Questions you are DYING to find the answers for

[Genesis]

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?

[Karuka]

No, because the force of the wind would rip you apart.

[hoytti]

Here is your answer (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/If_your_traveling_faster_then_the_speed_of_sound_c an_you_hear_anything)

[Alyssa Snow]

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

[Lloyd]

Im not even entertaining that question^

[Alyssa Snow]

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

[Ell]

Creationism answer? The egg. Evolutionist answer? The amoeba. Realist answer? The chicken.

[black shadow]

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

[Karuka]

A universe-shattering boom.

[Max Dirks]

Yes to Genesis, for the reason linked by Hoytti.

Yes to Lye's original questions, because sound is not created by our ear drums, it's merely translated by them. Sound is caused by vibrating airwaves, which most certainly would occur if a tree fell, even if no one was there to hear it.

Egg to Lye's second question, because chickens, like other lifeforms, presumably evolved from some prodo-chicken. The mutation to modern chickens would have been in the embryo Egg.

To Black Shadow, neither. There is no such thing. There would be, however, a large burst of energy equal to our famous E=MC^2 equation.

[Fez_The_Kid]

Next time I am gonna ask about science, I'll make sure Dirks is there to hear it:

Is it true the world will be underwater in the future, DR. DIRKS?

[Max Dirks]

Unless God unleashes a second flood, probably not. Increasing CO^2 in the atmosphere may cause coastal cities to flood as oceans rise, but eventually the earth will enter its natural ice age and the ice caps will refreeze. Of course, there could be another 10,000 years until that point, so whether humans will survive until then remains to be seen. Keep in mind, if the greenhouse effect runs wild, we may end up like Venus with no water whatsoever. I feel comfortable in saying that as long as the earth remains volcanically active, Waterworld will not become a reality though and some sort of life will likely remain. If you're worried about an apocalypse, I see two possible means: war or astroid impact. Economically, if our planetary resources become too used up, there is a logical point where it would be more cost effective to save the environment rather than kill it. That's why I don't think global warming will be the source of our inevitable doom (less it be when the sun novas).

[hoytti]

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

[Ashla]

He lied, and whoever is standing in front of him is gonna get speared! xD

[Koli]

but then he was telling the truth because his nose did grow... so it's shrink again?

[Ashla]

Trick questions -_-

[Fez_The_Kid]

Max Dirks: I watched a documentary once on National Geographic, it was about what'd happen if the world population doubled. Lots of disasters that eventually lead to peace again, where the population dwindles and becomes something like near half a billion? I don't remember well.

If I got to choose between being eaten by lions or living during that period, I'd choose the lions in a heartbeat. ._.

[Ashla]

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

[Alyssa Snow]

I've always rattled on about the four horsemen and how true their coming will be:

Overpopulation leads to famine. Which, if you ask me, is already happening. We need to genetically modify crops and over-process foods to keep up with the insane demand. Even then, foreign countries like India and South America/Africa are in a famine.

Right after famine, and even at the same time, comes pestilence. People get sick from malnutrition. Disease spreads in the desperation for food and lack of hygiene. Medicine demands cannot be met.

Leading to war. With the resources stretched too thin to maintain a booming population, we turn to war. We kill each other, steal, and enslave. We go back in time and become animals. Using the terrifying technology and weapons we've stored to keep one another at bay, the body count will be massive.

Ending in death. The after affects of our own creations will pollute, corrode, and destroy. How many survive depends on how soon we see our errors. Either the planet rots and withers, or we reform. Either way, the population crisis is solved and the cycle of life begins anew.

In the medieval times, pestilence was enough to dwindle the population. We've gotten so good at preventing that, we've forgotten what happens if the numbers keep going up. Infinity is not a mathematical number. It's a paradox. It cannot be.

That's just me being pessimistic, but it is certainly a believable scenario. That, or we travel space to spread ourselves on other planets.

[Asmodeus]

What's the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

Come on. Everyone was thinking it.

[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?

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 :p

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 (http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/12/tech/innovation/warp-speed-spaceship/index.html) 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 (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5C5_dOEyAfk&feature=kp).

[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.

[Hysteria]

You could pull a Phillip Fry and become your own grandfather as well. :p

Another:
Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?

Is the mind separate to the body? (Ie dualism of the mind)

[Krausus]

I don't know. But I do have a question.

Why do we rescue these polar bears then keep them in tiny cages compared to the thousands of miles they usually have to roam?

3400

[Warpath]

Ok, question:

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

You couldn't because you didn't, because if you had then you couldn't have gone back in time because you wouldn't have existed.

Either time travel is impossible, or some event would prevent you from committing the murder.

Or there's a multiverse, and the act of killing your grandfather only "spins off" a universe where your father is never born, and therefore you're never born. So if you returned to your present, nothing has changed, there's just a new parallel universe out there where your grandpa is dead.

[Genesis]

According to Einstein's theory, you can only go into the future and NEVER the past, but if you were to create a wormhole you could visit the past but only as an observer because if you were to interfere and in your case kill your grandfather. According to the laws of space and time some type of alternate events would still lead to the same result of your birth. Can't change history man, gonna happen anyway no matter what you do according to Einstein.

Speaking of traveling into the future, we have already accomplished this, although in a very tiny amount. For example, they put clocks on aircraft capable of mach 2, and after they came back to base to refuel, the clocks on the aircraft were milliseconds slower than on the ground. In other words the faster you go, the slower time flows. According to Einstein, again, if you traveled at 99% to 99.9% of the speed of light around the globe for a week, you would have only aged a week, but the rest of the world aged 100 years, you just traveled to the future!

This is also true if you are near a ridiculous amount of mass ... for example a red giant star or even better yet, a black hole.

[Alyssa Snow]

Thoughts on quantum particles, black matter, galactic lensing effects and string theory anyone?

Is there such a thing as absolute zero or absolute maximum in reference to size in the universe?

[Hysteria]

The discovery that the universe is still speeding up is interesting. It would seem to suggest that we there haven't been multiple big bangs as the universe may never contract.

[Genesis]

According to several ideas, the universe started as a giganto black hole where time didn't exist and then exploded into the universe starting as small (if not smaller than an atom) and continued to expand at a rapid pace and still is to this day ... because, as an example, when the Sun (our star) was born after a red-giant went supernova, it made 1000's if not 10000's of stars from ONE explosion, each having planets etc float around them. Multiply that by the trillions and trillions of stars and you can calculate how fast the universe is expanding. Holy f*&^!