Yahoo Answers is shutting down on 4 May 2021 (Eastern Time) and the Yahoo Answers website is now in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.

Lv 42,831 points

?

Favourite answers11%
Answers769

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

  • How would gravitational time dilation effects readings on clocks in deep space vs those on Earth...?

    There's more to this question than I could have added in the title.

    Lets say you have 2 clocks on board your ship in deep space. The one is an Earth clock that would now be running faster due to you not being present in a gravity well, while the other is a clock that's set to run slower and thus, stay synced with the actual Earth time / date.

    If you were to observe Earth's orbit around the Sun, which would signal one year as being complete, what would the time on the clocks show? Would the visual observation of one year take place at the rate of the clock running at the faster pace, the one synced with Earth time, or perhaps neither?

    PS: I realize that light would take longer to reach you and thus you'd be looking at this retrospectively, but you can compensate for this delay and focus on the duration of the event you're measuring, whether it happened already or not.

    3 AnswersAstronomy & Space8 years ago
  • Can we communicate as speeds greater than that of light?

    Lets say you have two ships in space, that's facing opposite directions while being connected with a lightweight, perfectly rigid rod.

    If they exert the exact same force in opposite directions, the ships and the pole would remain perfectly still, right?

    So if the connector at the one ship was to release the pole, would the other ship not begin to move instantaneously (considering that the pole is lightweight), and thus mean that communication happened at speeds greater than c?

    (assuming that the pole can not contract / stretch)

    3 AnswersPhysics9 years ago
  • Why can't I format my internal hard drive?

    Windows 7

    I can copy / delete stuff to and from the hard drive, but I just can't format it.

    I boot from another drive, with this drive simply being used as a mass storage drive for my movies, music and games.

    6 AnswersDesktops9 years ago
  • What would happen if you add a second double-slit behind the first in the double-slit experiment?

    And what would happen if you 'measure' the first slit only?

    Would you view a single particle going through a single slit in the first double-slit, and then once it reaches the second one, it would again behave as a wave and project an interference pattern?

    And can you then string together a couple of these, with every second double-slit being 'watched' to then at will change particles to waves and back?

    1 AnswerPhysics9 years ago
  • What did the carnivores eat after they finally got off Noah's ark?

    Every meal would have literally meant the end of a herbivore species!!

    Speaking of which, what did the herbivores eat, if all plants were under water for almost a year? (to my knowledge, normal vegetation don't do too well under water)

    7 AnswersReligion & Spirituality9 years ago
  • Is there an upper limit of how heavy an element can be, and can heavier elements form in black holes?

    Heavy elements form in the core of stars under high pressure. Is it perhaps possible that even heavier elements are formed in black holes, in a form that we're not aware of?

    I know that they say that the singularity is infinitely dense, has zero volume and I also understand that THAT description is somewhat incomprehensible...since there's 'stuff' in there. So can heavier elements, of which we're quite unaware of be able to form in the singularity, and if so, what would happen if they were 'set free'?

    6 AnswersAstronomy & Space9 years ago
  • Who here believes that evolution is where monkeys changed into men, or gave birth to them?

    Who thinks that the whole idea is stupid? Who believes that evolution is where we come from apes, and then wonder why apes don't evolve into humans?

    Recently I had to explain evolution to someone, and I did it in the following way, which I hope makes it much clearer to you guys that still have the wrong idea of what it really is. --- Imagine you have a pack of dogs, same species. The pack of dogs split up, with one pack moving to the mountains, while the other moves to marsh lands. Over time, the packs start adapting to their new environments, with the marsh dogs growing wider paws, stockier build, perhaps even with some webbing between the toes, while the mountain dogs grow longer legs and become lighter in build to suit the rocky terrain they live in. As time goes by, they adapt more and more, to such an extent that when you later on take 1 of each pack and compare them, they differ from each other immensely. (different species)

    So what that boils down to is that the one species did NOT give birth to the other. On the contrary - the one pack of dogs had no influence over the other pack at all, since they lived in different regions. They both adapted to their conditions separately, to better survive by hunting / feeding and to avoid bigger hunters than themselves.

    Humans and apes are like these two packs of dogs. We started from the same point (long, long ago), but we adapted differently due to the conditions we lived in. Obviously, there's a few more steps between us and the original "pack" (ancestor), but this is pretty put in a way I hope you can understand, to realize that evolution really isn't that far fetched and weird at all.

    So we don't come from monkeys, and monkeys did not 'stop evolving' for some weird reason with only us evolving.

    So forget the idea that monkeys suddenly gave birth to human like babies by accident, since they had absolutely nothing to do with it. They adapted to life in the trees, while we adapted for life walking on our hind legs, which freed up our hands, which lead to us using tools, which lead to us 'thinking' more and becoming creative, which lead to us using traps to hunt etc etc etc.

    Clear?

    Therefore, when putting evolution against something like Creationism, there really is only one weird story, not two.

    Makes sense?

    13 AnswersReligion & Spirituality10 years ago
  • Where can you sell your expensive items on a regular basis in Skyrim, to avoid stockpiling items?

    The stores don't have much money (unless you use them to train you in some skills), and thus if you come back after a mission with a couple of expensive items, you can only sell a portion. If you then store the rest, and go on another mission you'd only return with more expensive items and no place to sell them. I use Whiterun to sell my goods, but there must be some other 'large' stores out there with some cash to buy the expensive, enchanted jewelry and magical items?

    1 AnswerPC10 years ago
  • If photons have no mass, why does gravity effect it?

    And if it's due to the curvature of space (which I guess makes sense), how do we know that it's not the same case for everything else.

