John Cuthber

I don't think the original question is about the exact solubility, but about why it dissolves much better in acids or bases than in neutral conditions.

My best guess is that it forms salts with acids and bases. The salts are more polar than the original molecule and are more water soluble. BTW, if you think Wiki's wrong then why not correct it?

If I choose a random direction and walk far enough I get to the sea. This is 1 because I'm on an island and 2 true no matter where I am. Since everywhere is on an island I can't see how the hypothesis is meaningful. Define "Island".

There's a fairly popular theory that says the stars don't move, but the earth does. One fairly nearby star seems to travel 360 degrees in 24 hours. The pole star hardly seems to move at all. The others generally come pretty close to somewhere in between.

Tree rings in fossil wood show that the trees knew years (and therefore, time) existed long before we did.

This is a whole lot of discussion based on one (questionable) data point.

There are a lot more ions in a gram of salt than molecules in a gram of sugar.

The widow's might is an interesting concept but the parable should be about her mite. If there were a God who built the universe does anyone really think He'd be impressed by a catherderal with some gold trimming?

The real pH of a solution can change with tremperature. For example the pH of pure water varies from about 7.5 near freezing to about 6.5 when it's near boiling. There's also a change in the electrode's response. You can correct for that (to some degree) but you will lose accuracy. Why do you want to know?

"Well, it depends. It does "work" if you want to get people to talk, but the data you get is extremely unreliable. You'd need to verify everyting that was said." One problem with torture is that it can only possibly be justified when you need data that you cannot get anywhere else. If you can't do that then you can't verify the data from torture but, as you say, you can't trust data from torture victims unless it's verified. Catch 22, you can only hope to justify torture under circumstances where you cannot make use of the data so obtained. I still say it doesn't work.

Political correctness has nothing to do with this. We should be talking about scientific correctness. Having obtained some sort of data from one prisoner by torture the authorities may have come to the conclusion that torture works. If so then they would be duty bound to torture all the other prisoners to try to gain further data. Lets make that clear, if the people who conducted this torture in the first place thought it worked they would have repeated it with all the prisoners. However we only heard of one success. If they prison authorities didn't wanrt to admit to using torture they would have had to keep quiet about how they got the data. They didn't keep quiet so they clearly don't have a problem with admitting torturing their prisoners. If they got information from more than one prisoner they would, for whatever reasons they told the world about the first case, have told the world that torture worked on more than one occasion. However they did not. It seems reasonable to deduce that it only worked in one case but was tried in many cases (however many prisoners they had). At best it has a very poor success rate. Is it worth losing the moral high ground for this? In particular; does the fact that the USA uses torture against people from other nations (and "other faiths") encourage those of other nations or other faiths to atack the USA out of revenge on their "brothers" and if so, is the small amount of unreliable information obtained worth the risk of producing more terrorists?

"he hasn't answered ANY question that would show him wrong." Surely you jest insane alien? Anyway, here's another chance for him to explain this interesting chemistry that he caims. Mind you, his explaining the failure of the laws of thermodynamics would be more interetsing to most people here. Any plausible mechanism for the formation of a hydrogen cored silicate clad earth would make for an exciting story too. All the ideas I can think of would have the slica sink or the world fall apart. Clearly you can't have the hydrogen arive later and burrow into the earth- even if you ignore the lack of any mechanism it contradicts the observation that hydrogen is known to leave the earth (slowly). On the other hand, if the hydrogen got here first, unless it was really cold, it wouldn't have enough gravity to hold it together- effectively it would boil off into space. However, since it has to have formed from the graviational agglomeration of hydrogen present as an initial gas cloud, you need to explain how it "fell" down to the proto earth but lost enough of the (formerly graviational, now kinetic) energy without getting absurdly hot. This thread still looks like a contender for absurd theory of the year to me.

Eric, this question implies an assertion for which there is no evidence. "John, tell me, time is either a consideration, or a physical form of energy (energy that is flowing or condensed as in matter.) Which is it?" It's like saying "time is either an orange or a table; which is it?". Why on earth should I think it's either? Whatever it may be and however you (or anyone else) chooses to define it; time is observably something that dilates in acordance with relativity. Wake up and smell the coffee; time dilation is a genuine scientific observation. Nobody says you have to like it and if you choose not to believe it that's your problem. However don't try to pretend that your refusal to see the nose on your face is scientific.

If you don't like the elimination of water then you could add it to CaO instead.

Our current methods of reproduction lead to alterations to the DNA. There is hope however. If we can just get the hang of cloning then we avoid this new sin. Does anyone else think the Vatican haven't quite thought this through? Oh, I forgot; we have to sort out the problems of teleomeres getting trimmed. (they are part of the DNA and we aren't allowed to change them. That might lead to imortality and, therefore , to population explosions that make all the previous ones look like a slight glitch. Mind you the Vatican's teachings on contraception seem to indicate that they think this is a desirable outcome anyway.

