Ask Mr. Wizard

[a1532b]

it's the chappelle show!

 

[BigNorm]

I have a question for you bignorm...

I was looking at your sig of rick james, and I was wondering if he's actually punching that guy.
If so, could you give me a set up as to why?

because HE'S RICK JAMES, B**CH! but seriously, he's slapping, not punching.

he's doing a skit on the currently deceased rick james, who was alive and kicking when the clip was made. but he slapped him because he was wasted on cocaine for one, and he could do anything cause he's famous. the guy getting slapped is Charlie Murphy, brother of Eddie Murphy, which rick calls them the Darkness Brothers, since they were the darkest black men in the world according to rick james.

i'll see if i can post the clip of charlie getting rick james back, cause it's even more funny.

ok, here's the whole clip, it's 13 minutes and great quality, and only 14 mb, and has all the rick james moments.
hacha is included in last folder. hope ya enjoy, it's a great clip.

 

[BigNorm]

here's the last of it.

 

[nessonite1]

Normie...apreciate you answering the all important nipple question for me! Question though...wouldn't baby wombats, tasmanian devils, possums, etc be much smaller than baby kangaroos, being much smaller animals themselves?

 

[BigNorm]

Normie...apreciate you answering the all important nipple question for me! Question though...wouldn't baby wombats, tasmanian devils, possums, etc be much smaller than baby kangaroos, being much smaller animals themselves?

nope, that's natures since of humor. but that's why kangaroos have pouches, the babies are too small to be any where else. once they are born, they crawl there, pic a nipple and huddle and suck it till they get too big for the pouch.

other marsupials are born normal size proportional to adults.

but the nipple question was important, and glad u asked the nipple master, whom has "persuation" over the nipple....... ok, i'll stop talking all stududip.

 

[nessonite1]

that's why kangaroos have pouches, the babies are too small to be any where else. once they are born, they crawl there, pic a nipple and huddle and suck it till they get too big for the pouch.

other marsupials are born normal size proportional to adults.

I'm afraid I must disagree there, Mr. Wizard. I guess all those hours watching animal planet are paying off!

The baby wombat (about the size of a small bean) is born three or four weeks after mating and as it is still very undeveloped, it claws its way through the mother's fur and enters the pouch. The pouch contains two teats and the baby wombat attaches itself to one of the teats and will stay attached for three months or more.

source: http://users.cybernex.net.au/wombat/wombats.htm

A large number of devils may be born as tiny embryos but as the mother has only four teats, it’s a race for just a small number (usually just two, maybe three) to struggle through the fur to attach themselves firmly to her teats in the pouch, where they are carried for about four months.

source: http://www.leatherwoodonline.com/wild/2004/devils/index2.htm

The baby koala, "joey", is blind, hairless, less than one inch long and weighs less than 1 gram (0.035 oz).
It then crawls into its mothers pouch completely unaided, relying on its sense of smell, strong forelimbs and claws.

source: http://www.giftlog.com/pictures/koala_fact.htm

So wombats, devils, and koalas all are born as tiny, undeveloped babies. I'm too lazy to search again but I'm going to assume that possums and any other marsupials Im not thinking of are the same way.
ACK! Mr. Wizard has failed me!! Where will I turn now! Whom can I trust?!

 

[BigNorm]

bah, the discovery channel screwed me once again. THANKS ALOT JEFF CORWIN AND YOUR EXCUSE FOR A TV SHOW!

 

[kut2k2]

Anyone else want to answer?

100% :beard:

 

[amywood]

100% :beard:

Ding... ding... ding. We have a winner. 100% is the correct answer.

 

[kut2k2]

I have a question....


Do black holes really exist and if the earth got sucked into one, what would happen?

Yes, and we'd all die. Matter sucked into a black hole gets shredded to quantum foam. It ain't a tunnel to some other universe or any of that other skiffy nonsense. :beard:

 

[kut2k2]

a question for anybody ...

How big is our solar system, length-wise and/or volume-wise?

 

[Dussicar]

a question for anybody ...

