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  2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2907586/ states that 'possibly endosymbiotic' rod-like methanogenic prokaryotes were seen in close proximity to the hydrogenosomes during scanning electron microscopy. If so then perhaps the circle is closed at least in part by the reasonably exothermic (and biological carbon fixing) of CO2 reduction by H2.
  3. Sorry to disappoint, but I recognised it immediately: The speed is the speed of the plane. It was 'a close encounter of the daily kind'. Blow it up in a cool place on a hot day (inside your home or in the shadow), bring it into the sunlight, until it lifts and let it go, and you will never see it again. From this Swiss site. Costs 12 Swiss bucks. What a fuzz about a funny, but physically interesting toy. I once 'launched' one. Ah, there is even a wikipedia article bout it: That was a fast +1, Moontanman. Small correction: blow it up on a cool but sunny day. Obviously there also much bigger ones...
  4. I’ve just had some new windows fitted which have argon between the two layers of glass. I can’t find a good explanation for this on line. I would expect the heat capacity to be lower than for air, as argon is monatomic, but this does not seem likely to be relevant. Would argon conduct heat less well and if so, why? Some “explanations” say the higher density of argon is an advantage but I can’t immediately see why. I can see that an inert gas would not react over time with components of the frame and seals, but this does not seem to be the chief reason for its use. Lower heat and sound conduction seem to be the reasons given, but why would this be? Does anyone know?
  5. Ok, let's consider a modified Hafele-Keating experiment: The stay-at-home twin would be in a tower, at the equator, and the traveling-twin would fly around the Earth, over the equator, at the same altitude as the stay-at-home twin (in order to have the same gravitational time dilation). The Earth is not spinning and flat, with mirrors placed all along the equator. The twins would see each other in mirrors, exactly as described in the classical, linear, experiment. Now, at the opposite side of the Earth (from the tower), the travelling twin turns the telescope from backwards to forwards, and by this action he is changing his perception from moving away to moving towards the tower twin. In this case there is no acceleration (change in velocity), no actual turning back, but the difference in ageing would be the same as he turns back with instant change in velocity and direction, like in a relay version. To me, this is yet another indication that: for the differential aging in the twins' paradox, not the acceleration, nor the frame change.
  6. Today
  7. Recent headline the teenage boy in me noticed today...

    TRUMP DEVASTATED BY PECKER IN COURT

     

