Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2007 December 5

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December 5

Company

What is the worlds largest company?thanks --Sivad4991 (talk) 00:14, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Exxon Mobil is the largest by revenue, PetroChina is the largest by market capitalization. MrRedact (talk) 00:28, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Walmart by revenue (among public companies) and by number of employees. Dragons flight (talk) 00:28, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

• This page says it's Exxon this year, with Wal-Mart at #2. I believe Wal-Mart is usually #1, but the oil biz is having a great time lately. I find the distribution of industries in the top ten interesting/depressing:

1. OIL: Exxon Mobil
2. Wal-Mart
3. OIL: Royal Dutch Shell
4. OIL: BP
5. CARS: General Motors
6. OIL: Chevron
7. CARS: DaimlerChrysler
8. CARS: Toyota Motor
9. CARS: Ford Motor
10. OIL: ConocoPhillips

--Sean 14:03, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

What's so interesting and or depressing about it? I would fully expect the top companies to be those with scalable advantage and wide appeal. Since car mfg, retail, and energy fall nicely into those two categories, it's natural that they top the list. What would be depressing is if the list were topped by Halliburton... --Jmeden2000 (talk) 17:32, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Dear Sean, I too thought that the list you provided was self-evidently depressing. Our planet is (and we are) doomed! Saudade7 23:25, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

downhill,luge weight balance

i have a heated battle going on with a friend of mine on how to make our street luges faster.I,being slightly smarter than him had the idea of using physics to my advantage.I was wondering what would be the optimum center of gravity point. i was thinking about a 70-30 ration with the 70 being towords the nose. or maybe a 80-20? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.8.167.136 (talk) 00:25, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

If you're trying to reduce friction, I don't think the weight distribution would matter much. The resistant force of rolling friction is proportional to the normal force, so the total rolling friction is going to be pretty much the same, regardless of how the weight is distributed. Stability considerations would probably outweigh any slight difference in rolling friction. And off the top of my head, I can't think of any other reason why a change in weight distribution would affect your speed. Certainly the force of gravity is the same regardless of where you are on the luge. Why do you think putting more of the weight toward the nose will make the luge faster? MrRedact (talk) 00:42, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

because of those little wooden race cars that i made in the boy scouts that went down a sloping track and when i put more weight in the front it went faster. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gotnse (talk • contribs) 21:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Conventional wisdom is to put the weight as far back as possible, so the weight will stay on the sloped part of the track for a fraction of a second longer. --Carnildo (talk) 22:49, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I thought the reason was to grab additional gravitational potential energy by starting off with the weight being higher up the track so the heaviest part of the car falls a greater vertical distance. But for a street luge this doesn't seem terribly relevent since the shape of the track is unknown. Some of the other techniques used by Pinewood derby cars might be relevent. But in the end, I can't imagine that anything other than reducing the friction of the wheel bearings would have much effect. SteveBaker (talk) 04:01, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Those are the same idea. While a car with its weight in rear and a car with its weight forward are both on the slope, each's center of mass will fall the same distance over time. When the cars hit the flats is when you notice that the one with its weight in rear is still accelerating. That is, it had more GPE to convert to KE. — gogobera (talk) 08:06, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Grab a heavy dumbell, and go do a couple of runs! Of course, you'll want to do several with the weight in each position, so you can average your results to reduce your uncertainty. My guess, for the record, is in consensus with the above: it shouldn't matter where the center of mass is. — gogobera (talk) 07:04, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

In fact, if you've had a course in physics (mechanics), you can draw up a simplified cart with wheels and a center of mass between them. You'll find that the normal force on the front wheel is proportional to (1-l/L), where L is the distance between the wheels and l is the distance from the front wheel to the center of mass. The normal force on the rear wheel is proportional to (l/L). Therefore, the frictional force, f, which is the sum of the frictional forces on the two wheels, doesn't change with respect to where the center of mass is. That is, (1 - l/L + l/L) = 1. If your two axels are the same, that is. I'd concentrate on reducing friction (good lubricant?) and drag (streamlined profile).

If the course levels out at some point before the end, placing the CM as far to the rear as possible (as high above that level point) might let you squeeze out a couple more meters/sec. — gogobera (talk) 08:06, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I get very nervous about applying the standard "laws" of friction in these kinds of practical situation - the real-world situation rarely matches the "high-school" friction law that says that the frictional force is proportional to the mass and that's all. We had a thread about this a while back and I ended up going to a lot of trouble to show skeptics that this 'law' is only an approximation of the truth (and in many cases, a TERRIBLE approximation).

