iPeppers

How would you imagine it work?

 

Y'know, just for fun and to pretend.

What do you mean by "psionic energy"? Big electric balls of purple energy shooting from my hands, or energy behind telekinesis, or telepathy?

Of course they would. They would eat hamburgers just like we do if they could. They love meat and everybody begs for a piece after a hunt. But the question is what is a healthy diet. Like us chimpanzees crave what foods are rare but important so that they take advantage of the chance to eat it whenever they can. That's why we love fatty foods so much. But clearly our over-indulgence in what we crave hasn't done us so well health-wise.

 

And yes, it is not very uncommon at all for a feast to go on after infanticide has been committed. A baby chimp is probably just as tasty as a Colobus monkey.

Stop, you're making me hungry!

No other primate eats as much animal meat as humans do

Then there should be the question of whether that is good for us? I'm far from being a vegetarian, but do we need to eat as much meat as we do? Protein is great, but that can come from other sources just as easy, if not easier.

Haikus are easy

But sometimes they don't make sense

Refrigerator.

sweet. so if you say ionize something to a great degree, say a wall, so there is little or no electrons around that wall, could we essentially walk through it? would it just dissentegrate?

Well if you took away all the electrons in a wall, it would quickly grab more from the air around, or from you trying to walk through it. And also if it had no electrons, then it's molecules would break apart and it would probably be more like a gas or plasma if it was contained.

Hey! I've been lurking around these boards for a long time, just reading stuff, but haven't posted anything since I know so little compared to all of you guys @_@. So for my first post, I thought I'd ask a question that had been bugging me for a while. So one of my high school friends is in an AP Physics class, and he was describing to me a lecture that his teacher gave about how no two solid objects can actually come in contact with each other because of the atomic particles' repulsion. Now, I'm a chemistry guy, so I can kind of appreciate what he was talking about, but am unsure to the forces involved. First of all, is it true what he said, that no two objects can touch one another? And if it is, what causes this? Is it that once the distance gets so small, the intermolecular forces are so intense that they repel extremely "hard?" If that's the case, what is our perception of "touch?" Say I touch my finger to my face, is it the strong forces between positive nucleus to positive nucleus that makes me "feel" my cheek flexing in? Then what happens when somebody is, say, shot with a gun? Does the bullet just repel the electrons in somebody's chest so fast that it causes tearing, thus a hole?

 

Ugh, all these questions I have makes me so glad that I chose to pursue chemistry as a major instead of theoretical physics. (-.-')

This is true. When I press my hand against a wall, the only thing stopping my hand going right through it is the atoms and molecules of the wall repulsing the atoms and molecules in my hand, and vice versa.

You would think that since atoms are made up of mostly empty space (and thus all matter is as well), that I should be able to walk through a wall. But the electrons and protons that make up the atoms are charged and will repel each other. So technically the basic building blocks of matter in my hand don't necessarily physically touch the matter in the wall, but what I feel is the repulsion between them.

Of course atoms are always moving and we are constantly swapping atoms and their electrons with everything we touch and even the air around us. The earth is just one big moving soup of matter.

The human diet has diverged significantly from what monkeys and even the other great apes eat - compared to chimps, for example, we eat a lot of the same things, but in much different proportions. Chimps eat mostly fruits and leaves with about 2 - 5% of their diet being meat and/or insects. Humans eat huge amounts of meat relatively speaking, as well as other proteins like nuts and roots. Fruits and greens too of course, but it's not the majority complement.

 

Besides, depending on what type of monkey that monkey chow was meant for, it could have been designed for a folivore. And we're definitely not folivores.

Interesting, but does this mean that humans couldn't live an average life on, let's say, a chimp's diet? Because I know a lot of humans who eat a lot of junk food and other processed food that shouldn't be in their diet. So, wouldn't those people technically be better off on, a close enough to a good human diet, monkey chow?

Also, do you know what species would have the closest dietary requirements to a human?

Why don't you go for a protein drink that's high in calories and has some carbs (nothing low carb, you'll be hungry in an hour). Or even muscle milk that has a decent amount of cals, filling, good fats. Even bars, I find them to be too much, but met-rx makes a colossal big 100 bar thats about 400+ cals and filling.

Well protein shakes and bars are full of good protein and carbs, but I was more hoping that something less expensive and full of vitamins as well had come out. Of course something like that would probably taste horrible but I could get over that.

i realized that antimatter could never be used very efficiently, because the great amount of power that is released when they annhilate matter is at most 100% of the energy required to make the antimatter.

 

but they probably have very good energy density, and could be used as batteries...

 

except i don't know, do they react with any matter they come into contact with?

 

oh, and they'll be better then nuclear batteries. batteries that work on nuclear reactions might overheat.

