Bob,

Here's where we agree on something.

I came from amazing wealth, like total top .01%, then lost everything and ended up in absolute poverty. I taught myself a valuable skill and kept building and building on it. It started with shit jobs, but I kept learning and doing more and never stopped believing in myself or in my ability to better my circumstance. I went to college and learned how to learn more efficiently. Even now, I'm improving my skills on a daily basis. 40 years later, now I'm in the 1%.

This is America to me, one part of it: that in America, you at least have a chance -- however small, however improbable -- to better yourself through your own skills, drive and determination. It's not a 100% guarantee, but I honestly haven't seen another country that fosters this attitude.

For the nb, did I have a leg up? Definitely. I was born with an extraordinary mind into a hyper-affluent family. As a child I went to the best public schools in America during a time when education was valued above all else. By the time my mom and I were basically on the street, I had enough base knowledge to build on what I'd already learned. I also took advantage of community college when it was all but free ($50 a semester) and was able to take pretty much any class that interested me. I was also able to afford a computer when they were very expensive and complicated.

Finally, I was born a white male and caught innumerable breaks because of that. I have zero doubt that I am where I am in part to this accident of birth, because I was told by cops, teachers and employers, sometimes quite openly and sometimes in coded language, that I was preferred over non-white people.

For all America's sin -- and many be thy score -- the nucleus of true capitalism is still alive.

Yes, the word derives from nucleus, not nuculus (because nuculus is not a word).
I also hate hearing it said wrong, and it happens so often these days that I have to actually think about the word before saying it now....and that sucks!

Uranium 238 should be pretty safe to touch and carry, in small amounts (I don't know at what size it becomes truly dangerous to the site exposed, especially if left there for any long length of time; I'd guess anything below one pound should be perfectly fine, but for all I know it could be 30 pounds).

You just cannot do this: do not swallow or inhale any of it. Also, if it has very sharp and jagged edges and it cuts you--then a tiny piece gets into your body (then the bloodstream), same problem.

But, at least this version of Uranium isn't too hazardous, but you certainly could poison someone with it. The heavier Isotopes created from Uranium are much more dangerous (I'm sure many are aware of this); like Plutonium (made in the natural environment if nuclear reactions are going on nearby, like a Star).

We created quite a bit of Plutonium back in the day using Uranium (more specifically we used Uranium and Deuterons; Deuterons are gathered from Deuterium, which is "Heavy Hydrogen"; the Deuteron is the nucleus of a Deuterium atom).

>> ^dirkdeagler7:

>> ^dannym3141:
Firstly, i'm not happy with his or the writer in the story's understanding of the words "quantum" and "dimension". Especially the former. And secondly i'm questioning that any ..."quantum effect"... occured because he made a huge assumption that the umbrella man was involved. I can think of a billion reasons why it might have happened (however unlikely).
This is an interesting story so i have no idea why he started with the quantum spiel. Heartwarming story about a conspiracy theorist who was cured

The way i read it is, if you understand some about physics you may think you know the universe and it all makes sense. However if you start to look deeper and at the minor details of the universe, aka the quantum level, things start to become much less logical and intuitive. Therefore you must dig hard to find the true nature of things at this level, and often times the truth will be more strange or surprising than you ever imagined.
When people were first discovering that there was a charged particle orbiting a nucleus do you think they assumed it was actually a cloud or probability and not a constant circling point? Of course not that would seem absurd at first, much as it would be absurd to think that the umbrella man was a guy protesting actions by JFKs father!


That's a decent explanation of what he was trying to say, but i still think he said it poorly. A quantum dimension? A very small dimension? I hope it wasn't foolish to misunderstand.

I agree that it would be absurd to assume he was protesting JFK's father but that's not the point being made is it? I thought the point being made was that it was absurd to think anything other than him being there for 'shenanigans', which i think is bullcrap. I think it's an expected result to find he's there innocently.

