insane_alien

and the point is 'believe' cancer therapies are tested for efficacy, they haven't just decided to pump cancer patients full of incredibly toxic chemicals for no reason. they decided to do it because it helps kill cancer cells faster than it kills normal cells. cannabis DOES NOT DO THIS. what cannabis can do, and has been proven to do, is help people deal with the side effects of cancer therapies. the nausea the pain etc. and these are not trivial side effects, they can be quite debilitating. unfortunately, we cannot just develop a version of anticancer drugs that doesn't have these side effects because that would be stopping the primary mechanism by which they kill cancer cells. I would say cannabis could and probably should be used as a complimentary medicine to reduce the impact of the side effects in cancer patients that are particularly susceptible to it. and for god sake don't make them smoke it. cannabis smoke is just as likely to cause lung cancer as tobacco smoke no matter what the hippies say. there are many other longer lasting ways to ingest cannabis. tldr version: cure cancer: no help with side effects: yes smoke it: hell no

Every instance of cancer is different. A cancerous cell is just a normal cell thats gone a bit mental due to genetic damage and started reproducing all over the place. normal cells have mechanisms to prevent this but in a cancerous cell they are broken. so, the cancer cell is essentially genetically identical to the host. this means each cancer is unique. If its a different host then it has a different DNA starting block so any treatment might not work on a different individual. then there is the location of the damage. this means that a treatment that works on damage to one gene will probably not work against a cancer caused by damage to a second gene. asking 'how do we cure cancer?' is like asking 'how do we cure disease?' there are so many variations it is a hopeless question. there is no answer. you can make more sense by focusing on a specific area of cancer such as cancerous skin cells or cancerous lung cells but even then, those are pretty broad brushes. It is highly unlikely there will ever be a single cure-all drug. most likely we will develop personalised medicines where the cancer genome is sequenced and a drug therapy that will be effective for that individual cancer can be applied.

Apologies for not getting back sooner but life interfered as it does. that and laziness. why should it cause this? why should it have a net effect of attraction? why don't objects experience different levels of gravity based on their electrical and magnetic properties? yes, there is concern mainly because they are a vital part of some theories attempting to be a grand unified theory. That and they are not explicitly ruled out by any known law of physics so far. how to 'tugging and budging' differ from 'pushing and pulling' surely they are different terms for the same thing. Also, if EM has no measurable effects then how can it cause gravity which is a measurable effect? yes cosmologists do talk about gravity waves but they're very different in nature to electromagnetic waves. right, so you arrived at the number by picking the number based on a gut feel. okay. I feel like we're getting into a bit of a rut here, so, new question: If gravity is electromagnetic in nature, then why do photons have an infinite range? To further explain, photons are affected by gravity (blackholes as an example) now, if gravity is electromagnetic in nature, then that means the photons interact with themselves. and the other forces that do that(strong nuclear) have limited range because of this self interaction. How do you explain this?

EDIT: the contents of the post changed between me starting to reply and hitting submit. or was it the wrong thread i replied to. Agh i don't know. ignore this anyway.

It has been a while since i've had to deal with magnetic dipole interactions so you may be right (i'm sure somebody more versed in this branch of physics will settle it) so for the sake of moving off this topic i'll agree with you on the provisio that you agree that 1/r^3 and 1/r^4 are noticably different from 1/r^2. I'm not sure i fully understand what you're trying to say here. Can you please expand and clarify? All i'm going to say is that if you want a static field effect (as gravity is) then its going to have a static electric field, a static magnetic field of both a static electric and a static magnetic field. Both these have been measured and they are insufficient to produce an attractive effect. more to the point, this would only work on dissimilarly charged objects (in the electrical case) and a select few types of magnetic materials (in the magnetic case). Either way, there should be a bunch of objects that experience "anti-gravity" humans are paramagnetic so we should be repelled from earth if the nature is magnetic and transmission lines should be bouncing up and down if were electric. They don't PREDICT. They ALLOW for magnetic monopoles. Nothing is saying they HAVE to be there, they're just not ruled out. Again, if they were present in normal matter, we'd have detected them in particle colliders so at best monopoles are more elusive than the higgs as they don't even show up in theory Note: the only theories I could find that predict monopoles are string theories and GUT's which have not yet been proven to be correct. Not sure where this came from. We have not noticed any behavioural differences in electromagnetism for billions of years (Thanks to long range telescopes) So your saying that gravity is caused by photons operating at wavelengths smaller than and atom? because those are high energy and easily detectable. they're called X-rays. Why don't X-ray machines suck you towards them then? but we can also block X-ray and Gamma with lead and other high-Z nuclei. Again, why no zero-g rooms? Again, we've known since Einsteins time that GR and QM are not the final word in physics. They were never intended to be and nobody ever claimed they were perfect equations. Even the next 100 theories to replace them will not be perfect. how did you work out those probabilities?

