrino's end up classified as pseudoscience (thanks a lot for that by the way Swansont, you're so open minded...NOT!!!) is because people automatically think they are nonsense? And don't even bother trying to understand or prove them? Yes, Blacklight's process may turn out to be wrong, but until it's been proven to be a scam, it is not right to assume that Blacklight is a con job. How many things throughout history were thought to be nonsense at first? Gravity, the fact that the Sun is in the center of the solar system, the fact that the Earth was not formed on the 23rd of October in the year 4004 BC at 9:00 A.M, evolution, the possibility of extraterrestrial life, String Theory, higher dimensions; the list is endless. Maybe Hydrinos are like that, one day they are pseudoscience, the next they are the breakthrough of the century. My point is that we shouldn't automatically conclude that something is impossible just because it doesn't fit perfectly with the current theory, leave that to the fundamentalists.

Why? Because it contradicts Quantum Theory? We all know that Quantum Theory is incomplete since it doesn't work on large scales. And what about cold fusion? That was supposed to be a big scam years ago, until there was an actual demonstration of it a few weeks ago. I know that there are a lot of companies and scientists out there who would do just about anything for more money; including publishing bogus discoveries. But I'm inclined to believe that if the company "Blacklight" really was just looking for more money then they would have chosen a less fantastic story to do it with. I mean any company claiming to have discovered a method that can produce cheap energy using only water, and then claiming to have actually developed an actual working generator using this technology, AND going commercial with it has to know that if they are lying, the company is dead, or at the very least disgraced from the scientific community. Maybe I'm being naive, but I for one believe them until it is proven otherwise.

What do you guys think about this technology that's supposedly been developed by Blacklight Inc.? I for one hope very much that it's not a scam.