John Cuthber

At the moment what I can smell in the air is smoke- someone nearby must be having a bonfire. There are a lot of chemicals in smoke- most of the research focussed on tobacco, but apart from nicotine, most of the chemicals will be similar whatever you burn. And so I can tell you that much of what I can smell are compounds like phenol and guaiacol together with acrolein, naphthalene and others. It's also possible to connect a gas chromatograph to a glass funnel and put your nose in that funnel. That way you can smell the compounds as they are separated out. (so you knew which ones are responsible for what odours). Here's an analysis of the volatiles from heating paper. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00021369.1981.10864521 So, if you wanted to know what "smokey" air had in it, you could start with those. People have done work to identify the major components of smells. Things like "burning stuff" https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-burnt-smell-standard-compounds-measured-with-GC-MS_tbl1_223971634 or things like "woody" which would include things like pinene and eucalyptol Or "herbal" where you find compounds like thymol or citral (You might notice, the chemists are not generally very original with names. The dominant odour of lemons is due to two main components, citral and limonene). So quite a lot of the work has already been done. It would be expensive to repeat it.

The smell of petrichor is largely this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosmin The first big problem is that there are something like a billion known chemicals, and we can't look for all of them in one sample. If we did then the analysis report would be rather unmanageable; a billion lines most of which said "not detected". I think that's something like a thousand big thick books (and it wouldn't be cheap) The other big problem is that, for some materials, you can smell them at concentrations which are below the limit of detection by GC/MS (or most other techniques). Cloning would be a perfectly acceptable term if I was, for example, seeking to copy a trademarked perfume. It's also a term commonly used for copying a computer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clone_(computing) And the word is used for credit card fraud involving a copied card.

Is it just me or... https://dilbert.com/strip/1992-08-03

This is close. https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/worlds-tallest-timber-framed-building-finally-opens-doors

It's their home too, and they were there millions of years earlier.

Can you provide an example? A negative number of moles would be very weird.

I wrote code that could do that in about 1982. It played noughts and crosses (badly). It learned how to play by seeking to avoid repeating "losing" moves. The algorithm was from a Sci Am article. I'm not sure how I define "Life", but... that doesn't see to cut it.

It may not matter much how you store them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot

"Is ingenious too strong a term?" yes

Toxicity- though it's hard to see the relevance in the context.

If wiser minds don't prevail and close the thread, I might respond when I have had a few drinks. I'm hoping it will make more sense then. Congratulations on timing this for Friday evening.

I don't think this is exactly a scientific review of the issue, but it does offer some explanations. What a drag it is getting old "Kids are different today, " I hear every mother say Mother needs something today to calm her down And though she's not really ill, there's a little yellow pill She goes running for the shelter of her mother's little helper And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day "Things are different today, " I hear every mother say Cooking fresh food for her husband's just a drag So she buys an instant cake, and she burns a frozen steak And goes running for the shelter of her mother's little helper And two help her on her way, get her through her busy day Doctor, please, some more of these Outside the door, she took four more What a drag it is getting old "Men just aren't the same today, " I hear every mother say They just don't appreciate that you get tired They're so hard to satisfy, you can tranquilize your mind So go running for the shelter of a mother's little helper And four help you through the night, help to minimize your plight Doctor, please, some more of these Outside the door, she took four more What a drag it is getting old "Life's just much too hard today, " I hear every mother say The pursuit of happiness just seems a bore And if you take more of those, you will get an overdose No more running for the shelter of a mother's little helper They just helped you on your way, through your busy dying day Hey

Could you expand on that- with real examples? Please take care to distinguish what the pollsters said from what the press and TV said about the pollsters' assessments.

This nonsense is old enough to have been parodied ages ago. There was a young man who said "God Must find it exceedingly odd To think that the tree Should continue to be When there's no one about in the quad." Reply: "Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd; I am always about in the quad. And that's why the tree Will continue to be Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.”

Anyone planning to build a school is designing it for people who are not born. What we have here is an example of religion crowding common sense out of someone's head.

They can; he did. And you will find the God Squad doing it a lot when they discuss abortion. So well over half don't think that. And, beware of selection bias.

Why do we condemn stepping on bugs but embrace sport fishing? I'm not sure we do. https://dilbert.com/strip/2001-02-16

It's a bit stupider than that: "Can [ any group] prove their beliefs?" No, -because if you could prove them they would be deductions or facts rather than "beliefs". To open a thread with a logical error like that, and then go on to make other daft claims as the OP has, doesn't bode well.

You seem to have that the wrong way round. The wealthy don't need to fear the future, but the poor do.

It is obvious that the original nothing has gone off to dance on the head of a pin.

That's good. Now have a go at fixing the other problem which I highlighted: And yet, at least in most people's opinion, it still is beautiful. So your assertion is nonsense. I know what a rainbow is, and how it works. But if someone tells me there's a rainbow outside, I'm very likely to go to the window and admire it, because it's pretty. Since rainbows are beautiful, it is clear that nothing has proved that they aren't. So, explaining rainbows doesn't prove what you said it does. So you are wrong. Is there any reason why I should read anything else you say?

Let's face it, when I said "If we expect 540 nm radiation", I was being ironic. We don't expect that. Partly because, if we did,we should expect it from any electron in a strong em field, and falling under gravity- for example, in a dropped sandwich. His claim is as plausible as if he said we ought to see a sandwich light up before it hits the floor.

I know that the model of an atom as "electrons orbiting a nucleus" is ... unhelpful, but the fundamental point is still there. The electrons of an atom must be doing something; we know that there are interesting effects like the colour of gold and the melting point of mercury- which arise from the relativistic effects of electrons. So there is some significant similarity between the electrons in an atom, and those in an accelerator. If we expect 540 nm radiation from the electrons in an accelerator interacting with gravity, why don't we expect some similar outcome from the electrons in a dropped sandwich? Ask the guy who pays the electricity bill for the synchrotron.

https://xkcd.com/285/ Ad yet, at least in most people's opinion, it still is beautiful. So your assertion is nonsense.

The trouble is that you don't get to choose either/ or. The neutrino detector emission is broad band, so your idea doesn't work. There are plenty of occasions where a narrow band detector is useful. But in many, perhaps most, of those, it's useful to be able to tune the detector. That's easy if the frequency selective element- perhaps something as simple as coloured glass- can be changed, but it's tricky if you have to change the whole detector. So, yes, if you were looking at something like LIGO where the bandwidth is narrow, that's great. But they aren't short of sensitivity (on that count) If they were, they could get a brighter laser. There will be applications, but it's never going to be as useful as a simple photocathode, nor as cheap.