Other Sciences

In light of the current crisis involving Iran and the much reported similarity between the enrichment process of Uranium for both nuclear power and nuclear weapons, I would like to ask this question:- Just how long does it take to get weapons grade uranium from nuclear power grade uranium?

Please see the article below (you may have to scroll down the page a bit) http://www.physorg.com/news9794.htmlJan%2012 Norway is to build a "doomsday vault" in a mountain close to the North Pole that will house a vast seed bank to ensure food supplies in the event of catastrophic climate change, nuclear war or rising sea levels, New Scientist says.

This is my first post here, so don't be too hard on me. I had an epiphany the other day and would like to share it with you guys & gals. Feed back on my theory, good or bad is, welcome. Assumption 1: The Earth's magnetic field swaps poles frequently in terms of geological years (10,000 - 40,000 years). At least that's a theory that I read. Assumption 2: As the magnetic field breaks up and moves away from the poles towards the opposite poll, more and more radiation penetrates the Earth's atmosphere. The Earth begins to heat and as the fields reach the equator position; the polal region is most exposed to radiation causing melting of the ice caps and a se…

Hi. New here. Hoping that someone will have a feel for the behavior of volcanoes. I've been thinking that it would be a good idea to move to Montserrat for my retirement. My gut feeling is that, having had a good blast, the volcano there might not represent a very great threat. Some risk is, of course, expected and the other qualties of the island would justify, in my mind, a moderate amount of risk. But would moving there represent a sufficient threat to life and property that the project would be foolish? I will be gald to hear any thoughts the SFN community may have on the subject. Thank you.

Hi everyone I am new to here, so here goes my first question! I have a question, how does scientists created elements like Plutonis, since in nuclear reactions are used with atoms with a lower atomic number than the artificial elements and using fission, how can scientists get elements with higher atomic number? PS: I am portuguese so all mine education is in portuguese, most of mine scientific vocabulary must be wrong but I think u will understand it

You don't seem to have a social sciences forum, so I suppose I'll post this here. Why do you think Indians seem to prefer pale skin to dark skin? A whole industy has grown up in India around making people paler, and many top Indian models are of European ancestry. Is this a product of colonialism? The Ayran (Iranian Aryan, not Nazi Aryan) conquests? Association of dark skin with maual labour? A combination?

Sorry if this seems like a stupid question but I do not know much about anything of science. What is electricity's reaction to a magnetic field and is it possible to projuct a magnetic field without having some surrounding apparatus? The reason for the question is an argument with a friend over the possibility of creation of an actual lightsaber like those used in star wars. He first suggested lasers which i said wouldnt work for several reasons then he suggested using a strong electric current contained within a strong magnetic field.

I got an interesting idea. This morning when I was going to the bathroom, I was just thinking about my bedroom alarm clock. The alarm clock have LED (laser) numbers on the screen. Well, during the nights, I would put a shirt covering the clock, because the brightness of the light would bother me when I go to sleep. During the strolling to the bathroom, I was thinking if I leave the shirt there covering the alarm clock for a long period of time, (say 5 to 10 years?). Would the radiation of the LED lights make the shirt radioactive?

http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_index.html what idea seems to YOU to have the most potential for danger? here is a list of what 100 or more other people thought were dangerous ideas, and why.

Can be closed. Thanks.

I am looking for some inspiration for a media outcome i need to do this year, we basically get to portray a specific subject to a specific audience and ive chosen to do this with digital photography. The subject ive chosen is to show that the often seen as mundane and boring aspects of science are not only present in the real world but they are also beutiful and artistic in their design. I have some ideas such as the typical freeze shot of a water droplet and the diffusion of ink through a glass of water, but i also wanted to know if anyone else has some good ideas? keeping in mind that i only have a basic digital camera (detail is average) and that i am trying to use thi…

I have just found a website containing math formulas, chemistry formulas, physics formulas. Site is http://www.eformulae.com. A must visit site:-)

Regardless of where you put a wind turbine and where you put a solar panel? which one would produce more energy?

