CaptainPanic

Right here. If it's in the wrong place, it will get moved (so, don't worry, we have nice moderators)... But I think here should be fine.

Engineering. Yes, I am biased... but science applied to some purpose is called engineering, and when the engineer also keeps some aesthetics in mind, it can easily become art.

I always wonder how we can form a picture of an ecosystem from fossil records? All a fossil can tell us is that the animal lived in a certain age... but it cannot tell us what else lived (unless we see bite marks or find prey in its gut or something). I'd like to have a little discussion, and I'm curious what you have to say. Here's a few of my issues (which may not necessarily be true): 1. Larger animals fossilize easier (or, rot away slower). Digging into quite recent layers of soil, how often do we find the smaller animals, despite the fact that we know smaller animals are more common in almost every ecosystem on earth at the moment? Has there ever been a study searching for animals which are fossilizing right now - and whether that record forming right now corresponds to the actual ecosystem? 2. We can see from modern ecosystems that most animals do not fossilize. In hot moist climates, everything rots away before it has a chance to fossilize, while in dry or cold climates animals have a much larger chance to be buried before rotting away. In the tropics, there's a lot of rotting, and relatively little soil movement, but in a desert, the soil moves a lot but not much rotting is going on. 3. We can date a fossil back to a certain number of million years ago, give or take a few million. But we know from more modern times that animals can (but don't always) evolve really fast. Also, populations can increase and decrease. In the last 10,000 years, the flora and fauna changed quite a bit on earth. Theoretically, it only has to take a 10 years for a population to double, in the right circumstances. Smaller animals can achieve that in a single year. So, what we conclude now was living together, may well have been successors and even competitors rather than animals sharing an ecosystem. 4. Given the large - possibly climate induced - fluctuations in ecosystems, isn't it likely to assume such fluctuations also existed a long time ago? And animals that are thought to have lived in a single area might never have co-existed? 5. Animals we think live in a same area might both be migratory? One might be a summer visitor, the other a winter visitor? 6. Evolution might be a lot quicker than we think. In the right circumstances (a drastically changing environment), animals can evolve quickly. Even elephants only needed a few decades or a century to evolve smaller and less frequent tusks. To take a random example: we seem to think that triceratops and t-rex lived together the same age - possibly in the same area (don't know - didn't check). But what if both animals only thrived in short boon-times when life was perfect for them? Maybe the triceratops population was huge during only 5,000 years when some conditions changed locally - maybe a river changed its course or a predator went extinct due to a disease, breaking the predator-prey link. And maybe this huge population growth only happened twice or three times, causing us to think it was actually common during all 3 million years that carbon dating tells us this animal existed.

This is a wonderful thread!! Love it! Everybody seems very involved in the discussion... But seriously now, GodsMouthpiece, if the picture in your first post and merely the anticipation of drawing slightly more complicated versions of a similar picture make you sound like you're on LSD, then for your own sake, stay away from fractals. Umm... no.

I know it's not a perfect analogy. A big difference is that the galaxy is held together in a spiral motion by its own gravity, and a local turbulence in a wind gust will instead dissipate quickly rather than converge or continuously rotate. Still, orbitals of electrons are more regular than the motion of molecules... so if you search for a way to continue the (only approximate, and probably erroneous) analogy, that could be it. [edited to fix typos]

I think you should see this galactic crash it as local turbulence. If the wind blows with 10 m/s, the net effect is that air moves in one direction. However, individual molecules move around at hundreds of m/s, and might very well be moving against the wind. Also, locally inside a wind gust, several m3 of air might just go the other way too. Turbulence creates vortices on all kinds of scales too. So, summed up, indivivual molecules might move in any direction. Small eddies might move clusters of molecules or small volumes in any direction, and larger bulks of air can also move in any direction. But the average is the direction of the wind. On an intergalactic scale, the atoms would be stars. Small eddies would perhaps be local clusters of hundreds/thousands of stars. They experience a form of randomness, although luckily they do not bounce into each other every fraction of a second, like air molecules. And entire galaxies can still move against the net flow. But on an even bigger scale, there is a definite expansion. You just need to look at the right scale, and that scale is big. Very big.

