Comandante

I see. Does that also mean that the gateway device would need to be turned on all the time? If that's the case then it's not feasible for me.

Do you know any software that can be used to limit the bandwidth on each individual pc and also be protected by a password or something so that users can't change the limit?

I don't know how the alarm got turned off, but possibly I'd forgotten to set it in the first place.

It's very possible that you turned it off when it sounded without remembering that you did, happend to me a LOT, it was only later in the day that I actually came to recall that I turned it off!

As for that waking-life thing, maybe someone could give us a little introduction to that, or a definition?

I still didnt' figure out anything, anyone got any other ideas?

We don't, but chimps havent mastered space travel yet.

Are you trying to imply that we humans mastered it? Our current understanding of space travel can be vaguely likened to a fish jumping out of the water for a second, only to fall back and wonder how tall the sky is. The fish won’t advance in its ‘technology’ much unless it grows some kind of wings, which is unlikely, but we humans on the other hand have a better chance.. or so we think!

Could all of you also explain why these compounds are your favorites? I would like to learn from those explanations (e.g. new experiments, funny properties, etc.).

hmm good idea!

I use my KNO3 to make small rocket propellants experimenting with ratios and additions of different grade catalyst and other similar things. Also use it to make smoke-making compounds. In both cases sucrose is another main component aside from KNO3. Basically KNO3 is my favorite because it's about the safest amongst the necessary propellant ingredients and rockets are always fun... even when they fail to take off! But I'm sure you're familiar with all that anyway

Hydrogen peroxide is cool for many things but I use it for my experiments with chemoluminescence as it's a good oxidiser. I can't make the dye but I use commercial ones Looking into the dye synthesis but can't find much.

And as for copper, it's a great element, I use it to make copper solutions for fun, which sometimes doesn't end up as easy as it sounds...

What happend with oxygen in that first equation, it didn't disappear into the thin air did it?

By the way this question goes into homework help section.

Whoever is in a position to control access to Mars will decide if and how it is to be shared.

That is not very likely to happen, but likely nevertheless. The reason being is that IF the access becomes restricted by the 'wrong' parties or in any way defies the international law, then the protests will be on Earth, not on Mars. Would you be happy with someone developing weapons of mass destruction on Mars and not letting anyone else come 'up', or defy to listen to any warnings or orders whatsoever? The real question though is; how do we make sure that they don't? If the parties that have taken control are all hosted on Mars then there will be noone to fight with on Earth and Mars will soon 'run out of control' - again, unlikely (since there is probably going to be someone connected with those parties on Earth). The main point from here is that the access to Mars must be controlled, if not strictly, to make sure there is no means of any harm or threat for the people on Earth and not only that but also to make sure that everyone would get a fair share of Mars should we need to evacuate from Earth. And that's only one of the objectives that must be achieved. We shouldn't 'infect' Mars with our Earthly evil and the only reason to do that is to control the access, but that brings us to the old question again; WHO is going to control it? Who is right? What if we’re all wrong and our human race is neither capable or intelligent enough to colonize Mars in a peaceful and thoughtful way?

What if a nation decides to setup a base on Mars (or even Moon?) for the sole purpose of building missile launch sites for 'defense' ? Surely such a missile would take a hell of a long time to reach Earth or even its designated target - or so you thought. Remember, we're speaking if not 1000 years ahead, nobody can predict precisely what the technology will be able to do by then. That in turn makes us ask why do we even bother to think about it now then? Well, technology might be changing rapidly but the laws not so much. On the other hand I like to imagine what the future might look like. In my personal opinion “we” (who is “we”? the UN?) must define a rule that will inspect every ship headed to Mars (or moon) and that will be amongst the first steps towards peaceful sharing of Mars.

According to current international treaty, it really depends on what the land is going to be used for.

Well, that's exactly my point. Who is going to decide what the land will be used for? A more logical approach as I see it is that the idea of making the land habitable should be developed and then the cost shared among.. perhaps even all nations and their contributions should be optimal for their country's networth. For example, you can't ask the same amount of contribution from US and... say Italy. Anyhow, when that's settled then all nations should agree that the land be 'free for all' (or '% of profit from products to all contributors based on their investment') after the terraformation process is complete. However, that's only an idea. The reality is probably different.

Nice bbc link there, interesting article. Russia will probably achieve the heights of former Soviet Union, it's just a matter of time.

(ps. this new SFN layout is rather ugly!)

Everything Sysco said sounds very helpful but I still plan to look into stuff I'm interested in. There's no reason why we have to know all the details but if all you do is high school/college physics you'll get bored, with out a doubt.

