Fanghur

I was watching a documentary show on the History channel talking about the Sun and it said that nuclear fusion is the only thing known to man that could power the sun. Now I'm not saying that I don't think this is true; but I'm just wondering if we actually have definitive proof that it it fusion that powers it or is that just the only explanation that makes sense? P.S. I do think that nuclear fusion is the explanation; I'm just wondering if it's been proven.

Does anybody know how someone could use an Ouchterlony (Gel Double Diffusion Assay) test to determine whether or not a culture of E.Coli is producing normal or modified insulin? Basically it's like this; you have two types of genetically engineered E.Coli, one of which produces normal insulin and the other produces modified insulin. What I'm trying to figure out is how to design an experiment that would allow me to determine which type of insulin is being produced by one of the cultures; and only one plate can be used. Any help would be appreciated.

OK guys; I'm getting the impression that you are missing the point of my question; so let me try and explain it a different way. Let's say that one day we discover some entirely new fundamental force which can be used to accelerate sub-atomic particles just as easily as the electromagnetic force with the only difference being that this force (let's call it the "fifth force") propagates at 50% the speed of light. (I'm just using this to make my point) Now; what I am trying to get at is this. Even though there is no law of physics which forbids an object to travel at 0.5C, and even though the fifth force is just as easy to work with as the electromagnetic force; if I am not mistaken it would be impossible to use this force to accelerate a sub-atomic particle (or any other object for that matter) to 0.5C because then the particle would be moving faster than the force itself could propagate to the particle; and since if the particle was traveling at exactly the propagation speed of the fifth force then the force would no longer be able to accelerate it any further because it would no longer be able to interact with it. Now I'll admit that I'm not a genius in math; but just from looking at this situation logically it seems roughly analogous to taking the tangent of 90 degrees; only the limit in this case is not 90 degrees; it's 0.5C. As the speed of the particle approaches 0.5C; the greater the energy needed to accelerate it even further. And since common sense tells us that something cannot interact with something that it can't make contact with... This hypothetical situation looks remarkably similar to the light barrier; only in that case the limit is the propagation speed of the electromagnetic force, and let's face it; the only practical way we have of accelerating particles is through the use of electromagnetic fields; and since if I'm correct (and I may very well be missing something) then it's only natural that we haven't been able to break the light barrier; because in affect we are using light to try and accelerate something faster than light.

But that doesn't make any sense; how could something that has a maximum speed be used to accelerate something else to an even greater speed? If the two things were traveling at the exact same speed then the force would no longer be able to keep pushing against the object in question in order to accelerate it further. For example look at two cars that are both moving at 50 km/h; one in front of the other. As long as the car in front and the car behind continue to move at identical speeds they will never come in contact with each other unless they are literally bumper to bumper; in which case even though the car in the back is in contact with the car in the front; since they are moving at identical speeds the car in the back is not applying any force to the car in the front because the car in front is moving away from the car behind at the same speed as the car in behind is moving towards the car in the front. So why wouldn't the same hold true for my original scenario? Because I would think that if the carrier photons were not able to interact with the object they are supposed to accelerate because it was already moving at their maximum speed; then the electromagnetic force could no longer to used for the job. Common sense 101.

There is something that I have been wondering for quite a while now about Einstein's theory of special relativity; basically it is this. According to Einstein it is impossible for anything to travel faster (or even at) the speed of light because as an object approached the SOL (speed of light) the energy required to move it even faster increases exponentially until it reaches infinity at the SOL. But what I don't understand is this; lets just for arguments sake say that Einstein was wrong about the whole "mass increases approaching the speed of light" thing. If I'm not mistaken it would still require an infinite amount of energy to make something move faster than the SOL because the only practical way we have of accelerating particles to even close to the SOL is by using electromagnetic fields; which of course propagate at the speed of light. So of course it would be impossible to accelerate something to faster than the speed of light because you can't use a force to accelerate a particle to a greater speed than the force itself can propagate; and I'm pretty sure that if you tried to work out that situation mathematically there would still be an infinity in there somewhere. Correct me if I'm wrong; and please keep in mind that I'm no PhD; I only read a lot of physics books.