How big is our solar system, length-wise and/or volume-wise?

Bigger than a fucking breadbox, that's for sure.

Norm! I have to thank you! I'm cured! I finally stopped scratching my ass for no reason whatsoever.

now I'm scratching my crotch. And It's not itchy Either!

 

[His Divine Shadow]

Depends on your definition of the solar system. The sun has influence all the way out to the Oort Cloud, out to a maximum of 100,000 Astronomical Units or so. That's 1.49598 × 10¹³ kilometers or 9.29558876 × 10¹² miles. Another definition of the size of the solar system is thr distance to the termination shock at the edge of the heliosphere, 95 AUs or so out, or 8.83080932 × 10⁹ miles or 14 211 810 000 kilometers.


See:
http://www.noao.edu/education/peppercorn/pcmain.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_system

 

[tcklshboy1]

What is the proper name for the long necked long tailed quadropedal dinosaur?

a) Brontasaurus (sp lol)
b) Apatosaurus (sp)

Do you consider Tyrannosaurus rex a predator or scavenger or little of both?



Last but not least what is the single best indicator fossil for a paleozoic rock I.E. what animal lived during this time and none other?



HA!!!

 

[His Divine Shadow]

I'll try my hand at these as well...

Apatosaurus is the proper name of that dino now. Used to be Brontosaurus.

I'd bet that T-Rex both hunted and scavenged. Even today, most predators will scavenge or outright steal the kills of other predators. Lions, tigers, hawks, you name it. If you mean scavenged more along the lines of eating carrion...well, I could't say for sure other than that anything that is hungry enough will eat whatever it can find.

The last question I guessed at immediately but had to check first. The humble trilobite be what you speak of. Close to half the fossils in that period are trilobites.

 

[Hungarian21]

Depends on your definition of the solar system. The sun has influence all the way out to the Oort Cloud, out to a maximum of 100,000 Astronomical Units or so. That's 1.49598 × 10¹³ kilometers or 9.29558876 × 10¹² miles. Another definition of the size of the solar system is thr distance to the termination shock at the edge of the heliosphere, 95 AUs or so out, or 8.83080932 × 10⁹ miles or 14 211 810 000 kilometers.


See:
http://www.noao.edu/education/peppercorn/pcmain.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_system

dork. 😛

What color are my undies? XD

 

[His Divine Shadow]

dork. 😛

What color are my undies? XD

Trick question. I'd venture you're posting au naturale. 😛

 

[kut2k2]

Depends on your definition of the solar system. The sun has influence all the way out to the Oort Cloud, out to a maximum of 100,000 Astronomical Units or so. That's 1.49598 × 10¹³ kilometers or 9.29558876 × 10¹² miles. Another definition of the size of the solar system is thr distance to the termination shock at the edge of the heliosphere, 95 AUs or so out, or 8.83080932 × 10⁹ miles or 14 211 810 000 kilometers.

See:
http://www.noao.edu/education/peppercorn/pcmain.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_system

Great response! Yes, it does depend. I also would include the (still hypothetical?) Oort Comet Cloud, but 100,000 AU happens to be a bit too far.

The problem with using the heliosphere or heliopause is that it marks the end of the sun's magnetic field, but not the end of its gravitational sphere of influence (SOI). Pierre-Simon Laplace showed how to calculate the SOI of a celestial body 200 years ago but you'd be hard pressed to find the sun's calculated SOI anywhere on the web. I did the calc using the best figures I could find for our current distance from the galactic center (28,000 lightyears) and the galactic mass drawing us inward (100 billion solar masses) and I came up with about 1.11 lightyears for the sun's SOI radius. To complicate things further, the SOI is never a perfect ball: it's flattened along the line connecting, in this case, the sun to the galactic center.