Hey, what's with the tone? I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings because I wrote about the red giant phase of our sun after you wrote it too... You get all the credits, don't worry. I even quoted you a little later. But in the future, I will make sure to never make this horrible mistake agian. Using the train metaphor again: if you can run fast enough, and jump off the train on the other end before it crashes, then there's no problem. It's quite likely that humanity would explore everything - it's in our nature. But if you take all of humanity and put us all into a giant spaceship to save us, then you head straight for the final destination with that, and you don't use that for exploration.

Is that about Ijsselmeer? (as I understand from the video you linked)Do they plan to go back to the times of zuiderzee? That would look like nature's revenge. No, they really wanted to flood some farmlands, and temporarily turn those into small lakes. In fact, they did deliberately flood a few hectares. The video I showed was only about letting water out, not in. I do not think that the IJsselmeer (lake), which was indeed previously the Zuiderzee (sea) will ever become salty again. Right now, the situation has stabilized, and it seems that there is no danger anymore. I guess that within a couple of weeks, those flooded lands will also be dry again... in time for the grazing season of spring/summer. The cows never noticed a thing.

If you see humanity as a species that is stuck on its little planet (also still in 3-5 billion years), we have other problems too. By that time, our sun will be running out of hydrogen, and will start to turn into a red giant. It's a process that would take millions of years: Gee, let's see what happened yesterday. Oh, it's just another day of apocalypse. Again. When the apocalypse happens every day for a million years, I bet it gets pretty boring. Our closest neighbor, the Centauri system, contains 3 stars at 4 lightyears. That hardly influences us. I don't think that if the number of stars would double, it would be a disaster. Obviously, if we'd be so unlucky that one comes really close, we're toast. The greatest danger is (I think) that we would be pulled out of our stable orbit around the sun. Galactic movement and human life times are not in the same scale, and shouldn't be used together when you're writing up some plans to save humanity. It sounds like you are suggesting that we are on a train that is gonna hit another train head on, and the smart thing to do is to jump onto the other train just before the collision? Why would we want to move in that way? I'd try to escape away from the biggest trouble.

The Taliban were in power of one of the world's poorest countries. So, in Afghanistan, yes, they had power. Anywhere else, they had nothing. Depends on how you look at it.

But it is true. They ARE all working together to stifle the assembly and free speech of those protesting wall street. That's the whole problem, and the topic of this thread! Except that it's not a conspiracy. It's how your government works. All Americans together elected the people that made these laws.

Correct. There are a number of such arms of the sea, where tides used to bring salt water in with high tide, and both riverwater and seawater would flow out at low tide. The Dutch have blocked off most of those sea arms in order to reduce the total length of coastline (so that we can spend more money on fewer kilometers of defense against the sea). In a few cases, we couldn't block a river altogether (water would obviously have to get out somewhere), so there we placed doors that open when the sea is lower than the river, and close when the sea gets so high that the current would reverse. Here's a movie (again in Dutch). The best explanation that anyone can understand is at 5.09. No need to speak Dutch for that. A similar system is used at the Afsluitdijk (there are two on that dike). There are still a few places where salt water is allowed in: Rotterdam harbor, for obvious reasons and the Oosterschelde, which does have a barrier, but that only closes in case of dangerously high water. Actually, we can also close off Rotterdam harbor now with two giant doors. Only the Schelde was kept completely open, because blocking off Antwerp harbor would have made the Belgians angry, and the water is too wide to place moving barriers... so that is still salty.

