Dropship

13 hours ago, swansont said:

And you’re better off pointing to evidence that exists than trying to prove a negative.

2000 years from now some people might be saying "Elvis never existed", but there'll be plenty of surviving books around to prove them wrong, same as the 27 books of the New Testament..:)

13 hours ago, iNow said:

In this one, the civilian casualties appear intentional. 

The same thing has been said about US forces in other wars, but as a military forum moderator and- ahem- online computer wargame champion, I can tell you it's just propaganda hogwash because nobody is going to deliberately waste munitions bombing kindergartens instead of military barracks and troop concentrations etc..:)

PS- our western pro-Ukrainian anti-Putin media seems to forget that Ukraine has been bombing the Donbas separatist area for years, causing civilian collateral damage like this-  

3 hours ago, exchemist said:

Are you really an ex-physicist?

Yes I'm a shatterer of worlds like the rest of 'em..:)

I've also got an interest in other fields but they don't grab me as much, for example chemistry is too smelly, and biology is too stomach-churning.

PS- I do however take a healthy interest in theology and am fascinated by the 'Superscience' throughout the bible, for example Ezekiel's sighting of a flying craft that looked like "wheels within wheels" could be a gyroscope-powered thing..:)  

Thanks guys, it seems Global warming and Climate Change have always been occurring through earth's history, but nowadays we dumb humans are accelerating the process.-

"Dr Joeri Rogelj, Director of Research at the Grantham Institute, Imperial College London, says, 'Global warming and climate change have both occurred throughout Earth's history. But it's the speed at which the world is currently warming, and how fast the climate is changing, that is so concerning.'

The surface temperature of the planet has increased around 0.08°C per decade since 1880. However, the average rate of increase between 1981-2019 has been more than twice that rate. These changes are unquestionably the result of human actions."

Thanks guys, and as a matter of interest I often wonder if scientists have ever done eperiments with gyros to explore their properties more deeply, such as by rigidly coupling a bunch of them together at various angles then spinning up the whole caboodle to note any effects.

For example i've heard it suggested they could somehow be used to create an anti-gravity power source. "  

6 hours ago, exchemist said:

Mark 13:32 in my translation says: "But as for that day or hour, nobody knows it, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son; no one but the Father."  And he prays to the father on various occasions. So there is a clear father/son relationship implied and sometimes stated explicitly. So we have the start of the idea of the Trinity.

The question of whether that makes Jesus divine is slightly different, it is true, but we already see it dimly in the prologue to St. John's gospel where Christ is identified with the Word -  the "logos", which , it is implied, is the means of God's action in the world, including the creation itself. 

Perhaps you think John the Evangelist, whoever he was, was a "Catholic"?  

When Jesus asked his disciples who they thought he was, Simon Peter answered-

“You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven." (Matt 13:16/17)

See, Jesus didn't then say "Wrong answer, try again", therefore SP got it right by saying "you're the Son of God"..:)

7 hours ago, swansont said:

1. As far as we know how far is that

2. Paperwork? Paper didn't exist at that time. The literacy rate was what, 15%? Would the average person have been aware?

How much documentation exists about any action from that era? 

When christianity began snowballing in popularity after Jesus's execution, the Jewish priests and the Romans said -  "Oops better not let on it was us who killed him, quick shred all the documents implicating us or we'll have a Jesusgate scandal on our hands. Let's airbrush him out of history and start hassling christians, and people will soon quickly forget about him"..
Nevertheless 27 books did slip through the net and get published as the New Testament..:)
 

5 hours ago, iNow said:

That’s not what they’re being told. They’re being told that their Russian cousins in Ukraine are being slaughtered and must be protected… that they are there to save them. The dissonance then comes when Russian troops arrive and realize they’re the ones doing the slaughtering and see their missiles being directed at maternity wards and their ordinance are killing children. 

Sadly there's always acciudental collateral civilian casualties in any war.

3 hours ago, beecee said:

 

So what evidence do you need to show that human induced global warming is a valid concept and real? What would convince you? What external sites do you trust? I was of the opinion that NASA was up there with the best. Do you have any evidence to show whay that isn't true?

https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

Thanks, yes NASA confirms my gut feeling that humans are responsible for GW; I mean, all that muck being churned out by industry and private cars can't be doing the planet any good at all.

6 hours ago, swansont said:

..frankly, I would expect a retired physicist to be taking a more critical view of the issue than talking to an explorer and settling for "he said, she said" reporting.

As an ex-physicist I was one of them blokes who "shatter worlds", I don't know nothing about what makes this planet go..:)

But as humans seem to be responsible for GW, why don't they do something about it?

I hear electric cars are being touted as a partial solution, but I also hear there are serious drawbacks to them, like short-lived batteries that'll need replacing at great expense etc. 

7 hours ago, Phi for All said:

Now that I know you aren't going to bother educating yourself by reading trusted links I post, I'm wondering how you think discussion will help? It sounds like you're going to preach and ignore what others say, and that's basically blogging. Discussion means you actually engage with others to remove ignorance. It works beautifully, but not the way you're doing it. If you aren't listening, you're soapboxing, and why would I want to discuss science with you? No disrespect, but nobody has time for that.

Wait, members here have already said humans are to blame for much GW, that's all I wanted to know, thanks to all..:)

I sense that the majority of Russian soldiers hearts are not really in the war.

Sure, Putin's told them "We have to occupy Ukraine now before it joins NATO" but many soldiers are probably thinking "Why"?

Putin is displaying a touch of paranoia and I think his troops realise that.

3 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

So you didn't read the information I gave you from the NASA site? If you continue to remain "neutral" afterwards, I would imagine there's nothing that would change your mind, and that suggests you don't want it to be true.

