mistermack

1 hour ago, Markus Hanke said:

Are you advocating some kind of absolute frame? And if you do, then, if I’m at rest with respect to whatever frame you propose, will I stop experiencing time, ie will I stop ageing?

I don't get that ??

I thought, if there was an absolute reference frame, then a clock at rest in it would tick the fastest, and any clock in motion in that frame would tick slower. So if you were at rest in that frame, you would age the fastest. 

I would have a hugely powerful PA system all around the government buildings, and in the case of an attempted intrusion, they should broadcast a warning. Here in the UK, we have the "Riot Act" and in the event of a riot, it can be read out as a warning that rioters are risking their lives. 

I believe that "reading the riot act" gives special powers to the police and security services, although I have no idea what they are. Surely there is some equivalent in American law? Ours goes back to 1714 so you would think that the USA has it's own copy. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_Act  

Edit : I just had a quick read of that link, it has since been repealed, but I don't know what effect that had. Maybe it just means that a warning is no longer a legal requirement for using serious force against rioters. In any case, a US riot has far more deadly potential than a UK one, because of all the guns.

23 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

I don't understand either your amazement or your perspective on this.

I thought my last sentence made that perfectly clear. 

33 minutes ago, mistermack said:

Obviously, they would rather have Trump in power, than Biden winning again. Even after all he's done.

  That's what I'm amazed at. Personally, if I was a republican, I would still rather Biden got four more years, than Trump. There is a bigger picture than just win/lose for the Republicans. 

In any case, I don't think it's as clear cut as you make out. I would guess that a lot of habitual democrat voters will be voting for Trump. His appeal isn't purely on party political lines. 

If the Republican Party had banned him from running for them straight after the Capitol attack (if that's actually possible), Trump might well run against them as an independent, that would be the worst scenario. But he might well be taking Democrat votes, as well as Republican, so they might still win, with the right candidate.  Would Trump run as an independent? It would cost a lot of money, and the odds are he would lose. 

I think banning him would have been a good move for the Republican top brass. It's obvious they don't like him, and surely can't trust him. 

As far as the original question goes, I don't think anyone's answered yet. Just saying it's not likely to happen like that isn't really an answer. You can't predict that kind of thing. Nobody did, and next time will be different but could be much more deadly. 

Look what happened to Ukraine, it all started with a 'demonstration'. 

The US should really be looking at how people might try to turn an 'ordinary' demonstration into a takeover. Looking at the current support for Trump, you can't say that 'it will never happen here'. It could, and the attitude of one half of the population makes it something worth trying, in the right circumstances.

I'm amazed that the Republican Party hasn't banned Trump from using their platform. There is loads of justification for doing it. 

Obviously, they would rather have Trump in power, than Biden winning again. Even after all he's done.

So when do the government forces start shooting? 

5 minutes ago, Ni Mimi. said:

Of the above, doesn’t that Supernova process then mean a process that occurred after or within the context of the Big Bang?

No. A Supernova is the explosive end of a Star's life. So you first need hydrogen formation, before the first stars formed. Then the star needs to form from a cloud of hydrogen, and burn till the fuel runs down, and only then can the star collapse in a Supernova event. The biggest stars still need a few million years to burn out, before they go Supernova. Smaller stars take longer still. So it's all taking place after what is generally viewed as the big bang event. 

You need to bear in mind that a few million years is nothing, in terms of the age of the Universe, which is about 14,000 million years old, so the process of Supernova building and detonating will have happened hundreds or thousands of times, leading up to the elements we are looking at now. 

3 hours ago, Endy0816 said:

Think Sunak would be the better of the two.

I would say that Sunak is the more likely to win an election.  On a purely image presentation level, both could do better. They both smile too much, and come across as too eager to please, but Liz Truss is much worse in that regard. Johnson got it about right, and that was partly why he was popular. 

They both need to slow down, not jump in too eagerly with their answers, and smile just now and then, not nearly all the time. 

Also, Sunak's message of balancing the books rather than dishing out tax cuts would sit better with general election voters. 

Unfortunately for him, the leadership election is by Tory party members, and they seem to be favouring Liz Truss's tax cutting agenda. But maybe, when push comes to shove, they will go for Sunak because winning the election has nearly always been their first priority. 

You can bet your life that Starmer will be praying that Truss wins. Well I would, if I was in his shoes. 

20 minutes ago, Sensei said:

part of the photon energy is reflected and part is absorbed by the glass..