If your sugar is $0.378 per pound, then your enthanol will cost more than $0.756 per pound, because from each pound of sugar, you will only make 0.5 pound ethanol (that is the theoretical optimum... doing it at home, with amateur equipment will get worse results). 0.5 pound ethanol is equal to about 0.16 gallon ethanol, so your ethanol would be $4.5 per gallon. And this assumes an optimal ethanol production, no yeast growth. It also assumes that yeast and other nutrients are for free. It also does not take into account the (small) investment of the equipment. It does not take into account the energy needed for distillation. And as already mentioned, you will not even get fuel-grade ethanol. Instead, you only get 95% ethanol... and the last water will stay in. You can only get that out with absorption (or some dirty chemical tricks you do not want to try at home). There are home-solutions for absorption, but it will only increase the price even more. I think you are lucky to keep the actual price (including some investments, which have a payback time) below $10,00. This is why the big scale industry does not buy sugar in the supermarket. And this is why they do it at big scale. Bigger is cheaper. p.s. Please watch out with the distillation of ethanol! The vapors can burn or even explode when in contact with air.

That is salt water. I was speaking about fresh water. Me too. We pump fresh water out of the low lying land, and into the rivers and main canals, and finally out to sea. Obviously, you should pick it up before it mixes with seawater.

The best method is HPLC: High pressure liquid chromatography. It's also probably the most expensive, and you obviously need to have access to HPLC equipment. But if you do not have that available, you can do a reasonably quantitative test using o-toluidine. You still need a spectrophotometer, because it only gets qualitative if you can measure how much color you have in your sample... Google gave me some information (mostly about blood sugar level test, which uses the same o-toluidine), but I think you're gonna have to find an experimental description in a paper to get going. Hopefully these keywords help you a little. [edit] Much easier is to measure how much cellulose you have before and after the hydrolysis, and just assume that all cellulose that is gone became glucose. But that was not the question, still it may be a useful solution.

With 2 superconductors providing a magnetic field, the field will not be uniform along the width of the track, and your drivers will hate you for that. Also, I don't know if you have played with magnets a lot, but a magnetic field strength drops really quickly when you move away from the magnet. I don't think your drivers would be much further off the ground than on an air cushion. Obviously, you can pimp it by just putting a lot more superconductors and more power. More power will solve a lot of theoretical problems, and since you don't really need to solve the practical ones, you're safe. I don't think there are many publications comparing transportation on an air hockey table with superconducted maglev transport... so I cannot do statistics for you. LOL, can I congratulate you btw for even asking that? I mean, read the question again, and marvel at its originality: It's gonna keep me smiling for the rest of the day.

We're already bringing the water to our borders (with the sea). You're welcome to pick it up at the border. I don't think we'll charge you for it.

Yep. You are right, except that it's not a conspiracy, it's how a country works. Lawmakers make a law. The police uphold the law. Judges proscecute those who break the law. Companies optimize profits within the law. Lobbyists try to influence the law. And you get to vote about who makes the law. It's a big machine, and it continuously changes the laws. And there are millions of people working in it. But why do you keep calling this a conspiracy, just because we think some lawmakers are screwing it up really badly? If some people in Washington screw up, this happens: Lawmakers make a bad law. The police uphold the bad law. Judges proscecute those who break the bad law. Companies optimize profits within the bad law. And lobbyists still try to influence the law. And you still get to vote about who makes the law. That's not a conspiracy. That's just how it works. So do your democratic duty, and vote for someone who makes sense.

You are right, your friend is wrong. In an ideal case, the piston moves up and down, and the velocity will reach zero both at the top and bottom on every stroke. In reality, every thing is vibrating, and there will be a very tiny sideways motion to - so nothing really ever stops.

Oh, come on! Even I can answer that question, and I am not even American. In this case, They = people making that law. On a national level in the USA, that means congress. And yes, to use your words, it is indeed "convinient how all of these people are working together in unison toward the common goal", which is usually what political parties do. It gets a little more fuzzy when you include the lobbyists who influence everything that happens in Washington. But conspiracy? How can a law be a conspiracy anyway? You have elected these people. The American electorate has allowed for over a decade that the argument of terrorism is milked to pass more and more draconian laws... And with the next elections coming up, you are all gonna vote for the same two parties again, confirming they are doing a good job. (Not that you seem to have much choice, in my opinion, the US is, in a weird way, a two-party dictatorship). I'm guessing that next November approximately 80% of the voters will vote for either the republicans or democrats. How do you think the people in Washington explain that: they think that you all agree with most that happened in the last 12 years. And weirdly, reading this thread, quite a few of you actually do agree! (Or, just don't understand).

