EdEarl

IMO morals are a mental artifact; thus, subjective. However, the article quoted was concerned with whether religion defined morals or whether they are a natural part of humanity regardless of religion, which means your question should be discussed in another thread.

Welcome to SFN chadn; enjoy.

Welcome to SFN, Mr. Sclater; enjoy.

The link tells what they are made of.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longhouses_of_the_indigenous_peoples_of_North_America

Christian witch hunts resulted in an unknown, estimated 35,000, executions. I did not claim there were executions for opposing the flat Earth theory. The 6000 year old earth is a protestant calculation, not Catholic. Copernicus book about heleocentrism was published after his death. Galileo was arrested by the Catholic Church for agreeing with Copernicus. Giordano Bruno, a Dominican monk, was found guilty by an inquisition of heresy for supporting heleocentrism.

I do not know, since I do not know the specific course prerequisites. On the other hand, CS courses require programming, which can be time consuming; thus you may find yourself running out of time to complete all programs on time. It should make no difference. Yes, if you can find a place to work that needs a biologist to do some programming.

Are you interested in structures made by the Europeans or natives of places that they explored, and which explorations are you considering, Africa, Asia, Americas, Pacific Islands, Australia, Iceland/Greenland, or other?

The design and engineering of large buildings are done by teams of people; thus, for you to do a complete design and engineering project would be too much for you. However, that only means you should focus on some aspect of the entire job instead of everything to all levels of detail. You might think of this project as big, complex and scary, or you may think of it as significant, rich and interesting. I think it is the latter. I recommend you start by establishing requirements and continue into design. Choose parts to design you find most interesting and important and work on it as long as you can. It can become a good science project.

At one time, people would only speak for science when they were old and near death, because they faced being burned at the stake if they spoke against the church's teachings. Now we have the right to speak out without facing the inquisition and death; thus, it is our duty to do so, so that others will learn science and rational thought. We will not convert those who blindly follow their faith, but some will hear and slowly, generation by generation, more people learn to think for themselves, rather than faithfully following a myth.

I think a nuclear power plant needs to be isolated from most people, because the spent fuel is stored on site and is dangerous for thousands of years after it is used in a reactor. A skyscraper is tall, which means it coul be be integrated with wind power. Vertical PV are limited by the amount of sun that falls on them. PV is most effective when perpendicular to the sun. All tall structure must be fastened to the ground by pilings that are usually sunk into bedrock. Very tall buildings also bend when the wind blows against them or in earthquakes, and are sometimes stabilized by inertia negation.

It sound like a good science project, except a skyscraper would tend to be unstable due to its height. You might go for a large short building on the order of the Pentagon, which is a huge office complex but not very tall. That gives you sufficient space for a PV array and rainwater catchment. Equatorial zones never have hurricanes and rainstorms tend to be mild. Deep water is cold enough to use for air conditioning, and has many nutrients that promote algae growth, which is the bottom of the food chain in the ocean. Plankton, small fish, and larger fish will follow, making it possible to provide a sustainable food chain for people living on the floating building. See: The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps by Marshall T. Savage for some ideas. Also, engineers in the Netherlands are planning floating cities. Search youtube for floating city.

Tesla gets much credit, but was not nearly as good an engineer, mathematician and scientist as Steinmetz.

The list Imatfaal made is a good one, I'd like to add Archimedes, who was close to inventing the calculus. I'd also like to add the Buddha; although, the Buddha may not be an individual but a myth developed by a culture. Whichever the case, it does not actually matter. Buddha was perhaps the first humanitarian philosopher, and responsible for ideas that are eternally good.

The most direct evidence of the Earth being older than 6000 years is found in tree rings (counted back to about 10,000 years) and ice core layers (counted back to about 100,000 years), which biblical fundamentalists ignore. How a person can ignore evidence they can see with their eyes and maybe a magnifying glass, and believe myth instead never fails to amaze and perplex me. It make me doubt we are an intelligent species.

While the CMB temperature indicates the earliest time that life may have formed, in fact, large bodies such as asteroids, comets, moons and planets would have formed hot and cooled slower than the CMB. Thus, the temperature at which life can from would extend from the CMB temperature being right for life forming until large bodies cool too much for life to exist or water evaporates from a body. Those bodies in orbit within the Goldilocks area around stars continue to have life sustaining temperatures. This observation seems to support the idea that panspermia may be the source of life on some planets; although, it is not specific evidence that Earth was seeded by life from elsewhere.

I've been lead to believe that very large stars were common in the early universe, and that they burn out within a few million years and go supernova to from black (gray) holes, in which heavy elements are made. Thus, rocky planets could form 10 billion years ago.

Most of the universe was the right temperature for life to exist about 10 Billion years ago, regardless of whether a planet or moon is in the Goldilocks zone, as long as it is not too close to a star that it remains too hot.

We make models of things we know, and they are bounded by things we know that we don't know and sometimes things we don't know that we don't know. We can estimate errors on things that we know that we don't know, but the things that we don't know at all can make our models useless. In some cases the things we don't know at all will apply to special cases. Models are useful, but always limited. Using them for predictions is often better than a SWAG. We do not have perfect foresight, which is the only way we might make perfect predictions. Sometimes "improved" engineering efforts will result in an unfortunate result such as the Tacoma Narrows "Galloping Gurtie" Bridge or Fukushima.

Welcome to SFN Kh112. Enjoy. Hi Endy. RK is already banned as a sock puppet.

One or more parents are sometimes killed, and gay parents can adopt their progeny. See: http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/same-sex-penguin-couple-allowed-adopt-egg.html Consider that gay is not unnatural.

We know we feel emotionally, touch, hear, see, and sense temperature; there is no question about it; everyone does it. If people were telepathic, everyone would know. Some people look for things that do not exist.

Interesting, they look and move somewhat like jellies, eat like a whale shark, and are shaped like a fish. It is odd enough to be proposed exobiology in a sci-fi book.