SamBridge

So what did you mean then? if you are trying to argue that stars are alive I think it's already been settled.

I'm talking about birds of course, they aren't directly descended but we can still use their bone structure and how closely they are related to make extrapolations of dinosaurs themselves. But we can still look at their behavioral patterns as well as actually dissecting their brain and running thermal imaging tests to see that they aren't quite as intelligent in cognitive thinking ability. With dinosaurs, this is limited, but we still have behavioral patterns extrapolated from fossils as well as the patterns found in animals near them in the evolutionary family tree which exist today, we can see that based on the behavioral patterns extrapolated and the intelligence of animals related to them that at the time of their extinction they probably did not possess spears. But it doesn't matter, their structures are still fragile, you can actually kill bacteria just with the friction of your hands when clapping, and there's still millions of pounds of clothing so even if clothing was as fragile as bacteria, there should by probability be some that survive, especially considering all the living domains that exist. If dinosaurs had just at the around the time of extinction began to posses the ability of stone age humans I can grant you that possibility, but not as evidence. While it may be possible, there is no direct evidence of it. If we found a "tribe" of dinosaurs with structures that couldn't be possibly naturally made, then we could say that there were some dinosaurs with a high likelihood of being as intelligent as humans if there was strong evidence that those structures were not from human origin.

The "larger" refers to the complexity or the number on the intelligence scale, which is larger. I think it said triceratops was something like .11 and humans were 5-8? Of course that scale is off, but it still says dolphins are 3-4, even though dolphins can be larger animals. You're almost contradicting yourself. Just because that system of measuring intelligence on mammals doesn't work on birds doesn't mean that that system can't measure intelligence at all, that's what that system was designed to measure in the first place, the EQ. We can still have some idea of the intelligence of dinosaurs, we just can't use the same system of extrapolating intelligence that we use on mammals. There's algae fossils that are 3.4 billion years old, and on top of that there's plants which are definitely more delicate materials than many man-made objects or even some man-made clothing materials. They left no direct descendants that's fine, but there are still animals closely related to them which have similar bone structures, we can create a clear picture of the evolutionary time line using all the fossils we have and the anatomy we know of in modern animals.

The very system of intelligence that you mentioned which is different than the one for mammals concludes that there may have been a very smart dinosaur comparable to the intelligence of an opossum. Some species of otters are definitely more intelligent than opossums and have better fingers for manipulating matter, but the most advanced technological thing we see them do is break open clams with rocks. It doesn't matter if the systems aren't the same, the outcome is still the same unit. I can say 2+2=4 or i can say 3+1=4. They did leave behind animals that are directly linked to them along the evolutionary time line there were even some dinosaurs that had feathers, I hope you aren't trying to claim they aren't closely related. If all of humans were wiped out, you would definitely see some of the objects they left behind. If they were wiped out during the stone age, I think it's reasonable to expect at least some spears and some clothing and at least 1 mad-made living domain.

But both systems still measure intelligence, but they do it in a different way. There's one way of measuring intelligence of mammals, and another way for birds, but the output unit is still the same: intelligence. We can still say that dinosaurs weren't capable of the technology humans have today for sure, even though it's not the same system system of figuring out intelligence i mammals. The fossil record is incomplete, but that's why we base information also on the anatomy and physiology of their decedents and the fossils of their predecessors.

"The size of a modern opossum", we don't exactly see opossums displaying levels of intelligence that even a dolphin has. As I said, I think dinosaurs could have eventually evolved to harness objects such as spears, but only with more time. With our current data, it seems they were not capable of such things when they went extinct.

At the very least they should create a clear distinction between what is their opinion and what is scientific fact or theory. I don't value an opinions in science because opinions can lead you in the totally wrong scientific direction as every great scientist has had to discover the hard way. You can know because they can explain the scientific data into terms of knowledge that you understand or possess. If I say "Hamiltonian operator", you probably don't understand that, but if I break it down and say "a correlation between variables of possible energy and space in atoms", you have a better sense of what it is.

A fair point I did not imply that they couldn't, I just plainly said there is little evidence that they did based on fossil records as well as the requirements for a species harnessing stones to make spears. I think if they had 15 more million years they could have done it within that time. Both are still a way to infer intelligence, and so far both systems show that dinosaurs weren't quite at the technological level when they went extinct.

Wolves don't use spears. But we haven't seen those discoveries in dinosaurs (at least not yet). If you read after the part of my post where I mentioned metal you'd see I mentioned stone The IQ may have a different scale of measurement, but if they knew how to make spears we should see at least one spear with all the thousands of fossils we found, don't you think? Saying "it would have broke down" wouldn't be a credible excuse either, we can still find plant fossils and short stemy plants are definitely a more delicate material than wood and rock.

