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Showing content with the highest reputation on 07/13/21 in all areas

  1. 2 points
  2. We have a technologically advanced civilization, compared to earlier civilizations we've had, and yet we don't behave very differently. Interstellar travel capability is no more a basis for assuming that entities are peaceful than transoceanic travel capability was - as the Taíno and Mi'kmaq and other indigenous peoples learned to their chagrin. But since the technological discrepancy here is greater, and the alien species doesn't share our predatory past, I was assuming that, if they were not benevolent, they wouldn't bother to make contact: they'd just take what they wanted and ignore us, unless we got in their way. Even if they were merely curious, they could study the planet without necessarily talking to the inhabitants, maybe even without us ever being aware of them. (Although, in Star Trek, the well-meaning humans studying less advanced species are so clumsy that they're accidentally discovered by some native and have to do damage control. That's the kind of situation I envision as most likely. Unless the template for first contact is more like Childhood's End or The Day the Earth Stood Still or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy . It could go any number of different ways.
    2 points
  3. I don't think they have names, but there's a famous theorem of Fermat that says an odd prime is the sum of two squares if and only if p = 1 (mod 4). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat's_theorem_on_sums_of_two_squares
    1 point
  4. If highly advanced civilization were found to exist other than the solar system what would its effect be on humanity?
    1 point
  5. Scalar just means that the value associated with every point in space-time has no direction. I fail to see how that favors emergence, or fundamentality, of space-time.
    1 point
  6. You make it sound like you've never heard of people ( men and women ) doping with HGH to obtain unfair advantages at Olympic, or other world class, competitions. How many citations do you want ??? Why assume trans gendered would be any different ?
    1 point
  7. Indeed, like so many adults who attack Gretta, personally, for pointing out the obvious; because they can't be bothered to make a few adjustments. People tend to be lazy and shy away from anything that threatens their comfort; so, if they can kick the can down the road, they will, because it's easier (and even if their looking down the barrel, it's easier to just run and hide). So all we're left with, is the hope that our children will sort it out for us; but we're angry when they try... Because it's more profitable. Money is a strange concept, it's meant to make it easier to exchange what we have for what we need, yet all we care about is what we have, rather than what we need. Go figure...
    1 point
  8. It's crazy how people would believe that such majestic creatures as these aren't real.
    1 point
  9. If the Byrds weren't real, how did Dylan make his voice so melodious ?
    1 point
  10. If birds are imaginary you need to rotate them 90º
    1 point
  11. Anything which distracts people from focusing on real issues or standing up against tyrants by causing us to spin around the axle battling back untruths like these being repeated by bad actors and other badly confused individuals
    1 point
  12. https://phys.org/news/2021-07-methane-plumes-saturn-moon-enceladus.html An unknown methane-producing process is likely at work in the hidden ocean beneath the icy shell of Saturn's moon Enceladus, suggests a new study published in Nature Astronomy by scientists at the University of Arizona and Paris Sciences & Lettres University. Giant water plumes erupting from Enceladus have long fascinated scientists and the public alike, inspiring research and speculation about the vast ocean that is believed to be sandwiched between the moon's rocky core and its icy shell. Flying through the plumes and sampling their chemical makeup, the Cassini spacecraft detected a relatively high concentration of certain molecules associated with hydrothermal vents on the bottom of Earth's oceans, specifically dihydrogen, methane and carbon dioxide. The amount of methane found in the plumes was particularly unexpected. more at link..................................... the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-021-01372-6 Bayesian analysis of Enceladus’s plume data to assess methanogenesis: Abstract: Observations from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft established that Saturn’s moon Enceladus has an internal liquid ocean. Analysis of a plume of ocean material ejected into space suggests that alkaline hydrothermal vents are present on Enceladus’s seafloor. On Earth, such deep-sea vents harbour microbial ecosystems rich in methanogenic archaea. Here we use a Bayesian statistical approach to quantify the probability that methanogenesis (biotic methane production) might explain the escape rates of molecular hydrogen and methane in Enceladus’s plume, as measured by Cassini instruments. We find that the observed escape rates (1) cannot be explained solely by the abiotic alteration of the rocky core by serpentinization; (2) are compatible with the hypothesis of habitable conditions for methanogens; and (3) score the highest likelihood under the hypothesis of methanogenesis, assuming that the probability of life emerging is high enough. If the probability of life emerging on Enceladus is low, the Cassini measurements are consistent with habitable yet uninhabited hydrothermal vents and point to unknown sources of methane (for example, primordial methane) awaiting discovery by future missions.
