So once all diseases are cured, we can feel free to pursue non-vital research. Face it, there will never be a time when we all live forever. There will always be things to kill us. Remember, just 100 years ago, it was much worse. Then, infectious diseases were the big killer. Now that we have brought those mostly under control, other problems have become relevant. Just supposing we bring AIDS, cancer and parkinsons under control, there will still be a #1 killer, and when we beat that, there will still be a #1 killer. We can never beat all diseases. I want to prolong my life as much as the next guy, and I support research for these causes, but they should not be an all-encompasing obsession. We are mortal, people die, why not explore the life we have while we have it?
So it's hard, so what? Scientific advances are not made by people unwilling to try and retry experiments. I think that if this suceeds, the result will be cool enough to make up for all the time spent.
Ok, last night I was too lazy to dig out a book and give real numbers and such, but now it appears I should have.
The second is not defined as itself. That would be dumb. It is "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium-133 atom"
"The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second."
A liter is indeed.1m^3 (but NOT 1m^3)
A kilogram is more or less the mass of one liter of water, but it is actually defined in terms of a platinum-Iridium standard weight in France. (This is the only unit not based on a physical constant.)
A Newton is a kg*m/s^2 or the amount of force to accelerate a one kilogram object at the rate of one meter per second per second. (kg/s^2 does not make much sense.)
The base units of the metric system (SI really) are meter, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, mole and candela, with supplemental units of radian and steradian.
First let me say that I support the metric system and would like it just fine if i never saw a english unit again in my life.
"The English system is focused on the idea that humans only want to / can deal with multiples of two or three things comfortably. Then metric wins, as there is only 1 "thing" to measure against, and 1 scale. Orthogonal design. Good."
I think he meant to say that we are more comfortable dealing with multiples of 2 or 3 than multiples of 10. For example: 2 cups to a pint, 2 pints to a quart is a nice clean way of dealing with things. We, as humans, understand halves intuitivly. Tenths, on the other hand, don't come naturally. If I show you 2 objects and ask "is this one one tenth the size of that one?" you would have trouble determining if it were closer to a tenth, than, say, 1/15. If I do the same experiment for halves, you would have a much easier time. The problem is that instead of using a factor of 2 across the board, they decided on 8 ounces to the cup and 4 quarts to the gallon, not to mention 40something gallons to the barrel and god-knows-how-many drams to the ounce.
Which leads me to my next point: flexability. Even if the English system had a constant ratio between its units (making the need to memorize "whatever,8,2,2,4,40something" unnessasary) you have the problem of running out of units for large and small values. If I want to express a large amount of fluid in the english system, I am forced to name a large number of gallons. If I want to express a small amount, i have to name a small fraction of an ounce (or dram or something). Since each size unit has a seperate name, you can't extend the system, you are stuck in whatever range of values were useful when the system was invented. In the metric system, for each quantity, there is one word to remember (i.e. liter) and for each order of magnitude there is one word to remember (i.e. kilo). In the english system, there are (number of quantities)*(number of sizes) words to remember, much worse.
So the prime weaknesses of the English system are inconsistancy, inexpandablity, and large numbers of words to memorize. The strength is ease of visualization for everyday objects.
This in mind, I have to completely agree with the point that we would be better off with 12 fingers. Base 12 arithmetic is MUCH easier than base 10... If you learn it from birth. And the metric system would be even better if we used base 12. Not only would you get the advantage of conversion by shifting decimal point, but you would get the ability to subdivide into 2,3,4 and 6, not just 2 and 5. This would allow for easy science and good cake recipies (nobody wants to use fractional amounts of sugar).
I don't think that the uncertainty principle has anything to do with the speed of light limit. You can't reach the speed of light because as you approach it, your relitavisic mass approaches infinity, and the more massive you are, the harder it is to accelerate. The uncertainty priniple deals with subatomic particles mostly and for the most part does not apply to large objects, but all objects have to stay under the speed of light.
Incidentally, the medium to which you refer in your last paragraph is a Bose-Einstien condensate.
The meter was originally defined as 1/10,000,000 of the distance from the equator to the North Pole, thru Paris. But, since this is not very easy to measure to a large degree of acuracy, and it is subject to small changes, it was redefined as the distance light travels in 1/c seconds. [c ~= 3*10^8, but I dont know all the digits off the top of my head.]
Another thing: Your statement that the AU is metric because it is based on the distance from the Sun to the Earth does not make any sense. The metric system (or SI actually) is mostly based on physical constants, of which this distance isn't one.
I know for a fact that Cherenkov radiation is not produced by gamma rays, because by definition, it is created by a massive particle going faster than the speed of light thru a specific medium.
As far as I know, blue light might be produced in some other way when Uranium fissions, but it is not Cherenkov radiation.
