mistermack

I clicked on this expecting to watch a couple of seconds of it, but I ended up watching it right through which is rare for me. It follows the mystery of where syphilis came from. Did it come from the Americas, as has long been thought, or did we give it to the Americas ? There's plenty of proper scientific detective work on off in the documentary. The answer given in the film is interesting, and the film also gives an insight into the horrendous suffering that people went through in the past, and how lucky we are, to have modern health care. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I found it well worth a watch : Apologies if there is some rule against recommending viewing. Just delete the thread.

Not really a problem, if you are producing high photosynthetic activity. The CO2 just becomes a useful source for the green algae. If CO2 capture was your motive, you would arrange your project in places where sinking matter falls into a low-oxygen zone, rather than the random way that nature does it. Personally, I wouldn't be aiming at CO2 fixing with this sort of project, but food production by making near-sterile oceans productive. Any carbon capture would be a bonus. But this kind of food production would have a beneficial effect on hard-pressed environments that we are currently fishing to death.

Yeh right. People primarily believe what they want to believe. A science education gives no protection against liars. A sceptical nature and upbringing helps, but gullibility is part of the human genome, and can only be partially cured. Adolf Hitler wasn't particularly academic, but it didn't stop him. Lots of clever scientists in Germany at the time, depending on him for a living.

I think that we (the population) at the end of the day get the politicians we deserve. They wouldn't lie, if they always got punished by the voters, but the fact is they don't. They usually lie carefully, so that they can say "I actually said this" while giving an entirely different impression. Most politicians would get slaughtered by the press, if they told the unvarnished truth. So it's a game that they play, avoiding trick questions, with devious half answers etc. But this fusion one is way out of that league. And for what? He isn't claiming credit for it for himself or the government. He was just using it as an example of what the UK can do "on it's own" when of course, it's totally untrue, and certainly not just British. But he's got away with it, nobody seems to have pulled him up for it, so like I said, you get the politicians you deserve.

But if the US, the UK, China, Germany and Japan etc had good working fusion generation, all of the cars and trucks would be going electric, and that would force the price of oil, gas and coal to the floor on the world markets. So even countries that couldn't afford the tech would benefit. If the UK held strong patents on the technology, then it would benefit financially. The fuel for fusion is a tiny insignificant fraction of the cost, so it would be the tech that made the money in that circumstance. The video file is too big, but here's what he said, if it will play : Boris fusion .mp3

He's not an idiot, (IQ wise at least) , he just missed out on a first from Balliol College Oxford, leaving with an upper second. And he spend a day at Culham, being shown around and briefed on the project by the top brass, so he should by now know more than most of us, about the subject. I can't see how anyone with half a brain could come away from doing that, and then announce it the way he did at the conference. If what he said had been true, it would be the end of global warming problems, it would transform the economy of the entire world, and make the UK the equivalent of the new Saudi Arabia of the energy market. No big deal really.

I agree he's a windbag. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't expect too much from him. But as Prime Minister, speaking to the party annual conference, with every news station covering him, I would have expected SOME kind of resemblance to the truth. They must have people fact-checking these speeches surely? Maybe it's the Trump effect. People are catching on that you can say whatever you like, if you are leader, and not get laughed off the stage ?? Edit : Come to think of it, I did hear some suppressed gasps from the audience when he said it, but no outright response.

Yes, but like I pointed out, the walls would be supported by the pressure at a thousand feet depth, but at the surface, you would have 450 psi inside the pipes, and just atmospheric pressure outside. And that doubles for 2,000 feet etc etc. The deep ocean is really deep. Sperm whales dive to 7,000 feet. At that depth, you would be pumping at 3100 psi. The energy needed to pump air at just 450 pounds at 1,000 feet would be prohibitive, even if you could get over the pipe problem. Also, narrow air pipes would incur far too much friction, at any realistic rate of flow.

Yeh, sorry you're right. I put the decimal point in the wrong place. The principle still applies though, I don't think with those pressures you would have a workable system.

I think using air as you describe really is a non-starter, but pumping up water as in my model might well work. Just a quick look at the required air pressures makes using air an impossible job. At 100 feet, you need 440 psi. At a thousand, you need 4,400 psi. I agree that at a thousand feet, the internal pressure in the pipe would balance the water pressure. But what about at the surface? What kind of pipe could hold 4,400 psi pressure at the surface? And what sort of pump could supply it? And imagine the heat energy being lost by that kind of pumping. It's an impossible project that way, but pumping up cloudy water from the deep is just overcoming the friction with the pipe walls, which in a wide enough pipe would be negligible.

