studiot

One of the arguments presented is "Why bother ?" Well that has a point if the 'planet' approached is like Pluto, which is now considered as equal top of the most likely to have developed or be developing life, following the discoveries of the new Horizons spaceprobe. But other than the satisfaction of curiosity what does Pluto have to offer humans ? But on the other hand we could argue "What if leaving Earth is forced ?" Scifiction has plenty of stories of aliens forced to leave their world for a variety of reasons.

Doomsday scenario Humans have blown themselves to bits in a nuclear war and caused the sixth great mass extinction on Earth. Cockroaches, having evolved to be more resistant to both radiation and other effects of nuclear explosions have inherited the Earth. Back to the present day Humans have not evolved to extract the oxygen microbubbles in water, nor photosynthesise from using the sunshine. In fact humans haven't evolved to live without the results of this photosynthesis. Humans and other life forms have trod different paths.

There are creatures that have the sort of life cycle following this. Some only live for one day, they hatch, grow up mate (if that is the right word) and pass on the genetic material and then die. Are we promoting this model for humans ? After all humans suffer greatly from the ageing process which our collective caring offsets. @BusaDave9 Have you considered this implication of human maturity since most make it past 'maturity' these days (in richer countries at least).

Two characters from history and fiction come to mind. King Canute The Queen of Hearts A real side cracker to wake up to, thanks @toucana . +1

One further thought to leave you with. Comparing wild animals and humans can be done in many ways. Some favourable to your thesis, some not so much. And some offering a bit of insight. So compare deer and humans. A fawn can stand immediately on birth and walk soon afterwards, feed itself soon after that. A baby human can....... stand after a year, walk another six months, and feed itself several years later. How do these characteristics play out in the self survival stakes you are promoting ? Can this difference be the reason Humans are more nurturing animals ? It is of course important between survival of the individual and survival of the species.

Shouting does not add weight to your argument. I said in my first post, to which you have yet to reply, that the real situation is vastly more complicated than you imagine. This is why you can't just say A is imperfect and therefore has a lower chance of survival to reproduce or take one factor in isolation. The natural selection environment is multi factorial, both for wild animals and humans. If you measure 'success' by how long has a species survived then: The most successful creatures on the planet have been present since the earliest times, from even before there was an oxygen atmousphere and can still be found today in isolated places. They are called stromatolites and have been around for several thousand million years. But they have never been a dominant species. If you mean the longest surviving dominant species then the dinosaurs lasted 200 million years. Until their environment killed even the hardiest of them. Humans would also not have survived the impact catastrophe and its aftermath, had they been around then. Nearly all, perhaps all, humans and other creatures are imperfect in some way or perhaps several ways. Most of these imperfections are small enough to have little impact on their reproduction history. Some of these imperfections seem giant sized to you, but how many are really? The world population of grazing animals greatly exceed the population of predators, Most join together in herds of many females to one of a few males. These vast numbers of females all seem equally attractive to the male in the appropriate season.

Well that opinion is definitely wrong. Science deals with facts and figures. All I have done before is asked for facts and figures to support your opinion and some clarification of your terms. Loose the attitude and you could enjoy a proper scientific discussion.

Thank you for answering my second post, what about my first one ? Unfortunately you answered a question i did not ask. This is a very specific claim that I am asking for evidence of. I have not disagreed that animals, weaker in any respect, often don't survive long enough to pass on their genes. However you made specific numeric claims about. I also asked you about 'rate'.

Evidence please. What do you mean by 'rate' ? IOW how are you measuring this ?

+1 I don't know if discussion ( if you can call it that) will be allowed to continue after such an overtly racist and misogynistic Opening Post.

Taking this as a serious scientific speculation here is a bit of context. Others have already indicated that the issue is far more complicated than 'cutting a Gordian knot' analysis. It should be noted that hardy-Weinberg is a (mathematical) model. This does not have the status of say Newton's laws of mechanics, but is a little more solid than say the Black Scholes equation in economics. Similarly the meanings of Evolution, Natural Selection, Environmental factors have all expanded quite considerably since the 'Origin of Species', (have you read it, it is masterwork). In particular there is now a considerable distinction between 'origin' and 'development' in evolution. Development is about what happens after origin occurs. You will now find articles in places like Nature and SCIAM along the lines of "Microevolution in Humans" for instances in dental changes. The environment that produces these changes is quite different from the environment that led to multiple human species appearing both sequentially and alongside each other. So perhaps you have recognised these factors hence your question and are referring only to the development phase of evolution ? Is there a main driving force - I don't know. But I can observe effects and possibly the largest effect (on more than half the population) is that females are catching up on males in physical size and capability, though both have grown bigger and stronger over time.