Incidentally, I have seen a non-critical reactor emmiting a blue glow (this was Cherenkov radiation) and lived to tell about it. The reactor itself was at the bottom of a tank of water something like 20 meters deep and the lights had to be off to see it, but I thought I should point out that blue light does not equal radiation poisioning. Also I should mention that it was at the bottom of this tank because water acts as a SHIELD for radiation, contrary to what the CNN article tells you.
Shame on the moderator, this is NOT flamebait, perhaps you don't agree with it, but that is not the same thing. Find something better to do with your points.
Hi, did i not make myself clear? I am neither anti-linux nor anti-slashdot.
I love the idea of linux, I think it is great that it exists. However, your average cab driver (and indeed, average computer user in general) has better things to do than to figure out how to install and use it. Let's face it, linux is not intuitive, windows is. I have linux on my system, and I might even use it frequently, except that there are no drivers out there yet for my video and network cards. Once linux becomes as easy to use as windows, then people can feel smug for running it. At the present, running it may make you a more knowledgeable computer person, but it does not make you superior to people who use windows.
If I was anti-slashdot, I wouldn't take the time to read it and post replies. I was simply speaking my opinion about what I felt was an inappropriate post.
I should point out that slashdot is free the way televison is free. Both are funded by advertisers. If I cannot critisize slashdot, then logically, I cannot complain about anything on TV either.
And lastly: "How they allow you to post such shit is amazing" It's called free speech. The system exists as it does so that people can say whatever they want, even to the point of flooding profanity. If you want an open forum, don't tell me what not to say, but instead tell me why I am wrong. Swearing at people doesn't promote the exchange of ideas, but intelligent arguments do.
The game is Magic, with a 'c'. Yes, you collect the cards, and buy the cards, and play the game with the cards, and in the most pure form of the game, you win the cards also. (I have never seen anybody play for ante, it is very old school. I started playing in the third year of the game, I think that ante was basically dead by the end of the first.) However, most magic players are old enough to know that when they spend money on inherently worthless items, it is their own fault and not the fault of the gaming company.
While I wouldn't have put it so bluntly, I have to say that this is one of the most moronic stories posted recently. Actually, it wouldn't have been so bad if not for the "and I'll run Linux, of course, which I'll bet the Yahoo cabs don't. Heh!" This is irrelevent and an unintelligent cheap shot at cab drivers who have no reason to use a geek oriented operating system. (I have nothing against linux, just against the notion that everything in the world should run it.)
The explosive effect of a neutron bomb is not tiny. It is simply small in comparison to that of some other nuclear devices. The primary component of the bomb is still a fission reaction, so the initial explosion will be about the same as the bombs we dropped on Japan. I belive that the misconception that it is some kind of magic no-explosion-but-kills-everything device comes from the fact that they were being designed around the time when large H-bombs were being tested.
As others have mentioned, the radiation doesn't magically dissapear either, tho it might decrease faster than a regular fission bomb.
"We probably have bombs now that have such diminised radioactive effects that you couldn't tell if it was nuclear or conventional the next day."
I doubt this very much.
Nuclear excavating may actually have been a good idea. However, I have never read any numerical reports of how much fallout there would be from the cleanest H-bomb. If it is really low enough that humans could live on the new shore line immediatly afterwards with only modestly higher background radiation, then the only thing stopping us is fear of misuse. (Note that i am defining modestly higher as an increase that could be found by moving to an area with natural sources of increased background radiation.)
Um, did you miss World War II? That was Hitler trying to implement selective breeding. For that matter, there have been a lot of eugenics wackos wandering around for the last few centuries (ok, probably only 95% of them have been wackos, since the underlining concept is sound, but people get power-hungry really fast.)
Colonel Kurtz, who transfers into this question, which I represented, is by the interest to some by you: " I regard, graduated school in approximately two years also obtained, in order to exercise masters or Ph.D. in computer science. I am a good user category Nichtgraduierter with an inclination for CS and I look the academic challenge degree-train above. I look Slashdot above after the informed advice of the community. Specifically, while I selects, a school graduated should? Is it worth a direction for the upper schools to the graduate of the series? (like ALSO, Stanford, etc..) or should I refer down even few (like Purdue or Syrakus?) At this point I would be lucky to have each possible type discussion over the schools graduated ",
Slashdot Mirror
So once all diseases are cured, we can feel free to pursue non-vital research. Face it, there will never be a time when we all live forever. There will always be things to kill us. Remember, just 100 years ago, it was much worse. Then, infectious diseases were the big killer. Now that we have brought those mostly under control, other problems have become relevant. Just supposing we bring AIDS, cancer and parkinsons under control, there will still be a #1 killer, and when we beat that, there will still be a #1 killer. We can never beat all diseases. I want to prolong my life as much as the next guy, and I support research for these causes, but they should not be an all-encompasing obsession. We are mortal, people die, why not explore the life we have while we have it?
