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big314mp

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Posts posted by big314mp

  1. but there is no evidence that any light is being sucked in by any galaxy

     

    What exactly would you use to prove that light got sucked in by a black hole? It's not exactly something that can be directly observed.

     

    There is plenty of info out there about black holes, as iNow has posted.

  2. I understand (and am quite surprised) that the iridium will significantly compress, but I don't follow the math:

     

    Change in volume = pressure applied / bulk modulus

    360GPa/320GPa = 1.125

     

    This doesn't make logical sense, as the iridium can't decrease in volume by more than 100%...so what's missing?

  3. I haven't taken much of an active role in this election, but my roommates have a few good stories:

     

    One had his girlfriend break up with him over politics. Kind of sad, I guess.

     

    The other is a devout republican, and decided to vote early at possibly the shadiest poll in the state. Obama supporters were actively campaigning inside. No ID was required. You could register to vote, and then vote, with no ID presented, all in one sitting. The woman handing out the ballots asked if he was voting for "that one candidate that all of the other college students will vote for *wink*."

  4. It is impossible to convince people like these, because to them, there are no inconsistencies in their faith. They do not accept any outside evidence, and the belief is internally consistent. Therefore, they are impossible to convince.

     

    It could be a Poe's law though.

  5. Try going to the library or a science fair next time. You might not come away with such elevated blood pressure, and potentially a renewed hope for our collective futures.

     

    Just for the sake of being a wet blanket:

     

    My mom works at the Main Library in down town Cincinnati. The kids from the inner city schools will cut class, but have no real plans of doing anything with the time. Instead, they wander to the library and generally create a slightly quieter version of ParanoiA's mall. So every ~3 weeks or so, police surround the library, and do a raid to send all of the truant kids back to school.

     

    They used to hang around outside as well, but one of my mom's coworkers had the brilliant idea of playing classical music around the outside of the library. It cut down on the loitering by an impressive amount.

  6. Well, when a diamond grinder (the guy who shapes gem) is grinding the diamond, he must be breaking lots carbon-carbon bonds, that are then reforming rather rapidly with something else. It would seem that this would lead to unpredictable reactions at the surface of the diamond, possibly impacting the color/hardness/etc characteristics at the cut face.

     

    And yet the cut face looks just like any other face of the diamond. :confused:

  7. Well, if we are going to take that into account, we should also take into account that the gravity at the surface of said Iridium sphere will actually be significantly higher than 1g, due to being closer to the center of the sphere.

     

    I figured I'd make a few assumptions in the interest of simplicity (read: the math to take all of those factors into account is beyond me).

     

    Hold up...wouldn't a different density not actually change the gravity (assuming a point source), as it is mass only in the gravitational equation?

  8. Diamonds are a lattice of carbon atoms, each bonded to four other carbons. This leads me to two questions:

     

    First, what happens at the surface of a diamond? How would the carbon atoms at the surface of a diamond bond?

     

    Second, when a diamond breaks, carbon-carbon bonds have to be broken (assuming it doesn't break along an internal fault). This seems like it would be virtually impossible to do, and it also raises the question of what happens once these bonds are broken.

  9. If you indeed see no deflection, one problem might be that the electrons in an arc may be moving quite fast, so there isn't much time to observe a deflection over a short path. The path being in air and the ionizations may have an effect. However, I've played with CRTs and magnets, and the electron beam is indeed affected by the magnetic field.

     

    I figured the atoms would be trading electrons with each other, rather than there being large numbers of free electrons traveling significant distances. The air pressure is too high for that. I figured that the behavior of the arc would be similar to the behavior of a wire.

     

    If he tried blowing the arc with something, it might get the ionized air moving at appropriate velocities to be deflected by a field.

  10. I calculated that a sphere of Iridium, with the same mass as the Earth, would have a radius 62.6% the size of Earth's radius. It works out to a radius of roughly 4000km.

     

    Basically:

     

    Set mass of iridium sphere equal to mass of earth. Use density of iridium to calculate the volume of this sphere. Use the sphere volume equation to calculate the radius of this sphere. Compare to earth's.

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