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As others have mentioned, the Sun doesn't have a well-defined boundary. When I first saw this headline I thought well some could consider the solar wind itself to be an extended part of the Sun's outer atmosphere, so they're hardly the first by those standards.

The solar atmosphere is so hot that the gas is primarily in a plasma state: electrons are no longer bound to atomic nuclei, and the gas is made up of charged particles (mostly protons and electrons). In this charged state, the solar atmosphere is greatly influenced by the strong solar magnetic fields that thread through it. These magnetic fields, and the outer solar atmosphere (the corona) extend out into interplanetary space as part of the solar wind.

http://www.windows2universe.or...

Provide citations that prove your side.

Nitrogen compounds (Nitrogen Oxides) are the primary cause of smog.

Except early cells didn't breathe at all...

http://www.windows2universe.or...

* The usable Jovian/Saturnian moons are too close to their respective planets, which pump out more radiation than current or near-future technology could handle.

* Dumping excess heat (and, well solar radiation of all kinds) on Mercury is also a bit too prohibitive for current/near-future technology. Sure you could park on the terminus (or even the dark side), but, well that tends to move in a 176-day cycle.

* The Moon is a nice idea (extremely small gravity well, conveniently located, etc), but it has pretty much nothing when compared to Mars - Mars has far more water that can be mined w/o a lot of processing, an actual atmosphere to brake in and provide at least partial pressure (albeit thin as hell), and with the (somewhat) greater gravity, won't wreck human health as fast.

Personally, I'd much prefer that we just bit the (financial) bullet and use the Moon (and Earth) as a source of material to build something similar to a Dyson or O'Neill type colony. Yeah, pricey as hell up-front, but the results are friendlier to human life and can give us a Zero-G platform from which to build and launch anything further out into the Solar System.

I don't think that ocean is 17C all the way to the bottom.

http://www.windows2universe.or...

Basically, below 1000m you can assume it is 4C.

And your point is? Venera 7, the first Soviet probe to land on Venus, was launched in August 1970-- that's a year after Apollo 11 landed on the moon.

During the Apollo years, the main focus of the Soviet program was on their human space program. Yes, they did some robotic planetary mission, withs (up until Venera 7) rather indifferent success. But their robotic program was much smaller and much less well funded than their human program, contrary to what anonymous coward had posted.

Over the same time period, we were flying the Mariner missions and just beginning the Pioneer series, both of which had some spectacular successes, so I'm really not sure what your point is.

Provided that if the Sun were to become a black hole, its diameter would only be 6 km ... (ie 200,000 times less), the thing that gives a current-Sun size black hole is gigantic! (one two).

No, it isn't. Weather occurs in the troposphere, the layer of the atmosphere closest to the earth, extending up to between 7 - 20 km above ground level. About 80% of the mass of the atmosphere is here.

The ionosphere is about 0.1% of the mass of the atmosphere, starting from about 90 km above ground level and continuing to between 500 - 1,000 km above ground level.

Educate yourself a little. Science is a beautiful thing.

No, it isn't. Weather occurs in the troposphere, the layer of the atmosphere closest to the earth, extending up to between 7 - 20 km above ground level. About 80% of the mass of the atmosphere is here.

The ionosphere is about 0.1% of the mass of the atmosphere, starting from about 90 km above ground level and continuing to between 500 - 1,000 km above ground level.

Educate yourself a little. Science is a beautiful thing.

Washington State, the proposed waste site was called Gable mountain, while it was shutdown over night - I found out why with this reply "These sensors recorded recent movement in the supposedly sable basalt. One fault had been generated by an earthquake estimated at 5.5 on the Richter scale that had occurred within the last 2000 years. To geologists with nuclear disposal on their minds, that was far too recent, and the Gable Mountain project was abandoned. "
http://www.northcolumbiamonthl...

Not Oak Ridge this area puts it to shame "The most contaminated nuclear waste site in America" http://digitaljournal.com/news... and everybody lives down stream...

Washington state is on the edge of a plate, https://www.windows2universe.o... while Oklahoma is in the center and should be fairly stable, I had thought till I read your PDF.

I can't say every, but almost all of the (U.S.) nuclear reactors store their spent fuel on site. With the closer of Yucca Mountain there is no place is available or planned for nuclear waste. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y... you can see the problem developing.

If it's 11 times the diameter, then gravity would be pretty tame at the surface unless it's extremely dense. For example, Jupiter's diameter is 11.2 times that of Earth, but the surface gravity is only 2.64 times that of Earth. Saturn and Uranus both have equatorial surface gravities roughly equal to Venus, in spite of being 9.44 and 4 Earth diameters, respectively.

Source: http://www.windows2universe.org/our_solar_system/planets_table.html

Take your politically colored blinders off, Rose produced nothing but propaganda for the anti-science movement. His "official" graph is a fabrication, (see http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/climate/climate_today.html and http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/ and Rose cites no authorities. Referring back to the main thread - the hour of 'lights out' would be much better spent if everyone sought out ways and actually acted on them consistently to reduce their energy demand. Like cleaning out and turning off that 2nd refrigerator - turning the heat down, unplugging your device charges when you aren't using them, just use less energy, or we're all screwed. Especially future generations.

Ah, yes moving the goalpost and god of the gaps.

