Forums / Discussion / General

"This thread is dedicated to Science. This thread has rules that must be followed"
Rule 1:No fake science.
Rule 2:No trolling
Rule 3:Always listen to Quantum ≠ Meme for his words of wisdom
Rule 4:Have Fun

This thread belongs to me, mortals.

I recently spent over an hour attempting to derive the expression for the splitting in nuclear ℓ-states because of spin-orbit interactions, according to the Shell Model. I also wrote a 3800-word essay about this reaction:

So yeah. Science.

CONVERSATION STARTER:

Cyborg technology is becoming closer and closer to being widely used. We are also coming closer and closer to self-sustaining robots.

Heresy. Heresy and Witch-Craft everywhere.

Ho ho ho! This is a thread I can post in! Lets see… any thoughts on the superfluid properties of Helium near absolute zero?
How about breathable liquid? I am currently looking into perfluorohexane as a starter liquid. My plan is to get someone absolutely used to breathing it, and then lower the oxygen levels gradually until it reaches near-open-water oxygen levels. Kind of like how people who go mountineering or vacationing in Tibet get themselves used to lower oxygen levels. The percentage of dissolved oxygen in regular water might be just too low, though…

@dravitar

Unless you're in extremely oxic environments, the amount of DO in your average body of water is far too low to sustain life for warm-blooded animals, especially ones our size. The atmosphere has about 200000 ppm oxygen, while ambient water (based on my studies of DO in rivers in Oregon) contains between 5-25 ppm oxygen. So your approach won't work, unfortunately.

Breathable liquid, in theory, is workable, as the "exchange of air" that we know as is just cytosis on the cellular level. The problem of liquid breathing is the gag reflex of the human body. As the larynx blocks fluids when we swallow, it would be hard to get the fluid down the trachea and into the lungs in order to function.

@opspe

Just verified your words… crap. Well, there goes that dream of mine.

Back to everyone

Alrighty then, how about we get into some theoretical partical physics? Gravitons have not been discovered yet, but they have been hypothesized as particles that give the gravitational force. Since most particles have been shown to have anti-particles, it is safe to hypothesize an anti-graviton. If we discover this particle, and isolate them extremely using an electromagnetic field, it seems to be an entry point into repulsor engines.
Just like the human race had, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…

edit @Mister (ninja) J,
Perfluorohexane has already been tested on some burn victims to keep their lungs functioning even when badly damaged, so I know there is some way to get around the gag reflex. Heck, sword swallowers get around the gag reflex all the time, but I see where you are coming from.

Excuse me, but I believe rules 1 and 2 make rule 4 impossible.

@dravitar

There can be no anti-gravitons. A graviton, if it exists, would be like a photon; it would be its own anti-particle. This is because, if it exists, it would be uncharged; the only thing that would be reversed is its spin (+2 to -2).

Moreover, what you're implying is that there are anti-forces. There are not.

@ opspe

Well, FU&K
You are tearing apart my childhood dreams page by page! (sob)

Well, ok then. I'ma ask you an open-ended question so I don't get shot down by the over-powering knowledge.
What's the method of long-distance space travel with the most merit? I'm partial to the idea of a solar sailer, but it seems to me to only work within the general vincinity of the solar system, maybe out to the Oort Cloud…

(and this is probably my last post for the night. I'll look for an answer in the morning. Take your time.)

Yeah, solar sailing would only work in the proximity to a star, although theoretically, if you were able to get enough momentum, you might be able to escape the solar system and drift to the next one. That presents the problem of habitation though. The amount of time it would take to get there would be several lifetimes, at least. You'd either have to have some sort of stasis (such as freezing), or build a generational ship with enough resources. Either way, it's a very long way off.

Wouldn't light reflecting be enough?

I mean if you see a star, it should work.

YOUR SCIENCE CAN'T HANDLE MAGIC OF THIS MAGNITUDE.

The photon flux would be too low past a certain point to be able to induce motion.

Peh. I know what really gets ships moving.

But if you have no resistance, you should still be heading somewhere, on a level so small, you might as well not even consider it real.

The rate of acceleration goes away, but the momentum gained remains bar resistance. Although, you are dragging a massive sail through an admittedly gas-filled medium.

You're Your right, we shouldn't have shot all these monkeys into space.

Actually, breathable liquid is more than theory. Reportedly, this scene from the 1989 movie The Abyss did not involve any visual effects:

According to imdb.com: "Five rats were used for five different takes, all of whom survived and were given shots by a vet."

You fail to notice what the rules fail to state, thus leaving open a massive loophole. I leave the identification of this loophole as an exercise for the student.

I just follow rule 4.

So coke/pepsi nearly got a cancer warning.

We also have anti matter.

I thought I was gonna die for a second with the Coke/Pepsi thing.

"1000 cans"

There has to be some idiot who has drunk that amount in one day.

I read the article in Nature about the antihydrogen. I don't really know much about hyperfine structure, but it was interesting. As I understand it, here's how they did it (more or less):

• They magnetically trapped the antihydrogen atoms in a vacuum
• They flipped the spins of some of the positrons using microwave radiation
• The spin-flipped atoms were ejected from the trap and were detected when they annihilated with regular hydrogen atoms
• The frequency of the microwave radiation that caused spin flips yielded info about the hyperfine energy levels of the antihydrogen atom

Pic semi-related:

seems legit

Bumping For Science

F*** YEA SCIENCE

I've been a while since the last time I saw him on TV.