>> ^dannym3141:

Firstly, i'm not happy with his or the writer in the story's understanding of the words "quantum" and "dimension". Especially the former. And secondly i'm questioning that any ..."quantum effect"... occured because he made a huge assumption that the umbrella man was involved. I can think of a billion reasons why it might have happened (however unlikely).
This is an interesting story so i have no idea why he started with the quantum spiel. Heartwarming story about a conspiracy theorist who was cured


The way i read it is, if you understand some about physics you may think you know the universe and it all makes sense. However if you start to look deeper and at the minor details of the universe, aka the quantum level, things start to become much less logical and intuitive. Therefore you must dig hard to find the true nature of things at this level, and often times the truth will be more strange or surprising than you ever imagined.

When people were first discovering that there was a charged particle orbiting a nucleus do you think they assumed it was actually a cloud or probability and not a constant circling point? Of course not that would seem absurd at first, much as it would be absurd to think that the umbrella man was a guy protesting actions by JFKs father!

No doubt ADSR would produce some great science, but it wouldn't address chemistry issues, or any other important issue any better than a LFTR project. It seems to me that it just introduces large amounts of extra complexity and cost. Particle accelerators are big unreliable machines, hence the need for 3 of them for redundancy and they could well reduce safety if something goes wrong. They are not even particularly suited to breeding, as they produce protons which as the name suggests are charged and so need to be very high energy to hit a nucleus and cause fission. The cynic in me says the whole idea was cooked up by the nuclear energy industry to ensure costs could be kept high, and so turn them and their friends in other energy industries a bigger profit (or even just a profit?). My understanding is also that between the various stockpiles of fissile we have, and high breeding ratios from early LFTRs startup fuel should not be a big issue.

I wish you all the best in your learning, I can think of few endeavors more worthy of changing your life's direction >> ^GeeSussFreeK:

>> ^Spacedog79:
The ADSR or "Accelerator Driven Sub-critical Reactor" is unfortunately a massive waste of time. Why not build a properly configured LFTR reactor and it does just the same thing and you don't need to build 3 large particle accelerators to do it.

I agree in one sense, but in another, the chemistry of the LFTR might prove impossible to solve (though this is hardly even a fear atm), so divesting in a "less" effective way to fission isn't a complete waste. Also, you could use this just to breed thorium which would be handy if you hand thousands of thorium generators to start up (you need a good deal of U233 to start the reaction as Thorium is only fertile, not fissionable). This also would be a good way to burn up waste before we get a highly functional LFTR's with the ability to siphon in fission products. In the end, no road should be left uncharted when the end result maybe the salvation of the energy crisis and a life like star trek
I play to dedicate most of my laymen efforts over the next couple of months in learning more about fission for use in determining if I want to drop my life for what is it now and pursue nuclear physics. Pretty sharp turn from where I am now, but I almost feel morally compelled to do so.

I think we agree that he implies that the outer limit is the electromagnetic force from the nucleus to the electron. But wait... he is pulling a fast on us.

This is a 1/r potential. So it isn't discrete at all. How is it like a box? This new question has answered part of our first question: He says that one end is the electromagnetic force. How can a continuous potential be treated like one that exists over a finite extent?


Or in other words: He says it is a box with well defined edges. But, it is more like valley (think of a bowling ball on a trampoline). A valley is not a box.

>> ^cosmovitelli:

>> ^MycroftHomlz:
Just for a bit of conversation, did any of you catch that he doesn't tell us what holds the "other" end of the spring? He says the nucleus acts like a box. How so? What are the ends of the box?

Elementary my dear Mycroft. (Elementary particles) -Constituent parts of the nucleus manifest as mass & therefore gravity.
Actually I'm not that smart but couldn't resist. Might be some other force at that scale - sift physicists?


The last time I looked, it involved virtual particle that pop in and out of existence (lots of them) and do other unusual things to tether the electron. This is of course known as the electromagnetic force, which is very well known and understood, however understanding just exactly how it works involves very complicated quantum physics which I don't know a lot about. As far as I know these virtual particles create a sort of a photon field with which the electrons interact which in turn gives rise to the electromagnetic wave.

