Gilded

ROFL. I was waiting for new posts (as I have no life) and saw a new one in GD, more specifically by Phi for All and thought "Hey, I wonder if he's made fun of me again" and whoah, I must be a psychic. Or an easy target. Gilded was walking down the road when he noticed Phi for All whose head had gotten very small for some reason. Gilded walked up to Phi and asked "Hey, what has happened to your head?" Phi explained, "One day I was fishing on the pier when I got a huge bite... And, I said to myself, 'I've caught a whale!' But, when I reeled it up, to my surprise, it was a gorgeous mermaid! Well, she looked at me in tremendous fright and said she'd grant me one wish if I let her free..." "And?" Gilded asked. "Well, after some quick thought, I looked at her and said, 'How 'bout a little head?'"

Ahh, I've seen this somewhere. Great stuff. And to believe someone like YT posted it, I mean he hasn't made ANY chauvinistic remarks in the past.

Don't get discouraged by YT. He has probably built every weapon and gadget you can think of, and some you can't.

Lil Jon @ QM: Teacher: "...and in the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics, each system is associated with a complex Hilbert space such that each instantaneous state of the system is described by a unit vector in that space." Lil Jon: "WHAT?" T: "Instantaneous state of the system." LJ: "WHAT?" T: "Described by a unit vector in that space." LJ: "...WHAT!?" T: "IN THAT SPACE!" LJ: "OKAAAAY!" T: "Now, I trust all have done their assignments?" LJ: "WHAT?" T: "Assignments." LJ: "WHAT?" T:"YOUR ASSIGNMENT JON! HAVE YOU DONE IT?" LJ: "YEEEEAH!" LJ: "Oh, excuse me teacher, would you care to elaborate on the particle in a box problem if you'd be so kind?" T: "Well Jon, it's a rather simple problem and the solution can be obtained by simply using the Schrödinger equation." LJ: "Ah, quite right sir! How silly of me." T: "Well, it wasn't that hard now was it?" LJ: "WHAT!?" Note: You might want to try this during your next physics lecture/class.

Actually, this might offend someone suffering from multiple personality disorder. Or at least one of him... her...? them... what?

[fanboy] DON'T PANIC and always know where your towel is. [/fanboy]

I do a terrific L. Ron Hubbard. *AHEM* Buy my book, buy my book, BUY MY BOOK!

Considering I can rarely think of something intelligible to say that doesn't get deleted by YT or Sayo, I'm quite happy with my ~1400. (This statement does not imply that all of insane_alien's posts would be intelligible in the slightest sense of the word)

I like mostly because I haven't got the slightest what it's all about. It has something to do with Yukawa interaction between a scalar and a Majorana field.

In the picture he almost looks like he has something against the verdict.

Well yes, they are necessary in most (or all?) mainstream models and fit there quite well too, to explain stuff like Casimir effect etc. But you can't detect virtual particles directly, as they're more like particle-like abstractions, that show some similarity to "real particles". However, I recall there being some relativistic phenomena where virtual particles are observed as real (which of course contradicts what I just said... ?). ...I think I'll just go and sit in the corner and wait for swansont or Martin.

I'm 18, and speaking of alcohol in Finland we have this (unusual?) system that allows you to buy and drink <=22% alcohol when you're 18 but you'll have to wait till 20 until you can buy stronger beverages.

If you don't mind me asking, what's so bad about organic phosphates then? Except that ATP is a necessity for a mischievous thing called life (with a few exceptions probably).

Exactly this sort of behavior is what will make Finnish people think you have some sort of social disorder.

Hmmm... Could be fraction of mole? As in M/10 being 0.1 molar.

Some haiku advice for anyone who has to deal with elements from group 17: Don't breathe too much of them halogens as you might end up a bit dead

The problem is that you don't own enough. If you did, people would create accounts on SFN just to tell you that you really r0x0red at <insert game here> the previous night. Anyways, welcome to all new members!

Might be just a mix of red and white phosphorus?

Yes, you're definitely right about that.

The U-235 isotope article on Wikipedia displays the following article: Link I realized that being the skeptic I am, if a discovery of that magnitude was in the papers today I'd probably think to myself "Yeah right, some pseudoscientists wanting publicity again". I can only wonder what were people's reactions back then, with the war going on and all.

Well, we're hanging on to our ecological niche pretty hard right now so I'd imagine we'd really have to take a beating to be reduced to a state where we are in fact still alive but can't reclaim the niche. This scenario also calls for a species that's capable of taking our place rather quickly.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium) "The most stable isotope is 244Pu, with a half-life of about 80 million years, long enough to be found in extremely small quantities in nature." Uranium-235 for instance, has a half-life of about 700 million years and is somewhat scarce in nature (only around 0.7% of natural uranium is U-235). Compared to Pu-239's half-life of 24,110 years this pretty much explains why you can't dig your weapon plutonium from the ground.

Thanks for the link! Interesting... Sort of control over randomness if you will. It's starting to bother me for some bizarre reason that 1000 nuclei of very long half-lives could theoretically all decay in a very short period by chance, yet there's basically nothing we can do to "make it happen" at will. Damn quantum-mechanical systems.

"At present, missions like Soho, which has been in operation for 10 years, are unable to show whether a CME is heading for Earth or away from it." Hmm interesting, good thing it's going to change.

With all the Zeno effect discussion etc. going on, I began to think about control over particles in general. Inhibiting certain things from happening, trapping particles in magnetic traps and so on. More specifically, nuclear decay came to mind. The question is, are there conditions that can sort of trigger a radioactive decay or accelerate the decay rate or should I say increase the probability of decay in a period of time, or is the half-life of a particle constant in all circumstances?