Moontanman

Mirror matter is matter that would be needed to restore parity symmetry as a fundamental symmetry of nature.

Could mirror matter comprise a significant quantity of the missing mass in the universe and how would we go about detecting it?

Actually it's the core of the Earth is more or less the same temp as the surface of the sun. I saw that show too. opps sorry for the cross post janus

No shit sherlock, where did you park your squad car? That is exactly what I have been saying, water appears to be so perfect to us because we evolved to fit water, if some other solvent had been used we would be sitting around thinking how perfect it was. If in some distant reach of the universe there is a planet with molten silicate as it's oceans and metal vapor as it's atmosphere and it has life they will think molten silicate is the perfect solvent.

I didn't quote blue book to make anything look credible, It was said the sighting was made up by Ufologists. I pointed this particular sighting was not made up in this manner. Blue book is widely know for simply wanting to debunk and cover up. No effort was given to really investigating anything. the scientist hired by blue book to investigate eventually became critical of Blue Book due to Blue Books actions. Don't put words in my mouth, I am not a "true believer" but I do call a spade a spade, Blue Book was a farce, used to only try to down play all reports, even the ones that were inexplicable. This pattern became worse as the project went on. The sighting I mentioned was explained away in a manner that was insulting to everyone involved, it may very well have nothing but a shared hallucination of military ground personnel, air traffic controllers, military pilots and civilian pilots. I have no idea what it was but it could not have been what the "official " explanation was. This pattern of obfuscation was wide spread in Operation Blue Book and only served to put an air of suspicion on all explanations even the ones that were obvious. http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc296.htm An earlier investigation came to an unusual conclusion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Sign

Yes I have read the report and it was reported as a gigantic object but the people at blue book assumed the B-52 pilots and the commercial airline pilots were mistaken, also Venus was not visible at the time of the sighting. Blue book is famous for making stupid claims like the object was a comet, that made less sense than the sighing it's self.

While there is much in the way of theoretical reasons to expect antimatter to be attracted by gravity and to matter I was wrong, no actual experiment has been done with neutral antimatter as yet to show it's reaction to matter. I apologize and with drawl my post. Having said that, if antimatter could somehow warp space in a way that would repel matter it would violate several laws we now hold dear but this shouldn't reason to assume anything. again I apologize for making an assumption based on assumptions.

It has been demonstrated that antimatter reacts with gravity the same way matter does. No antimatter gravity and anti matter doesn't repel matter

The report i told about is not a report made up by a ufologist, it was part of project blue book. Everyone needs to understand that yes most UFOs are indeed misidentified normal objects and made up BS but some, a very small core group, are not only quite detailed but not made up or in some way suspected of being a hoax, they are truly inexplicable with an embarrassment of information. If only one is true, even if the one has has promoted and or has been covered up by hoaxes and misidentifieds, this one is of profound significance. Focusing on the ones we know are false and rehashing them over and over again to prove the rest are false as well is not good science.

Ok, I'm going to be the devils advocate here. First I would like to say that it totally disingenuous to say that all UFO reports are from wild eyed crazies or that all UFOs are just lights in the sky. One of my favorite sightings was seem close to the ground, in the air, seen on radar, ground and airborne, the air radar was from a nuclear armed B-52 that was diverted from it's flight plan by ground radar operators to investigating the sighting. Radar returns were not only seen from the B-52 but a gigantic structured craft was also seen from both the B-52 and a commercial craft. the UFO was first seen over a nuclear missile complex by ground observers. This was very complex sighting by many well qualified people some of which were qualified to carry nuclear weapons. the UFO was observed for many minutes and never explained except that blue book concluded it was the planet Venus. At one point early in the sighting it was seen hovering close to the ground and then took off at a high rate of speed not to mention seen on radar and by the eyes of pilots as a structured craft, Venus seems to be a little less than credible. Ok, this is just one of many such sightings. I am very skeptical but that doesn't mean I take the track of most skeptics and only discuss easily dismissed sightings. One of my favorite explanations often given by skeptics is the comet explanation. The observer sees a bright light in the sky that moves slowly over head and then disappears. it's in sight for several minutes and is close enough to be seen as a ball and not a point source of light. the explanation is a comet or meteor. Does anyone else see the problem with this knee jerk reaction? Bob Lazar who may or may not be a total BS artist, said that not only did he see saucer shaped alien craft at area 51 he also read a description of the aliens that said they had bred us back the beginning of our humanity from more primitive but human shaped hominids to be workers for the aliens who later set us free to take over the planet. BS probably but it's another bizarre story that might give us some perspective on the possibilities or at least the BS. I would like to add that i agree, photos are a catch 22, good photos are automatically fake and bad ones are just not evidence. In this day and age of photo shop all photos and films are suspect. there was a film going around on the Internet a year or so ago that looked so real you would expect to see alien troops landing at any time but of course it was a total fake.