So it's not gravity, the electromagnetic force is much, much stronger and is one of the primary reasons everything (that we experience) holds together rather than collapsing in on itself into a black hole.

>> ^MycroftHomlz:

Just for a bit of conversation, did any of you catch that he doesn't tell us what holds the "other" end of the spring? He says the nucleus acts like a box. How so? What are the ends of the box?


Elementary my dear Mycroft. (Elementary particles) -Constituent parts of the nucleus manifest as mass & therefore gravity.
Actually I'm not that smart but couldn't resist. Might be some other force at that scale - sift physicists?

Just for a bit of conversation, did any of you catch that he doesn't tell us what holds the "other" end of the spring? He says the nucleus acts like a box. How so? What are the ends of the box?

>> ^BoneRemake:
I bet we are in a marble sized universe like in MEN IN BLACK.


Not even that big.

Our universe is simply what you would see if you could see into the nucleus of an atom. It would look just like a swarm of galaxies orbiting around a central point of origin (the nucleus). But it's complex and ever-changing simply because, from the way we see it (from inside the atom), we can't tell that the arrow of time is cycling our universe through representations of every atom that has ever existed.

I think the problem of perception comes from the fact that all the atoms that have ever existed (the ones that the universe represents) were all created from the particle accelerator at CERN. That's why the universe is expanding faster and faster. Because all the atoms that it represents were created in a huge vacuum to begin with.

I don't know why nobody else reaches the obvious conclusion. Or why I always feel the need to explain it.

This misses the entire point of the thought experiment.

It's not that the poison gas has a 50% chance of being let loose (I like the gas version).
It's that the trigger is the decay of an atomic nucleus; which--under the theory of Quantum Superposition--has the ability to be in both states simultaneously (decayed--or whole; dead cat--or live cat).

If the cat flips a coin and will die if it's heads (for the purpose of this comment we will ignore the fact that cats have no thumbs) --that's a 50% chance. But, that has nothing to do with the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics.

Also, Schrödinger used this scenario to refute the Copenhagen interpretation--because he didn't believe it was an accurate statement of reality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat

(I still upvote this for the promotion of thought )

@TheGenk @Skeeve @Boise_Lib @gwiz665 @packo @IronDwarf @MaxWilder @westy @BicycleRepairMan @shuac @KnivesOut

Evolution is pseudo-science. It exists in the realm of imagination, and cannot be scientifically verified. At best, evolution science is forensic science, and what has been found not only does not support it, but entirely rules it out. I don't think any of you realize how weak the case for evolution really is. None of them quotes, as far as I know, are from creation scientists btw

No true transitional forms in the fossil record:

Darwins theory proposed that slow change over a great deal of time could evolve one kind of thing into another. Such as reptiles to birds. The theory proposed that we should see in the fossil records billions of these transitional forms, yet we have found none. When the theory was first proposed, darwinists pleaded poverty in the fossil record, claiming the missing links were yet to be found. It was then claimed that the links were missing because conditions conspired against fossilizing them, or that they had been eroded or destroyed in subsequent fossilization.

120 years have gone by since then. We have uncovered an extremely rich fossil record with billions of fossils, a record which has completely failed to produce the expected transitions. It has become obvious that there was no process that could have miraculously destroyed the transitionals yet left the terminal forms intact.

The next theory proposed was "hopeful monster" theory, which states that evolution occurs in large leaps instead of small ones. Some even suggested that a bird could have hatched from a reptile egg. This is against all genetic evidence, and has never been observed.

The complete lack of transitional forms is not even the worst problem for evolution, considering the big gaps between the higher categories, and the systemic absence of transitional forms between families classes orders and phyla.

"I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader?"

Dr. Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History (and a hardcore evolutionist), in a letter to Luther Sunderland, April 10, 1979 admitting no transitional forms exist.

"Contrary to what most scientists write, the fossil record does not support the Darwinian theory of evolution because it is this theory (there are several) which we use to interpret the fossil record. By doing so we are guilty of circular reasoning if we then say the fossil record supports this theory."