On a further point, if I was you I would continue to participate in this site. I've been on for about a week and I've learnt so much about physics, maths, philosophy, arguing, politics, economics; just by saying what I think and reading the responses.

Yes, that's very important that you mentioned that, SFN is a great resource, as you can see I've been on the site since 2005 (final year of my high school!). And another thing I forgot to mention is that you can of course spend time reading about quantum physics for example if you want instead of the time you would've otherwise spent watching TV or playing games, but be careful, sometimes you can get tired from all the reading and then you can't do your normal school work. I know 'cause I've been there recently

Please excuse me if this is in the wrong forum area. I attempted to fit it in the best I could.

 

I am a high school student that is interested in a career in research in some area of science. I am not certain which field I would like to go into.

 

I am not sure how to begin exploring these interests. The kind of material I am learning now is a bit frustrating. I feel like the way we learn science in school is a bit superficial. For example, we learn that electrons like to be in groups of eight to be “stable,” causing certain atoms to bond to one another. There are subatomic particles, like protons that have a positive charge, and negatively charged electrons that fly around in these crazy shapes and patterns. But I am unsatisfied with this, as I do not really understand the concepts beyond the context in which they explain it. What is charge? What specifically causes these particles to behave the way they do? I would like to fully understand the concepts and how these things actually work in life, not what seems like analogies or simplifications or explanations that are very incomplete.

 

It seems like much of the written material available to me is like this. Other books seem too advanced and beyond my current level of experience. Similarly, reading scientific articles can be interesting, but at the same time unsatisfying as I understand very little of the specific details that allowed the researchers to build their conclusions.

 

I have a good amount of time explore this area of interest, but I am not sure what the best way for me to use it is as a high school student. From what I’ve read, it seems like I would have to learn classical mechanics and then move onto subjects in quantum mechanics and electromagnetism to get the level of understanding I am looking for. But I wouldn’t know where to start or what books to look for. It seems like that also might be an inefficient use of my time at this point. Am I looking at this in the wrong way?

 

I guess the question of this post is: What is the best way for me to start learning more about science?

I can answer most of your questions.

As for trying to understand a lot in high school, especially if you live in a country where you need to get a good end result to be able to get into a university, don't bother. All you need to do is make sure that you get to university, to BSc (Science) course meeting all the prerequisites. I've tried to understand everything to depth in high school and that has cost me a lot, I would spend heaps of time on single topic researching further to satisfy my logical reasoning (like you said the idea about electrons sounded absurd in high school) and I did this for almost all my subjects. This has caused me too much work and eventually I ran out of time in trying to cover other basic concepts, and as a consequence did not prepare for my final exams properly. Luckily this didn't happen with all my subjects, in fact, the subjects that didn't really interest me gained me the most 'points' for my entrance score and that's what got me to university, otherwise I would've stayed another year in high school.

Once you get to university then it's all good. Take a science course and pick yourself whatever you like, you will have enough time to research things in depth because there is less subjects/units to study at university in a single semester and that will allow you to spend more time on certain things. The prescribed textbooks will have almost all the information you need and explanations, and this part is important, explanations will start from high school science, for example, in a few lectures you will go from 'what is chemistry' to orbital angular momentum. Everything will start to fit in if you have interest in science. In further years you can decide what path you want to do choose.

However, don't take my "dont need to know anything" philosophy and go home and do nothing, make sure you at least 'mechanically' learn how to follow examples and do what they ask you, even if you find it hard to understand due to the lack of in-depth explanations, it will all be compensated for you at uni level.

BUT, you should try and understand the philosophy of science in general terms and I think the best way to "get into" science and know what you really want is to start realizing the connections between all different sciences, watch documentaries, they're usually interesting and entertaining and you can look up some books but don't waste too much time on them.

Good skills to bring with you from high school would definitely be stuff like algebra, bit of calculus, balancing chemical equations, bit of electrochemistry and organics, basic understand of some physical laws and depending if you want to do biology, a bit of basics from there, but in general, you should cover it all from the start at university, and even if you don't, usually every uni textbook has first 15-20+ pages dedicated to 'revision' of what you're supposed to know, usually in much better context than books designed for high school.

I'm in my second year, in Australia, so if anything of what I said is different (like number of units per sem etc) in your country then I apologize, but basic ideas which I discussed still count. I wish someone told me all this when I was in high school! Luckily I got where I wanted to be, gradually but firmly.

