Thales

Bush ia a war-mongerer. He is also a redneck. He is also stupid. He is also a dangerous man to be leading the 'free' world in dangerous times. He does not appear to have extensive knowledge of history, or at least his actions seem to lead me to that conclusion. He, with his Dad and Brother, helped rigged the last election. He is very right wing. He helps his rich mates and doesn't give a stuff about the poor or the environment. He has no respect for other religions or political doctrines. He believes you can forcefully instill democracy in other countries via violence. He rarily finishes what he starts. He screwed my counrty with a bodgy FTA. He has done next to nothing for the general scientific community. He operates on the politics of fear. He has made the terrorist threat worldwide worse, not better. He lets his cronies run the show. He has distanced the American population from the rest of the world by his actions. and worst of all; He has an insane ability to make half of your counrty think that he is a good leader.

I don't but I have another question that relates to this; Is it true that when milk is added to black tea it severly reduces the amount of antioxidants present?

You need to reread my posts. I said it has not been accurately measured. The hubble constant is the expansion rate. You have been claiming it was c and I have been trying, patiently, to illude to the fact that the ball park figure is sub c. My arguements against your 'prediction' hold regardless of the choice of the expansion being c or above. I am aware you are presenting another theory, I am afterall a working scientist. If you reread, objectively, the critiques of your theory you should be aware that you have failed to adress most of them. Arguing any futher to save face on this topic will not gain you much standing in the eyes of others. It is those who can admit when they are wrong, or at least not entirely correct, that learn much faster and are (by logical extension) much more intellegent in my eyes. As I said before, you might be onto something. But you have not explained or proven anything other than a simple quantative guess. There is rigourous scienctific research in this field and to presume that your theory is undefeatable is an insult to the many researchers trying to prove their theories relating to this matter. You can quote me and others all you like but the context in which I made them holds and if you understand the overall jist of what it is I am trying to say to you, you will progress more than if you simply disbelieve based on your 'hunches'.

If quantum mechanics is correct and the universe does contain a truly fundamental 'bit' of information then yes, the universe can be desribed as a number. A very large number could describe the universe as it stands at some snapshot in time. However, such is the case with any raw binary, its relevence is limited to the mathematics you choose to interpret it with. As severian rightly points our, the mathematics we use are chosen for us by the laws of physics. So while it would be useful to know the universes overall state at any point in time without solid physical principles to meaningfully relate and interpret the data it becomes largely useless. One of the finer points of this method is related to information/matter/energy conservation. If we know how much of each is floating around out there it would help alot with our theorising. The problem is of course, the universe is a really big place and counting all those digits may take longer than the age of the universe itself.

Aerospace engineering is mainly confined to vehicles in our atmosphere. Astonautical, I would assume, is related to the construction and functioning of vehicles designed for space. Engineering is based on scientific concepts(as indeed everything is) but due to its close relationship with first principles it is sometimes refered to as 'applied science'. I used to study engineering but I got frustrated because it functions mainly along the line of figuring out the semantics. Most of the design work is in someone elses hands, they just give you the schematics and you crunch the numbers and tell them whether its going to work or not. There are fields of engineering where this is not always the case, the one discussed here is a case in point. However I still feel like engineering does not have as much freedom of thought involved as theoretical physics and the like. Just my opinion by the way.

Correct. Zooming in changes the resolution of the image but not the time at which the photons hit the instrument. To see it from a different time you would have to travel some cosmically relevent distance (ie light years) towards or away from the object. There is a theory in circulation that the overall shape of the universe is a 3-sphere. Light that has left the earth travels outward in all directions and since the universe is wrapped in on itself this light can take a multitude of different paths around the sphere but could, hypothetically, reach us again billions of years from the future. The main problem I see with this theory is the universe may be so finely balanced that in this regard it ends before light can traverse the cosmological sphere.

The hubble constant has not been accurately measured, anyone claiming otherwise is a lying, or at best embellishing the truth. Have you actually stopped to think about the consequences of a universe that expands faster than the speed of light. Take the WMAP data for instance, how could the background temperature of the universe be so homogenous if the phonons from one section of sky could not 'communicate' their temperature to other regions. How could light, infact, traverse the distances between galaxies if the galaxies are receding at a rate faster than that at which light travels. There are holes in you arguement my friend. It is mainly based around conjecture and a multitude of errorneous assumptions. That and the very concept of the speed of time is not only physically insignificant but quantative nonsense. I have studied long and hard in the areas of astrophysics and cosmology so please don't presume that such a subjective based arguement, such as yours holds any weight with me or in fact the larger scientific community. You may well be onto something, some concept that is the seed for a great discovery. However please respect those superiors in your field when they try to point out the errors in your reasoning. Intellectual arrogance breeds ignorance and if you don't listen to people, the tried and tested methods of peer review, about which science revolves, breaks down. Then you are left with a jilted view of physical reality and you will lose respect from your collegues. I hope I don't sound overly harsh in this post as tone is impossible to type. I am telling you this in the hope it will make you a better scientist and thus you can aid more effectively to the wealth of human knowledge and understanding.

