pavelcherepan

Well put, billiards. One more thing for you, arc. So you seem to be entirely sure that you're right and we have a broken theory. That's fine. 24 pages of discussion don't seem to have put a dent in your resolve to prove you're right. In that case what you need to do is to write a scientific paper and send it to a good peer-reviewed journal and see how it stands up to a proper scientific scrutiny. Not many people on this forum are qualified to peer-review and fewer yet to discuss this particular topic. So if you want a proper response from scientific community then that's what you need to do, rather than waste our time and yours here. I'd also suggest not to wait too long. Modern science is all about timing. If you wait too long, someone else will come up with a similar idea and then they would reap all of the benefits of discovery.

Well, that's always an option.

So I have choices, I can quit my job and slaves didn't have that luxury. Or maybe they did? History know a lot of cases where slaves lived a relatively happy lives and even some cases where slaves went on to become extremely rich and powerful, take Roxolana or Abram Gannibal (personal slave of Peter the Great of Russia). I agree that these are unique cases, but in reality it would depend on the person and on particular slaver society they find themselves in. As Ophiolite has pointed out, slaves were always a valuable commodity and were very expensive. They were also a cornerstone of slave economy and were main producers of goods and services. If a person bought a slave it was generally a pretty hefty investment and they'd want their investment to pay off and ideally several times over. If you make your living off your car and you have a fairly modern car, you can of course fill it with 72 octane petrol (if you can find any) or run it into a tree on purpose, but then you'd be a bloody idiot and I would argue that most businessmen who made money from slaves generally weren't. So a lot of scary pictures of slaves getting killed, tortured and mistreated constantly are more of a product of modern society, because person who goes to see a movie about slavery will accept nothing but the most cruel, most horrible display of what slavery could be, because we all have to be sorry and repent. Yet, probably most of the cases treatment of slaves wasn't that harsh. It wouldn't be pleasant, mind you, but not like you'd see in movies. And slaves would have options. If conditions are absolutely horrible they could commit suicide, incite an slave uprising or run away. All these three options happened a lot in history, but not as much as you'd expect. As a business owner, you'd really want to keep slaves happy enough to not succumb to these three options which are all very bad for business. Other options and less violent included showing your master your skill and proficiency in some task and becoming a supervisor among slaves like yourself, showing knowledge and literacy and becoming personal assistant slave or children's tutor. And there were probably many other options. Really, saying that slaves had no options is really an insult to them, because that is belittling them to the level of bacteria, who really have no choice, but to eat and to reproduce.

For the purpose of this discussion "universally wrong" is something that is perceived as being wrong by everyone. Alternatively, "universally wrong" can also be formulated as something that's not perceived as "right" by anyone.

With hindsight I think I shouldn't have brought up slavery altogether, but what's done is done. OK, no problem, I will retract my argument comparing myself to a serf, it's not so important for the great scheme of things. Although, I have to say that you guys haven't done an awfully good job at disproving it except just saying "Oh, it's wrong". But it's dragging the discusion somewher I don't want it to go. Let's go back to the original point and can you say that slavery is universally considered wrong or can there be a society living now where it's considered normal?

I appreciate your comment, while I never said that my argument was sound, I only said I hoped it was logical and whole. If it isn't please do let me know. So by your logic, I should feel sorry for any group of people that's been mistreated throughout history. Well, in that case I'd have to do nothing else, but be sad all the time. There should be some time limit when you can finally say it's time to move on. Or not? Should I feel sorry, for example for some 1 million Gauls that were killed during Caesar's conquest? Or is it now just a historical fact? This whole discussion is meant to be about looking at things from outside perspective. Can you say that there is not possible for such a point of view to exist, where SERFDOM (please stop dragging slavery in all the time) is very similar to market economy? If you think that it doesn't exist, please provide argumentation. I did provide some examples of points of view, from where it potentially can seem so and it will be fair if you argument your position as well.

