41

Technology / Re: What does "more torque" do to a car's performance?

« on: 16/04/2012 05:58:15 »

I have high hopes of getting more than 110Km extra range, which would be 10% of the total pre-chipping range

Thanks for the feedback.


I hope you're enjoying those extra torques that were promised!

Have you got as far as doing a rough calculation on what the payback period is for the cost of the 'chipping'? Not that it's all about the dosh necessarily, but it's nice to know.

Yes, the extra torques does provide extra driving pleasure
If, for the sake of easy calculations I assume a gain of 10% (which it's likely to become I've noticed), then let's see what the payback period is at current fuel prices:

Before chipping, I spent 85€ to fill up and drove ~1100Km pump to pump (~985 until "low fuel" light turns on, but then I still have 10L)
After chipping with an assumed 10% increase I will spend 85€ to drive ~1210Km pump to pump.
I annually drive ~44.000Km, so I save (44000/1100)-(44000/1210)= 40 - 36.36 (let's stay conservative and take 36.5) = 3.5 trips to the fuel station per year, or 297.5€
Chipping set me back 500€, so payback period is about 1.7 years under fixed fuel prices.

Modifying the engine mapping sounds to me like a very dangerous procedure (financially) professional programmers are known to leave the occasional bug in programs let alone amateurs who do not have all the debugging facilities that the original engine mappers had.

I've been given 3 years warranty on the engine, and 1 year on the gearbox. I'm thinking that if nothing goes wrong in that period, it won't go wrong after that period either? And I can always have it "rechipped" after 3 years just to get an extended warranty and still make profit

42

Technology / Re: What does "more torque" do to a car's performance?

« on: 13/04/2012 13:29:45 »

How's the post-mod mileage testing going BTW?

First empty gas tank increased my range with 85Km until the "Go fill up light" came on, but I had considerably more traffic jam on my commute due to road works.
The tank I'm doing now might be more comparable due to more comparable traffic situation, and I have high hopes of getting more than 110Km extra range, which would be 10% of the total pre-chipping range.

43

Technology / Re: What does "more torque" do to a car's performance?

« on: 10/04/2012 12:23:26 »

Many manufactures may 'lock-out' after-market changes to all but the most basic of these, but subtle adjustments to the maps for just the first three could make a major difference to economy and feel of the car.

Don't know if the 'lock-out' worked though, cause they did take out my ECU and used a soldering iron on it. Maybe they did that to bypass the lock-out to be able to change more parameters.

44

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: What is the temperature inside a Black Hole?

« on: 10/04/2012 12:05:16 »

As soon as it has, assuming that the inside of a black hole have a 'space' too, it should follow a geodesic. Now, when following a 'accelerating gravitational' geodesic, does the object give of heat in a empty space?

I think there will be multiple geodesics to follow as the object will be under such a gravitational stress that it's ripped apart. Now, if a black hole would be a ball of GQP in the centre, the temperature would be at Planck scale, at which point gravity becomes as strong as the other 3 fundamental forces. If we then look at a single atom falling into the Event Horizon, the pull on the atomic nucleus will be much harder than on the electrons, so the atomic nucleus will be absorbed in the ball of GQP well before the electrons who will eventually follow. These separations of nuclei and their electrons might give off radiation, and the collision of the nucleus with the GQP might give off radiation and the subsequent collision of the electrons with the GQP might also give off radiation. Since we're dealing with such extreme conditions, we don't even know if all of these radiations are photon based, but that it could be gluon or W or Z boson based radiation as well. All these processes could generate heat as byproduct, keeping the temperature near or at planck temperature..

45

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: What is the temperature inside a Black Hole?

« on: 10/04/2012 11:02:59 »

It seems a rather meaningless question as the normal definition of temperature does not seem to apply to the insides of black holes but my guess would be the planck temperature of 1.416833 × 10^32°K

... which occurs at QGP

46

The Environment / Re: What will Earth's temperature be in 5000 years?

« on: 10/04/2012 10:51:30 »

I didn't vote since there's no "I have no idea" option.
Anyway, in 5000 years humanity has evolved from biological to mechanical lifeform and agricultural lands will have switched to solar power or wind power farms since all we need for sustainability is electricity.
We'll still be drilling oil but we won't be using it as fuel anymore. We'll use it as motor oil or lubricating oil to maintain our robot bodies

I'm just saying, 5000 years is a long way ahead of us and who knows what'll happen in the mean time..

47

The Environment / Re: Can we get "twice as cold" as 0 degrees C?

« on: 10/04/2012 10:27:00 »

"What is twice as cold as 0 degrees?"     (in ANY scale)

-0 degrees :p

48

Physiology & Medicine / Re: How do memories of dreams and memories of real events differ?

« on: 10/04/2012 08:45:33 »

In other words,  if you have a memory of a dream and a memory of a real event, do they share the same part of the Brain? and if they do how do we tell what memory is real and which is not?

Most of the time we can't remember our dreams. Some nuroscientists think dreams ore nothing but random firings of the sleeping brain. Parhaps all of the imagages we remeber from the dream are only created AFTER we wake up.

When I was 10 or so I found a stray cat under our deck. He was in really bad shape, busted leg, belly split open infested with parasites... While we were trying to decide if we were going to adopt him or put him down I had a dream that my dad had decided to put him down and he made me stab the cat to death with a large nail.

We did end up adopting the cat and he lived with us several years before he contracted feline leukemia. For a very long time I felt terrible guilt about this dream, despite the fact I knew no attack ever took place.

