h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Bit of a simple one here (imagine it's a Christmas special where HonestDavies has taken over from Clive the Flying Fry ):

Why would India be a good place to go if you were looking to lose weight? Couple of s and clues will be available if I think they're needed.

>Clive the Flying Fry <



India's a big place. Any spot in particular?

There are several spots all over the subcontinent.

Ah. intriguing.

We're talking weight, not mass, right? So the place to go would be in the water somewhere...

dehli belly

colonic irrigation was invented there

all the various types of tropical diseases that were there during the empire, loads of soldiers diet, usually lost weight and wasted away

dysentry

various vicious types of tape worms

how many

Merry Christmas Taff

Delhi Belly

Tropical diseases

If you can provide evidence for the colonic irrigation claim it'd be worth a QI bonus.

Mala: +3 for reducing weight, not mass.

Now the crucial question is how - water is not the answer.

You'd go and stand on the equator. You're furthest from the centre of the Earth's gravitational field, and therefore weigh less.

B

The Ring Current in the magnetosphere runs horizontally around the globe, (I know this from my Guide Entry research on the 1859 aurora) - and in that instance it affected sensitive equipment in Bombay (Mumbai) - so is it that there is some effect like magnetic currents that off-set the instruments used to measure weight?

Go up a big hill. You'd weigh less and, because of relativity, time would run slower and you'd live longer.

Sorry hygienicdispenser but big hills/Himalayas is a .

Mu, not on the equator, but you're definitely in the right field +1 DGI

Clive, not the Ring Current but take a +6 for teaching me something new.

Bother.

Woo-hoo!

Do they use a different standard to measure a familiar named weight?

do they use troy ounces to weight things

the troy oz. is used to weigh gold and is slightly smaller than a regular oz.

so the riddle which weighs more a ton of lead or a ton of gold actually works as the lead is haevier due to the weighing system

Ah yes, Troy & Avoirdupois (sp?) & the old Q: which is heavier, a pound of feathers or a pound of gold (or was it lead)?

Something subterranean then, like caverns measureless to man

>go and stand on the equator. You're furthest from the centre of the Earth's gravitational field, and therefore weigh less.< (Mu)

>not on the equator, but you're definitely in the right field +1 DGI< (Iago)

>big hills/Himalayas is a .


So not the equator or up a hill and it has something to do with gravity.



Okay, so in Newtonian wotsits is a field so obeys the inverse square law, which explains why moving about within the field are tempting explanations for weighing less

Is it something like the gravity field isn't uniform (I'm thinking like polar magnetic reversals - there's a region of the magnetic field off of S.America called The South Atlantic Anomoly where the 'loops' of the field lines emerge closest to the surface which is measurably vacillating as magnetic reversal draws near.

I don't know if there's anything similar in India.



2nd Alternative is something to do with the thickness of the crust. to the North are those unmentionable mountains were are not climbing up but as the crust buckles up there does it thicken the crust in the tectonic pile-up behind which has some effect on relative mass


3rd alternative is it has something to do with the passage of the Moon, where the two gravity fields interact and there's a neutral point where you weigh less in the competing demands of being pulled by both masses.

There are very few Catholics in India, so they don't have Mass.

Boom, boom.

B