DrP

Yea - it's awesome! I am shamelessly pinching that photo as my avatar for a bit if no-one minds.

At a guess... if you fell asleep when you were cold you might die of hyperthermia or something. All the shivering and energy burning probably keeps you awake... the tiredness comes later when you are back in the warm.

Thanks I'll check it out... erm, well actually that was the film I was thinking of and thought it was called Contact. lol. Yea - is a good film. "Shaka, when the walls fell"!

But an alien 'language' might not have a word for 'Apple'. It might have apples in it's knowledge but the alien word for it could be something like "earth alien reproductive plant growth destroyed and assimilated for energy by alien ingestion' or 'biological nurture pod for land growth organism reproductive mechanism' - or it might emit a smell that represents 'an apple' or a 'basic food source' or 'reproductive offspring nurture pod for land based biological growths'. I am sure that AI could eventually figure out any language if there was a 2 way attempt at communication... especially if it was an earth based language (but not in the 2 seconds the universal translator has to work it all out in, for an alien language at that). The film 'Contact' springs to mind. :-)

That should reduce road noise too I think. It gives a route for compressed air to escape from being trapped and forces from under a tyre which can give louder road noise (I think, iirc). I assume the water gets forced through the channels rather than getting blasted and sprayed up behind the car. A different friend of mine had the idea quite some time back to include soluble crystals into the tar mac mix (like rocksalt crystals or something) so that they would dissolve out later and wash away leaving the tarmac with little holes. The idea was reduced noise and better drainage from these channels/holes left in the surface for compressed air or water to escape through.

Well heart surgery might have been a bit severe to be able to 'believe' yourself well from. :-D In the case of Eric's mum, maybe it was a condition that positive thinking could pull you out of. I'll try to remember to dig up the article re 'thinking yourself well' later if I get the chance.

I saw a New Scientist headline this week regarding 'Mind over matter' for healing oneself of certain illnesses. With the faith healing.. FAITH is said to be the key - to really believe it. This, her faith in her god through the prayers for her, I believe is like Dumbo's feather... it is the placebo she needs to believe enough to heal herself, or pull through with shear will. I am speculating of course, but I have always believed something along those lines.

Yep - That's what I was trying to describe exactly.

One of the hardest Star Trek inventions to replicate would be the Universal Translator. It sounds easy... it IS easy if you are using it for know languages. But to have it interpret a totally alien language never heard before that could have a language built on totally different rules and make ups to what we know as language and turn it instantly into English is one of the more far fetched inventions on the program imo... I'd go as far as to think it totally impossible. Even after warp and transportation devices the universal translator is pure fiction I would think (for a first contact anyway).

...assuming they are perfectly in sinc or 180o out of sinc like in your diagram. There are many possible combinations of the 2 waves being out of sinc by 30o , 37, 45, 72.8o etc.. where you will get both constructive and destructive interference along the wave as you add or subtract the amplitudes of the waves at each point along it which will give a more complex wave pattern than just doubling or total negation of the wave's amplitude.

If you picture 2 sin waves perfectly out of sinc so that the peaks of one overlap the troughs of another the result of the destructive interference will be 0 as the resultant peaks and troughs cancel each other out. If they are perfectly in sinc then you will get the amplification of them when the peaks overlap. If they are randomly out of sinc then you will get a new curve/wave which is a culmination of the 2 waves built by the constructive and destructive interference of the 2 waves as they interact. Just as an example - it is how noise cancellation works. You have a device that receives sound waves in and inverts them and re emits them to interfere with the initial wave... the 2 waves cancel each other out and you get silence. I hope that helps.

Although this is clearly not the same... I always cringe a little at titles like this due to some guy I know at college years back. He was disgruntled that his supervisor did not, in his opinion, give him enough guidance and support and help during his Masters/PhD research program. (imo - part of learning how to research ids going off and finding things out for yourself... it's kind of the point). Disgruntled by his perceived 'lack of support' from his supervisor he changed the title of his Ph.D. thesis to ' The failings of the supervisor in the staff student relationship during post graduate studies and further education'... or something like that. Needless to say his supervisor wasn't impressed and refused to help him with the that study at all. He failed his Viva and got an M.Phil for his troubles. I tried telling him that he wouldn't get any help with it as it was a clear dig at his supervisor, but he was only interested in complaining about her rather than listening to her. He was the type that, although from a very privileged background, felt that absolutely everyone owed him some kind of effort to help him through his problems... which he kinda made for himself more often than not. Any attempt at constructive criticism was met with fierce objection and argument to the contrary. It was never his fault in his own mind... although to others the causes were clear as day. I know this sounds horrible, but I am glad he didn't get a Ph.D. for his drivel. @ the OP: How do you think science teaching should be changed at uni's then and why? What are the problems with the traditional ways that have seemed to work so well so far? I think that some of the problems are due to the number of intakes now into unis (in the uk anyway). It used to be that the top performing 2 to 5% went on to further education at degree level. Now the target is around 50%. I am not being mean, but how do expect the people in the 50- to 95% range to be able to keep up with the top performing 2 to 5%? If you change the teaching methods and dumb them down for the majority to follow then what do you do with the top 2 to 5 % that the institutions were meant to nurture in the first place?

