Posts by Chemist
1444 posts • joined Wednesday 24th March 2010 19:26 GMT
The slide mentions the "Look-Elswhere-Effect"
Is that a cousin of the "Somebody-Else's-Problem" field ?
"No matter how intelligent a person"
I agree entirely with that.
I worked with an extremely intelligent chemist who could think & rationalize well outside his area of expertize but he thought computers were binary - it never crossed his mind that you could parallel the binary logic and make 8-bit,32-bit etc,. systems.He assumed it was ALL serial.
"Goes to show just how heavy that ice was"
I believe that GPS based altimeter readings show the SW of England rising and falling each tide by a measurable amount due to the continental crust being pushed down by the increased weight of the sea.
Re : It just doesn't seem to ring true that the climate system is so sensitive....
Why ?
CO2 absorbs outbound infra-red radiation thus heating the atmosphere more than if it were not there. It's totally irrelevant whether this occurs at .003% or 1% - it depends on the gas. In the case of CO2 0.003% is significant.
However HEAT != temperature. Different materials have different specific heats and worse than that ice/water has a large energy involved in it's phase transition ( ice at 0C + lots of heat > water at 0C )
"CO2 levels != global temperature."
As I've pointed out before rising CO2 levels should cause retention of more HEAT - simple physics
but the relationship between heat and temperature on a planetary scale is likely complex - a very simple example is that you can put lots of heat into ice at 0C and it will stay at 0C until all the ice has melted.
"so much bone damage that it can usually only be done once"
Whilst I agree that it's difficult I do know of 2 people that have had 3 hip replacements. Takes quite a bit of doing and can involve bone-grafts
Re : At warp5 it will take 4.8 years to get there
Pity it's just a fictional means of travel !
I know it not the same ..
but UK Parliament is also available as wmv format which can be used by Linux browser plug-ins
"Linux isn't an entertainment OS"
Strange - it seems to be from here.
"If you care about democracy"
Just harangued http://www.parliamentlive.tv
Ta
"You'd think he'd get a sponsor."
"Watch" that space
I think you missed ...
"giant mutant" before space goat
"or stops the growth"
Good question. It is controlled in normal bone repair but quite how ...
Even more astonishingly normal bone is constantly remodelled by osteoclast cells that attach to the bone, dissolve away the mineral part, enzymatically degrade the protein matrix and then the 'hole' is refilled with fresh protein by osteoblast cells . The protein matrix acts as a scaffold for calcium ions in the blood to deposit and remineralize the bone.
The process may stop naturally as all the protein is covered calcium but I'm not sure about that.
$1,000 for a 128MB memory stick
Not for the MoD I'm sure
"The price is about nine times what one might expect" - I'd expect not to be able to buy such a small one anymore
Do you mean 128GB ?
"with the clothesline outside"
Just use a rotary drier.
( When it's not being used it could make the craft look more like a 'real' spaceship which everyone knows bristles with that kind of antenna)
Posted in HP douses firebomb printer hack threat
Halt and Catch Fire
I think that was Motorola 6800 or 6809 CPUs - I can't remember
Posted in HP douses firebomb printer hack threat
"a component used to dry ink"
That'd be the fuser used to melt toner onto the media
Posted in The BBC Micro turns 30
Re : Re: Ah !
I've still got a chart of the (gigantic) number of op-codes on my study wall. Spent a long time writing 6809 assembler including a floppy disk driver & formatter for my home-brew Forth system
Simpler days !
Posted in The BBC Micro turns 30
For those who wonder why Branch Always is useful ..
Using a sub-set of 6809 op-codes you could write true position-independent code and I think BRA was the JMP relative version of JMP
"Don't these things get used in labs anymore"
Less and less - they use an enormous amount of water unless a pump recirculates in a closed system.
"not a 15mm reduction from atmospheric pressure."
A lab water pump will get to ~~15mm Hg absolute .
"just use the huge PSU caps"
They self-discharge far too quickly
"didn't we recently find some lifeform which lacks carbon"
NO !
To give a fuller answer ..
No you were wrong about the arsenic bit.
The reason why carbon seems so important is that it's got a lot of useful properties all in the one element
It can bond with 2,3 or 4 other atoms either with single. double, aromatic or triple bonds. It's reactivity can be altered relatively easily to make or break bonds. Long carbon chains can be relatively stable. Other elements don't have all or most of these properties. I could go on but it would end-up being a text-book in organic chemistry.
Posted in Psst, kid... Wanna learn how to hack?
