The Official Cricketweb Science Thread!

[Top_Cat]

Originally Posted by Burgey

An answer so simple that it can't possibly be the right one in the realm of science.....

Neither is the question, though, considering bread doesn't always land on the buttered side nor do cats always land on their feet.

EDIT: By the way, I have no clue what the answer is and I may or may not be stalling.

[Son Of Coco]

Originally Posted by Top_Cat

Yeah that's right, even in the brain imaging side of things. It must be such a frustrating field; you divide the brain up into vague regions and decide what they do. As soon as you delve too deep, you discover the parts of the brains where work goes on actually is individual so the image of one brain isn't generalisable to the image of another. If you're doing research, keep it at the sub-cortical level and don't do any more detailed imaging. You'll get your Ph.D.



Police do it too. Call it cognitive interviewing and is primarily used to get the sequence of events right, enable memory of events which they might have tried to shut out, etc. You can imagine how it goes when you're doing it to a rape victim who's just a bit upset already......

Yeah I'd imagine that'd be a pretty ordinary experience for everyone involved, and probably a little difficult to explain the necessity of to the person you're doing it to when they're not in the greatest frame of mind.

[Son Of Coco]

Originally Posted by Burgey

Fact: cats, when dropped always land on their feet.
Fact: drop a piece of bread on the ground and it always lands buttered side down.
Assumption: a piece of bread is strapped to a cat's back, buttered side up.
Question: When dropped from 1 foot off the ground, will the cat/ bread arrangement land:
a. cat first, on it's feet?
b. bread first, buttered side down?
c. will not land at all, but get 6 inches off the ground and begin spontaneously spinning around, defying gravity?
Bonus point: give reasons for your conclusion.

Depending on the surface area to volume ratio of the cat and the height it's dropped from the bread may be slightly toasted by the time it hits the ground. Given sufficient height the bread may also be covered in 'Vegemite'.

[cover drive man]

Hows the mushroom cloud work?

[Son Of Coco]

Originally Posted by cover drive man

Hows the mushroom cloud work?

You go outside on a slightly overcast day and lie on the ground looking at the sky. When a cloud passes over that looks like it fits the bill you yell out 'mushroom'...you can also point if you like.

[cover drive man]

haha.

[andmark]

I remember reading a newspaper article about another planet with oxygen (tabloid newspaper I must warn)

Anyway, for a planet to have oxygen it must have plants which breath out oxygen, and breath in Carbon Dioxide. Now then, animals obviously breath in oxygen and breath out Carbon Dioxide. That's is what I've been taught in school
Here's some simple equations:
Plant/s + Animal/s= Oxygen on planet
Plant/s die = Animals die and no oxygen on planet.

Unless if there's another way how the oxygen have gotten there, I think that's a massive peice of evidence

[sledger]

You realise that there was no oxygen on Earth at one stage?

[silentstriker]

On Earth, oxygen is the result of life. It does not follow, however, that it must be the same on every planet. When it comes to life, we only have one example to go by (Earth life). And a sample of one is bad statistics.

I'm as excited as anyone if this is indeed true (I doubt it), but its nothing to get your hopes up about. It's amazingly difficult to even detect the planets, let alone figure out their atmospheric makeup. The more exciting question is that of intelligent life. Most likely there is life on other planets, but I am not sure how much life exists above the unicellular level. Putting my own guesses in the Drake Equation, I come out to something like 1-2 species in the galaxy at any given time that are capable of communicating with us. Considering the diameter of the milky way galaxy is 100,000 light years, it is likely that even if they somehow knew our location and sent a message, we would be extinct before that message got here, and if we were not and we actually managed to recognize the message and send a reply, that they would be extinct before our message got to them. Especially as the whole Detect -> Send -> Receive -> Reply loop could take hundreds of thousands of years, and it is unlikely that any civilization would be sitting around able to listen to radio waves for that long.

The second argument against us ever detecting intelligent life is simple: 'Why are they not everywhere?' If intelligent life were common, and assuming they followed the path of life on earth (not an assumption we can make), then they would need to expand to keep up with the resources. Considering the Universe is 12 billion or so years old, you'd think someone would have figured out star travel by now, and once they do, it's only a matter of several million years before they would be able to spread through the entire galaxy. Once you've spread throughout the galaxy, it is unlikely that any single event can wipe out an entire species. Of course, there could be cleansing events such as supernovas that would cleanse everything in the local region, not allowing any life to get above the cellular level and wiping out everyone that does every hundred million years or so, and acting as a 'reset' button, like Stephen Baxter wrote about, so that could be an explanation.

