exchemist

This doesn’t seem to make much sense. I can’t see why an infinite past would violate causality. Surely so long as each cause precedes its effect one can have chain of causality as long as one likes? And then, even if infinite past did have problems, surely that would lead people to treat the big bang as a one-off, in order to avoid that issue.

No I didn’t visit those things but they do have an outpost of the Victoria and Albert museum, curiously. Big modern thing on the Tay waterfront, next to Discovery.

Here is a description in English: https://rope-source.co.uk/ropes/how-is-rope-made-a-comprehensive-guide/ This is by a British manufacturer, James Lever, near Manchester. A couple of years ago I visited the surprisingly interesting Jute Museum in Dundee, where among other things they had some of the machinery used to process jute fibres into ropes and other products made from jute yarn. This was the principal industry of Dundee in the c.19th.Apparently the jute industry there took over from processing flax from the Baltic into linen, Britain have used its early Industrial Revolution to become pre-eminent in mechanising the linen industry. Dundee was also at the time a centre of whaling in the Arctic and it turned out that whale oil was ideal for lubricating jute fibres, to enable them to be worked. So a happy synergy for the town. Incidentally, Dundee’s expertise in building ice-proof whalers (with a heavily reinforced wooden bow) was what led Scott to choose Dundee to build the ship Discovery for his first Antarctic expedition, which is now preserved there in dry dock. I had been led to believe Dundee was rather a dump, but in fact I passed a very informative day there.

True, though that was before we came along and started drilling holes in it……😉

Drax has been converted to burning wood pellets I understand, ostensibly making it close to carbon neutral. However there has been a prolonged campaign by Private Eye claiming these wood pellets are far from carbon neutral in reality. I'm guessing that this project could be partly to allay that criticism and partly as a pathfinder project. The steel industry in that part of the world must be a considerable emitter, I'd have thought, even if the blast furnace at Redcar has gone. And in any case, even if the wood pellet burning really is carbon neutral, the net carbon capture can be offset against other net emissions for the governments targets. I remain uneasy about burying CO2 underground. I just have this horrible feeling it will eventually find its way back to the surface. I have not come across any description of mineral chemistry to suggest it would be absorbed by the rocks.

I remember reading about these in the 1960s. As I recall, they seemed to be allowed mathematically, so long at they always travelled at speeds >c. However it looks as if their actual existence has subsequently been dismissed for a variety of reasons. So no, I do not think we are at a turning point for humanity due to speculations about tachyons. Though we may be for other more prosaic reasons, notably climate change.

I don't know much about QFT - and no doubt others will weigh in - but I had always thought the EM interaction between two electrons in QFT is mediated by virtual photons rather than real ones, and that a virtual photon is not a photon. There is what seemed to me, as a non-specialist, a fairly clear review of the distinction by Prof. Matt Strassler here: https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/virtual-particles-what-are-they/ I can't imagine there is anything in QFT that precludes a free (i.e. real) photon being emitted unless an absorber is identified. That seems nuts - what about the CMBR?

This is why the insurance companies are under no illusions that climate change is real. I understand that Jamaica has something called a catastrophe bond. They will need it. As to your question, I expect the fate of Miami will be that of Galveston (which I have visited): A direct hit, monumental damage - and then a half-hearted recovery that knocks the heart out of the place as people move away.

I’ve read his Wiki entry and can’t see why he would be politically sensitive. Nobel for literature, has written about apartheid S Africa in the course of a long and varied literary career, but I couldn’t see anything to trigger concern. Do we know what the intended purpose of his visit was?

OK , this is now sounding increasingly psychiatric. I think you should talk to a doctor, if you haven’t already done so.

You may not be a complete idiot, I grant you. But you have now been given two good reasons why your accusation must be baseless. So maybe not idiotic, but silly at the very least. And you are ranting again. If you go on throwing out this abuse at all and sundry, people will eventually tire of you. It’s a pity, because I was hoping to have a sensible discussion with you about science and religion, as it is a topic close to my heart. But evidently, it is not to be.

Moderators can know. But you are not a moderator.

You cannot know this. Up and down votes are made anonymously on this forum. (Mind you, just because you are paranoid it doesn't mean everyone isn't out to get you. 😆)

But it doesn’t demand everyone has to do all the legwork for himself. That would mean humanity would never move forward by benefitting from work done by others. It is absurd to suggest that relying on an established body of prior knowledge is somehow automatically “ideology”. As for evolution, the evidence for it is enormous. But yes, to recognise that does mean trusting in the work by a lot of other people, not just going out and doing your own DNA analysis or digging up your own fossils.

No. The px and py orbitals are unhybridised in a triple bond. It is the unhybridised p orbitals that form π-bonds. In the carbon atoms on acetylene, H-C≡C-H, each has two σ-bonds at 180 degrees to each other, formed by the sp hybridised orbitals. One of these is to the H atom at the end of the molecule, and the other is between the 2 carbon atoms. That leaves 2 unhybridised p orbitals to overlap sideways on in 8-8 formation, making 2 π-bonds. In summary: sp hybridisation of a carbon atom gives 2 σ-bonds at 180 deg to one another, in a (1D) line. That leaves 2 unhybridised p orbitals to form 2 π-bonds. sp2 gives 3 σ-bonds at 120 deg to one another, in a 2D plane. That leaves 1 unhybridised p orbital to form a π-bond. sp3 gives 4 σ-bonds at 109.5 deg to one another, in a 3D tetrahedron. That leaves no p orbital unhybridised, so no π-bonds.

Yes I suppose I should have qualified my response to indicate I was referring to the on line variety, as mentioned by @CharonY .

Agreed. It’s too silly to spend time on. In fact I think somewhere there is a forum policy that says we don’t waste time on such non-issues.

Because it is sp hybridised instead of sp2. That means s and pz are hybridised (if we take the z axis as being along the line of the bond), leaving both the px and py to overlap sideways on, 8-8 style, as I explained before, but at right angles to one another. This is actually shown in the diagram.

A crank, usually. And by usually I mean practically always.

Sure. That's what people do.

Please let's not fall into the silly trap of reading Genesis, the oldest book in the bible, literally. No mainstream Christian today who has thought seriously about this story would take it that way. This Wiki article is worth reading on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegorical_interpretations_of_Genesis

Ha, I stand corrected! This seems to be a term no longer recommended and for some reason it had entirely passed me by.

Where does the bible speak of "dynamic energy"?

"Neo"? where do you get that from? "Neo" forms no part of the standard nomenclature for these compounds. It is a prefix meaning "new", e.g. neoprene which was, when it was invented in the 1930s a "new" kind of synthetic rubber. Also "propy" doesn't mean anything. I'm afraid I cannot make sense of your question here. Can you try again and this time uses a few more sentences to explain more clearly what it is you want to understand?

OK here is the web link to the paper I referenced: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/people/kettell/cloud/faithless.pdf. Hope you can open this. It's quite readable, unlike so many academic papers. (As for all art being propaganda, I think that's baloney, but then I like Bach, whose instrumental music is abstract. But in any case I was talking about the gospels not being agitprop, so unless you are describing them as art I wouldn't think the aphorism applies.)