CaptainPanic

It is a good idea to do this inquiry. The widespread belief is that the people were being lied to. And this inquiry will restore (some of) the trust people must have in their government in order for it to function. For too long have governments been taking unpopular decisions. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are just two bad decisions. Europe is also suffering from a number of other issues. People are grumbling. More radical political parties are gaining popularity in many countries. The Dutch government also created a committee to investigate the way the decisions were taken. The conclusion was that our government has made some rather serious mistakes (such as grossly exaggerating and extrapolating the threat of the weapons of mass destruction of Saddam).

Some tablets to help the stomach fizz if you put them in water. I couldn't find what's in them, but I wouldn't be surprised if these also contain carbonates which form CO2 when contacted with water.

Depending on ambient temperatures, and the desired water content of the product, a spray tower may be simple enough. Vacuum evaporation, as insane_alien said, should use ambient for heating. In industry, vacuum evaporation is used in order to utilize waste heat.

With evaporation (by heat), you put in heat. That requires almost precisely as much energy as needed for the evaporation. With vacuum evaporation, you will also need to put this heat of evaporation into the system. However, two differences: 1) your heat will be at a lower temperature. That is most likely a good thing for your energy costs (note: you don't need less energy, but you just need it at a lower temperature!). 2) you have a vacuum pump running constantly. This is effectively a gas pump, also known as a compressor. Types vary with the desired flow and pressure (the degree of vacuum). The important bit is that this vacuum pump will not nearly be 100% efficient. In fact, thermodynamics will show you that it's not so good. You must also look at the type of energy you will purchase. Heat can be bought in the form of gas, or any other fuel. Vacuum pumps will almost certainly require electricity. Just my 2 cents. I add a disclaimer that this was written in a hurry...

Water is indeed special. It's a very light molecule with rather special properties. But there is little point in discussing it. We're not going to find anything new... and all the experts here are way too lazy to make a list of all the special properties of water... Water is arguably the most researched chemical substance on earth... so I suggest you just search around and become a physics/chemistry/biology water-expert.

Don't forget about our atmosphere. Significant losses and gains of "stuff" are probably in the upper atmosphere.

I think that the current situation is better than to abandon those tourist spots altogether. I believe that a company who sails to Haiti is partially responsible for its employees in Haiti (apparently they employ 500 people) and their families. In an emergency like this, an employee might need to take time off to help his/her own family... and I hope that the cruise companies are forthcoming in that - preferably making this a paid leave - so that the locals don't lose income. If these ships are indeed used (partially) as cargoships to deliver aid, then I absolutely approve of that. That would be a noble and also very logical choice... which might turn out to be quite significant given the size of these ships. And profits - I don't know the financial situation - but helping out Haiti isn't expensive. It is one of the poorest countries in the world. I simply don't believe that some aid might endanger the profits of a large cruise company.

It would be interesting to see this. I've posted a lot of times that the Netherlands show that a policy of legalization is not harmful to citizens or the economy. However, I am slightly worried about these developments - what's gonna happen to tourism in Amsterdam? It might be argued that a policy of legalization of weed in other countries would be harmful to the Dutch economy.

I still have a number of open questions, which as far as I'm concerned means we didn't reach the 99% (which, I know, is a number not to be taken literally). If you feel like it, please address them. I am still not convinced we're dealing with a rocket. I'll just list my questions: 1. Why does the long plume glow blue? Possible explanations given: -It's still burning (but jet fuels don't burn after they left the nozzle - unless the entire rocket was designed poorly, including it's fuel). -Sunlight reflects off the fumes (but sunlight generally is red / orange / yellowish in the morning, even on high strato-clouds) 2. Why are there regular patterns if the atmosphere is turbulent (it's a phenomenon called "wind")? People wrote: -It is in fact turbulent if you look closely. (But it's not distorted like normal plumes...) 3. Why is the plume more broad higher in the sky? I assume that the spiral thingy is caused by the bright flames of the rocket engine itself. No answer was given at all -Normal plumes become more narrow because the rocket moves away from the viewer (up). Of course, this is said to be a malfunction, so it might have crashed... The only explanation is that the rocket was moving toward the viewers. So, the Russians launched their rocket directly at the Scandinavian peninsula... Yet nobody seems worried about this. And I also wrote a few points which could possibly lead to the HAARP kind of things. I'm not part of the "conspiracy theorists"... I just have valid questions. I don't want to talk about intentions, or our governments being good or evil. I just have questions. 4. Three questions a. Can you excite electrons using radio waves in molecules or ions present in our atmosphere, including the ionosphere, using using radio waves in the range of 224 MHz up to 931 MHz? b. Can radio waves interact with ions (or neutral molecules) and thus create circular patterns? c. Would the above 2 questions be answered differently is the frequency of the waves emitted was different? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedI just realized another question I have: With a rocket failure, you would expect a single spiral, not a double one.

I used the search function, and I searched for the keyword "toothpicks". It came up with this thread. And Zolar V, you opened that thread with exactly the same post. You have a total of 11 posts in it... Surely you remember that thread. So, yes, we already did this thread. I'm reporting this thread - asking the mods to close it. Click here to return to the old thread about nuclear floating toothpick islands, so we keep stuff together.

A material with a huge heat capacity (or specific heat) is the well-known substance called "Water". It is also non-toxic, and if stirred a little it will have quite a decent heat transfer coefficient. An alternative is to dig some piping into your garden, and run some heat pumps. You use your own garden as cold sink (a place to "dump" your cold), and you heat the house.

