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I'm still looking for diligent answer to my StackExchange question: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/8294/how-much-of-a-star-falls-into-a-black-hole

Arbitrary masses for the star and black hole should be fine, as you should be able to obtain a percentage of the star that is "DEVOURED!!11" and then create a line chart of the behaviors of stars and black holes with varying masses.

This seems important just to know, but also to make predictions for the Black Hole model.

Then again, I'm too dumb to answer my own question, so what do I know? :)

First, to be clear: the Fermilab people haven't shown that the Higgs boson doesn't exist. They just didn't find it.

If the LHC doesn't find it, then we can start saying it doesn't exist. That would pretty much invalidate the standard model of particle physics, which is the currently best-accepted theory we have (because it gets most things right). If the standard model is wrong, it opens the door for other physical theories to be considered. Right now we're not taking those other theories so seriously because they all get one thing or another wrong, but if the standard model is also wrong about the Higgs, then there's no particular reason to favor it over other theories that also get one or two things wrong.

First, to be clear: the Fermilab people haven't shown that the Higgs boson doesn't exist. They just didn't find it.

If the LHC doesn't find it, then we can start saying it doesn't exist. That would pretty much invalidate the standard model of particle physics, which is the currently best-accepted theory we have (because it gets most things right). If the standard model is wrong, it opens the door for other physical theories to be considered. Right now we're not taking those other theories so seriously because they all get one thing or another wrong, but if the standard model is also wrong about the Higgs, then there's no particular reason to favor it over other theories that also get one or two things wrong.

Indeed. A germaine reference: Is Japan's nuclear disaster “on par” with Chernobyl? (paraphrased):

Radioactive coal has been mined, but this is not as common as you have apparently been led to believe.

Sir, I give you this link for consideration. It was the first link in my google search, which took me 10 seconds.

pdfLaTeX!

Here's a tutorial: http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/pdf-forms-tutorial
or
http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/14842/creating-fillable-pdfs

Its nice to be able to speak people better informed.

Try http://physics.stackexchange.com/

the factoring problem, which is NP hard.

Quick correction. The integer factoring problem is in NP, but is not known to be NP-hard. Here are a couple of explanations:
http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/159/is-integer-factorization-an-np-complete-problem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_factorization

http://physics.stackexchange.com/

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/8126/is-the-game-go-a-proper-noun-what-about-checkers-or-chess

I should clarify, actually. We (the dev team) are not trying to limit it by language. Our in-house recruiter, however.... well, he's got different ideas about what we're looking for than we do, and let's just say I've heard rumblings from the head of Engineering which don't bode well for his future. Not that I can take any credit; I'm just now taking over hiring for my department; the battle to make our job posting look half-decent for this round of hiring begins when I get back from Christmas vacation. In the meantime, I'm asking around for tips.

I asked about this and someone from the Ubuntu kernel team responded, looks like we'll even get a backport for 10.04!

They're still looking for enough users to commit to open up the beta, but Stack Exchange (the folks behind Stack Overflow, Server Fault and Super User) have a proposal up for an question & answer astronomy site:

http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/51/astronomy

Eh, I meant the engine behind StackOverflow, SuperUser and the like.

This is the most obvious Slashvertisement I've ever seen.

So much so that my company's 'Smartfilter' spam filter has it listed as spam already!

"You cannot access the following Web address:
http://www.stackexchange.com/

The site you requested is blocked under the following categories: Spam URLs"

It is good to know that the parenting forum is asking the most important questions.

What's even more funny is that there is no single answer that isn't a serious one. If it was slashdot however... let's just say the first answer would involve a man whos rectum is severly dialated.

It is good to know that the parenting forum is asking the most important questions.

Bah, nobody has asked the most important question yet.

It is good to know that the parenting forum is asking the most important questions.

Bah, nobody has asked the most important question yet.

It is good to know that the parenting forum is asking the most important questions.