Well, you are right. The earth isn't a sphere, its an oblate ellipsoid. If you do ever get around to launching a balloon, make sure you consider the effect on the image from the lens.  The formula for bodies of water finding level is derived from the equation for gravitational potential energy which relies on the distance of the object being 1 radius from the earth's center away (at the earth's surface). Admittedly, fluid dynamics aren't my forte, there's too much chemistry going on for my liking, so I use the, good enough to get an idea of whats going on models, not the, I trust my rocket to this man's models.

The vacuum of space doesn't really exist right next to our pressurized environment, its a gradient.Pressure decreases as you get higher and higher up. On top of a mountain the pressure is lower than at sea level. It continues like that all the way up until you reach a point that is "virtually" a void or vacuum. Space isn't always an ideal vacuum, it gets closer and closer to ideal as you get further and further away from all other planets.

To me, there is a lot of observable proof, which I can justify to myself either with a telescope, observing the periodic motion of celestial bodies, etc. You are fine not taking  anyone's word for it if you don't really want, but if you are going to be a skeptic against the mainstream opinion, you should first get a definitive grasp of what you believe to exist. Then see if your predictions based on what you believe hold up 100% of the time. If your models don't hold up 100% of the time, but 50% of the time instead, try and figure out why. There is still a lot you can learn or figure out for yourself from that.

With regards to the link, to avoid dragging the thread off topic, please don't respond to the part about nuclear power, if you'd like we can chat about it more in another thread or shoot me a PM.


Yes, the nuclear scare scam is a thing. There have only been a handful of incidents, and they've been caused by negligence and greed. The problem with nuclear power as people see it now is the perceived danger, and that the waste needs to be contained, however that isn't necessarily the case forever. There are a lot of useful products that come out of spent fission materials. Something that I've spent a fair amount of time researching is a zero net sum reactor that uses catalytic processes to influence the makeup of fission products to point them in the direction of those with short half lives, or towards valuable materials like rare earth metals. The perceived danger is completely disproportional. Ask someone how many coal plant related accidents there have been, and they can't name one. I had to do a google search myself to see for myself, and there have been plenty, lots of mine related accidents as well. I just stole this chart from wikipedia, so don't take any of the numbers as definitive, but there is certainly a trend you can notice. On top of that, who is in charge of counting the effect of air contamination by gases related to fossil fuel combustion and coal burning particulate? Go ask the older generation of people from Pittsburgh how they are holding up.



Comparing a coal burning plant to a nuclear power plant, a power plant that uses 10 kilograms of fuel per day will produce the same amount of power as a coal burning plant that burns 30,000 tons of coal in that same day. We worry about the three major nuclear incidents (Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima) but not what it means that there have been three incidents in 40 years. On top of that, Chernobyl was from a poorly designed and crudely built Soviet plan with people that weren't trained. Three Mile Island same deal, the employees weren't trained, and Fukushima was the result of plant operators not wanting to scare people by telling them there was a problem, so they missed their window to protect people because they didn't want to get sued. All of those were the results of human problems, not anything inherently to do with nuclear power.

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May have misquoted that one friend  

Flat earth theory works relatively well in some regards even with a professional/science background because transformation of spherical objects into circles, or points for that matter are the basis for simplifying physics to get a "pretty good" approximation. You don't see people explaining how a flat earth would work by applying the full physics formulas. They use idealized versions for people who don't have 4 hours to work out all of the correction factors. My background is in nuclear physics, so I'm not the authority on astrophysics (thought it is my minor) but the geometry of whats going on at a subatomic level and at a planetary level are so incredibly similar, that until grad school, you use the same equations to describe interactions between particles and interactions between planets. Rather than dealing with angry people having an ideological debate, its a lot more fun to discuss the physics and math implications of what happens when you assume the earth is flat vs a oblate ellipsoid. Its like a religious debate but instead of people dying, you can find some lost monuments or something neat by comparing religious texts.