There are hundreds of examples of macro evolution.
http://evolutionlist.blogspot.com/2009/02/macroevolution-examples-and-evidence.html

http://www.windows2universe.org/headline_universe/olpa/whales_20dec07.html

And so on.

" when the continents themselves would have worn down (and been replaced) in a fraction of time."
also, stupid.

I'm not sure where you are getting your science information, but I'm pretty sure it's from no where.

What a few people in the ID world have done is conflate several issues:
Origins and Evolution.
Evolution and speciation.
God v. Science.

They have spread the idea that understanding evolution is the same as not believing in God.
This is false. Evolution is a fact.

If it had not been for the exhorbitant cost of the wars, we could have afforded to build a probe to orbit Pluto rather than just do a flyby.

As it was, New Horizons was largely made possible by a few congressman who pushed specifically for funding for this mission before Pluto's orbit removed it too far away from the sun.

So, makes more sense now?

Mayyyybe...?

So if something has a north/south polarity in magnetism we say it has a strong "Magnetic Dipole Moment"? Or more simply I would using my non-physicist vocabulary say it has a distinct Magnetic Polarity. Magnetic Moment = Amount of polarity?

Yes, you are mostly correct. We use the word dipole because there are monopoles and quadrupoles and octopoles and so on, so we need to differentiate between them to be precise. But the dipole moment is what corresponds to polarity, so you can understand the magnetic dipole moment as amount of polarity.

So even though the electron obviously has an average electric charge some theories think it might actually be the product of a slightly + in addition to being mostly - field?

No, no theory says it so. The origin of the predict electric dipole moment of the electron is very fundamental, and no one thinks that it is due to a slight + charge. The most simple example of a system that has an electric dipole moment is a combination of a + and a - charge, but that is by no means the only example. Things that have an electric dipole moment have an electric field like the one in the picture.

But this study found that there isn't any duality to the charge; it's to the best of our measurements completely singularly charged and therefore has no polarity or shape?

This study found that our best measurements can't see any polarity in the electric field of the electron.

I'm getting thrown by "Bipole Moment" since I don't know what that means but I feel like it's important to your explanation. :D

I'm imagining a magnetic field in my head. If you could create a magnet that was only positive it would be a round field pattern. But if you had a bar magnet it would form the classic figure eight of magnetic fields and therefore not be 'spherical'?
http://www.windows2universe.org/spaceweather/images/bar_magnet_correct.gif

Am I understanding you correctly?

Hmm no. The issue of the shape is that if the electron were a uniformly charged sphere (it isn't), and you distorted this sphere a bit, it would display an electric dipole moment. So by measuring the electric dipole moment one can measure how much the sphere deviates from a perfectly round sphere, as a perfectly round sphere has no electric dipole moment.

The issue is that the electron is not a uniformly charged sphere, so it's meaningless to measure its roundness through the electric dipole moment; and I think that it just obscures the issue, because you have to know a bit of electromagnetism to know that a imperfectly round sphere has a nonzero electric dipole moment.

So, makes more sense now?

Mayyyybe...?

So if something has a north/south polarity in magnetism we say it has a strong "Magnetic Dipole Moment"? Or more simply I would using my non-physicist vocabulary say it has a distinct Magnetic Polarity. Magnetic Moment = Amount of polarity?

So even though the electron obviously has an average electric charge some theories think it might actually be the product of a slightly + in addition to being mostly - field?

But this study found that there isn't any duality to the charge; it's to the best of our measurements completely singularly charged and therefore has no polarity or shape?

I'm getting thrown by "Bipole Moment" since I don't know what that means but I feel like it's important to your explanation. :D

I'm imagining a magnetic field in my head. If you could create a magnet that was only positive it would be a round field pattern. But if you had a bar magnet it would form the classic figure eight of magnetic fields and therefore not be 'spherical'?
http://www.windows2universe.org/spaceweather/images/bar_magnet_correct.gif

Am I understanding you correctly?

This seems to be a key point that is obfuscated or ignored by deniers. That there are gigantic sinks of fossil carbon, in addition to the fossil fuels we bring up, that have been sequestered safely under the conditions prevelant during all of human civilization. Many of these are predicted to, or have already begun being released, as global temperatures rise. Positive feedback means the more it happens, the more it will happen, until the system spirals wildly out of control.

Example of this are the permafrost areas at the edge of the Northern polar region, the Methane Clathrates, reversal of the Amazon rain forest from a carbon sink to a source, and the greater absorption of heat from sunlight as melting ice and snow changes Earth's albedo.

And here is what is meant by irreversible--that these feedback loops will accelerate and cause massive disruption in time scales directly relevant to human civilization--i.e. the next few centuries, at least. Deniers like to bring up crap about there having been massive changes in temp all throughout the billions of years of the fossil record, so we should all relax. That is true, but in each case, these changes caused massive dislocation or extinction of the dominant plant and animal species of that time.

We're talking about what happens to this particular race of animals that is here spending its time reading and writing Slashdot postings. It is disingenuous for deniers to claim some lofty halo of wisdom that transcends mere human-centric concerns, especially when, for the most vociferous of them (such as the paid lackeys of Exxon-Mobile), they are more concerned with making a buck in the next fiscal quarter than they are about the concerns of even the humans alive today, much less those not yet born.

Is this the same chemical reaction that is causing limestone facades all over Europe to dissolving in polluted cities?

http://www.windows2universe.org/milagro/effects/property.html