So if (to pick a purely hypothetical example) you had soft rubber tyres on these things - then changing the weight over the wheel alters how much the tyre deforms under the weight - and the continual flexing and unflexing of the tyre as it rotates eats energy and slows you down (this is one reason why you get worse gas mileage in your car with under-inflated tyres). If that were the case here (and this is only an example) - then moving the weight to the center of the luge might eliminate the flexing (a net win) - or distribute it more equally so that more tyres flex (making matters worse). If this 'flexional' loss were not a linear function of the weight over the wheel, there could very well be a reason to move the weight for or aft. Now, I may well be completely wrong - since probably street-luges use hard nylon wheels - but all sorts of parts of the luge might flex like that - you may have much more complex things going on than we can easily imagine. That's not to say that I know the answer - only that an over-simplistic treatment of the problem may produce seriously incorrect conclusions. I think our OP needs to do some controlled tests. SteveBaker (talk) 18:26, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

The factors that I remember being decisive from my days in the Cub Scouts: 1) Lubricate axles. 2) Streamline the shape. 3) Even more than the above, make sure the axles are perfectly straight & perpendicular to the direction of travel. Anything else will have the wheels dragging against the ends of the axle. Of course, I'm not sure how much of the above is applicable to downhill luge. jeffjon (talk) 14:56, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Cold Chills

I have been trying to start the page for Cold Chills Does anyone know why we get chills when we listen to music that affects us deeply or when we have certain thoughts? Thanks,--DatDoo (talk) 02:06, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

We already have a shiver page; we probably don't need one for cold chills. We certainly don't want one called "Cold Chills", because that's incorrectly capitalized. - Nunh-huh 04:01, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

My bad brah...I wasn't really sure how to CAPTALIZE it. do you know how to change??? The shivers page has no info on getting chills from music or inspiration or anything like that.--DatDoo (talk) 04:26, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

The solution would be to add that information to that page, not start another page! Yes, Cold Chills could easily be moved to cold chills, or if you want, I'll delete it at your request and you can add any information you want to shiver. - Nunh-huh 04:30, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I think the OP is not talking about the medical condition but about what the German Romantics (poets, philosophers, biologists etc.) called the "Heilige Schauer" or "Holy Shiver". I wonder if we already have a page on it...Nope - so it is free for you to build/write! Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottfried Herder, Friedrich Schiller, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm von Humboldt, even Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel all wrote things but you will probably need to read some German. Good luck. (By the way, if you Google it, the first hit where the guy is relating it to only courage in battle and sports...he's wrong. It's more subtle that that. It's about the Sublime). Saudade7 23:45, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

The OP isn't describing the reflex response of shivering which "is a bodily function in response to early hypothermia in warm-blooded animals". DatDoo is instead referring to that emotionally triggered response which also results in goose bumps but without the cold stuff. hydnjo talk 05:20, 6 December 2007 (UTC) addendum: Accordingly, the cold chill article has been started to address this difference. hydnjo talk 05:29, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Poorly Defined Triple/Critical Points?

I have seen a number of examples on wikipedia and even in journals of triple points given as "triple point temperature" as in Tetrafluoromethane. What use is this without the pressure of the triple point? Shniken1 (talk) 03:47, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

...left as an exercise to the reader? ;-) Someguy1221 (talk) 04:21, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

...Probably under standard pressure if it is left undefined. Or if the article is talking about an environment in that environment 213.107.86.173 (talk) 21:22, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Unconscious sleep?

Are we unconscious when we are asleep? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cockysht (talk • contribs) 11:38, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Is there any reason why Unconsciousness which is a link from Unconscious doesn't help? Seems pretty straightforward to me... Nil Einne (talk) 12:22, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd have to say no. They're two different things. To be unconscious means that you can't be roused. --Milkbreath (talk) 12:31, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Not necessarily. A person who faints is unconscious but can usually be aroused pretty quickly. Being asleep (which sometimes happens involuntarily, like when watching TV) and being unconscious for other reasons (eg. fainting) are two different ways of being non-conscious. -- JackofOz (talk) 13:41, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

