exchemist

Yes, I had the same feature on the 4 wheel drive I had when I lived in Dubai in the 80s. I remember I was also told not to engage 4 wheel drive until I went off road, to avoid "winding up" the transmission on surfaced roads when turning. The front wheels turn through a longer arc than the back so without a centre differential, which such vehicles don't have, the front and rear drive shafts are trying to turn by different amounts. So the procedure was when going off road to engage 4 wheel drive and then jump out and connect the front hubs. By the time I left in 1987 many of the newer vehicles did it automatically. (The vehicle I had was what is called in the UK the Mitsubishi Shogun. However in Dubai it was called the Pajero. Many years later, I learnt from a S. American colleague that "pajero" is Spanish slang for wanker. Another example of the Japanese instinct for picking brand names that don't work in Western culture.)

From @Ghideon's post it seems you are right.

I think you've picked the wrong word with "priest", actually. In Christianity, those denominations that have priests do not subscribe to scriptural literalism. Literalism is almost entirely the preserve of fundamentalist Protestants. In Islam, there seems to be a degree of scriptural literalism too - but they don't have priests either, of course. But indeed, as with all religions, people tend to believe what the teachers of that faith teach. So if the preachers don't understand metaphor and allegory, there's not much hope for their congregations. So maybe what we can conclude is that scientists with religious faith will tend to have a grasp of metaphor and allegory!

OK I understand you better now. I quite agree there is no necessary conflict between the pursuit of science (applying methodological naturalism) and religious belief per se - though some more naive forms of religion are ruled out, of course, notably scriptural literalism of various sorts.

It seems that if you want to make a Grand Trampling Exit (for the second time now, is it?) , you have to do it without help.

Plenty of scientists have, and in the past had, religious beliefs without it getting in the way of their science in any way. Science is not some priestly calling that takes over your whole life.

OK, I'll have a go at this. The signs are phases of the orbital wave function, just as you have a +ve and -ve phase in an alternating current, or in a water wave as crests (+) and troughs (-) pass you. When combining atomic orbitals to make a bond there is either the option of the two having the same phase (one is + when the other is +), or of them having opposite phase (one is + when the other is -). If they have the same phase, the resulting combined orbital has a build up of electron density between the atoms, has lower energy than either of the atomic orbitals, and is therefore a bonding orbital. If the phases are opposite, you have a node between the two atoms (where the sign of the phase changes), indicating that electron density is reduced, rather than increased, in the region between the atoms, and this corresponds to an antibonding orbital, which is of higher energy than either atomic orbital. Both bonding and antibonding orbitals form when 2 atoms approach one another. A chemical bond will form if there are enough electrons to populate the bonding orbital but not the antibonding one. (An example of where both are populated is when 2 inert gas atoms approach one another. Both orbitals are populated and the repulsion due to the antibonding one cancels the attraction from the bonding one, so no bond forms.)

I'm not sure everyone agrees they are greater disciplines. I'm inclined to resist potentially invidious rankings of that sort. I think the split came about due to empiricism - and the huge push that got with the invention of suitable instruments by which nature could be studied (telescope etc), and the invention of the printing press which gave like-minded experimenters an easy way to read of one another's work. I suppose people like Roger Bacon and Ibn Al Haytham were the first since the ancient Greeks, but it only got properly off the ground after the Renaissance.

Yep, that's the one I would go for as well, for the same reasons as @studiot. As the units of entropy are energy/temperature, say J/K, it gives a sense of thermal energy becoming less able to do work as its temperature drops, so a sort of heat dissipation. It's a bit harder to see how this applies in the case of entropy of mixing, but in that case too each component it becomes spread out through a larger volume, so its internal energy becomes more dissipated.

Looks like a homework multiple choice question. What do you think and what makes you uncertain of the best answer?

Thanks, that's very informative. But according to the link, neutrinos are detected, not by beta decay, as @Heis3nbergsaid, but by emission of Cerenkov radiation, in which, apparently, both electron and muon neutrinos can show up but not, for some reason tau neutrinos. They don't say why, but I can imagine that it would be less likely a particle with such a large mass will be accelerated to speeds greater than the local phase velocity of light in the detection medium.

Exactement. The Immaculate Conception of Mary has nothing to do with parthenogenesis, however.

Who claims "science is about reality", and what was the context in which this was said?

Do muon and tau neutrinos also participate in beta decay reactions, then? Or, when you say "similar", do you mean different from beta decay but in some way analogous? Or is it that they do, but to a much lesser degree, due to their greater mass (which you referred to earlier)? Is this a cross-section effect? (I don't know anything about this stuff.)

Why is it that we can only detect electron neutrinos?

That would seem to indicate there is not much to worry about, at current levels of exposure.

Oh so you mean candle soot. I see. I'm not sure I would expect that to do anything. And I've just tried it- having taken the elementary precaution of removing the metal foil and the metal disc securing the base of the wick - and nothing happens.

I don't follow you. Dioxane is present in some cosmetic preparations, at <10ppm. At that concentration, yes, I would rub it on my face without worrying too much. Except that, being a bloke, I don't use cosmetics......... unless you count shaving lotion.

What graphite is this?

Because it does scientific research and produces results. You can read about what people studying it do here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrobiology They don't just speculate about life on other planets. They study life here in extreme environments, to see what range of environments could support the kinds of life we have here on Earth. They study the environments of other astronomical bodies. They look at things such as the chemistry of meteorites and comets, etc. And they publish the results of these studies.

Well pretty different, it seems to me. Dioxins, being aromatic, are chemically related to phenols, while dioxane is an ether. Dioxins are persistent pollutants while dioxane biodegrades. Dioxins bioaccumulate, whereas dioxane apparently doesn't. These differences in behaviour are presumably related to dioxane being water soluble while dioxins are lipid soluble.

And your petulant sarcasm, in response to getting your previous wrong idea rejected here, is not hostility? Look, if you want to make a serious point, and are willing to respond constructively to the responses you get, people like me will be more than happy to take you seriously, whether you can spell or not. But you have yet to show any sign of being able to do that - and by your own admission this thread was not started in that spirit. If you take the p***, you must expect that others will do so too.

It's spelt "meant", and "your". The sarcasm (not really irony) of your post was very obvious, but as it raised no serious point of discussion I thought I might as well correct your spelling.

It's spelt "exist".

Hang on, that's about dioxins, not dioxane. They are quite different, surely.