I reviewed the topic you refered to. It said things like "Composition fallacy. Just because torture made someone tell what was apparently the truth in a case instance does not mean that torture coerces truth in the general case." Even if you assume (and I think it's an odd assumption) that the only person they tortured was this one guy who gave them some information then you are still basing a policy on one item of data. On that basis, since I have a beard, all people have beards. If you take the much more plausible view that they tortured many people to get one item of data then you have evidence that, generally, it doesn't work. Whether democrats or republicans are better people for running your country doesn't make the slightest bit of difference to the fact that torture, at best works badly, and is inhumane. This reference gives a reasonable definition and would be viewed as authoritative by most people. http://www.who.int/hhr/Convention_torture.pdf "‘any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.’" That definition would include "waterboarding".

"How can dark matter affect the trajectory of stars when it can't even affect the trajectory of my pencil? Gravity is gravity. There should be an effect on my pencil if it is really here." There's half a universe full of dark matter to the left of your pencil. Even given that the density of dark matter is small, half a universefull is a crapload. However, there's also half a universe to the right of it. It's precisely because the universe is the same on the left side as the right (ie that it's isotropic) that you don't see the pencil fly off sideways.

Vaccines are known to cause occasional side effects. It is quite right that those who suffer from these side effects are compensated in some way. After all, the society that pays the compensation is the same society that benefits from not having epidemics. However it doesn't make sense to pay "compensation" out of that fund to people who just have the bad luck to be affected by autism. With no evidence that the problem was caused by the vaccine (and with plenty of evidence that vaccines don't cause autism) the decision is ridiculous.

The ownership of slaves was banned. Government officials owned slaves. Admitting that you were doing wrong (and refraining from doindg it in the future) is a way to claim the moral high ground. Still doesn't mean torture works.

Now you are just being rude.

I'm intrigued by some of the things Eric5 writes. For example "Time is not being measured, oscillations are. Not all machines that are built to “measure” time use an oscillator. " This is true; a few other things have been used to verify time dilation such as the extended half life of subatomic particles whne they are traveling near the speed of light. These "clocks" agree with the "conventional" ones; time dilation happens, just the way relativity says it should. Eric5 seems to have gone to the trouble of pointing out more evidence against his claim-that's rather odd behaviour. He also says "If time is something more that a mere human consideration, then it must exist as some sort of energy , either energy that is flowing or moving, or energy that is condensed, as in the case of matter" Now, when I was at school the definition of energy was "the capacity to do work". Presumable in Eric 5's world there is no impending energy crisis because we can use time to heat our houses and run our cars. In this world it just looks like his understanding of energy is as shoddy as his grasp of relativity. He repeatedly asks for evidence, some of the available evidence is a bit highbrow- not easy for the layman to understand. The fact that GPS systems work with clocks that were deliberately set (on earth) to run at the wrong speed so that (in orbit) they will run correctly is pretty good evidence for most people. But I realise that he wasn't there to see the clocks being set so he's entitled not to believe it. I was particularly pleased to see that an amateur got a collection of second hand (no pun intended) atomic clocks and took them camping in the mountains. Then he took them back home and showed that they had gained an extra 22 ns just as predicted. A bloke with some spare cash, a van and a family that don't mind camping can verify special relativity. Surely it's time for Eric5 to believe in it.

I think that the real problem here is that Mr Bush doesn't understand that torture doesn't work. Whether or not this counts as a "black mark against the USA" or breaks international treaties isn't the point. He is condoning torture for no valid reason. If he is in a position to make decisions like that he really ought to check the facts before making them.

Coden 3, I see you say "I fear I will not be able to convince you that any alternative to the present dogmatic view of Earth’s formation and compositition should ever be considered. " It has been considered, at some length in this thread. It has been found to contradict the observable facts. It's time to ditch it. And I note you seem not to have answered my questions about the chemistry of hydrogen.

At the start of this thread NH4OH didn't exist, and it still doesn't now. As you have pointed out, the original project is done. That's why I think nobody's listening. "You seemed to have missed the essence of my argument since NH4OH represents (NH3+H2O). So if there are a lot of NH3 present in water, the concentration of NH3 + H2O would be high, and therefore the same would go for NH4OH" That simply isn't true; there's lots of water, lots of ammonia, not a lot of ammonium or hydroxide ions and even less undissociated ammonium hydroxide. Why call the stuff after the least common species present? In principle there must be some tiny concentration of H3O+ and NH2- present too. Is it sensible to refer to ammonia solution as hydroxonium amide? If not then calling it ammonium hydroxide doesn't make sense either. I'm not planning to tell all the books' publishers to change nor do I intend to lobby the universities. I will just wait for people to look on the wiki page which says "Thus, the term ammonium hydroxide is a misnomer". I think the pH of household ammonia is about 12 so the OH- concentration is about M/100 or a dozen or so miligrams per hundred ml, the NH4+ concentration will be about the same. Compare that to the 10 g or so of ammonia there. I don't think it makes sense to call the stuff ammonium hydroxide when that is only a small fraction of the material.

We are just fine. Thank you for asking. Please don't "SHOUT AT US IN Odd fonts" or unusual colours- it doesn't help. If someone here knows the answer and feels like answering you willl get a reply. If not, you won't. Offhand, I'm not sure how you would make collidine, but I'd probably look at wiki and such first. Perhaps I will think about it and post a more complete answer later.