(after e/c) I'd have to say yes. You are not conscious when asleep so.... But (like so many questions) it's probably just a question of definition. The OED doesn't say anything about "can't be roused" for "unconscious", indeed it defines sleep as "The unconscious state or condition regularly and naturally assumed by man and animals, during which the activity of the nervous system is almost or entirely suspended". But the OED is not a medical dictionary, which would no doubt be much more specific.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 13:44, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

"Unconsciousness" / "being unconscious" is a physical state e.g. being in a coma. The "Unconscious", on the otherhand, is an area of one's psyche that is not directly accessible to thought or introspection...e.g. in Freud's psychoanalytical theories. One is physiological; the other is psychical. (Which is not to say that Freud and I aren't materialists). Saudade7 23:57, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes because we are 'not knowing' (the meaning of unconscious)--TreeSmiler (talk) 02:23, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Ah, but do you not know, or do you just not remember? Hard to be sure. I'm fairly certain there have been times I have been asleep, but still able to think and be aware that I'm thinking (not dreaming), and even remember what I was thinking about when awakened shortly afterwards. --Trovatore (talk) 02:27, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

You are not aware of the outside world: therefore you are 'unconscious'--TreeSmiler (talk) 02:29, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

That's a rather restrictive interpretation. If you're aware of anything, external or not, that constitutes consciousness, in the sense that we're most interested in (for example, in the question of whether a machine can be conscious, we don't really care whether the machine's perceptions correspond to any external reality, but only whether the machine has perceptions of any sort). Anyway I strongly suspect that's what the original poster was asking: Are we aware while sleeping? --Trovatore (talk) 02:35, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I quote from our article:

Consciousness is a characteristic of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment. It is a subject of much research in philosophy of mind, psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science.--TreeSmiler (talk) 02:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Do you disagree with this definition?

Note that it's not, strictly speaking, a definition; it tells you something about consciousness, but does not precisely demarcate what is and what is not consciousness. Nevertheless, it's pretty accurate -- it's a list of a bunch of things that can be called consciousness. It doesn't imply that they all have to be present for a state of mind to be considered conscious -- any one of them is sufficient. --Trovatore (talk) 02:46, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Is DNA unique to Earth?

What the arguments (or evidence if it exists), for and against the idea that extra-terrestrial life will be made up of DNA os we know it? Do we expect some variance, or a completely new system of life? What are the scientific implications of being able to interact with life not made up of DNA? Fenton Bailey (talk) 12:54, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Today, no one can say for sure. If the panspermia theory is true, DNA arrived here from "out there" already in operational condition, so we may eventually find DNA other places as well. If DNA evolved here on earth, it may still exist in other places if it is a "pretty-good" encoding scheme (as it seems to be); in this situation, it (or something very much like it) may have independently evolved on other life-bearing planets as well. It's also possible life elsewhere evolved other, completely-different coding schemes for their equivalent of a genome that doesn't involve anything like a four-base double helix. For example, if we are eventually replaced on this planet by self-replicating artificial intelligences, they are unlikely to use DNA as a storage medium.

Atlant (talk) 13:21, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I am afraid this calls for speculation. In anycase would the basic building blocks / storage of alien life even have any greater impact when it came down to interaction or communiction? You require sapience for communication anyway, as for interaction it very much depends on exactly what you intend to interact with. It is a very open set of questions with very speculative answers. Lanfear's Bane | t 13:23, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

• It would be interesting to know if anyone has developed a theoretical genome encoding not based on DNA or RNA (which works, chemically). Such an alternative would answer the question of whether DNA/RNA are the only way to do it. The fact that all the diverse life on Earth is DNA/RNA-based makes me wonder whether it's unique in some way. --Sean 13:49, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

There have been theories about using proteins for storing information.--Stone (talk) 13:58, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Looking back on the history of mankind the most important consequence of an alternative biochemistry of aliens would be that you can't eat them! Humans are only able to do a limited set of transformations in organic molecules and therfore digestion and reusing the molecules of aliens will not work. Bacteria are by far more capable and the would recycle the organic molecules.--Stone (talk) 13:56, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

We have no good reason to expect that extra-terrestrial life will be based on DNA. Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart warn against this sort of restrictive and unimaginative thinking in their book Evolving the Alien. We don't even have a good reason to expect that extra-terrestrial life will be made of matter. However, there is a point beyond which extra-terrestrial life-forms may be so "alien" that we cannot meaningfully interact with them or even recognise them as living beings at all. Gandalf61 (talk) 16:23, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Keep in mind that even if aliens do have DNA, it may be in a different form than is commonly found on Earth. See DNA#Alternative double-helical structures for other ways DNA can be structured other than the familiar double-helix. Also, some organic molecules tend to be left- or right-handed for life formed on Earth. For example, sugars tend to be right-handed, and proteins and amino acids tend to be left-handed. But alien life may have the opposite handedness for some or all of those things, which could make it hard for us to get nutrition from each other's foods. See Chirality (chemistry)#Chirality in biology. So, even if the aliens have DNA, they may still be rather unlike us in other details.