I read recently that it is possible that if a person does not drink enough water over a long period of time (I'm not talking about "dying of thirst" dehydration, just much less than the recommended amount of water) it can lead to symptoms which mimic that of medical conditions involving an enlarged prostate, specifically urinary retention and difficulty urinating (i.e. having to strain.) I just can't figure out what not drinking enough could have to do with urinary retention, I mean if you don't drink a lot you obviously won't have to go to the bathroom as often, but I'm stymied as to how it would cause enlarged prostate symptoms, the only thing I could think of is that it somehow triggers your body to try and conserve as much water as it can. Any clarification on this would be appreciated.

I just thought of something the other day. It is common knowledge that the speed of the electromagnetic force (AKA the speed of light) is "C". And experiments with particle accelerators have shown that nothing can travel faster than "C". It occured to me that maybe the reason that no particle accelerator has been able to accelerate particles faster than the speed of light is because the accelerators use electromagnetic fields to accelerate the particles, in other words it would be impossible to accelerate a particle faster than light because it would then be moving faster than the magnetic fields which are accelerating it. In other words if a particle were travelling at superluminal speeds, it would be unaffected by the electromagnetic force, kind of like how a slower runner would be unable to touch a faster runner in a game of tag. I've actually always thought it was kind of stupid to assume that gravity moves at the speed of light even though we know virtually nothing about how gravity works, and since gravity is a completely different fundamental force than electromagnetism.

There is something I've always been curious about regarding high and low temperatures, namely whether or not hot cancels out cold. Let's say you are inside a freezer that is at a constant temperature of -70 degrees Celsius, also inside this freezer is a burner that is at a constant temperature of +70 degrees Celsius. Now, for this thought experiment we will assume that both the freezer and the burner are kept at their temperatures of +- 70 degrees Celsius. Let's say you were to put your hand on the burner, my question is whether the burner would burn you or if the two temperatures would cancel each other out.

Ok, I have seriously had enough with these crackpot claims that the Large Hadron Collider will destroy the Earth. We already know 100% that it is not going to produce anything dangerous because last time I checked the Earth is still here. Even if this Walter Wagner moron is right and any black holes produced by cosmic rays would have enough velocity to escape the Earth's gravity, the Earth would still have been destroyed billions of years ago. Think of it like this; let's assume for arguement's sake that LHC collisions (and therefore cosmic ray collisions, since cosmic rays make the LHC's power look like a battery compared to a fusion reactor) do have the power to produce stable micro black holes, but that they black holes produced by cosmic rays pass harmlessly through the Earth when they are created. Well, even if that were the case, everywhere in the universe is filled with a flux of cosmic rays which are constantly colliding with each other, interstellar dust, micro meteorites, planets, etc. Now, if each of those cosmic rays produced a micro black hole that went zooming off in a random direction in space, it stands to reason that if they were indeed stable that they would begin feeding on the interstellar hydrogen and grow in mass. Now, since cosmic rays are everywhere in the universe, there would have to be literally billions of billions of trillions of black holes of various sizes zooming around the universe constantly growing bigger. Now answer me this, what are the odds that after all the 4.5 billion years the Earth has been around that not one of this flux of black holes has collided with the Earth, or any of the other planets or the Sun, or for that matter any of the other billions of stars we know of? I'm on holidays right now, so you guys do the math.

Hypercube is right about the fact that extraterrestrial life forms may have evolved completely differently than life on earth; and when we do eventually find an alien bacteria or something or other, we probably will see some differences between it and our bacteria. There has to be other forms of life in the universe, there is no question about that, whether or not they are technological is probably much more rare, but considering the size of the universe; 200 billion stars in 100 billion galaxies...do the math yourself.

