Recent content by SciFiGuy

Hmm...so does that mean that nukes produce coherent light? It also means that someone should fix this Wikipedia article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_applications

Intelligent creatures certainly evolve faster. Look at, for instance, small birds, who have high ratios of brain to body weight. Currently, the mechanism behind this is assumed to be the greater flexibility of intelligent life. Imagine a stupid bird that could peck at grubs half-exposed in...

I think that's a bit off. My research on the subject seems to suggest that the rods were the lasers, and that the bomb was the energy pump - hence the common name "bomb pumped x-ray laser". There was no means to focus the laser, or even prevent it from firing both forwards and backwards.

Hmm...I'd heard that the Y chromosome contained less information per length than normal, because it repeats so that it can cross-check against itself. Who knows. I'm an ecologist because I hated all that micro stuff.

Thanks - that seems to match what else I'd read, which probably means that my dubious net source was actually correct. Looks like the data on the frequency here will let me backtrack to figuring out what that is in real (and engineering) terms. Ah yes...explodes and kills you with radiation...

In mammals, males have one sex chromosome of each type (XY) and females have two of one type (XX). In birds, males have two of one type (ZZ) and females have one of each (ZW). In some reptiles, sex determination isn't genetic at all, but based on incubation temperature. And even there, it...

Well, I'll admit that grad student salaries don't put me in front of plasma TVs that often, so I don't know that much about them, but here's a quote from the article: So Agile Mirror is made of plasma (maybe the operational parts of plasma TVs are too - I don't know), and it's the plasma that...

Well, from what I can determine, plasma, under the right circumstances can act to transmit, reflect, or absorb radiation. A plasma antenna transmits radiation in a directed fashion, serving as a tight-beam radio antenna. From what I've read, the main advantages are that the direction of the...

Several places. I've already posted this link http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6543 but maybe it isn't working for you. The bottom of this Wikipedia article discusses using a particle beam to push a mag sail. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_sail More on the plasma beam end...

Ok..since everyone seems to think that plasma mirrors are something I got out of a sci fi book, let me provide a link to technical article about using plasma mirrors to reflect high-intensity lasers. http://www.clf.rl.ac.uk/Reports/2001-2002/pdf/92.pdf That's the phenomenon I want explained.

ovoleg - thanks for the link. Cool. Anyone know what it is for a gauss gun? I've gathered that they are actually better, but harder to build. That whole "no rails to explode outward and corrode with every shot" thing. Nice link. Currently, there seems to be some interest in using a...

I aced two semesters of college physics. Ok, let me rephrase the question - what are the forces involved? For the gauss gun I'd need to know the force on a ferromagnet in a given magnetic field, and I can't find that anywhere. My bad on that - I should have phrased the question correctly the...

While Morris's explanation has issues, you've just demonstrated some pretty severe bias of your own in your critique of Morris's bias. It is in the best evolutionary interest of women to maintain a long-term pair bond. Clearly, pair-bonded women have access to more resources to raise their...

There's no one test. For instance, to test how high rats can count, researchers set up a Skinner Box (press the lever, get food) with a certain number of randomly timed electrical shocks delivered to the floor. A nervous rat hits the bar for food much less. Give the animal one shock, and it...

In case the name didn't give it away, I like science fiction. A while ago (more than a year ago) I decided to look into space combat from a scientific standpoint. After spending huge amounts of time procrastinating from real work by looking up laser efficiencies, theoretical maximums for...