Pioneer, what is your point? Can you really claim any of these things you list as unique properties of water are things absolutely required by life? I don't think so, I think you simply want to win this argument and water is your God. I see absolutely no reason to lay claim to water as the unique basis for all life or even most life. Lots of fluids could work even better, hydrocarbons, ammonia, HF, the list is large and the universe is larger.

Pioneer, how do you know that only water can do the amazing things you say? You are still only working from one data point. For all we know hydrocarbons might be the fluid of choice in 99.999999999999% of all life in the universe and we are just an anomaly. Our life has managed to use water in amazing ways for sure but we have no data to support water as being either an absolute necessity for life or even the preferred fluid for life.

Sorry HB but that was really funny, I laughed my posterior off Pioneer (HB) are you thinking of a three legged animal using each leg in turn? Did you see the latest War of the Worlds with Tom Cat? The aliens had three legs, they walked like a tripod, two then one, two then one, not one two three, this gait looked entirely natural. To walk One two three your legs would have to be in a row wouldn't they?

Sisyphus and bombus, yes I have heard of insects, I've never seen an insect as large as a man or capable of making tools or technology. Haven't you ever heard of centaurs? While I doubt a being would likely have hooves and hands a six legged being with four legs and two arms makes much sense especially in a high gravity situation. A vertebrate with six limbs would be better at crawling around in higher gravity than a four or two legged being. If evolution selected for tool use going to four legs and two arms might be as natural as animals going from four legs to two in our case.

Inow we both know humans are apes but not in the context that knupfer was using, yes we are apes, hominids to be exact but in knupfers mind there is only room for us and them and them is chimps and gorillas although I'm betting he doesn't know the difference between monkeys and apes either.

Since this thread was originally about the number of legs, three to be exact, how about six legs? Might result in a centaur like being. What could bring this about? Higher gravity?

At very cold temps, around the temps we find on Titan Si could form chains and rings like carbon without the help of oxygen. Such molecules could also sport methane radicals attached to the Si chains. This would allow even more complex molecules to form that would still be unstable enough at these low temps to react in the way hydrocarbons do on Earth. It also just so happens that liquid hydrocarbons are pretty good at dissolving these Si chains. Since water would be rock at these temps it would be able to react with these Si chains and they would be stable. Just another possibility. Lots of hydrogen, Si and C sloping around there, anything could happen!

Knupfer, so you think Neanderthals were apes? They were stronger than us, had bigger brains, talked, made the same tools, and buried their dead. Not to mention they were enough like us that if a Neanderthal was dressed in modern clothes he could walk down the street and no one would give him a second glance. You are the worst kind of troll Knupfer, a ignorant close minded troll.

No Knupfer, there is no evidence of aliens on the Earth all life on the Earth is far to similar to have originated on another planet. Fossils of long dead animals is evidence of their existence, religion is a fairy tale with no evidence what so ever of the BS claimed by any religion. No one alive has ever seen any of the stuff in the biggest book of fairy tales called the bible. Just because someone wrote about things that happened in the past doesn't make them true. There is evidence of past life, none for the fairy tales in the bible.

Never wrestle with a troll, you both get dirty and the troll likes it.

Knupfer, you are a troll and an ignorant troll at that. If I thought for one moment you were actually looking for knowledge instead of trolling for the creationist cause I would give you information to show just how wrong you are but I am sure that no matter what argument I used you would continue to believe your religious fundamentalist BS and take no heed what so ever of any facts presented that disagree with your narrow stupidity worshiping world view.

