greg1917

Silicon based life ive heard of yes. but metallic based? the nature of metallic bonds dont really allow this, at least with silicon u can form some type of chain for molecules like carbon.

Difficult to give you an opinion when you dont mention where you read it, personally ive never so much as heard of metalic based life. How could life be based on metals anyway? Metals come in a number of guises - reactive little b*stards like sodium that react violently with water, not so reactive metals that react over time like iron and the more inert ones like gold. considering a large portion of carbon based life is water or water based this makes mere existence a little hard.

Of course its economic. my fathers driven through Roswell and he said the amount of shops selling tacky UFO memoribilia and UFO themed restaurants was huge. people are caught up in the culture of the place - any small US town will sieze on any possible claim to fame to try and generate some sort of tourist revenue and Roswell seems to be doing fantastically well at it. Whether you believe in UFOs or not you have to admire the entrepreneurialship here, a bit like Elvis' home town. The King lives, just like ET or so im told.

yeah. different ways to do it. since v^2 = u^2 + 2as you can rearrange to give s = (v^2 - u^2) / 2a which gives 51020m which is close enough to ure figure. and yeah v = u + at which gives t as 102s.

Grades are awarded solely on performance in end of year external exams. some subjects have coursework which constitutes a percentage of the overall mark - this is sent away and marked externally as well. For example my advanced higher chemsitry mark depends on my final exam mark (80%) and a project i chose at the start of the year (20%). My Higher economics mark is entirely based on my final exam mark. After this u go on to college or university, university being the preferred option. It depends what uni course u do, theyre all different. for example ive applied to do chemsitry at uni, but theres also loads of other courses like applied chemsitry, biomolecular chemsitry, medicinal chemsitry etc. one course i find stupid is chemical science - this is for people who want to do a course in chemsitry but dont want a chemsitry career at the end, instead they go into business or accountancy or something. Then there are the schemes on offer. Vocations and art subjects have their own set of qualifications but when i chose chemistry i could do either a BSc or an MSci course. BSc means Bachelor of science and was a 4 year course for chemsitry while MSci, Master of Science, was a 5 year course which is fazing out BSc. I applied to St Andrews which I enjoyed when i visited, bit cold being on the North Sea coast tho...

Can someone give me a brief explanation of the structure of the US education system in schools? Reading over past threads some people mention what look like courses but I have no idea what they refer to. In Scotland for the most part preparatorary school goes from prep 1 to 7, starting at age five and finishing at age 12. Kids then go to senior school, which goes from senior 1 to 6. Seniors 1 and 2 are spent learning basically everything. In S3 and S4 the first proper syllabus is undertaken with externally modulated exams - Standard Grades. Every pupil chooses 8 subjects and sits them over two years, culminating in an external exam marked by the Scottish Qualifications Authority. each subject's exam consists of 2 of 3 papers depending on pupil ability. the three papers are, in order of increasing difficulty, foundation, general, credit. All pupils sit general, better students sit credit and less able pupils sit foundation. marks range from a 1 or a 2 in the credit band, a 3 or a 4 in the general band, a 5 or a 6 in the foundation band and a 7 if u manage to fail foundation (which is really impressive, this almost takes more talent than getting a 1). the advantage of this is that pupils are almost definitely going to elave schol with something , if they fail a credit paper hopefully they can pick up a 3 in the general paper. moving on, in S5, the next stage is the Higher. the majority of students take 5, some brainiacs take 6 and some freaks of nature even choose 7. these are much more versatile than standard grades as you usually sit them over one year although you can choose to sit them over two years. these dont have the same stupid exam system as the standard grades do, here its just a single paper which is graded A B C fail. there are further distinctions - there A1 passes (the best) A2 (slighty below obviously) and so on. a fail at Higher usually results in the awarding of an Intermediate 2 grade, which is above Standard Grade level but below Higher. Advanced Highers follow in the final year of schooling, S6. one can only study an advanced higher if one has achieved a half decent pass at the same subject at Higher level. pretty much exactly the same outlay as higher only the stuff is more advanced. I took maths, english, history, physics and chemistry at higher. i got 5 As, an A1 in physics and chemsitry and an A2 in the rest. In S6 ive taken advanced chemsitry and advancd physics as well as higher economcis to break up my timetable. as for an indication of the level of knowledge, in advanced chemsitry the topics include a basic introduction to quantum mechanics, the laws of thermodynamics etc. advanced physics has things like rotational dynamics, relativistic effects. economcis is just crap and boring and i wish my teacher got run over. by a bus. then another one to make sure.