In my last post, I asked about how "deep" the earth is in a flat earth model, because it'd be interesting to compare location of center of mass and moments of inertia in a sphere vs rectangular earth. Never know, might find some nice simple transform equation that could help people avoid polar coordinates.

Your approach would be from a different direction. Distances traveled would be different as well.


I mean, you can verify for yourself the shape of the earth with a decent model rocket or a weather balloon if you don't want to take anyone's word for it. Its not really obeying consensus, its agreeing with some of the basis of physics, but you can kind of confirm it for yourself. Just because some things hold true regardless of whether the earth is flat or a sphere, doesn't mean it proves the earth is flat. A lot of equations would still work even if the world was a point, or a toroid (actually a lot holds true as a toroid, probably far more than what works with the earth as flat)

Genuinely curious, the people here seem to put a lot of effort into this, far more than the half assed people I'd find results from if I just did a google search. What is your position on how "deep" the flat earth would be?

I'll throw out a counterpoint for someone to find a way to counter. Assuming the earth is flat, seismic activity from convection of the temp gradient of the layers of the earth would be in a different shape and distance from what is physically measured. Also, how do satellites work with the flat earth model? What keeps them from just falling out of the sky if they aren't in uniform circular motion(x,y,z)?

As I said in my previous post, I'm not belittling anyone. I have no intentions on changing your mind, and I won't feel any sort of gratification by proving that my understanding is better than yours. Rather, I'm curious about alternate understandings of things. In my astrophysics courses, we used to do pseudoscience all the time, and we'd occasionally stumble across some weird discovery about an equation that seemingly holds true. Then after writing a proof, we'd figure out it'd be a simplified version under an ideal condition or something. Those discoveries are worth something if we hit one that nobody else has yet before.

Because its fun to be a contrarian. I've never been able to understand why anyone would think the earth is flat. Its not like its hard to witness numerous low tech experiments to prove to yourself that its a sphere, however it is fun to play with pseudo science, so rather than get frustrated at perceived stupidity, I say let them have at it and maybe they'll accidentally stumble across something useful while playing with the math. You find an example where a model holds true with ridiculous parameters at one point and ignore the rest of the set of data to prove what you want. That's how you prove that the earth is flat. At the same time, in playing with those ridiculous parameters that no one has before because there is no reason to, you can find something actually useful (maybe?)

I'm dying laughing at this, its a good idea, but something about it just strikes me as an elaborate joke rather than a real product.

Jokes aside, onto my real questions.
1) Have you done any testing about how humidity effects it? If the bags are water soluble and you have dry acid in the container, how long would it take to disintegrate at 50-70% humidity etc.

2) Is it a safe? Or just an open plastic drawer?

3) In general, what features does it have to keep from accidental discharge? If you bump into it with enough force, is it going to spring a small leak and destroy whatever is inside?

There isn't a gag order, no one cares about what people say on a forum, and even if they did, it would take some amount of time between having the order issued, Theymos speaking with lawyers, and then responding/removing a post. Did you post the threads in the three separate boards at the same time, or did you post one after another when they were removed?

Why would an entity outside of BTCTalk try to cover up a forum post when there is already some article that you are linking? And moderators don't moderate with their personal opinions in mind, they wouldn't stay a moderator for long if that was the case. Anyway, if there is no deleted message, I'm assuming that means your thread was moved to the Trashcan section, and the reason for that would likely be that you have posted it multiple times, its spam, or you are posting it in the wrong section. Spam is generally defined as low quality topics/comments that introduce little to no points of discussion. So while you might have points of discussion for your topic that you'd like to bring up, if you are not addressing them and just posting a link + an intro, it might be being deleted as spam. There is a TON of spam that is just *insert link* What do you guys think? So even if your topic isn't intended to be something like that, if it follows that kind of format, chances are its catching moderator's attention. Try posting in Off Topic or the Politics section with room for discussion, and it'll be left alone.

