exchemist

There seem to be several different items here. Where did you get them and were they part of a set? First reaction is that they seem to be silvered. Is that right? And could they be double-walled? They remind me of double-walled vacuum flasks used to handle things like liquid nitrogen. Those are silvered, to reduce heat transmission by thermal radiation. I see the spherical one has ground glass joints at either end. Also these pictures are very poorly lit. Can you not illuminate them with daylight instead of a computer monitor?

Perhaps not (though it probably does). However there are other standpoints besides the biological one. It interests me me from the standpoint of physical science.

In fact, though, these projects were decided upon years ago. ITER - which JET will hand on to - was effectively started back in 1987. Though it is true that more partner countries (e.g. India, Australia) have joined the project in the last decade or so. But fusion remains a "jam tomorrow" energy source that will only contribute, if it ever does, in the 2nd half of the century. Given that state of affairs, it is actually quite remarkable that there has been the - global - political will to fund something so expensive, so long term and so uncertain.

So there are. I didn't realise (not having young daughters). But if it's just design issues, where does chemistry come in?

It sounds like a great idea in principle. I imagine the main problem is the range of drugs that could be used for spiking. You would need something that reacts with each one to produce a colour change. Possibly some kind of immuno assay method could be developed. However this will not be simple.

Depends how far back you go. The water would all have been present in the same cloud of gas and dust from which the solar system formed, and all the oxygen in it would have come, like all the other elements heavier than H, He and some Li, from stellar fusion in earlier generations of stars. So yes, it all has a common origin in that sense. It's interesting about Ganymede's water, but maybe not hugely surprising, given that it is bigger by volume than Mercury and about half its mass. The vapour pressure of water in the cold of space that far from the sun is pretty low so, given its quite large gravity, not much would have evaporated into space. What is a bit curious is that it has quite a lot of other similarities to the Earth: a molten metallic core, creating a magnetic field, surrounded by a rocky (silicate) mantle and then an ocean of liquid water, all beneath an icy surface. I see the internal ocean is even said to be salty. I'm not sure how that would arise, given the lack of the erosion cycle of the rocks that we have on Earth.

Yes I saw the square and the note too, but I'm not sure what it signifies. In the structure, I think there are both octahedral sites (6 coordination) and tetrahedral sites (4 coordination) for cations, which glue together anionic double chains of silicate tetrahedra. It may be that the Mg2 denotes occupancy of the tetrahedral and Mg5 occupancy of the octahedral sites in the lattice. Maybe the defect remark indicates a repeating gap (vacant site), necessitated by electric charge neutrality if all the cations are divalent. (There are some structures with monovalent cations, eg Na+, where more of these sites would be filled, I think.) But I"m guessing and unfortunately I can't find anything on the web that gives me a structure or explanation clear enough resolve the issue. Maybe if we have a mineralogist on the forum he or she could interject. I am conscious that I am approaching the bullshit threshold.

I read it as making a factual claim, which, as I have explained, it could easily have been. But OK, so it's just what you think. We can leave it at that, then.

I think this indicates that Mg appears in 2 different sites in the lattice and can be partially replaced by other cations, such as Ca++ or Fe ++, in the first position in related amphiboles. But I'm not 100% sure. The compositional ranges of these silicate minerals are not exact and are very complicated.

Not a silly question. If you make a factual claim, it is not unreasonable to ask for evidence in support. There could be case histories reported, e.g. upheld claims for unfair dismissal, newspaper reports, causes célèbres in the right wing blogosphere etc. Or you might have personal knowledge of people to whom this has happened. But in fact it is just supposition on your part - you've made it up, in other words.

And my earlier questions? Let me repeat them for the the third time: Do you have evidence of people being driven out, or of "new sceptics" being deterred from entering the field? Where does this come from?

OK, as @swansont says, maybe I can't separate the fields from the particles experiencing them.

I gather they are often found together in nature (both metamorphic products of ultramafic minerals like olivine, I think), so measures have to be taken to ensure commercial talcum powder does not contain any asbestos.

Eh? The gain in stored energy is accompanied by a gain in rest mass of the battery, yes or no? Yes, that makes sense, I suppose.

Surely that may depend on what one is talking about. When we charge a battery we say it very slightly gains mass. That mass gain is in the form of chemical potential energy, due to the electrostatic potential of the electrons and nuclei that comprise the atoms or ions involved. Isn't it? So isn't that mass gain in the form of the electric fields they experience.

They have different composition, as @John Cuthberhas explained. My understanding is that the different physical appearance is due to the way the minerals cleave. Talc easily cleaves along a plane, in one dimension, into 2D sheets, rather as graphite and the micas do. Asbestos minerals cleave along two planes, more or less perpendicular to one another, resulting in 1D fibres. The behaviour depends on whether the crystal structure is in the form of sheets or chains of the silicate tetrahedra in the mineral.

So you say. However I can't seem to find a response from you to my earlier questions: do you have evidence of people being driven out, or of "new sceptics" being deterred from entering the field? Where does this come from? And as I said earlier, even the oil companies acknowledge man-made climate change is real: the European ones started to acknowledge the risk at least was real, several decades ago.

Could be interesting. But of course there may now be an "observer effect", as by telling us you are doing this you are perturbing the system........

Fair enough.

I'm hardly alone in my view. It's fairly mainstream. In civilised societies. https://justice.org.uk/article-3-prohibition-torture/

You need to do this for a couple of months for it to mean anything. So much depends on whether or not there is a live topic that a person is contributing to, during a given week.

Correct.

No it's never justified. It degrades law enforcement and is likely to result in bad information anyway. Normally this is posed as a hidden nuclear bomb, but I guess paedos are all the rage at the moment.

I've decided to suspend judgement for now, that's all. If you cite material from disinformation sites, you must expect people like me to be suspicious. "Watts Up With That" is notorious. I presume what you are now referring to is Scaffetta etc. I'll sit that one out, I think. Others seem more au fait with it than I am.

Yes, I think I'd be in favour of keeping it, so long as we know the mods are monitoring it for abuses, such this person with an apparent grudge.