sethoflagos

Ask yourself what the phrase "went up 50 points" actually means. It means the narrator believes his audience is too stupid to understand the actual units, how the increase relates to a normal healthy range, and how that translates to a quantifiable increased risk of serious disease. I have fairly frequent blood tests for other reasons, but have never had my cholesterol level flagged despite getting most of my protein from eggs (I probably average about two a day). So I'm comfortable with dismissing this video as somewhat offensive, partisan rubbish. Those who do have high cholesterol levels should heed the advice of a qualified medical practitioner who has properly assessed their health condition.

If you work it through F = ma becomes F = density x area x velocity^2 / 2. Divide by area and you get the pressure rise acting on the windward side of the wall. On the downwind side the reverse happens, air is accelerated back up to wind speed creating a partial vacuum. The nett force on the wall is 2F (give or take).

Yes, though the full belt can be traced from the Algarve to Bohemia (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variscan_orogeny)

The ophiolites I've personal experience of, the Lizard complex and Ballantrae complex are pre-Mesozoic (associated with the Hercynian and Caledonian orogenies respectively) and extensively altered. But some of the rocks are absolutely gorgeous, especially the serpentinites.

No I don't. The initial heating and cooling effects are one offs. A small amount of heat transferred between two bodies at the cost of some of your initial potential energy. If you try to make use of the temperature difference in any way, the machine will compensate until all its initial potential energy input has been consumed. And then it stops.

Cyprus has one of the world's best exposed ophiolite sequences (uplifted oceanic crust), the Troodos Ophiolite.

Absolute energy values are irrelevant - it's the changes that matter. The change in potential energy of the ball between highest and lowest points of travel determines the change in internal energy of the gas at those positions which in turn determines the maximum temperature change of the gas. dU + dEP = 0 is not a really hard sum to solve. Yes it's a sort of simple refrigerator. It's also a sort of simple harmonic oscillator with potentially minimal damping. So it's also a candidate for perpetual motion machine of the third kind. No, it won't run 'forever' but stating that there is finite limit to how long such a device could remain in motion would be a falsehood.

The little bit of energy you put in to get it running in the first place. If you deny the necessity of this then fine. Just produce a refrigerator that operates continuously with no energy input and we can continue the conversation. Until that happens then words are just words. No science here.

Okay, we're agreed that with a little initial energy input we can cycle indefinitely between two temperature states. Okay, I'll accept that obscure terminology can be a bit confusing. Let's avoid the unnecessary and cut to the important bit. I accept 100% that starting at uniform ambient temperature and given that little initial energy input, it is possible to produce a hot body and a cold body. Not impossible at all. Most of us have access to a refrigerator.

Many wind musicians (especially trumpets) are occasionally called on to 'fluttertongue' which is produced by rolling the tongue. Some find it harder than others (depending on their mothertongue as much as anything else) but most seem to get the hang eventually.

To the extent that if a machine exists that lost half it's 'bounce energy' in a week, there's every reason to suspect that with a little more investment that performance could be extended. And so on. You're adding heat to a closed system so the temperature rises throughout the cycle until there's no more incoming heat. And the expansion has hit your compression ratio so you don't see on the hot side what you've lost on the cold side.

Focus on the 'bouncing ball' assembly in the middle of the apparatus. If there are no losses from the system, the cycle can be described by the equation: U + EP + EK = constant where U is the instantaneous internal energy of the gas and proportional to it's temperature; EP is the instantaneous potential energy primarily due to the height of the ball in the tube, and EK is the system bulk kinetic energy realised in the instantaneous velocity of the ball. At rest, everything is at ambient temperature, the ball is stationary with no kinetic energy, and at some intermediate position where its mass is supported by the air pressure beneath. To start the process either the ball must be raised to the maximum height, minimum temperature position, or depressed to the minimum height maximum temperature position, and subsequently released. Both these actions require a significant input of work. The system can in principle then continue to oscillate between these points cycling between high and low temperature (either side of ambient) moreorless indefinitely. No physics is being broken so far. The problems happen when you try adding or removing heat to/from the device. The stored energy used to start the machine runs down. There is no free lunch.

No. The 1st Law treats W & Q as equivalent. The 2nd Law was introduced to help explain their observed differences. eg why it is possible to convert W into Q completely while the reverse is not true.

You claim to derive the 2nd Law from the 1st Law in this (unreviewed?) reference. However to do this you rely on the relation dU = dQrev = TdS, which is a 2nd Law statement. Therefore your claim is undermined by a very obvious fallacy.