No it is not enough said. Point us to an older article or don't waste space on the comments page.
"Of course, it will be interesting to see whether the newly cloned mammoth will be an endangered species"
Um, is this an attempt at humor? Of course it will be endangered. There will only be one!
So it's hard, so what? Scientific advances are not made by people unwilling to try and retry experiments. I think that if this suceeds, the result will be cool enough to make up for all the time spent.
Ok, last night I was too lazy to dig out a book and give real numbers and such, but now it appears I should have.
.1m^3 (but NOT 1m^3)
The second is not defined as itself. That would be dumb. It is "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium-133 atom"
"The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second."
A liter is indeed
A kilogram is more or less the mass of one liter of water, but it is actually defined in terms of a platinum-Iridium standard weight in France. (This is the only unit not based on a physical constant.)
A Newton is a kg*m/s^2 or the amount of force to accelerate a one kilogram object at the rate of one meter per second per second. (kg/s^2 does not make much sense.)
The base units of the metric system (SI really) are meter, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, mole and candela, with supplemental units of radian and steradian.
For more information this is a good source.
First let me say that I support the metric system and would like it just fine if i never saw a english unit again in my life.
"The English system is focused on the idea that humans only want to / can deal with multiples of two or three things comfortably. Then metric wins, as there is only 1 "thing" to measure against, and 1 scale. Orthogonal design. Good."
I think he meant to say that we are more comfortable dealing with multiples of 2 or 3 than multiples of 10. For example: 2 cups to a pint, 2 pints to a quart is a nice clean way of dealing with things. We, as humans, understand halves intuitivly. Tenths, on the other hand, don't come naturally. If I show you 2 objects and ask "is this one one tenth the size of that one?" you would have trouble determining if it were closer to a tenth, than, say, 1/15. If I do the same experiment for halves, you would have a much easier time. The problem is that instead of using a factor of 2 across the board, they decided on 8 ounces to the cup and 4 quarts to the gallon, not to mention 40something gallons to the barrel and god-knows-how-many drams to the ounce.
Which leads me to my next point: flexability. Even if the English system had a constant ratio between its units (making the need to memorize "whatever,8,2,2,4,40something" unnessasary) you have the problem of running out of units for large and small values. If I want to express a large amount of fluid in the english system, I am forced to name a large number of gallons. If I want to express a small amount, i have to name a small fraction of an ounce (or dram or something). Since each size unit has a seperate name, you can't extend the system, you are stuck in whatever range of values were useful when the system was invented. In the metric system, for each quantity, there is one word to remember (i.e. liter) and for each order of magnitude there is one word to remember (i.e. kilo). In the english system, there are (number of quantities)*(number of sizes) words to remember, much worse.
So the prime weaknesses of the English system are inconsistancy, inexpandablity, and large numbers of words to memorize. The strength is ease of visualization for everyday objects.
This in mind, I have to completely agree with the point that we would be better off with 12 fingers. Base 12 arithmetic is MUCH easier than base 10... If you learn it from birth. And the metric system would be even better if we used base 12. Not only would you get the advantage of conversion by shifting decimal point, but you would get the ability to subdivide into 2,3,4 and 6, not just 2 and 5. This would allow for easy science and good cake recipies (nobody wants to use fractional amounts of sugar).
I don't think that the uncertainty principle has anything to do with the speed of light limit. You can't reach the speed of light because as you approach it, your relitavisic mass approaches infinity, and the more massive you are, the harder it is to accelerate. The uncertainty priniple deals with subatomic particles mostly and for the most part does not apply to large objects, but all objects have to stay under the speed of light.
Incidentally, the medium to which you refer in your last paragraph is a Bose-Einstien condensate.
The meter was originally defined as 1/10,000,000 of the distance from the equator to the North Pole, thru Paris. But, since this is not very easy to measure to a large degree of acuracy, and it is subject to small changes, it was redefined as the distance light travels in 1/c seconds. [c ~= 3*10^8, but I dont know all the digits off the top of my head.]
Another thing: Your statement that the AU is metric because it is based on the distance from the Sun to the Earth does not make any sense. The metric system (or SI actually) is mostly based on physical constants, of which this distance isn't one.
Could you please explain how water provides neutrons? The only ones avaliable are in the oxygen atoms, and they are tightly bound.
Not neutrons: #92
I believe this comment has all correct information.
I hope you don't think that the blue light itself (being ever so energetic) is the thing that hurt them...
