Recent content by ExNihilo

I rarely heard in science news that an important break through was achieved thanks to the ISS. On the other side, there are full of science projects who are searching desperately for funds: Asteriod alert, material research for solar panel, biology, etc. Then I think of the $100 billions of the...

Hum ... I read somewhere longtime ago, that Godel's theorem is generic. Something like you cannot use the knowledge inside a set to claim to understand the whole truth of the set itself. For example, using the precepts of a religion, you cannot claim knowing the whole truth about that religion...

Hi, You are a scientific committee and you have 100 billions dollars to do the researches you want. The only requirement is that the researches must not have any hidden agenda and must benefit human knowledge as much as possible. What would be the program would you suggest? Would you be OK...

Hi, Based on Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorem, may be we could never understand the Universe completely because all our knowledge originated from within the Universe itself. Is it a valid application of the incompleteness theorem?

Is it correct to say that a supplement of energy in the form of heat must be supplied to start a combustion. This heat is used to split H and C from the HydroCarbons and allow them to be oxidized. The Oxidation is exothermic which allows the combustion to keep going. From your explanation, I...

Hi, I have some silly questions about combustion and the Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combustion) doesn't explain all I would like to know. Can you please help to answer these questions? Q1. What exactly makes combustion an exothermic reaction? Is it because there is a...

What is the best way to dispose a satellite? A year or two ago, China decided to retire an old satellite by shooting it with a missile. Maybe it was political show off / weapon test masqueraded as a civil purpose. In terms of danger to Earth population (hit by debris, radioactive waste...

Yes, I have read further about albedo after klimatos explanation and had understood that the interior color of the computer case has negligible impact on heat dissipation. Laptop casing is in plastic. The plastic shell is itself the case so it is not surprising that the interior is the same...

For the uninitiated, can you please clarify the implication of " little variation in albedo" ?

Hi, Computer desktop cases now tend to have a black interior like this one: http://www.corsair.com/cases/carbide-series/carbide-series-400r-mid-tower-case.html I don't know what is the reason for this black interior finish to be so dominant in most of computer cases. One of the member of...

Thanks a lot to all of you. Learnt a lot of new things thanks to the links you suggested.

Hi, I don't know what is the generation number of our solar system. But it is certainly not the first generation of stars. Because the heavy elements that made up the planets must have been synthesized during the supernovae of earlier generation stars. Let's assume a star massive enough to...

That is exactly what I wondered. Looking at something doesn't alter in any way the energy of the observed particle. And how does it know it is observed by someone or something? For example, a star distant at X light years away has no idea if it is observed. BTW, the argument of shining light...

Hi, Reading about quantum mechanics, the probability wave is so that a particle can be everywhere. But when observed, it's probability wave collapses and the particle has to take a definite state. The example were given for Schrödinger's cat, which is either alive or dead only after we...

Hi, Oh so that's the slingshot effect in action? Thanks, this leads me to further documentation. In particular another post in this same forum https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=480187"