"Hello, let me describe the human race in a nutshell…

We are a bunch of determined idiots who occasionally get a good idea and build on it until we can't do anything else with it, then we wait until we get a new one. How about you?"

Chances are, their civilization is going to be similar.

New topic: Super-Advanced PROSTHETICS!!!!!

I'm thinking about having the sensors for the individual servos in the prosthetic limb link to individual nerves that the mind already uses / can use easily. This might also allow amputees to learn to move more mechanical "muscles". Thus, the limb might have many more functions than an ordinary flesh-and-blood limb.

Thoughts?

How about some pole dancing robots?

A bit of animal science here, but I found out recently that Uloborid Spiders crush their prey like garbage compactors.

When I first heard of them, I found out that they have no venom and no fangs. If you think this sounds like a less frightening spider, you are seriously underestimating nature's deranged creativity.

Scientists had noticed for some time that these venomless spiders wrapped their prey in ridiculous amounts of silk -- up to 28,000 wrapping motions and 450 feet of the stuff to encase just a single insect. It almost seemed like they were trying a little too hard to compensate for their lameness and lack of poison.

A biologist by the name of William Eberhard did tiny autopsies on the Uloborid. The spider itself weighed 14 milligrams, but its prey had been compacted to death by several hundred milligrams of pressure. A very slow and painful death. Like the equivalent of stuffing a seven foot guy in a suitcase very slowly.

Picture A is a bug. Picture B is the same bug after crushed by Uloborid silk. Around the corpse is the leg of said insect.

After crushing its victim, the uloborid soaks the whole cocoon in powerful corrosive slobber, melting down the entire insect into a protein shake from hell.

nostalgia anyone?

But there's no enemies to cast it on!

Did any one else noticed Sweatie deactivated his account?
Also here is my opinion on clone to keep things relevent.

see more Memebase and check out our Troll Face lols!

@Mister J
"“exchange of air” that we know as is just cytosis on the cellular level."
gas exchange in the lungs works by diffusion, not cytosis

@dravitar
"What’s the method of long-distance space travel with the most merit?"
I am thinking, build a large structure orbiting the Earth that is similar to a large particle accelerator, but instead of accelerating particles it will accelerate spaceships. Put people into the spaceship, remove their blood and put in some solution before deep freezing them. Slowly accelerate the spaceship inside the spaceship accelerator, round and round, at an acceleration rate where the G-forces are not crushing the ship/people but they are still speeding up significantly. After they have gotten sufficiently fast enough release them from the spaceship accelerator into deep space towards your desired destination. Sheer momentum won't change due to a lack of friction, except for the odd particles floating around in space, so some sort of shield which can deflect these without using energy or loosing momentum(lol) would have to be developed. Once the people are in sight, thaw them out, and let them work out the issue of slowing down.

No kidding, YOU MADE THIS!?

Eeyup.

Well, thank you for including me in a rule.

Just a note though: I'll post something 'smart' sometime later. (Then me and opspe can argue over it!)

So guys, I've been thinking about a little idea of mine for a while.
As you know, humans' blood is red. That is because of the iron (IV) atom in the center of haemoglobin. I was thinking, would there be any simple way to remove that without the molecule collapsing around it, then replacing it with another atom with 4 valence electrons (say, a copper ion) to change the color?
Even so, would the body reject it?

There is a way to remove iron from the heme group; by adding another chelator that has a higher affinity. Then, you could use the same type of reaction to add another metal to the heme ligand. But, you could never do this reaction in the human body. Ever.

This is a nice read for an introduction of modern physics:

Some highlights:
- Yeah, philosophy is dead. You can't explain the universe with philosophy alone. I agree.
- Everything has multiple and infinite histories. We are a sum of probable histories.
- You can't explain photons as just particles or waves.
- Link gravity and quantum theories convincingly so you can win like 3 Nobel Prizes.
- Richard Feynman drove a fancy van.

opspe wrote:

There is a way to remove iron from the heme group; by adding another chelator that has a higher affinity. Then, you could use the same type of reaction to add another metal to the heme ligand. But, you could never do this reaction in the human body. Ever.

Hmmm… then might you be able to do it outside the body, and then just act like it's a regular blood transplant?

dravitar wrote:

Hmmm… then might you be able to do it outside the body, and then just act like it’s a regular blood transplant?

No. Iron is vital to oxygen transport within the body. Other metals just wouldn't work, and if you were injected with them, you'd die from lack of oxygen and/or metals poisoning.

Now that's not to say that there aren't other metals in the body. Vitamin B12 contains cobalt, for example. But, the iron in hemoglobin is so critical to oxygen transport that our life would be impossible without it.

HEY GUIZE!

I just found some very interesting scientistical type things that may be relevant to your interests. In an attempt to isolate genes responsible for HIV, scientists have injected the eggs produced by cats with the DNA of…

yadda yadda yadda….

CLICK HERE FOR GLOW IN THE DARK CATS!!!