    In other words, how do we know that gravity is in fact, a force that pulls matter towards matter, and that it's not just a result of the curvature of space, with matter 'seemingly attracting' matter, but also photons which have no mass, due the space-time around it being warped?

    2 AnswersPhysics10 years ago
  • Shortcut for strikethrough in Outlook 2007?

    Excel is set as Ctrl + 5 I believe...but I have no idea how to do it in Outlook...or how to manually set it as a specific key.

    3 AnswersSoftware10 years ago
  • Why does time slow down "literally" for someone who moves at a high speed?

    If both the traveller and observer would experience their own time as 'normal', why would the traveller's time be slower compared to the observer, should the traveller whisk off in a spaceship at 99% the speed of light?

    I can understand why you'd 'see them move slower', due to the speed of light having a constant speed in all reference frames, but why the ACTUAL time laps?

    From the traveller's perspective, the Earth would be moving away from him at 99% speed of light, so why does he not experience more time than the Earth, as opposed to him experiencing less time?

    Why does the act of acceleration, which is all that I can think of as being different from the observer and the traveller, cause an actual difference in time experienced?

    9 AnswersPhysics10 years ago
  • How many failed religions would one need, before you finally understand why the whole idea is silly?

    All the people of previous religions, believed just as much as you do now, and they had the same conviction, and determination.

    But today, their God is a myth, their belief is part of stories, which in themselves are not taken up seriously. Dismissing their belief is probably not even seen as blasphemy. And over time, more and more religions shared the same fate...with the total number of religions formed totalling a couple of thousand.

    So how many more do we need to create, and dismiss before you finally see our point, that they're ALL made up, and that they can ALL be dismissed in the same manner as you dismiss the other thousands of possible Gods?

    21 AnswersReligion & Spirituality10 years ago
  • Where in space would time be 100% unaffected, and thus, measure time in it's purest form?

    Time is relative, and thus, it's not the same everywhere. For example...should you travel on a plane, your time goes by slower than for the people on the ground, travelling at slower speeds. Time also slows in high gravity, therefore it's slower on Earth, than it would be on a larger, denser planet for example, or near a star. So if someone was to travel to a far away place in the universe, where there's much, much higher gravity, they'd measure time differently than us, even though to them, it would appear as if time is the same. If we were to look at the clocks, they'd appear to move at different speeds, yet when you bring them together, they'd measure time the same way (although by now, they'd be out of sync).

    So, is there a place in the universe, where the factors that effect time, is nullified to the extent that should you place a clock there, it would measure time in it's purest form?

    (I understand that we'd still measure it in minutes, and hours, which was created based on Earthly events such as the rotation and orbit of the Earth...so this question is merely aimed at whether or not, there are areas in space that's unaffected by forces that effect time itself)

    9 AnswersAstronomy & Space10 years ago
  • How much energy is used per year on recycling, and how much does this process contribute to pollution?

    Just wondered how much energy would be used to recycle things like plastic, and glass - and how much pollution is produced as a by-product of this energy usage for the conversion process.

    4 AnswersGreen Living10 years ago
  • What would happen with the light (heat) between two points, should we create a wormhole?

    Lets say you create a wormhole that connects two points VERY far apart. This would happen by compressing the distance between them, right?

    So if the distance is compressed, the light (heat) between the two points would be compressed as well, and thus, it would generate A LOT of heat.

    Where would this heat go, and what would happen if this heat is compressed in such a small period of time (almost instantly)?

    5 AnswersAstronomy & Space10 years ago
  • Why does the sugar move towards the centre of the cup when you stir it?

    Shouldn't it move towards the outside, due to centrifugal force?

    4 AnswersPhysics10 years ago
  • Can someone track your phone through your IMEI number, if your sim card is registered - and the phone stolen?

    If you bought the phone and put a registered sim into the phone. Could it be traced based on the IMEI number, if a new sim was placed into the phone and then used?

    1 AnswerCell Phones & Plans10 years ago
  • Why didn't God just forgive original sin?

    He created us, and knew us. He knew what we'd do, and still did it.

    Then when we 'sinned', he held US accountable for it, and called it original sin. Something which we're all born into.

    He then sent himself, as his own son, to Earth to die for our sins. Yet our original sin STILL remains, AND he didn't die. So why go through the trouble of saying that HE died for our sins, sins which are sins due to his OWN rules, when he didn't die? What purpose did this exercise serve, if he didn't die for sins against the very rules he created himself?

    Why not just forgive us? Would that not have served the same goal? Why not just be as forgiving as he says he is, and then just forgive us?

    14 AnswersReligion & Spirituality10 years ago
  • Can any God truly be omnipotent?

    I just thought about what it means to be omnipotent, and came up with a dilemma. If a God, any God, is omnipotent and all knowing, it would mean that He'd know what would happen to us before it happened, but we can go even deeper; He'd know, that he'd know what would happen, before he knew (paradox).

    But if we ignore this paradox, it would mean that this God had to know what He'd know would happen even before he created Earth and life, and that He had to know that everything He knew, was going to happen.

    This presents a problem - If a God knew what would happen, and if that which He knew would happen HAD TO HAPPEN, otherwise it would imply that He was mistaken and thus not omnipotent and all knowing, it would also imply that this God is not in control of His own fate, nor that of the life He created. He, and everything else would be on autopilot, with Him just knowing what's going to happen, unable to make any changes, since any changes would mean that his earlier thoughts of what would happen, was incorrect. This in turn points to an even higher consciousness ...

    God has to have a God too?

    But even the last conclusion poses the same issue, since the same would be true about this God. So can there truly be something that's 100% omnipotent, if this 'omnipotent' being, would need to be all knowing, and in the process loose control over His own fate, and therefore it's omnipotence?

    3 AnswersReligion & Spirituality10 years ago