I believe this is a classical example of improper memory pairings. You have probably put a nail in a wooden plank with a hammer, maybe because your dad asked you to do so, and a part of that memory (dad asking, you putting nail in something) crossed and linked with the event of you finding a cat under the porch due to a common factor (maybe the presence of your dad and a similar emotional state of yourself, ie excitement of finding a cat and excitement of you allowed to use a hammer for the first time).

49

Physiology & Medicine / Re: On Memory

« on: 10/04/2012 08:36:03 »

1. One memory is one collection of "trained" or "reinforced" neuron connections, but one neuron can be part of multiple memories/collections. When studying for example, you are training certain connections which make you remember your course when making the exam.
2. Your brain is no two seconds in your entire life anatomically/physiologically the same.
3. Context. Your brain does not store "the incident" as such. It stores the memory of the moment you are watching/reading/hearing about the incident and places it in that context (movie, dream, book, ...). If someone tells you a lie about an incident, and does it convincingly, it will not be stored as a lie since you believe it. But if later, it is revealed that it was a lie, there will be a conflict in your brain and your brain will decide which truth to accept. Schizophrenic patients have trouble in this area.
4. The mechanism of storage will be the same. The locality in the brain will be roughly the same, ie: it will be in the same area of the brain, but not in exactly the same neurons. This is because no two brains are identical anyway, not even the ones from identical twins.

50

Chemistry / Re: Why are streetlights orange?

« on: 10/04/2012 08:22:53 »

And, since it's documented that bees can see into the UV it's fair to say that insects can see and respond to a range of wavelengths which rather brings that assertion "because a lot of bugs respond to specific wavelengths" into question. They can see a broader range of the em spectrum than we can.

There's a difference between "seeing" and "responding to" BC..

As to the How and Why?
Different pollinators (butterflies, bees, hummingbirds, etc...) typically favor different plants in a highly diverse flower garden because they "respond to" them differently (less or more attracted). This brings mutual benefits for plant and pollinator alike. For the pollinator, there's less competition for their favourite flower in a mixed garden. And for the plant, there's a higher chance of pollination if they are the 'favourite kind' of any given pollinator.

Therefore, a sodium light with a narrow spectrum, will still be seen by the animals, but they will not react to them compared to a street light that would emit over a broader spectrum.

51

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Do you believe dark matter is real?

« on: 10/04/2012 08:02:12 »

I voted yes, simply because Black Dwarfs, even though they're hypothetical at the moment, seem legit.

52

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: why is matter not spread perfectcly if it came from a singularity?

« on: 10/04/2012 07:51:13 »

The idea with the balloon isn't that good really for describing it, one has to remember that it only is that outer 'skin' that represents those four dimensions we see. The inner side of the skin has no existing/visible analogue in SpaceTime. But it gives an idea of the 'mechanism'.

Maybe the 'skin' of the balloon only represents the 3 spatial dimensions, and an arrow, perpendicular to the skin and pointing outwards is the time dimension. The balloon is inflated from past to future, and the 'center of the balloon' is 'all the skin at time = 0', more commonly known as 'the singularity'

53

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: What is the temperature inside a Black Hole?

« on: 10/04/2012 07:35:38 »

For me, a black hole is a QGP, so i'd say about tens of trillions Kelvin.

54

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Black-holes and singularities?

« on: 10/04/2012 07:27:01 »

Black holes clearly seem to a  one way route to somewhere else but at the moment no one is brave enough to simulate what happens with the processes that we know and understand just inside the event horizon as black holes are collapsing and just run to this mathematical end game of an infinite density infinite energy "singularity".

I don't think Black holes have infinite density. For me, they're just a giant lump of quarks and leptons held together with a whole lot of bosons. The electrons surrounding the atoms get smacked on the nucleus by gravity to stay charge-neutral, which vastly reduces the size of 1 atom, and thus vastly increases it's density, but not to infinity. I consider a black hole as being some sort of QGP

This is probably oversimplified or even wrong, so I'm happy to read the arguments why my vision of a black hole is incorrect.

PS: If in the future we discover that quarks are made up of even more basic building blocks, I'll change my black hole vision to a giant lump of that new stuff.

55

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / How come Andromeda is moving towards us?

« on: 05/04/2012 09:21:48 »

What explains the fact that all galaxies are moving away from us... except one?
I thought I read somewhere else on this forum that everything's moving away from each other with a speed greater than escape velocity, yet somehow, that didn't work for Milky Way & Andromeda?

56

Just Chat! / Re: Cats & Robotic floor cleaners!?

« on: 05/04/2012 07:38:06 »

And his tail is helping to sweep the floor

57

Chemistry / Re: Why are streetlights orange?

« on: 05/04/2012 07:08:32 »

It must be, because a lot of bugs respond to specific wavelengths, and as your graphs show, the sodium lights only have a narrow output spectrum, so a lot less bugs will be affected..

58

Technology / Re: What does "more torque" do to a car's performance?

« on: 05/04/2012 06:44:59 »

They can't alter pressures or combustion chamber design without mechanically altering the combustion chambers. They might be able to do something with valve timing, but only if the engine has a mechanism to do that, so I think they can only be modifying the fuel/air ratio “map”.

You must be correct cause it seems you know what you're talking about
But I'm sure they can alter some pressures.. It must be the Turbo pressure then..

59

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: can nothing not exist?

« on: 04/04/2012 13:45:50 »

In effect, if you add enough curvature into a specific region, matter should appear.

This is going towards the Photon-only theory...

60

Guest Book / Re: Hello

« on: 04/04/2012 12:17:56 »

Hello!

So sad that this topic has been read 193 times already and I'm the first one to say Hi
Anyway, welcome here, and time does really exist!!! :p