exchemist

Curiously, what I got was apparently a successful log in, with no error messages and no hesitation on the horizontal bar at the top that shows progress towards logging on. But having apparently completed the handshake, it just presented a white screen. I had that last time as well.

Quite. Putting it another way, if our models of physics are correct aliens have not visited us and, we can predict, will not do so in future either.

What kind of homework is this?

Forum was unreachable again yesterday, just a white screen. This is getting pretty crap.

To me the key point is that any reaction engine will be subject to the rocket equation and thus you get a requirement for an absurd amount of mass. Unless the thing travels for millennia.

Many thanks for your intervention. It seems to have been fixed. Out of idle curiosity I’d be interested to know what the problem was, if you happen to know.

Yes it does seem to be back to normal now. Checked ~0600 and again ~0900 GMT and normal speed on both occasions.

Haha it was a fluke. Worked quickly for 3 operations, then back to the same slowness we have all been experiencing. To be honest it is not worth me even looking at the forum until such time as this gets fixed, as you simply cannot navigate around the site.

Working quickly again just now, at 1514GMT. Wonder if it’s fixed or just a fluke.

Yes I spoke too soon, evidently. It is almost unusably slow again now. I can just about use it by having a dedicated window open for it to respond while I look at other stuff, but that's not going to be enough to keep the forum going. People will give up.

Yes, I've been unable to get in for 3 days too. At least, the little horizontal bar at the top that shows progress to accessing the web address has frozen and after about 30secs or so I have concluded the site is down. It appears from the above comments others have got in after waiting for several minutes, so maybe I was too impatient and it might have got there in the end. Much better this morning (0900 GMT). So whatever it was has for now gone away. Apparently.

This is still a terrible muddle. Complex numbers have nothing to do with numerology. They are just a concept in mathematics, a logical extension of the real numbers which obey mathematical rules. You seem to be confusing branches of mathematics with searching for patterns in numbers, and then further confusing patterns in numbers that are real, with a rational basis, with perceived patterns that are not really there. There is no such thing as a numerology "technique". Several people have pointed out to you that searching for patterns in numbers or numerical data is not numerology. Numerology starts when patterns are either imagined, when they are not there, or are ascribed to imaginary influences with no basis in science. Cryptography is not numerology.

That is not correct. Investigations frequently start from observations, particularly from unexpected observations.

So what? History does not just consist of military history, that’s the point. So saying it is written by the “winners”, as if it was all a contest, betrays naïvety about the nature of history.

My son read Ancient History and Archaeology at St. Andrew's. I read his dissertation, on the trading and manufacture of Egyptian faïence in the Eastern Mediterranean before the Bronze Age Collapse. (Quite interesting for a chemist, actually. I may have posted about it previously.) Believe me, historians know a lot more about the ancient world than just battles.😉

Well, one obvious issue is that a great deal of history is not about “winning”. Winning applies to wars and to some degree economic competition, but there is vastly more to history than those things. So it’s something of a glib cliché really.

You continue to miss the point. Merely looking for patterns in numerical data is NOT numerology. Statisticians do this all the time. Numerology is assigning mystical, occult or otherwise unscientifically based explanations to whatever patterns you perceive in these numbers. Nobody “rules out patterns we cannot see”, as you put it. Apparent correlations in data are a signpost for further investigation, to see if there is some mechanism responsible. But what science will not do is imagine explanations for perceived patterns without reproducible evidence.

How can a survey be numerology? A survey obtains information about the subjects surveyed. This may be qualitative or quantitative. If quantitative, the results may be subjected to statistical analysis. That isn't numerology. Attempting to determine the psychology of individuals by measuring their heads is an old pseudoscience from 2 centuries ago, known as phrenology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology That isn't numerology either.

Then Utah is a damned silly place to build the thing.

Seeing as the AI companies make billions - and forecast they will make billions more from AI investments - I should think they should be required to make their facilities environmentally neutral and not a net drain on public utilities. If that makes them look harder at their return on investment calculation, that’s fine too.

Time. Lactate stiffness will wear off after 2-3 days, whereas a muscle tear will take a couple of weeks or more to heal. But they also feel different. Stiffness feels like what you get when you have influenza or something, which you are aware of every time you move the affected muscle, but it is not really painful. A tear feels like a distinct pain whenever you put a load on the affected muscle. There may also be swelling. Similarly with a tendon tear, though for the latter you might do well to see a doctor, as it may need strapping up to avoid loading it while it heals.

How long is a piece of string? Seriously, the answer obviously depends on the degree of overstress, ranging from a muscle or ligament tear requiring surgery to a minor ligament or muscular strain that heals itself over days or weeks. (Ligaments and tendons heal far more slowly than muscles, as they don't have a blood supply.) But muscular overexertion can also include simple stiffness, resulting from lactate accumulation in muscles that, not being trained up to that level of exercise, don't have the circulation to oxygenate the muscles aerobically. This stiffness is what anyone starting an exercise programme will feel in the first days and weeks, until the muscles and cardiovascular system respond by enabling a better blood supply. (I recall this vividly from my own rowing days🙂. In rowing training one spoke of aerobic and anaerobic training regimes, the latter generating lactate which the body has to oxidise and remove after the exercise is over.)

Why does water for cooling have to be a problem? Surely any system can run with closed loop cooling, provided you build adequate radiators? And in Utah why can’t they build their own solar farm to power the thing? I cam’t see why they should be allowed to be parasites on the infrastructure built for the citizens.

Yes I think @pzkpfw makes a relevant point. Looking for patterns in numerical data is not in itself numerology. Numerology consists in ascribing a non-scientific cause to any patterns that may be perceived. So it is not science, by definition. If you merely identify what seems to you a pattern, without ascribing a cause, you leave it open to others to determine if the pattern is indeed really there, if it is significant and if so to propose causes.

Gibberish.