Tom, is it going to be one of these discussions like the one we had about orbital propellant depots, where I repeatedly was pointing out that there are rather simple solutions to prevent fuel from freezing and you were time and time again ignoring my comments and pressing your idea? Because of its one of those than I won't even bother responding. I hope that my argument is fairly logical and whole so you can't just take a part of it and criticize it in separation from other points. The thing that you're repeatedly ignoring is perspective. Yes, I agree, you can't own people, at least legally, but from a certain perspective current situation is not so much different from serfdom. I repeat - From A Certain Perspective! A feudal Lord buys a piece of land with people living on it. Can they refuse to work for him? Yes. They can run away and start anew in another place, but then they will lose their house and a lot of possessions. My company is bought. Can I refuse to work for the new management? Well, sure, but I have a mortgage and if I don't find a new job very quickly, I also will lose my home. From some perspective this could look way too similar. Say, you have a family of south American Indians living in jungles of Amazon. They are as free as pretty much possible. To them serfdom and market economy may very well look almost the same. And don't give me this moralistic stuff. I don't have to feel sorry and repent. I've never owned a slave, never said that slavery is good and never done anything racist or inconsiderate to people of other races. It's been a long time ago. Time to move on, nay?

Strange, meme is a term used by Richard Dawkins in his books in regards to the evolution of DNA and proliferation of successful genes. His position is that origin and proliferation of memes is analogous to that of genes.

There are a plenty of communities even now where an arranged marriage is not considered abhorrent, but normal, whether person arranging the marriage would be woman's parents, tribal chief or someone else. Take India as an example. It's got a huge population and for a big chunk of it arranged marriage is still very much normal. The other point in the video I linked was that it was in lord's best interest to arrange a good marriage, because he wouldn't want a conflict and he'd want his subjects to be relatively happy and produce plenty of offspings, which in turn would ensure that there's always someone to work his fields. Marriage by love is a relatively new invention, which only became widespread in the 20th century and for millenia people have been married often against their will, but in many cases had a relatively happy marriage. I'm not trying to justify anything. Some things feel wrong to me, because of the way I've been brought up, but it still doesn't make it universally wrong. Take your serial killers example. One thing is the other sk's who often seem to emulate killing patterns of serial killers they know of. The other point is that serial killers usually target a specific group. Most of the groups that have some sort of defining feature often have people who dislike said group. Say, a serial killer is murdering prostitutes, I can bet you money that there will be in most countries a whole bunch of puritans who'd say something like "This whores had it coming. I don't feel bad for them". And the same will happen for almost any group. As far as feeding hungry people is concerned. Imagine your country is running a big food aid program for starving people in Africa. While most people will say it's a good thing, some members of underprivileged class would say something like "People are starving here too! Why don't you feed us first?!". And if economical situation in the country gets worse the number of supporters of this way of thinking will just grow. That's not a point I was making. People are not property, but if you view current situation out of context and from a perspective of a person who's not familiar with our ways it may seem horrible. State can take children from parents, when they grow up, government can (in some countries) take them to serve in the army, regardless of whether they want it or not. So if you take it out of context it seems quite horrible, but if you understand the background of the society really well, you'd find out that there are good reasons for doing so. Or maybe not "good" reasons, but at least "some" reasons. EDIT: Some further thoughts on swansont's comment. History and time tends to blur boundaries so that looking from far in the future things seem to blend together. Let's take slavery and serfdom as an example. Say, we have a slavery society that changed to more feudal ways with abundant serfdom. Is it a big change for them? I'd say it would be enormous from a point of view of a person living in that time. You can't buy and sell people outright and relocate them to wherever you want. You can't make them do whatever you please and they do have some of their own fields that they can work and produce food and goods. But still, you can buy a chunk of land and automatically all the people who live off of it will become your subjects, they will have to work X amount of time on your fields and you will take some of their own produce to pay tax to your own lord. You are still the main authority who settles all disputes and often arranges marriages and such, As a result, from a modern day perspective slavery and serfdom look like two sides of the same coin, while at the same time it probably was a huge change for the people. Now let's look at the modern western society.You can't buy or sell people. Oh, wait. Or can you? If my company is bought by one of its competitors, I would automatically become an employee of the buying company. Obviously, they would offer me term of contract, but it's very likely it would be pretty much the same, give or take a few bucks. And now I will "work fields" of another master. So when you buy a business, you also buy people who work there... in a way. I also have to give over a third of my income to central government overlord, who also has power to settle my disputes with my employer and other random people, can decide whether I can or can't be wed with a person I want (for example, if I were gay, I couldn't get married in many countries), it can potentially take my children from me, when it decides that they are not treated well enough, it can take my son an enlist in army and send to war and do many other nasty things. So, in essence, change from serfdom and slavery to modern market economy was a huge change for society, but from a perspective of a person living in a Utopian society of 24th century it might not seem so. They might even have a paragraph in their books on history and economy titled "Slavery, Serfdom and Market Economy", and for most people living then these might seem like almost the same thing. Sorry for the wall of text.