    1 point
  13. Highly advanced civilization, huh? That, no doubt, can only mean: Healthcare for everyone Education for everyone Opportunities for everyone Rational management of their planet's resources Not alienating those who are different (pun intended) An emphasis on prevention and correction of misbehaviour, rather than punishment I see no problem. Even monotheists and politicians would want to jump onboard once they see how it works.
    1 point
  14. Hinduism is probably the most diverse religion, which would likely be reflected in their response. Given Buddha and even Jesus have found their into the various Hindu pantheons i don't think they'll have a theological problem. Buddhism explicitly refers to sentient beings rather than humans and doesn't have a creation myth so aliens wouldn't make the slightest difference to their beliefs - other than already having a scriptural basis to extend compassion to the visitors.
    1 point
  15. That would depend to a very large extent on the attitude and behaviour of the visitors. Obviously, our leaders would be shaking in their boots in the face of technology that far advanced, so they probably 🤞 wouldn't do anything stupid, like to try to attack the aliens. I'd like to think they would let the UN be the interface - if that's the right word - but am afraid that at least some nations' leaders would look for an "in" - some way to gain special favour for their own regime, and make us all look like sneaky opportunists. That, however, doesn't apply to the armed lunatic fringes of every stripe, who would almost certainly do whatever the stupidest thing is in the circumstance: frontal assault. I assume they'd be vapourized, which wouldn't go down well with their compatriots. So, right away, we're bound to have frictions and fractiousness. The scientists, creative people and their readers/followers/students would be thrilled, vindicated, euphoric and curious enough to piss off the aliens with unwanted attention. Not as integrated units. They already have sects, sub-denominations and factions; those differences would suddenly grow into rifts. The Pope might be able to put a single voice to Roman Catholicism, at least for a short time, but protestants reactions would be all over the place, and soon at one another's throats. Muslims, too - at least two main factions contradicting each other, probably more like four or five. The Jews would probably be okay with it; top rabbis would be sent from several countries to talk directly with the aliens regarding their belief. Native populations with animistic traditions would be okay, too. I have no guess as to the attitude of Hindus and and Buddhists. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if a great many marginal believers of all religions fell away all at once, and the power of religion generally were fatally weakened.
    1 point
  16. If we were to make face to face contact, I tend to agree. Other then answering the age old question "are we alone" I would imagine the forces of reasonability to generally prevail on Earth...well at least that's what I would like to believe. The fanatically religious may need to do some rethinking, or re-interpreting. But the majority of us would find the answer to the question awesomely fascinating at the time of revelation, and then a gradual acceptance. I believe we would co-operate more and as a result and thereby flourish as a species ourselves. If face to face contact was impossible due to distances/time constraints, [which obviously would more then likely be the case in retrospect] that imo may be the catalyst for some sort of upheaval, particularly again by the fanatical religious fraternity as well as other extremist groups. Not knowing who or what we were dealing with would not go down well with many imo. But again, I would like to believe that in the course of time, most would accept it as is, until we [or they] had the technological means to somehow overcome the distance/time barriers.
    1 point
  17. I use upvote and downvote as they have no chance of triggering the self-destruct sequence.
    1 point
  18. (My emphasis.) Taking up on this, your idea; dear @Butch; should be able to mesh with (at the very least): 1) Quantum mechanics 2) General relativity as it's presented as a model for gravity at a more fundamental level than the one we have. None of these criteria seems to be met from what I've seen. (My emphasis.) It's the other way. The meshing point should be the starting point, which is at the core, I think, of Swansont's last statements here. It's definitely not: Hey, this looks right in my mind; somehow some day it will click with everything else. What are the chances of getting it right this way? It's the other way. And believe me I just want to be helpful. If you see someone starting out from an obvious mistake, you try to tell them.
    1 point
  19. I imagine it would bring people together to some extent. We tend to group ourselves based on similarity, which means humanity is quite fractured. By country, race, politics, or which end of a soft boiled egg should be cracked open prior to consuming. If others were found to exist, suddenly we have a new group to belong to; Earthlings!
    1 point
  20. I think a surprising majority of them would somehow assert that this is all perfectly consistent with their beliefs, and in fact foretold in some heretofore obscure passages of their holy books.
