CaptainPanic

The problem is only money. As soon as sustainable sources of energy (solar, wind, biomass, geothermal) are actually cheaper than fossil sources, they are used at a large scale. At the moment, with increasing fossil fuel prices and decreasing sustainable energy prices, and especially solar energy becoming a lot cheaper, I think we're near a tipping point.

Lady Gaga, 448,000,000 in .41 seconds I think it says a lot about popularity, but nothing about influence.

All focus should be on propulsion. At the moment it's just too expensive to get something heavy into space and keep it there and move it around a bit. - Vitamin D seems trivial to me - we can create all the wavelengths of light that the sun shines on us. - Gravity, or there lack thereof, can indeed be solved with some rotating system. Again, if it's no problem to launch a few tons extra into space, then this is trivial. - The moon won't keep an atmosphere, so taking our earth atmosphere to the moon is not a particularly good idea. It's gone soon after.

I admit. Let's take a better example: Jesus vs. Socrates, who is the most influential? The one started the World's largest religion, the other enabled science as we know it. My point was not to prove that Feynman is the world's most influential person, because he is probably not. My point was that we can debate this forever, but if we don't agree on the method of comparison, we will never agree on the outcome. Shouldn't the purpose of a thread in a scienceforum be that we try to achieve some kind of consensus? Otherwise, the OP should have asked for our favorite famous people - "favorite" is a clearly subjective word, and leaves no room to disagree.

Garlic can prevent a girlfriend/boyfriend, thereby forcing you to live the unhealthy life of a bachelor, increasing heart problems. (This is not a serious scientific reply)

Without any atmosphere, the really tiny particles slam into the moon's surface at the same speed as the really big ones. And they should (I think - not sure) decellerate just as fast, or even faster, thereby heating up just as much, and thus melting like every meteorite. As far as I'm concerned, this reply that I just wrote is pure speculation. I cannot back it up with any data or articles.

I claim that there has not been a single scientific discovery that caused more harm than it was beneficial to mankind. Also, as I will show below, mankind was perfectly capable of slaughter and genocide on a massive scale, using only a sharp piece of metal. Nonsense. Pure and utter nonsense. Here's a list of the TOP 10 most deadly conflicts. There is absolutely no relation between the scientific advances and the number of dead people, as shown in this list (source: wikipedia): World War II , 40,000,000 - 72,000,000 dead. From 1939 - 1945 An Lushan Rebellion, China, 33,000,000 - 36,000,000 dead. From 755 to 763 Mongol conquests, 30,000,000 - 60,000,000 dead. From 1207 to 1472 Late Yuan warfare and transition to Ming Dynasty, China, 30,000,000 dead, from 1340 to 1368 Qing dynasty conquest of the Ming Dynasty, China, 25,000,000 dead, from 1616 to 1662 Taiping Rebellion, China, 20,000,000 - 100,000,000 dead, from 1851 to 1864 World War I, 15,000,000 - 65,000,000 dead (*), from 1914 to 1918 Conquests of Timur, 15,000,000 - 20,000,000 dead, from 1369 to 1405 Dungan revolt, China, 8,000,000 - 12,000,000 dead, from 1862 to 1877 Russian Civil War, 5,000,000 - 9,000,000 dead, from 1917 to 1921 The only trend that I can see here is that the larger the countries (or the larger the governmental influence), the larger the death toll. China was always a huge country, and therefore its conflicts outnumber European medieval wars by orders of magnitude. But luckily for the Europeans, they had many small wars. Hell, even in Roman times it is estimated that Julius Caesar and his army butchered up to a million people when they invaded Gaul, which is more than died in the American Civil war when they already had machine guns... There is no relation with technology at all. There is no pattern.

Disclaimer: I'm no expert - just interested in the topic and the discussion. On earth, dust (from rock) forms by erosion, and obviously there isn't any on the moon. So, for that reason we shouldn't compare the Moon to any planet with a liquid or an atmosphere. Btw, dust in your house is mostly from fabric and dead skin - which is obviously absent on the moon. Instead, I think I read that the only source of lunar dust is the constant impacts of smaller and larger meteorites. But such an impact will melt rock. If it would only smash up the rocks, then it would become dust... but liquid rock sticks.

The main comment My main comment (after reading your post) is that you chose some criteria. And I chose (in my previous post) some different criteria. I completely disagree with your criteria, and you disagree with mine. So, it appears that to give a rating of who-is-more-influential-than-who seems a very subjective matter! The details But I am happy to discuss the details... so here we go. Nor are we looking at the impact that Jesus had of one person like you!! You choose some criteria to determine who is more influential. And I choose some other criteria. I am sure that I can find people who agree with me too. They also all know Lady Gaga. Influential and famous are not the same thing. Not true. Christians are only 31-35% of the world's population, and I don't believe that all those Christians hold Jesus as the central figure in their lives... so the actual number of people who do so is lower. So, perhaps 1 in every 4 people agree with you. The other 3 out of every 4 will probably disagree. The month July is named after Julius Caesar. August after emperor Augustus. The days of the week are named after the sun and the planets - also by the Romans. The church adapted in a very practical way to an already existing Roman system, and Jesus has nothing to do with this adaptation. A quantifyable criterion! Something we can test. Nice. Areyou sure he'll beat Michael Jackson? And does the pure number of songs count, or also the number of times it has been listened to? The most common school name in the USA seems to be Lincoln school (list)... but both Feynman and Jesus do not appear on the list at all. Meh. I still disagree. And we were comparing a scientist to Jesus, not an army commander, an admiral or a government leader. See above.

From all the staff of the forum, I wish all the new people a warm welcome. Hope you have fun learning/reading/writing/posting/thinking/discussing/laughing/etc...