Gravity causes the accumulated matter to form a spherical shape because as the planet forms (from the inside out) matter tries to occupy the lowest gravitational energy state, that of resting on the matter below it. Protrusions away from the spherical surface will 'slip' towards the center and thus matter is distributed evenly along the surface of the sphere.

The popping in your knuckles is caused by air bubbles being released from the 'cushy' thick gel like substance that pads your joints and stops the bones rubbing together. The more you crack your knuckles the more this gel deteriates and can lead to an early onset of athritis in people who are more suseptable. The bubbles build up as a result of joint movement so the longer between cracks the louder the noise(generally speaking). You test the theory by wiggling your fingers for a few minutes then crack your knuckles. Other joints in your body can crack for similar reasons although in the case of your shoulders and back it can be more a result of manipulating your bones into reallignment with the surrounding tissue/tendons. As a side note, I don't want to offend any chiropracters we may have here but I advise anyone with back and neck problems to see an osteopath rather than a chiropracter. Studies have shown forceful manipulation of the spinal cord may temporarily alieviate pain and discomfort but does not put you in good sted as your body ages. Osteopaths are more likely to give you gentle repeatative exercises that will realign you spinal column much more naturally.

Here is an excellent compendium of links that extrapolate the mathematics of special relativity to create very interesting visualisations of the bizarre effects of travelling near the speed of light. http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/anima/rfslink.htm

Why do people keep saying that the universe expands at c. It doesn't. We know the expansion rate and it is very much below c.

Not exactly. We know what black holes are and we know they exist we just aren't sure of the details of how they operate.

My hypothesis the question of matter falling into black holes is centered around the concept of tidal forces reducing the matter to constituant atoms once passing the event horizon. These individual particles will be accelerated very rapidly but the black holes radius dictates a finite amount of velocity that can be obtained. Seeing as my models of black holes omit a singularity in the traditional sense, the matter can over shoot the central region by some small amount but will eventually settle in its exotic form in the sentral region. The error in your assumptions stems from the thinking that because light cannot escape from inside the black hole that matter falling in must be accelerated to c when coming from outside the hole.

There is no such thing as rigidity in special relativity. As you move the point across the sky the photon beam will bend slightly as each successive photon will be ejected on a different trajectory. The same thing happens with solid objects. If you have a really long pole, for instance, and you try to use it to send messages faster than light by pushing at one end the pressure wave, placed on particles in the atomic lattice, is restriced to the speed of sound in the material. This is a similar concept to what I think your trying to get at here.

No. QM is incomplete. Just because we see contradictions today, it does not mean that future technology and intuitive reasoning cannot find a way to get around these. If we had some means of optically resolving exactly what was happening in the quantum realm we may indeed find that it is simpler than we currently think. We may be taking a long and convoluted path that helps us reach the eventual simple conclusions I envisage but in the end our models will always be just that, models. Summing the universe up in one simple theory may be possible but the limits set on our intellectual capacity may provide nature with a way to outsmart us.

I think we should draw names out of a hat. That way the probablity of someone dumber than bush getting elected is severly reduced If they suck then they should be manditorially assinated, it would be good motivation not to stuff up. Terms should last a week. It would be a good way to curb popultion growth also. The abundance of seriousness in this post should be taken into account!

I read recently that a study involving glial cells and there apparent role in intellect, more specifically in higher order functions from imagination to creating causal links between seemingly unrelated ideas. I think the basic premise was the higher the concentration of these cells in the cerebral cortex the more 'intelligent' the person was. As I have not studied psychology extensively the reason this discovery(if it turns out to be true) took so long to figure out astounds me. When I did study psychology in my first year at university I remember being told the role of these cells was to hold in place or 'glue' active neurons in the brain. But such a complex looking cells that interlinks neurons and 'hold' them along their axon(not connected to the synapses) must still have a mechanism of at least detecting the change in electrical potential as the neuron is 'fired' and if these glial cells are indeed interlinked among themselves, may form an as yet unknown/thought about sub-network(that has not yet been extensively studied) which may explain why we have so much difficulty in describing the processes by which consciousness arises. The evidence for the study came from the sacreligious autopsy of Einsteins brain which was then compared with 'controls' who had died more recently. While I am aware of the abundant extraneous variables in the study, the very fact that these previously simplistic cells, may play an as yet not understood role in coordinating brain activity, is surely cause for concern/excitement. I might go and see if I can get me some glail cells implanted to help boost my brain functions some more

The experiment was originally conducted on birds i believe. They gave the bird the lenses and watched as they underwent an extended period of disorientation before their brains finally figured out how to 'flip' the image in their head and thus compensate for the upside down(or right way up on the retina) vision. When the glasses were removed the birds experienced similar difficulties but eventually adapted again. There is a theory that this happens in young babies and some doctors even warn agains confusing the process by looking over your babies head (so your upside down) regularly as this is thought to confuse the process of stabilising the babies vision. So in theory we are actually looking at the world upside down in the first place as would be expected from the raw nueral data recived by the brain from the optical nerve.

