The Lounge

There could be aliens on Earth. If a species a million years older than us, discovered immortality and embraced exponential population growth, they would have traveled to every star system in the galaxy by now. They may have us completely surrounded, at every neighboring star system.They could have terraformed hundreds of billions of worlds. They could have watched as planets with life, less developed, matured, achieved sentient and eventually global consciousness. They could be manipulating us through immortal agents implanted on the planet. We could be a reality TV show for scientists of an alien race. They could be on Earth, possibly found or there may be detectable …

I've been looking around the internet for a solid list of science related shirts and other merchandise, but couldn't seem to find one. I figured a forum like this would be a good place to start one. Though I don't have much to add myself, I thought you might like one of my designs that recently became available over at Cotton Bureau. "Gravity Surf," as I've come to call it, is a little play off of the discovery of gravity waves. It's only available for about a week and a half, though, so don't wait to pick one up if you're interested! Here's a link, followed by a 10% off discount code you can use at checkout: Advertising link removed by moderator Feel free to post …

A newspaper article last week about diesel cars (Sunday Times 24th Jan UK) caught my eye when the author reported his 1.6 TDI car does 37mpg with a CO2 classification of 99g/km. Whereas I calculate my 1.6 petrol job to do 46mpg (although the dashboard indicator says 48mpg!) with a CO2 classification of 139g/km. With the apparent drive to reduce CO2 emissions, would it be better for manufacturers to build cars with a lower mpg figure?

Here is a beeb video of a bike on a practice lap of the Northwest 200. Now I am a bit of a fan of this madcap form of racing anyway - but that's not the reason for the post. The video is 360 degrees - you can turn your view direction around with the mouse as you watch https://www.facebook.com/BBCBIKES/videos/vb.114010462015043/942879885794759/?type=2&theater I love it. I did actually say "FFS brake already" as I gripped my chair preparing for the brakes to send me forward in my pillion seat

My history knowledge of the US is very limited. Did at any time, perhaps around 1800 or earlier, citizens of the newly established states needed a passport/documents to move/travel from one state to the other ? -Like Europe had strict traveling documents well into the 20th century-

I was once at a luncheon with three Ph.D. students in the Chinese Department at Peking University, all native Chinese (one from Hong Kong). I happened to have a cold that day, and was trying to write a brief note to a friend canceling an appointment that day. I found that I couldn't remember how to write the character 嚔, as in da penti 打喷嚔 "to sneeze". I asked my three friends how to write the character, and to my surprise, all three of them simply shrugged in sheepish embarrassment. Not one of them could correctly produce the character. Now, Peking University is usually considered the "Harvard of China". Can you imagine three Ph.D. students in English at Harvard forgetti…

DARN!! They changed the rules for getting the million dollars, because Randi retired and now they're setting up "new" protocols, which supposedly come out this year. I have a hypothesis on how to get the million dollars. I actually completely held the desire to go do it within the past few months, grab a suitcase of my clothes, and personally walk down there and get the million dollars. That'd be like hundreds of miles, but I'd do it. Anyone willing to back me if they have it as a condition that I need academic support? Also, I more than likely will not tell you how to get the million dollars. I firmly believe the new rules will prevent me from personally gett…

Hey friends, have you already heard a soprillo? The rare instrument is a saxophone, but a higher-pitched one: in Bb, one octave over the soprano, one fifth over the sopranino. Made only by Benedikt Eppelsheim, a nice guy in Munich http://www.eppelsheim.com/en/instruments/soprillo/ (have a look at his other odd instruments too...) Any high-pitched wind instrument is difficult, and this one is very high-pitched, but Nigel Wood plays it nicely http://soprillo.com/soprillogy.php he recorded a Cd of inspired and diverse jazz, "Soprillogy", that's probably the debut of the instrument's reknown. Track samples there!

Opening some threads here remind me of being a child stepping through our church door, some remind me of reading One Flew over the Cockatoo's Nest, some are like school or university, some are like a bar fight, and a few are like a party of drunks arguing politics or other trivia.

I (as an average person) was stuck in a dilemma how to validate my research idea, basically same situation as in - http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/50970-how-would-one-publish-a-groundbreaking-scientific-idea/ So instead of moving on with my research I started to learn more about why people don't want to share their ideas: Ideas get stolen with no reference or credit to the source Ideas are harder to define on your own Ideas are hard to validate (evaluating the validity or novelty of the idea) There is no good way of getting constructive feedback outside of my network This research might already exist You don't want to feel stupid As a scientist, do you agree or d…

Lost My Best Friend Today I lost my best friend today, he was my buddy, followed me everywhere I went, slept snuggled up to me every night, would not allow strange dogs to get close to me and even people he didn’t know. He would always place himself between anything he suspected might be dangerous and me. He was very protective. My heart is broken… He was a Basset Hound named Winston, many people and other dogs I am sure, thought he was an asshole. I told people he suffered from an excess of personality, in reality he had a very strong sense of self. He knew who he was and how far he was willing to be trifled with. On the way to the vet I broke out in tears, he strugg…

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/93134-newtons-apple-the-secret-untold-story/#entry901343 I typed that out, ten minutes later the horrible swasnot looms up to me with a message on a silver salver. Hes LOCKED, for Blessedssaykes, my topic. Now was he right to do what he did? Or should he have excercised the prior courtsey of TELLING ME TO JUST MOVE MY TOPIC TO A DIFFERENT THREAD SECTION? I have no idea what this guy has against me. I secretly suspect he dislikes my skin tone or something like that.

