Severian

I think Wikipedia is fine for rather basic things. So if you want to find out the date of the battle of Nasby, then wikipedia is quite good. It is not very good with advanced or controversial topics, mainly because either there is not an 'accepted' viewpoint or the topic is beyond the scope of the guy who wrote the article. So a lot of the particle physics info is just wrong, or perhaps 'misinterpreted' would be a better word. Also, ironically, it is a lot less speculative than scientific journals. Anything the wiki big-wigs don't like gets instantly deleted. This tends to be anything in variance with the traditional viewpoint, and the big-wigs tend not to know enough about the subject they review to tell a good new idea from a crackpot one.

The easiest way to do it is to think about energy. At launch the potential energy V=0, while the kinetic energy is [math]K = \frac{1}{2}mv^2=\frac{1}{2}m(v_x^2+v_y^2)[/math] (where [math]v_{x,y}[/math] are the horizontal and vertical components of the initial velocity.) At maximum height h, V=mgh and [math]K=\frac{1}{2}mv_x^2[/math] At half maximum height V=mgh/2 and [math]K=\frac{1}{2}m\left(\frac{3}{4}v\right)^2=\frac{9}{32}mv^2[/math] Conservation of energy tells us the sum of the two is constant, so [math]\frac{1}{2}m(v_x^2+v_y^2) = mgh + \frac{1}{2}mv_x^2 = \frac{1}{2}mgh + \frac{9}{32}m(v_x^2+v_y^{2})[/math] This has 2 equalities. Use the first to determine h: [math]mgh=\frac{1}{2}mv_y^2[/math] Stick this in the second: [math]\frac{1}{2}v_y^2 + \frac{1}{2}v_x^2 = \frac{1}{4}v_y^2 + \frac{9}{32}(v_x^2+v_y^{2}) \Rightarrow \frac{7}{32}v_x^2 = \frac{1}{32}v_y^{2}\Rightarrow \frac{v_y}{v_x} = \sqrt{7}[/math] and the angle is [math] \tan^{-1} \sqrt{7}[/math]

Would that be pheasant pluckers, or unpleasant ones?

gib65: In principle, yes. If you had a handful of dark matter and 'let go' then it would fall to the centre of the Earth. Fred56: Most new theories building on the Standard Model have a dark matter candidate. In the minimal supersymmetric standard model for example, the dark matter is a stable 'neutralino' - a spin-half particle which has only weak interactions and gravity. Models of clumping predict the dark matter to be about 100GeV/c2 in mass, so we might see it when we turn on the LHC. There are also direct searches going on, e.g. http://cdms.berkeley.edu/ and http://xenon.astro.columbia.edu/

Your sticky seems to miss the point of what went wrong last time.

Not necessarily. It could very well have a weak interaction, like neutrinos have.

I use emacs for pretty much all my editing.

I find that very hard to believe. You appeared to be making the point that religion is pointless because it does not lead to testable predictions. I was pointing out that most of mankind's activities are pointless by that criterion.

I'm curious. How many alternate models and theories in science have you come up with or scientifically explored? Surely, by your own argument, everything you say on these fora are a waste of time and space?

So what are you advocating? Concentration camps perhaps? Or maybe just 're-education centres'?

Who gives a shit what they thought? They didn't even regard the right to live wihtout slavery as a "right".

I must admit, I am something of a fan of the notion that the universe is not expanding at all, but that the strengths of the interactions are changing. Since our distance scales are all measured by the strengths of interactions, this would have the identical observable effect as an expansion.

I thought it was spelled 'adsorption' just like it is 'absorption' rather than 'absorbtion'. No? (Or is this another Americanism?)

I won't watch it because, quite frankly I don't give a ****.

But that is equally ridiculous. I presume these instances were thrown out of court, but I do think that the authorities who made the charge should be punished for such blatant misuse.

No. Torturing an innocent would be morally wrong under all circumstances. Note that that doesn't mean I wouldn't do it. But I think it is important that we realise that some of the things we feel forced to do in special circumstances are indeed immoral.

That seems very artificial though. They are including things like replying to an email and including the original email in your reply (to the tune of $150,000 a pop). I don't see how sending material back to the original sender can in any way be regarded as infringement of copyright. Most of the examples are also similarly ludicrous, such as taking a photograph for private use where a painting can be seen in the background. Argeing that things like that are copyright infringement is like charging someone for assault if they give you a hug or a handshake.

Hmmm. I had Pangloss as a vaguely Woody Allen-like guy. Maybe a little taller.

Speak for yourself.

True: 3 False: 9 ?: 1, 2, 4 (but this one is a bit crap), 5, 6, 7, 8, 10

Do I just not have a sense of humour, or was that just not funny?

It depends on where the supernova or GRB is. We are hit by light from supernovae and GRBs frequently but they are so far away that there is no problem.

We really need a term for people who are not strong atheists (i.e. weak atheists and theists), so that we can make our crass generalizations more efficient. Any ideas?

The religious motivation behind the formation of stars is that it is God's will. That simple! Science is not asking why, it is asking how. But we are not just talking about science. I have clearly explained that science only asks how questions, so if you make statements only "in the context of science" then you are not dealing with all the questions. Now, it is your right to hold the opinion that the question 'why' is not important (since it cannot be scientifically answered) and can thus be ignored, but that is your own (and Dawkins') personal bias.

I think the "cliche" is entirely correct and Dawkins is talking out of his arse again. "How" is concerned with the mechanism with which something happens, whereas "why" is concerned with the motivation. The "cliche" is pointing out that science is not equipped to answer some questions because it can only ultimately answer "how". I would dispute Glider's answer to the second question. "Because some perturbation in a previously stable gravitational field caused hydrogen to begin to coalesce ..." is actually an answer to the "how" question, not why. And of course, Dawkins is unable to recognise as relevant anything which is not describable or answerable by science and therefore claims that why questions are meaningless