16 MAY 2012 by ideonexus

 Elegant, Simple Description of the Electromagnetic Strong...

If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into ...
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Pulled together when a little distance apart, but repel one another when squeezed together.

28 JAN 2012 by ideonexus

 Fire is Perpetual Motion

What is there about fire that's so lovely? ... It's perpetual motion; the thing man wanted to invent but never did. Or almost perpetual motion. ... What is fire? It's a mystery. Scientists give us gobbledegook about friction and molecules. But they don't really know.
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A "Fireman" from Bradbury's book describes the fire he uses to burn books in a most unscientific fashion.

03 JAN 2011 by ideonexus

 Death is Not a Law of Biology

It is one of the most remarkable things that in all of the biological sciences there is no clue as to the necessity of death. If you say we want to make perpetual motion, we have discovered enough laws as we studied physics to see that it is either absolutely impossible or else the laws are wrong. But there is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death. This suggests to me that it is not at all inevitable, and that it is only a matter of time before the biologists ...
Folksonomies: biology death
Folksonomies: biology death
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There is no law of biology that says things have to die.