Posts by Diego -=Mav3rik=-
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61)
Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
New Planet
(Message 443282)
Posted 25 Oct 2006 by  Diego -=Mav3rik=-
Post: Yes, I am aware that gravity is by comparison the weakest of the 4 fundamental forces. But it rules the universe! ok? ;) By the way, is the existance of quarks proven or still a theory? |
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Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
Origins of the moon...
(Message 443279)
Posted 25 Oct 2006 by Diego -=Mav3rik=-
Post: The most accepted and plausible theory: 4.5 billion years ago, the Earth had recently been forged out of the detritus of star formation, assembled from dust that became rock, then boulders that collided and grew. Other planetary hopefuls roam the solar system. Impacts are frequent. The scene is hectic. A large rock, about the size of Mars, is doomed. It's heading toward Earth, destined for a slightly off-center impact that will set everything that isn't already rotating into a frenzy of spin. Upon impact, material from the incoming object and from the new Earth is cast into space. A ring of debris orbits the planet, and in an amazingly short amount of time -- about one day -- it begins to coalesce into a satellite. It takes somewhere between 1 and 100 years for the Moon to gather most of the stuff into a ball. Earth may or may not have been rotating before the impact, but it certainly was afterward. Importantly, the orbital and rotational mechanics of this new Earth-Moon system were then planned out for all time. The impact imparted angular moment on the system, a spin that could never be destroyed, the laws of physics tell us. Curiously, the specific relationships would change over time -- dramatically -- and the shifts continue today. --------------------------------------------------------------- If you ask me, it's a coincidence that we're here when the Moon's apparent size in the sky is equal to that of the Sun, so that a total solar eclipse is possible. Furthermore, we arrived comfortably after the pockmarked satellite began showing just one face to Earth, providing that immutable and unchanging beacon we call a full Moon, cosmic governor of terrestrial love and a lot of loony ideas. ;) Source of most of the stuff: www.space.com |
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Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
Can we Travel at The Speed of Light??
(Message 443271)
Posted 25 Oct 2006 by Diego -=Mav3rik=-
Post: We just need surf boards big enough to ride gravitational waves. ;) |
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Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
Are viruses alive?
(Message 443265)
Posted 25 Oct 2006 by Diego -=Mav3rik=-
Post: Viruses are alive if you don't use the narrower definition of life. From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life ...viruses and aberrant prion proteins are often considered replicators rather than forms of life, a distinction warranted because they cannot reproduce without very specialized substrates such as host cells or proteins, respectively. However, most forms of life rely on foods produced by other species, or at least the specific chemistry of Earth's environment. Some individuals contest such definitions of life on philosophical grounds, and offer the following as examples of life: viruses which reproduce; flames which "grow"; certain computer software programs which are programmed to mutate and evolve; future software programs which may evince (even high-order) behavior; machines which can move; and some forms of proto-life consisting of metabolizing cells without the ability to reproduce. Still, most scientists would not call such phenomena expressive of life. Generally all six characteristics are required for a population to be considered a life form. # Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, sweating to cool off. # Organization: Being composed of one or more cells, which are the basic units of life. # Metabolism: Production of energy by converting nonliving material into cellular components (synthesis) and decomposing organic matter (catalysis). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life. # Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of synthesis than catalysis. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter. The particular species begins to multiply and expand as the evolution continues to flourish. # Adaptation: The ability to change over a period of time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity as well as the composition of metabolized substances, and external factors present. # Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism when touched to complex reactions involving all the senses of higher animals. A response is often expressed by motion, for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun or an animal chasing its prey. # Reproduction: The ability to produce new organisms. Reproduction can be the division of one cell to form two new cells. Usually the |
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Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
My Thoughts on time travel
(Message 443257)
Posted 25 Oct 2006 by Diego -=Mav3rik=-
Post: I don't really have anything to add to this fascinating subject of discussion, other than to say that -once again- I agree with Mr. Tesla. |
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Message boards :
Number crunching :
Almost 30 hours CPU Time and 42% progress?!?!
