Fred56

Right, but the original poster might work this out for herself.

Don't you need a function that defines the distance between the two objects? Then you solve for when it's = 0? The hint from the problem about the 15 stories means ball two can probably be assumed to travel at terminal velocity...

I think that life is an emergent property of all the atoms, elements, organic compounds, compartmentalisations, and overall structure, that make up some living thing. Here's something I concocted a while ago about emergence: The car is made up of a whole pile of what are, at first glance, simple parts. If you wander through an assembly plant, you find a lot of separate parts and sub-assemblies, none of which is a car, but you know it is part of a car. When all the parts needed are assembled (put into a certain configuration, or "structured" properly), a "car" emerges. If that same car is crashed, or squashed up into a little cube, it becomes something that isn't a car, as we usually understand a car to be, even though it still consists of all the things it was originally made up of, they are just in a different configuration which cannot exhibit the emergent properties of "car-ness". A pile of parts isn't a car either. i.e the whole can be more than the sum of its individual parts. The parts do not "determine" what a car is, the way the parts are put together does.

My earlier comment was also a hint about how soldiers are not in general trained to be policemen. They are not assumed to have any skills dealing with civilians (I believe the US at least, specifically does not do this), just skills with other soldiers, and these skills involve efficient killing.

So how do you say something like "the infinite set (of values)"? How do you describe the "value" of infinity. Or isn't this possible (or logical)? Would it be better to say "infinity can be any indefinite value"? Or that "it is not denumerable"? I'm trying to avoid using terminology from set or number theory, and see if sticking to "ordinary" language runs into lots of problems, or what. Could you expound a little? If a real number is fixed, how does it "assume" an infinite value? Although I studied calculus to 3rd year, the concept of approaching a limit wasn't covered in any great depth (perhaps because, once you understand how to use it, you don't need to keep thinking about what it really is, sort of).

Our sense that time evolves regularly or “linearly” is a direct consequence of the neurobiological mechanisms within us. These employ the regular folding and unfolding of specialised protein segments, and the “ticks” of this clock are kept going by a constant supply of energy from the environment. There are many feedback cycles, positive and negative (which are themselves regulated by other feedbacks) to ensure these “body clocks” run efficiently. These give us our sense of being “observers”, of time and everything else. They are the “system clock” for each individual human observer (and every other organism that has them, probably a big list), and can even be “reset” (now that the mechanisms are understood) with artificial stimulation. But it means that our sense of time and our sense of change are based on the change in shape of a protein molecule. That this, has along with the rest of our “neurobiological” system, given us all that physics, math and other “models” (like pioneer's succinct and quite logical one above), is kinda deep, or something. Um I might need to revise my initial assessment of pioneer's model. I only skimmed through it so I didn't spot some of the problems it has until I read it again. But I thought he was talking about how acceleration can be analysed by doing things like “squaring” time. And that his “snapshot” metaphor was to do with what happens when a derivative is taken with respect to time,and I thought that was the point of his post . Oh well... Monday arvo Here's the start of a (long) conversation between two Pythonesque characters about, you know, the "T" word (I made this up): What makes you so sure you can measure time? Well, I can use my watch. How do you know your watch measures the "time", though? Well, it ticks. It's ticking constantly. What do you mean it ticks? How does it tick? Does it tick all at once, or does it tick, stop a bit, then do a bit more ticking? Or does it stop, do a few ticks, then stop a bit more, then a few more ticks? What exactly is this "ticking"? Well, I can hear it ticking, and it ticks regularly, once per second. But when you hear a new tick, where is the old one? How can you tell that it isn't just the same tick, all over again? Well, I can remember the last one. I can remember lots of ticks. But how do you know the new one isn't the same as the last one? It might just be tricking you like that. How can my watch trick me? You mean it's a sort of illusion? Well, think about it, you can't really tell that it isn't the same tick. I mean all those ticks you manage to remember in your head are only there. In your head, I mean. We've only got your word for it. But I know my watch ticks regularly, and I know it can tell me what time it is. But how do you know? How do you know that your watch isn't just using the same time over and over, and just pretending to tell you what time it is? ...and so on

So it is a process then (as well as being "other" things)? And: There is at least a philosophical barrier between real values and those that are “in” the set of infinite values. Real numbers are not in this set because they are said to “approach a limit”, which keeps them in the real number domain while allowing them arbitrary “largeness”. Infinite values are in a “domain” which is always beyond this. There are an infinity of real values that the real numbers can be, but a real value cannot itself be infinite, it only “approaches” infinity. There are at least two sets here, then. The set of “real” values (which can be placed on some line which can extend arbitrarily), and the set of “non-real” or infinite values. The set of real values is not a subset of the second, and infinite numbers (not arbitrarily large reals) are excluded from the first. Come on guys, surely I'm not completely correct here about all this? Doesn't anyone have any objections to my rant so far? Can someone at least tell me if the following makes any sense? Because Infinity can be all values, but no (single) value, is it like a guest in a hotel where the rooms are all full, but each contains not one single guest, so there is always a vacancy?