Some folks think what you're doing is being a good skeptic, but a good skeptic not only questions what they're told, they also dig deep and find the best current explanation. Skeptics are NOT fence-sitters, so if you've remained "neutral" all this time, it's most likely because you're resisting what you're trying to learn.

Can we trust any external site, no matter what it says?

Discussion forums like SF therefore serve a very useful purpose by discussing things among members themselves.

We know there have been a cycle of ice ages and thaws throughout earth's history, so perhaps we're currently in a "thaw" phase, hence the melting ice.

Or perhaps pollution is to blame, so we don't really know what to think? 

On 3/2/2022 at 5:22 AM, JIMMY12345 said:

Could President Putin be suffering the effects of mild COVID.? Certainly one of the symptoms is increased  aggression...

Vlad's certainly showing bad judgement/mental fog, so perhaps covid is responsible for that?

I mean, launching an invasion in the muddy month of March is just getting his forces bogged down.

Anyway, trying to conquer the whole of Ukraine is a bad idea, he should just have occupied the pro-Russian Donbas region in the east where they love him to bits and then declared it part of Russia.

2 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

This is badly out of line with current science, where consensus on the subject is based on the data. I politely suggest you educate yourself instead of making these blanket assessments, which are often perpetuated by those who stand to gain from ignoring the present climate crisis. IOW, you sound like you're being paid to spread bad info.

I'm neutral at the moment not knowing which camp to believe so I'm hoping to educate myself by getting some sage guidance and wisdom from SF's finest brains..:)

3 hours ago, swansont said:

And of course you have evidence to show that nobody did this. 

The snooty priests and Romans and their lackeys could have tried to crush early christianity  by pinning up proclamations on walls saying "That Jesus bloke never existed", but as far as we know, no such paperwork has been produced.

It's like somebody today writing a book titled "Elvis Never Existed", he'd never make it fly because Elv was seen and heard by too many eyewitnesses, right Elv?

"Uh-huh"

2 hours ago, swansont said:

Potassium-40 (1.25 billion year half-life), Uranium (predominantly U-238), Thorium-232 (17 billion years)

 

Thanks, so if it's bubbling away down there and isn't harmful, you'd think scientists would drop boreholes to suck it up to use as an energy source to heat our homes.

In fact there are hot springs all over the place like Old Faithfull so the stuff is often close to the surface anyway.  

2 hours ago, swansont said:

What expertise does this person have that they might render a scientific assessment?

Well Stroud is a polar explorer, and anyway there are plenty of other sources showing pictures of melting ice and polar bears looking a bit unhappy.

Generally, scientists can't seem to agree on he 'Global Warming' thing anyway; some say we nasty humans are causing it, but others say it's a normal natural cyclic thing that occurs at periods of earth's history, so which camp are we to believe? 

On 3/1/2022 at 3:23 PM, Peterkin said:

According to the story told about him, Jesus ascended to heaven, leaving behind a promise to return in 1000 years..

I can't find any mention of him saying that '1000 years' stuff in any Bible.

He did say "I'll be back", but only on judgement day (no date given) when he returns to rescue his mates (christians) from the apocalypse..:) 

PS- As for Mohammed, he's a corpse in a box somewhere but JC is not, spot the difference?

After JC was executed and the first gospels were written, nobody- not a single person- from the priests or Romans or people dared come forward to say "Baloney, he never existed".

That's because they knew they'd just be making fools of themselves because he was seen by countless thousands of people, heck he was almost as big as Elvis and the similarities are uncanny..:)

"And the people all tried to touch Jesus, because power was coming from him" (Luke 6:19)
 

In a youtube vid, a guy shows us how difficult it is to lift a big heavy non-spinning gyroscope, but after it's spun up he can easily pick it up with one hand and whirl it around his head!

Where has its weight gone?

9 minutes ago, swansont said:

2 reasons. One is various radioactive materials inside the earth, with billion year half-lives, and the other is a yellow orb sending us thermal radiation from a 6000K surface.

Exactly what type of radioactive stuff is in there? i thought radiation was dangerous?

Regarding the weight of ice and water affecting the earths crust, Asimov did this interesting essay about it in 1973 and I should think it's stll largely valid today-

Yup, pressure squeezes air pockets.

As a kid, I remember playing with a tiny one-inch frogman free gift from a box of Sugar Puffs, you popped him in a glass lemonade bottle full of water, then made him go up and down by screwing the bottle cap up and down.

He was designed to have a tiny bubble of air trapped in his goggles and we could see the bubble shrinking as we screwed the cap, making him dramatically sink to the bottom of the bottle through loss of buoyancy. 

I mean, mother earth is supposed to be billions of years old, but it's still full of that hot molten stuff!

A couple of years ago I asked polar explorer Mike Stroud if global warming was a myth, and he simply replied "The glaciers are melting." but wouldn't elaborate.

Anyway our sun is going to become a red giant billions of years from now, vaporizing the Earth, so there'd be nowhere for reincarnated people to reincarnate to..:) 

On 3/2/2022 at 11:53 PM, deepend said:

 ..I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw that this religion section was for discussing the rational foundations of religion.  There is nothing rational about any aspect of religion..

Yes, some other religions are crocks, but Christianity is a fascinating "Superscience" that we as yet know zilch about..:)

We could speculate that our "reality" is simply an illusion or dream, and we could further speculate that Jesus was a "Master of the Art of Dream Manipulation", bending reality with his 37 miracles to perform what looked like "miracles" to people, and he said WE could do it too ("move mountains") if we had the knack, how kool is that..:)

Go for it Neo..:)