exchemist

The latter point is what I too suspect, to do with ion sizes. But I’m not a mineralogist. We need to check what these abundance numbers mean. Do they include the oceans or not?

Yeah but the point is why would rainfall deplete Na more than K by a factor of 30, given that there are similar amounts - within a factor of 2 or so - in the Earth's crust to start with, and both form equally soluble cations, more or less.

Aha, that makes a difference, certainly! But there is a factor of 30 to account for.

Well those numbers are certainly different from the ones I had found. But even so, if you look further down in the article, at the graph for abundance in the upper crust, which is where the minerals in the sea would be leached from, the difference seems to be considerably less. Here's another source also suggesting levels of the two in the crust are comparable: https://pressbooks.lib.vt.edu/introearthscience/chapter/3-minerals/. Ah. Maybe I'll have a look into that later - I need to go and cook a kedgeree for supper.

Interesting question. I see the abundance of K in the earth's crust is similar to that of Na: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Tables/elabund.html . Both are of course alkali metals with many soluble salts. I have a feeling it may be to do with the stability of complex minerals containing K, e.g. aluminosilicates. Perhaps the greater ionic radius of K+ forms more energetically favourable lattices , or it is harder for the larger ion to migrate within minerals and eventually be leached out by water. But I confess I am guessing. I would be interested to know the reason. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable can comment.

Yes that's the thing. A photovoltaic device induces a non-equilibrium population of electrons and holes in a semiconductor from excitation by absorption of photons, which creates an electrical potential and can do electrical work as the population is restored to equilibrium. At the moment I can't see how this antenna produces a non-equilibrium situation.

I've just caught up with this discussion and I agree about the apparent Maxwell's Demonish nature of the explanation on Wiki. The problem I have with it is just as you say, that the arriving photons are not in phase so there won't be any coordinated flow of electrons induced. All you will get is an increase in their thermal, i.e. uncoordinated) kinetic energy. The diode aspect of the device would seem to have to work at the level of individual photon-induced excitations. I am reminded of the "Brownian Ratchet": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_ratchet But I would be most interested if someone can point out what I am missing.

That is being kind. This is Quantum Woo. Belongs in Religion rather than Physics, at best. Is Deepak Chopra involved? 🤪

We've been through the black hole thing. I pointed out there is no inconsistency in what Hawking said. But you've ignored it, being the aggressive and slightly mad idiot you clearly are. Enough of this tomfoolery.

Eh? Research is done all the time on transient phenomena. If there is doubt about the results, someone can repeat it to confirm it. In science, what happens is that the researchers write up the experimental procedure and their findings in great detail, precisely so that it can be reviewed and challenged by suitably qualified people in the field, and so that other researchers can try to replicate it. Here is a history of the first entanglement experiments: https://scitechdaily.com/first-experimental-proof-that-quantum-entanglement-is-real/ You will see from this that entanglement experiments have been done from as early as the 1970s.

What I am still not sure about is the lattice vibration thing, i.e. phonons. The article I read mentioned absorption in the far IR, which shades off into the microwave region. I presume that in a large crystal there will be a huge range of states, the longer wavelength ones having a pretty low excitation energy. But whether microwaves can excite these seems a bit hazy so I’m guessing a bit. Regarding rotation, molecules in liquids can of course rotate, but each rotation will get interrupted by banging into neighbours so you end up with an incoherent mess of absorptions from all kinds of dipole-induced excitation that can’t really be said to due to any specific degree of freedom. What I am fairly sure of, though, is that the classical stretching and bending modes of covalent bonds need photons of IR frequency to stimulate them.

Yep, I don't use it much for defrosting, except things like soup where you get it started and then tip into a pan to heat through. Interestingly I once bought some frozen quails stuffed with foie gras at Picard, the frozen food chain in France. These they recommended you cook in a pan from frozen! By the time the outside is golden and the quail is cooked, the foie gras in the centre is nicely defrosted, without getting too hot and all melting out! They were in fact delicious. Also bought some frozen Burgundy snails, to be cooked in the oven on the same principle. Only the French............. Getting them back from France before they defrosted was the challenge. Possible if bought at Calais with a cool box and you jump on the shuttle. Not feasible now that we go on the ferry from St Malo (8hr crossing).

