Mr Skeptic

OK, so they might detect our radar. They might even be able to conclude that it is for echolocation. Maybe. What if they communicate by crafting and transferring messages encoded into DNA? It would be a totally awesome way of communication, and they might never realize that electromagnetic radiation would be a good way to communicate. Or, they could communicate via smells. In any case, if they communicated like this we would probably not realize they communicate so well nor even at all.

What signals? We've advanced way past the era of analogue signals, and now have digital signals that are barely distinguishable from noise. Maybe they came here to mine one of our moons.

What of my example -- torturing someone for 40 years? It is temporary suffering, as is any suffering by any one individual on this earth. But isn't there a difference between the temporary suffering of a vaccination and the temporary suffering of 40 years of torture? Can we not consider whether vaccination overall reduces suffering? This is why no one but you cares about temporary suffering -- all of it is temporary -- and we're talking about necessary and unnecessary suffering. Fair enough, but we can still say that as far as we can tell god is evil because he allows apparently unnecessary suffering. I know that I could prevent most of this suffering were I to be omnipotent, so I guess I'm just a better person than God is, or at least more clever. For example, I could run a computer simulation with the people being code, and with a permissions system like in Linux so that people cannot harm each other without permission. They'd still have free will, just like we still have free will even though we can't hold our breath for 5 hours, but they would be unable to do things like rape.

Oh right. You could say you have one copy of your genes from your mother, one copy from your father, and about 20 new mutations.

Please don't mind iNow, he's been suspended several times already for his attitude. I'd have to say though, that ignoring a rude person on an internet forum takes much less self-discipline than going through med school. In any case, if you came here seeking advice and then don't want to follow it, one must wonder what is the point. We've all one way or another said that psychiatry has more creativity to it than physician, that neither of these fields have much creativity to them, and that from the little we know our best guess is that you are not suited for either of these. What I would suggest is that you ask your high school counselor (or whichever counselor you have, I'm pretty sure you have one). He knows you much better than we do and would have access to your grades, training or practice in helping people find their field.

Your second attempt is better since the wing is closer to where the waves would be (I'm not sure how well the wing will work without being near the ground btw). However, it still has an extra 950-1950 ft of pipe in either direction, which would provide unnecessary friction losses. Also, step 4 will not work unless your machine leaks oil, and then it will run out of oil and stop working. Once you open your main valve, the pressure of the oil and the pressure of the water will be the same, and closing your valve won't change that -- you'd need to pump the water out of the valve, doing more work than you got by letting it fill.

It is possible that some of our constants change, eg they might be dependent of other constants. For example g, the acceleration at earth's surface, changes depending on where on earth you are, how high you are, and is constantly increasing due to the mass of earth slightly increasing as it absorbs asteroids. We don't consider g a fundamental constant, of course, but some of the constants could depend on something else and science could handle that just fine, if that were the case.

If you are familiar with starcraft, think of the two alien species, the zerg and the protoss. The zerg are a bio-technological species, they don't have technology as we do but instead they have a type of creature that does that for them. Their social structure is a hive-mind. Perhaps they would see our technology as strange rock formations, and us as unintelligent creatures much like ants that build stuff. If they do recognize us as technological and intelligent, they might be thoroughly disgusted by how little we respect our hive leaders. The protoss have a living crystal quality to them, although I think the protoss themselves are biological. But if you go with some of the living crystal species of sci-fi, they might not even see us as alive at all. Personally, I think that any aliens visiting us would be intelligent, technological, and social... but there is no guarantee. They could just as easily be interstellar microbes.

It would depend on the resistance of the battery (or if you prefer how many amps it can provide). Yes, two identical batteries in parallel have half the resistance and so double the current, quite what people expect.

Mass is a type of energy. Energy is conserved in inertial frames including in special relativity, but general relativity deals with accelerating frames.

Nothing is completely transparent. A gel would be problematic for optical instruments since its size/shape would change if water content changed, and you would have humidity in your instrument maybe fogging up your lenses.

I'd say truth has nothing to stand on. There is no evidence that truth exists, much less that anyone can know it. The closest you can get is via consistent observations, but then that makes "truth" functionally equivalent to "consistent observations'.

Airplanes fly at high altitude (I think for fuel economy) where the air is too thin for us to breathe. They only partially compress the cabins, which is why your ears pop. However, this increases the weight of the airplane, for example the pressurized cabin of a boeing 747 weighs an extra ton due to all that air. The second of your questions is answered here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_laws

Neither of these are really creativity fields, especially not physician.

Recessive traits are passed on, they are just unlikely to be expressed (only expressed when someone has two copies of it), so much that it could be dozens of generations before any individual will end up with two copies. That's why there are a lot of recessive disease genes, but hardly any dominant ones.

I mean farther away than any of the planets. Eg the Kupier belt for the short-period comets or the Oort cloud for the long-period ones. http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/comet_worldbook.html Whereas asteroids are mostly in the asteroid belt (between Mars and Jupiter). But yes, there is some overlap between the two; after all they are rather arbitrary classifications. http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/asteroid_worldbook.html

Comets are thought to have formed outside the solar system (compare with asteroids). What class is this for?

Per the Bible, Adam and Eve did not know what not to do, even though they were told. For example, if someone tells you in Chinese not to do something, you've been told what not to do but you don't know what not to do. Anyhow, before eating the fruit Adam and Eve did not have knowledge of good and evil and so couldn't have known that it is good to obey god and sin to disobey god. It is only after they ate the fruit that they realized that they did something "wrong". Suffering isn't evil, true, but causing or allowing unnecessary suffering is evil. Think of the Golden Rule. Now, not only did God allow Adam and Eve to sin (as above, they couldn't have even known it was a sin), but after that he cursed the whole of creation as a punishment for it, specifically going out of his way to create thorns and such. This punishment would be overly harsh (and so cruel) even for a real crime such as murder. Ah, but the consequences were not the problem, it was God's overreaction that was the problem. It's the difference between warning someone that your cookies are moldy and they'd get sick if they eat them, and hunting them and their children down and torturing them for the rest of their lives for eating your cookie.

Wow, that is nasty. And I'm not talking about the debt, so much as the interest.

dumb [duhm] adjective, -er, -est, verb –adjective 5. disagreeing with a politician on one or more issues. Depending on the circumstances, slightly more polite words might be used instead, or the accusation done only indirectly such as contained within a joke. 7. mute, silent -verb 3. To attempt to mute or silence by calling a person dumb.

Certain of our immune cells develop in the thymus, during which time they learn to recognize "self". So if you are a chimera (made of two different types of cells, can happen when embryos fuse) during this time, then the immune system recognizes both types of cells as "self". However if you become a chimera afterwords (eg via a heart transplant), then the immune systems will recognize the other cells as foreign and attack them. Chimeras may be made from different species, eg the geep.

Invent new laws of physics! Or, build a solar-system sized coilgun, put the human into a liquid (preferably also fill lungs with breathable liquid), and shoot them at close to the speed of light at a target system.

Click the "reply" button to reply to one person, and the "multiquote" button to respond to several people. This will automatically insert both the name and a link to the post in question.

It can't become anything else in sufficient quantity. Its an effect of the second law of thermodynamics. Any conversion away from potential energy is going to eventually end up as heat (in case you doubted that the sun is hot), and hot things must radiate photons per Maxwell's equations. Again, is there any other possibility?

For example if I torture someone for 40 years, it is temporary suffering but still unnecessary and evil.