So basically the size of the solar system is the size of the sun's SOI, which is a spheroid with a polar radius of 0.97 lightyears (61,370 AU), an equatorial radius of 1.11 lightyears (70,500 AU), and a volume of about 5 cubic lightyears. There used to be an excellent American webpage that derived the SOI formula and worked out the SOIs for the Earth, the Moon, and some other planets, but it's been taken down. If you go down about halfway on the webpage below, you'll find the SOI formula. Sorry, I don't read Polish but I understand the formula so I can answer any questions if there are any.

http://www.astro.amu.edu.pl/~breiter/lectures/Astrodynamika.htm

It's kind of disappointing to read how many professional astronomers actually think the sun's SOI reaches halfway to the nearest star. It's like they don't know the solar system orbits the center of the galaxy. 😛

 

[His Divine Shadow]

Perhaps it was a great response, but that was an excellent response. *Files away for future reference and passes the Mr. Wizard hat*

Great response! Yes, it does depend. I also would include the (still hypothetical?) Oort Comet Cloud, but 100,000 AU happens to be a bit too far.

The problem with using the heliosphere or heliopause is that it marks the end of the sun's magnetic field, but not the end of its gravitational sphere of influence (SOI). Pierre-Simon Laplace showed how to calculate the SOI of a celestial body 200 years ago but you'd be hard pressed to find the sun's calculated SOI anywhere on the web. I did the calc using the best figures I could find for our current distance from the galactic center (28,000 lightyears) and the galactic mass drawing us inward (100 billion solar masses) and I came up with about 1.11 lightyears for the sun's SOI radius. To complicate things further, the SOI is never a perfect ball: it's flattened along the line connecting, in this case, the sun to the galactic center.

So basically the size of the solar system is the size of the sun's SOI, which is a spheroid with a polar radius of 0.97 lightyears (61,370 AU), an equatorial radius of 1.11 lightyears (70,500 AU), and a volume of about 5 cubic lightyears. There used to be an excellent American webpage that derived the SOI formula and worked out the SOIs for the Earth, the Moon, and some other planets, but it's been taken down. If you go down about halfway on the webpage below, you'll find the SOI formula. Sorry, I don't read Polish but I understand the formula so I can answer any questions if there are any.

http://www.astro.amu.edu.pl/~breiter/lectures/Astrodynamika.htm

It's kind of disappointing to read how many professional astronomers actually think the sun's SOI reaches halfway to the nearest star. It's like they don't know the solar system orbits the center of the galaxy. 😛

 

[Hungarian21]

dorks 😛😛😛😛

and as for my "trick" question.......EWWWWWWW! XD

 

[TheChameleon]

Here's a good question. If I were to... walk, an average of 6 miles an hour, of course, only for like 5 hours at a time, with 3 hour breaks, PLUS sleep at least 8 hours A day, how long would it take for me to get to Las Vegas, Nevada? I'm starting in Tacoma, Washington.

 

[kut2k2]

Here's a good question. If I were to... walk, an average of 6 miles an hour, of course, only for like 5 hours at a time, with 3 hour breaks, PLUS sleep at least 8 hours A day, how long would it take for me to get to Las Vegas, Nevada? I'm starting in Tacoma, Washington.

You're covering 60 miles a day (walk 5 hours, break 3, walk 5 more, break 3, sleep 8 = 24 hours), so the hard part is determining how far between the cities.

"As the crow flies" was easy to find: 848 miles

http://www.indo.com/cgi-bin/dist/place1=@165018/place2=@86679

Driving distance was harder to find, but I finally came across this:

"From Seattle, Washington to Las Vegas, Nevada is about 1180 miles"

http://www.onlineconversion.com/drivingdistance.htm

I believe Tacoma is about 30 miles south of Seattle, so ...

Walking in a straight line (probably not possible) would take you 14 days, 1 hour, 20 minutes.

Walking along the roadways would take you about 19½ days.

 

[Ignatz]

Here's a good question. If I were to... walk, an average of 6 miles an hour, of course, only for like 5 hours at a time, with 3 hour breaks, PLUS sleep at least 8 hours A day, how long would it take for me to get to Las Vegas, Nevada? I'm starting in Tacoma, Washington.

Gee...most people drive or fly to Las Vegas and then walk back.

 

[Hungarian21]

more like crawl...