exchemist

This is all well beyond my grasp of physics but if gravitation were an emergent phenomenon rather than a fundamental interaction, would that get rid of the intractable problems associated with the (so far hypothetical) graviton? I can imagine that in that case one might no longer need to try to treat gravitation in terms of QFT, with its own mediating particle and so forth.

Very likely. But what is the operating principle of the desert still?

Yes, I admit I don't quite follow how this works. It speaks of the adsorbed water being released from the structure by solar heating, but then being "condensed", implying what is released is water vapour. So to condense it requires latent heat to be removed. How is this achieved, given that solar heating will be available during the day, while the lower temperature needed for condensation only obtains at night? Addendum: I've found a paper on this (from 3 years ago): https://yaghi.berkeley.edu/pdfPublications/23MOFwaterdevice.pdf It seems there is an aluminium heat sink shielded from sunlight. The MOF material adsorbs water at night and then releases it as a vapour under solar heating during the day. The device relies on the heat sink still remaining cool enough to condense it (I suppose it all takes place in the early morning). The point, presumably is that the partial pressure of the water vapour released is far higher than in the ambient air from which it was adsorbed, and above the dew point at the temperature of the heat sink. By the way, I read in yesterday's FT that Omar Yaghi, the Nobel winning chemist who has worked on this, has now decamped from the USA to China, due to the hostile attitude of the Trump administration towards science research. Nice one Donald!

I note that UEFA has very publicly stated there will be no such breaks in their competitions.

I thought it was nice that the Belgian manager had a word with Balogun after the match to reassure him it wasn't his fault. That is the sort of kind and thoughtful human gesture in victory that would be inconceivable to a man like Trump. But Trump's Turdas Touch strikes again, this time tainting the World Cup and, unfairly for them, the US team. (But Infantino should be made to resign.)

Oh bugger I was trying to reply to @geordief .

Yes tit willow is Mikado. The policemen are in Pirates of Penzance, however.

Or, on the distaff side...... ........cocks.

In Europe, "chickadees" are tits. Some people find those sexy.

Can you expand that a bit? My understanding was that living organisms make protein from RNA, which is made from a DNA template. Can protein be made direct from DNA as well?

I thought this was quite dramatic: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jul/01/synthetic-life-lab-made-dna-spudcells-scientists It seems these artificial liposomes carry DNA that can make protein (not sure if RNA is involved, having not read the paper), being fed with ATP and nutrients from the growth medium and can actually make (unreliable) copies and cause the cells to divide. That seems fairly extraordinary, if I've understood it correctly. The research paper, which is still a preprint, is here: https://www.biotic.org/research/spudcell/ It seems to trigger cell division via a buildup of protein on the cell wall that eventually makes it split open, so not like the mechanism in living cells. But very intriguing as an exploration of some of the steps by which a version of life could possibly have started.

I bet it is neither. But I’m not watching a Faecebook video.

You mean, if the impossible were possible, would it be possible? Possibly, I suppose. Though as I can’t seem to access more than the abstract of the paper, I can’t really say.

My reading of the passage you quote is that it analyses why such cloaking concepts can’t be made to work.

Don’t we all?!😁

I take it that you struggle with mathematics. 😄

If, which you have not so far established, such blind and deaf people reproduce as much as the average, that would imply that blindness and deafness are no longer very relevant to Darwinian “fitness” in humans. But other traits might be, such as those @CharonY and I have mentioned. So it would not be evidence that natural selection has ceased to operate, just that the selection criteria are different from those in wild animals. However it could equally well be that such blind and deaf people in fact do reproduce less, or even that they selectively abort foetuses in which the defect is present, to avoid having to raise disabled children. So it seems to me we would need some evidence about their rate of reproduction before any conclusion such as the one you are trying to draw could be reached.

@CharonY did actually give a number of examples of environmental selection pressures that affect humanity, in response to a post of mine: climate adaptation, pathogen exposure and metabolic syndromes related to diet that reduce the chance of reproduction. (I might speculate in addition that tolerance to, say, certain pervasive pollutants in the human environment, such as oestrogen mimics, might confer a reproductive advantage.) Such factors are relevant measures of “fitness” in the Darwinian sense for humanity, whereas for example short sightedness arguably no longer is. (This is important to understand. Darwinian “fitness” means suitability to the environment, not closeness to some standard of perceived physical perfection.) One further interesting point he made in that post is that people with a genetic disability cannot be treated as if the disability is their sole contribution to the gene pool of humanity. They also contribute to the width of the gene pool in other respects, which may turn out to have evolutionary advantages at some point.

Ah so it was the hubristic boast that he could clean it up and turn it blue that has caused the trouble. It really could be a metaphor for his entire presidency, as Tim Walz says.

This implies the algal problem has always been there, so nothing has changed. Is that right? Because what I am trying to understand is whether Trump’s tinkering has made it worse or not. If not, why the ballyhoo now?

How would you decelerate the spacecraft at its intended destination?

Has it always been full of algae then? Or if not, what has changed? My impression is that painting the bottom dark blue has somehow made it worse. Or is it that, before, people were solely concerned with the reflection from the surface and didn’t care about the algae, so it is Trump’s insistence on it being blue that has proved to be impossible?

Yes these are all very fair points. Particularly interesting to think about pathogen resistance and metabolic disorders.

Why do you say humans do not seem to be evolving more slowly than wild animals? I should have thought it likely that we are, though I have not seen any data on it.

Haha good catch, I was creating a confused synthesis of the two. Maybe a covfefe moment on my part. 😀