THE SERIOUS DISCUSSION THREAD

[craycpanda]

GOD LOVES ME.

[Zenith Nadir]

that's not what he said last night

[craycpanda]

the plot thickens

[nps]

hey, god said he'd only do that with me =(

BITCH

[MadTom]

(Just joined us? The joke is that Nadir had sex with God!)

[http://yahoo.com/]

yeah well i had phonesex with him

her

it

yeah you get my point

[Alexis Janson]

This discussion is not very serious >:|

[Quantum P.]

Dear Fungahhh:

It has come to my attention that you have made an unauthorized use of my copyrighted work entitled "<:(" (the "Work") in the preparation of a work derived therefrom. I have reserved all rights in the Work and have registered copyright therein. Your work entitled ">:|" is essentially identical to the Work and clearly used the Work as its basis.

As you neither asked for nor received permission to use the Work as the basis for ">:|" nor to make or distribute copies, including electronic copies, of same, I believe you have willfully infringed my rights and could be liable for statutory damages.

I demand that you immediately cease the use and distribution of all infringing works derived from the Work, and all copies, including electronic copies, of same, that you deliver to me, if applicable, all unused, undistributed copies of same, or destroy such copies immediately and that you desist from this or any other infringement of my rights in the future. If I have not received an affirmative response from you by 1/6/2005 indicating that you have fully complied with these requirements, I shall take further action against you.

Very truly yours,

Thomas O' Beðlam

[Dr. Dos]

you know there's a filter that changes <:( to <:( copyright 2000 by madtom but it never worked.

[nps]

guys i can't use my azumanga avatar again! =(

and by guys i mean quantum p.

[nps]

oh wait yes i can! ok don't worry!

[MadTom]

And thus one more stone was paved on nps' road to incurable Scaryanimefanism.

[Spectere]

This discussion is not very serious (REMOVED SO I WOULDN'T GET RAPED BY SCARY LAWYERS ALA MADTOM)

If a ball is thrown upwards from the surface of the Earth it reaches a certain height and then falls back. The harder it is thrown, the higher it goes. Laplace calculated the height it would reach for a given initial speed. He found that the height increased faster than the speed, so that the height became very large for a not very great speed. At a speed of 40000 km/h (25000 mph, only 20 times faster than Concorde) the height becomes very great indeed - it tends to infinity, as the mathematician would say. This speed is called the `escape velocity' from the surface of the Earth, and is the speed which must be achieved if a space craft is to reach the Moon or any of the planets. Being a mathematician, Laplace solved the problem for all round bodies, not just the Earth.

He found a very simple formula for the escape velocity. This formula says that small but massive objects have large escape velocities. For example if the Earth could be squeezed and made four times smaller, the escape velocity would need to be twice as large. This surprisingly simple derivation gives exactly the same answer as is obtained from the full theory of relativity.

Light travels at just over 1000 million km/h (670 million mph), and in 1905 Albert Einstein proved in the Special Theory of Relativity that nothing can travel faster than light. The above Laplace formula can be turned around to tell us what radius an object must have if the escape velocity from its surface is to be the speed of light. This particular radius is called the `Schwarzschild radius' in honour of the German astronomer who first derived it from Einstein's theory of gravity (General Theory of Relativity). The formula tells us that the Schwarzschild radius for the Earth is less than a centimetre, compared with its actual radius of 6357 km. Values for some other astronomical objects are given in a table in a following section.

PS: I hate you Fungahhh

[superbowl shuffle]

Rutherford scattering is a phenomenon that was observed by Ernest Rutherford in 1911 that led to the development of the orbital theory of the atom. It is now exploited by the materials analytical technique Rutherford backscattering. Rutherford scattering is also sometimes referred to as Coulomb scattering because it relies on static electric (Coulomb) forces.

The discovery was made by Rutherford when he performed a gold foil experiment, in which he fired a beam of alpha particles (helium nuclei) at layers of gold leaf only a few atoms thick. At the time of the experiment, the atom was thought to be analogous to a plum pudding (as proposed by Thomson), with the negative charges (the plums) found throughout a positive sphere (the pudding). If the plum-pudding model were correct, the positive “pudding”, being more spread out than in the current model of a concentrated nucleus, would not be able to exert such large coulombic forces, and the alpha particles should only be deflected by small angles as they pass through.

However, the intriguing results showed that some alpha particles were deflected by very large angles (over 90°). From this, Rutherford concluded that the majority of the mass was concentrated in a minute, positively charged region (the nucleus) surrounded by electrons. When a (positive) alpha particle approached sufficiently close to the nucleus, it was repelled strongly enough to rebound at high angles. The small size of the nucleus explained the small number of alpha particles that were repelled in this way. Rutherford showed, using the method below, that the size of the nucleus was about 10−14 m.

[Spectere]

As we near the end of the century, the disposal of nuclear waste is becoming a concern. Many nuclear power plants around the world are nearing the end of their operating lives. This is particularly true in the United States where most nuclear power plants are approaching the end of the operational time period allowed in their licenses. Locally the Ginna power plant, 20 miles northeast of Rochester, on Lake Ontario, is attempting to deal with these issues. The close of the cold war has left us with radioactive waste from decommissioned nuclear missiles.

The disposal of radioactive waste from nuclear power plants and nuclear missiles is as politically intense an issue as the plants and missiles themselves. Yet the three issues have remained curiously separate in spite of their close physical ties. Few debates on nuclear power or nuclear weapons discuss the problems of waste disposal should the power plant or missile be decommissioned. Few debates on nuclear waste disposal discuss the opportunities to close nuclear power plants or get rid of nuclear weapons a disposal site would afford.

Nuclear waste can be generally classified a either "low level" radioactive waste or "high level" radioactive waste. Low level nuclear waste usually includes material used to handle the highly radioactive parts of nuclear reactors (i.e. cooling water pipes and radiation suits) and waste from medical procedures involving radioactive treatments or x-rays. Low level waste is comparatively easy to dispose of. The level of radioactivity and the half life of the radioactive isotopes in low level waste is relatively small. Storing the waste for a period of 10 to 50 years will allow most of the radioactive isotopes in low level waste to decay, at which point the waste can be disposed of as normal refuse.

High level radioactive waste is generally material from the core of the nuclear reactor or nuclear weapon. This waste includes uranium, plutonium, and other highly radioactive elements made during fission. Most of the radioactive isotopes in high level waste emit large amounts of radiation and have extremely long half-lives (some longer than 100,000 years) creating long time periods before the waste will settle to safe levels of radioactivity. This area will describe some of the methods being under consideration, for dealing with this, high level, waste. These include short term storage , long term storage, and transmutation.