Ronald R. West, PhD (paleoecology and geology) (Assistant Professor of Paleobiology at Kansas State University), "Paleoecology and uniformitarianism". Compass, vol. 45, May 1968, p. 216

"Lastly, looking not to any one time, but to all time, if my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking closely together all the species of the same group, must assuredly have existed. But, as by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?"

-Charles Darwin

"In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another."

-Evolutionist Stephen M. Stanley, Johns Hopkins University

Fossil record disputes evolutionary theory:

According to evolutionary theory we should see an evolutionary tree of organisms starting from the least complex to the most complex. Instead, what we do see in the fossil record is the very sudden appearance of fully-formed and fully-functional complex life.

If you examine the fossil record, you see all kinds of complex life suddenly jumping into existence during a period that evolutionists refer to as the "Cambrian explosion".

None of the fossilized life forms found in the "Cambrian period" have any predecessors prior to that time. In essence, the "Cambrian period" represents a "sudden explosion of life" in geological terms.

Evolutionists try to disprove this by stretching it over a period of 50 million years, but they have no transitional fossils to prove that theory before or during.

"The earliest and most primitive members of every order already have the basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximately continuous series from one order to another known. In most cases the break is so sharp and the gap so large that the origin of the order is speculative and much disputed"

-Paleontologist George Gaylord

What disturbs evolutionists greatly is that complex life just appears in the fossil record out of nowhere, fully functional and formed.

A major problem in proving the theory has been the fossil record; the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth's geological formations. This record has never revealed traces of Darwin's hypothetical intermediate variants - instead species appear and disappear abruptly, and this anomaly has fueled the creationist argument that each species was created by God.

-Paleontologist Mark Czarnecki (an evolutionist)

"It is as though they [fossils] were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists. Both schools of thought (Punctuationists and Gradualists) despise so-called scientific creationists equally, and both agree that the major gaps are real, that they are true imperfections in the fossil record. The only alternative explanation of the sudden appearance of so many complex animal types in the Cambrian era is divine creation and both reject this alternative."

-Richard Dawkins, 'The Blind Watchmaker', W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1996, pp. 229-230

Evolution can't explain the addition of information that turns one kind into another kind

There is no example recorded of functional information being added to any creature, ever.

"The key issue is the type of change required — to change microbes into men requires changes that increase the genetic information content, from over half a million DNA ‘letters’ of even the ‘simplest’ self-reproducing organism to three billion ‘letters’ (stored in each human cell nucleus)."

Species just don't change. Kind only produces kind:

"Every paleontologist knows that most species don't change. That's bothersome....brings terrible distress. ....They may get a little bigger or bumpier but they remain the same species and that's not due to imperfection and gaps but stasis. And yet this remarkable stasis has generally been ignored as no data. If they don't change, its not evolution so you don't talk about it."

Evolutionist Stephen J. Gould of Harvard University

Not enough bones:

Today the population grows at 2% per year. If we set the population growth rate at just 0.5% per year, then total population reduces to zero at about 4500 years ago. If the first humans lived 1,000,000 years ago, then at this 0.5% growth rate, we would have 10^2100 (ten with 2100 zeroes following it) people right now. If the present population was a result of 1,000,000 years of human history, then several trillion people must have lived and died since the emergence of our species. Where are all the bones? And finally, if the population was sufficiently small until only recently, then how could a correspondingly infinitesimally small number of mutations have evolved the human race?

"Evolutionism is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless."

-Professor Louis Bounoure, past president of the Biological Society of Strassbourg, Director of the Strassbourg Zoological Museum and Director of Research at the French National Center of Scientific Research.

