Recent content by hammertime

What I'm wondering is this: if H5N1 does become easily transmissible among humans, what kind of death toll are we looking at? Millions? Tens of millions? Hundreds of millions? Billions? By the way, didn't some researchers find that the swine flu vaccine also helps protect against H5N1?

The second of two controversial H5N1 studies was released today. My question is this: if H5N1 were to become easily transmissible between humans, how bad would it be? Are there any potential vaccines available (I heard the swine flu vaccine helps)? How hard would it be to develop and...

Another thing that could set off a nuclear war: an accident. You know, someone in a command center thinks he sees an incoming nuclear missile on the radar screen, where it's really just a flock of geese. The point is, I've just been freaking out a lot about this recently.

Anyone else have any feedback? I'm actually freaking out quite a bit over this.

How do we know that for sure? And even if you're right, how do we know this whole situation over a missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic won't escalate. Some Russian generals have already threatened pre-emptive strikes against those missile defense sites. Others have warned...

Really? I mean, just the fact that Sarah Palin actually came relatively close to the nuclear arsenal or the fact that Michele Bachmann was NOT promptly laughed off the national stage makes me doubt this. But how do we know this will continue to happen in the future?

The Cold War ended 20 years ago, but I still wonder: is nuclear war still a danger to mankind? How likely is it that we'll experience a nuclear war in, say, the next 20 years? I mean, it seems like there are a lot of situations that can quickly get out of hand and lead to one. 1.) A war in...

I thought QT let's us work around the HUP. By the way, Ryan_m_b, do you have any formal training in physics, quantum mechanics, or quantum computation? For the record, I don't. I'm not trying to be rude or offensive. It's just that I noticed that, in your profile, it says that your interests...

Can we expect the discovery of the Higgs boson to bring us any closer to teleportation?

Hey, guys. I know that this is an idle thread, but I wanted to mention that the IFTF (Institute for the Future) just recently published a "map" of the next decade of scientific discovery and innovation (http://www.iftf.org/futureofscience). At the link I posted is a PDF that details all the...

But if I were to do some research, write a thesis, get some relevant coursework done and do well enough academically, would I then be able to essentially choose where I work? Also, when I go to career/internship fairs, should I tell employers that I'd like to work in Southern California, or...

I'm currently a grad student studying Electrical Engineering and I'm kind of interested in working and living in the Los Angeles metro-area. I'm originally from NorCal (Silicon Valley, to be precise), and proud of it. In fact, I went to UCLA and got into plenty of playful NorCal vs. SoCal...

But if the recent developments at CERN end up being true (i.e. it turns out that something CAN travel faster than light), then what's to stop us from communicating faster than the speed of light? All this time I've heard that one of the limitations of QT is that information can't be transmitted...

So, as we all know, scientists at CERN recently found that some neutrinos APPEAR to travel a bit faster than the speed of light. If it turns out not to be correct, and that relativity has been violated, would this move us any closer to macroscopic teleportation, either classical or quantum...

What about non-quantum teleportation? What about the things that you see in Star Trek, where a body is converted to energy and then "beamed" to a destination. What challenges lie in the way of doing that?