[Tycho?]

Yeah I've always read that cosmic rays included gamma rays, as well as the massive particles.

Ha, I just glanced at your post, wrote up a big explanation, but realized I couldn't back it up, and deleted it. Turns out its exactly what you thought it was, with the density idea. It does seem to make sense, but it may not be the best way of thinking about it. After reading and disliking my first explanation, I thought it may be better to think of it in terms of buoyancy. So think of a balloon, and keep in mind your thoughts on density of the air. At the bottom of the balloon the air would be more dense than at the top of the balloon. This means that there will be more pressure exerted on the bottom of the balloon than the top. And since there is an unbalanced force, you get an acceleration, which is the balloon floating upwards. Now, the problem with this is obviously that a balloon has a surface, while hot air is simply a region of hotter air, and so I can't be totally sure that the hot air thing can be explained solely with buoyancy. This would be part of it though.

http://www.google.com Its really not that hard.

Whoops, yeah the number I used to do my calculation was mixed around between mass undergoing fusion and mass converted to energy. Wikipedia says 383×10^24 W is the matter energy confusion rate. Which is close enough to your number; what handbook is yours from? I would tend to trust that more than wikipedia for the most part.

The sun converts something like 15 000 tons of matter into energy every second. Now this isn't the same rate that it gets rid of this energy, but yeah, its loosing mass.

Is it just me, or did that last paragraph take this post from interesting to nonsensical? The statements of the first two paragraphs at least are backed up by some reasoning. But the 3rd paragraph just seems to come out of nowhere. Why are some of the digits more random than others? Why is it to 121 decimal digits yet 404 to binary digits? Interesting either way, I await the comentary of people who know more geometry than I.

The photon is not an abstraction, they do exist. And they dont apply to all forms of radiation either, only EM radiation.

Mass has a gravitational effect, yes. But a lot of the nitty gritty on, say, WHY mass has a gravitational effect has yet to be worked out. For example understands gravity on the quantum level. But saying nobody knows where it comes from is probably a bit of an overstatement.

I'm really biting my tounge here. As was mentioned already, the first post had nothing to do with fusion except that it mentioned ITER. Everything about how "fusion" works is not even close to correct. And there have been fusion reactors for decades. ITER is important because its supposed to be the prototype for a commercial reactor that will actually produce electricity. All this information and more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER , the threadstarter should make a habit of going to wikipedia before starting any more topics.

Yeah google has lots of stuff like that, its pretty neat.

They're not talking about dropping it into water, they're talking about putting the egg in a box with water in it. Surface tension does not factor in. I remember doing something like this back in middle school, although we only had to drop our eggs from 2 meters or something. Which was kinda pointless, since just encasing the thing with foam worked perfectly well. I tried to be creative, and made a sort of scaffolding and suspended the egg inside using elastic bands. 10 cm isn't that much space to work with for a 6m drop though, so the liquid ideas are probably better.

Step one: use a search engine. Step two: there is no step two.

I dont think so, I think it would be too insignificant. Hell, hubble can't even see a planet the size of earth around a star; the star itself is too bright. A nuke going off would be super super tiny compared to how much the planet reflects.

You havn't actually used the equation, have you? Put the velocities into the equation, and see what you get. It will not be >c.

Yeah, the wave front thing led me to believe it would look something like that. I still dont know what it means by rays though. I know rays are lines that have a start point, and go out to infinity, but that doesn't help much.

Draw a diagram with rays and wave fronts of the equations intensity maxima (theta max)=inverse sin(m*lambda/d) m=0,1,2,3.... intensity minima (theta max)=inverse sin((m+0.5)*lambda/d) m=0,1,2,3.... Where d is the distance between the two sources. This is a lab question. I dont know what a wave front or a ray looks like on diagram though, I'm not sure what that means. I would have thought it would be the classic interference graph, with the large maxima in the center and then varies mins and maxs as one gets futher from the center. Yet the mins and maxs are supposed to be drawn seperately, apparently. Any insight into this?

A block of wood would interact with the EM spectrum, at the very least it would be emitting heat. So no, it would not be dark matter.

Matter does not change into energy very much, certainly not anywhere near as much as the opposite happens. This makes no sense. This is just blatantly wrong, a black hole is made of matter, it has nothing to do with dark energy. I'm not sure what you mean here, but if you're still talking about big bang and black holes, then big bang came first. Uhhh, sure, whatever you want. What?

No.

Did you run that abstract through some translator? Because its unreadable, it makes no sense at all.

Well comets would definately be easier once they were close enough to the sun to get their tail. Beyond that, I'd say it would vary case to case. Since comets consist largely of ice, they may have a larger albedo than asteroids (they reflect more light, and hence are easier to see). Can't think of any particular reason why asteroids would be easier to see, but hard to say.

Interesting yes, dangerous as well.

Hmm, neat.

Neutrinos cause it though, they aren't charged.

Beta emitters give off electrons and positrons in two seperate reactions; I dont know if you get the same reactions happening at the same time. But regardless, positrons are not going to last long. Every atom has electrons whirling around it, so a positron is not going to make it far at all before it finds some electron and is annihilated. Cherenkov radiation is a different beast. It is caused when particles (I dont know what kind) move faster than light in that medium. An example in a nuclear reactor: you have radioactive stuff in water. Light moves more slowly in water than it does in vaccuum. So particles given off can end up beating a beam of light emitted at the same time. For some reason, this gives you the radiation. Wikipedia has more info on it, I obviously do not understand the process.