One picture that I found comfortable is to firstly accept that the paths taken are simply governed by a form of least action (via Fermat's Principle of least time) - which I think is one way of saying that any potential deviation from Snell's law would be corrected by wave interference. Then taking a first law view, the total energy of the incoming light is transformed at the interface into a composite package of equal energy that now includes some level of induced motion in the local lattice electrons. This package, if viewed as a particle in its own right, now has some albeit small mass and therefore must adopt a sublight speed appropriate to the amount of 'baggage' it's now carrying. When leaving the medium the lattice field reclaims its baggage and returns its borrowed energy back to the reconstituted photon which continues on its way. I'm sure there's some phrasing here that I've got wrong but at least it's a process I can picture.

Much of what you say is correct which is why they got ignored for over a century. Compared to IC engines, they're more amenable to renewable energy resources (such as solar collectors etc); they can be very quiet; and as static devices they're quite competitive in cost with IC up to ~100 kW.

That's the most popular theory for what happened to Mars ~4 billion years ago.

Okay, so what would happen to say a waterworld planet tidally-locked to a red dwarf star. Could it be possible for a permanent iceberg to form on the dark side so large that it occupied a substantial proportion of the planets volume? If so, then gravity via buoyancy forces would seek to maintain a substantial elevation difference between the two hemispheres. As it happens, other issues might come into play such as ice changing phase to a higher density structure at depth could well be a limiting factor. But going back to Mars, the southern hemisphere is 2-3 km higher in elevation on average than the northern hemisphere for reasons no one seems entirely sure of. This would be consistent with the two hemispheres somehow having different average densities, though there are other possibilities.

Interesting thoughts. If we take the Martian volcano Olympus Mons as an example: a 22 km high pyramid of basalt formed mainly around 3 billion years ago that is certainly taking its time to dissipate. If vulcanism were somehow to restart on Mars, might it not follow the old channels and lines of weakness and extend Olympus Mons even further from isostatic equilibrium? Gravity may always be there lurking in the background, but if changes to surface topography are dominated by 'random' events (asteroid impacts are another obvious example) the long term trend towards regularity may not be apparent. Elsewhere in the solar system I think the 396 km diameter Mimas is the smallest body with a gravity strong enough to deform itself. On the other hand, isn't a sphere the optimum shape of a given volume for collision avoidance? That may provide some statistic bias towards 'roundish' shapes for smaller bodies.

And after so many years what do you have to show for all this effort but lame excuses for your failure to produce one single testable data point to back up your wild claims. Compare with the test results presented in the attachment. Hirata et al..pdf

Yet those best placed to make a fortune if there were any merit to your ideas decided that you were unemployable. And judging by the way you persistently misrepresent what I and others have actually posted here, perhaps they were having issues with your honesty too.

Your not in the kitchen, Tom. The adults won't let you play there any more will they because of what you did.

It's a few years since I measured sodium's cross-section to neutrons at Risley experimental reactor. When did you publish your refutation of https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4482648, 'Evaluated Neutron Cross Sections of Sodium-23 for the ENDF/B File', USAEC, 1968.

There are quite a few mammals that typically will not survive into a second breeding season in the wild. Many, if not all of these can live for over two years in captivity, the Common Shrew included. So 'life span' is very dependent on context. The shortest average lifespans may simply reflect the highest predation rates rather than the animal's ability to survive longer if not preyed upon. The Common Shrew is often cited because it is a familiar animal to many in an influential part of the world. More so than say Mullers Giant Sunda Rat (Sundamys muelleri) of SE Asia which may be a better contender for some particular interpretation of your question. In many cases, there simply isn't enough research data available to provide any sensible answer. Long and the short: nobody knows (whatever you've read elsewhere on the internet).

Of course, there is cause for more optimism in some parts of the world, Ken. But when I see oil companies deliberately throttling back their domestic gas production, forcing power stations off the grid so that they can sell their premium priced imported gasoline to a population now dependent on their small inefficient generators, I think I'm just seeing callous exploitation. By US and EU companies with US and EU shareholders. Yes, the indigenous companies do the same but they're following practices long established by their 'former colonial masters'. I tend to plan for the worst likely outcome which sounds pessimistic but isn't really. Things often work out not as badly as that and I think that helps maintain a positive frame of mind. A certain situation may have a certain limited number of potential outcomes. You can acknowledge them and estimate their relative likelihoods without assigning an emotional value to each. Helps keep confirmation bias at bay. Applying this to the OP, we know that the climate is going to follow some trajectory within the spectrum of the various predictions of the climate models. Whatever our intellects and emotions tell us about the preferred trajectory and whether or not it can be achieved, it is clear that there are likely to be significant changes coming. My duty of care therefore became an issue of how well I'd equipped my children with the ability to adapt to a changing environment. And theirs in turn is to do the same as they raise our grandchildren. And I agree with you on revolutions. I wasn't making a serious case for it. I'd just been wondering what the possible outcomes might be if a former imperial power tried to transform itself back into the 'Golden Age' of the 1920s.