Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2014 September 3

= September 3 =

The light of the sun
Does the light of the sun had so great inductive magnetism that if our planet had been not a natural magnetism, our planet would been enveloped by fire?--Alex Sazonov (talk) 05:59, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The magnet helps, in this case. We must give the stratosphere credit, too. But not Stratos, in this case. Also helps that we're simply far enough away. All the forces of good on the planet didn't do much for Mercury. InedibleHulk (talk) 06:35, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks much! Does the natural magnetism of our planet had slowing the inertia light of the sun?--Alex Sazonov (talk) 08:49, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The earth's magnetic field has almost no effect on sunlight. But it does affect the solar wind. At the energies involved here, light behaves in a linear way, so that light can pass through other light, or electric fields or magnetic fields without any interaction. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 13:24, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I thinking when the cosmic objects are incoming in the space of the natural magnetism of the planet Earth, always is been created the exit of enormous dynamic energy of the magnetic induction, which been causes burning and glowing and so a force of molecular friction to this is been only ratio of private case.--Alex Sazonov (talk) 15:48, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Does in the nature been a substance which been resisted to the force of the magnetic induction and the force of the electromagnetic induction?--Alex Sazonov (talk) 08:23, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Is it been possible that the natural magnetism of the planet Earth will not been prevent to space objects which incoming in to the space of the natural magnetism of the planet Earth?--Alex Sazonov (talk) 06:28, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The magnetic field of the earth has weak effects on most things, unless they are highly charged, like electrons or protons. Some materials are ferromagnetic and can be rotated by the field, eg compass needles. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:46, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you Graeme Bartlett. Could an electric current (electromagnetic induction) been resisting to the natural magnetism of the planet Earth?--Alex Sazonov (talk) 15:22, 4 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Does always an electric current (electromagnetic induction) done work in the space of the natural magnetism of our planet?--Alex Sazonov (talk) 05:32, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I believe that in the space of the natural magnetism of the planet Earth any exit of energy always done work!--Alex Sazonov (talk) 05:46, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Does in the space of the natural magnetism of the planet Earth any exit of energy to be done the absolute values?--Alex Sazonov (talk) 06:38, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

If this problem would had a mathematical solution, so. . . Does had a possibility of discreteness for absolute mathematical values been in mathematics? What does if in the mathematical calculations of some of scientists been present a discrete mathematical values which these scientists been presented (identified) as absolute mathematical values?--Alex Sazonov (talk) 17:33, 5 September 2014 (UTC) Does the mathematical values of the roots and degrees had been a discreteness in mathematics?--Alex Sazonov (talk) 09:35, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Does exit of energy of the natural magnetism of the planet Earth had done a absolute value?--Alex Sazonov (talk) 11:30, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Sometimes nuclear physicists think that force which been repaid (absorbed) the exit of nuclear energy is always been more much than the exit of the nuclear energy.--Alex Sazonov (talk) 09:40, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
 * What would been happen if the natural magnetism of the planet Earth had been always opposed to the light of the sun with more much force than the force of the sun's light is always been?--Alex Sazonov (talk) 11:41, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I suppose that the reaction of a nuclear explosion is always been created a powerful (force) electromagnetic resonance or powerful (force) dynamics of electromagnetic resonance, because of which always been formed an enormous amount of heat and fire, although the thermodynamics of the reaction of a nuclear explosion is always been a negligible!--Alex Sazonov (talk) 10:02, 8 September 2014 (UTC) --- ''Note:I suppose that with the free exit of nuclear energy the natural magnetism of the planet Earth always been creates an enormous force of backward magnetic induction which always been resists to the free exit of nuclear energy! So that, doing split our planet by force of nuclear energy can not been!''--Alex Sazonov (talk) 07:43, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Exactly. InedibleHulk (talk) 12:02, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Ikat Weaving in China
In ikat:


 * Ikat is most characteristic of Indonesia, though ikats have also been woven in India and central Asia. Double ikats are produced in a few places including the Okinawa islands of Japan

I find it amusing that ikat is known to be practiced from India, central Asia to Japan.

China is surrounded by these countries.

Yet, the article does not seem to mention China.