So I was watching a video on Youtube channel of lindybeige about historical perspective and it got me thinking. In the video linked below he talks about how in Medieval England if a villein woman was widowed and didn't find a new husband after a while her lord could go and arrange a mariage, selecting suitable husband for her himself. And from a modern point of view that sounds ridiculous. I mean, he selects a husband for a woman whom she might not even know and even if she knows, might not even like at all? How horrible. He then goes and takes us to 200 years in the future (our future) and what would people then could potentially think of our society. Like the social workers, whom he used as an example, who go to families with children and if they find that children are mistreated they can be taken away from their parents. Which means, that our children are not really our children, but are in fact are a property of the state, and that if you don't take a good care of the property of the state, it will take it away. Even if it's your own child. That could sound rather horrible, depending on what society is like in that future time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pkhaneo25Mc Anyway, enough with this long intro. Then I went to think how in many politics and ethics discussions many people (including this forum) stand up and say things like "It's horrible! X is universally wrong!" and X here can be anything from slavery to racism and pedophilia. But is there really such thing as something universally wrong? When you say such things you say it from your perspective, which in turn has been shaped by the current society and things it considers acceptable and not acceptable. But the fact that one particular form of society is more or less dominant in the world doesn't mean that it will be so forever. In fact, history tells us that it probably won't be so, as different societies come and go and all of them have their own list of "the goods" and "the bads". I will go further on to argue that any world view, held by at least one living person, any thing one does and which doesn't make them feel remorse or shame is never a universally bad thing. Can anyone be 100% sure that this particular person's views won't become a dominant ideology in the future? Probably not. It can be very unlikely, but you can never be 100% sure. Weird things do happen. Tl;dr: Even if one single person in the world currently considers that having slaves (replace slaves with almost any taboo topic) is a good thing, it's not a universally bad thing. You can say, that it's generally considered a bad thing in the society you're living and have been brought up in, but please don't speak for all people. P.S. There are potentially, contrary to my point, some universal taboos in human societies worldwide, such as incest, as an example. But this taboo stems from purely biological and genetic reasons and observations over the course of millenia, that children of incest very often are sick or deformed in some way. Although in history still there have been societies where incest for one reason or another was an accepted practice, such as Ptolemeic dynasty in Egypt or (as wiki tells me) among Balinese and Inuit people.

Wow! Similarities are uncanny!

Well, you didn't exactly specify what actually trips you here. You have all the data and all the formulas, you just have to plot the data into formulas. Reciprocal cell is an extremely important concept in crystallography when you're dealing with crystal structures and x-ray diffraction. Normal unit cell identifies actual relations of positions of atoms in crystal structure, but when you put your protein in the difractometer and run it through analysis the diffraction pattern that you'll get as a result would represent the reciprocal unit cell, which is a Fourier transform of the normal unit cell. Could you specify exactly which part are you having issues with?