I know for a fact that Cherenkov radiation is not produced by gamma rays, because by definition, it is created by a massive particle going faster than the speed of light thru a specific medium.
As far as I know, blue light might be produced in some other way when Uranium fissions, but it is not Cherenkov radiation.
Incidentally, I have seen a non-critical reactor emmiting a blue glow (this was Cherenkov radiation) and lived to tell about it. The reactor itself was at the bottom of a tank of water something like 20 meters deep and the lights had to be off to see it, but I thought I should point out that blue light does not equal radiation poisioning. Also I should mention that it was at the bottom of this tank because water acts as a SHIELD for radiation, contrary to what the CNN article tells you.
Shame on the moderator, this is NOT flamebait, perhaps you don't agree with it, but that is not the same thing. Find something better to do with your points.
Hi, did i not make myself clear? I am neither anti-linux nor anti-slashdot.
I love the idea of linux, I think it is great that it exists. However, your average cab driver (and indeed, average computer user in general) has better things to do than to figure out how to install and use it. Let's face it, linux is not intuitive, windows is. I have linux on my system, and I might even use it frequently, except that there are no drivers out there yet for my video and network cards. Once linux becomes as easy to use as windows, then people can feel smug for running it. At the present, running it may make you a more knowledgeable computer person, but it does not make you superior to people who use windows.
If I was anti-slashdot, I wouldn't take the time to read it and post replies. I was simply speaking my opinion about what I felt was an inappropriate post.
I should point out that slashdot is free the way televison is free. Both are funded by advertisers. If I cannot critisize slashdot, then logically, I cannot complain about anything on TV either.
And lastly: "How they allow you to post such shit is amazing" It's called free speech. The system exists as it does so that people can say whatever they want, even to the point of flooding profanity. If you want an open forum, don't tell me what not to say, but instead tell me why I am wrong. Swearing at people doesn't promote the exchange of ideas, but intelligent arguments do.
The game is Magic, with a 'c'. Yes, you collect the cards, and buy the cards, and play the game with the cards, and in the most pure form of the game, you win the cards also. (I have never seen anybody play for ante, it is very old school. I started playing in the third year of the game, I think that ante was basically dead by the end of the first.) However, most magic players are old enough to know that when they spend money on inherently worthless items, it is their own fault and not the fault of the gaming company.
While I wouldn't have put it so bluntly, I have to say that this is one of the most moronic stories posted recently. Actually, it wouldn't have been so bad if not for the "and I'll run Linux, of course, which I'll bet the Yahoo cabs don't. Heh!" This is irrelevent and an unintelligent cheap shot at cab drivers who have no reason to use a geek oriented operating system. (I have nothing against linux, just against the notion that everything in the world should run it.)
Anybody have links to this?
Fallen empires was a damn good set!
The explosive effect of a neutron bomb is not tiny. It is simply small in comparison to that of some other nuclear devices. The primary component of the bomb is still a fission reaction, so the initial explosion will be about the same as the bombs we dropped on Japan. I belive that the misconception that it is some kind of magic no-explosion-but-kills-everything device comes from the fact that they were being designed around the time when large H-bombs were being tested.
As others have mentioned, the radiation doesn't magically dissapear either, tho it might decrease faster than a regular fission bomb.
"We probably have bombs now that have such diminised radioactive effects that you couldn't tell if it was nuclear or conventional the next day."
I doubt this very much.
Nuclear excavating may actually have been a good idea. However, I have never read any numerical reports of how much fallout there would be from the cleanest H-bomb. If it is really low enough that humans could live on the new shore line immediatly afterwards with only modestly higher background radiation, then the only thing stopping us is fear of misuse. (Note that i am defining modestly higher as an increase that could be found by moving to an area with natural sources of increased background radiation.)
Book, it's a book.
Um, did you miss World War II? That was Hitler trying to implement selective breeding. For that matter, there have been a lot of eugenics wackos wandering around for the last few centuries (ok, probably only 95% of them have been wackos, since the underlining concept is sound, but people get power-hungry really fast.)
Yes, a movie out of a book. Yes, Animated. Yes, Disney (or whoever) mangled the story.
Do they have a price for this thing listed somewhere? I haven't been able to find one.
Colonel Kurtz, who transfers into this question, which I represented, is by the interest to some by you: " I regard, graduated school in approximately two years also obtained, in order to exercise masters or Ph.D. in computer science. I am a good user category Nichtgraduierter with an inclination for CS and I look the academic challenge degree-train above. I look Slashdot above after the informed advice of the community. Specifically, while I selects, a school graduated should? Is it worth a direction for the upper schools to the graduate of the series? (like ALSO, Stanford, etc..) or should I refer down even few (like Purdue or Syrakus?) At this point I would be lucky to have each possible type discussion over the schools graduated ",