John Cuthber

Did you notice that I put the word "denser" in quotes? And that's the lie: the claim that the air is homogeneous, when we know that it gets less dense as you go up. Here's the first page of the explanation from the 70s And here's the second page

As I said, I'm trying to track down a reference from this https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Inventions_of_Daedalus/0Xt2QgAACAAJ?hl=en What I disagree with is the idea that they think it is appropriate to publish stuff that is obviously wrong. The essence of the point is simple. As they say, a alight beam will bend towards a "denser" medium (one with a higher refractive index). Imagine a beam of light shining horizontally as in their experiment. Eventually, if it didn't hit anything, it would go over the horizon and into space, But clearly "space" has a much lower density. So the light beam is bent towards the denser medium, i.e. the beam bends downwards. It's not a big effect, but nor is the curvature of the Earth. The book includes a couple of interesting calculations. One is that, if the earth was a bit smaller, the gravitational gradient would be a bit steeper and the curvature would be a bit more, and light would actually go all round the earth by refraction. The other is that, if you used a slightly more refractive gas - They suggested sulphur dioxide- the curvature would match that of the earth's surface. That would mean that light shone into a tube full of SO2 would go round the world. Now, I recognise that the predicted effect would only completely cancel the effect of the Earth's curvature if the planet was a bit smaller. But the effect we do get will cancel out most of the curvature. So their insistence on 8 inches per mile squared is simply wrong. And, by now, it's fair to assume they know it. Incidentally, at about 2 minutes in to the video, they point out that they are a not-for-profit organisation. That doesn't stop them claiming expenses. And I guess that's why they are ignoring physics that was widely published decades ago.

I watched the first 20 minutes, at which point they said something that's plainly wrong (so I stopped watching). I will try to dig out an interesting reference from Daedalus about it.

If I want to measure the length of a table, the fist thing I need to do is define the edge of the table. Does a photon have an edge?

Yes it will.

Sorry, I hadn't realised how far into the realms of fantasy you were. I misread the 294 as 284. I have a theory that it twill turn out that the only way to get the 294 isotope is by bombarding unobtanium with unicorn droppings. as you say...

It has a measured half life of 0.098 seconds. Observation trumps "theory".

The most stable known isotope, copernicium-285, has a half-life of approximately 28 seconds.

Have you added any boron/ borate to the water? If not, then there's probably not enough to make much difference.

Interesting. In answering the OP's question as if it only applies to this bike you seem to have introduced some of your trademark nonsense

Six years on this may be a rhetorical question but... Have you ever tried to steer a hovercraft? There's a reason why they use this sort of thing for trains, and the reason is rails. Magnetic bearings are useful at high speeds and when you want to ensure that grease doesn't get anywhere you don't want it. Neither criterion applies to bikes. The other reason to add absurd bearings to a bike would be so you could add an absurd fee to the price tag.

You might want to revise your opinion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway The only accidents in its 33 year history resulted from human action.

Then it's not of the form N (N+2) How long would it take you if the number was a thousand digits? What about a million?

I assume he means this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium_radioluminescence Eventually the T pressure would be high enough that the gas would stop most of the beta particles reaching the phosphor. On the pother hand, by that point it might be acting like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterium_arc_lamp There would also be a point where the energy density would be so high the glass would melt. And, if you really worked at it,. you would get nuclear fusion. You could get more power per gram by using something with a shorter half life or a higher emission energy (or both).

If this happened, how come my dad never mentioned it?

No It "breaks down" with a half life of 14,500,000,000 years. No, it doesn't. No, it couldn't, unless those experiments were in a nuclear reactor. A long half life means that it is LESS hazardous. But since they aren't actually produced, it doesn't matter much. That's not true. Mixtures have reduced melting points. However the solubility of thoria in tungsten is so low that the effect will be small. No. The point of adding it is to reduce the electron work function which makes it easier to sustain an arc. Finally, a valid observation. That strongly suggests that you got somewhere near 6000oF You could have saved a lot of trouble by saying that earlier. You still failed to answer the bit about gravity. We will all just assume you made it up. Now, speaking of arcs, why did you try to post the nonsense about Anode Rectified Cathode, when you know that it is wrong, and have known that since it was pointed out in 2012? No. There was, until you arrived, talking nonsense. You keep using this phrase (and cognates) what do you think it means?

I have seen that hogwash before (I think it was on a different forum). The poster there insisted that was what the word meant. Even though the word "arc" was in use long before the words Anode and Cathode. Would you like to give up this tosh now? I found it. I know it's "poor form" to post stuff from one forum to another but... https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=45336.msg395033#msg395033

It's longer. No. One "face" of the heated tip was connected to a length of tungsten rod that will have acted as a heat sink. I doubt that, It looks like a calculated adiabatic flame temperature, converted to the wrong units and with spurious accuracy. But you didn't use one. You didn't use tungsten, you used thoriated tungsten. How did you measure the attraction?

How? How did you measure that temperature? How did you measure that?

Science doesn't generally prove things. It sometimes proves that things are wrong.

Given a product of two primes n, and n+2 the product is going to be very close to (n+1)^2 So you can take the nearest integer to the square root of the product, and the factors will be that +/- 1 Eg. imagine I give you the product 19043 the square root of that is 137.996... Very close to 138 And the integers 1 away from it are 137 and 139. And those are the factors of 19043.

The good news is that we are able to dismiss his views on the WHO.

So, we dismiss Trump out of hand - because he was so wrong about lots of things. And, on that basis- we know that his views are often wrong. So, for example, since he didn't like the WHO, we can reasonably deduce the the WHO is probably a good thing.

I'm not sure, but I think that they rely on the fact that the aluminium corrodes faster in more acidic soils and thus sets free more electrons which pass through the meter and give a larger reading. Or they may work on a principle is similar to this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimony_electrode How would that help find out how the meter works?

I'm not sure i have understood this. Does this only work with primes where the two factors differ by two- which is interesting but not much use (I think there's an easier way)? If not, please show us how it works with 33,033,660,080,507 (which isn't a product of very big primes, just fairly big.)