No offense but that is a very naive attitude that underscores the lack of understanding among most people about the symboytic relationship man has with nature. Nature has regenerative properties and managed carefully can prosper, whilst yielding functional if not abundant resources for us to utilise. The problem centrally revolves around the ease of slash and burn tactics (along with their short term rewards) when weighed up against a more long term considered approach, that places the environment in which we live on the same level as our own immediate prosperity. If you slash and burn the last forest on earth, you are effectively killing yourself as the trees produce the oxygen you breathe. If you erradicate biodiversity you sow the seeds for man's downfall as the entire food chain implodes. It seems to me that education is needed more than anything else, as our much more primitive anscestors seem to have a much more functional and harmonious relationship with the world in which they lived, than the general urban populus, which accounts for the largest proportion of resource wastage. Biology on this planet is pretty durable and can (and has) fight back from the brink again and again. However the more complex the organism, the more it relies on other organisms survival and the less easily it can itself adapt to a rapidly changing enviroment. The moral of this story is that without caring for nature we(or more likely our descendants) stand little chance in the polluted, deforested and all round dirty world we are passing on to them. The opinion expressed above about the aparrent 'hopelessness' of the situation frightens me, as it is this kind of naivity all to often used as the central crux against a fundamental shift in humans mentality when dealing with the environment. Negativity and doubt are not the way forward. Neither is denying the existance of the problem or dismissing it as 'human nature'. We control our future, nothing else so its about time we grabbed the reigns and steered it toward a better world.

When setting up the balls before a break in a typical game of pool, the 'J' arrangement of the balls is preffered by most players. I use it operating under the assumption that it will give the most even distribution of red/yellow(stripe/dot) balls. Is there anyway to mathematically verify this if so how would one approach such a problem. I assume there will be a fair amount of probablitistic anaylsis but I cannot think for the life of me how such a problem should be undertaken. Is there a more logically sound intial layout that will insure a more even distribution. Any thoughts?

Its a very relivant point that you make. The ideas that exist in theory also have a distinct effect of biasing detection equipment. Take photons for instance. If you look for waves, you see waves however if you calibrate the equipment to see particles, you see particles. To me this is one of the most stark examples of how technology and the means by which we observe the directly unobservable influences how and what we actually observe(or infer to be more correct). As technology improves the resolution at which we see the world improves and influences theory. The irony in the situation is that new technologies arise via new theories. A self supporting cycle that needs only the input of a few inspired thinkers to get us, well, here where we are today. The microscope and telescope are other examples. Its is also a steady increase(that has made marked acceleration in the last century) which usually dictates(with a few obvious exceptions) that statling new and innovative theories, that require technology much beyond us currently to prove, are few and far between. That said our brain is the best technology we will ever have and shouldn't be underestimated!

If your conducting this experiment at high school chances are your physics departmetn will probably have a bell jar and vacuum pump. There is always the issue of how long you want to run it for though unfortunately. However I think if you even get half of this completed you'll be staring down the barrel of a pretty kick ass grade either way.

Covalent bonding is the 'sharing' of valence(outer shell) electrons between atoms to form a molecule. Ionic bonding is a bond formed between to ionised(positive and negative) atoms. I think covalent is much stronger although weak ionic bonds can form between dipoles(atoms that are not fully ionised). Can someone verify this last point for me because my chemistry is a bit dismal at times.

Perhaps making some sort of miniture self sustaining bio-dome to demostrate the feasability of independent moon/mars colonies. Its a pretty hot topic at the moment and one that can be explored on many levels, I'm sure which ever one you attempt it on the assesser(if there isn't one thats you) will be impressed. Stuff to think about; -Stable, regenerative atmosphere -Food production and water recycling -Functional living/research quarters -Realistic construction materials -Expansionist capability -Power production You can go on an on. A very interesting space project you can conduct at home. You can even set up a vacuum in a chamber to place the model in if you really want to impress.

Does anyone suppose there is an obvious/practical solution to the problem though. Perhaps TV could play a role in trying to inform and educate the masses in broader more interesting terms. I guess thats the life of an academic though, frustrated by the overwhelming apathy towards knowledge yet satisfied and all to aware thats what seperates us from the crowd.