Hello. Meet my new the best friend, the most likely Eurasian pygmy shrew. I caught him/her today in the hypermarket (surprisingly without any problem).. Market bodyguards and employees wanted to kill him/her. But I disallowed and took him/her with me. According to wikipedia they eat as much as weight per day. And one day starving in the winter is deadly. Best Regards!

I know there's quite a few people on here currently (or previously) enrolled in some kind of post-secondary institution that can relate. I'm receiving a lot of stress from my father. He constantly asks me what my grades are, and at the same time tells me I should be getting high 80's and 90s. Whenever I even mention something below an 80 I get a "you should be spending less time with your girlfriend" or "you should have focused more" or, more recently, "how much money did you spend on this semester?" I answered "about $7000," to which he responds "... money well spent..." It's this negative, non-supporting, judgmental attitude that leads me to constantly lie about my grad…

Beauty, like almost every other random thingamajig around, is grounded to the teeth in science For instance theres the golden 3.14 that accounts for every twist and turn in the beauty of anything. The closer your measurements align with the Magic Pi, the sexier, generally speaking you are. Bearing this fact in mind, just how appealing, taking every such measurement into account, is the Following Human Face on a scale of 1-10?

Can anyone tell me the difference to an American between a City, a Town and a Village please|?

Happy new year! ¡Feliz año nuevo! Feliz ano novo! Bonne année ! Frohes neues Jahr! Felice anno novo!

Hello. For a small quantity of about a dozen, does anyone know which would be a simple source of printable clear thin vinyl sheets (as from office products stores), with glue layer for seeing the image behind glass ? To be fed to a plain color printer or photograph printer. Problem... printing white being one of the colors... Workarounds ?

I've seen that Daedalus has been posting his own music on here occasionally. Although I don't share his technical composition capabilities, I'm reasonable with the production side of things. In any case, here's a track I finished recently. It has a very bitter sweet theme... https://clyp.it/hinjrfpw

Hello all, Just for fun, could the phenomenon "seduction by the dark side of the force" in Star Wars be scientifically explained by a simple X-linked recessive mutation? Here’s how: Shmi Skywalker (Anakin Skywalker’s mother) was a carrier (not clinically manifest). Presumably, Her husband did not have the mutation. Anakin Skywalker (Darth Vader) received the mutant X chromosome from her, and got seduced by the dark side. Luke Skywalker, Anakin’s son, was normal because his X chromosome came from his normal mother, Padmé, who was normal. Leia: Anakin passed his mutant X chromosome to Leia Organa (Princess Leia), thus making her an asymptomatic carrier. Kylo Ren: Leia …

Ok, so I saw the new Star Wars the other day, and I'm so disappointed. The movie had SO MUCH potential to be great. I would think after episodes 1,2, and 3, they would carefully tailor this film to be not only better. Instead, it seems like they wrote the whole movie over a single weekend, and didn't take a step back to think about it. By far the biggest disappointment was the characters, their abilities and personality: Fin- A storm trooper deserter who, in summary, appeared as a cowardice, whiny, unskilled boy. We barely see Fin fight, and when he does, he's a scared nanny. He's been trained as a storm trooper his whole life, and he lacks fighting tactics. Not o…

At the risk of sounding religious... I want to wish everyone and their families a very merry Christmas. May the joy and good will of the season be with us all year round.

What is your opinion on using multi-letter variables in math formulas? Should they be used more often or avoided? If I use a quantity called 'Gross Domestic Product' in a formula, I might want to use 'GDP' as the variable name representing it. But this actually seems as a rare example - I cannot think of many such examples, can you? Should I better come up with a single letter representing some money quantity (like 'M') and then use the 'GDP' description in its index? That is what I usually do when I have several quantities of the same type in the same formula (for example, to represent a current through resistor R1 and a current through resistor R2 I might use in…

Hello everyone, a simple question ; what's your best place to get inspiration ?, where you can think and find new ideas or solutions to your problems. and do you have any tricks for a phd student to come up with an original idea for his research theme ? For me, it's the kitchen, when i'm eating, tons of ideas come to my mind.

Hello, I am anti-social, not because of people bullying me, but I think because of my mother downing me everytime. I hate doing smart stuff in front of other people, in fact i can't do anything in front of them at all. I also have trouble speaking words, I get tongue twisted. I get to socialize with anti-social people though [but we're few].