exchemist

No doubt.

Some good comments in this collection of clips from the British satirical panel game “Have I Got News For You” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG5osfcZ_gk If nothing else, the Freudian slip in the clip 30secs from the end is worth watching.

I think you are getting pushback on this because, this being a science forum, many of us have the habit of being careful not to exaggerate findings into black-and-white oversimplifications. "Struggle significantly to afford" is not the same as "cannot afford". I recall Gideon Rachman (I think it was), writing some years ago in the Financial Times, being advised as a young journalist that the way to make your pieces more readable was to "simplify, then exaggerate". That is certainly a rather prevalent habit in journalism. Most here would agree with what seems to be your underlying sentiment that what you describe is a scandalous state of affairs. However, even from a purely rhetorical point of view, it seems to me exaggeration ultimately weakens rather than strengthens the case, as opponents can pick you up on it for misrepresentation and turn the debate into an ad hominem attack on your credibility.

I was not previously aware of the magnetocaloric effect so thanks for drawing it to my attention. From the little I have (rather quickly and superficially) read up on this, it looks to me as if the warming up is due, not to kinetic energy added by moving the specimen into or out of the field, but to a change in its effective specific heat capacity. When the magnetic domains line up in the field it seems as if there is a reduction in the degrees of freedom of the atoms, reducing the heat capacity and so the temperature rises even though no heat has been added. But I'll defer to a physicist on this, obviously. 🙂

I've just given you an upvote to cancel it, as it was very obvious to me that a downvote was undeserved.

I'm still curious as to how your earlier post came to include a web link, for superposition, to entirely the wrong subject, viz. quantum theory. It seems an odd mistake to make. But as moderation has reminded us that speculation about your use of AI or otherwise is not the subject of the thread, I won't pursue it further. Of course I entirely agree - as would anybody with basic knowledge of science - with the general point you make, about younger strata generally overlying older and the evolutionary progression of fossils that can be traced in the geological column. If you look back in the thread, what is striking is the feebleness of the challenges from creationists. They almost all rely on carefully cultivated ignorance. No doubt that is fine when they talk among themselves, at chapel or bible study class, but what beats me is why they choose to come to a science forum and try the same arguments on people who know some science. It seems extraordinarily naïve.

Science doesn’t fix anything. It is technology that does that: engineering, medicine etc., i.e. the practical disciplines that make use of scientific knowledge. Science is concerned with studying and understanding how processes in nature work. When it comes to the “science” of economics, the economist’s task is to understand how economies work, so that effects of economic policy can be predicted. The economic “technologist”, in this case, is the policy maker: the politician and the central banker.

Agreed. Atmospheric gases do not spontaneously stratify by molecular weight, because molecular speeds are far too high. My understanding is that hydrogen and helium tend to escape from the atmosphere because a higher proportion of their molecules have speeds above escape velocity than heavier molecules. So no doubt there will be mostly these gases in the exosphere, but the mean free path is by then so long that they don’t really behave as if they are in a gas.

I’m not sure what you have in mind by way of an energy application for this. But tunnelling is involved in the mechanism of nuclear fusion, as penetrating the barrier presented by electrostatic repulsion is required for nuclei to fuse.

From the data you quote, it is 8% that cannot afford it. The higher numbers are for those that have difficulty doing so. I agree that is still pretty scandalous for the richest society on the planet, but I think we should be careful not to exaggerate.

Yeah it was "showcasing" that did it for me. Almost nobody says that, outside of corporate blurbs.😁

Your link on superposition goes to quantum theory, not geology, which is a bit unfortunate. 😉 I think in geology it is usually referred to as a "law" of superposition, as distinct from the "principle" of superposition which normally relates to the physics of waves - and thus to quantum mechanics.

Sorry, yes you're right about the moral awareness bit. But the whole story is allegorical anyway.

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.