Knupfer, are trying to troll or just being obtuse. Science is all about reality, some times imagination is what changes our perception of reality and the limits of that reality. Don't denigrate what you are incapable of understanding.

No one is talking about riding a nuclear bomb into space e or even orbit, no nuclear explosion is possible with this rocket design. The payload is not nuclear, in fact the payload of the suggested space craft is as much as 2,000,000 pounds from a space craft massing the same as a Saturn five moon rocket. For the record the Saturn Five didn't have a payload of even close to 2,000,000 pounds. Chemical rockets are simply not powerful enough to support any real space effort, safety protocols on these rockets along with remote landing take off sites would mitigate any real risk. We are not talking about tons of radioactive fuel, just a few pounds, Each and every atmospheric nuclear test released many times as much as the absolute worst case scenario of a nuclear light bulb rocket failure. there were many of these nuclear tests, the world didn't come to an end. We are not talking about crashed space craft falling everywhere several times a year. Even one crash would be a highly unusual event and wouldn't release enough radio-nucleotides to be the "end of civilization or even noticed in the grand scheme of things Can you suggest a technology that can lift the payloads nesesarry to build a real space station? a tecnology to make space travel both safe and economical? If you can i await the info with baited breath. first of all we are not talking about carrying 1000 people, we are talking about launching payloads into space. payloads to build space stations, build interplanetary space craft, satellites, Moon bases, habitats. these things cannot be done in any realistic way by chemical rockets. A 2,000,000 lb payload would be capable of doing things we only dream of at this time. No other technology promises so much for so little risk. The nuclear reactors we have now are old technology, comparing what we have now to 21st century technology is like assessing the safety of air travel by looking at WW1 bi planes. having said that it wouldn't be fair not to point out that most of the current reactors have been completely safe, doom sayers of the death of the earth from nuclear reactors have proved false. Radiation is a part of life, there have even been natural nuclear reactors in places on the earth. For our civilization to go forward we have to use nuclear power, no other technology can take us to the future.

Not true, Chernobyl released just a few pounds of radionuclide's, it was just released all at once in a completely uncontrolled manner mixed with tons of other debris. You are appealing to emotion, there is no comparison to the immense amount of radio-nucleotides released by a coal fired power plant and the tiny amount released by Chernobyl Storage for the radioactive fuel can be easily built to with stand impact. Cracking open an empty reactor is no big deal. Again you are being emotional, it would be easy to protect the fuel from impact by storing it in a small armored space. this fuel can be swept out of the reaction chamber immediately. There is no comparison to a nuclear power plants with many tons of core material and shielding. You really need to do some research about gaseous fission nuclear reactors. On top of that risk mitigation means lessening the risk, nothing will ever be absolutely safe, I think in the article they used Bhopal India as an example of risk mitigation. Just because of that accident chemical plants weren't shut down everywhere. No that plant didn't do a good job of risk mitigation just like Chernobyl, Chernobyl shouldn't have been built much less run by incapable people. Chernobyl melted down due to bad design and human error. If a space craft was seen as going to impact the earth the radioactive fuel would be removed from the reactor immediately, if a high speed impact as inevitable it would be steered toward an uninhabited site or a site of less inhabitation. You have to plan ahead for problems, plan for the worst possible scenario after you have mitigated the risk from the worst possible scenario then you do everything you can to avoid that scenario to begin with. You seem to think this would be done by simply launching a nuclear light bulb rocket and see what happens. That's not the way safety works. I used to be employed by the DuPont corporation in the safety department. Somethings are inherantly unsafe, but nothing cannot be made safer and even the worst possible disaster can be planned for.

Coal fired power plants do indeed release many times the radiation of any and all nuclear power plants it is not an appeal to emotion it is the truth. If the truth is an appeal to emotion then I am guilty. Comparing the possible worst case scenario of a nuclear light build rocket release to a common radioactive release is not emotion it is a completely fair comparison. No space craft launched from the earth is going to impact the earth at any speed even remotely approaching the impact speed of an asteroid. Solid balls of rock are not particularly strong or survivable. Nickle/iron asteroids survive impact at many times the speed a space craft launched from the earth could reach if it failed trying to reach orbit. It would be relatively easy to protect the contents of the engine from impact at any reasonable speeds.