The Official Science Thread

Chinese method of developing stem cells from urine might help this?

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i have a dumb question that i'm too embarrassed to make a thread about***********:
if i shot a bullet on earth from a high-powered rifle, straight out in front of me, and there were no obstacles in the way, would the bullet go around the circumference of the earth until it eventually lost speed and fall to the ground (i.e. gravity would hold it within the atmosphere) or would the bullet kinda go tangentially from the earth and build altitude until it lost speed and fall back down to the earth from a much higher height than i originally shot the bullet from?

The bullet will fall towards the earth at 9.8m/s² regardless of its horizontal velocity. If you shot it from say 1.5m up, it would hit the ground after 0.5s. Assuming a muzzle velocity of 1700m/s, the bullet would have travelled 850m by the time it dropped 1.5m. The curvature of the earth isn't enough for it to get into "orbit" at that velocity.

So it would hit the ground about 850m away.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity_nr_

The bullet would take off

Originally Posted by mash20

The bullet will fall towards the earth at 9.8m/s² regardless of its horizontal velocity. If you shot it from say 1.5m up, it would hit the ground after 0.5s. Assuming a muzzle velocity of 1700m/s, the bullet would have travelled 850m by the time it dropped 1.5m. The curvature of the earth isn't enough for it to get into "orbit" at that velocity.

So it would hit the ground about 850m away.

Assuming it was fired parallel to the ground.

Originally Posted by Mike Larry

i have a dumb question that i'm too embarrassed to make a thread about***********:
if i shot a bullet on earth from a high-powered rifle, straight out in front of me, and there were no obstacles in the way, would the bullet go around the circumference of the earth until it eventually lost speed and fall to the ground (i.e. gravity would hold it within the atmosphere) or would the bullet kinda go tangentially from the earth and build altitude until it lost speed and fall back down to the earth from a much higher height than i originally shot the bullet from?

Originally Posted by mash20

The bullet will fall towards the earth at 9.8m/s² regardless of its horizontal velocity. If you shot it from say 1.5m up, it would hit the ground after 0.5s. Assuming a muzzle velocity of 1700m/s, the bullet would have travelled 850m by the time it dropped 1.5m. The curvature of the earth isn't enough for it to get into "orbit" at that velocity.

So it would hit the ground about 850m away.

Brew would disagree
http://forum.e46fanatics.com/showthr...ysics+question

Originally Posted by kuksul08

The bullet would take off

This is the correct answer

Some cool news from my town/school

Nasa detected a burst of positrons with the Fermi detector back in 2010 that originated from earth. They think it comes from "dark lightning," a chain reaction of high energy electrons emitted from a storm hitting air molecules and producing gamma rays. Gamma rays in turn interact with more air molecules producing electron - positron pairs, and the cycle continues. Since the process mostly takes place outside of the visible spectrum, you get an invisible burst of antimatter detectable from orbit.




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Now if only we could capture and harness that antimatter...

Originally Posted by SamDoe1

Now if only we could capture and harness that antimatter...

...and use it for our own purposes...

Originally Posted by SonicBoom

...and use it for our own purposes...

Warp core, duh?

I'm not sure if I'm more impressed by the design or the fact that NASA can simulate sounds so accurately

http://www.aviationweek.com/Blogs.as...7-3eec0578c19b

This is a molecule
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19584301

This just goes to show how fast technology changes, as if we didn't already know that. The Kinect came out a little over 2 years ago and was the first of its kind. In a scant two years time the same technology has shrunk and the resolution has increased by a factor of 10 (1.3mm to .01mm)

This is the kinect next to the Leap Motion that's coming out soon for $70

we can finally get those screens from Minority Report!

Originally Posted by mash20

we can finally get those screens from Minority Report!

Imagine if you put a cat or a dog in front of the screen and they started touching it with their paws ? ...........lol

Originally Posted by mash20

we can finally get those screens from Minority Report!

Originally Posted by Raymond42262

Imagine if you put a cat or a dog in front of the screen and they started touching it with their paws ? ...........lol

There are two kinds of people

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/st...e.html?cmp=rss

Amazing. It sounds like mainstream DNA computing will soon be a reality.

Shakespeare sonnets encoded in DNA

The ones and zeroes of digital data were converted into sequences using the four-letter alphabet of DNA. The sequences were then encoded into synthetic strands of DNA. (iStock) It can store the information from a million CDs in a space no bigger than your little finger, and could keep it safe for centuries.

Is this some new electronic gadget? Nope. It's DNA.

The genetic material has long held all the information needed to make plants and animals, and now some scientists are saying it could help handle the growing storage needs of today's information society.

Researchers reported Wednesday that they had stored all 154 Shakespeare sonnets, a photo, a scientific paper, and a 26-second sound clip from Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. That all fit in a barely visible bit of DNA in a test tube.

The process involved converting the ones and zeroes of digital information into the four-letter alphabet of DNA code. That code was used to create strands of synthetic DNA. Then machines "read" the DNA molecules and recovered the encoded information.

That reading process took two weeks, but technological advances are driving that time down, said Ewan Birney of the European Bioinformatics Institute in Hinxton, England. He's an author of a report published online by the journal Nature.

DNA could be useful for keeping huge amounts of information that must be kept for a long time but not retrieved very often, the researchers said. Storing the DNA would be relatively simple, they said: Just put it in a cold, dry and dark place and leave it alone.

Ideal for large archives
The technology might work in the near term for large archives that have to be kept safe for centuries, like national historical records or huge library holdings, said study co-author Nick Goldman of the institute. Maybe in a decade it could become feasible for consumers to store information they want to have around in 50 years, like wedding photos or videos for future grandchildren, Goldman said in an email.

Researcher Nick Goldman, showed here hold in a vial of DNA, suggested that in a decade, it could become feasible for consumers to use DNA to store information they want to have around in 50 years, like wedding photos or videos for future grandchildren. (European Molecular Biology Laboratory/Nature/Associated Press)The researchers said they have no intention of putting storage DNA into a living thing, and that it couldn't accidentally become part of the genetic machinery of a living thing because of its coding scheme.

Sriram Kosuri, a Harvard researcher who co-authored a similar report last September, said both papers show advantages of DNA for long-term storage. But because of its technical limitations, "it's not going to replace your hard drive," he said.

Kosuri's co-author, Harvard DNA expert George Church, said the technology could let a person store all of Wikipedia on a fingertip, and all the world's information now stored on disk drives could fit in the palm of the hand.