Ophiolite

Repeat the experiment in a second micro-wave.

Very similar, but they lack the clan's well known intellect and charm. Bloodhound, brilliant story. The way to deal with the BNP is either by ignoring them, or ridiculing them. Ridiculing them is so much more fun. This shows them up so clearly for the bigoted idiots they are. The DJ now has a story he'll be telling for decades. Hopefully when he tells it to his grandchildren they will say 'What's the BNP?'

Fresh water has a pressure gradient of 0.433 psi/ft.

Good question. I don't know the answer. The figure I gave you was actually derived by adding (or subtracting) the appropriate velocity of the Solar System' date=' and the Earth within the System, from the closing velocity of the Earth with stars in Andromeda, based on their blue shift. Try Googling some combination of [i']velocity Andromeda[/i] "blue shift" collision. Just to re-emphasise a point. Our inability to measure a velocity relative to a fixed point has nothing to do with failure of technique. As we understand the Universe today there really are no fixed points.

I just can't stay current. I thought Gates was a reptile. (Sorry Mokele.)

There are no fixed points in space. Velocity can only be measured relative to something else. Here are some examples: Earth's average orbital velocity around the sun: 29.8 km/second relative to the sun Astronomers sometimes find it convenient to imagine that there is a sort of fixed point in space as you have described. For example they will refer to the Local Standard of Rest (LSR). This is an imaginary circular orbit around the galaxy lying within the Galactic plane. At our distance from the galactic centre a star that followed that orbit exactly would be travelling at 220 kms per second relative to the galactic centre. The Solar system's orbit is not exactly circular (nor does it remain in the galactic plane). So, it has a motion, relative to the LSR, towards the constellation of Hercules, of between 17 and 22 kms/sec. Our closest large neighbour galaxy is the Andromeda galaxy. We are approaching it at about 140 kms/second and will eventually collide in around 3 billion years. Hope that helps.

It doesn't strike me as very practical.. 1. Large energy requirement. 2. Energy requirement demands more solar cells or other energy source 3. Field generator is massive. 4. Points 2 and 3 demand valuable space. 5. Points 2 and 3 demand valuable heavy lift capacity. 6. Generating a uniform field very difficult. 7. The field would screw up all the other equipment. Sorry. Just attatch your space ship to a spent booster by a long tether and spin them around.

So you're making the distinction, a fair one, that freezing water is in the process of becoming frozen; frozen water is ice (solid), freezing water is water (liquid).

You thought you were speaking with more meaning and knowledge.. How about your listeners? What may have happened is that the alcohol freed your inhibitions,giving you the confidence to express your thoughts in a more fluent way than when completely sober.

Sial and sima are, as you suspected, two short hand terms to cover the general composition of continents and oceans respectively. SiAl - is short for silicon and alluminium, major elements in granites and their derived sediments. SiMa - is short for silicon and magnesium (simg is unpronounceable) major elements in basalts, which pretty much make up the ocean crust. Your understanding is, I think, broadly correct, but the scale of the factors involved have important consequences. Let me expand on that. The cratons/continental shields are pretty much permanent (well, reasonably so), as you say. We tend to think of the Baltic shield and the Canadian shield as type examples, but they don't stop at their exposed edges. Much (most?) of Siberia is underlain by rocks of comparable type. Unlike Finland these are covered by thick sequences oof younger rocks. The same story in Poland and Germany and on across the North Sea to the UK. So you are right that it is the edges of continents that are prone to depletion by subduction, but it is the cores that make up the greater part of the continental masses. Also, when a continental plate collides with an oceanic plate it is the latter that subducts. The continental edge is in fact much more likely to grow by accretion as sediments lying on the continental slope and the ocean floor are welded to the continent. Erosion will gradually remove material, but there are very deep roots on large mountains, and isostasy will keep raising them - the remains of the Caledonian mountains formed in the Palaeozoic would have been at least as large as the Alps. Now we can barely muster 4,400'. I'll try to find some relevant links, but a first pass was not successful. I am not up too date with the thinking of the current rate of continental growth.

It's interesting. I like off-the-wall ideas, because that's where tomorrow's accepted wisdom comes from. [in my heart of hearts I don't believe in the Big Bang, but in Fred Hoyle's Steady State Universe - and don't these recently discovered 'new' young galaxies give pause for thought? Sorry, red shifting off topic.] That said I share some of Coquina's reservations. How can he be sure there were no larvae? I really disliked "Compared with modern animals, some of them seem to have the front end of one animal and rear end of another" - that read like the sort of argument I expect to hear from a creationist. I think it is interesting speculation, but no more. For me there are three factors responsible for the Cambrian explosion: the 'rebound' from snowball earth conditions; the evolution of exoskeletons; something as yet unidentified. Perhaps this hybridisation is the third factor. Coquina, I would challenge you on the land life issue. I believe he is essentially correct here. Land masses are continental and sialic. It is largely the simatic oceans which get recycled. There is enough pre-Cambrian terrestrial rock that if there were significant land life we would have detected it. All in all an idea that is worth further consideration, but........

And then you expect a mere geologist to understand! My frame of reference is surrounded by mental blocks. I thought I heard a noise from beyond the wall - the freedom of understanding immersed in the light of knowedge was at hand. Alas it was only YT in an adjacent cell.

1. If I knew your stance I wouldn't ask. I don't log the positions of each poster on each issue for future reference. 2. The question was relevant to the post, which is about the end of the world. (If the reversals produce cataclysmic effects they can provide fodder for end-of-the-world cultists.) 3. I am still interested in your view and believe it to be relevant to this thread.

To the Master's honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton's ground. Newton, forgive me. Nature to him was an open book, whose letters he could read without effort. "The cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research. No one who does not appreciate the terrific exertions and above all, the devotion without which pioneer creations in scientific thought cannot come into being, can judge the strength of the feeling out of which alone such work, turned away as it is from immediate practical life, can grow. What a deep faith in the rationality of the world and its structure and what a longing to understand even the smallest glimpses of the reason revealed in the world there must have been in Kepler and Newton ..."

But he charges £12.64 and he isn't one of us.. (I'm still digesting your exposition Martin.)

No.. I already worked that out. (Are you curious as to the answer I discovered?)

No. Unless you define it in such general terms as to render it meaningless I see no evidence for it. Are you just trying to provoke discussion?

It is better to be rich and happy than poor and miserable. Or balls? balls! Or Huh?

You may be interested to read The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Princeton University psychologist Julian Jaynes. Here is Amazon's summary of the work: At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion -- and indeed our future. Further information here: http://www.julianjaynes.org/index.html

As someone raised on linear measures of rods poles and perches, and monetary units of florins, crowns, tanners and bobs, I think can handle that.

Could you try that again, in English. Edit: that was for 5614

Delayed Y2K

Survival rates from Malaria are excellent, but are dependent, not surprisingly on the pre-existing health of the patient. As an example we see death rates climbing towards 10% in Zambia.. http://www.fightingmalaria.org/zambia/Zambia_treatment.htm while South Africa targets a rate of 0.5%. http://new.hst.org.za/indic/indic.php/124/

Alternatively, even a primitive ladybird can be intrigued by the sight of Gilded swinging a number seven iron.

What a bizarre question. Humans are innately curious. Science and religion are natural outgrowths of that curiosity. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it provided the impetus to bring us out of the trees, out of Africa and off the planet in the space of only a few million years. I woud rephrase your question - What possible reason do we have not to speculate on other universes? And I would supply the answer - none.