Do Chinese people use ikat to make their clothing? -- Toytoy (talk) 08:15, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

I been thinking the factory (industrial) factor is always been a factor of progressive socio-cultural and economic development!--Alex Sazonov (talk) 04:33, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Note: Factory textile technology always been defines all sets (kinds) in textiles, because a factory textile technology is always been forms the start of the new features in textiles, that is a factory textile technology is always been completely defines the development of textiles.--Alex Sazonov (talk) 12:54, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Car scraping floor at foot of ramp
I often park in a multi-storey car park. It has ramps between floors that are at a fairly shallow angle, connecting two flat surfaces (ie its not a continual ramp). I've noticed that if I drive down a ramp just a bit too fast, something underneath my car will scrape the floor around the time when I hit the flat surface, whereas if I drive just a little slower it doesn't. I can't understand why this would be, as the only factor that's changed is speed - the angles are all the same. I'm a science ignoramus... so what am I missing? --Dweller (talk) 09:10, 3 September 2014 (UTC)


 * The faster you go between the ramp and the flat, the faster the transition rate. This will put a greater force on your front wheels, which will drive the front suspension further up, thus lowering your car. This could be enough to ground the oil sump. CS Miller (talk) 09:41, 3 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Ah, so you're saying that the speed I'm driving at can change the angles? Interesting, thanks. --Dweller (talk) 12:21, 3 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Your car may have a front air dam of questionable aerodynamic benefit. If the leading edge of your car has a strip of rubbery material that looks chafed, you can ask a workshop to remove it. Your car will go (if not win races) just as well without. 84.209.89.214 (talk) 12:40, 3 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I drive a fantastically oldmantypecar. The only spoilers I have are the damage to its bodywork. --Dweller (talk) 15:00, 3 September 2014 (UTC)


 * This isn't some fancy racing doodad, it's just a piece of plastic under the front of the car. Honestly until someone mentioned it just now I assumed it was a "snowplow" to knock down the height of snow before it passes under the car so the car isn't resting atop it as often.  Whatever the reason for it, because it's all the way in the front and also a very low point, it is by far the most likely thing to hit when you get a change in angle like that.  The oil sump should hopefully be linked closer to the wheels so that as long as your car is on a pair of wheels and the road doesn't have a boulder in the middle of it it ought not to be able to hit anything.  I think. Wnt (talk) 03:50, 4 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Right. The wheels of your car aren't rigidly connected to the body&mdash;you would have a really rough ride if they were!  The wheels can travel vertically a modest distance relative to the body, limited by the travel in the suspension's springs and shock absorbers.  If you head down the ramp at high speed, the wheels change direction - heading horizontally - while the body is still travelling downward (at an angle). The springs compress a bit as the body continues down, reducing the clearance under the vehicle: thunk!  At lower speeds, the body has a smaller downward momentum, and the springs aren't compressed as much in the course of changing the body's direction.  In some circumstances, you may also have better results if you hit the transition at an oblique angle, rather than straight on.  (That is, so that one wheel at a time is making the transition from downhill to flat.)  TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:00, 3 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Gosh. I think I even understood that (except perhaps the bit about the wheels heading horizontally). Thank you. --Dweller (talk) 15:00, 3 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Because the floor on each level is horizontal, not inclined like the ramp. --65.94.51.64 (talk) 15:58, 3 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Since the car has inertia, it wants to keep going the same direction (downward at an angle). The springs force it back upward, but it takes time to respond.  The faster you are going, the less time you give the springs to force the car's front end back up again, and the less it will have moved out of the way.


 * Now, as for the design of the parking deck, it shouldn't have two flat area with an angle between them, as that's bound to cause problems. It should have a curve connecting the two flats, and tangent to both.  Why don't they ?  Because this design is cheaper and they don't have to pay for car damages.  It might also work as a speed bump to slow cars down. StuRat (talk) 17:38, 3 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Or there is a curve at the transition, but a fairly sharp one. --65.94.51.64 (talk) 20:35, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Main Battle Tank
How many M1Abrams tanks are still in service with the U.S Army ? 149.200.194.101 (talk) 11:37, 3 September 2014 (UTC)


 * According to List of currently active United States military land vehicles, 6344. -- Jayron  32  12:17, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

I wonder that although the gas turbine engine caused catastrophic consequences for the economy of the U.S, the army is still using the Abrams ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.200.194.101 (talk) 15:23, 3 September 2014 (UTC)


 * What catastrophic consequences are those ? With only 6344 of them, it would be difficult to have much of any impact on the US economy, even if they were all run continuously.  Compare that to something like a hundred million private vehicles on the road in the US. StuRat (talk) 17:30, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

I respect your point of view but I am sure that German tank designers were smarter when they decided to build  their tanks with piston engines instead of gas turbine engines. 149.200.194.101 (talk) 19:50, 3 September 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.200.194.101 (talk) 19:50, 3 September 2014 (UTC)


 * According to a random guy on an internet forum, these are the advantages and disadvantages of turbines.