Your explanation is a little misleading. Your understanding of limits isn't wrong, but the application is. When you say A = X^3 and C = 3X^3, if you take C/A you get 3, that is the case as X approaches infinity, not when it is at the value infinity. The reason you can express the limit of the function 3X^3/X^3 = 3 as X approaches infinity is because on the way up from your lower bound to infinity, the magnitude of the numerator is growing at a rate 3 times greater than the denominator. That is the domain includes all real numbers from negative infinity to positive infinity, non inclusive. If you try and deal with the value infinity, you almost always get some sort of undefined function because infinity isn't a number.

You can't go beyond infinity, because you can't reach infinity. Even if you say, infinity + 1, since infinity isn't a number, that makes about as much sense as saying, green +1.

Plan to try to impersonate Ognasty huh?

On a related note, from now on, I will no longer accept any proof of identity other than a timestamp with the Nasty Medalion.

Rather than focusing on hydrogen, I think a more realistic option would be to stop at an intermediary step proposed in your OP.


We have plenty of methods of storing, utilizing, and transporting electrical energy generated from wind farms or solar panels. By focusing on converting that electrical energy back into a combustible source, we've already lost a fair bit of energy. On top of that, hydrogen is obscenely dangerous. Its molecular structure is so small that it can't reliably be contained in a gaseous phase. I'm not sure if it could be odorized the same way natural gas is, but at this point as far as I know, there is no way to detect gas leaks besides just assuming they are there. Another major issue is that its combustion is a temperature far higher than what modern combustion engines can handle. I use an oxyhydrogen torch that I've gotten pretty close to melting tungsten with at ~6200 degrees Fahrenheit. I know there are catalysts that can lower the temperatures, but that involves another process, another cost, another new piece of machinery to engineer, and another failure point.

My point isn't that it shouldn't be done, I'm sure there are proper ways to handle hydrogen safely, but if the first step is creating it by splitting water, even assuming that we are using Nickel Oxide catalysts rather than platinum to make it economically feasible, it requires that the energy is available in the first place. If we are generating the power needed to create the hydrogen gas in a green fashion, and the only perk to using hydrogen is that we can transport the energy, I'd propose focusing on improving battery technology, or ideally making the switch over to capacitors once we can figure out how to increase their capacities.

Default trust is a group of people that are set by default to have their feedback viewed with more priority, their feedback contribute to the green/red numerical scores that you are talking about. People are free to edit their trust settings, but the majority of people have left their settings at default. These members can leave feedback for other members, and it is more visible than those who aren't on default trust. If you are tagged with negative trust, it will become more difficult to do business here. If you want to continue doing business, you'll have to be sure that the other party doesn't need to trust you for a transaction to work, ie use escrow or another method that mitigates risk. The original Default Trust members were picked by Theymos. Those people picked more people that they trust, and those people picked more people, etc, to create a web of people that have feedback that is shown by "Default".

If you can't post or PM for 7 days, that means you've been banned by a moderator, it doesn't have anything to do with trust. Trust is not moderated. You did however admit to ban evasion which is also against the forum rules, and I'd highly advise against it if you don't want your ban to become permanent. Bans are not limited to a single account, they are directed to the user of that account. If one of your accounts is banned for 7 days, all of your accounts are banned for 7 days, and by continuing to post, you risk having that ban become permanent.

That one actually works from time to time, depending on what the person was banned for. Not saying that anyone should give it a shot, but a one time mistake caused by the heat of the moment such as saying something that went over the line in an argument. Or while drunk, is a bit more forgivable if you are able to take a step back and apologize the next day.

The excuse that I could absolutely never understand is where a person would deny doing something they were temporarily banned for, but in the process would admit to something more serious. Oh yeah, I didn't spam, this 1 day ban is ridiculous. My post was an encoded message about an illegal trade! I don't even think it was something people do unknowingly in some cases, its like an ego trip where they must prove that they did not do something, even at the cost of a greater penalty.

Bitcointalk cannot prevent scams, so there is no point in saying that it will moderate them. Its not possible, so its sort of the same deal as using Craigslist. Protect yourself from scams, if you can't then don't invest/buy things/etc here.