Alan McDougall, I'm sorry that I have to say that you totally fail to answer my question. You give some anecdotes of other famous people talking about Jesus, but none of them made the comparison with Feynman. So, how can you conclude anything about the comparison? I understand you're a devout Christian, so for you Jesus is the #1 important person ever, and there's no point in questioning that. But we in this thread, we are questioning it, so we need arguments and criteria. So, allow me to do a proposal for some criteria for our comparison between Jesus and Feynman: 1. Number of peer reviewed publications? (more is better). 2. Worked on the Manhattan project? (yes is good, no is bad) 3. Worked on superconductivity? (yes is good, no is bad) 4. worked on particle physics? (yes is good, no is bad) 5. Number of public speeches? (more is better) You see? According to my criteria, Feynman is a much more influential person than Jesus. Doubtlessly you'll disagree... but at least this discussion will enter a next phase where we can discuss how we rate the influence of people.

Forgive me if I still fail to understand it. But does your idea make any predictions we can test?

If this "white hole" is the opposite of a black hole, doesn't that mean it's just empty? You seem to suggest that we all know what a white hole is, but I don't. Never heard of it.

And they're wrong. So, the purpose of the poll is to find out who disbelieves the scientific consensus. Why don't you just say so? Btw, those who want creationism taught in schools are only being successful in the US. In europe, I don't know a single country where this is seriously being considered.

The generalization and suggestion that we're constantly abusing our powers makes me want to prove you right. A few questions is fine, and although I cannot be bothered to look it up, I am sure we answered those initial questions patiently and politely. But seriously, you just never stop. And that's what makes us annoyed. You have 94 (!) posts in the Suggestions, Comments and Support section. More than most staff members in fact. I think "asking questions about their job" is quite an understatement. We're doing our jobs to the best of our abilities, and from all observations I've made so far on the internet, this is a friendly place... but even the near-perfect mods of SFN have their limits. And 94 posts with questions about their jobs is very very near that limit. And a few compliments in between the questions don't change my opinion.

I would do the following: - Ask this same question on the ubuntu forums. - See if you can find out the name of your sound card (or if integrated, your motherboard), and the drivers - and google specifically for those. - Upgrade your sound drivers. And finally if all fails, what solved it for me many years ago (one of the first Ubuntu Studio versions to come out - never got that to work properly): - Install the normal Ubuntu, and get your favorite programs separately.

Religion has nothing to do with it, and our best evidence is that the universe is 13.7 billion years old. And having a poll on it is silly - sorry if that sounds rude.

As far as I understood, this is one of the main questions that we're all trying to answer now. Nobody knows for sure. Nobody knows why the universe started the way it was: why it started with a low entropy, why it was assymetrical. Here is a movie (TED conference, 15 minutes) that addresses some of these issues. It doesn't give an answer to your question though.

I would guess that because of the distance, the wave would be a lot smaller. Also, many islands in the Caribbean are volcanic, which means they're actually quite high. The area that would be affected is perhaps not so great?? If this is important, you might want to look at a detailed map of those islands, and see if they have towns/cities in low-lying areas near their west coasts. ! Moderator Note 2 posts merged into this thread: mine and Armada's. There was another thread in our homework section with exactly the same opening post. It slipped through our moderator nets thus far. To avoid confusion, let's keep the whole discussion in 1 single thread.

Yes. But why? You avoid answering the question. How do you evaluate this? How did you come to this conclusion? I want you to explain this a little more. "For example Jesus had a much more impact on human history than say Richard Feynman who was a great scientist, because...

Frankly, your constant attention to the moderation here is getting on my nerves. Yes, we make mistakes. We're all very sorry that we're not perfect. And if you don't like it, you can go and find another forum. Aww. You must be new on the internet... complaining about the behavior of the moderators on one of the most polite and friendly forums on the entire interwebs. Maybe my previous advice was wrong: don't go find another forum. They'll eat you alive. Please tell us, other than handing over the entire forum to you, is there any way that you can stop complaining?

I think that could be defended, if you would turn it around and say: "show me a human who never gossips". I don't think you can... but before we engage in such a discussion, we might want to clearly establish what "Gossip" actually means. To me it involves the following: Gossiping is a way to gather information about all the social interactions in your social group, and especially those social interactions where you are not involved yourself. These can still be of significance to you. Proof/confirmation is hard to come by in this situation, so second hand information will just have to do. Also, if you take gossip one step further, where it starts to resemble manipulating, you can use it to strengthen your own social situation, or rather weaken someone else's to your own benefits.

You can hear that?? What can I say... I was hungry. Sorry for the noise.

! Moderator Note REQUEST - Please post all your jokes and pictures also on our forum, so we can all have a laugh. Thanks! It probably proudly announced to its fellow Higgs Bosons that it has found the theorized humanoids with a 99.99% certainty, also known as the Ungodly Particles. [edit] OMHB! Teh interwebs are full of Higgs Boson jokes already! Since we're linking to other sites anyway. Have some good Higgs Boson jokes.

We prefer that you first point out that someone used a fallacy (you can add that this is against the rules if you like - there's no need for that though). There is a fair chance that your discussion partner used a fallacy by accident, and will improve the post, or explain why he disagrees this is a fallacy. If someone deliberately uses a fallacy, and refuses to improve after being requested by you, then you can report. But please try to solve your differences yourself before requesting mod assistance. Immediately reporting everything means that the mods get far too much involved in every discussion. We are here to keep the peace, not to win your discussions for you. [edit] Please find our rules here. Also, by scrolling to the top of every page, you will find a link to the rules, called "ScienceForums.Net Forum Rules".