Try to debunk this if you can
http://www.youtube.com/watchv=tYLHxcqJmoM&feature=PlayList&p=C805D4953D9DEC66&index=0&playnext=1

More fun facts:

There are no records of any human civilization past 4000 BC

"The research in the development of the [radiocarbon] dating technique consisted of two stages—dating of samples from the historic and prehistoric epochs, respectively. Arnold [a co-worker] and I had our first shock when our advisors informed us that history extended back only for 5,000 years . . You read statements to the effect that such and such a society or archeological site is 20,000 years old. We learned rather that these numbers, these ancient ages, are not known accurately; in fact, the earliest historical date that has been established with any degree of certainty is about the time of the First Dynasty of Egypt."—*Willard Libby, Science, March 3, 1961, p. 624.

Prior to a certain point several thousand years ago, there was no trace of man having ever existed. After that point, civilization, writing, language, agriculture, domestication, and all the rest—suddenly exploded into intense activity!

"No more surprising fact has been discovered, by recent excavation, than the suddenness with which civilization appeared in the world. This discovery is the very opposite to that anticipated. It was expected that the more ancient the period, the more primitive would excavators find it to be, until traces of civilization ceased altogether and aboriginal man appeared. Neither in Babylonia nor Egypt, the lands of the oldest known habitations of man, has this been the case."—P.J. Wiseman, New Discoveries, in Babylonia, about Genesis (1949 ), p. 28.

Oldest people/language recorded in c. 3000 B.C., and were located in Mesopotamia.

The various radiodating techniques could be so inaccurate that mankind has only been on earth a few thousand years.

"Dates determined by radioactive decay may be off—not only by a few years, but by orders of magnitude . . Man, instead of having walked the earth for 3.6 million years, may have been around for only a few thousand."—*Robert Gannon, "How Old Is It?" Popular Science, November 1979, p. 81.

Moonwalk disproves age of moon:

The moon is constantly being bombarded by cosmic dust particles. Scientists were able to measure the rate at which these particles would accumulate. Using their estimates according to their understanding that the age of the Earth was billions of years, their most conservative estimate predicted a dust layer 54 feet deep. This is why the lander had those huge balloon tires, to be prepared to land on a sea of dust. Neil Armstrong, after saying those famous words, uttered two more which disproved the age of the moon entirely "its solid!". Far from being 54 feet, they found the dust was 3/4 of an inch.

Evolution is a fairy tale that modern civilization has bought, hook line and sinker. Humorously, atheists accuse creationists of beiieving in myths without any evidence..when they place their entire faith in an unproven theory even evolutionists know is fatally flawed and invalid. Evolution is a meta physical belief that requires faith. Period.

Evolution is false, science affirms a divine Creator
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Books,%20Tracts%20&%20Preaching/Tracts/big_daddy.htm

Though most of this is undisputable, I'm just getting started..

>> ^ForgedReality:

What if it depends what the comet is made of...?
A comet, by definition, is not going to trouble the sun.

A rogue planet on the other hand...

>> ^dannym3141:

>> ^AeroMechanical:
As a related note, someone told me that a hydrogen atom is similar in relative scale to the solar system, with the sun being the nucleus and the earth being the electron. I dunno if that's right or not, but it's pretty cool anyways. Maybe Pluto was the electron. Back when it was still a planet.

That interested me.. if you're interested;
Accepted radius of a proton (nucleus of hydrogen) is 0.88 10^-15 m
Radius of sun = 6.96 10^8 m
Divide radius of sun by radius of proton to give how many times bigger the sun is than the proton = 7.91 10^23
Radius of an orbiting electron = 0.0529 10^-9 m
Multiply orbital radius of electron by our scale factor = 4.2 10^13 m.
We're 1.4 10^11 m away from the sun (that's the value of an astronomical unit, it's as good as you can ask for when talking about orbital radius, cos it's not a circle). So it's out by a factor of 300ish. (cos i rounded here and there)
Pluto's orbit is very eccentric (more elliptical than circular), but at its closest, it's about 4.4 10^12 m away from the sun. Out by a factor of 10 there. Or getting close to a factor of 5 at its furthest. Getting close, but still a pretty big difference.
^ all subject to change when (not if) i notice i've dropped a clanger

A factor of 300 is actually not that bad when you're talking about such big numbers.