Gilded

Speaking of seeing and taking quantum phenomena into account, are we nearing the scale in consumer electronics such as PCs where you can no longer ignore the Casimir effect in the design?

Now there's an interesting effect. So basically if you had a box (well, an electromagnetic trap sort of box) of very unstable particles that were under frequent measuring, the decay rate suddenly increase when the measuring stops... right?

ecoli might be on to something. As everyone knows, global warming is inversely proportional to the amount of pirates. Thus a high concentration of pirates in one place might actually overcome the warming in said area, while other areas suffer from a deprivation of these jolly swashbuckling and rum drinking chaps.

Gilded would like to note that just about any avatar related to destruction of great magnitude is awesome and will make everyone think you're cool.

We shouldn't jump into conclusions here. Of course, that merely means that said builders and plumbers are just particularly happy, rather than homosexual. For instance, wouldn't you prefer a happily whistling roofer instead of one that says "sod off" when you bring him some lemonade? This is truly a remarkable marketing idea.

woelen, try http://www.smart-elements.com for NdFeB-magnets, mine are great. Their pyrolytic graphite levitates pretty nicely on the magnets too.

Tesla coils generate high voltage which is discharged through air, or through an innocent bystander. I don't recall them generating particularly strong magnetic fields though. Railguns base on the Lorentz force. ( See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun ) A particularly impressive medium-budget railgun can be seen at http://www.powerlabs.org/railgun2.htm

I know there has been a thread on the speed of gravity, this isn't only about it. I just want to know if any of the current mainstream models of gravity predicts a phenomenon like I described, and if it has been observed. Wikipedia doesn't help much here.

For some reason this reminds me of Lovecraftian mythology where beings from distant worlds have lived in the Antarctic etc. way before man even came down from the tree. And before dinosaurs for that matter. However I wouldn't recommend digging around Antarctic if you're allergic to shoggoths. On a more serious note, if there was a species that fits your description it must have been pretty damn unlucky and secluded (as we haven't found any proof of such yet, as bascule said).

I never really cared much for rice but that's freaking awesome

First of all, does anyone have any recent information about measurements of the speed of gravity? I know of some that have been made by observing planets etc. and most results imply that the gravity propagates somewhere around c. And also, could it be thought that if gravitational interaction is caused by exchange of gravitons, that each graviton that arrives at a particle sort of pulls it to the opposite direction of it's velocity vector? If so, would an object traveling towards another object at the speed of gravity cause itself to receive more gravitons in a given period thereby experiencing heavier gravity than normally, and forming a front of gravitons that the other object at some point will observe as a sudden impulse?

So, a busy night at SFN again. Or morning if you live in the deep chasms of the Pacific Ocean, I heard Mokele sometimes takes a nap there after destroying a coastal city or two. So anyhow, I see Phi for All is around again, pretty much to the annoyance of many. But man, what a party he had last Friday! I mean, it was a blast and I didn't even have to bring my explosives. There was this fun occasion where I was standing on the porch when I heard the phone ringing. I answered and heard "Hi, it's your beloved wife." She asked me if she should buy some new gold jewelry. I said it was OK, and told her that she'd better make it at least $50 000 worth. She was a bit surprised and then asked if she could have the permission to move to Mexico with her secret lover. I laughed and told her that, sure, it's fine and that she should go and have the time of her life. Later I walked up to Phi and told him his new cell phone is very nice and all but he shouldn't leave it on the porch like that in the future.

Having been on YTMND more than enough I think I've had my share of "lol, Jesus" and Tiny Tim thank you very much.

They don't? At least there's iron and nickel carbonates, did you have any more particular metals in mind? Quite a few transition metals (in the loosely defined sense) also exist in oxidation states suitable for carbonate formation. Edit: Damn, have to learn to write faster, woelen beat me to it. Edit2: "However, Cr2S3 can be made from the finely powdered elements." And so can aluminum sulfide, actually, I've tried it myself. Quite a violent reaction too.

If I ever come by a flux capacitor I'll go and punch Democritus and a few other guys for coming up with the idea of atoms in the first place.

If I remember correctly QM states a certain amount of energy associated with "each point of space". However, this would lead to having an infinite amount of energy within any volume and I don't think it's generally thought to be infinite, just damn big. Perhaps someone else knows better.

Reptiles are probably awe-struck every time they see him, not being able to grow facial hair themselves and all. Welcome back!

Mostly, uranium you see on sale is depleted uranium (high 238 content). Natural uranium contains about 0.7% of the fissile type (which is isotope 235). Depleted contains even less. I must, however, admit I've seen small fuel grade uranium pellets on sale. These have a U-235 content of somewhere under 20%. Now, let's say someone would get hold of huge amounts of slightly enriched uranium. It would still need isotope separation to enrich it to weapons grade (about 85% or more), which is a process so difficult and expensive that even some small nations can't probably afford it. And the critical mass for uranium-235 is about 50kg so you need quite a bit of it too. I'm more concerned about terrorists getting hold of plutonium-239, which has a lower critical mass and is perhaps easier to use in an "improvised" nuclear device. Summary: It is more likely that terrorists will get directly hold of a nuclear weapon than build one themselves.

Reminds me of the possibilities featured in Rowan Atkinson's "Invisible Man" sketch.

Glad I could help! I have myself done lots of independent study (which sometimes in my opinion is the best way to learn) on radioactivity and related subjects, before I even had the first lessons of it in school. It also lead to acquiring some uranium ore and a tritium key chain (lots of beta minus going on in there), which some people have been suspicious about.

By the way my order arrived today (or yesterday actually, for GMT +2), electric matches and fuse and everything, no hassle. Great products, great service.

As you probably know, a neutron contains two down quarks and one up quark. Simply put for the beta decay, when one down quark is turned into an up quark, the neutron "loses" a -1/3 charge and "gains" a +2/3, in total increasing it's charge by 1. Edit: If you want to know about all the more specific stuff with the W-bosons and antineutrinos and what not I recommend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_decay

DragonForce - Fury of the Storm Rammstein - Benzin Bond - Explosive

Wow, decent indeed. And close too. Too bad they sell "most of the chemicals only to companies". I wonder if a company is required for some sulfuric acid.

^the Lord of R'lyeh is onto something indeed. There have been several online games where merely a bug has caused the exploit (i.e. Diablo, Diablo 2), no external programs needed. Edit: I'll make up an example for you (even though I have very limited coding experience, not to mention netcode, so "those who can't, teach" applies here pretty well). Let's say there is a mechanism that allows you to place an item into a separate container in your inventory and remove it from there at will. Let's assume some decisions the programmer has made. When you put an item to the container the item in the inventory is destroyed but a copy of this item is created in the container. Now, let's say the item would still appear in the inventory because the programmer forgot to include the code to destroy it, or delete the instance, if you will (in Java for example). Now, you can remove the item from the container and place it in your inventory, ending up with a copy of said item. This of course, is a very simplified case and a bug that would be noticed almost immediately, but when things get more complicated I'm not surprised at all that there are occasional bugs in MMORPGs that allow duplication of items.