I can't see that being easy or cheap to do. The pressures at ocean depths are phenomenal, so you would need extremely powerful pumps and thick walled piping, and a lot of energy, to do it that way. If you had a submersed electric propeller and a thin walled pipe, you could pump up cloudy water that you have disturbed with a jet and the only energy needed is to overcome friction in the pipe. The wider the pipe, the lower the friction, so it should be doable that way. As far as the local environment is concerned, you would be doing it in an ocean desert, something that covers more than half of the planet, so I can't see much harm coming from it. If you can raise the productivity in the lifeless parts of the ocean, it takes the pressure off the threatened species elsewhere, by applying a brake to the price of fish worldwide.

I don't know if this should go into politics or physics or science news. I just heard on my tv, the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in his big speech at the Conservative Party conference, that the people at Culham Tokamak project in Oxfordshire are on the VERGE of producing successful mini fusion reactors, and selling them worldwide. He then acknowledged that they have been on the verge for a long time, but now claims that they are on the "verge of the verge". I haven't heard the slightest whisper of any such thing. Are they actually winding up the Prime Minister of the UK ? It's not April Fool's Day. Or did he dream it? I couldn't believe my ears when he said it. Edit : I just found this link reporting on his visit. It doesn't match his claim at the conference, but it must be where he's got the idea from. The MAST part of the project seems to be the relevant bit : https://www.energylivenews.com/2019/08/09/boris-johnson-hails-world-leading-fusion-energy-research-in-oxfordshire/ And I found this : https://www.energylivenews.com/2018/10/19/prince-william-tours-uks-new-fusion-energy-experiment/

This might be of interest : Over at another thread, the one about "Planet 9" if you read the link provided in the original post, Scholz and Unwin say that if Planet 9 turned out to be a small primordial black hole, they would expect it to be surrounded by a halo of dark matter. At the bottom of the page : https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614441/is-planet-9-actually-a-primordial-black-hole/

It's only ASSUMED that dark matter doesn't interact at all, because no evidence has been seen so far. Might it be that very high speed high energy particles can on occasions collide with dark matter? Over billions of years, it might be enough to cause a bit of clumping around a galaxy.

I'd still prefer someone a bit older doing my heart bypass though.

Far more importantly, there can't be the same need for a bra in zero g. Big girls must look amazing without one.

I think he means inside the Space Station : I suppose it would depend on the individual but I notice that the guy in the picture is wearing gloves on his hands, so maybe there's a technical reason to keep skin away from components.

From Wikipedia, made me smile : "In August 2019, Thunberg sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from Plymouth, UK, to New York, US, in a 60 ft racing yacht equipped with solar panels and underwater turbines. The trip was announced as a carbon-neutral transatlantic crossing serving as a demonstration of Thunberg's declared beliefs of the importance of reducing emissions. France 24 reported that several crew would fly to New York to take the yacht back to Europe. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Thunberg

Yes. One is preaching that the world is about to end in fire and brimstone. And the other, . . . something about Jesus. 😕

I've got the same passion and conviction from Jehova's Witnesses on my doorstep. It doesn't mean much, it's the evidence and quality of the argument that does it for me.

It's more relevant that she's only sixteen. An age when most girls are still at school, studying for their exams. Or having babies with Isis fighters. Or having sex for money with Prince Andrew. They grow up so quick these days.

The real problem with burning the Amazon is that it's burning the AMAZON !! A world treasure that's taken millions of years to reach this level, and god knows how many species being driven to extinction, as well as the rightful human residents being driven out. The world should be imposing massive sanctions on the country, till it stops. After all, they've crippled Venezuela, just for telling the yanks to piss off.

The problem is, they start out civil, but end up damned uncivil. It's the involvement of the common soldier that drags wars into the gutter. I would like to see a war with just officers fighting each other. It's the only way to maintain standards.

Everyone uses others, there's nothing wrong with that. Some people are using her to get their message across, and she is using others to get HER message across. I think you are confusing being used, with being cynically exploited, which is totally different, and which I certainly didn't say. The only observation I would make is that her delivery and passion comes across as rehearsed, but trying to sound spontaneous, which is inevitable given the circumstances. You couldn't shove her in front of the world's cameras with no preparation. But in the end, that makes her a politician, like the people she's having a go at. A fifteen year old one, but using the same methods as her elders. I am a bit worried for her though. Older people tend to have the experience to not get carried away with it all. She's bound to be more vulnerable, psychologically.

There really is not an issue with oxygen dropping. There is roughly 525 times as much oxygen in the atmosphere as CO2. To double the CO2, you only need to use about 0.2 % of available oxygen. As the current level of oxygen is about 21% there is no prospect at all of problematic levels of oxygen. It really would be the CO2 that was the problem, if that ever happened.