swansont

Since time dilation and deflection of light are both effects that derive from GR, it seems unsurprising that they would be correlated. Effects based on time dilation being the cause, and gravity as refraction. No, you don’t get a new thread.

! Moderator Note Merged with existing thread

! Moderator Note You posted this in the evolution section, so leave religion out of it. This goes for all participants.

Boiling does not produce energy. Liquids will boil at low pressure if they possess enough energy to change phase at the temperature they have. e.g. at 0.5 atmospheres, water boils at ~80ºC. At 0.25 atm, it's about 60 ºC. Keep getting lower and it will boil at room temperature. What is a hydrogen-powered steam engine? Are you boiling hydrogen, or making steam?

Prof Reza Sanaye has been suspended for repeated thread hijacks and instances of arguing in bad faith. (we have a low tolerance for appeal to conspiracy, among other things)

The thing is, being on twitter, soundbites are kind of necessary, and it's easy to read too much into a tweet where someone is trying to be pithy. Steak-Umm wasn't wrong, but it's arguable what "it" encompasses. The process of science, or the knowledge it uncovers? And are you picking nits when the parenthetical "all science is subject to revision if new information is uncovered" isn't included, because perhaps that was meant to be understood? So yeah, it could have been worded better, but then it wouldn't flow as well. "The good thing about Science is that the truth of the information it uncovers doesn't depend on whether or not you believe in it." would be better, but won't fit as well onto a t-shirt. It's also a matter of his followers probably knowing the science is both a process and a body of knowledge and being able to discern between the two uses, and Steak-Umm cynically assuming that his followers aren't those people.

An ion lifter as described doesn't work in outer space; you need to ionize air molecules for them to work. But you are correct, it wouldn't be collisions that create the thrust, but the reaction from the motion of the ions you have created.

I don't disagree, but the question was about why things are the way they are, not how things should be. (and there are governments that do something about this) This could easily apply to real estate that is not being offered to people who are just getting by. My apartment would probably cost half as much if I lived another hour outside of the city.

The thing is, if you live in a town or city, you probably don't have a job farming. Those people live on the farm. It's not high-density labor employment (you were asked for numbers. Where are they?) Besides fishing and farming and a couple of stores to supply them with what they need, what else would attract people to work there? (You could be a novelist and live in Cabot Cove, because you can do that anywhere, but personally I'd keep away from a place like that because of all the murders) If you attract a bunch of other businesses to the town, employing a lot of people, then it's not a small town anymore. And some companies are going to demand/require infrastructure. Power, roads, etc. A supply of labor, possibly skilled labor. And if a lot of people live there, the rental costs are going to go up, because of supply and demand.

From what I've read the power requirement is tens of watts (i.e. several milliamps at tens of kV) for the basic lifter, which isn't very massive, but you need to lift a payload to carry the power supply. This paper mentions a lift of less than 5N/m^2, and a maximum efficiency of ~70 N/kW (and they mention getting higher geometrical lift at the expense of a lower electrical efficiency) https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4890353 So it's quite likely that nobody has built a lifter that can lift its own power supply for any appreciable length of time. You can characterize this as insufficient power being the problem, or as insufficient thrust being the problem.

Unfortunately, those of us in the US weren’t able to dismiss him out of hand. And yet his administration’s response seems to not have much to do with the information he got, since he largely ignored it and did almost nothing. Which is one reason I want to know why it would have mattered knowing the details of how the virus originally spread. Would Trump have done a different kind of nothing? Would governors have changed their push to repeatedly reopen too soon? Would they have done something different in avoiding mask mandates? How were these decisions based on the WHO's investigation?

I don’t see an analogy in the post, and no, “employability” does not reflect poorly on the discipline. Colleges/universities are not vocational schools (can you get a job doing e.g. English Literature or Art History? Are there a lot of professional philosophers out there, just philosophizing?), and employability is impacted by supply and demand, among other factors.

I didn’t ask you anything about the WHO, so it’s ludicrous to claim that this is an answer to my question.

That does not follow. Costs are different. Math matters. You’re basically saying a burger that costs $5.66 vs $6.37 isn’t a factor in turning a profit. (cost of a Big Mac in Sweden vs USA) https://www.statista.com/statistics/274326/big-mac-index-global-prices-for-a-big-mac/

I’m sure that’s an answer to a question, but it’s not an answer to my question.

Again, what does this change? I fail to see how this informs a pandemic strategy. Is the strategy different in the three cases? (leak, natural, don’t know) What do you do differently? We did what for Iraq? What does Iraq have to do with this? Not really a thing in this kind of discussion.

That wasn’t really the point; you can’t compare two countries without normalizing the numbers for cost of living, and other factors. In Denmark, $20/hr is a living wage because of the cost of living and their social safety net. In the US, $15 might be. “Scandinavia pays $20/hr for fast food workers not eliminated all hesitation at raising the minimum wage at least to 15?” lacks that context. There are undoubtedly countries where $15 would be higher than the cost of living.

It's fusion, which nobody has yet made work. One (or in this case literally you) really can't say he has "developed" this technology. It's the generic "you" and my objection was that people are suggesting that conclusion. Your personal view is irrelevant, as my original comment predated your contribution to the thread. But "the question remains open" is too forgiving. If you see hoofprints, you do not say the question is open as to whether zebras (or aliens) made the prints, if you are in North America. The question is not open unless you actually have some evidence that leads you in that direction. You go with the best science available, which is horses. Based on what definition of viable? viable: capable of working successfully, feasible How can you say something is capable of working successfully if it's never been shown to work successfully? (feasible is even worse; possible to do easily or conveniently - nothing easy or convenient about it)

It would depend on the cost of living, wouldn’t it? It’s more expensive to live in Denmark; you might conclude that wages would be necessarily be higher there for similar jobs https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Denmark/United-States/Cost-of-living

But you only mentioned farming. Why wouldn’t these business be located in or nearby the coastal town where the fishing is taking place? What does this have to do with big-city rent?

No, in fact, I don’t. You need to mean what you say, and not put the burden of parsing it to people reading. What you claimed to be true is not true in Sweden, and therefore not true in Scandinavia. So you presented a falsehood, which makes it difficult to understand what you mean.

Was supply and demand not considered? How many farming jobs are involved here?

How much would it cost to build and maintain?

You’re ignoring the context of the post, which was paraphrasing what the article was saying. And I conclusively stated the article is saying that nobody was asserting they were aliens And if you admit you don’t know, you can’t conclude they are aliens. And yet that wasn’t accepted as being true earlier in the thread. If you pursue it here, however, you don’t get a pass on scientific rigor.

To what end? What changes if we determine an outcome like natural outbreak or accidental release from a lab studying the virus?