Taya!

Sourced from "The Australian" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ AFTER nearly 30 years of arguing that a black hole gobbles everything within it - including traces of its own existence - physicist Stephen Hawking has done an intellectual backflip. Next week at a conference in Dublin, the wheelchair-bound Oxford University academic will recant his controversial "black-hole paradox". It's an idea he first proposed in 1976 and involves the complicated physics of black holes, or dense objects such as what remains when some stars run out of fuel and collapse under their own weight. Leading cosmologist Paul Davies, of Macquarie University's Australian Centre for Astrobiology, heard rumours earlier this year about Dr Hawking's intellectual conversion. "Evidently, something has caused him to change his mind, but he's being very coy about what it is," Professor Davies said yesterday. Even the organisers of the 17th International Conference on General Relativity know little of what the great thinker will say or why he's saying it. "He sent a note saying, 'I have solved the black hole information paradox and I want to talk about it'," said Curt Cutler, chairman of the conference scientific committee. Dr Hawking's paradox begins with the notion that the gravitational pull of black holes is so great nothing escapes from them. Nothing, that is, except "Hawking radiation", the energy emitted by the gravitational field around a black hole. The radiation "erases" information about matter inside the black hole, turning it into the cosmological equivalent of "white noise", Professor Davies said. When the hole vanishes, he explained, so does the information, violating the laws of quantum physics which say that the information can never be destroyed. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Obviously, we live our daily lives by the laws of Quantum Mechanics, it would be very inconvenient to have to throw them out... What is your opinion and what do you think he'll come out with in a few weeks?

I once read a report detailing how the use of mud slicks allows heavy objects to be transported a great distance with little effort. 4 old men pushed a block of stone 100 yards with little exerstion by use of this method, from memory.

Me too, i wouldnt want to die slowly in agony, or make my family watch me waste away. The idea of dying quietly in a recognisable state is much more appealing.

I voted no because at the moment to get a clone of your pet you would have to watch 10 or so die, or be born hediously deformed.

In some conditions the hot water will freeze first, in some conditions the cold. There are many reasons why, for example. Hot water will evaporate much faster than cold, this means that there is less water in the cup to freeze, which speeds up the freezing. Secondly, evaporation takes up energy, energy which comes from the hot water. As the energy is being lost due to evaporation, the water left behind is cooling. hope that helps...

I still show up at highschool in the hope that Mr Keating from "dead poets society" or someone similar will oneday walk into the class and actually remind me why i used to respect teachers so much.

Well anyone can have an abnormal furby... simply rotating a couple of the cams 90 degrees produces some amusing effects, mine now sleeps with its eyes open and its tongue hanging out

Hey everyone this is my first post, thought id throw in something fun for my first one so heres one of my photo threads ive put on other boards In a moment of mental abstraction this morning i decided to put the batteries back into my furby to see if it would still remember its mum. It was alright for about 10 minutes, singing, laughing and being genuinely annoying, nothing unusual there. Untill it seized up and started to BUZZ extremely loudly. I remembered a website i once saw, detailing how to disembowel your furby and have a look how it works, so i resolved to do so. Here is a step by step guide showing how i messed with my favourite electronic mental patient. step 1. Take one last look at your furby, perhaps take a picture to remember the good times... step 2. Assemble your tools... Step 4. Disconnect the furby's ears from the little plastic spears which allow them to move... ..... Taking care not to rip off its ear bones, undo the cable tie at the bottom of the patient and draw the "skin" over its face. Undo the screws holding its face on, and completely remove the skin. undo all the screws holding its skeleton on, and launch into a diagnosis. Cause of death: It turns out my furby was a generation 1 furby (ie one of the first furbys) Everything in there is of the lowest quality, which explains why mine packed it in so early in its young life. The CPU is a huge blob, which makes me hacking it quite out of the question, although with enough time and knowhow im sure it could be done... The cams are made of bodgy plastic, when i got inside they were all in invalid positions which explains why my furby was paralised. Furbys cant hear. Even though there's a microphone, all they can do is react to loud noises, they actually cant discern between noises of any sort. My furby still works, i put everything back in place, save the skeleton and the skin. So it can still sing and snore, it just looks like a complete loser.