  8. Interesting, I honestly thought hydrogen in the form of protons was the energy of the cell, I seem to be lost in the bushes on this. I know there are bacteria that produce free hydrogen as part of their metabolism and bacteria that use free hydrogen as an energy source and give off methane as waste and of course there are bacteria that consume methane... brings back memories of why I was so obsessed with biochemistry in high school. I love the complexity and order of chemistry.
  9. I think it's interesting that different countries have different attitudes about this phenomenon. France seems to have the most progressive attitude with serious research being done via actual experts being employed by the government to investigate sightings. The USA seems to have to have the most repressive systems that appear to be geared toward ridiculing the sources to poison the well rather than investigation to find the truth... interesting how the same subject is treated by different schools of thought. Investigate the sources or ridicule the sources... which is scientific?
  10. Not my analog, my point being that while the knowledge is out there, no one is going to throw away the ability to wield even if it has to be a secret. The gun analog is delt with by game theory, which is not applicable here.
  11. So "zombification" by AI is like this post, where you let AI software analyze my post and then answer for you with these tasteless, generic, mindless observations? "As we navigate the challenges" we have to remember to talk and act so the future will be better? Thanks, AI, for NOTHING.
  12. Driving across the US and back at highway speeds accumulates a couple of nanoseconds of time dilation. Most can ignore it, but if you’re transporting an atomic clock (as part of a calibration effort) you have to account for it. The quality of the clock matters, too.
  13. Yes, that's why I asked Markus Hanke:
  14. As I understand it, waste. The overall process has to release energy to make ATP from ADP, as it is ATP that is the principal energy molecule driving biochemical processes. I believe I read once that the gas in farts contains a lot of hydrogen, presumably from anaerobic metabolism by gut microbes. A schoolmate once collected some over water in the bath and claimed he set light to it. Whether it gave the characteristic “squeaky pop” of hydrogen was not clear however.
  15. I think this is where a misunderstanding arose, as the discussion shifted away somewhat from the OP. I take your and @toucana point as to where the thread started, so I didn't make clear that I thought the thread had moved a bit and was trying to follow that. My point goes to the substantial difference (especially re the fate of Earth's supporting ecosystems) between any nuclear exchange and all the other historical forms of massive death you described. I won't rehash that, but anyone who wants to review previous posts is welcome to. I agree there is a legitimate moment of self-defense in a war, but I tried (and failed) to make some points as to how a nuclear "defense" can ultimately kill so many people who are not attacking. Therein lies the problem of proportionality, as well as Geneva issues, plus the migration of radionuclides and weather effects to friendly nations, also addressed by me and others. Again, I didn't communicate well that I see this as more than just a form of the Trolley Problem, because of the unique implications of annihilating an entire (or several entire) cities (and what that opens up, in terms of a larger war). We don't have to explore them here. I gave it a shot, but will step aside so others can resume with the original question.
  16. But that’s a velocity-induced blueshift. The acceleration is incidental; you’ll see that blueshift regardless of the acceleration details.
  17. OK, I notice your comment. All seems fair and representing today's cosmological physics. Also very distinct and compact expressed. For my own ideas of the cosmological evolution, I'll express them in the Speculation section. Just very interesten in cosmology and physics in general, and in a "layman" level.
  18. What is the significance of the H2? Is it fuel, waste, or something else?
  19. Ok, but the context was the twin paradox and the blueshift observed at the turnaround. The blueshifted signal originated from Earth, clearly not local. Ok, so why did you offer the equivalence principle as an explanation for the blueshift there, in the twin scenario discussion? Anyway, the mentioned/linked discussion was closed and I don't intend to continue/reopen it here. All I wanted here was to make this observation:
  20. Indeed, I suspect that it's a Wall-E type imagining of our future, with AI doing all the hard work; the issue with that is, not everyone is lazy enough to just sit there and not think at all. I have to disagree: he doesn't suggest one is better than the other, just that the Übermensch can see what other's can't and the great man/woman can teach/show us all a way to understand the path to peace in ourselves. I have a thread on this, let's discuss this in a more suitable forum.
  21. Yes it is more like a loop but plants don't feed off living things (most plants anyway, there are exceptions such as the Venus Fly Trap.) Plants only feed off sunlight and nutrients from the ground, and are eaten by animals, which then might be eaten by other animals and so forth. Thus all the food in the food chain, or food loop or food web or however you want to look at it, can all be traced back to the plants. It was high school biology. High school is where I took biology, in college I studied psychology and physics.
  22. If we had a snail's pace (with no extra acceleration or deceleration) the difference in the clocks would be similar or identical but ,as an example it could be a billion years as against a billion and one years , depending on a great distance and a slow speed.Make sense? It only stands out as remarkable when the speeds are relativistic.
  23. I have some 10mm X 2mm, I think N52, suitable for this device.
  24. The first two paragraphs are accurate enough. It's more accurately described by As a result of expansion particle fields including the Higgs field drop out of thermal equilibrium in accordance to thermodynamic ideal gas laws involving tempersture/ density/ pressure and volume relations. Once the Higgs field drops out of equilibrium particles acquire mass leading to electroweak symmetry breaking. All particles and particle fields has a temperature contribution As for any personal proposals this isn't the section for that. If you choose to pursue personal ideas and a personal hypothesis our rules require that gets done in our Speculation forum. We may not currently know the cause of the cosmological constant. It may be quantum fluctuations due to the Heisenburg Uncertainty principle of the quantum harmonic oscillator which all fields are effected by. Or it may be the Higgs field. There is plenty of research papers suggesting either possibility however nothing is conclusive enough to make any determination between those two possibilities
  25. The title of the OP in this thread was “Why use the atomic bomb on Japan ?” which seemed to me to be about the strategic military thinking and realpolitik of using such a novel weapon to end WW2 in August 1945 - (as opposed to pursuing a devasting war of attrition that might not have ended until 1947). All of those points have already been answered in detail in this thread quite a while ago imho. At some point the discussion then seems to have became a version of the thought experiment known as ”The Trolley Dilemma”. It might be instructive in this context to read a recent study by Exeter Business School which evaluates how different cultural groups - especially Asian ones - evaluate sacrificial dilemmas of this type, and can come to markedly different conclusions and ethical judgements in doing so. https://phys.org/news/2020-01-trolley-dilemma-sacrifice-person-culture.html To me it seems that arguments about ‘Few’ or ‘Many’ deaths descend into a form of Sorites Paradox (Greek σωρός - ‘a heap’) which is a type of [N-1] problem. At what point does a ‘heap’ of sand stop being a ‘heap’ if you repeatedly remove one grain of sand from it ? It’s a type of argument that relies on vague predicates. At what point do ‘Many ‘ deaths become “Few’, and when do you reach a moral tipping point which renders that value ‘acceptable” ? https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox/ Moral philosophers can pursue this type of debate almost indefinitely - but it’s rather different from the one raised in the OP.
  26. ... yep. And make sure you don't let them clash together. Either they will break, because they are very brittle, or you have to remove them sideways with pincers. And I imagine assembling them into a bigger contraption might be very difficult, due to their magnetic strength. I only know this address in Switzerland, ordered a few of them: https://www.supermagnete.ch/
  27. Yes. The time dilation does not happen at some event or events along the ship's worldline, but rather accumulates along the entire worldline. You can have a wild worldline with accelerations, decelerations, turning back and forth, etc., like this, for example: You divide that line into infinitesimal straight segment. On each segment, the proper time of the traveler is \[d \tau^2 = dt^2-dx^2\]. Then you integrate, \[\int{d \tau}\] to obtain the total time of the travel on the traveler's clock. Just a matter of calculation, see above.
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