It's a lot more simple. Electric engines are very efficient. So, simply put: the more electricity you can push through your engine, the more energy will go into your air treck. It does not matter if the engine is in the wheel or next to it. It is indeed one of the best engines I have seen so far. I wonder what the power of that engine is... it looks small! Please read my comments about power requirements. You want at least a few hundred Watts... regardless of the design.

Compressed air cars also pollute. But the pollution does not come from the car's exhaust. Instead, it comes from the chimney/exhaust of the air-compression-facility.

If it was something that was caused by the camera (photographs and movies), it would be highly unlikely that numerous cameras recorded the same event. Then one or two cameras would have recorded some freaky picture, but not all. Why does everybody keep pointing at the orange and keeps saying it's an apple because it's so obviously round and edible?

thanks for the video. You can tell me all you want... and I am not necessarily saying that some obscure organisation is beaming up Scotty into the ionosphere... But that's no rocket. I just think that "rocket" or "rocket failure" is a very poor description of what I see there... I am not sure what it is.

Ok, I didn't read a lot of literature on this - so my question may be a n00b question - but did the NASA researchers calibrate their Kepler telescope on stars known to have planets, or are they just assuming that the new observations are correct? You'd expect that the first observed planets would be known planets.

Ok, so you have a solid compound (a salt), which is a fertilizer and forms a buffer. You want to be able to scoop up a standard measuring cup of it, and put that in a standard amount of water. But the concentration is too high if you use a standard 1/4 cup in the standard volume of water... that's the problem, yes? I am probably thinking way too simplistic, but why not use more water to dilute it? A different standard? If you will mix one solid (the buffer stuff) with another solid, you risk that the particles of one solid are more coarse than the other... Shaking the box/bag/whatever of your blended solids will cause the fine particles to drop to the bottom. It's like mixing pebbles with sand, and then shaking it. The sand will fall through the pebbles to the bottom. Also, the proposed solids are not so good. Sugar will cause all kinds of organisms to live in your soil on the long term. It will create fungus problems maybe. Salt will kill plants. Ice cannot easily be stored. A truly inert (and cheap) solid is sand. If it will end up in soil anyway, maybe it doesn't matter that it doesn't dissolve.

Terrorism has absolutely nothing to do with religion or fundamentalism. Anyone with any kind of motive can be a terrorist. Terrorism is nothing but the disruption of society. If someone liberates a bull from a farm and lets the animal loose in a town center, it's definitely terrorism... much more so in fact than the religious warfare which occurs in Afghanistan. So, yes, sure, terrorists can come from anywhere. And they don't necessarily kill people.

Sugar? Table salt? Ice? It really depends what you want to dilute, and with what purpose. Your question is not clear. And anyway, if something dissolves, it is not a solid anymore. And if the solid is able to dissolve, it is not inert.

Makes one wonder why Bush thought these people were against him. If I ever have seen a leader of the world who thought exactly along the lines of these selected Qur'an quotes, then it was the previous president of the USA - albeit a fundamentalist of a different religion with a different name of the same god. But ajb, you did answer the question. In your eyes, perhaps, these quotes are all there is to Muslims. And therefore they can try as hard as they want to seem like peaceful people and improve their image - they'll fail. You closed your eyes to them, and therefore any attempt to improve the image will surely fail. Pity really - I do advise you to visit some Muslim countries before the Western countries, led by the USA, invades the next (Yemen?). Open your eyes.

Sunlight reflecting off the undissipated fuels or exhaust gases? Since when is sunlight blue-ish? It may be a different material than clouds, it may be a different altitude, but I surely would expect sunlight reflections to be at least somewhat like, well, sunlight reflections. And more importantly - if it is true that under certain conditions it is possible to create spiral shaped stuff in the sky, then why don't we see it more often? Several pictures were taken with different cameras. This means that shutter speed and all other parameters are irrelevant. It's not like I really want the ionosphere idea I posted earlier to be true. It's just that I have seen missile failures before, and this is nothing like it. I am wondering why everybody is so eager to accept such an unlikely explanation of the phenomenon.

I really expected we'd have conquered space by now. And we have, but not by manned flight, but by telescopes instead. Also, I expected computers to be more *bling*. Instead, we have 16GB on a paper clip sized stick. But most of all, I kinda expected that cars would be obsolete by now... or at least that cars would be replaced by something more advanced, traveling through tubes at high speed, or through the air. (Note: over 10 yrs ago I wasn't really much of an engineer yet - now I realize how much energy and infrastructure that would cost).

Violence is no solution. But I hope that protests will continue - at some points the Iranian government must give up something. The big question I have is how widespread the protests are. We must realize that Western media will blow up any Iranian protest against the Iranian government out of proportion too... Propaganda happens in both sides.

Convergence of my model after some serious trouble with it I went from "having lots of problems" to "finished, time to go home" in 5 seconds. Lovely.

Well, the Dutch seem to be super-enthusiastic to implement some kind of body scan now... Amsterdam Airport (which gets over 50 million passengers / year) is where the guy switched planes - and although you might think that the airport of departure (in the Middle-East?) is responsible for the security, we don't care... we want scanners now! I believe that some people have really been waiting for a chance like this. This is the first terrorism in the Netherlands in many years. Celebrations! It has been a brilliant move of the security business, which has slowly become a serious industry and a powerful lobby. In the first 24 hrs after some attack (failed or not) nobody will mention and concerns regarding losses of privacy, so they have been quick to get politicians to promise some measures. And the result is millions of additional income for those companies. But in all fairness - Airplanes carry 1.6 billion passengers per year! How secure do you want it? http://www.worldmapper.org/display.php?selected=29