exchemist

We've already had a thread on this topic, about 9 months ago:

Aha, so there is indeed something you don't understand about science. A theory will be recognised as scientifically valid if it (a) fits the relevant observations of nature and (b) makes successful predictions about what further observations can be expected. This is how theories are put to the test in science. Note that correspondence with observations of nature is the key. There may or may not be mathematical calculations involved. In physics there almost certainly will be, but in other branches of science there may not. In no case is any "proof" of correctness of a theory possible, since we cannot foretell what future observations may, some time, be made which do not fit the theory, forcing it to be revised or abandoned.

I suspect that was Francis making one last effort on behalf of humanity.

There seem to be a couple of misunderstandings here about science. First, one can never prove a theory in science and second, as @studiot points out, calculation, i.e. the use of mathematics, is not intrinsic to the scientific method.

Yes, it’s obviously nothing to do with physical appearance.

I think the modern Christian interpretation would be that it refers to the concept of an immortal soul and of moral awareness. I don’t know what the Jewish interpretation would be.

I suppose raising the pH might help coral reefs survive. But I agree it seems like locking the stable door and needlessly complex.

Easter break?

Yeah, performative politics. It will play well in the old coal communities, but nobody will burn more coal, because of the poor economics. An empty gesture, but good for trolling the libs of course.

Yes. But surely only the second, zwitterionic structure would support aromaticity, as the neutral keto form has 7 electrons in the ring π-system, (plus one more on the oxygen atom). So one might expect there to be quite strong polarisation of the keto form, which would presumably favour the rearrangement to the enol form. However I read that the keto form is the more stable, which seems a bit paradoxical. What about the NMR? Should be ring currents if it is aromatic. I suppose what we need here is an MO diagram.

This has been explained to you. You can find them anywhere. But good hotels will clean and vacuum thoroughly, and will also tend to have guests that use other good hotels, so it is not very likely, though still possible, to pick one up in them. Whereas bad accommodation, with clientele that use less scrupulous establishments, may more easily harbour them.

Yes cross-posted.

They travel in mobile objects like luggage, clothing etc. Bed bugs are most likely to be found where there are a lot of people passing through with their own possessions, e.g. in hotel rooms. So you are most at risk of importing them into your house when you have been staying away somewhere or when a traveller stays with you.

People. They suck blood, right? You just have to get rid of them. Professional pest control job, probably. Don't muck about.

Pre-owned by a French medieval knight with a passing resemblance to John Cleese, I presume…

No, “pure energy” is Star Trek, not physics. As I say, energy is a property of a physical system, not “stuff” with an independent existence. But a physical system can include fields as well as matter, for instance electromagnetic radiation, which as you say is massless. To account for that you need the long form of Einstein’s equation, dealing with entities that are moving relative to the observer. E=mc2 only deals with things at rest. The long form is: E2 = (mc2)2 + p2c2, in which p is momentum. For systems at rest relative to the observer p=0, so the 2nd term vanishes and you get good old E=mc2. But for massless EM radiation, m=0. Then it becomes the 1st term that vanishes and you are left with E=pc. So yes, light has momentum, even though it has no mass. We observe this actually, in the form of “radiation pressure”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_pressure 🙂

No it doesn't, actually. This is a common misunderstanding. m denotes mass, not matter and what the equation says is that a system with a certain amount of energy will have a corresponding mass. i.e. BOTH mass and energy at the same time. One is not converted into the other. Mass and energy are both properties of physical systems of various kinds. Neither mass nor energy is a thing in its own right. You can't talk about energy without saying the energy of what.

Ballocks.

Quite. Confess I'm baffled by the angry response. There seems to be a confusion between individual animals and breeds. None of this stuff can change an animal that is already living, obviously.

This is ridiculous. There is all the difference in the world between killing creatures and just being careful not to bring yet more of them into existence in the future. If we have bred intrinsically unhealthy varieties of animal, we should stop it. Stop them procreating in ways that perpetuate the unhealthy outcome. In nature, such unhealthy creatures would fail to breed well and would die out anyway, because of natural selection. It is only by interfering with nature that we have been able to create them. To take your dog example, we should not allow one of these unhealthy dogs to mate with another of the same type. We should make sure they are used only to breed mongrels. The mongrels will have a better chance of being healthy and, over time, the unhealthy breed will vanish, all without needing to kill a single dog.

Ah yes of course, the enol form will be aromatic while the keto one is not.

Culling is killing. That is quite different from not allowing an animal to breed.

I agree. It's a carbonyl group, sure, but it's an amide rather than a ketone, I should have thought, as the carbonyl is joined to N. Though perhaps not a real amide, since the lone pair on the NH group may be participating in the aromatic ring structure, i.e. sp2 hybridised, which would not be the case with a regular amide. Mind you, it's not clear to me whether cystosine really is aromatic. It seems to me it would only be aromatic if the carbonyl is strongly polarised, to C⁺-O⁻ , since for aromaticity you would want only 6 electrons in the π system (Hückel's Rule). But I'm very rusty on this stuff. Maybe someone more up to date can comment.

Genocide is quite the wrong term. You just forbid the breeding of animals that are congenitally unhealthy and let them fade away through lack of offspring. A breed is not a living being. It is a class of individuals. Genocide involves killing every individual of the breed, or race. That is quite different.

I don't see any point in "restoring" or rectifying mistakes in selectively bred domesticated animals. For such animals the remedy is simple, surely? Stop breeding them. That applies to breeds of dog, or battery hens that can't stand up, or what have you. It seems to me this is a fake technology, producing pastiches, that is being hyped as something it is not. A bit like LLM AI. Or quantum computing. These are all techie ways to fleece gullible investors, by means of promises far beyond what is anywhere near to being achieved.