 * Advantages
 * Higher Power/Weight Ratio than piston engines. This means for two engines that produce the same power, the Gas Turbine is generally smaller.
 * Lesser Parts
 * Not much need to tune up
 * Operates on wide variety of fuels.
 * Starts up in low temperatures with no warm-up period and no anti-freeze (provided you use a proper fuel).
 * Doesn't stall easily with sudden overloading.


 * Disadvantages
 * More expensive to manufacture than a piston engine.
 * Generally uses up more fuel. Gas Turbines are way less efficient when idling.
 * Turbines are actually quite loud too. During idling, they're louder than most piston engines in general.
 * Turbines operate better when they're running at a constant speed.


 * Source: http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?64478-Tank-engines-Turbine-vs-diesel


 * Justin15w (talk) 21:20, 3 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Does "Lesser Parts" mean fewer parts, less expensive parts, or smaller parts ? StuRat (talk) 03:08, 4 September 2014 (UTC)


 * add in that turbines tend to smoke less, a big deal for tanks in daylight, but they have a bigger heat signature, a big deal for IR detection. Greglocock (talk) 05:02, 4 September 2014 (UTC)


 * And note that not all German tank designs were brilliant. Take the Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte for example, which seems more like a bad joke than a practical weapon. StuRat (talk) 02:55, 4 September 2014 (UTC)


 * What catastrophic consequences did the use of gas turbines have on the US economy? They are used extensively in aircraft (Aircraft engine) including both military and civilian aircraft. In fact it would seem that the gas turbine provides a boost to companies like GE Aviation. CBWeather, Talk, Seal meat for supper? 04:43, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Although that gas turbines have those advantages, I think that having a tank that needs to be refuelled every four hours will cause a logistical problem for you , imagine this scenario : a group of tanks are surrounded in an area , or fuel tanks need a long time until they reach the battle tanks , which tank has bigger opportunity to survive ? of course the piston engine tank can hold longer .149.200.194.101 (talk) 07:03, 4 September 2014 (UTC) But also I say every army has its military doctrine or strategy that is suitable for its goal. 149.200.194.101 (talk) 07:06, 4 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Being flexible fuel vehicles, they can hopefully "live off the land" and use whatever fuel they find in the area, like gasoline, diesel, kerosene, methanol, etc. StuRat (talk) 14:18, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Its very doubtfull fuelusage of 6000 M1 Abrams has an impact worth mentioning on an defence budget of 600.000.000.000 (600 Billion) us$. Generally turbines are more efficient at full throttle but they are very inefficent on idle. Additionaly it depends allot on construction. Today modern 500Hp V8 car engines use way less fuel that most small cars from the 70'. Engines for Tanks are ofcourse build to be very reliable and german tanks are shurely not fuel efficient aswell. --Kharon (talk) 13:10, 5 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Hello chaps! (and chapesses of course!) - there's another advantage of the turbine engine on this newfangled contraption is that it runs on the same fuel as everything else the old colony's armed forces uses - they really like only having one type of fuel to ship around. If it had a fuel oil (diesel) engine they'd have to have another complete supply chain for that. There is however another disadvantage - it generates so much heat that their GIs can't get very close to the rear of the machine so it's harder to use it for cover during combined operations. Quintessential British Gentleman (talk) 23:27, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

is this satire?
Is this satire:

http://www.google.com/patents/US20060071122

Keep reading for a while. Is it satire the whole way through, and become obvious where it mentions the observers of the smoke experiment? (I'll let you read it.) THat's where I stopped reading.

Or, is it genuine on the part of the author.

If it is genuine: how can he construct meaningful-sounding, grammatically correct sentences like that?

(While mentioning the "Grey".)

If it is edited by a lawyer, why didn't he edit out at least that part?

I don't understand how anyone can write that earnestly. So, is it satire? Why was it granted?

