Comments on: LlewTube

By: jonwade

jonwade — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 03:59:16 +0000

£1.5 billion spent on homoeopathy each year in Europe? Mad. And they are just sugar pills. Not even sugar coated vitamin pills, just sugar.

By: ftv

ftv — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:17:02 +0000

The gravitational field of the moon is in fact much stronger than the field of a person sitting next to you.

The gravitational field is given by G*M/r² where G is the gravitational constant (6.673*10-11 m³/(kg¹ s²)), M is the mass of the body producing the field, and r is the distance from the body. The force on another body is proportional to this field.
So if we want to know the ratio of the moon’s force to Robert’s force, we just calculate
M_moon/M_robert * (r_robert/r_moon)².

M_moon = 7.35*10²² kg (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon)
r_moon = 3.84*10⁸ m (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_distance_%28astronomy%29)
M_robert = 80 kg (just approximate values)
r_robert = 1 m

These values give a ratio of about 6000. This means that the gravitational pull of the moon is three orders of magnitude higher than the pull of Robert.
However, this is still no evidence that the moon should have a significant influence on us but it shows that we should be skeptical towards the arguments of skeptics.

By: pv

pv — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:37:43 +0000

Dr Aust I read your comment immediately after I watched Ben on Carpool. Obvious error on my part and am humbly apologetic!

By: Dr Aust

Dr Aust — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:53:18 +0000

I meant in the little written preamble, pv.

By: mash

mash — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:34:31 +0000

nice hat!

By: AntibodyBoy

AntibodyBoy — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:29:01 +0000

Nerdy pedant mode: his show is called “Carpool”; llewtube is just a gag on the video pages.

By: pv

pv — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:59:30 +0000

Dr Aust said,
January 19, 2010 at 12:57 am
“You didn’t mention Baroness Greenfield, Ben!”

I thought he did, and mentioned her computer games too!

By: Quick2kill

Quick2kill — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 02:18:57 +0000

brian cox is not exactly unerringly accurtate btw. you could do a few articles on some of the stuff he says.

By: Dr Jim

Dr Jim — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 02:14:40 +0000

Great format for an interview, and good range of topics.

Though I feel for Robert when you broke out the:

“This egg sandwich does actually smell like a fart.”

Hehehe

By: Dr Aust

Dr Aust — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:57:13 +0000

You didn’t mention Baroness Greenfield, Ben! The chat with her is actually a bit dull (at least to me), though there is a now oddly poignant (or ironic, if you prefer) bit where they drive past the RI and SG tells Llewellyn about what they do there.

By: pv

pv — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 23:10:03 +0000

Great! I enjoyed that. Ten years might be a bit excessive, but a couple of hours of chat would have been good.
Don’t agree though that the motivation of chiroquacks or homeoquacks is so unimportant with regard to their attempts to get their critics to “shut up”. I would have thought their motivation is the one thing that should be exposed.