CPL.Luke

It's not that surprising that the US has more sattellites than anyone else. After all most of the teleommunications companies in the world are american, and even the ones that aren't use NASA to launch their sattelites.

I think if there ould be any problem in the new religion forum it would be it attracting to many posters, whereas beore the philosophy and religion forum was buried inside of a science forum and thus made it so people would come here looking for science and find something a little extra. People who now google for religion forums will find the new sfn-religion forum, and so there is the danger of attracting more people who are unwilling to reason and just want to vent about how they hate such and such religion etc. On the other hand its possible that the forum will attract alot more people interested in religious matters, and if it is properly moderated and the rules are clearly laid out it could become far better than what it was. also as a sggestion can a political subforum be put into the new religion forum to better handle the political implications of religion?

as for the spy sattleite bit it might be worth mentioning that the main mirror for the hubble was built in a plant that normally manufactures the optics for spy sattelites, apparently they build things of similar siz and accuracy quite often.

I agree with Jim and others, by removing the openesss that we here at SFN had the community and the site suffers. There are alot of other science websites out there that discuss science to a far higher level of technical detail, but were the only ones who put a human face on the discussion and say that were not just interested in science and "I want to know what you guys think of my idea". Besides the topics in the P&R forum were very interesting and entertaining to read (for the most part) and I believe they kept people coming back to the site. Also removing a very popular part of the forum at a time when the post count has been dramtically diminished in recent months is not at all wise in my oppinion. If there aren't alot of new posts being made regularly, then people will stop coming back to the site.

you have to wonder what would happen if a country like China ever underwent anouther cultural revolution or something similar and just took possesion of the the american owned factories that were making all of America's high tech weaponry. How could we in the US respond to something like that? especially if the Chinese then declared war on us ^note the above could probably never happen because those factories get money to make the equipment from american companies, and they also get parts to make the equpment from other foreign companies that are routed through american firms. And even if the parts were made in China they probably wouldn't have enough money to keep the industry going for more than a few years.

also as oil becomes less feasible hydrogen and other alternatives become more feasible, until their equal and we use the alternatives, then over the next few decades the alternatives go down to the price that oil is today (maybe a bit higher)

Locrian, The math in string theory is incredibly complex by most standards, and so unless you are involved in the theory or have studied it through a textbook or something similar the mathmatical arguments wouldn't make much sense. Besides Smolin isn't critisizing the math he's criticizing the science of it. String theory has been pursued in a very old fashion, ie I think that the universe works like this, and I can write all these pretty equations that would tell me what the universe would look like if it did look like this. and while this mehod is all well and good for a pet theory or something similar it shouldn't suck up all of the research positions for an entire field. I remember someone posted a feynmann quote about string theory on the amazon page not to long ago where he spoke very dissaprovingly about string theory.

dissapearing people usually falls under warcrime

hmm and what would these pur motion movement equations be?

Lucaspa I'll refer you to last months issue of scientific american, it had a very good article on the future of nuclear energy. Essentially it stated that nuclear is likely to become competitive with coal over the next decade because of 1. Newer nuclear reactor designs are safer (china is buiilding aseris of pebblebed reactors that can literally have their cooling system shut off and they won't melt down) 2. modern nuclear reactors burn more of theirfuel, with liquid metal designs consuming 95% (contrasted to curent reactors which consume 5%) of their fuel and leaving waste products that become safe in less than 100 years 3. If laws are enacted to require coal plants to burry their waste, then that aditional rise in the cost of coal plants will make nuclear competitive again.

its also worthy of note that a higher nicotine level in cigarettes makes them more addictive when used for the first time. So a random kid who takes one puff is more likely to want more than if he took a puff for the first time off of an older cigarrette brand.

^ but the majority of this book's audience work in, study in, or are deeply interested in (the guys who fund things) physics. The average layperson hasn't even heard of string theory, and the ones who have read books like the elegant univers in order to better familiarize themselveswith it. This book's target audience is to people working in or studying physics, and is so aimed to raise awareness in the physics community that string theory is not all its cracked up to be, and that alternatives exist.

granted, but I'm koscher I wish it was wednesday (when college starts)

granted, now they all hang out in your yard

I wish bascule had made a wish in that last post

because the 83 can do almost everything the 89 can do, albeit in a slower more complicated matter. I wouldn't see why they wouldn't let you use it. ALthough you could hold off until you get to school and then just ask you math teacher wheather they would allow an 89

no, the 84 lacks a computer algebra system, in other words it doesn't really understand the operations that you put into it, the 89 does. the other advantage of the 89 is that all of the functions are keyed into menus that you can access with the touch of a button, so you can change settings and find solve functions within seconds in a nice graphical interface. I know I'm in love with my 89. I had lost my 83 a number of years ago and used a standard ti-36 that I had for 2 years. At the end of this last year I needed a graphing calculator for the AP tests, I figured that because I was about to go to college and take classes where the 89 could be requrired (it has alot of features that are very useful in college) I would just go and get it. I was finishing my pre-calc tests in half the time of my classmates because the calculator allowed me to do variable operations and such on the calculator. Not to mention that the calculator came with about a dozen programs pre-loaded for electrical engineering and solving linear equations etc. In short I love this calculator

http://www.snopes.com/religion/soulweight.asp I assume you got the 21 grams figure from the movie, don't believe everything you see especially in a drama film. and there are numerous studies done on prayer and its effects on the human body, they have found that prayer is a highly effective means of stress relief however relaxing over a cup of tee would do the same thing.

there are also designs that use a nuclear reactor to thermally "crack" the water. So essentially the water goes over the reactor as a coolant, gets broken down by the heat, and then is used to heat something else which in turn would generate electricity. so you would end up with the byproducts of hydrogen oxygen and electricity. there are toher designs which would use the gamma flux and or neutron flux to crack the water. EDIT: I stand corrected on the power distribution efficiency

cp'n your forgetting how inneficient our power distribution system is, I believe the statistic is something like 30% of the power generated actually reaches people for use.

granted, you went insane and now chant that song all day long while you sit in a white padded room. I wish I could wish something that was uncorruptible.

agreed martin, when von braun was trying to tget the american space program off the ground in the 40's and 50's he turned to walt disney to help get his message across that space was in our grasp and that there is a whole world of adventure out there for us to explore.

the 89 can do all of the things that an 84 can do, and a bit more. probably the most useful feature on it that I've found is that it displays symbolicly exactly what you entered into it in linear form, for example if you enter in (1-5/2)^-4 it will show this to you [math] \frac{1}{(1-5/2)^4} [/math]

the 89 does take some getting used to but after the first week it seems hard to think of using an 83 again