arc, I have a new theory of subduction mechanism. By my thinking subduction occurs because a bazillion of dwarves get together and pull the oceanic plate down. Sometimes they decide to stop and have a break, sometimes they pull harder and sometimes they suddenly decide to start pulling in an entirely different place. This sounds retarded, doesn't it, but given enough time I could bring my "theory" in a complete accordance with all the observational evidence and even make some predictions based on it. Unfortunately, everyone will still think it's retarded until I'm able to prove in a mathematical framework or modelling that these dwarves can exist and that they can create forces required. You hypothesis has dwarves too, they live in the core, run currents through it to heat it up and then come together and push the core-mantle boundary upwards. Regardless of how well your idea matches observations, you still have to show that these "dwarves" are there. You need to show mathematically, that induction currents from solar magnetic field can produce amounts of energy required, that the expansion of the core is significant enough to influence expansion of lithosphere and that rather than relieving stress in many other ways the mantle has at its disposal, it would, for some weird reason, just lift up. Unless you can show that your idea will never be accepted. And once again I'll have to refer you to Guidelines for Speculations Discussions which coincidentally is exactly on the point of my comment above (bolded part): Also it's quite fascinating how you consider that for a top-down theory using observational evidence for both deriving a theory and proving its validity is acceptable. You can't do that. It's a circular logic. I'm also quite amazed how you managed to comment on all of my questions without actually answering them. We're not talking about what I know. We're talking about your hypothesis. Please stick to it. Do you not agree that since all short-lived isotopes have decayed and most of high-energy impacts have finished, the Earth started to slowly cool down at a modeled rate of ~100oC/billion years? By your idea such a decrease in temperature should lead to an overall increase in the number of subduction zones over time. Can you show that this is happening? You're mixing cause and effect here. Earth's magnetic field originates from a geodynamo in the liquid outer core. If, for some reason Earth's magnetic field strength increased, this could be because the temperature of outer core has increased, but it would not lead to a further increase of the core temperature, because then you're stuck in an infinite positive feedback loop. Well, you should seriously consider it. Changes in crystal structure of minerals under pressure and temperature influence are well documented and are a very efficient way of relieving stress. You can't just dismiss it. Yet again, you can't use observations to prove validity of the model when it's already created in a top-down fashion and is based on that same evidence. And please stop linking enormous posts, can't you present a short and condensed extract of what it's all about? Just so that I don't look like a person who refuses to properly study argumentation, I went and read the post you've linked. It did not open my eyes, if only a few times in a honest befuzzlement. I see absolutely no point in discussing it or even reading it in the first place. I did not ask you for evidence about water presence on early Earth. We're talking about subduction. You made a claim of when it started and I want you to back it up. Why couldn't subduction have started before water has largely condensed? Is the presence of the shallow ocean somewhat important to your model? Ok, say we have Himalayas where the Indian subcontinent collided with the Eaurasian plate. These are both continental plates of similar average thickness and composition and even though Indian plate was actually being pulled down by the still attached subducting slab of oceanic plate, it didn't go under Eurasian plate. Instead, we had collision and orogeny. Then, in your model, if you have a more or less uniform proto-crust, why would one of the pieces of it get subducted under the other, rather than resulting in orogeny as well? If, on the other hand, we say that there were areas of different density then we're looking at the existing model of subduction initiating mechanism. You seem to have taken a lot of liberties with your model. Yet again, I repeat my question - what is so different between "flat" subduction and "steep" subduction so that the former will result in creating of continental crust and the latter wouldn't? There are plenty of reasons why it wouldn't. Just as I said, the new crust is thinner, weaker, comprised of more dense mantle material and it's much more likely that the convergent boundary would form there almost 100 times out of 100. Well, cratons do get eroded, at least in areas where they are exposed but they don't get destroyed or created since the time they formed. You don't have a model. It doesn't work. Refer to the beginning of my post. Yay! Dwarves!

I think that the easiest way to get rid of staining is good mixing. If every iron particle is in its own coccoon of oil molecules, there shouldn't be any staining. Mix it in really well and you should be fine.

No. I did try that a while ago with magnetite powder and viscosity of the oil is not sufficient to hold large particles suspended for long time. If you leave it undisturbed, quite soon iron particles would precipitate. When you add a strong magnetic field the same will happen even faster. Iron particles will become separated from the oil. They would form some pretty shapes, but those would stay the same even after magnetic field was removed. Quote from this paper: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02540248 So I don't think you should worry too much about oil dissolving. I believe that vegetable oils work just fine.