He does state certain things as fact that some people still like to argue are unknown. I think that clashes with their beliefs and the cognitive dissonance kicks in for many.

From google of 'destructive interference': destructive interference:- Physics - The interference produced when two or more waves are not in phase and create a wave that is weaker than either of them.

.. the agenda being the removal of ignorance and the establishment of known facts. ;-)

Just my opinion for what it is worth I have always thought studiot to be very patient and thorough when explaining science stuff to people that come here for home work advice and things. He unintentionally rubbed me up the wrong way when we first met (he will not know this until now) and I have never been a fan of the "I gave you +1 for that", which seems to have caught on, but I can't fault his enthusiasm or the work he seems to put into helping people when they ask scientific questions. I am not a fan of the premise of this thread, but he seems pretty knowledgeable and helpful to me and seems to bend over backwards to explain things to people that ask for help. I can tell from his posts that his general knowledge of basic chemistry and physics are way better than mine... and I have a PhD in the subjects. Just my 'worthless' opinion though. He is a good egg in my book. I wouldn't have commented but the suggestion that he is 'unproductive' on the forum doesn't ring right to me. Regards, P.

lol - I'll wear a badge saying 'POTUS' on it too... although that might be too frightening even for Halloween. UK.

Is this the Chinese salamander thing that was on the radio yesterday? They said it hadn't changed for over a hundred million years. I do not know... I might guess at it being because they are perfectly evolved as they are to survive in the environment they are in? There design has been good enough to avoid becoming extinct over that time. I think they are good hiders and must be pretty resilient. Presumably any mutations were not improvements to their on-going survival. .... I was trying to think of an axolotl pun to sign of on but I couldn't quite make it work. Well 'that's all I gotl'.

probs not - but here it is anyway. Damp squib if ever there was one... https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/118572-i-offer-the-innovation-green-technology-of-generation-of-the-electric-power-by-means-of-a-new-renewable-energy-resource/?tab=comments#comment-1099131 A - "I have a great new ground breaking invention that will change the world forever and no-one will ever need for anything again" B - "Great - what is it" A - "I can't TELL you of course, doh, that would be telling and you might steal my idea - it's SO great though - what can I do to build it and sell it to the world" B - "Whatever". Mods: "yea - whatever - we get 20 of you a month, thread closed unless you want to discuss the science behind the idea".

So - what conclusions could we help the OP draw from this do people think?

I'm sure that wasn't his name. Can't remember what it was. ... he said at the time that you can choose to believe what you like - 'did I do a magic trick or did I perform a miracle? - it's up to you to choose what you believe'. Not sure what he was getting at with that really, lol. It was C of E so maybe he was an unbeliever but followed the path of peace, love forgiveness, mercy etc.. without believing in god. That's not unheard of, although I fail to see why this type seek to become priests. I'm glad I didn't join his all boy choir to be honest. :-/ Being fair the churches I have attended in the past do not like Harry Potter, Tolkien or anything like that. Anything that 'glorifies' magic or normalises it or presents it as light and fluffy and good. Anything with witches in it, wizards or demons. They would see it as glorifying the devil. PS - in fact it is the reason I've never been to a Halloween party in my life.

When we were at school the assigned school vicar gave a year assembly and changed water into wine. I am pretty certain that they way done it was the way a magician would do it (rather than Jesus' published method). He had 2 buckets... one contained water and then he poured it into another bucket and it looked like wine (we were at school so were not allowed to try it out). .

Are you sure? I thought that was the whole point of the infinite probability drive... however improbable, bang, it's there. Maybe a mis-reading/misinterpretation from one of us. What are the chances of that happening eh!? Someone asked me to list some of the things here once... I was going to but it would be time consuming and thread crashy. I was going to do it in my thread about my own spiritual 'conversion' from Christianity to atheism - That's where I was asked to describe some of them... but the guy ended up getting banned for something unrelated or just never cam back and I didn't get around to it.

Thanks - of course - sorry. My point is that it is a trivial calculation.... ...as Strange also suggested.

Most tend to fall apart under scrutiny or 'can' be explained by probability and co-incidence regardless of how unlikely the event seemed. The Catholic church is supposed to have a record book... but I have heard that every one of them in the book falls apart too if followed up on. I've seen some miraculous things that I thought were God at one point in my life - but the realm of probability doesn't rule out the almost impossible.