I agree with Hypercube, size isn't everything. I've often wondered if it might be possible to consider Titan as a kind of planet orbiting a planet. After all, it is larger than Mercury, has a very thick atmosphere, oceans on its surface (albeit ones you wouldn't want to go swimming in, although there must be some pretty big waves considering Saturn's gravity), it's rich in organic materials, and hey who knows, maybe it even has some kind of ammonia based lifeforms (I'm just saying, who knows?). Maybe Titan was a planet at some point but got captured by Saturn's gravity, since there is no question that if Titan were orbiting the Sun rather than Saturn, it would certainly be considered a planet.

I saw some bogus proof on wikipedia claiming that if 0/0=1 than you could prove that 1=2, it was a lot of nonsense though, whoever wrote that proof seriously needs to go back to school.

I just realized that if photon's really do have rest mass of exactly 0, then they should be able to travel faster than light (yeah, I know photon's are light, but work with me here). Because as I understand, the reason that nothing can travel faster than light (unless it has an imaginary mass, AKA Tachyons) is because as an object approaches the speed of light or C, its mass increases and to actually accelerate to the speed of light would require an infinite amount of energy. This is the forula used; M= M0 / sqrt (1-V2/C2) Note: The "2"s are squared signs So if an ordinary object is applied to this formula, at the speed of light it becomes something divided by zero, which is infinity. But if the rest mass is zero (AKA a photon), at the speed of light it becomes zero divided by zero, this is not infinity, it is simply a meaningless mathematical statement. If anyone could explain this to me I would appreciate it. But if you make V2 greater than C2 for a photon, it becomes 0/n>0. Zero divided by anything is zero, so that should mean that a photon should be able to travel much facter than C without requiring infinite energy. If my math is wrong, somebody convince me.

iNow as far as I'm concerned, Pluto will always be the ninth planet.

Well, I suppose it's not impossible that there could be a tenth planet somewhere beyond the orbit of Pluto, since as Hypercube said, there is certainly enough material out there for a planet to form. As for the Nemesis theory, I think it's highly unlikely, although I suppose that if the companion star was small and dim enough it's possible that it would be hidden by the Oort cloud. Neither theory is impossible, but the Nemesis theory is very improbable.

Yeah, Hypercube's right. Unless you can back up the things you say, stop talking.

Sorry Graviphoton, but I have to agree with Hypercube on this one. There is no way that a particle accelerator would be able to do something that two cosmic rays colliding head on wouldn't also be able to do. Were you aware that this Wagner fellow also filed lawsuits against the Tevatron and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider? The guy just wants attention.

Graviphoton, did you even bother to read Hypercube's original post? Yes, the LHC will produce levels of energy that only existed a few trillionths of a second after the big bang, but cosmic rays have millions of times more energy than the Large Hadron Collider (the LHC produces energies of roughly 14 TeV but cosmic rays can have energies up to 100 000 000 TeV) and they are constantly bombarding the Earth and every other object in the universe - not to mention each other - and they aren't producing killer black holes or strangelets, or do you think that we've just been lucky all these billions of years?

Let me rephrase the original question. Let's say you are moving at 100% the speed of light, if this was the case your clock would be not moving at all, in other words you would be moving through time 0%. Now let's say you are travelling at 50% the speed of light, then your clock would be running 50% slower relative to someone at rest. My original question was whether this relationship between space and time was linear, or is it more complicated that just being inversely proportional?

I've always thought that speed through space was inversely proportional to speed through time, and vice versa. In other words the faster you move through through space, the slower you move through time. Is this analogy really true? I mean, it's true as you approach the speed of light, but is it also true for all speeds?

Hypercube is right, if we assume that Hawking is wrong, then there should be literally moles of black holes (or strangelets) zooming around the universe growing in mass or converting other matter into strangelets, as Hypercube said, clearly this is not the case, otherwise the Earth would have been sucked into oblivion long ago. This is a good observation Hypercube. Since we don't really know how gravity works at the quantum level, who knows, maybe you're right and even if a stable micro black hole was created it would be unable to get by the strong and electromagnetic forces holding matter together.