But, regarding your main question, it wouldn't surprise me at all if advanced aliens had transfered their minds from organic brains into mechanical/electronic devices. It would allow them to survive without aging and they could "sleep" during the long interstellar voyages to other worlds. As for interacting with them, well, it might take some time, but some form of communication should be possible, though we may never totally understand each other. -- HiEv 18:47, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

It's also interesting that adenine, a precursor to the nucleoside adenosine, is found all over the solar system and is feasibly created in widespread interstellar dust clouds. It's cool to learn that the buidling blocks of known life can be found well outside planet Earth... — Scientizzle 21:34, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

There are several reasons for suspecting alien life to be chemically similar to life on Earth, and it mostly revolves around what is easiest to do, chemically. Amino acids, nucleic acids, and other simple organic molecules are "easy" to make in many anoxic environments, and some have even been found naturally in space. Further, any presently plausible life form has to compartmentalize itself to confine chemicals inside or outside, and in Eukaryotes, in different intracellular compartments as well. The "easy" way to do this is with water and an amphipathic lipid. This can be done outside of water, but not with anything that's remotely likely to form in an Earthlike environment. So with all of this, it's not to say that alien life is necessarily similar, or even that it's likely to be, but rather that on the conditions of planet earth, our current almost certainly the easiest way for life as we know it to happen. Someguy1221 (talk) 19:05, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

• I recommend this recent article in Scientific American. In addition to chirality (noted above), and changes in amino acids (which could be done with DNA, just not the sort of DNA that we have), this is the proposal that I find the most intriguing: arsenic instead of phosphorus. The result would be stunningly similar to DNA, except that the creatures would find phosphorus to be just as poisonous as we find arsenic. --M@rēino 19:21, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Taxonomy

Is there a classification of animals and plants strictly according to the chemicals and the amounts their body can produce? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.1.143 (talk) 14:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not aware of such. It may not be a very useful way to classify- down at the molecular level, a lot of what's going on inside you, and inside, say, corn, is the same. Friday (talk) 16:05, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

On the other hand it may render relationships such a predator and prey more obvious.

It would be too hard to classify like that too. How could we classify dinosaurs with this system? Our classification system is based on common ancestry, which provides insight to how the animals evolved, and how recent a common ancestor existed between two or more living beings. 64.236.121.129 (talk) 18:22, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Certainly to hard for manual classification. Automated techniques on the other hand such as Optimal classification need only a list of entities and their chemicals.

Junk DNA Part 2

I was wondering if the what's referred to as junk DNA could be the coding for genes that we carry but do not express? Could they be for example some of the genes that your great grandmother maybe had green eyes or your grandfather was really good in math and science, but these traits were not expressed in you, however, they are carried and could be expressed in your child? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.120.83.149 (talk) 15:22, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes and no. So-called Junk DNA is not usually in a form which translates to protein. DNA which codes for a protein has three base pair combinations called codons which code for specific amino acids (which combine in folded chains to form protein). So while much of the junk DNA used to code for something, mutations have accumulated in it so it no longer works (in the sense there are no recognizable codons anymore). The term "junk" however should not be taken to mean it is useless. There is also some reason to think the non-coding sections alter the expression of genes. Other hypotheses have suggested it acts as spacers or buffers to add robustness to mutation. There is more extensive discussion on the junk DNA article. --TeaDrinker (talk) 17:43, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Might I ask a question to the answer; with such variation in sheer size between DNA between different species, how does Evolution treat and discuss this? 81.93.102.185 (talk) 18:15, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Four paragraph discussion in an online book, with some references. Some interesting articles: Cell size as a link between noncoding DNA and metabolic rate scaling, Economy, speed and size matter: evolutionary forces driving nuclear genome miniaturization and expansion.
--JWSchmidt (talk) 19:53, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean the article Evolution, or the field of evolution? Assuming you mean the latter, there are various theories based in evolution regarding the existence and utility of junk/noncoding DNA (see those articles for many of them.) It is also known that birds, for example, tend to have less noncoding DNA than most mammals and reptiles. For example, chickens have about as many genes as humans, however the human genome is nearly three times the size of the chicken genome (see here). It was thought that evolutionary pressure is stronger on birds to lose any unimportant noncoding DNA because evolution strongly favors lighter designs for flight, but more recent research suggests that the reduction in genome size may have happened during dinosaur evolution because smaller genomes meant smaller cells and an elevated metabolism. See JWSchmidt's comment above and Dinosaurs provide clues about the shrunken genomes of birds". It could be that a smaller genome in dinosaurs created the possibility of bird evolution. Also, as the article notes, non-flying birds today have more noncoding DNA than flying birds, so having more noncoding DNA probably has benefits too (as I mentioned above). Does that answer your question? -- HiEv 20:07, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Human eye size