To conclude, you don't have enough time to fully learn and understand electromagnetics, quantum physics or synthetic organic chemistry (or anything else along those lines) in high school, you're better off concentrating at gaining high marks so you can get into university, once you get there you're all good. You can choose to do whatever you like and study to whatever depth you want. Even if you find that science isn't the area you want to base your career upon you can always change to a new course in second year, or even transfer to another university. All options are open. But if you spend too much time on these things now, and you fail to get into university, then you will have to repeat your last year of high school or whatever and I assure you, that will be extremely boring! (As far as I'm concerned it's better to get into any course at university than do one year of high school again, for one thing you will have gained uni experience and for another it won't be nowhere near as boring as if you had to repeat a year)

Cheers.

I know you're being sarcastic, but I very much doubt "capitalists" will play any part in terraforming a planet, except maybe as government contactors.

 

Also, I don't see how, short of violent action, any country can "hold any other back."

We will most likely not proceed with terraforming unless the cost of such project isn't on optimal levels, in fact, I think it won't take place until a VERY good idea is laid down first so that terraforming takes place relatively cheaply and so quickly (relatively) and efficiently. Of course I haven't got any ideas now of what kind of idea that could be, but I'm sure as technology advances that new ideas will be born. That way most of the cost will probably be in setting up a launch pad and a booster (if we still happen to use rocket boosters by then), and perhaps a machine(s) to convert carbon dioxide to oxygen and carbon to nitrogen (as SkepticLance said, Nitrogen is going to be needed on Mars and it isn't there (in high enough concentrations)).

As for seeing how a country can hold any other back think of it this way; if, for example, 5 nations decide to share the cost of going to Mars and in return expect a rep (or a group of reps) from each nation to board the 'ship' as well as equal share of whatever they're going to Mars for, and then for example, one of the nations figures it can cover the cost by itself and just refuses to make a deal with the other 4 nations, it can just as well take off and help itself while the others will be watching it on tv (if they're lucky).

Who, then, does?

Well, that's precisely the question this thread is trying to investigate.

Mars would have something like 1,000,000,000,000 tonnes of atmosphere - pretty much all carbon dioxide. It may be theoretically possible to use photosynthetic organisms to convert this to oxygen. However, an oxygen atmosphere is not viable for a planetary ecosystem. Gotta have a nitrogen cycle as well. If the terraformers did not find a massive source of nitrogen on Mars, what would they do? We are talking vast quantities of anything and everything that might be needed to make a living ecology.

 

I cannot even imagine a method of raising Martian temperature to that required to keep water liquid, unlss it involves continuous technical input. Mirrors in orbit have been suggested, to focus heat onto the planet. However, they would need to be constantly adjusted. Even if that was done by computers, they would need constant maintenance. Even a small error would be disastrous.

We'll leave science out of this one, however, to make a comment, I think that use of photosynthetic organisms would be an inefficient method for conversion .

I'd imagine that one would buy land from those who made the land habitable.

I don't think that whoever makes the land habitable should deserve the right to own the planet.

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LOL

It's an interesting topic, but I don't foresee any way for it to be "planned out" in advance, because if the planet did get parcelled out now, who gets there first and places the most infrastructure first would be a throw of the dice. I am pretty sure the process will be a lot more ad hoc when the time comes.

Those that get there first will be scientists, after them most likely tourists then engineers and builders and other robotic equipment. I think there's plenty of dust on Mars to make some kind of bricks and eventually erect buildings, scientific and residential, perhaps even business. We're talking about terraformed Mars after all, it will be possible to cultivate food etc. However, as you say, those that invest most of the money will want to claim 50% ownership of anything up there so that is an issue. But I can see a way around this, let the world's superpowers (by that time it might no longer be USA or China, might be Australia or some other nation(s) doens't matter which) invest equal amounts of fund into the project and in return expect equal amounts of profits for anything that might be profitable on Mars (don't be too skeptic about this, Mars will be an excellent playground for scientists and scientific research often turns out profitable). Once they reach say, 150% returns from these profits they can then agree to let the project to public - to the new colony, which can then declare new nation that will not be tied to any government or private ownership on Earth. That's only one way it could work, perhaps there are other ways. The bottom line is that we Will have to plan things out because if we don't they might turn nasty and our process of colonization of Mars will be inefficient and perhaps even stupid. Yes, we can't do much about it now because we're yet to see what all the problems will be, but it's definitely going to be a very large international project. We can use the upcoming moon missions as our models, I think they're already arguing who's going to build a base on what spot.

Terraforming will not be quick. I saw a reference somewhere a few years back to the number 10,000 years.

Hey, were you being skeptic? Don't underestimate the power of science and technology; it might all just resolve one day like a line of dominoes.