Well first, I don't call myself an expert, and secondly it's not science if any opinions and emotions are any sort of justification for something (except of course analytical anatomy and psychology of which is a different context), and third this topic is in the "other topics" section which I think is ok to post opinions in. You may value their opinion, but what is more important and what actually makes scientific discoveries is science, is what's actually been observed and tested. it's not their opinion if they are merely restating what evidence or proof in science has shown. This is just for the science topics, in philosophy or speculation or those types of topics it seems completely appropriate for them to assert their opinion as those topics are not science. Even if this site doesn't change at all I'm just going to eventually contact a university eventually about making an actual very formal national science forum site with provably credible experts (not saying the experts here aren't credible).

First, no quadrupedal dinosaur would have had even basic technology because they wouldn't be able to appropriately manipulate matter to create something such as a spear. Secondly, in order to create a metal tipped spear, dinosaurs would have had to not only have means of digging into ore veins, but also be able to isolate the materials, which requires heat. Perhaps they could have found localized volcano heat vents, but this leads to 3. In order as a species to to be able to use a spear, they would have had to have advanced communication skills to share the methods of making the technology. If it was a rock tipped spear, they would have not only to have discovered that rocks can be sharp, but also a way to make them sharp, which also requires communication as a species. We should see at least some evidence of rocks existing in clearly manipulated shapes near dinosaurs with the appendages to do so, but so far I have heard no news like that. I'm not saying it's impossible or that dinosaurs were't smart, but based on our current knowledge of them there isn't much evidence for them possessing even basic technology. It seems like they could have done it if they were given a few more million years, but it seems they fell short of time.

Of course there are always fringe nut-cases in every scientific field, but that doesn't mean a degree is worthless, that's a bigger logical fallacy, and I certainly wouldn't think the site would call someone an expert without actually seeing some of their posts first, would they? Even if you don't have a degree in mathematics, you still probably have a degree in something that required advanced mathematics, which does not make what I am saying any less true, because that degree shows that you know about not only the concepts of w/e field you are in but also the math used in that field. Secondly, nothing is stopping you from buying a pet rock, but that does that mean you have to buy it? You can just talk to some co-workers or some professors at a local colleges/universities and say "hey, would you be interested in becoming an expert for us at scienceforums.net and helping us out"? Advertising. I bet someone could talk you into buying a pet rock for whatever reason if they actually tried and talked to you. Experts shouldn't be mixing and matching opinions and science as they please, that defeats the purpose of science in the first place, they should only post what is scientific theory or consensus when posting in any scientific or mathematical topic. If someone personally asks their opinion then I think it is valid.

Fossils are rare, but we still have thousands or maybe even hundreds of thousands of them. We also have observations of animals very closely related to dinosaurs which show they do not have many technological capabilities.

They obviously couldn't have had sort sort of advanced technology at the time they went extinct, based on fossils, and based on the actions of their descendants. If there was some dinosaur technology, since plants can be preserved as delicate as they are, we should at least see some dinosaurs with some tools, but we haven't seen too much of that. What other basic technology could they really have? That seems too obvious for the entire topic to be based around that.

But the topic isn't the "now", it's the "future", "past" and the "what could have been". Obviously "now" there aren't apes capable of building as advanced technology, but lets say dinosaurs did have 65 more million years to evolve, and humanity had used up the resources already and for one reason or another disappeared from Earth or never existed. They could eventually do many similar technological feats without oil, it would just be restricted in efficiency.

"Is the universe deterministic ? Nope, there's 3 different branches of mathematics which combined prove its not. There's of course quantum physics, which by observation and experimental trials has stated that "the measurements of the future and the past are in no way causally connected to the present" which is essentially extrapolated from matter itself existing not as solid objects, but as fields of probability, which of course was observed by looking at where exactly electrons showed up. There's chaos theory which explains how systems change and sometimes can never return to a previous state and fractal mathematics which shows there are patterns which have a correlation extending to an infinitely small realm, which combined with chaos theory shows that things can never be perfectly predictable because there are infinitesimally small and immeasurable changes that end up creating large impacts.

Not sure what I said about hydrocarbons, but "any intelligent species needs oil" doesn't seem right. Dolphins don't need oil, apes don't need oil, ect. Perhaps species couldn't get things don't as fast, but there's still renewable resources as well as possibly some chemical batteries we haven't discovered similar to ATP. But given enough time, convention could bring the materials up to the mantel, and given enough time, that mantel will be able to penetrate through the crust, that's what has already happened with us in certain areas.

I'm still in the middle of watching the video, but the term "burning" waste, I don't think that's what you want to mean, because physical macroscopic processes don't alter the radioactivity of a material. I suppose if you had a laser more powerful than any laser beam every created in history, you could convert the material into a quark-gluon plasma, which has been done, but not with laser beams, only about 2 particles, it would require tremendous amounts of energy.

