Gilded

There's not much going on in the flame itself, chemically that is. Sure, there's small amount of volatiles but if you add pure oxygen to a "separated" flame anything oxidizable would be gone in an instant. And if by frozen oxygen you mean oxygen that's been frozen solid there's no way a normal burning reaction could take place at those temperatures. I'm not exactly sure what sort of exact scenario you have in mind.

You're looking at this the wrong way. A flame isn't something that "needs" certain things such as heat, it's just a product of a chemical reaction, and is hot/energetic by definition, as mentioned by Edtharan. In the rubbing sticks scenario the chemical reaction in the fuel keeps going once you've added a required amount of energy to system (with the sticks), and this reaction is what produces the hot gases that are seen as a flame.

There isn't that much of a chemical reaction going on in the flame itself, it's just gas molecules that are hot enough to emit photons in the visible spectrum. The flame doesn't really produce heat to begin with, it's the chemical reaction in the fuel that does. If it was possible to somehow flash freeze a flame I'd imagine it would turn into a powder of various crystallized chemicals. If you flash freeze the fuel the flame will quickly disappear (disappearing meaning that it disperses, cools and stops glowing), for the simple reason that the chemical reaction that produces the flame (the hot gas mixture) has stopped.

Anyone play any RTS games btw? I've been playing DoW quite a bit recently (got all expansions) and now I'm just waiting for DoW2 so that they can rob me of my money again. Also, on the MMO front I've been playing Age of Conan. Too bad the graphics card fried on my newer computer so I haven't gotten the chance to get back to it. It's quite fun though.

Say goodbye to creationists and embrace the crackpots.

I do! I was away for quite a long while too, I suppose sometimes it's healthy to take a break. Anyway, welcome back!

Interestingly enough, the first search result is this thread.

It's difficult for me to think what I'd "want" to do as just a consciousness that could nevertheless observe the universe somehow. Mainly because curiosity or any interest in basically anything whatsoever is so strictly an evolutionary trait that's apparently just derived from our brain. Of course, as a human I sort of wish that curiosity would be some sort of "cosmic instinct" that any conscious being possesses. Agh, this is starting to make my head hurt.

So, 2007-2008 has been a reasonably fruitful period in the category of awesome PC and console games, so I thought I'd make a thread about it. Played any recent games? Waiting for any? I think the two best games last year were BioShock and Mass Effect, truly great gameplay, graphics and plot in both cases. Crysis wasn't bad either. Mass Effect was recently ported to PC and I finished it a while back and it was better than I expected (and had many of the elements that made Star Control 2 so enjoyable, for example well-written characters, exciting exploration and hot sex with blue aliens), but the optional part of the game was missing a bit of diversity that would've brought it a few steps closer to perfection. Still, I recommend both BioShock and Mass Effect for anyone who owns an Xbox 360 or a reasonably new PC. And on the topic of upcoming games, I'm sort of expecting Fallout 3 but as a sworn Fallout 2 fanboy I'm a bit afraid it might not have the same kind of "charm" and gameplay that made the first two games so great.

People are confusing the constant c with the "other" speed of light again. Sometimes I think it would be less of a hassle if c was referred to as "photonspeed" or something. As mentioned photons travel at c, where as light as a phenomenon, a "wavefront" if you will, can travel slower as the individual photons get absorbed and re-emitted. To actually add something rather than just repeat what has already been said, photons are indeed affected by gravity but it doesn't accelerate or slow them down.

Protists or their remains on Mars for example would of course help to understand the conditions required for life to form (and it would be interesting to see if they're structurally similar to their Earth counterparts) and would be quite a discovery indeed, no doubt about that, but the discovery of life that doesn't base on familiar carbon biochemistry would be a tremendously more significant discovery as far as astrobiology goes, and at least more surprising. And as we go further down on the "that's freaking amazing" scale, Something like this would be completely mindboggling.

What do you call the med student that graduates at the bottom of his class? -A doctor. Teachers are humans too, I presume. Though I'm not sure if my teachers have ever said anything completely ridiculous, just some slight inaccuracies which I quickly pointed out, in chemistry at least.

I use Reason too. However one of its problems is that it doesn't have VST support, which makes it a bit less flexible than software like Cubase. And the mastering and mixing capabilities are somewhat more limited. I also use FL Studio and Acid Pro though, so it doesn't matter that much.

"Astronomers caution that the missing baryonic matter is not to be confused with 'dark matter,' a mysterious and exotic form of matter that is only detected via its gravitational pull." Hmm, I thought dark matter was simply a term used to refer to all matter that's "invisible" in the EM spectrum that could consist of any combination of particles (not excluding baryons), and thus wouldn't be completely "exotic" per se.

How powerful are those those laser sight modules anyway, like 5mW or something? I'd say it's completely safe (especially seeing how many people use laser sights + scopes without any problems). I'm quite sure your sources meant the focusing of the actual direct beam itself.

You know, I used to feel that way a few years back too. I sort of practiced playing guitar for a very brief while but it didn't catch on. I did enjoy composing music and experimenting with different sounds though, and eventually got a midi keyboard which is a nifty thing to have if you're composing a lot electronically, regardless of piano/keyboards experience. Eventually I learned some basic scales and chord progressions sort of on the side and it just went on from there. Recently I even got myself a Korg X50 synthesizer and now I'm thinking of picking up the guitar again. I'm not too talented as far as technique goes but during the last few years I've learned a lot about music and sounds in general.

Bump. Also, here's my sort-of-recent dark ambient/drone doom project "Nescient", although whether it can be considered music is questionable.

It's very useful (and sort of fun) to remember the most common ones, as pointed out multiple times already. Not only by name but by structure too, helps if you need to predict properties of the compounds that they are a part of.

My view of this is pretty much the same as Phi's. I've come to think it's really quite impossible to even remotely grasp any form of existence or consciousness that might follow death. More and more of our "experience of reality" is being attributed to chemical reactions. Emotions, memories, all senses... and suddenly you're stripped of it all. It's quite confusing to even think about it.

I wouldn't say hermaphroditic species are uncommon in nature in general, but they are indeed uncommon in vertebrates. One reason why hermaphroditism is favorable with organisms such as gastropods is that it takes them quite a deal of effort to seek out any partners. Imagine a snail traveling for days, reaching another snail only to discover that they are unable to mate. And obviously sequential hermaphroditism would be quite a bit more difficult for a more complex vertebrate than it is for, let's say, a clownfish. As to why vertebrates don't usually have both sets of simultaneously functional reproductive organs I'm not sure if there's a widely accepted, definitive answer among evolutionary biologists. One possible reason has to do with the mate-searching efficiency I mentioned earlier; when partners are easy to come by it seems to be ultimately favorable that a part of the species uses minimal resources searching and can actually just wait for suitable partners to find them. It's all about survival and efficiency.

- Metal in general - Various genres of electronic music; DnB, house, trance, chiptunes... - Ambient, dark ambient - Drone doom ... Recently I have really enjoyed spacesynth, especially songs with some very 80s sounds with something new added. for example, awesome stuff.

Personally, I'm not very bothered by MOND and apparently a majority of the scientific community isn't either. It's one of those not-completely-crackpot, non-mainstream theories for unexplained phenomena. As do many other theories of that kind, it falls a bit short in areas more widely accepted theories do not.

Hmm got to contact my ISP then. I was kind of wondering if it was something related as most service providers really don't seem to have better things to do than inconvenience or just plain annoy their customers to amuse themselves.

In Soviet Russia, phrase catches you!

I've probably posted this before in some thread but the old link might be down anyway. From 2005 I think. Hanging out with wax-Arnold at Madame Tussauds.