well, it depends on your definition of 'soft' all you really need to do is have the asteroid come in at as shallow an angle as possible. but even then you're not going to be able to do it with asteroids more than a few tens of meters across. there just won't be enough atmosphere to slow them down to terminal velocity (which would still be supersonic). but then, why spend all that dV on moving the whole asteroid back to earth. you could do some simple refining on site and send back some partially refined product for less energy expenditure. LEO is halfway to anywhere in the solar system. EDIT: Okay, I got bored and made you a python script to simulate the re-entry into the Earths atmosphere. BE WARNED: It makes a few small assumptions for the sake of simplicity(and its an earlier program i used for predicting how far an air rifle would shoot) 1/ flat earth (shouldn't be too bad) 2/ euler integration is used 3/ the atmospheric density follows an exponential curve 4/ normal aerodynamic assumptions apply to a body as massive as an asteroid Have fun. Note: It's written in python, if you use linux you should be able to just run it in windows you'll probably need the interpreter from python.org it's written in V3 For a non simulation approach (it uses estimates based on empirical data) you can try this website http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/ It also tells you how big an explosion it will be in terms of nukes. but really if you land this thing in the middle of the sahara where nobody is, who will mind if it has a few kilotons behind it, you don't get the radiation so it's just blast and heat you need to worry about which will only go out for say, 100km. ProjectileSim.py.txt

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=356781 seems to indicate i have remembered correctly. but its moot. the point is it is a different relationship from 1/r^2 which is what gravity works under. dipole came up because we have not detected any monopolar behaviour in magnetism. ever. depends on the dipole if it has 4 charges. if its a magnetic dipole then there does not have to be any charges. why is the 1/r^3 relationship wrong? we are dealing with dipoles and that is the defining characteristic of force at distance for dipoles. we've already told you, magnetic interactions go by 1/r^3 this is different from 1/r^2 therefore your idea is wrong. there is no need to go any further than that. conventional wisdom need not apply to the universe. just look at the uncertainty principle. you might not see them in isolation but to have an electromagnetic gravity you would almost certainly need them to be in isolation. well, you are saying electromagnetism IS gravity. but they are demonstratively different. Therefore you are saying electromagnetism is acting in a way that isn't electromagnetism. not really sure how else you think that's going. no, faraday cages don't shield against gravity. but again, you are saying that electromagnetism IS gravity. and faraday cages DO shield against electromagnetism. Are you noticing the big problem here? IF gravity is an electromagnetic effect then it should be trivial to shield against it. As we cannot create zero-g rooms, we can't have figured out how to shield against gravity. Why would we have zero-g rooms? because it'd be as cool as anything thats why. people would pay money for it. If the n+1 th theory is wrong then it will be replaced by the n+2th theory. Knowledge is an iterative process. We cannot arrive at total knowledge without going through the intervening steps. If we were to follow your ideals there then we would never progress as there would always be some sticking point where the theory does not apply. You can apply this to any given theory. Also, if QM and relativity are completely useless, give up your computer, mobile phone, GPS device, CRTs, LEDs, transistors and so on. I think you'll find QM played a major part in them all. not bad for wrong reasoning. You should know that there are different levels of wrong. Every new theory science creates has one purpose. To be less wrong than the previous theory. To go only by absolutes is to go backwards because we certainly won't stumble across an absolutely correct theory. yep, GR and QM are partially invalid. There areas where they are known not to work, Wrongness is not an absolute its a relative. GR and QM are less wrong than the preceding theories. The theory that replaces GR and QM will be less wrong than GR and QM but it'll still have areas where it is invalid. We cannot just jump to absolutely correct theories. Just like we don't have 100% efficient anythings. we just go through continual cycles of improvement. If we were to go with 'gravity is electromagnetism' then we'd be taking a BIG step back. gravity has very few of the properties of electromagnetism. It's a bit like comparing diesel and petrol engines. Sure, they look a bit similar at first glance, but when you get down the details they are quite different in operation. petrol will not make diesel engine run and diesel will not make a petrol engine run.

