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MigL

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MigL last won the day on December 19 2023

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  • Location
    St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada
  • Interests
    History
    Modern Military aviation
    Computer hardware
    and of course Science
  • College Major/Degree
    B.Sc. Physics
  • Favorite Area of Science
    Physics
  • Biography
    Single, never married
  • Occupation
    Solvay Canada - Phosphine and organophosphorus derivatives production

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  1. Sure. But we know that the military leadership had promised to fight to the last man; I don't think starving hundreds of thousands would have mattered much to them. J Stalin and Mao Zedong starved millions to achieve their goals. I fail to see Airbrush's second guessing of the atomic weapon usage when he has no regrets of having used incendiaries to burn about 100000 people using chemical instead of atomic reactants in Tokyo. Additionally there were 4 fire bombing raids on Dresden, the first of which killed about 25000 people. I would guess the fire bombing of Tokyo and Dresden combined, killed almost as many as the two atomic weapons.
  2. Because of the finite speed of light ( information ), objects ( events ) are separated by time as well as distance. At small distances the time separation is trivial, so we can safely ignore it.
  3. Inflation would have started as a result of the drop from a false zero point vacuum energy due to a symmetry break. The last would have occurred at about 10-35 to 10-32 seconds, at least, according to most Inflation theories, the first of which was A Guth's inthe 80s. At this time, geometry ( and therefore space-time ) would already have 'formed', as that change, from the initial quantum foam occurred at Planck time, 10-43 seconds.
  4. I hate doing laundry, so I take the least amount of time possible, IOW, no pre-soaking; it's a waste of time. Have three different hampers for colors, whites, and 'it doesn't matter'. Dump one of them into the washer with appropriate liquid detergent. Transfer them to the dryer with softener sheet for an appropriate time. You are done; and if a stain doesn't come out, toss that garment, and learn to be more careful next time. After the washing/drying comes the part I hate even more; folding and putting away.
  5. Wheeew ! That's a long post, and I certainly haven't read and digested the whole lot, but if Mordred is willing to give your approach consideration, I can do no less. I'll start with the very first question ... Entropy is proportional to the number of degrees of freedom, or microstates of a system. The universe, pre-Big Bang ( whatever that means ), would have had no degrees of freedom, and only one state, until a possible quantum fluctuation set in motion the Big Bang evolution that results in ever increasing degrees of freedom, microstates, and entropy. Someone should tell Sean Carroll ( in your link ) not to over-think it; it could really be that simple.
  6. This is an example of non-locality, or 'action at a distance'. ( IOW, an effect that cannot be realized with local variables, hidden or otherwise )
  7. I love reading about these little European towns, Eise. I went to Schaffhausen to see the Rhinefalls. My cousin said they were the largest falls in Europe. I was thinking ( to myself "Have you seen Niagara Falls ?". And of course you can't get any lunch between 1 and 5 pm, so we crossed into Germany ( and me without my passport ) on our way to Basel. We stopped at a quaint little town called Waldshut-Tiengen and had a late lunch in what looked like a castle courtyard surrounded by shops and restaurants. My apologies for the veer off track, but I love Southern Germany, much more than Switzerland ( sorry Eise ).
  8. Wow ! I didn't think that survived. Nice post, Eise.
  9. The responses by members indicate that either you did not explain yourself very well, or, you posted nonsense/word salad. When you come back, I suggest not arguing against the 'nonsense/word salad' responses, but rather, take the time to elaborate on your explanation. Please clarify some of your non-standard terms; words have precise meanings in science and using them incorrectly results in perceived nonsense.
  10. Before KJW and Markus make this discussion too mathematical, and the rest of us can only look on, let me put in my two cents. The rubber sheet ( trampoline ) analogy fails because it is 2D, gravity pulls the trampoline down, and we cannot show 4D curvature ( yes I know, KJW and Markus, except mathematically ). You would need to imagine trampolines above the mass, on all sides of it, and even extending into past and future. And all of those are not pulled down by gravity. Can, or is, space-time really curved ? All we know is our model does a very good job of describing how test masses act in space-time, by using the curved geodesics that ascribe curvature to our model. And that's why I never engaged full-time 4 wheel drive with my Jeep Grand Cherokee on firm, dry surfaced roads.
  11. Just to clarify. The matter dominated era comes later; the first era was radiation dominated. What later became matter, with mass, was originally all massless radiation ( possessing the property of energy ), because the Electroweak force had not decoupled yet for the Higgs mechanism to give mass to Fermions, This would have been when the observable universe was in causal contact ( light/information has time to traverse it ) in order to establish an equilibrium that ensures isotropy and homogeneity, prior to a vacuum energy driven inflationary period that expanded that observable universe many many orders of magnitude. See Alan Guth, Electroweak symmetry break, and Inflationary Theory.
  12. The theory for the fission bomb was already well established, but some of the parameters could only be obtained by experiment. The problem is that the experiment consumes a large amount of fissile material. As it was, the Americans were already hedging their bets, because they didn't know which system would work ( better ? ). E Fermi had already shown how to produce Plutonium from large amounts of Uranium in the reactor in Chicago; the other approach was liquid thermal diffusion of a Uranium compound to enrich it. The fissionable material for the bombs, Plutonium and enriched Uranium, was produced at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. That is where the 'heavy lifting' was done. Given the fissionable material, and some resources, even a shmuck like me could design a simple fission bomb. Other complications are arming and delivery of the weapon without it doing unintended damage. The Germans were well ahead of the Americans in the late 30s in the theory aspect, but by 1940 A Hitler had conscripted many of Germany's leading scientists; others, mostly Jewish, were either purged, or escaped to America. Hitler's advisors overestimated the time needed to develop a fission bomb, and he refused to devote manpower and resources to such a project, assuming it would not be ready in time to make a difference in the war. He did authorize development of a reactor, but even that was small scale, and used inefficient heavy water moderation instead of graphite. Japan was given a chance to surrender, but the military leaders had promised to oppose an invasion of the Japanese mainland to the very last man. It would have resulted in much higher casualties on both sides. As Swansont noted, even fire bombing Tokyo, and the first A-bomb drop, was not enough to convince them. You know what they say about 20/20 hindsight, armchair quarterbacking, the fog of war, and losing opportunities by second guessing, don't you ?
  13. Also a good description of the global warming mechanism. Earth absorbs radiation of a certain wavelength ( temperature ) and re-emits it at a much lower wavelength ( temperature ) that is intercepted ( absorbed and emitted ) by greenhouse gases, leading to a higher temperature equilibrium.
  14. A lot of people have 'personal demons'. Once the Church used to deal with such issues; nowdays Psychology and Psychiatry do the same. The term 'personal demons' is used to describe mental issues/conditions that lead to destructive personal, or social, behavior. Why do people want, or choose, to interpret what is clearly the time-specific allegory of the Bible, as fact ?
  15. At first I thought it was some kind of Political analogy, when talking about 11 different states, and defending/going to war for them. But no, ... just another person confused about his/her sexuality.
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