(Message 443249)
Posted 25 Oct 2006 by Diego -=Mav3rik=-
Post: O&O, did your windows freeze for whatever reason and you had to reset the computer? Sometimes when this happens the current WU state and progress are lost but not the CPU time for that WU, so when Boinc comes back up again it starts the WU from 0% but CPU time is not reset to zero. This has happened to me a couple times. |
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Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
Enlighten me
(Message 442467)
Posted 23 Oct 2006 by Diego -=Mav3rik=-
Post: I watched a documentry on discovery channel about a team of scientists working on plasma,the fuel was sea water but strangly enough they could not get any heip from the goverment to develop it so they were cannibalising from other projects. bit of a disgrace really Indeed. If you think about it, we are looking for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, when actually we should be searching for signs of TERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE. I mean, if I was an alien explorer visiting our solar system, I'd go: "yes captain, the 3rd planet is inhabited by an intelligent life form, but my god what a bunch of morons they are. Let's come back in a couple centuries when at least they should have stopped destroying their own planet. Please change course captain! :P I'm really resigned to the fact that humans won't start massively using a clean source of power until we have sucked up absolutely every last drop of fossil fuels from our soil. The reason is obvious, and sad. |
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68)
Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
New Planet
(Message 441090)
Posted 21 Oct 2006 by Diego -=Mav3rik=-
Post: And to take it a step further, the Universe probably has some rotation about its centre of gravity, if the Big Bang theory is to be believed...... I believe the bing bang is a kid's bed time story. But anyway, the definition of dwarf planet should clarify that it shouldn't be a satellite to another planet in the same system. Because well, everything seems to be a satellite to something else in the universe. :p Aaah, gotta love gravitational force. The true master of the universe. Ok I need sleep. |
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Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
Enlighten me
(Message 441089)
Posted 21 Oct 2006 by Diego -=Mav3rik=-
Post: I'm still amazed how perfect our Earth is for us... You shouldn't be, since it's the other way around. We are what we are because we evolved here (as far as we know). It's not like we originated in some other system and found this M-class planet long ago to settle in, because it was "perfect" for us. :) we have to look after it. Yep, we won't have another one to settle for a long time. I know I say this too often in many threads, but I wish oil deposits would run dry today. It would be fun to watch the oil-based market crumble to dust and having to get off our lazy asses to development alternative fuels, fast. :P |
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Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
New Planet
(Message 440328)
Posted 20 Oct 2006 by Diego -=Mav3rik=-
Post: By the way... the definition of dwarf planet: A dwarf planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, (c) has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite. But, at a first glance I kind of disagreed with (d), because well, what is the exact definition of satellite? I looked it up. A satellite is any object that orbits another object (which is known as its primary). Satellites can be manmade or may be naturally occurring such as moons, comets, asteroids, planets, stars, and even galaxies. An example of a natural satellite is Earth's Moon. All masses that are part of our solar system, including the Earth and Sun, are satellites of either a planet, the Sun, or the galactic center of the Milky Way. So, ummm, I still don't agree with (d), because even galaxies move around an unknown center of gravity. |
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Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
New Planet
(Message 440324)
Posted 20 Oct 2006 by Diego -=Mav3rik=-
Post: We can open the first extra-terrestrial hotel. And if we don't have atmosphere... we'll presurize the whole place. And we'll recycle everything. |
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Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
Enlighten me
(Message 440321)
Posted 20 Oct 2006 by Diego -=Mav3rik=-
Post: Another possibility is that our closest E.T. neighbours are deaf. That is, they don't use sound to communicate in any way, and never have. |
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Message boards :
Number crunching :
Help me! I am outta work!
(Message 437432)
Posted 16 Oct 2006 by Diego -=Mav3rik=-
Post: Yeah, shut it kevin. |
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74)
Message boards :
Number crunching :
Updating preferences
(Message 437239)
Posted 15 Oct 2006 by Diego -=Mav3rik=-
Post: So... any word on why this is happening? |
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Message boards :
Number crunching :
Updating preferences
(Message 436792)
Posted 15 Oct 2006 by Diego -=Mav3rik=-
Post: Do we need to check our preferences to see if they are still set correctly? I also noticed this like 2 days ago and I asumed there was some problem with the scheduler and that soon it would be fixed. Today I checked my preferences and they were all right, but it is still updating the preferences every single time the client connects to the scheduler. There's a missing flag somewhere. ;) |
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Message boards :
Cafe SETI :
Evolution being rejected by more people?
(Message 435494)
Posted 13 Oct 2006 by Diego -=Mav3rik=-
Post:  Dunno about you all, but I descend from this guy. :p |
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Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
Enlighten me
(Message 435476)
Posted 13 Oct 2006 by Diego -=Mav3rik=-
Post: Diego I think i an better off being dumb Yes, that's sad but true. We all would be better being dumb. It's a fact that stupid people are happier. Anyway... you can ignore a lot of things and be amazingly intelligent, and you can know much and be incredibly stupid. Knowledge and intelligence are two different things. There are wise stupids and ignorant geniuses all around. Then there are special cases. Ignorant morons that still manage to acomplish big things like being president and stuff. But that's another story. ;) The Fourier Transform has a lot of applications, but in signal processing -and roughly speaking- it's used to decompose the signals into different frequencies components. I'm sure somebody else can explain it better. /Regards |
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Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
Enlighten me
(Message 435414)
Posted 13 Oct 2006 by Diego -=Mav3rik=-
Post: sorry sleestak you have lost me with the fourier transform if you look at my profile you will see i am not a brain surgeon, :-please enlighten me Don't worry, I'm sure most brain surgeons don't know what a fourier transform is. ;) |
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79)
Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
travel at Light speed
(Message 435195)
Posted 12 Oct 2006 by Diego -=Mav3rik=-
Post: It would take 353,7 days of constant 1G (9,81 m/s^2) acceleration to reach the speed of light. In that time you would travel 4,58 billion Km. I know about those theories, but yorkieron started his question with "if we could travel at light speed" so regardless of relativity, I was trying to answer his question. where you observe it does make a difference. The clock of a person moving at high speed runs slow from the point of view of someone standing still. So less time always seems to pass on the spaceship that's accelerating compared to someone back on earth. You said it yourself, "the clock"... "seems"... ;) /Regards |
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Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
New Planet
(Message 435006)
Posted 12 Oct 2006 by Diego -=Mav3rik=-
Post: I read that article and Ceres sounds like a little Gem of a plannet. Yes I plan to move to Ceres when I retire... in like 40 years. They better hurry those construction plans. |
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