Considering the pre-requisites for their existance, indeed it would!

lol hilarious. fossil fuels on mars would trully mean 2 flies down with 1 hit (unless of course, we discovered fossils first!)

As for terraforming, that's something science will deal with. What I was referring to is the 'law' behind 'space exploration' and in particular the law behind colonization of Mars. Does it exist as of yet? Apart from the fact that space should remain "demilitarized zone" and if I'm not mistaken, we can't even stick to that, have there been any attempts to lay down a basic set of rules or anything like that (at least)? . China knocked down a satellite lately by a rocket projectile making the rest of the world feel a bit unnerved.

As I see it, Mars will need an entire new legal system on international grounds that will be guarded by someone or something like UN. So if any nation breaches the rules it must be sanctioned (something we've found not to be a very efficient method). Nothing is perfect so neither will be this new legal system - whatever it happens to be, it will need to be upgraded and changed according to the advancements made.

It is also very likely that, as a result of misunderstanding or breaching of policies and rules on or in regards to Mars, there could be fights/wars about it on Earth since that's where the governments will reside. Therefore the problem about Mars is not on Mars, it's on Earth! Whatever arguments we might have about Mars, the chances are we'll fight over it on Earth or even in space. And that's only for the early stages (division and allocation of territory). When settlements start growing on Mars we'll have even more problems to deal with.

By the way ecoli, that idea of new nation is not bad. I imagined having a large spaceship filled with first 'immigrants' of every possible nationality and religion (provided they all speak a common language - english preferably). I would also set laws such that no single religion or nation should form any kind of group residences (something that happens a lot these days) - just to ensure a good mix. This first colony should be at least 5000 people - carefully selected each of them through a series of tests to ensure maximum stability of the community. After all elements and bodies that are required in a single country are formed on Mars, I would suggest declaration of a new nation, purely neutral to any other nation on Earth and fully responsible for Martian administration. If it was me, I would name the new country Marsiania and, if I was in a contest to design a flag, I would definitely start with a orange background

Antarctica is different, a 'habitable' Mars would be much more popular and in my own opinion no easy agreement could be possible. I also think China might be the first to populate Mars. But the questions still remain...

As scientists we are still trying to figure out the best way how to make Mars hospitable. Eventually we'll come up with a feasible idea, Mars will turn green and scientists will be happy (overly generalized , but then what? Who would own the territory and how would we split it? Would we share it in the first place? How does one buy land on Mars and from who? If someone wants a piece of land that is unoccupied can one just have it? What if we start a war on Mars and the strongest nation gets to own the planet? Those are just some of the things bothering me and I'd like to hear what you think, or shoot me a link if it's been discussed before.

I HIGHLY doubt that. Unless your professor took the liquid N2 and sprayed it into a mist in the air, the "smoke" was not liquid nitrogen. The "smoke" you saw was suspended particles of solid H2O in the air. Liquid Nitrogen is so cold that the little bit of humidity which is in the air will solidify into small ice particles. The exact same effect is seen when you put solid CO2 (dry ice) into water.

Actually this makes more sense. Especially when you mentioned dry ice because I just recalled that it does indeed show same 'smoke' effect, just not as much of it. Interesting.

ahh I see... so that's why it tasted so good, I thought I was biased there for a sec

In my first year of uni (last year) I witnessed something 'cool'; icecream made with liquid nitrogen before my eyes, and I had my portion after that I was skeptic to try it at first since I never heard of anything like it, but it did work and icecream was great!! Did anyone else try it?

What I'm curious, and what the lecturer didn't explain, is what happened to the nitrogen? Did it simply go into the air? Perhaps she did but I kind'of forgot I know there was a lot of ... something that resembled smoke but fell to the ground and disappeared... was this concentrated nitrogen that eventually mixed with air? Explanations?

LOL hilarious...

Anyway, what does radar have to do with chemical reactions?

Unless chemical reactions produced some kind of EM radiation emanating from them to a long enough distance for some very sensitive radar to pick it up and identify what’s going on… I don’t see how radar could help?

As for identification of elements and molecules using non-chemical techniques, I am so far only familiar with NMR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_magnetic_resonance).

The router is Netgear WGR614 v4 (http://kbserver.netgear.com/products/wgr614v4.asp) and I didn't find any options to limit bandwidth or anything like that... but there are some options that I don't quite understand so if you think it has it then tell me where to look

I do have another 3 computers, 2 are on wireless g and 2 are wired (including this one). How can I setup that tiny linux gateway of yours and how could I use it to monitor bandwidth?

Not that I could figure out. There is no option available. Any ideas?