I have studies many people's faces, including my own, and one eye is always bigger than the other. In certain people this feature is more visible than in others. I want to know what causes this irregularity or asymmetry. I know that when I was little, I used to lay on my side while watching TV. Obviously this would have an effect on what eye the body considers more important, and then would adjust its size or position? Also, could it be that if you see closely the whole time (like reading, computer, etc.), the one eye might go back into the cage, and the other might become more pop-eyed? And that if you see far the whole time (like on farms or the countryside) that your eyes might be more equal in size? Just like a binoculars? Please tell me a) what you think subjectively about this, b) what scientific research was done about this and what science says about this, and c) what you think objectively about this (ie give your unbiased opinion based on the facts). — Adriaan (T★C) 15:38, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

If you are concerned about buphthalmos, please seek professional medical advice. As for body symmetry, human bodies are not normally symmetrical. There are many studies that have shown better symmetry is linked to attractiveness. That implies that a lack of symmetry is common. -- kainaw™ 16:00, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

An interesting exercise that is very easy for those with Photoshop or equivalent is to take a photo of oneself (or anyone) where the subject is looking straight at the camera, and to create 2 faces: one with the left half mirrored, and one with the right half mirrored. The hair can be cropped or masked so it looks like the normal hairdo. The two faces often look like utterly different people. Edison (talk) 20:26, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

This is also the reason people find photos of themselves to be such terrible likenesses (NOBODY thinks their drivers license photo looks like them). We are used to seeing ourselves in the mirror - but that produces an image that's flipped left/right compared to a photograph. Just as mirroring a face renders it less recognisable - failing to mirror it when you're used to seeing it mirrored is also every-so-slightly "wrong".

Many years ago, before there were PC's, I was writing a paint program for television studios and we had a very early colour document scanner. We had great fun stealing photographs of people's families from their offices, scanning them and very-subtly "damaging" them to make the people look every so slightly wrong. Since we had no colour printers back then, we had to use a hideously expensive gadget we had for taking large-format polaroid photos of a special CRT - but we could then re-insert the 'damaged' versions back into their frames. The trick was to 'damage' them just enough so they didn't look quite like the real person - but not so much that their owner could tell what we'd done. Mirroring the face was one trick we discovered - and moving one eye or one ear just a tiny fraction away from it's original position such as to make the faces just a little bit less symmetrical. Rotating the nose just a few degrees clockwise or anticlockwise, repositioning the hair out a quarter inch further down to create a 'low-brow' forehead also has a dramatic effect. Since the technology to scan, edit and print photos was unheard of back then, none of the victims could quite believe what had happened. Anyway - you can do very subtle things to a human face and make it wildly ugly or completely unrecognisable...it's another one of those ways in which humans see things in a manner that is completely unexpected.

SteveBaker (talk) 20:57, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Interestingly, there has been some genuine peer-reviewed research into the effect of facial and body symmetry – or asymmetry – on perceived health and attractiveness. A number of researchers have found evidence that we find more symmetric faces more attractive. Our article on symmetry (physical attractiveness) has a number of interesting links. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 21:57, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Something odd I saw on Discovery Channel