arc, I would suggest you listen to the advice by billiards and refrain from constantly posting ridiculously long wall of text. Constantly posting the entire theory without being asked to can be considered preaching; these huge walls of text are very hard to follow; and this is explicitly discouraged by the Guidelines for Participating in Speculations Discussions: Could you please just answer questions presented without spilling out the entire theory with all pictures and graphs and external links? Greatly appreciated. Now back to the discussion. As this is a cornerstone of the model we're discussing, I'd suggest you present the mechanism that would create such temperature variances, especially, given that you think it's such a simple matter. Although, maybe you have already presented it, but I can't persuade myself to browse through all other 22 pages of gigantic posts. How does your model reconcile with the fact that the Earth has been cooling ever since the end of Late Heavy Bombardment. Do you have any data that shows the overall increase of the number of subduction zones over last couple billions of years? Well, this is just plain wrong in the form it's currently phrased. Have you considered a possibility of structural change of mantle minerals in the contact area between outer core and lower mantle, which could reduce the volume and allow to dissipate the stress without the need to lift the entire mantle? The process of metamorphism is extremely abundant in nature due to the fact that it's energetically more viable than all alternatives. How exactly did you link the magnetic field into the mix? Is it your mechanism for temperature variance? Any evidence for this? Explain how, if the original proto-crust was more or less uniform (not separated into oceanic and continental), why is one of the plates subducted below the other rather than forming a mountain ridge, like Himalayas or Tibet, for example? By "flat" are you referring to a shallow angle of subduction? Why "flat" subduction specifically provides genesis for the first continents, while, say, "steep" subduction wouldn't? Why wouldn't your divergent boundary during the cycle of expansion not become a convergent boundary during the contraction phase? Think of it, it's a new part of crust that has a lower thickness, perchance it hasn't cooled down completely, it's much weaker. Why would convergent boundary form anywhere else? I'm not sure why you've decided to bold parts of the passage from Wikipedia. There's no contradiction in the existing model between having mineral associations of billions of years old that have been at one stage subducted and are now exposed on the surface. A very knowledgeable forum member even have said structure as his forum name. Since you've decided to quote Wikipedia article on cratons, why do you then go and contradict the very definition of a craton which is in paragraph 1 on the page: I.e. cratons are stable and have been so for billions of years. There are by no means regularly created and destroyed. And there is a plethora of data to prove this based on radioisotope dating. I think I should have a surprise for you. The current model explains quite well the difference in the character of interaction with a continent between Atlantic and Pacific.

Thanks guys! Makes much more sense now!

I was just wondering if anyone knows why submarines normally have lower surfaced speed compared to speed when submerged? It's understandable for diesel-electric submarines, where diesel engine is there more to charge batteries than to provide propulsion and as a result surfaced speed is lower, but what about nuclear subs? They have exactly the same propulsion in both cases, but for example, US Ohio-class SSBN has a top speed 12 knots surfaced and 20 knots submerged. Same story with Russian/Soviet Akula-class 10 knots vs 28-35 knots. Is it due to lower performance of the propeller when it's close to the surface or is it something else?

You can only speculate whether life was likely to form so quickly or not, because you have only one case of life originating. That's not enough data to be making such assumptions, especially given that abiogenesis is still very poorly understood. But the fact is that the oldest known banded iron formations, which were created largely with the help of photosysnthetic organisms are as much as 3.8 bya and potentially biogenic carbon was discovered in rocks 4.1 billion years old. If that's the case, life in the most primitive forms should have come to be almost instantly (by geological time scales) after Earth had attained favorable conditions. If, hopefully, we do eventually find signs of life on Mars, this will be a lethal blow to "life was unlikely" idea, since on Mars conditions favorable to life would have existed only early on and only for a few hundred millions of years. http://apnews.excite.com/article/20151019/us-sci--earliest_life-a400435d0d.html

There is still some science to be done on the Moon. First of all, it's a really good training of how we can establish bases on other celestial objects and it will be of extreme use if we do plan on colonising the space. Also lunar low gravity and lack of atmosphere is a good test bed for a whole bunch of engineering and scientific tests. For example, we can test effectiveness of different versions of radiation protection that we'd need later on for long manned missions, test various things relating to future asteroid mining, resource extraction, ore beneficiation, large-scale metal 3d printing and many others. And we shouldn't forget that the base on the Moon would be an amazing for all sorts of astronomical observations. There's no atmosphere, telescopes would be easier to maintain (compared to Hubble) if there's a permanent base there and easier to upgrade. Unfortunately, I read recently that Roskosmos had to make some cuts to it's fundamental science programs for the next few years and focus more on developing new launchers (Angara family), new manned ship to replace Soyuz and on moving a lot of infrastructure and training bases to Vostochniy kosmodrome. And among things that have been cut was a lot relating to the proposed lunar program.