A photon can't lose part of it's energy, usless it's redshifted in space. It would be more accurate to say that some of the photons are reflected, and some are absobed.

1 hour ago, Existential Dreams said:

Can i ask if there are any rules about Spelling and Grammar

Not that I know of. We even have Americans posting here, with their quaint version of English, but we still manage to communicate. 

I think in any case, an attack on the Capitol or White House or Pentagon, or maybe other national institutions is in a totally different catagory to any other demonstration or protest. Crossing the perimeter should be regarded as an attack on the whole country, otherwise it's going to get more popular with time.

There was a report on tv an hour ago, from outside the Capitol, and there was a lot of scaffolding around it, with high sheeting, so that you couldn't see what was being done. Maybe they are putting in some much more effective defensive infrastructure. I'm just speculating. 

2 hours ago, MigL said:

It may not 'vibrate' unless you count the cycles in years or decades, but you will certainly get different effects if you measure the gravity on one side of the Sun, with all the planets lined up towards you radially, than if they were lined up on the opposite side of the Sun ( it does happen ).

But in that case, the centre of mass of the Sun would move, a tiny amount, and nullify the shift of the overall centre of mass. Like the 'wobble' that we see in the light from some distant stars, indicating a sizeable planet orbiting. 

They would probably need to pass a special law to cope with future attacks. Otherwise, the courts would have a field day working out what was legal, and what not. 

The police have to demonstrate why they pulled the trigger in day to day shootings, and it revolves around a percieved realistic threat to life. If it stays that way, it will be difficult to plan an effective defence against a similar mob in the future. When does a protest become a threat to life? It would be unfair to just leave it to the boots on the ground to decide. They are just there to provide muscle, not to make political decisions of that nature. 

If they don't draft a law protecting the defenders, it's a cop out, buck-passing by the politicians. 

They might dodge the issue by putting up more effective crowd barriers. 

I would say that it depends how far away you are from the solar system. Inside it, you get noticeable variation, like the high tides we get when the Sun and Moon are on opposite sides of the Earth, or in line on the same side. 

But further away, the local effects would dwindle. I'm guessing, but I think it's pretty likely that the centre of mass of the Solar System will not move, or vibrate, (apart from rotation round the Milky Way etc) so once you are away from the local effects, there would be no 'vibration' in the field. 

I seem to remember that the centre of mass of a binary star system doesn't move, so Jupiter/Sun should behave the same way. 

This might be a science forum, but this is a politics thread. The words 'questionable' and 'evidenced' are obviously used differently in political language, compared to scientific papers. I peronally have no problem with the meaning, when they are used in the everyday parlance. The context makes it clear what's being said. 

Considering how gun-happy Americans are, I was amazed how few shots were fired by the 'defenders' of the Capitol. This event seems to have been something that was never considered as possible, because nobody knew what to do when it was happening. 

But now it's happened, what do you think would happen next time? What should happen? 

You can bet your life that there is now already a plan in place for any repeat ocurrence. But what is it? If the plan is to start shooting, once somebody crosses the boundaries, then you would think that the public should be warned. So that if someone gets shot next time, at least you can say that they were warned. 

Maybe the authorities don't want to up the ante, and risk people coming armed next time. But I think that that would happen anyway. If people want to try again, they WILL be tooled up. 

If I was in charge, I would announce that people will get shot, if they join any attack on the Capitol or White House. Make it common knowledge. Mind you, if I had been in charge, they would have been plenty of shooting last time. An attack like that is an attack on the country. It can't possibly be a grey area of protest/attack. Not any more anyway. 

19 hours ago, Cindi said:

OK, I was thinking before I looked on the board again, let's say in the case of "Neanderthal" man. How do they figure the dna composition? (That's one question.) I mean how do they determine it's Neanderthal person and not, let's say, homo sapien? If I'm wrong in my terms, please feel free to correct me.

The answer really is "through years of study done by experts in the field". It's not simple enough to explain in a few sentences on a chat forum. If you watch some documentaries on youtube, or read some articles, you will find that there are stand-out features that you can use to identify the remains, and just like dating, cross-checking across features makes identification more certain. For example, the skull of a Neanderthal has some clear differences from Homo Sapiens. Our braincase is more rounded, Neanderthals' are more elongated, like a rugby ball. And Neanderthals have thicker ridges of bone across the eyebrows. Some of it is less obvious, like the relative dimensions of bones. Neanderthals were more stocky, with shorter limbs and stronger bones, in general, compared to us. The differences are small, but unmissable to an expert. And when you have all of the differences in one individual, you can say with a great deal of certainty that it's a Neanderthal, or Homo Sapiens. 