First of all, there's no real danger to people. The problems I describe below are minor. And the main problem is excess rainwater, which cannot drain away because we're below sea level. We've had a pretty wet december, and last week we've had strong winds and lots of rain on top of it. It's been wind force 8-9 for 3 days in a row now. Nothing really out of the ordinary, and the types of problems below are also something that will occur almost once every year in some form or another. But still, it's in the news all over the country, and I thought this would be entertaining to read. So, the situation is the following: we've had lots of rain. All that rainwater collects in the smallest canals, which form a grid in a certain area, called a polder. Then it must be pumped into the main canals by many relatively small pumps. And then this water must be pumped out to sea or a large lake (which itself drains into the sea) by other larger pumps. The problem now is that (1) we've had lots of rain, and (2) the water in the lake/sea is a little higher than normal because of a strong wind from the northwest, making it harder to pump water out. Also, the wind can actually also push the water up in a canal. And in addition, the land must be kept dry, so we can't stop pumping water into the canals - certainly not in the populated areas. So, because of all that, the canals into which the water is being pumped are getting so high in some areas that they can flood back into the land. Sounds a little weird to be at risk of flooding from a canal. But we are. 85 people have been evacuated (article in English). It's a small area, but frontpage news. The officials are considering to deliberately flood some parts of the country to temporarily store water. The risk of floods is so real that the largest still operational steam pumps in the world have been started up to remove the water from those canals in low lying parts. Here's a movie, with commentry in Dutch, but pictures speak for themselves. It runs on fuel oil, and can pump 4,500 m3/minute with a head of 1 meter (it pumps that water up by 1 meter). This pump is not in the same region as the highest risk of flooding... but it is getting pretty wet everywhere. In addition, a large inflatable rubber dam (balgstuw) has been activated to protect some other parts of the country. This site shows it still under construction, and here's a picture of the finished dam being tested. Strong winds push water and increase water levels on our biggest lake (not the sea), so this is not so much to get water our, as to prevent more water from coming in. Later this week, the rivers are expected to reach their peak flows, and high water is expected along the river dikes when the water from Germany comes down through the Netherlands on its way to sea. At the moment that's nothing to worry about though. The funny thing is that none of the waterworks mentioned here are on the coast. All the problems occur inland because of excess rainwater. I believe I read somewhere that the seawater is also +2.3 meters above average, but nobody seems worried about that.

But isn't a maglev restricted to its tracks? It would be pretty boring if the drivers were stuck to the tracks, and wouldn't have to steer? It would be something like this: <-- boring But since wheels are obviously very normal, I dismiss ordinary wheels too - I've understood we're looking for something extraordinarily cool and perhaps exotic. So, how about a pumped up version of hovercraft racing? <-- not boring I don't really care how the vehicles would hover - either some wonderful trick with magnets (make sure you don't flip over, this would suddenly attract the vehicle rather than repel it), or the hovercraft technology. If we don't care about the costs, it could be cool to have the track made of something like an air hockey table: <-- brilliant And steering can be done by one thruster at the back with thrust vectoring, effectively making it a very powerful version of the hovercraft racing I showed... Or simply put two thrusters on the sides of the vehicle, with separate controls, so that there is only a forward (no reverse), and the vehicle steers like a tank: go left by getting more power from the right thruster than from left, and right by getting more power from the left than from the right. Obviously, acceleration should be huge, but there are no laws of physics that prevent that. That should be fun on a good race track with tight corners and some straights.

Assuming that (1) the fossil sources of energy run out, (2) the biomass technologies all fail, (3) energy density in batteries make only few advances, or none at all and (4) a plentiful supply of electricity from something sustainable... then yes, this would be an alternative to electricity powered planes. But if you power this reaction with electricity from a fossil source, you will put more CO2 back into the atmosphere than you remove from it, resulting in a net increase.

I am not so familiar with internet in general. What's going on outside this forum?

Mahna mahnam! Is there a post limit to this thread, or shall I write my next post in 2.26 min, after this brilliant song is over?