It's 1/r^3 for dipoles 1/r^4 is different yet again. no, but what has this got to do with anything? no, I'm not sure you understand what we mean by 1/r^2 and 1/r^3 relationships. When we say something has a 1/r^2 relationship we mean the force at distance r is proportional to 1/r^2 so If the force at r=1 is 1 then at r=2 the force will be 1/4 and at r=3 it will be 1/9 and so on For 1/r^3 relationships it is different r=1 is still 1 but at r=2 the force is already 1/8 and at r=3 its down to 1/27 Do you see why these are so obviously different? a change in the distance from a source has a much larger effect with a 1/r^3 force than a 1/r^2 force. You're right it doesn't. BUT they'd be ridiculously easy to identify if we actually came across them. We have a wide gamut of instrumentation for detecting magnetic fields and even have some detectors built specifically for finding monopoles. If we were to come across a source of magnetism that was large enough to cause the effects of gravity and was a monopole we'd know already. Yes, but the thing you are saying we are missing is a truly massive and fundamental difference in the way the universe works. You are saying that not only does gravity not exist but electromagnetism has this whole other lobe of effects where it doesn't behave anything like magnetism at all. And in a way that would be startlingly easy to detect in things such as the earths magnetic field (which is under constant observation). no, but its not meant to shield against subatomic particles. It's meant to shield against electromagnetism. (which when you get down to it is photons). and it does a very very good job. you can get some very very high signal reductions inside a good faraday cage. If gravity were electromagnetic in nature then why wouldn't it be affected by a device that is effective at shielding against electromagnetism? We know that quantum physics and General relativity are wrong. This has been known since Einstein (who spent his final years trying to resolve the conflict, unfortunately by trying to delete quantum mechanics). He was not successful. Equally great minds have also tackled the problem and not been successful. There are a number of candidate hypotheses that solve the issue but we have a problem with most of them, it is impossible to test them at this time(not because of theoretical limitations, just technological). You speak derisively about predicting the properties of the Higgs boson but fail to grasp the importance of what that would mean. A scientific theory should match reality. It should also make specific testable predictions about things. Such as the mass of the higgs boson. As we now have evidence of the higgs bosons existance, we can investigate its properties and rule out all of the wrong hypotheses and focus only on those that got it right because they better represent reality. This is what will lead us to a unified theory. More data. not pretending gravity doesn't exist and its actually electromagnetism wearing a fake mustache. we've already tried tugging at the mustache and it didn't come off.

Only for monopoles. but if everything was a magnetic monopole then we'd know about it. The behaviour of the solar wind around the earth would be VERY strange for one. Actually, it is very relevant. Any theory trying to chuck gravity out MUST explain the data gravity does. Gravity shows a 1/r^2 behaviour so anything else trying to explain it must also. as we don't have magnetic monopoles, all magnetic sources must be dipoles and follow 1/r^3 which is both qualitatively and quantitatively different. any major deviation from reality hints at barking up the wrong tree. 1/r^3 is a major deviation from reality. maths IS logic. Anyway, even if we ignore all that and forget the maths and everything. If gravity was an electromagnetic phenomenon it would be trivial to shield an object from its influence. a simple matter of a faraday cage or even just wrapping it in foil should have a noticable impact (much like how your mobile phone is rendered useless by being similarly wrapped). As we have not seen drastic variations in weight caused by electro magnetic shielding (which is in most electronic devices that include some form of microcontroller.) then we can rule out electromagnetism as the cause of the phenomenon of gravity.

H+ ions are essential for your health. If, say you continually removed H+ ions as they were generated you would die very very quickly.

I came across a phenomenon that seemed strangely familiar today. I was attempting to schedule a meeting amongst a few people from work today who are from a few different rungs on the corporate ladder. Aside from the obvious difficulties of finding a time when everybody's free that isn't a few years away, I had to contend with other meetings getting shuffled into my timeslot so I had to shuffle my meeting about (and since my meeting was somewhat important I got priority over some other meetings meaning they got shuffled). This seemed oddly familiar, then it hit me. A nuclear chain reaction! So, I have begun developing a theory of MSCR's (Meeting Shuffle Chain Reactions). There logical conclusion of this is that there will be a critical density of meetings (measured in meetings per man-hour) that will cause at least one other meeting to be shuffled on average. Once at this point we will have a self sustaining chain reaction of meeting shuffles. What worries me is when we go past this point and on average each meeting shuffle cause >1 other meeting shuffles on average. We'll have a problem getting exponentially worse sucking up time and resources eventually leading to stagnation and death (The Bureaucalypse). Anyone else encountered this phenomenon?

grub is just a bootloader. why would that impact anything? all it does is provide a way to load the kernel. windows has one too but you just don't get any options with it. it has negligble impact on battery life because it won't be running after boot. also, grub will still run on boot in a virtual machine.