This is getting quite a bit off-topic. Hopefully one of the mods can split it to a separate post. I don't agree with your maths. Let's just count calorific value of Russian agricultural produce and compare with requirements to feed 143.5 million people, since we're talking about malnourishment, not about a balanced diet. 143.5 million people * 2000 kcal/day * 365 days = 1.047*1014 kcal required for all the Russian population to not be starving. The data below is taken from Russian Wiki, that unlike it's English counterpart has stats from Russian bureau of statistics up to 2014. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B5_%D1%85%D0%BE%D0%B7%D1%8F%D0%B9%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%BE_%D0%A0%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B8 In 2014 Russia has produced 59.711 million tonnes of wheat. A kilo of wheat has 3151 kcal. Hence, 59.711*109 kg * 3151 kcal/kg = 1.88*1014 kcal which already is more than enough to feed everyone. As a result Russia exports ~16 Mt of wheat per year. There's about 46 Mt of other grains produced in 2014, including rye, rice etc, but I won't bore you with doing calculations for all of these. There's been (in 2014) approximately 31 Mt of potatoes produced. At ~1000 kcal/kg that yields 31*109kg * 1000 = 3.1*1013 kcal What else. Beef. 1.654 Mt produced in 2014. ~2500 kcal/kg * 1.654*109kg = 4.135*1012, pork - 6.84*1012 kcal and on it goes. It's incorrect to use only the numbers for grain production that people eat to calculate potential output of meat production. In the same link above (you'll probably need Google translate) you can see that total forage production in 2014 was ~62 Mt. Then if we add up the total grain production of approx. ~105 Mt and forage production of 62 Mt we get a total of 167 Mt which is more than required by your calculations for a self-independent country. Also, you can compare the agricultural GDP with imports. The agriculture is about 4% of Russia's GDP which was ~3.493 U$ trillion (PPP) in 2016, which makes agriculture produce ~139 U$ billion (PPP). Imports for the same period were about 25 U$ billion, or about 15% of the total agricultural consumption and among these 25 billion dollars of imports third and fourth biggest imports are tobacco and tobacco products and beverages, which are all really not food. So, actually the % will be smaller.

I don't think that Russian bases on the Moon is anything but a fanciful notion. For starters, Russia atm doesn't have a launcher capable of supporting even a return mission to Moon, let alone building a base there. The heaviest version of the new launcher that's being developed - Angara A5 is only capable of ~25 tonnes to LEO, which is 5.6 times smaller than that of Saturn V. Citation needed. This paper, for example, says the following: And The article states that based on their findings the percentage of Russian population who are malnourished is less than 6%, while for most other people calorific intake is well above international standards. Also, don't forget that Russia is the second largest producers of grain in the world, third largest grain exporter. Most of the countries have to import food to a certain extent. Russia does have a negative trade balance of food imports vs exports, but main imports are goods with high added value - three main are meat, beverages and cheese - while exports are mostly grain, seeds, oil and sugar. Yet, still, for most of the food products Russian agricultural sector fills the market 80% or more. Sensei, I find your comment quite offensive and even more so when it's not supported by any evidence. http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/880591/gfa15i_002.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4481043/

There's a quote from wiki about Salyut station: Also I can't find a source for the propellant transfer for Mir station but I see that it had a fuel transfer control panel: http://www.hightechscience.org/mir_podu_refueling_control_panel.htm

I'm pretty sure you've misread it. The passage talks about albedo and insolation of Northern Hemisphere in which the biggest driver is glaciation in high latitudes. Increase or decrease in the amount of glaciation changes the insolation regime of the whole hemisphere by a lot.

The main reason why deserts have little to no rain has very little to do with temperature, mainly it's because whatever moist air is coming their way ends up as rain before reaching the desert. Some deserts like Atakama or Gobi are pretty awfully cold and still have very little rain because of mountains blocking moist air from ocean. So the answer to your question is most likely no.