Just tried that ..
on my aging laptop and got a 1GB file in ~15 secs.
How fast can you sidle ?
"world is so much better off in having the Windows standard"
Shouldn't that be -
"Microsoft is so much better off with the world being forced to have Windows as standard" ?
"Rossi had better be nominated for the 2012 Chemistry Nobel... !"
Ha, ha, ha ......
"Where are all the space/time believers?"
Every time anyone uses a GPS they are getting data that has been adjusted for the effect of spacetime being distorted by Earth's mass.
What they want for the generators ..
is Pu 238 which is not fissile but generates a high decay heat
This is the most blatant ignoring of data ..
That I've read in a long time.
No wonder you're an AC
"universe to 'see' another approaching it at >2.0c "
Worst than that.
The two proton beams at the LHC each almost travel at c. To an observer outside the beam it appears that the closing speed is ~2c, but to an observer traveling with a proton the closing speed will always appear to be <c
It's one of the reasons relativity always appears so bizarre to non-relativitists Worth looking up 4-velocity.
"Space-time is already bent by gravity"
Noooooooooooooooooooooo !
That's not General Relativity - it's almost the opposite
The presence of matter & energy curves spacetime - the effect of moving through 'bent' spacetime is *perceived* as a fictitious force called gravity.
"the cosmos is regenerated"
So was it or was it not regenerated ~5200 years ago ?
Must check the house insurance.
Posted in Graphene circuits from an inkjet printer
NMP
Used extensively in the fine chemical industry - it's a high-boiling point dipolar aprotic solvent meaning it has a high dipole that helps to solubilize materials but isn't capable of ionizing under 'reasonable' conditions.
Reading the data sheet is a bit like looking up your symptoms in a medical dictionary - scary
With correct handling, ventilation and recycling it's no problem. Doesn't mean that you should be using it in a 'normal' inkjet printer though
"You seem to believe you're an expert on this topic.."
I don't need to tell you anything - you already seem to know it all
As for Are they moviing faster than C?
Or are they traveling on a shorter path?
Until the experiment has been repeated by independent labs using diff.equipment then there isn't anything to explain.
As several other people have pointed out your understanding of GR's explanation for gravity is deeply flawed.
"trying to do is simply explain the findings"
Oh, good grief !!
What they will be doing first is to try and duplicate the finding, preferably somewhere else with different equipment
Only on the basis of good hard experimental results that disagree with SR ( which has HUGE existing experimental support ) will there be a need for theorists to get involved.
Anything else is pure speculation for speculation's sake
It's more likely ...
they'll have already read HHGG and will turn up expecting Bournemouth ( or was it Eastbourne ?) to be 'one of the most exciting places in the galaxy'
"Except that neutrinos don't seem to be effected by gravity."
Why do you keep repeating this - there's no evidence whatsoever that it's true !
Even photons with no rest mass are affected by gravity as predicted by GR
"Synthetic fuel is actually quite old"
Mostly made by hydrogenating coal !
I've just been in B&Q
and they had 50W equivalents on the shelf with 25 years printed on the packaging.
Mind I think they were @30GBP
Incidently...
I've just looked at the detector web-site. The detector stack is 25 m long ! so the transit time for a light speed particle would be about 80nS
I assume the detection events are found over the entire length and then averaged in some way
http://www-opera.desy.de/pics/detector2.jpg
"only releasing it 3 hours later"
Photons interact STRONGLY with matter - that slows them down - that's why light travels slower than c in matter
"And since established theory forbids superluminal travel"
AFAIK it only forbids superluminal speeds* in a vacuum, but in anything else where light is traveling at less than c then these sort of effects (e.g. Cherenkov radiation) are seen.
* Yes, I know the theory only actually forbids reaching light speed not travelling faster
"tunnel through the c barrier "
My understanding of tunneling is that it can ONLY occur if the energy barrier is finite. It then becomes a question of what that means for a FTL transition
"ize and composition of a star 168,000 light years away "
Well try this - for our local star - on average it takes many,many years for a photon, once generated as a gamma ray, to escape from the sun due to the dense interactions in the core.
"It's about time boffins took this idea seriously."
There's no need to take this seriously - if life can evolve in such diverse conditions you'd basically have to look almost everywhere so why not leave it at that.
"Conservation laws are already gone #"
NONESENSE !
Particles created near black holes are effectively taking mass from the black hole which will eventually vanish ( if no matter replenishes the black hole ) This is exactly why micro black holes are thought to have a very short lifetime and hence if the LHC somehow managed to create any it wouldn't be a problem