This is a geology/meteorology question. Groundwater can persist in underground reservoirs for thousands of years, or the levels of water (the water table) can have a much closer dependence on rainfall patterns. It depends on the local conditions. So your question covers quite a bit of, er, ground.

So this is possible -the non-use of English (or any other language)- and just equations or some meta-language instead? Has anyone actually tried to write a paper?

This doesn't come for free, it has a "carbon footprint" even before it gets used. The idea being that biodiesel and other biofuels recycle atmospheric carbon, so there is no net increase. But the process itself uses energy.

What might this transformation matrix look like? And what are these certain properties?

Here's something I posted months ago on another site: (sorry if it's a bit polemical) Could it be that there are just too many of us, too many humans using or wanting to use too many resources at once, such that this burden is becoming too much for the planet to take? Most people in the "developed" world have cars to drive around in and simply could not imagine doing without the convenience and comfort. Most might agree that something has to be done about all the CO2 going into the atmosphere but would be very reluctant to give up their vehicles, their personal transport devices. Gee, if only someone could come up with a way to run the things on something that doesn't release any bad stuff. But would this really save the day? If we do manage to drastically cut emissions and the global mean temperature doesn't go up by more than 2 degrees, will that mean we can then continue to "develop" our planet without changing it so much that it becomes unliveable? Are we going to "rescue" ourselves from global warming only to succumb to over-use of resources so the oceans are empty of fish and the trees are all gone?

I don't see how anyone can believe that men who have been trained to kill (some enemy), then deployed in civilian areas, can hope to "avoid" shooting civilians. Especially if they can't or don't discrimate between innocents and insurgents.

Methinks one way to look at religion, sorry Religion, from a sciencey perspective would be to examine any parallels between the two. Is Religion scientific? Is Science religious? Faith, by definition is acceptance or belief in the unknown (and unknowable), but belief in something without actuality is otherwise known as delusion. Does Science have a "faith", or ritual? What's the difference between a scientist checking some calculation, and a priest crossing himself? Things like that.

How many of you would be happy to pay $10US for petrol? Or not be allowed to drive a vehicle (unless it is a hybrid). Such things could well be in everyone's future.

Especially if you think it tastes better (so you drink more of it). But you are still consuming ethanol (EtOH), despite what else might be mixed with it.

It was meant to be nh3+ oh- instead, the 4th h is now with the cl. I just couldn't be bothered with the + and - bits.

That's actually a pretty big generalisation, and I shouldn't really have made it in the first place. It depends which part of the species kingdom you look at. Insect species can go extinct a lot sooner. Then there's the bacterial world. The million year yardstick is only applicable, mostly, to large animals (like us).

Any time you put a salt like ammonium chloride in water it dissociates into two ionic complexes, and (some of) the water molecules "provide" electrons or protons so conventionally the result is NH4Cl + H20 -> NH3OH + HCl. But really it's a hydronium ion not a proton. And the rhs should be 4 ions, not what I've got.

Maybe not a few centuries, but we can't say not after a few million years. We are already a million years "down the track" in the evolution stakes, and the evidence is that most "runners" only stay a few laps of the million year racecourse. Most (large) species only live for a few million years before going extinct. Especially "specialised" ones like us. We happen to be sort of "multi-special" in that we can adapt to a lot of different kinds of places, but that doesn't mean our evolutionary clock isn't ticking.

Isn't there new research that indicates there is a bigger forcing from the solar cycle than previously believed, and that the next cycle should help to measure or calibrate this effect now they understand it better?

The only "remedy" I've heard about for hangovers that actually does provide relief (it isn't a cure) is to drink a fair amount of water either before (best) during (not best) or after(least effective), drinking the EtOH. Primarily because this stuff dehydrates things, like your brain.

What happens if x is infinite?

We already know that if everyone in China owned a car the oil industry would not be able to supply the fuel. Never mind the calculations for China's eventual energy needs, or India's, or Africa's. Supplies of oil are only just keeping up with current demand from developed countries, so the supply chain will need to about treble in size to cope with the coming demand, and the industry admits it simply will not be able to do this. But we continue to cut down 200 and 300 year old trees because people want furniture, and houses. The demand for resources continues to accelerate, and we can't be all that far from the point where we just use them all up. Like the collapse of the North Atlantic cod fishery, it wasn't until they were all gone that anyone noticed. Everyone knows that if the ice melts, it's over for us. I mean I can't envisage what sort of world it will be with most of the large cities under tens of metres of water, as well as much of the usable land, and most of the freshwater systems supplied by mountain glaciers and snowmelt shut down because there won't be any more snow.

Anything that touches on emergence or ergodics should do it, mate. Or functional and logic languages. Quantum computing (which might be only 10-yrs away)?