We've only been looking for a very short time, so nothing is yet certain, but its something to think about. Of course all this is built upon assumption, not the least of which is that it is impossible to travel or communicate at a speed that is faster than the speed of light. If this is not true, then all bets are off. But then, that's even more reason for a civilization to have spread throughout the galaxy, and none has as of yet (as far as we can tell).

[sledger]

It's worth bearing in mind that if intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe then there is no reason that any civilisation would be as technologically advanced as we are, in fact some would say if there were it would be a huge coincidence.

Personally I believe that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, would strike me as totally illogical if there wasn't, but obviously this may never be verified, certainly not in any of our lifetimes anyway. For me personally the biggest and nearest chance of life exisiting elsewhere in the universe would be the andromeda galaxy, certainly not the milkyway, but again...this is something ulikely to be resolved in our lifetimes.

[silentstriker]

Originally Posted by sledger

It's worth bearing in mind that if intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe then there is no reason that any civilisation would be as technologically advanced as we are, in fact some would say if there were it would be a huge coincidence.

Yea. It is virtually impossible that we'd meet someone at the same level of development as we are. They'd likely to be much more advanced, or in the stone age.

Originally Posted by sledger

For me personally the biggest and nearest chance of life exisiting elsewhere in the universe would be the andromeda galaxy, certainly not the milkyway, but again...this is something ulikely to be resolved in our lifetimes.

Why not in the milky way? Andromeda is bigger (a trillion stars), but Milky Way has 200 billion stars. However, that may not be a big advantage, considering that it may mean more supernovas wiping out life left and right.

[silentstriker]

Of course, in about 2-3 billion years, our galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy will collide - creating one huge galaxy, so then the distinction will be moot.

[sledger]

Originally Posted by silentstriker

Of course, in about 2-3 billion years, our galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy will collide - creating one huge galaxy, so then the distinction will be moot.

Haha yeah, what strikes home to me how big space is, is the fact that the two Galaxies are on a collision course and getting nearer to each other at a speed of something like 400,000km per second (correct me if i'm wrong), but despite that, they won't even be anywhere near touching distance for millions of years, weird. And perhaps my denial of any other life in the milkway is a bit much...i'm still dubious mind. However, I would bet everything I had on the fact that there is no other life in our solar system if such a claim could be verified, but then so would anyone who knows anything about space etc..

[silentstriker]

Originally Posted by sledger

fact that the two Galaxies are on a collision course and getting nearer to each other at a speed of something like 400,000km per second

Nothing can travel at a speed of 400,000 km per second. Light has a speed of approximately 300,000 km/sec, and that's the maximum speed in the universe, as far as we can tell. We are on a collision course with Andromeda at a rate of approximately 100 km/sec.

Originally Posted by sledger

but despite that, they won't even be anywhere near touching distance for millions of years, weird

Billions really.

Originally Posted by sledger

And perhaps my denial of any other life in the milkway is a bit much...i'm still dubious mind.

I'm asking why you are so dubious? 200,000,000,000 stars not enough?

Originally Posted by sledger

However, I would bet everything I had on the fact that there is no other life in our solar system if such a claim could be verified, but then so would anyone who knows anything about space etc..

Well, I like to think I know a little bit, and I'll take you up on that offer, if you mean life in general, and not intelligent life. I think there is a very good chance we'll find some form of life on either Europa, Titan, or somewhere else. Considering how active the solar system was in the past, it is not unreasonable to assume some life got bounced around. And then its just whether the destination environment is suitable.

[sledger]

Titan is probably the best bet in the search for any other type of life in this solar system certainly (that is the moon that has it's own atmosphere isn't it? sorry, i'm a bit of a noob when it comes to this sort of thing).

Whether or not life ever existed on mars is also an intruiging issue, certainly appears that if anything ever was there it's now long gone, but the theory of water once flowing there is an interesting one, and strikes me as being a reasonable idea.

The entire mystery surroundning the univserse saddens me mind you, as it's undeniably the greatest enigma remaining to humankind (unless you count the existance of god I suppose), but yet, chances are if there is any great discovery to be made out there, chances are nobody will ever see it.