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What is curious about this news is that the wrong information that is was done by Russians seems to come from a Russian (dis)information news site: https://www.altusintel.com/public-yy752j/ But anyway, what is more interesting is why formaldehyde is thought so significant. This seems to be for two reasons. One is that it has a clear rotational spectrum, which astronomers can use for a number of purposes, e.g determining temperatures and velocities (via Doppler shift) of clouds of dust and gas. The other is that it can react with ammonia to produce amines and ultimately amino acids.

I suspect I'm smart enough not to be caught by such specious nonsense. Neither Curie discovered radioactivity, though they worked a lot with it and sadly died from it. I did not say this was an account of the discovery of penecillin. It was, however, the result of a single incident - which is what anecdotes are all about. Nor did I deny that there was intensive scientifc activity follwing that incident and continued subsequent developement thereafter. Incidentally that discovery led to the making of a struggling minor american company called Pfizer. (But that would be another anecdote).

Indeed. Seems they've found anomalous Helium isotope ratios in hot springs in Panama that are consistent with the material coming up from the mantle at the Galapagos hotspot, even though these Panama locations are hundreds of km away and, moreover, on the far side of the subducting slab of the Cocos plate that lies in between. So a hole or break in the subducting plate is to be presumed. But, er, not "a hole in Earth's centre", whatever that might be supposed to mean! Here is the abstract of the PNAS paper: It is well established that mantle plumes are the main conduits for upwelling geochemically enriched material from Earth's deep interior. The fashion and extent to which lateral flow processes at shallow depths may disperse enriched mantle material far (>1,000 km) from vertical plume conduits, however, remain poorly constrained. Here, we report He and C isotope data from 65 hydrothermal fluids from the southern Central America Margin (CAM) which reveal strikingly high 3He/4He (up to 8.9RA) in low-temperature (≤50 °C) geothermal springs of central Panama that are not associated with active volcanism. Following radiogenic correction, these data imply a mantle source 3He/4He >10.3RA (and potentially up to 26RA, similar to Galápagos hotspot lavas) markedly greater than the upper mantle range (8 ± 1RA). Lava geochemistry (Pb isotopes, Nb/U, and Ce/Pb) and geophysical constraints show that high 3He/4He values in central Panama are likely derived from the infiltration of a Galápagos plume–like mantle through a slab window that opened ∼8 Mya. Two potential transport mechanisms can explain the connection between the Galápagos plume and the slab window: 1) sublithospheric transport of Galápagos plume material channeled by lithosphere thinning along the Panama Fracture Zone or 2) active upwelling of Galápagos plume material blown by a “mantle wind” toward the CAM. We present a model of global mantle flow that supports the second mechanism, whereby most of the eastward transport of Galápagos plume material occurs in the shallow asthenosphere. These findings underscore the potential for lateral mantle flow to transport mantle geochemical heterogeneities thousands of kilometers away from plume conduits.

Russian scientists? This paper is a collaboration between the Universities of Stuttgart, in Germany, and Leiden, in the Netherlands. But indeed a new, low-barrier i.e. potentially fast, mechanism for formaldehyde synthesis, on ice-coated dust grains, at the low temperatures of interstellar space. I note they comment that the James Webb telescope may carry out observations to confirm the abundance of formaldehyde in interstellar ice. And a neat mechanism it is, too.

Mod: any chance we can merge this with the Wilson thread I started yesterday?

Right. That’s all well and good. Hard to disagree with any of that and we’re aligned. Do me this favor, though: Kindly please explain how any of that is even remotely relevant to me asking for confirmation that textbook sizes truly have increased over the years and decades… and pushing for this premise to be confirmed before seeking explanations from us about why they did. Go ahead. I’ll wait… and just so we’re clear, inspired comments about anecdotes aiding in scientific progress throughout history won’t suffice, regardless of how many you introduce.

His book, Naturalist by Edward O. Wilson, was a required reading when I studied Biology. I liked it.

Replacing 'left' by 'tangential' doesn't exactly clinch the case, IMO. There is a clockwise tangential, and an anti-clockwise tangential. But I think you touched a very important point that for some reason you don't recognise as having a molecular basis (homeobox genes, which are what determines developmental hormones, which in turn determine relative placement of organs, cells, etc.): It's the pattern with which the next polyp buds out of the progenitor polyp. As far as I can see, you need another plane of assymmetry to complement the axis defined by the growth, and always keep it 'doing the same thing', so to speak. The simplest hypothesis that would explain the appearance of this plane of 'slight asymmetry' is how growth hormones flow away from one side of that plane and onto the other. Environmental factors cannot be excluded, of course (See image below.) Plants always grow their stems towards the Sun and their roots towards the ground due to combination of growth hormones + light, gravity, etc. Consider a spherically symmetric phase of the embryo previous to the blastocyst (the first 'axial' phase.) There's no up, no down, no front, no back, no left, no right. After that stage, a migration of subsequent-generation stem cells has to decide what's up and what's down (blastocyst). 'Up' and 'down' don't mean anything in themselves. It's cellular development that decides that. And who decides these placements? Hormones do. You've got an equivalent to your polyps here, because the organism is cilindrically symmetric. Next, stem cells of another generation have to decide what's front and rear. A second axis, perpendicular to the first, defines this, forming a plane with the previous one. Migration is induced with respect to this plane. Now the fact that you've defined two perpendicular directions, in 3-dimensional space, automatically determines the third. This is a peculiarity of 3 dimensions. What is right and what is left is only possible because we've agreed first what's up and down, front and rear. The curious aspect of these corals seems to be that chirality is minimally and elegantly defined, not having to do with migration of specialised tissue, and resembling very much the (minimal) mathematical definition. Why it's fixed once an ancestor organism evolved it that way I think boils down to macromolecules, the very same reason why our liver is on the right, and our children's liver is also on the right. These orientation factors rarely ever change once they've been decided.

Ya'll won't believe what I found. The entire section on coherence domains has been copy pasted from this paper;-https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Quantum-Coherent-Water-%2C-Non-thermal-EMF-Effects-%2C-Ho/071e91e34a1245ee505888d9bca715d7e8facdde The entire section doesn't belong to him. He's copy pasted it and changed some words in between. I haven't checked the other sections ( i will shortly in a week or so) but when Swanson told me this sentence "QfT explicitly recognizes an extended VEMF......" I just pasted it google and found this article. My suspicions are correct.

Personally I have nothing against religious people, or religion for that matter. In a vast majority of cases in this day and age, I believe people use it and practise it, more as a comfort entity then anything else, and as a wall against the scientifically based conclusion that death is it...it is final and the end. That worries many people imo, and religion gives them that inner warm fuzzy feeling that upon their death, they will be magically transported to heaven or its equivalent. There are many good decent religious people in this world that mean well, and truly practise the basis of their religion. My Mrs is one of them. She was born in Fiji, now a naturalized Aussie, and like almost all Fijians, have a strong religious connection, based on Christianity or Hindi for Indian Fijians. She also puts up with me. But basically, we tolerate our differences and have been together for 42 years now, and both our first marriages. My only beef against religious people are the one's that come to science forums such as this and others, preaching their fire and brimstone, and attempting to belittle science. I have seen the video in the opening post, and while I like both those esteemed scientists, Carl Sagan imo had a far more subtle approach to people of a religious leaning. But that's a personal taste. I don't particularly see myself as an Atheist, more a student of reasonability and scientific application, that simply sees any God as a mythical entity constructed to bring comfort to an individual, and as a companion to their ignorance of science and the scientific explanation.