tomgwyther

I'm not sure if you're aware, but... At about 3:00am on british T.V. last night: it was reported that an NEO similar to that which wiped out the dinosaurs, has been calculated to be on a collision course with Earth. Estimated time of impact is April 2029. Again, like the report you heard mooey poo, it was broadcast very quietly, at a time when only geeks like us might be watching.

If it's of any interest, I have a small beer fridge which I got from the bar where I work. I have no use for it. It's about the size of a large T.V set, plenty of room for a few plants; it has a glass door already; and runs at about eight degrees Celcius constantly, It's designed for use in the U.K so runs on 240 volts at 15 amps, it will work in the U.S but may not be as effective. You can have it for free if you're willing to pay the postage.

Answer to question... YES to abortion in that circumstance. [M] 27 Actually I belive early abortion is completly justified, there are millions of orphaned children all over the world who desperatly need parents, to bring a new unwanted life into an already crowded world seems selfish toward the children who are left to wander the streets unloved and in poverty, I lost my daughter last year, and I'm now considering adopting rather than conceiving, when I'm ready to have kids again that is.

I wouldn't buy one for this very simple reason: Hybrid, electric and hydrogen powered cars are BAD for the enviroment. HYBRID CAR While you drive the engine burns fuel not only to power the car but has to burn extra fuel to charge the battery, When you switch to battery power, the total amount of energy output is less than the energy you inputed you've burned extra fuel, a hybrid does about 40mpg, a small diesel engine car will do 60mpg with fewer emissions (Buy a Diesel!) ELECTRIC CAR the vehicle itself is clean, but the electricity needed comes from burning fossil fuels, coal or gas mainly, which are far more polluting than Petrolium spirit based fuels. HYDROGEN CAR The easiest way to get a steady source of hydrodgen is through electrolosis, again we'd be using electricity produced from dirty fossil fuels. coal is about 90% innefficient, petrol (gasoline) about 30% Diesel engine operate at a much lower RPM so burn less fuel per mile too. Be good to the enviroment and buy a Diesel, or better still, buy a horse and use it's 'exhaust' as compost!!!

There's a computer program I have, it's called 'band in a box,' you simply input the chord structure and it will write solo melody or even polyphonic melody line over the top. It realy is quite impresive, an untrained ear cannot tell the difference between the computer and a real soloist. Mind you, one has to input the chord structure manually and moreover; music is all about projecting the thoughts and feelings of the performer to the mind of the listener. A computer has no feelings therefore it cannot produce 'true art' It has no life experience or emotional bagage or emotional highs to draw on for inspiration. Let's hope they never make a machine that can write meaningfull tunes, I'll be out of a job!! Britney Spears is probably a robot-cyborg, that's why her music sucks!

Take a look at the work of physicist, Julian Barbour. he's got some interesting theories on time which you may be interested in and seem to echo what you've writen about the nature of time as a series of instants. I could go on about all the other complexities of his theory, but you'd be better of reading the book, "end of time"

I'm not sure if there is a part of the brain that specifacaly decides what is atractive and what isn't. I do know that some research into human facial recognition stumbled by accident onto a curious cunclusion. A computer program was set up which would use two or more photos of faces and meld them together to produce a single image made up from attributes from each individual face. the operator found that the more individual faces that were added; the better looking the final amalgumated picture was. Attractivness seemed to be relative to how 'average' the face was. Even two or three realy ugly people melded together in one photo, produced and attractive face. A photo made up of 50 or so faces produced a real stunner! Bueaty is still in the eye of the beholder though, facial recognition my be processed by the inferotemporal cortex, but our 'judgement' on what we see could be somwhere completely different.

They actually don't mind being brought to shallower (Lower pressure) water. their bodies have evolved to have no empty spaces in them so the drop in pressure doesn't realy effect them. Imagine a balloon and a rock, the rock can exist in both places as it is solid, the balloon however has a specific pressure margin it can exist in before it either implodes or explodes. Many of the species found near hydro-thermal vents on the sea floor have been collected and are now living happily in a fish tank in a laboratory.

You end up with 'white noise' It sounds like a radio that's not tuned in properly, something I also use when calibrating sound equipment.

hmm interesting, I've worked in the music industry all my life and have a mesurable amount of ear damage (Tinatus) but could still hear up to 21000Hz Quite pleased my ears aren't as bad as I thought they were. I played the sample through top notch studio mastering monitors to be sure I was getting a true representation of the sample

By the way, the original question I asked had nothing to do with accelerating particles faster than light, Mallet's experiment was to curve space time to an such an extent as it would cause a loop. Just thought I'd mention it

If you go to the monkey enclosure at your local zoo, the reason for the 'boner-bone' becomes apparent. Those dirty little monkeys are shagging non stop, if they have a break, they'll spend their time sitting in the rubber tyre masturbating. They probably need the bone to stop their penis falling of from over useage! It's the female monkeys I feel sorry for, getting jumped on and pounded by the male every five minutes. I wonder, do the females have a re-inforced vagina to cope with this?

Thanks to your help I was able to look into more detail on this experiment. I personally don't think it will work, not as a time machine anyway. I think the gravatational effect generated by spinning space wont be enough to do a great deal to any particle dropped inside, It will also need a huge amount of energey input to produce a mesurable effect, Plus the predictions he makes for it sound to me more like time dilation than time travell, It looks like a very expensive 'time dilator'; an effect we could easily replicate witha couple of atomic clocks and a plane. It is an interesting way of manipulating space-time in a laboratory though, I'm sure we'll learn from it.

