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Icefire

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Everything posted by Icefire

  1. What I gathered is that you're asking why we don't use a metric clock. The main reason is that there is two different standards in time: how long it takes the earth to rotate and how long it takes the earth to rotate around the sun. it takes approximately 365 1/4 days for the earth to rotate around the sun, so no matter how you configure the metric time you will have to deal with a lot of leap days. besides, Metric Time has been tried before, and it ended up just being too confusing. It has been proven that the natural circadian (body) cycle is approximately 25 hours (which is why babies wake up in the middle of the night - they are not use to a 24 hour cycle). Using this, if we were to start space travel the time units of earth would not be as relevant, so you could have a time system which is just multiples and fractions of the 25 hour period.
  2. possible, but some reversions would require so much energy that doing so would be unrealistic.
  3. Icefire

    Cryonics

    you could possibly dehydrate the person first. there has been cases of people being lost in the Arctic, froze, then reviving once they warmed up. One theory of why this worked was because of the extreme lack of oxygen caused the cells to hibernate instead of dying, but the people lost probably got dehydrated first. assuming that the rest of the cells stay pliable long enough, the water could probably freeze and expand without damaging anything.
  4. Depends. last year our family ended up looking like we didn't pay our power bill while every one else continued on (Calgary)
  5. IDK I'm not a psychiatrist. But what I did gather is that you are not one to take an unusual question trivially with only a passing thought. Instead, you try to pick apart the question as much as possible to try to see what the different meanings to be. Which I'm guessing to be a cut and paste answer for the majority of the responses, due to this being a science forum. If I asked at a forum that is more about the artistic side of the brain, or at other forums such as truck modding or gossip forums, then the answers would be vastly different because the people there would be taking a different approach to the question.
  6. Answer this question as best as you can with plenty of explanation. your response will give significant insight into how you think.
  7. The synapse structure is 3d, correct? a MRI would be best.
  8. it's possible, depending on how much of "us" is really the transmission of signals between the cells, and not just the configuration and shape of the cells. in other words: if we were to make a working copy of one's brain after the cell activity has stopped, how exactly would we restart the cell activity? starting every cell may destroy the brain or damage data (before stopping again), and starting in the wrong area may just die down again after a while. However: think of the brain as a computer. the information on how to access basic files and how to process is located in the electric charges traveling in the CPU and RAM. when the computer stops, you can't just fire a random charge into the CPU, you have to go through a fairly complicated processes called booting. Brains are not meant to be booted (which is why they are encased inside the skull), because once they start they should never stop. now, there has been cases where people have been frozen in the Arctic and been brought back to life in certain cases, but they may have been in a form of hibernation and still had brain activity. and then there's unconscious people, who still have some brain activity, which in some cases is not able to restart the rest of the brain. which means you probably can't restart the brain, which would probably be the only way of extracting data, because each individual brain would have a completely different way that brain is stored. with a live brain you could by trial-and-error figure out how each piece of data is encoded, but a dead brain might as well be a slimy paperweight. now put it back.
  9. By my definition it is immoral, because you're taking advantage of somebody because they will not recall the incident. And also over time if you think it's OK to rape an unconscious girl or hit a forgetful guy, then eventually you will reach a point that you will naturally start to think that it's OK to do other related stuff, then from there onto other related stuff, until you are either caught or have lost all inhibitions.
  10. From what I gather it will allow you to travel to a different location while you experience time at a accelerated (or decelerated idk) rate (eg: it takes you 22 hours to fly to australia, but you experience it as five minutes). Returning is something that's a lot harder for me to wrap my head around. Observe: Normally you would live on earth for about 60 years, represented by the blue line. Now suppose you took a K-Tube that brought you to a far away destination at a very fast velocity. To anybody tracking you, you will take 30 years to arrive there, but you will experience those 30 years as a week or so. then you get there, and do your stuff. When you want to go home, you have to options: 1. you take the tube that brought you there. it maintains the same location in time and space (but presumably the entrance/exit continue to exist), which means that when you take it you will be going BACK 30 years, according to somebody that is tracking you (presumably you will experience a week, or a negative week), and you will arrive at the same point in time and space as you started (but I believe there will be a difference identical to your stay elsewhere). 2. you take a new tube. same thing as traveling elsewhere. you will arrive at earth 30 years later, for a grand total of 60 years plus the time you spent elsewhere in reality, but you experience only two weeks plus the time that your were elsewhere. Actually, I don't know. the more I think about it the less sense it is, and the bigger my headache.
  11. Too many of the amendments were to remove former amendments, and parts of the constitution itself. I think that I'd just scrap the constitution and rewrite it in a forward thinking manner that makes the needs of future amendments unnecessary except in extreme and unexpected cases. Chance of being passed: zero. The original Constitution, though flawed, is considered by the people to be too important to be removed even though it is constantly altered.
  12. It seems that all matter will eventually be converted into black holes (stars form from balls of gas, which then create denser materials, which end up being black holes theoretically, after an infinite amount of time, all matter will be sucked into black holes, and the black holes will start accelerating towards each other. eventually they will collide, possibly making a bigger black hole. assuming that the theory that black holes dissipate over time, eventually the entire universe will be nothing but a singularity with infinite mass. sounds familiar? That's what the big bang was expected to have originated from. thoughts?
  13. Icefire