I'd like to experiment with an ice cube. As that is only frozen water, in theory it should only absorb a few very low-lying lattice vibrational excitations. But I imagine once it starts to melt it will go a lot faster.

I've been looking into this a bit today. It seems that in the liquid phase, pure rotations of water are quenched by the transient weak intermolecular bonding, but a broad band of microwave absorption is still present due to the breaking and forming of these weak bonds. Also it is not just water that absorbs, since other polar molecules can also be affected by the radiation. I imagine this is important in defrosting food, since molecules in ice itself will not be able to absorb, as they are bound in fixed positions. However, there may be lattice vibrations that are low-lying enough to be excited. So it's actually quite complicated, apparently. I have found, the hard way, that some crockery can heat up very rapidly in the microwave oven, to the point of cracking the glaze, whereas other (white) crockery stays cold. I suspect some of the dyes in coloured glazes may absorb, or something.

I think it will be rotation. You would need IR to excite stretching and bending vibrational modes, surely?

No I have never heard this ballocks. But then I bought my first microwave oven decades after leaving university, so I would have been fairly impervious to such myths.

OK thanks for running up the Jolly Roger. Now we know what we are dealing with. Once again the Galileo Gambit proves to be an accurate litmus test. If we ever have a thread on QAnon, we'll look forward to your contribution with great interest 😄.

This has nothing whatever to do with the point at issue. The entanglement experiment has been done. Nobody is going to lie about that.

Well you did actually, saying you questioned things as Galileo did. Be that as it may, my point stands. The experiment has been done. It’s fair for you to ask how the various difficulties that bother you were overcome. But to suggest that people may be in the grip of some false established narrative, enforced by a powerful organisation like the government or the medieval Catholic church, because that is what your comparison with Galileo implies, is bonkers.

I'm just amused that you compare yourself with Galileo, which is one of the classic symptoms of crankery on forums such as this. In this case, though, you are not even advancing a half-arsed alternative theory, but arguing it is impossible to do an experiment that has already been done. So it's as if Galileo had spent his time disbelieving in the European discovery of the potato, when there were already potatoes actually being grown in Europe. 😄

BINGO! The Galileo Gambit!

You could put a water wheel in it and get some power out, perhaps enough to light some LEDs.

Actually no, that is not what I am saying. Be careful not to make sweeping simplifications or you will get entirely the wrong idea. But it is interesting you make this mistake, as it is an assertion that one sometimes finds creationists making*, so it may be quite a common misconception. First, the word "chaos" is not one I used. I spoke of degrees of "disorder", or of "dispersion of energy". I could equally have said "dissipation" or "spreading out" of energy, it gives the same idea. This does not indicate "chaos" which, to me at least, implies total disarray and absence of any order whatsoever. That's a wrong idea. Entropy is a quantitative concept. It's not all or nothing. There are even entropy tables you can look up, for various chemical substances. Second, it is perfectly possible for ordered systems to arise spontaneously, so long as the overall entropy of the process involved increases. When water freezes, the order in the water increases, because the molecules all line up in particular positions in the ice crystal structure. This is a far more ordered arrangement than the randomly moving and tumbling molecules in the liquid phase. But what happens is that energy is given off (the Latent Heat of Fusion) as the bonds in the crystal form. This energy gets dissipated into the surrounding environment. Overall, entropy - the degree of dissipation of energy - increases in the course of ice forming, even though the ice itself has lower entropy than the water it formed from. * Creationists sometimes claim the increasing complexity of life in the course of evolution could not have taken place naturally, because it involves "order" spontaneously arising out of "chaos" (a word they love because of its association with creation myths). This ignores the obvious fact that organisms continually take in lower entropy energy (e.g. sunlight or complex, ordered molecules like sugars) and give out higher entropy products of respiration (lots of small molecules like water and CO2) and heat. So overall entropy goes up during all the processes of life, including replication of DNA etc. during reproduction.

There is nothing about quantum theory in this post.

Read more carefully. You have confused a rapid expansion of the universe, which is what the Big Bang hypothesis says, with an "explosion" (your words), taking place in the universe. The universe itself expanded. There was no "explosion", and no void into which the universe expanded. That is what everyone has been telling you. Read the responses again with this in mind and it should become clearer to you. And stop moaning: the problem is you, not us.