Get in a plane. Lose altitude fast enough and for a few minutes ull undergo what could be described as weightlessness - ure falling at the same speed as the plane so u float around. This is how scenes in Apollo 13 were filmed. As for a machine that can 'fake' zero gravity, No.

Didnt mean to change the subject, Its just George Galloway did a lecture at my school on Friday. hes the MP for Glasgow - Kelvin. He frequently visits Iraq and is probably the most vocal anti war politician in Britian (arguably). he managed to persuade me about the futility of the whole crisis. but anyway, religion. I think Bush believes he has some right to go ahead with this because of his religion - because to him Christianity is the bigger more powerful religion, the one which constitutes more powerful industrialized countries. He clearly doesnt care about the different religions of the people who live in the Gukf - Turkey will probably occupy Kurdistan and Turkey doesnt even recognise the Kurds as a race! they call them mountain turks. there is a lot of hatred between these two and Bush hasnt even mentioned it, he just wants Turkey to give him another flank on Baghdad. Id say his consultation with the Pope was more political than religous tho. From Bush's position that is. I doubt the Pope would have anything new to say on the matter with respect to the real situation - the UN, rising tensions in the surrounding countries and the future consequences. theres a cultural difference here as well. British operations in Ulster have led us to a mind-set of minimum force, urban life going on as normal and trying to keeping hated factions together. American military doctrine seems to revolve around overwhelming force, an attitude to collaterall damage thats verging on apathy and also, what I find strange being british, a belief that one should support his president out of some patriotic feeling. Obviously this isnt the unilateral case for an army the size of that of the US but these are just the views of British people and to an extent the rest of Europe.

But why would a giant lobster called marmaduke sent giant bananas to Earth? i know marmaduke knows and sees all but im not sure about your hypothesis here, youve yet to produce marmadukian maths OR show proofs for your banana theory. hmmm

The reason I believe Bush and Blair are pushing ahead with this is because due to them being a) white and b) western they think they have the god given right to carry out 'regime change'. this sounds like something from Colonial times which I presume is what Bush is yearning for - an American empire. what damn right do these two monkeys have to decide who is evil and who isnt? its a bit hypocritical to PUT saddam into power, sell him weapons, ignore other dictators then announce that an invasion into probably the most unstable and explosive area in the world will apparently lead to peace. Blair recently referred to it being a 6 day war. oh it is, is it? the same war between isreal and arab arimes that lasted a few days in the 60's? which then mutated into the 35 year war they STILL fight in isreal and occupied Palestine? so an invasion wont allow iraqi military commanders to take whatever biological agents they can lay their hands on and move on to other countries as warlords, with the most horrific weapons ever developed? is that containment? maybe if the US didnt pour rifles bullets bombs and helicopter gunships into Israel, the most agressive, violent and expansionist country in the world, it might actually achieve something in the middle east. I pity the poor american and british soldiers who will die in this ridiculous conflict, as well as the thousands of iraqis which will be bombed then forgotten about a few days (or even hours) later.

basic trig must date back an extremely long time, arabic mathematics maybe? they invented most simple principles i believe.

Are those possibly the worst UFO pictures youve ever seen? nice use of basic picture programs there on simple landscape photos...

There was a report on bbc news on thursday night about the research facility at Porton Down - theyd developed a new way to make biological warfare protection suits. It didnt go into much technical detail but they put fabrics into what looked like a big flourescent tube and the fabric was then coated in fluorine or a flruoine compound. liquids of any sort seemd to be unable to penetrate any fabric treated - water simply cascaded off the fabric like drops of mercury. the process was shown on a neck tie and red wine just slid down it without a stain of any kind. anyone know any more? it looked amazing - obviously fluorine has been used in this general application before but not like this, to my knowledge.

Well even looking at the stars with the naked eye involves this priciple because the sky at night is the cosmos millions of years ago due to the time lag in the light arriving at earth - thus looking at things extreme distances away will show you the universe in its (relative) infancy.

Um, no one really invented them. trigonometry has certain relationships between angles and lengths in a right angled triangles (there are obviously god knows how many other situations which involve sin cos and tan but right angled triangles are the simplest application that comes to mind). sin = opp/hyp cos = adj/hyp tan = opp/adj Its just a ratio of lengths which are constant in a right angled triangle. Sin Cos and Tan 'ratios' were determined not invented. They are mathematical functions which are used, not entities in their own right which were created. If your asking who specifically determined them then sorry, that escapes my memory at the moment. Anyone know? it wasnt Newton was it? His name comes to mind for some reason.