If thorium reactors can be constructed on a large scale and there is enough of it available, then good for us, we don't have to worry about previous problems so much, but my previous statement remains the same: "too much radiation building up isn't a good thing". Anyway, I think at this point we're getting too off topic. We need to see if there's ways to stop a nuclear reaction. If you can just vaporize the reactive material, it will stop the reaction but still release materials into the atmosphere potentially. If you use gluon ionization rays, you can't cause they don't exist. If you shoot it into space, it will cost a lot of money, it won't stop it, but we won't have to deal with it anymore unless it loops around the sun and hits Earth.

The goal is to produce energy, but it is not to produce it all at once, or in an uncontrolled way. Even with better designs in place, too much radiation building up isn't a good thing, that shouldn't be a debate. Perhaps in the future things will happen in a much more controlled manner using fusion instead of fission if someone can successfully mine Helium 3 from the moon or create efficient cold fusion. There are numerous ways which the reaction can become uncontrolled, which I direct you to this http://www.makeitgreen.webs.com/Nuclear_meltdown.html

I think that not only should there be just more experts in general, and not only of a wider variety, but with a much higher standard. I'm not doubting the knowledge of any specific individual, but as a passive observer in many topics, I think that there needs to be more of an effort to bring in more experts who have a Masters degree or higher in every field this site has, because so far I haven't seen an "astronomy" expert or a "psychology" expert, but also need to display a level of maturity such as that they never put in their personal opinion or emotions except in the philosophy, speculation or brain teaser, lounge and politics sections.

Perhaps more recently constructed reactors are, but have you herd of Chernobyl? And did you hear about Tokyo? Even if the walls themselves are thick enough, the heat could be enough to melt other more delicate machinery just outside those walls which control the moderation materials. In any case, uncontrolled nuclear reactions are not good. Can we at least agree on that? If a nuclear bomb went off inside a nuclear reactor sure it wouldn't cause as much damage, but that doesn't mean everything would be completely OK, some of the walls would definitely be vaporized, something will go wrong with too much energy. I would imagine the walls are designed to withstand radioactivity more than they are to extreme thermal energy. http://www.makeitgreen.webs.com/Nuclear_meltdown.html Try to ignore the add

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_poison Neutron absorbers do what they say they do, absorb neutrons, that's what I thought before http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_moderator reduces the speed of neutrons, that's what I thought before too, With regards to your comment "no, it won't", that makes no sense, the title says you're a chemistry expert so I'd like to think you know that most materials become more dense when they cool down. You argued the process can be damped by the expansion, using basic logic that a child could understand it's pretty simple that the process would become closer to critical if the material contracted and became more dense if your argument that the expansion affects the process is true. Either you didn't know that or you aren't giving me the simple courtesy of wholly reading my posts. Heat builds up. If the container was indestructible, you'd be right perhaps, though perhaps some of the heat could escape through the walls so that it didn't completely dampen the reaction, but it's not, if you read later in my post, you would have read that my statement was justified by that the container could melt eventually, thus exposing the reactor to a cooler atmosphere making the material itself cooler, making it contract. Since it's pretty likely that a chemistry expert would understand how density and temperature are related, I like to think you just skimmed my post without much of a regard instead so to avoid issues like this in the future I suggest you give posts more though and read things more carefully. The fact that you put so little words down and that the only thing you referenced was a rocket launch and not even the heat build up causing expansion seems troubling, and is one of the reason why I'm leaving this site soon. As you have hypothesized indirectly, if you could vaporize the uranium in a super strong container that wouldn't melt but that would also moderate thermal energy to the outside world without letting radioactive decay out, that would seem to be a solution. I also did not say putting something in a rocket wouldn't be expensive, that's not the debate, the debate is "how to do it at all", not "what's the most cost effective way".

So how do you explain what happened in Tokyo where there was a catastrophe because the walls melted and leaked radioactive material into the atmosphere? Yes, neutron moderators can be in any form, they typically use water don't they? But what happens if the walls melt and the gaseous moderator leaves? No moderator anymore. Even if the material is slightly less dense, even if it doesn't make a big boom, radioactive material continuously leaking everywhere isn't exactly great, the reaction will still happen somewhat just not at a critical rate to create an atomic explosion, I think uranium has a half life of something like at least a few million years. And on top of that, the heat would lead back to it becoming critical if such a small density change does in fact effect it, because it will melt the walls and then expose the reactor to the atmosphere which I'm guessing is cooler than a few hundred degrees, and it will become more dense again. I guess if you could heat up the material so much that it vaporizes that could be a solution but you'd still have to deal with it being in the atmosphere, maybe just put it in a rocket and send it into space before it melts the rocket.

In a way, it would be appropriate to call it a hypothesis as there is no observation of strings.