It is plausible though. It also explains why small blackholes don't seem to exist. of course, until we can isolate a black hole to see what radiation it gives off this will likely remain theoretical.

yeah, ubuntu can push your computer up because of all the eyecandy. if you're not using eyecandy because you don't like it then the processor usage stays low till you actually do something that requires the CPU to work hard.

well, we'd come to the same conclusions. we have never directly observed a blackhole, we only know they emit no light because of logical deduction. we can however observe the accretion disk and get an estimate of its size, mass and temperature. from observations of these disks we would be able to deduce that they are orbiting a body of immense density. From this data we can deduce the amount of force necessary to hold a body from collapsing under its own weight and find that nothing even comes close. from this we can deduce that unless there is an unknown force never before encountered it has collapsed to a singularity or at least a point where the rest of our physical theories breakdown. we could also find that the escape velocity as its surface exceeds the speed of light. due to knowledge of gravitational redshifting (which can be observed even on earth) we would be able to deduce that it would appear black as no light is escaping from it. astonishingly, this is us already 99% of the way there to modern blackhole science. the rest is details. details that have been deduced by the observations you say we have access to and applying physical models (models from other areas of physics such as relativity and quantum mechanics). As our modernday theories are direct products of observation, any new investigation tabula rasa is going to end up either in exactly the same place or one very close to it. The only time where it could have ended up vastly different is when blackholes were still a prediction and not a fact. One of the awesome things about science, sometimes you can predict things before you've seen them. When you do find them, it is huge evidence that your theories are on the right track. If you don't find them then it hints that there is new and interesting physics to be found.

its gaseous temperature can be anything between its boiling point and its ionization temperature. there isn't really any limit on it other than those just like everything else.

just tried it out, when linux is running on my laptop the time between fan turning on at idle is 10 minutes. when running windows 7 at idle 7 minutes. seems to indicate that linux puts out less heat (both can keep the fan on max if there is sufficient load)

I'm pretty sure any psychologist worth their salt knows that people (psychological problems or not) often have thoughts about illegal activities even though they will never carry them out. Hell, I've thought about throwing a computer at my ex-boss's head many a time to quench the unending stream of drivel that came out his mouth but thankfully his superiors got sick of it as well and fired him. that was a happy day at work. (don't worry, the new boss is much better. She actually knows how to do her job). A psychologist isn't going to report you to the police for something like that. maybe if you had a history of violence and you told him/her that you had just bought a gun and were going to murder someone after the session then they would be required to tell the police. talk to your psychologist, they'll have seen it a thousand times before and i'm quite sure we'd have heard about it LONG ago if they regularly broke confidentiality. everybody has fantasies about who or what they hate and journalists go to psychologists too. i'm quite sure they wouldn't keep quiet about it.

This could be many things if its the wrong replacement part it could be a battery of lower capacity than the original. it could have properties different to what the battery manager expects which causes premature termination of charging hell it could just be a cheap knockoff too. on the other hand, if it is the right part and genuine and all that, there are still some things that could cause these issues. such as it being a second hand battery thats seen heavy use. this may have reduced the capacity. also if it has been stored in improper conditions this could reduce capacity (this is even likely as manufacture was probably stopped some time ago). when my last music player's battery died i just got a new one as it was so old and replacement would have cost more than a new one. you can pick up a decent player for £30 these days. not ipod but those seem to be over priced for what they are anyways.

why don't you just use x= 0 ? the y intercept is where it crosses the y-axis (x=0) not when y equals zero, that's the x-intercept

efficiency at what?

To expand on Johns answer, Hydrogen is expensive (or rather, it would quickly become expensive once it becomes a major fuel for transportation until more production plants are created). Therefore there is a strong incentive to use the hydrogen as efficiently as possible. ICE's have a hard limit on efficiency of about 30% thermal. they will never get better than this because of thermodynamics. fuel cells can reach up to 85% efficiency but a more reasonable value for one used for transportation is about 50% This is still far and away better than an ICE will ever be.

That is genuinely horrifiying. so, not only would women have to endure the usual traumas of rape (I say usual, i mean the potentially life destroying psychological trauma) but they also have to have the rapists child, which i'm guessing is going to be treated with such conflicting emotions that its not really going to get a normal upbringing either. i'm pretty sure that would fall under cruel and unusual punishment never mind it being the victim that has to endure this. I think you guys need to reboot your political system (again).

why are they allowed to pass such laws and bill if it is illegal then? shouldn't proposals have to be vetted for such obvious things as this before they can be submitted for voting? surely there is something in their procedures that means they check if it will be overruled by a more fundemental(i'm not too savvy on the US political/legal systems) law? maybe i'm just looking at this from the wrong point of view. i only have experience of making rulesets and SOP's in the pharma industry where they have to work and be non-contradictory and always legal.

bloody hell. how did they get away with that? surely thats all kinds of unconstitutional?