Not the craziest post ever, it is a nice idea but it wouldn't work. Antimatter isn't found in nature so far, it can been seen being created in particle collisions, but usually in a matter and antimatter particle pair which annihilate right after.

Here is a quote related to your subject from a CERN physicist:

You can imagine antimatter as a storage medium for energy, much like you store electricity in rechargeable batteries. The process of charging the battery is reversible with relatively small loss. Still, it takes more energy to charge the battery than you get back.

 

The inefficiency of antimatter production is enormous: you get only a tenth of a billion (10-10) of the invested energy back. If we could assemble all the antimatter we've ever made at CERN and annihilate it with matter, we would have enough energy to light a single electric light bulb for a few minutes.

-from http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/Spotlight/SpotlightAandD-en.html

So it's a no go at this time and in any foreseeable future.

Does anyone know the genotype/phenotype of the following:

 

off white, chestnut & Palomino horses - all bred from Palomino horses)

 

chestnut = ee, aa, CC, dd, gg, ww, toto

palomino = ee, CCr, dd, gg, ww, toto

off white = ee, CrCr

 

(Chart based on Dr. Bowling's Genetic Formulas)

Is this kind of what you are looking for? It lists the alleles which you do, and gives the phenotype for each.

My eyes are very unusual. They are different colors, but change colors.

My left eye is 3/4 brown with a 1/4 that is blueish greenish and changes size and color randomly. Sometimes it is more 1/2 and 1/2 of each other other times you can barely see the blueish greenish part.

My right eye is a greenish blue, but has been known to randomly become silver, completely blue, green, or a dark brown.

I first noticed my eyes when I was 4 and have never figured out why they are so random and weird. Many people have noticed them and one genetics doctor only told me that .3% of the population has eyes like mine, but I have never gotten a reason for why they are so random and unusual.

My family has a history of our iris being different colors, but never to the extreme that I do.

Help?

If wikipedia can be considered to be reliable here, then you may have some form of heterochromia or sectoral heterochromia, if I read your description correctly. But it seems it could come about from a number of possibilities. You would probably have to be genetically tested to be sure.

The pictures on wikipedia look so pretty. I wish I had different coloured eyes.

is it possible that the mass of an object bending space supplie the energy used in gravity? maybe the constant force against it is doing something like knocking electrons off of it wich in turn fuel the energy needs for gravity? just a guess.

Electrons don't tend to disappear and be eaten up by space itself. But maybe the graviton, if it exists. There could be a force carrier particle for gravity (the graviton) that could be carrying the energy to bend space, but it hasn't been identified yet.

What's the story behind this discovery news article?

They seem to claim that cold fusion is possible. I will make a wild guess and say that most people here would tell me the opposite. Why? What are the hurdles or snags in cold fusion? And do you think the scientists talked about in the article believe that it is possible?

Absolutely Cosmos (Carl Sagan) is up there in my top list. Whoever of you who are in the USA can see it now (legally, for free) in hulu: http://www.hulu.com/cosmos

 

I want to watch that one for sure soon, but I'm still finishing up reading the book.

Time seems to be inversely related to speed to me. If I speed up to just under the speed of light, physical restrictions not withstanding, time slows down for me relative to anyone not moving as fast. It almost seems like we are constantly traveling forward through time as we are now, and can affect the speed at which we travel through time by increasing the speed at which we travel through space. If a man could bypass the flow of time of the rest of the universe by traveling quickly, it implies to me that time is an established dimension that can be traveled along just the same as the three spatial dimensions.

My question is to what degree does this relativistic property of time constitute as time travel, and if it does constitute as time travel, how does that not explicitly suggest Block Time?

Also, if a point in time contains all points in the three subsequent dimensions, how can string theorists talk about eleven dimensions without the whole of the time dimension contained within one of those higher dimensions?

I am a layman, and I may be making large assumptions. If that's the case, have a heart and let me know instead of passing on it if it seems ridiculous.

I think it is just how you want to phrase it in your own mind. I wouldn't see anything wrong with calling that time travel. Technically we are traveling through time as we speak, and to an extent we can control this with our movement through the spatial dimensions. Traveling at the speed of light would be as if time had slowed to a stop. Too bad we can't travel faster than the speed of light, because then one might be able to take a leap and say time might run into the negatives, or we would travel backwards in time?

I'm not a string theorist, so I wouldn't know for sure, but does time need to be contained within the extra dimensions that string theorists like to tag on? When they talk about 11 dimensions, time is included as one of those dimensions.

The rest of the dimensions don't all have to be spatial either, what if there were more dimensions that acted more like our familiar time dimension, but more compact and curled up instead of blown up to interact directly with our senses? I found Brian Greene's the Elegant Universe book and documentary on Nova to be quite interesting on these subjects, but it really does leave everyone a bit confused in the end. There are many different versions of string theory as well as m-theory going around, and there could be any number of possibilities when talking about extra dimensions.