Thanks Guys, that's helped alot. the CTC mentioned helps it to make more sense and eliminates the need to break Einstiens laws.

I recently caught the end of a documentary where someone is actually trying to build a crude time machine, I can't quite remember all of the exact details but it went something like this, He's created a device which takes a sub-atomic particle (A photon I think) and orbits it very fast through a chamber via a system of differently angled lazers, the aim of which is to have the particle exeed the speed of light I presume, so as it can be sent back in time, to create a sort of sending and receiving device over time rather than space. He hopes that by simply turning it on that he'll receive messages from himself in the future almost straight away; provided he remebers to send them to himself next week?!?! I've trawled through the internet looking for more information on this experiment and found nothing. Does anyone know anything more about this thing? Is it even possible? Can non-locality work over time, as well as space? Any answers would be much appriciated as I'm fascinated by this experiment. Thanks

Rock layers can form very quickly in the case of a volcanic eruption, or slowly in the case of sediment being layed down by a river or ocean, I'm not a geologist so I don't have to the exact figures to hand right now, rock layers vary considerably from place to place. As for Pangea, that's easy, we can see where the continants are now; we can see where they were 100 years ago, we can see them moving. Europe and America were about an inch closer to each other last year then they are now, so 100 years ago they would have been 100 inches closer, 500 million years ago, they would have been 500 million inches closer (Joined up!) Alot of what is writen in the bible was writen around 1000 years after the birth of Christ, by people with political bias, and/or people involed in spreading the 'Christian word' to so called 'Pagans' many facts were distorted in this process, for public relations reasons and for the good of the church. Unfortunatly, these writings have been taken as fact by maby fundamentalist Christians, thus distoring the origional message the bible tries to put across. p.s. I am a complete athiest; I've studied science since I was a child, my wife is a born and raised Christain, albiet a sensible one! So I've been able to see both side of the argumnet on your original question.

Oh for goodness sake you lot. evolution/survival has very little to do with what you look like, only with how well you can survive, Modern apes are still with us because they can survive in our current climate etc. We (Humans) are still here because we can survive at the moment. we are all co-eveolving. Being able to manufacture tools like apes do, or manufacture ipods and McDonalds out-lets like we do is not a pre-requisit for evolution, humans are not top of the chain at all. The reason we still have apes, lizards, fish and most importantly bacteria and single celled organisms is because they're very good at surviving, Humans are an unusual bi-product of evolution, intelegnce has no bearing on survival.

Twas only an example of how to date a substance... anyway. 40,000 years is longer than the Bible would have us belive the world has existaed for! Thank you for pointing that out though!!!

hhmm. interesting. there are may different ways of dating things, liveing matter for example can be dating according to the amount of C14 (Carbon 14) left in it's dead tissue.. i.e. all living tissue has a set amount of C14, when it dies, this substance decays at a known rate. that's how we can 'carbon date bones, plants etc. I could go on for hours about how other parts of our world/Universe are dated, but it can get rather complicated... If you realy look into it, it all makes perfect sense, even a child can understand it. I once walked a mile or so into the grand canyon, Arizona and pulled a seashell from a 300 million year old rock-face to show it to the Creationist christian I was with... he ran like a scared child! I simpathise with you completely, I've given up trying to explaine the amazing complexities of our world to fundamentalist christians, because they always have a lame excuse for every thing! (i.e. It's God's will; God put fossils there to test our faith... etc etc... Religion is a very easy way for some people to explain the world, not one I subscribe to myself, but it's best to let them be happy in their own belife, than to try to prove to them otherwise. Our planet's history is staring us in the face every day; we can see how old it is with a little research, It is actually more amazing than the bible would have us belive. Tom

The depth of water is importand, even if it's only very shallow. water is about 600 times more dense than air, as the ball hits the water there would be more friction generated thus slowing the spin of the ball. You could maybe try a few other fluids to see their effect on the ball. see if custard, fizzy drink or oil or somthing has a different effect to water, might be fun.

It seems to... If the magnet was sufficiantly negatively charged, it would repel it's self more from what-ever it was standing on. You'd probably need a huge charge though. Don't forget every thing including the computer screen your looking at is hovering above what it's sitting on. i.e. Your computer monitor is hovering about 1 micron above your desk as this is as close as the atoms in each object can get. It's a bit like a magnetic cusion. p.s. take a peek at this mad scientists work http://www.americanantigravity.com/hutchison

The person who wrote the origional thread trying to disprove Einstien is a complete moron who has no concept of his work. I can't be bothered to point out all the holes in his text because there are so many of them. To the Einstein critique writer:- Please, never go near an internet forum again.

Have a look at fasthosts.co.uk Thats who i'm with, they'll fix you up with a domain name and on-line software that lets you create your own site very easily, with graphics, file downloads, guestbooks, e-mail, the lot. I'm with them and I can't fault them, I knew nothing about creating my own web site before I started; I got mine up and running in one evenings work. It cost me about 30 pounds ($42) per year and it's well worth it. My site is at http://www.redweaselmusic.co.uk if you want to check it out Tom

My Grandmother's house in wiltshire England was about 350 years old, she got a guy in to rotate all her windows 180', I Guess she should ask for her money back!!!!

In the long scissors/two pieces of paper idea; Nothing is actually moving. No mass is being accelerated. No object is going from point A to point B. Moreover; If you put an object at the closing point of the scissors (I.E as if you were trying to cut it in half. but actually push it forward.) You would not be able to accelerate the object beyond the speed of light because you would need an infinate amount of energy to close the scissors.