A significant fraction of comets (where we can observer the comet nucleus) seem to share this common structure... (ie. lobed, dumbbell) and the probability of a gravity-only collision producing the form seems infinitessimally small (due to the extremely weak forces involved). IMHO there is definitely some other process at work, and electrical effects could be a likely candidate.

Thank you for the informative comment! Wish I had mod points. LNT is not based on actual science... it was an overly conservative worst case scenario from back when we knew little about the dose-response effects of low to moderate level radiation. Unfortuntely today the industry is all about $$ and using fear as a tool against the uninformed.

1. Right click on player
2. Add AdBlock audio filter to slashdot.org domain
3. Problem solved! ;-)

Here's an interesting related article from 2003 Wired: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html

Wikipedia maintains a list of synthetic diamond manufacturers at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_synthetic_diamond_manufacturers

WOW! That's quite a trick! :)

I guess I should have read up on all the other ideas/theories first. Interesting, but it seems it's mostly addressed at a macroscopic level from what I have seen. Very interesting.

I thought this was well understood and have explained it to my nieces/nephews and many others.

Corn starch as packaged for sale consists of VERY small grains (see http://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0144861705005059-gr3.jpg). When mixed with water in appropriate proportions, they exhibit the same behavior as sand at the beach's edge where it will apear to dry when stepped on and when the pressure is removed will return to being very wet.

This has to do with dense packing behavior: When undisturbed, the particles naturally form a relatively dense packing due to it's low energy configuration. watter fills the space beween the particles. By disturbing the dense packing by applying an external force, the space beween particles increases alowing for more water to be stored in the inter-particle space. The natural dense packing will occur once the disruptive forces have disipated, so to remain in the more 'solid' state, the dense-packing arangement must constantly be disturbed.

If this research is aimed at the reason for the natural dense-packing in the first place, I thought that was also well understood. Am I missing something?

I have to agree. I remember when I was young being quite confused at the purpose of school. It seemed so totally worthless for teaching information. It actually took me a few years before I realized what it was for other than babysitting. Especially in kindergarten... just playing with toys, story time, nap time, ... really? Any actual instruction was so minimal it seemed inconsequential. Then in later grades most of the year was spent reviewing the previous year an adding a tiny bit more - especially math. I was starving for education and they would provide only crumbs.

Actually, althought net charge generally cancels out at large scales, currents and electromagnetic fields likely don't. The argument in the past has generally been that if there are large charge differences they will flow to cancel out. While this does happen, the flow is a current which creates a magnetic field so that when the charges are all finally neutralized, the magnetic field collapses and continues to drive the current. Same principle as a relaxation oscillator but on huge scales. We have observed plasma filaments carrying currents within our solar system and with the vast amount of plasma in the universe and it's excellent conductivity it would seem naive to assume that this wouldn't extend to larger scales. Large scale computer models using Maxwell's equations and the known laws governing plasma show galactic rotation curves that match observation without the need for 'Dark Mater', and unlike 'Dark Mater' or 'Dark Energy', these laws are experimentally verifiable and reproducible in the lab).

IMHO, the assumption that all electromagnetic effects can be ignored at large scales has led us down the ever more bizarre path of Dark Mater, Dark Energy, Cosmic Strings, etc. and many scientists are finally seeing the mountain of evidence that is building to overthrow that assumption. We can see magnetic effects on the sun where massive currents and fields produce CMEs, sunspots are known to be magentically produced phenomena, x-ray emmisions from commets show they have a direct high voltage electrical interaction with the solar environment, ...

Yes, hormesis has been shown in many many low level radiation studies. When you get to higher levels, things look pretty linear but at lower levels you generally see a standard dose-response type of curve.

I haven't had time to read the article fully yet, but the research I have seen seems to contradict the summary of the article. The regulatory agencies have been trying to suppress studies and research on radiation hormesis for quite some time, and have misrepresented scientific findings in many ways. I guess they're apposed to losing out on the multi-billion dollar industry of managing harmless levels of radiation.

Pretty far off base IMHO... You should try actually READING what Ron Paul says instead of regurgitating what you hear on TV. Specifically, try reading chapter 2 in his book "The Revolution: A manifesto" if you want to understand his foreign policy views, which he backs up with intelligent, logical, and rational arguments and reasoning.

If you have different ideas that's fine, but by misrepresenting what he stands for, you just sound like a tool for big-media and big-government anti-constitutionalists.

More like...

fun caresAboutYourFreedom(candidate : Democrat) = 0
| caresAboutYourFreedom(candidate : RonPaul) = 1
| caresAboutYourFreedom(candidate : Republican) = 0

Do some reading man. ;)

So, you just had to bring Ron Paul into this. ;-)

When I first heard him, I was astonished that any US politician still existed that actually respected and tried to defend the Constitution. I was kind of in shock.

One of my favorite bumper stickers of all time: "186,200 miles per second. It's not just a good idea, it's the law." ;-)