They are even able to say if a Homo Sapiens or Neanderthal is an early or late example, using clues like the ones I've mentioned, even without a positive dating, because we and neanderthals evolved a bit over time. 

So if you make a positive ID of the sample through physical means, and can get a dna sample from the same individual, you can be pretty definite that you have a good dna sample of a neanderthal. 

Having done that, you can look for matching dna in our modern samples, and make a comparison. 

But as I said, you would need to read up, or watch some relevant material, to fully understand how firm identifications are made. 

Another point is how they cross check one method with others. If carbon dating from bones agrees with dating from the soil layers, it's not twice as sure, it's more like five times. And if anything's wrong, it will stick out with dates disagreeing with each other. 

Some of the technology in the artefacts can help with dating too. Technology and culture gradually change over time. Just as we can roughly date a car just by looking at the design. 

The BBC output is pure propeganda these days. 

It was Germany that decided to weaponise trade by imposing sanctions, especially on Russian oil. Once that precedent had been set, Russia had every right to retaliate in kind. 

To portray that as "Russia can't be trusted" is pure BBC spin. It's like punching somebody on the nose, and condemning the violence, if they hit you back. 

If mimicry blurs the species boundaries, what the hell is this octopus? Is it a poisonous lionfish, a sea snake, or a gravel sea bed? 

3 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

I admire NATO for what they're really there for

NATO is there to raise the stakes. Just like nuclear weapons do. Raising the stakes is fine, until someone goes all in. 

Anybody would think that Vietnam never happened, they way you talk. What the west says, and what it does, is two very different things. After WW2 Churchill wanted to carry on and invade Russia. He didn't get his way, but the intent was there. 

If I was Putin I would view NATO as hostile. That's what it's for. To fight Russia. What do you think NATO is for?

1 minute ago, MigL said:

Except that NATO is, and has always been, a defensive organization of member states,

That's the spin. Hitler had no hostile intentions. So he said. If you take peoples word for it, you will get shat on. 

41 minutes ago, MigL said:

We should criticise, or praise, the aggressors/invaders

Ukraine joining NATO is an aggressive move, from the Russian point of view. 

In the 1930s, Hitler built up his forces but nobody did anything. If the allies had invaded Germany when it began arming itself, millions of lives would have been saved. Doing nothing, and waiting till you are invaded, didn't appeal to Putin, and I don't blame him. He's learnt from history. And he gave Ukraine an easy alternative option to invasion, but they didn't have the intelligence to take it. 

Years ago, people tried their very best to make philosophy into a science, making rules and catagorizing arguments. They thought that they could make it like maths, where you could start at A, follow rigid rules, and end up at B.

It eventually became obvious that that was not possible. Words will never be absolute like numbers. In the end, it's irrelevant, but entertaining. Like esperanto. 

Everybody has an instinct of some sort for logic, reason and rationality. You don't need rules or catagories, you just need to be able to think and express yourself.

5 hours ago, zapatos said:

You don't really discuss anything as your posts are mostly cheerleading for Russia. 

As opposed to your balanced approach.

10 hours ago, Ken Fabian said:

Surely that was Nickel-Iron,

You're right. I was going from memory, from a long time ago. The "iron" meteorites are always nickel iron. What I remembered was either a complete freak, or a wrong memory on my part. 
Just to complicate it though, there is some pure iron IN iron meteorites, according to some sources. 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276236319_Pure_iron_and_other_magnetic_minerals_in_meteorites  

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S0038094614060070 

so maybe there is a freak one out there that I read of years ago, but probably not. 

One thing I was surprised to learn, is that the suggested method of melting and separating of the original nickel/iron was in asteroids, via nuclear decay. Or by the heat of a collision. It's just at the hypothesis stage at the moment, but that's the general idea. 

It sounded unlikely to me, when I first read it, because of the rapid heat loss and lower gravity of an asteroid, compared to a planet or moon. But obviously, it makes sense, or they wouldn't be putting it forward as the mode of formation. 

That figure of .004 ppm seems reasonable. But you would expect the heavier elements to sink in the early days, when the Earth was molten all the way to the surface. So what's in the crust wouldn't be representative of the overall figure. By a coincidence, 0.004 ppm is the figure I recently read for the ocurrence in seawater. If it is coincidental. 

Edit :   Make that ppb.