At one point you have to open the plates, if only to plate the bacteria. And if you want to add other things to them you have to open them again. In my old lab any time we opened a plate it was done directly under a lit bunsen burner (in a recently cleaned sterile area, of course). I felt plexiglass would be a little safer in a home environment.

Right, but without a filtration system, would the air inside the plexiglass shield be any cleaner? And I would have to remove the shield to open the plates... unless maybe I had two holes with gloves attached so I could just slide my hands in. hmmm

also at the risk of derailing, "How it`s Made" is also pretty good, I`m not sure Who it`s aimed at, but I AND my daughter both enjoy watching it.

That is a great show. I don't watch a lot of tv, but I do quite enjoy that show. There are so many things that I used to clump together into the "they are all just made in a factory somewhere" group, but it's actually interesting to see the details of the manufacturing process that regular people usually wouldn't.

lol, adding a new gene to bacteria is a whole other ballgame - requiring a whole other set of materials, equipment, and methods. Expensive materials and equipment, I might add. The best manipulations you can do would probably be adding various nutrients and/or chemicals to the plates and seeing how the bacteria react.

 

If you do want to try culturing some bacteria though, set aside an that is less likely to get cross contamination from other areas (not under a house vent or by a window or anything), and clean the hell out of it with bleach. While you're using that area re-clean it regularly with ethanol. Depending on your budget it would be nice if you could get some kind of plexiglass shield to go above and/or around the area, which also should be cleaned regularly. It would probably be best if you bought plates that already contain the agar medium - you can make your own but again, the area where you make and store them needs to be as clean as possible. And of course, always wear gloves. I'm not sure what else I would add for a DIYer. CharonY will no doubt have some good suggestions.

haha yeah I realize that I won't be gene splicing in my room anytime soon, but I was kind of hoping there would be something else that I could do with bacteria cultures, relatively inexpensively. I have cultured bacteria under strict step-by-step lab procedures in a biology course before, so I was hoping there would be something a little more advanced or something extra that I could try to do with the cultures.

Thanks for the good cleaning advice. Would a plexiglass shield really help much if the plates have covers on them anyways?

Excellent! I'm looking into a few of these now. Thanks people.

As a side, without trying to derail my own thread... has anyone seen the Elegant Universe on Nova with Brian Greene? I know it's probably simplified a lot for laymen and non experts like me, but I thought it was very well done, with a lot of visuals to help me understand the concepts a little better.

Do you have any favourite science documentaries?

It's your chance to promote your favourites, and it would be very helpful to me as well. I'm in the mood for a few good documentaries in any area of science to keep me entertained after work. I know that people on these forums would know which documentaries to watch and which are to watch out for. That is my main reason for asking. I don't want to accidentally watch something that will brainwash me into believing lies or seeing only half of the story. Thank you!

Actually it is unlikely that they turn pathogenic. It is possible that you inadvertently culture bacteria that are pathogenic (in other words bacteria that are on you or your room to begin with). With the right medium you can lower the chances for that, though (that is, keep away from blood agar and suchalikes). Minimal salt media are usually quite good. But maintaining a pure culture is, as Paralith pointed out, quite tricky. And you really do not want a culture with undefined bacteria. Remember, those floating around your room have a relatively low titer. But by cultivating them you will amplify their numbers enormously, including potentially harmful ones...

Good to know, thanks!

Is yogurt bacteria is relatively safe and easy to culture? I remember seeing mention somewhere of people culturing yogurt bacteria and then making it glow with a fluorescent jellyfish gene, and I'm sure I could think of other ways to modify the culture for fun and personal knowledge.

I realize that by doing this at home it will be hard to ever culture something without contamination and difficult to do it all by the book, so to speak. Any suggestions or precautions or guides?

MC Lars is pretty awesome

I looked him up on youtube, because you have to register for that site that you linked to. I watched Signing Emo, it was weird because it broke in with emo in places. Is the song supposed to be against large music labels for signing crappy bands just to make a quick buck?

Look at my post again, and pay Particular attn to the quote and those words in Bold.

 

that track is from a Sci-Fi film (your 1`st requirement) and also fits your second requirement.

 

but here, try this one instead:

Ah, gotcha! What's the Gene Generation all about? It looks like it could be a good watch.

And yeah Daft Punk totally fits the bill. My roommate used to crank that song in uni residence and play it over and over again. He was in love with that song.

Wow! That is actually extremely fun. Great find!

Wow YT2095, combichrist videos are insane! I watched a bunch on youtube, and their music is pretty good, but where is the geekyness?

I totally forgot about MC Hawking! haha it's pretty funny stuff.

I also remembered the name of that Klingon death metal band. haha