    1 point
  21. So that argument has some merit from a scientific perspective as they argue that the data provided is too thin to fully assess the pharmacokinetics of the formulation. Fundamentally this criticism has some merit and the context makes more sense than the posts you have provided earlier. But before I get into that, I want to emphasize that in the context of OP long-term effects are not expected. For starters, even with incomplete data we see evidence of some elimination. As noted, the test concentrations was much higher relative to the animal weights as for the human formulation, so especially with hydrophilic compounds, it is likely that clearance will happen slower in rats compared to humans (i.e. more will circulate for a longer time). But more importantly, I want to point out the earlier argument with regard to monitoring health endpoint and its relationship to concentrations. The rats were injected with 300-1000x the dose of their human counterparts (adjusted for weight) and a basic assumption of the effects of drugs is that they follow a dose-relationship (which is also the rationale behind PK and related analyses). So fundamentally you will expect the stronger effects when the concentration is high. Now with respect to the animal studies this has several implications. One is that the levels are massively higher than a person relative to their weight is going to encounter. I.e. any adverse effects should be pronounced in the animal. Second, clearance will be overall slower, as the small body needs to process a lot of material. For humans the relative dose is much lower. So going back to the health effects, there were separate studies submitted to the various drug agencies based on injecting rats concentrations between 10-100ug of the drug three times a week apart (followed by a 3 week resting period) and compared to a control group. A snippet of the results is here: In other words, even if injected with over a 1000x of the concentration of the drug several times, there was no indication of serious health effects other than inflammation (which is expected). The increases in the spleen were expected to be related to the inflammatory response, which can lead to the formation of blood cells, which is supported by bone marrow data. This was not the only study, another experiment was presented with more rats at single dose and also looked at organ abnormalities and found none. I.e. the toxicity studies directly look at damages caused by the vaccine components and the conclusion is that even at extremely high concentrations there are no unexpected damages in animal models. Thus, even if LNPs were lingering around, they would be as such low concentration that harmful effects are extremely unlikely. These findings are so far supported by clinical data in humans. So together the point here is that one should not think that the one report is the full data provided to the drug agencies nor should one expect that any given data point can be easily extrapolated to health issues. Rather, different experiments provide different insights and the panel's job is to look at the full package and make a decision from there. It would take a bit to explain how area under the curve analyses are conducted and how they are used, but I will for now note that full PK studies are often not required for vaccines. In part because you do not get regular doses of it, so that overdoses and similar events are not an issue. That being said, similar to the tox data, there is also more PK data out there covering about 2 weeks from which they estimated elimination rates: The public details can be found either on docs provided by the European Medicines Agency, but equivalents should also be found from basically all approving countries. If you are interested in more detail how elimination rates are calculated I could do that if I have a few minutes, but should probably be a different thread.
    1 point
  22. I don't have time to do a book report. I don't think page numbers are actually required to site a reference, even in a scientific journal or publishing a theory. They assume that the people reading it would have a significant enough background to know the facts about it. The fact that you don't, shouldn't be my problem. It would require some research on your part. You need to be qualified on a subject in order to do a peer review. It has been almost about 5 years now, and you still haven't sited a reference for this. I 100% absolutely know without a single doubt that every single best seller written up to the mid 90's doesn't agree with you on this. Even if you did point out a page, I still would not agree with you, because that would mean that only 99.99% of the literature doesn't agree with you, including the actual people that worked there and wrote about. That was the official statement Fermilab put out. You're still living a pipe dream. You still haven't bothered to look it up. It was detected by the particle accelerator in Fermilab. It only detects photons that come from particle interactions. Those photons are absorbed by the electronics antenna, which in turn changes the voltage level. That change in voltage level is then translated through other electronics to create a reading. Particle accelerators are unable to detect phantom particles that do not emit light. They were discovered experimentally and lack a theory, not the other way around. This is part of your dillusional fantasy created by, "No, No, No, science... blah blah blah... always obeys conservation of energy." Try splashing some water on your face and slapping yourself... AND SNAP OUT OF IT!!! It is highly unusual, because it eventually leads to defining and proving something mathematically... I don't really care. Tell Sean Carrol. He probably is a busy man, so you probably shouldn't waste his time about it. I am just regurgitating information about it. I haven't read his newest book, but in my first post I said this is what he went a great depth into about in part of it. It couldn't be any more clear that it was something new that he was making up, so that is why he wrote about it in his book to explain it, "The Particle at the Edge of the Universe". It even talks a bit about these great discussions we have...
    -1 points
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