I'm hoping somebody can refresh my memory on this. I saw something on the Discovery Channel about 6 years ago about somebody working at Princeton who conducted this odd study where he placed analogue random number generator devices around various parts of the world that reported their histograms on an hourly basis; and he found that whenever there were catastrophic world events (such as 9/11), the histograms indicated that the random number generators were not being as equiprobable as you would expect from a random number generator. I think the point of the study was to investigate the claim that human moods could alter technology. It struck me as rather "out there", but since it was a peer-reviewable, falsifiable study that anyone could reproduce, I don't think it was unscientific per se. Anyway, I hope someone can refresh my memory as to the details; all I remember is that it was conducted by someone at Princeton. Is there an entire community of people who study this phenomenon in a scientific approach? --75.165.55.66 (talk) 16:57, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like Global Consciousness Project. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:00, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Maybe this is it. (Actually, Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab.) --Milkbreath (talk) 17:09, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Not to be confused with the (interesting but fictitious) Hundredth Monkey Effect.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 18:08, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

If it's true - and if it can be reliably demonstrated then it's a little surprising that they haven't claimed their million dollars yet. SteveBaker (talk) 20:41, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) lab and the Global Consciousness Project (GCP) are actually somewhat related, though the PEAR lab has since shut down. Also, there are many criticisms of the methodology used, questions about some of the results, and attempts to reproduce some of the results have had a tendency to fail. While the research is interesting, and has claimed some results, the overall results have generally been overstated in the media and public discussions. The PEAR researchers have been offered the James Randi Educational Foundation $1 million prize if they could reproduce their results twice under controlled conditions (as SteveBaker mentioned above), and they have repeatedly refused to even attempt it (see here for example). All of this makes me doubt the results they have claimed.

Regarding the GCP, they claim that "global consciousness" somehow affects their randomly generated numbers, but instead it looks to me like they are cherry picking their data. For example, during the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake that caused tsunami damage in 20 countries and cost over 200,000 lives, the CGP didn't show any significant difference (see the mean composite of all eggs graph here). In their own analysis of the event (seen here) they show almost nothing during that time of statistical significance (which they show as the blue line with "P=0.05" (5%) on their graphs; note also the arbitrary selection of where they start and end showing data, which affects significance). The only graph on that page that shows a significant change on the day of and following the quake is the final one, but that is merely a chart of the number of hits on their website. However, with things like this, it's usually the case that the hits are remembered and the misses are forgotten, which makes the evidence seem stronger than it really is. -- HiEv 21:03, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I heard these guys (The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) lab and the Global Consciousness Project (GCP)) on a few old Art Bell shows maybe a year or two ago (while I was doing dishes - always a good crazy show to clean house to); I think you'd have to subscribe to their show-downloads (like 6 bucks a month) on Coast to Coast but then you could download all 8-12 hours of the interviews. I am pretty sure they were on with Art and not the new guy George Noory who, as an interviewer, is a tad too fluffy, ADHD, and religious for my tastes. Saudade7 00:10, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

The existance of the Randi's $1 million prize is a great way to debunk a wide range of paranormal claims. Few people can come up with a believable reason to turn down a million dollars for a couple of day's work - and an underfunded college research group certainly cannot. So as long as the prize is still on offer, we may be reasonably confident that not one of these paranormal claims can be trusted. People who refuse to even try the test must not only be unable to demonstrate their effect - but also KNOW that they can't...nobody turns down a million dollars. SteveBaker (talk) 03:45, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Buddha did :D -Shniken1 (talk) 04:06, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, the issue with the Randi challenge (and the reason I guess he's so sure he'll never pay it off) is that as soon as something is provable and repeatable, it's not 'paranormal' in any real sense anymore. Personally, I agree with Randi that self-professed psychics and healers, etc. are either charlatans or deluded individuals, but anyone looking for the million bucks should accept the fact that they're just not going to "beat the system", because the system always moves. It reminds me of an essay by Bertrand Russell where he mentions that the reason many philosophers seem so weird and nonsensical is because as soon as something is proved empirically it becomes science and if it is proved theoretically it becomes mathematics. All that can be left has to be a little wacky. Matt Deres (talk) 18:16, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

No, winning the challenge does not invalidate the challenge. It only has to be "paranormal" as far as Randi is concerned at the beginning of the test. In at least one case (possibly more) he has offered to remove the word "paranormal" from the challenge due to people who said they refused to take the challenge because they didn't want to be associated with the paranormal and that they didn't think their claims were paranormal. Despite the offer to solve the potential applicant's objection, they still refused to be tested. In other words, that argument is just an excuse to avoid taking the tests. -- HiEv 05:39, 9 December 2007 (UTC)