I suggest you read it first, but the part where I stopped reading was the sentence beginning "It was this experiment". It makes the whole thing sound like a joke - not just pseudoscience and wrong. 213.246.165.17 (talk) 16:31, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * That is a patent application, not a patent. The requirement for filing a patent application in the United States is quite low, especially if the applicant chooses not to pay an attorney to vet the application.  No patent was granted for that application.  By default, the application fell into a category called an "abandoned application" because the applicant did not respond to further legal information requests and fees from the patent office.
 * You can read all about process in the United States at the USPTO Patent Process flowchart. Here is the current fee schedule.  Any applicant who has $70 and a few hours can buy themselves a sort of expensive bit of comedy, but frivolous filing will probably reflect poorly on that applicant's future career and patent prospects.
 * (Personally, if I was a young kid who liked fooling around with science and $70, I'd go out and buy myself a discovery flight, but we've all got our own hobbies...)
 * Nimur (talk) 16:38, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Does it been possible to patent(s) in the United States the possibility of phenomenon of physical, chemical and mathematical?--Alex Sazonov (talk) 16:48, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * What should be do if some phenomena are not been observed in nature, although the possibility of them been confirmed by other existing natural phenomena, which may been considered as the ideal scientific cases?--Alex Sazonov (talk) 17:06, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * A patent describes a solution to a specific technological problem and is a product or a process. No patent authority will give anyone an exclusive right to a natural phenomenon. 84.209.89.214 (talk) 13:12, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Alex Sazonov, in your case I would hire a technical editor to write your application before hiring an attorney. (Full disclosure of potential conflict of interest: I used to rake in big bucks translating technical publications from englsh into English!)  You are, without doubt, writing at a level somewhat below the median for bots, non-native English users, and internet-commenters.  You can save a lot of money and time by going to a technical writer before you hire an attorney or file a patent!  Nimur (talk) 17:15, 3 September 2014 (UTC)


 * So was this specific application satire or not? 212.96.61.236 (talk) 17:37, 3 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Obviously there's no way for us to know, but it looks to me like a product of mental illness. There's no reason people who hallucinate can't write coherently about their hallucinations. -- BenRG (talk) 18:32, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * To me it seems like a patent troll trying to establish some prior art. Maybe at sometime in the future someone will develop a teleportation scheme which could make serious amounts of cash, and any prior art could get a tasty cut. Luckily pattens have a relatively short timespan so the patten if properly filed will expire long before such technology become possible.--Salix alba (talk): 19:34, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * That's almost certainly not the case, as the putative troll would only be able to litigate on the patent once it was granted, and there is no way that this would get granted! If it can't work, it can't be industrially applicable/useful, so it's not patentable, and there's no way that the skilled person could put it into practice from the specification, so the application is insufficient. Also, if that was the case, I'd expect the claims to be much broader.  Plus, with the fees for application, search, and maintaining the patent, the troll would be banking at least 4k (assuming micro-entity status, and relatively few rounds of examination) on teleportation being invented (by a similar method to what he's written) within 20 years. MChesterMC (talk) 08:26, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Just for fun, look at some of this guy's other patent applications. --jpgordon:==( o ) 23:19, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I'll limit what I say for BLP reasons, but if you look around for that name, we aren't the first people to notice and comment on those patents by far. There's even a Facebook page, I think made by someone else. I haven't found any evidence anyone ever worked out if he was serious or not, this blogger tried contacting him via the correspondence address on the applications (a while after they were filed) but failed . Before the patents, evidentally a similarly named person albeit with an extra last name tried suing the NSA for what appears to be very weird reasons  and made a serious of strange claims (seemingly seriously), but I didn't find any information anyone has evidence they are the same person besides the similarity in names and weird stuff they've claimed. (Based on the info below, I'm guessing the location details don't match up anyway.) I presume  is a different person as is John St. Clair. Nil Einne (talk) 15:54, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Interesting based on the address, this (granted) patent filed in 1973 is probably for the same person. This makes me think that the person mentioned in this patent filed in 1971  is likewise the same person despite living somewhere else then. Note that the 2 less strange recent patent applications Internet cellular phone prepaid service Internet accessible mail box system which based on the address are also from the same person, demonstrate one point. These patent applications were themselves cited by other patents, I presume because any decent patent attorney would cite everything remotely relevant which suggests if an attorney was used, it was only to a very low level. Nil Einne (talk) 16:57, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I think we are missing the motivation for such fanciful patent applications. Outside the US patents are often contested on claims of first to invent rather than first to register. Mr/Mrs J. Clair by means of these applications gets official documentation of what (s)he was working with and thinking about, and when (s)he did this. By covering enough subjects (i.e. shotgun method) (s)he may strike lucky, if either A) it gives grounds to dispute a real inventor's claim, or B) it gets him investment or employment by someone who is impressed. Patent offices doing Prior art searches will notice these applications whenever they handle new applications that cover similar subjects, including and not limited to Grey aliens. 84.209.89.214 (talk) 18:45, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Right except there were only about 10 or so patent applications & it seems unlikely someone who was probably at least 50 years old at the time was that hopeful those particular patents would help with employment. Also, you seem to be confusing between who uses what system, I suggest a read of First to file and first to invent. Nil Einne (talk) 20:49, 4 September 2014 (UTC)