Moontanman

Force Fields are real and can be used to protect astronauts from charged particle radiation, as in this idea from NASA... http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/24jun_electrostatics/

You are making an assumption here that is not valid, all UFOs do not do things that are impossible by what we consider to be laws of physics, (the word is debunk by the way) actually not even most can be said to do do things that are impossible by the laws of physics as we under stand them. BTW, i am using the term UFO by the original definition, an technological object that cannot be explained by conventional means, not anything that is seen and unknown to the observer...

Don't wrestle the trolls severian, you both get dirty and the troll likes it.... I have no evidence that unicorns do not exist either but I see no reason to try and dig some up... So all i have to do is think up something that has no evidence it doesn't exist and it has to be believed? Or at least others have to allow for the existence of it so much they will teach it to children in schools as though it was the truth? That's a scary thought. No really, that is very scary... Ok, you do have a point about Daffy Duck it hasn't been long enough since he was made up for his origins to be hidden.... so Thor the Thunder God has to be respected as real? There is circumstantial evidence that alien life exists, we know the laws of chemistry allow it, we know there are places where it could exist, there isn't even any circumstantial evidence for God, in fact his written word contains so many obvious lies it's enough for me to seriously doubt he has any basis in fact at all, more than equal to the positive evidence for alien life.... No not at all, we are discussing this among equals and providing our own thoughts on the subject to be believed or not as you or i will, no pressure at all from me or you as far as i see... I unless you are proselytizing God by being here... I have never met a Christian that didn't participate in the whole deal, either collecting, asserting you should give, or giving, you and I both know this to be true, this is the first really dishonest thing you have said so far...

Powdered coal can explode, we used a system that kept the powdered coal in constant suspension, if it settles out it will not burn, too much dispersal and it explodes, using small gravel sized chunks i think would be best... If you use charcoal it wouldn't really be coal... two completely different things... and charcoal lighter fluid will probably not light coal... it burns too fast and too cool to light up coal... Now that I do not know the answer to...

Severan, you seem to be angry, no wait this is the religious anger thread First of all, all the people who supposedly made up Bugs Bunny are now dead, all we have are writings that claimed they were made up, maybe the followers of your god made up the idea that bugs is made up But to be serious, Mormonism was made up less than a century ago, Islam was made up about 1700 years ago Christianity was made up about 2000 years ago, so what you are saying is that making something up doesn't count if it was along time ago? 2000 years from now the entire Earth maybe covered with the Church of Daffy Duck and suggesting he was made up could get you beheaded, good reason to go along with the gag for sure but it doesn't make Daffy real any more than time makes your God real, in fact, and in going along with this thread, it's your impotence at being unable to assert the reality of your God in comparison to the reality of Porky Pig that makes both of us angry, you get angry because you can't provide evidence of the reality of your god so you try to assert his reality by making others take him seriously. I get angry because you try to make others admit your gods reality by imposing your respect for him in schools government, billboards, TV commercials, door to door proselytizers, Pop Culture, amoral politicians, and almost anywhere else you think you can hood wink someone into fearing godly wraith. It's really kind of sad because all it would take is one substantiated miracle to bring me and billions of others into the fold. just one lousy miracle, turn Venus into a life bearing planet like the Earth over night, make the moon bloom with life, should be easy for an Omnipotent God but no we get nothing but assurances that miracles have occurred and that if we don't give our money and believe stuff that is obviously false we will burn in hell. I, on the other hand do not try to proselytize atheism, i do not do my best to convince others that God is false, I hold no services for No God, i do not collect money that will go toward getting others to believe and making more No God meeting places while claiming the money will go toward improving the lot of humanity, i do not go door to door trying to get others to go door to door to do the same thing. i am content to simply not believe, it would be nice not to be consistently mind fucked by people who want me to believe but no that is not how religion works, they need more and more people to believe so they can get more money to build new churches to impress more people into giving more money to build more churches to impress more.... hmm that sounds like a pretty good gig, maybe i should start my own church and collect money to spread the word to others who will give me more money to spread the word, oh yeah, why be angry... money for nothing... chicks for free.... You might have a point there HB, the uneducated do seem to have more babies than the educated, maybe that why many religions deny their members the option of birth control, a little bit of education just might cut down on the number of new followers...

