Questions you are DYING to find the answers for

[Erikar]

What do you mean? African or European?

[Krausus]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a8pI65emDE WATCH IT. WATCH IT ALL.

[hoytti]

Egg WINS! LOL!

[Genesis]

Is it possible to travel faster than the speed of light, aka warpdrive? I know we don't have the technology yet, but I wonder if it's possible. The way I think about it is if you take a piece of paper, lay it flat, and draw two black dots on opposing sides of the paper and then connect the dots. After that, you fold the piece of paper to make the dots touch ... This is the general idea of warpdrive, but is it really that easy of a concept?

[Hysteria]

I love these questions! They tend to be a matter of perspective so take my answers as my opinions.

Yesterday, I asked myself ... theoretically if you were driving a convertible that has no windshield and you are driving faster than the speed of sound and you turned on the radio, would you be able to hear it?

Its been covered, but assuming you're still functioning, the air wouldn't be able to carry the vibration towards you. If you were in a sealed environment then yes.

There is a similar question, if you were travelling at the speed of light in a space ship and you shone a light out in front of you, what would the light do?

Spoiler:

The speed of light (given our current understanding) maintains its speed as if you were a fixed point. So you shine the light, the light would travel away from you like normal, at the speed you are used to. This question though suffers from a huge assumption that you can travel at the speed of light. It might be more likely that matter would convert to energy at that speed, meaning you'd cease to be as you currently are.

So... If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

No. Let me explain.

This hinges on your definition of 'sound'. Sound (from my point of view) is the last stage of a process of things. In most cases it is caused by a vibration of air, travelling into your ear and the vibration of your cochlear hairs. These thing are changed to impulses (action potentials) that travel up your nervous system into your brain. Your brain then decodes the information and it makes its way into your unconscious and concious mind. When it enters your concious mind we label it 'sound'. If it fails anywhere along the way we don't register it. It is possible that it makes its way into your unconscious mind and alters your behaviour without you realising it. For example you might decide to wander out of your room and your mother had been calling your name. You didn't 'hear' her, but unconscious mind did.

So then, I define sound as the perception of vibrating air. Without anyone to perceive then all there is in that forest is vibrating air. The potential for sound, but no sound.

Fine Lloyd, which came first: The chicken or The egg?

As mentioned, it depends on your stand point on evolution, creationism, etc.

From an evolution point of view. We had an almost continuous change of dinosaur into bird. It would be hard to say at what point the bird-ancestor of chicken created the first chicken, but the mutation would have been in the offspring rather than parent. So the egg with the new 'chicken' inside it came first.

All that said, the egg might be slightly different though to the first chicken egg... Is an egg laid by an animal that isn't a chicken, but contains a chicken, really a chicken egg?

EDIT: hehe, like the video said.

If an unstoppable force runs into an unmovable object, what happens?

I love this question.

So, lets start by defining these two things. Conventionally we think of this as something like a giant hammer striking a giant shield. This is fine, but it creates the paradox. To define something as 'unstoppable force' would make the opposite impossible. Only one can exist at a time, the creation of one ends the other.

Now, what if we change these definitions slightly. The 'Unstoppable force' doesn't need to move the 'unmovable object'. It needs simply not to move it and continue on its way for parts to be true. This is far easier to picture. Take for example a type of energy that moves around us slightly outside the range of existance that effects us. Dark energy might be a suitable example. We can't detect it because it doesn't interact with us like matter does. If that is our 'unstoppable force' then we have an answer.

The Unstoppable Force moves through the Immovable Object.

Pinocchio says "my nose is about to grow!" What happens?

Ha, amazing.

I believe the answer depends on what he thinks is going to happen. A lie in this case is dependent on the liar's intent. If he expects it to grow then it won't, if he doesn't it will.

Is it possible to travel faster than the speed of light, aka warpdrive? I know we don't have the technology yet, but I wonder if it's possible. The way I think about it is if you take a piece of paper, lay it flat, and draw two black dots on opposing sides of the paper and then connect the dots. After that, you fold the piece of paper to make the dots touch ... This is the general idea of warpdrive, but is it really that easy of a concept?

That example was used in Event Horizon

The issue here is that we still don't know much about physics. So for example, did you know that you can predict down to the second how long it takes Mercury to travel around the sun? However, when they did they kept getting this delay. They re-checked it over and over, but there was a delay between when it should be in position and when it was in position.

This turns out to be due to the sun's gravitational effect on time. The laws of space and time just seem to disappear when you have large amounts of mass. Thats why you often hear mention that scientists don't know what happens in a black hole.

If you threw someone into a black hole, what would happen? Perhaps, given we know time slows down as you approach it, that person would continue towards it, but never reach the centre. In effect they would fall forever. If they didn't die, (big maybe) perhaps they would be able to watch the light coming off space go past them. Falling towards and abyss for ever, watching the universe collapse around them.

EDIT2: This falling forever would appear to them as only a small amount of time passing. Dependent on the speed at which they approached the black hole, they might be able to get far enough towards it that time slows down for them, maintains its speed for the rest of existance and they get to watch the show. It would be like watching a show on a much faster speed.

[Max Dirks]

Tis a wormhole that you speak of Genesis, not warp drive. Warp drive would involve expanding and contracting space around the drive.

It may become a reality if Harold White figures it out.

[Genesis]

We all know that if you drop a tennis ball and a bowling ball from the same height and the same time, they both hit the ground at the same time. However, every time they did this test it was like less than 10 feet off the ground which means they didn't reach terminal velocity. Therefore, if you did the same experiment at say ... 10,000 feet to let them reach terminal velocity, would they still reach the ground at the same time?

[Hysteria]

No, the tennis ball would be effected more by air resistace. If you removed the air then they would fall at the same speed.

It was galileo tht first showed that weight didnt effect the speed in which something fell. He dropped to balls of the same size from a tall building and although they were very different weights they fell at the same speed. The iconic teast was repeated with a hammer and a feather on the moon. You can see it here.

[Hysteria]

Ok, question:

If you went back in time and killed your grandfather before your father was born, what would happen?

[hoytti]

Nothing, he's your mother's father. LOL

Okay, but seriously, you would either become a being outside of time, or you would just disappear. I don't know which I would rather be.