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/310/5756/1878 usually Science is only available online to subscribers. a few things are for free, but must is pay-per-view they made the current issue free (or so it seems, everything I tried so far) maybe as a way of bringing more people to their website. this issue is about the main breakthroughs of 2005, their picks. and how their picks of 2004 did, in retrospect and why they didnt pick what they didnt, etc. My understanding is that this issue is available UNTIL MARCH 1. so for the next couple of months.

current issue of Science picks ten top developments to highlight these pages have content that one can access as a non-subscriber--- they are open instead of merely "pay-per-view" number one: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/310/5756/1878 index of the nine runners-up: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/310/5756/1880a it is a long page so you just scroll down from 2 to 10---dont need any further links, but here for example is what they say about planetary probes: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/310/5756/1880a#planetary It's nice that Science magazine does this, but what do you think of their choice? WOULD YOU CHANGE THE …

Just watched Jurassic Park again on TV....and have some questions for the dinosaur lovers here. 1. How do they know that Tyrannosaurus rex can only see movement (ie. if you stood completely still they could not see you) 2. How do they know veloci raptors (sp?) hunt from side-on in groups? Or are there just things made up by the movie makers?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/18/wmap18.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/18/ixworld.html oldest Western map found so far----500 BC time of Pythagoras, who lived in one of the Greek cities in South Italy not far from where this piece of a map was found. the Heel is a peninsula pointing roughly south, with the Adriatic sea on the eastside of it and the Gulf of Tarento on the west side of it. Greeks colonized much of South Italy and it was called "Magna Graecia" for a while. Any place with a harbor for their ships. and they were trading all over---selling black-glaze pottery with lines drawn on it (pictures, ornamental designs, wr…

In other words, a nuclear device made to create mass amount of destruction. If you watch TV. You'll probably heard if this, and its usually said AL-quida might try this. Well let me tell you something, even if this was possible (which its not) the nuclear radiation emitted from it wouldn't even be enough to light a firefly's ass. You wanna be worrying about a biological weapon going off. I don't know where they get these daft ideas from? and the general public seems to believe in this stuff.

I think I may have posted a thread here or in another health forum about any possible dangers of leaving gladwrap or any other plastic on food when you put it in the microwave. Recently a friend of mine who is doing honors in chemistry told me that heating gladwrap on food can lead to dioxin poisoning. Or at least what is released into your food is carcinogenic. Is this true? I'd like to know the definitive answer to this issue because I've been getting lots of mixed messages.

SFN needs to compile a set of guides to evolution and ID that can then be put into a PDF/thread/whatever for future IDiots to reference to, or for education about evolution. The following would be a good start: A good description of evolution and its evidence A good description of ID (non-biased) and how it doesn't have evidence A comparison of the two and logical evaluation I'm willing to help out, and I know there are a few threads that list evolution's evidence and such. It would only take a bit of research and then some writing. I'd be fine compiling and editing the bits in OpenOffice and then making it into a snazzy PDF (after the holidays, of cou…

the decision by Judge Jones (BTW a Bush appointee) in the Dover case is online some key exerpts have been quoted at the Pharyngula blog, so one doesnt have to scan the whole decision but can cut to the chase and find key passages ---quote--- To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions. The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for t…

I've looked around and found a few distributed computing projects that would probably be worthwhile to run. All of these use BOINC, which means you can use them at the same time. Einstein@home is a project to detect pulsars by their gravitational waves alone. If it's done, it would be a major achievement. LHC@home is another project, by the people at CERN, to test different possibilities for particle orbits in the upcoming Large Hadron Collider. The idea is to find out which ones result in particles hitting the walls of the collider, which would damage it. Climateprediction.net is a project to forecast the climate using computer modeling, so that scient…

hi, this is my first post and an easy one for you all i would think. This question came up in another forum and the answer was given as b. Are there any views on this or is the answer in all cases option b. cheers, morag

In school earlier this week I was learning about photosynthesis. If you don't know what photosynthesis is, it's when plants take 6 molecules of CO2, six molecules of water, and sunlight to make one molecule of glucose and six molecules of oxygen The glucose is used for the plant's food, and we use the oxygen. While reading from the textbook, I had an idea. What if we could make artificial photosynthesis. It will take out some CO2 and add in O2 to slow global warming. Maybe the glucose could be used to put in food or something like that. If you have any comments about my idea or possible ideas on how to make it work, please reply.

recently, i learned that the atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and 1% other stuff like carbon dioxide, sulfer dioxide, etc. I was wondering, what will happen to humans and other animals if the air was pure oxygen? Would animals die off (from ther air, not by lack of food because plants will die off), live better, or will it stay the same? If anyone knows please tell me.