Ummm, where would you get the anti-matter? And how would you protect the earth from such a huge blast? just a few grams of anti-matter/matter would be equal to a multimegaton blast, a meteor several miles across would be enough to wipe life off the earth.... even if it were many thousands of miles away....

The USA has lasers that work quite well in defending against incoming missiles. the Navy recently tested a laser and it worked well against small aircraft. Lasers are becoming better and better, new technology allows for lasers to be fired from ground vehicles not much larger than a Humvee and to knock down incoming artillery rounds. New powerful solid state lasers have opened up the possibility of airplanes as small as fighter jets using lasers against each other and incoming missile attack. Of course there is the almost outdated now laser defense system mounted in a 747 aircraft meant to shoot down ground to ground missiles in the launch stage. I'm not sure I would discount anti missile laser technology advancing to the point of actually shooting down incoming ICBMs in the near future. There have been some real advancements since Reagan initiated Star Wars.... Nothing I would be the farm on in a nuclear attack yet but it's not total bullshit now like it was in the 80's. opps, sorry cap'n, i missed your link... yeah what he said....

Since this is something i give a considerable amount of thought to, i know but it's my time to waste, lol, I think a torus shaped space craft rotated to give a reasonable g force inside and a magnetic field to use as a sail. in my mind this could be used to travel around the solar system, such trips might take years but living conditions would be much better than a one shot trip to mars taking a couple of years. this space craft would travel consistently to various locations have shuttles to visit planetary surfaces or to transfer supplies of raw materials to the craft. it would be the permanent home to the people who lived there, the inside would be a ecology, trees, lakes, streams, with what would be to them underground living conditions with the park like conditions above. This type of craft could in theory travel to other stars, slow boats where the trips would be in generations. magnetic sails to escape the suns gravity and to decelerate at the end of the voyage. These ships would be permanent colonies, eventually avoiding the gravity wells of the planets completely, long term artificial worlds slowly spreading across the galaxy, we should the Galaxy in a few million years...

I think the best way for the moon to solve Earth's energy crisis is by providing Helium3 for aneutronic fusion. Yes Solar power can be used to extract the helium3 from the moon, helium3 is energy dense enough make it worth while to bring it to the Earth and aneutronic fusion creates no radioactive waste and can be turned directly into electricity without steam and other inefficient means of generation.

Seriously cypress, as long as you cling to the idea that life has a 10^-41,000 chance of forming we have nothing to discuss here. That figure has been shown over and over to be totally unrealistic. I think the idea of some outside source of information being necessary is just as silly. Complexity (information) can arise from simplicity under the right conditions in the presence of energy the same way natural selection can serve to create new ever more complex life forms. I am very loath to keep this conversation going, not because i have some totally unsubstantiated idea but because I know form your previous behavior you have no intention of discussing anything. Thanks Mr Skeptic for reminding me of what he is really saying. I spent the last hour looking up links to verify my claims and you just pointed out he has done nothing even close to showing any evidence of his claims. I can post my own thread and be critiqued ( or abused) for real, no need to let cypress do it from his straw man position.

Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, and God all have one thing in common, they all have an equal basis in reality, you trying to claim any of them is a better model for this comparison to Gods is a big part of what pisses me off about Gods fan club. Bugs Bunny's fan club doesn't claim special tax exemption or a special place in science classes to insure that everyone knows about them and their special powers. Suggesting that The Flying Spaghetti Monster's fan club are idiots because you don't approve only under scores how idiotic the fan club of god is....

The first thing I notice in your drawing is that your coal needs air, our coal fired power-plant used powdered coal blown into a burner with air. with out air your coal will not produce smoke to go out your "pollution pipe" but more importantly the coal will not burn. I'm not real sure coal will burn in space small enough to be included in your meter cube. It takes quite a bit to get coal to burn, i grew up in a house that used coal fire places as a source of heat, it took a pretty good sized wood fire to get coal to burn, that why at DuPont we burned powdered coal and we used a very large hot natural gas flame to start it burning, getting a small amount of coal to burn in a tiny space will be difficult. Other than the problem with burning coal and the large amounts of smoke it will produce I see no problem with your device, you have the basic steps about right.