Researchers have created the highest resolution optical image ever, revealing structures as small as just tens of billionths of a metre across. "This is the highest resolution optical spectroscopic measurement ever made," said Lukas Novotny, professor of optics at Rochester University, US. The novel technique should allow a new insight into the world of the small, for example examining the proteins embedded in a cell's membrane. "There are other methods that can see smaller structures, but none use light, which is rich in information," said Professor Novotny. "With this technique, we have a detailed spectrum for every point on a surface." Gold point Other ultra-high resolution imaging techniques, such as atomic force microscopes, only detect the presence of objects. But they don't actually see them. The laws of physics make very high magnifications extremely difficult because the wavelength of light is a limitation in itself. To tackle this problem, Professor Novotny's team sharpened a gold wire to a point that was just a few tens of nanometres across. A laser was then shone against the side of the gold tip, inciting electrons inside it to oscillate. These oscillations created a tiny bubble of electromagnetic energy at the tip, which interacts with the vibrations of the atoms in the sample. Designer medicines This interaction, called Raman scattering, releases packets of light from the sample at specific frequencies that can be detected and used to identify the chemical composition of the material. The first images taken with the new technique are of so-called carbon nanotubes, filaments of carbon atoms strung together. One prospect for this technique is determining exactly how cell membranes work, opening the door to designer medicines that could kill harmful cells or repair damaged ones. Currently, Professor Novotny and colleagues can achieve a resolution of about 25 nanometres. In a few years, they expect to be capable of seeing proteins, which are little more than five nanometres wide. To do this, they will have to get the point of the gold tip sharper still. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2822251.stm

hed probably saying 'Oi you, muppet, thats isnt a bloody universal instrument for measuring time as it doesnt apply in all situations due to its simplistic mechanical nature.' Thats assuming hes in a somewhat irate mood at the time.

What would the pros and cons be? Something that had a delayed reaction would have the advantage of being able to infect much more of the population before it started taking effect and the local populace tried to defend themselves. or at least try and halt the spread of the disease. The goal is made much easier by a population ignorant of the danger faced by them. A virus spread through food sources which reduced peoples ability to absorb nutrients would work well. People would feel the need to eat more but this would only heighten the problem.

just something to exercise your creative minds. This is in no way meant to be serious, just a general musing. hence its location in this forum. Having seen Resident Evil recently I started to think about the most efficient and successful way of killing people. The method used was the spread of the virus material itself first through an airborne carrier. inhallation results in the deceased becoming zombies, infecting whoevere they bit etc etc im sure you know the plot. the question im asking is, given the aim of eliminating as many people as possible, what do you think would be the best method through which to do this? nerve gas seems basic seeing as it only kills those in the proximity in which it was released. The virus in resident evil had the advantage of spreading beyond the original source, virus hosts could themselves spread it before dying. Although the ease with which the zombies were dispatched reduced their effectiveness as a medium through which to spread the virus and thus accomplish the goal. Would the spread of a poison or virus be better spread through water supplies of perhaps through foodstuffs? for that matter what are the benefits of poison as compared to viruses or other anything else? I know it sounds a) ridiculous and b) slightly sinister but I was hoping to keep a light hearted tone to this. try and be creative:D

Do you think there would come a point where the complexity of knowledge was unable to be furthered due to the inability of humans and computers to comprehend it? Id believe so, otherwise people would become some sort of diety like entity. Emotion would be blurred and sidetracked in the pursuit of pure knowledge.

Knowledge itself is subjective I suppose, is there a defienite point when 'everything' is known? When every single possible uncertainty is accounted for and every single event is able to be predicted accurately?

No they arent covered by the Geneva convention, they constitiuted of a large rectum inside a transparent plastic sphere. By dropping them they implode thus warping rectum-space, its a relativistic effect. the resulting shock wave would have a laxative effective, the power of which varies as 1/(r^2) from ground zero. scary stuff, especially if youve eaten dumplings recently.

Dont be picky now, slavs dont like that. Where in Bulgaria are u from by the way Baigligan

identical twins occur naturally in humans. A fully grown adult or even a dead person are never cloned, I said that in an earlier post.

it would be identical to a normal human being, physiologically. Emotionally for the clone, he would feel different as i said in an earlier post about emotional stress. he would also be (wrongly) classified by society as some kind of sub class in the same way children who were born through artificial insemination are unfairly treated by the right wing press. I meant different in the sense of what hed experience, not he himself. I wasnt very clear before