Funny you should bring up Lake Bailkal. I was just watching a Channel 5 documentary about how recent archaeology there may identify the source of the Loch Ness Monster. Not quite the same as a paper but an intriguing nonetheless.

Yes you get these answers and more if you cut it to "tunnel in Taunton". I note the Wikipedia article, which contains the correct answer to my original question, is now at the head of the Google search list. It was further down when I first asked the question, and clearly Google has responded to you and others subsequently asking. The first time it answered me it certainly picked up a different website which refers to the Whiteball tunnel SW of Taunton, but it definitely told me that this tunnel was NE of Taunton. There are a couple of issues with this 1) Would you use a slide rule or calculator that gave you a different answer every time you repeated a calculation ? 2) Victim blaming is unacceptable practice. Yes it most definitely pays to ask variations on questions to obtain information. But that only demonstrates that it takes real intelligence to obtain reliable answers.

You are still missing the core of my argument. The infinity was just to avoid complication, take it out if you like, the core point still remains. The point about the 'heat death' definitely refers to Second Law entropy reaching a stationary point, which may only be a local maximum. This has wrongly been regarded as meaning that 'all motion ceases' and I think @julius2 is asking if that also implies that time looses its meaning. This reinterpretation has been renamed 'the big freeze' in modern times. The core of my argument is that there is no requirement per se for motion to cease so I agree with the original question that time does not loose its meaning. My vapour pressure equilibrium example demonstrates how such a system can maintain time and motion and not die a heat death.

Whilst I would agree with you that choosing any tool inappropriately the point of labour saving devices is to make the job easier for the user. Inappropriate design or construction of a tool is not the fault of a user, however. I would dearly love to know how Google slipped up answering this (to me) plain and simple question What is the name of the mainline railway tunnel NE of Taunton ? Google returned the name of a railway tunnel SW of Taunton.

But this is all supposition we have no way of proving. The OP make no mention of entropy at all. You introduced this in post#3. Here is an example of what I mean about 'equilibrium' Consider an infinite ocean with infinite atmousphere above it. I stipulate that the system is in equilibrium. By this I mean the is a measurable property that does not change with time. This property is the relative humidity of the atmousphere. But this is a dynamic equilibrium since motion has not ceased since there is molecular interchange between the air and the water, which can only occur if the molecules are in motion. Furthermore this motion introduces self balancing momentum and kinetic energy exchange between the air and the water. I also think it is wise to distinguish between heat and general energy. Heat is a quantity that is transferred across a system boundary. This is inherent in the original definition of both First and Second Laws. General energy includes energy that is (cannot be) not transferred across a system boundary.

As I understand the thread, it is about the Heat Death, which is (was) a proposed consequence of very well established theories, from long before all the cosmological and standard model stuff, which still under development and far more speculative. I was impressed with Seth's thinking on the subject. +1 Equilibrium is another of those concepts that are bandied about a bit to freely, without proper description/ definition of what is in equilibrium and what sort of equilibrium is meant static or dynamic, stable, unstable or metastable etc). Dynamic equilibrium for instance implies motion, which has implications for the proposed Heat Death. I hope @julius2 is benefitting from the discussion, now you guys have the bit between the teeth.

That is indeed the definition of an isolated system. But that energy is distributed between KE and PE (partitioned) as you say so both must continually vary to preserve the sum. This is exactly where consideration of the system, along with the system boundary, is necessary, as I also pointed out.

Since the orbit of m1 is continuous, there must be an infinite count of energy states, all different, ie a continuum of energy states.

How would a Physicist view the entropy of this isolated system ? A small body m1 orbits a larger body m2 but remains under the influence of a third body m3 so the energy varies throughout the orbit of m1.

Is M_ _ k an alien hack ?

I suppose I'm fighting a loosing battle against the general misunderstanding of Entropy partly due to snappy soundbites like this. No offence meant Julius, but at the very least the soundbite should read entropy is a measure of 'randomness' not 'increasing randomness'. But then that leaves you seeking a definition of randomness, which simply replaces a short difficult word with a longer difficult one. Neither have mean much meaning without reference to the system to which they refer. The Wiki article is quite good, if you understand the Mathematics, but note carefully the caveats. There is more than one way to interpret entropy. Further there are systems for which entropy does not increase. The correct interpretation is that entropy can never decrease, it either always increases or remains the same. Furthermore the equations give no measure as to how long it may take for the change to occur. You require additional theory (equations) to attempt an answer to that.

+1

Funny you should mention this as I'm taking my wife for an MRI scan tomorrow. +1 MRI is, of course, a fusion of two very modern technologies as I'm sure you are familiar with NMR in Chemistry and we have the Maths of finite patch models. Duda's models are not meshes but aggregated solid blobs (bodies).

Studying your article will need some heavy lifting, but here is an extract.