Evidently I am a weird person because a belief in something bigger than me but shows no interest in me other than wanting my money does nothing for me at all Jackson, bless your heart

I suggest you do some reading on the subject by someone other than "Hoyle"ets, You have already said you are saying that some outside source of information is needed, you tell me what that source is and I'll start taking you seriously, making some mysterious claims you never back up does not make me take you any more seriously than the latest claim from the pulpit. "Life not as we know it" by Ward would be good but maybe you should start with "it's a wonderful life" by Gould For the most part you need to go outside the creationist envelope and try to discover reality as most evolutionary biologists scientists see it. several people have already pointed out your "odds of life" assertion is simply not true, you have ignored them, why would I want to be ignored as well? You stop running a straw man argument and I'll go with a real discussion until then it would be a waste of time to disagree with you, tell me what your outside source of information is and I'll tell you why it's not needed, i tire of a battle of wits with someone who hides behind a straw man. As for mine being speculation, I'll quote swansont... pot-kettle-black... And I'll tell you what I've told others, my BS is just as good as your BS, you show me yours and I'll show you mine.....

If there is no way to know if the truth is the truth what's the point of it?

Ok, I'll grant you that but if there is no life after death what's the point of believing in god to begin with ?

I'm not sure what you mean by fork in the road when you get there? if indeed there is a god, you will know when you die, no matter what your beliefs are now when you die you will know if there is a God, you will not have a choice of paths one leading to a god and the other leading to no god. If there is no god, then when you die you will not know anything, you will be dead. i don't see how there could be a fork in the road....

Your basic premise is deeply flawed, coal is in no way an ineffective way to produce power, coal is a very effective way to produce power, it does have problems but most of them are centered around pollution from burning the coal and environmental problems from mining the coal not the effectiveness of producing power. See above... power plant efficiency whether it be coal or natural gas or nuclear power revolve around how much power is produced and how much is lost to waste heat, most new power plants are designed with very high efficiencies and loose the least amount of heat possible to waste, If you have problems with using coal as a power source I suggest you stick to environmental problems not the least of which is radioactive ash from coal....

http://www.biologyreference.com/Mo-Nu/Nitrogen-Fixation.html

Because he thinks that if he can get everyone to agree that life is unlikely to have come about via pure chance it means his world view that life was and is controlled by an outside intelligence (ie God) is confirmed and he can go around claiming he convinced a science forum that God is real. Of course he totally ignores the real story of life and how under the correct conditions energy drives chemical reactions toward complexity with no outside input of information from God, aliens, a conscious universe, purple unicorns or the flying spaghetti monster.... It's his strawman and he thinks it cannot be defeated as long as his terms for the argument are followed, one trick pony

New species of Sting Ray Evolving! Until recently there were no North American freshwater sting rays but in the St Johns river in Florida and several freshwater lakes and streams in the region a new species of sting ray is evolving. The Atlantic stingray (Dasyatis sabina) has populations that are now living permanently in freshwater, these new freshwater stingrays are both geographically isolated and reproductively isolated. This stingray normally inhabits marine environments and occasionally traveling into brackish and freshwater environments but always returning to the marine environment. This new population is land locked and lives in freshwater their entire lives, even reproducing in freshwater which the original species does not normally do. This is very good example of an animal population splitting up into two different species...

At one time the idea that lightning was the result of an anthropomorphic God throwing lightning bolts around to show his displeasure, i am quite certain if you tried you could still find people who considers that a valid assertion but it is none the less no longer accepted as a way to explain lightning...

Nitrogen fixing bacteria would be better and faster than lightning. I'm pretty sure these bacteria need the minerals in volcanic soil, Molybdenum is important to nitrogen fixing bacteria, I'm not sure if Molybdenum occurs more often in volcanic soils or not ... http://www.the-compost-gardener.com/actinomycetes.html

God on the side of an alligator..... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-400709/The-alligators-skin-spells-God.html Any depiction of Muhammad is prohibited or any other depiction of Allah or depictions of religious figures at all if i remember correctly, accuracy doesn't matter...