Saying, the post is less spammy than the spamiest posts isn't a great defense. The moderators here really do use a lot of common sense when deleting posts, especially with regards to scam accusations. At the same time, just because it is related to a scam warning, it doesn't give immunity to moderator action. Otherwise people would abuse that, and just wrap all of their spam in a veil of "reason" to not have their posts deleted. You probably wouldn't believe how many identical posts to what you posted I've seen. If you are legitimately trying to warn people against something, make sure (1) its valid to post in the thread you are. Posting about scammer X in some unrelated person's tech help thread, will get it removed even if valid. (2) Try making the post have some substance, include details, why you think/know its a scam. "Stay away from exit scammers, read here:" doesn't look much different to me than, I'm in, or great job! (3) Make sure the post can stand on its own. There are some exceptions, but if you want your posts not to be deleted, its best if they don't look similar to spam posts.

Not that I care all that much because the people arguing here don't actually seem to be involved with the project, ie I'd care more if it was investors who were complaining about mismanaged funds and not random people with vendettas against each other. But just curious, would the ~10 BTC from the BTCCash to BTC exchange that people say have gone missing happen to be from a fork exchange service fee? As in a service that searches for forks, converts them all to BTC, and then handles the transaction?

Well, while a solution to the problem would be nice, unless you are using a throwaway account it also ups the ante as far as moderator punishment. The vast majority of the time, if someone is bumping a thread more often than 24 hours, they'll get the excess bumps removed, and a PM in their inbox explaining that you can't bump your thread more often than 24 hours. Unless its spammy to the point of being obviously annoying, that is one of those rules that can be overlooked fairly easily.

If however you are knowingly deleting your bumps for the purpose of bypassing the rules, you don't get a nice friendly PM, you get a ban.

Interested in doing a joint venture there? My neighbor will be selling girl scout cookies as well, so that could draw people in.

The main point should be that ranks aren't really that important. Newbie accounts may have a bit of a negative stigma to them when it comes to a few things regarding credibility, but the difference between a full member and a legendary member solely because of the rank is relatively little. The vast majority of old members didn't really have any rank goals in mind because there was no benefit to being a higher rank. The merit system is primarily to weed out account farmers and spammers, an individual should have no issue getting as much merit as they'd like, eventually.

Its not that hard to find a topic to reply to that helps someone out for a merit here or there. Exceptional members are those that are able to post generally insightful and helpful posts. It'd be great if everyone posted like that, but realistically, as long as you aren't detracting from the conversations you are welcome here regardless of your rank or merit level.

One thing that I'll mention is that because of all of the annoying merit threads, I've decided not to award any merit to anyone in a merit related thread, regardless of how exceptional their post is. It just incentives the further teetering of spam level threads that people are making. I'm sure each individual has their own I will or will not give merit scenarios.

No there is not. People are occasionally unbanned after making a genuine mistake. Intentionally breaking the core rules of the forum will not be forgiven. If your "friend" got your account banned, both you and them are not welcome to post here anymore.

You just have to deal with it for a little while. Read up on topics that interest you, make posts when you feel its appropriate, and deal with the irritation of account restrictions until your account ranks up and they are gradually lifted.There is a WHOLE lot of spam going on behind (and in front of) the scenes. Without the restrictions that there are now, this place would be a mess. This is a very unique type of forum. There is financial incentive to being here, and its a gathering place for people with cryptocurrencies. That means people will be here to spam, scam, promote, and phish. The spam, phishing, and advertisements are what we try to cut down on with newbie restrictions. If any new account could send out a mass of PMs, many more members would be effected by it before the staff can ban them. The same applies to posting.

You can rank up your account by activity, posts, and merit, check here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2766177.0

As for proof of gold, who is your 3rd party audit company? You don't mention any names, just that they are your secure storage partner. And, can you not convert your gold back into Bitcoins? Everything on your site suggests that you can only withdraw your gold value into a bank account or by having the gold mailed to you.