    Seeing colors

    Eventually, possibly. I recall an article a while ago where a man that was born with defective eyes had transplants in his 30s or something. At first he couldn't make out anything because his visual centre was underdeveloped, but as time went on his spacial processing abilities improved a bit, but he still had to shave in the dark and it was extremely confusing. He eventually had a stroke, making him blind again. In this case: Since we are just adding new information to an already developed visual centre, it shouldn't be too hard for the brain to begin to understand this new information. It'll still take a while to adapt, but it should work. It would be very cool, because for Infared you would be able to detect temperature changes easily But for both spectrums, things and people will look significantly different, which can be a major shock.
  14. as some of you may know, I have a theory of making an electric car where the drivetrain is basically a tire/ring being suspended by magnets. here's a lousy approximation: the central magnets will be the same idea as a regular clothes dryer electric motor, except inside-out and split into four different quarters, each independently controlled. each segment will induce an electric field that will rotate the ring clockwise or counterclockwise, depending on which one is more powerful. now, here's what I think I need: four iron (or something lighter but magnetic) rings, about three inches in diametre, one inch wide and a thickness of 1/4 inch. the scale will change depending on what I can find. for the magnets, I'm pretty sure I'll have to wind them myself. Yards and yards of thin copper wire (or most likely dedicated wire for making magnets), insulation to prevent short circuiting, and a frame to wrap the wires around, most likely made out of plastic or carved out of wood. the main frame connecting the four magnet hubs I'll probably build out of scrap wood or something. more thin wiring to connect the components, probably shielded/cheap wire. a power source, most likely a dc transformer. it will be connected to the frame by a long wire to conserve weight. and, the most important components: the controller system. I know for a fact that I will need something that will adjust the electricity sent to the magnets based on what the sensors say, to make sure that the magnets stay in the middle of the rings and not touching any of the sides. I'm not exactly sure how to do this, all i know is that I need sensors that will tell the acceleration of the unit and the location of the magnets in the rings, which are sent to a computer which maintains the balance by adjusting the voltage of the magnets in order to alter the repusion/attraction forces really quickly, and accept input to move the unit forward and back (steering will be in the next project). I believe that the frame and the things that the magnetic wire is wrapped around will be easy to make (wood), but advice would be appreciated. I don't know where I'll get the rings from, probably a local machinist What is the best wire for making magnets, or a chap and easy to find alternative? I think I can scrounge up some cheap wiring from The Source™ or something I don't know how powerful the transformer has to be, whether a car battery will work or something else. And I have absolutely no idea what to use for the controller system, because this thing will will be balancing the magnets in the middle of the ring while controlling the rotation of the ring. help?
  15. $25??? I want that! of course I'd need to figure out what to do with it...
  16. Truth. And the really nice thing about working in space is that pretty soon (relatively) we would have a self-sustaining moonside colony in the case that the UN self-destructed or something else happens that threatens humanity. not that it will ever happen, and if 2012 is true then we're doomed anyways.
  17. depends on the tipe of fat on the obese guy. Signing up for "boot camp" at the local gym may be much better.
  18. Although the main problem with having a wide ring as tires would be that at high speeds the ring would not be very aerodynamic because the flat side is to the wind and may be forced under the tires and so. what if the tire rings were separated into say five heavy duty bicycle tires side by side, possible permanently connected in a way that allows air to pass through?
  19. if it does community service, then all it really is is some glitter for your resumé
  20. one of the main problems is that the current way of getting stuff up there is by going straight up, which is done by essentially building a high-pressure column of air faster than it can dissipate. If the space elevator by some sort of miracle becomes a reality, then it would be a whole lot easier.
  21. I'm going to try to take a psychiatrist approach to this question. The way our society works is that we are taught to always cover our genitalia from others, which gives some of us because we feel it prevents others from judging our looks by the appearance of our genitalia. Having sex requires us to reveal what we have never revealed before and allowing it to be judged by someone else. If one does this and then is judged negatively, it could cause this person to feel shamed about his or her body and otherwise making him or her unhappy. Of course this all depends on how confident you are with your body. If you feel great in your body and would stroll around naked if it wasn't for the fact that you would get arrested, then you would have no problem getting down and dirty. But if you would die of embarrassment if your towel slipped in a dormitory, then you should wait for somebody that makes you feel confident in yourself. If you feel that you need to have sex though, then the best way is with someone you trust and will wait for you to be comfortable before continuing.
  22. Maybe so. but since Neutron stars and black holes are usually generated the same way and the outcome differs depending on the initial mass, it is possible that at some point the mass of the neutron star is strong enough that the neutron star exhibits the familiar black-hole abilities.
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