exchemist

Your doctors?

Well indeed, it’s the paper that is suggesting electrolysis, but the absence of free hydrogen is why I was speculating in my earlier post about some other process trapping hydrogen in some way.

I have to acknowledge the logic of swing state tactics though, as others have pointed out. But he's very useful guy to have around during the campaign, at least.

OK but work function is not really the right criterion. This is not removing an electron from a metal surface in a vacuum, it is taking water molecules, splitting them and forming new molecules of H2 and O2, in an aqueous environment, and in the process donating 2 electrons per molecule, from a metal oxide or hydroxide. What I took from the paper was that one needs 1.23V + 0.37V overpotential, so 1.6V whereas the potentials they have detected are only up to 0.95V. So I guess they must be assuming there are spots with a potential difference >0.95 that they just have not picked up. I can see that if Mn II goes up to MnIV, say, you have your 2 electrons, but the rest looks handwavy.

Just to come back to Buttigieg for a moment, this is what I mean about wiping the floor with these Republicans: Just watch the first 3 minutes. It's all done very gently, with humour, but he manages to make JD Vance look a prize a**hole without saying anything rude - and has the audience laughing. It is in truth hard not to laugh. The guy is a Rolls Royce. Harris will be nowhere near him in effectiveness.

Yes I saw this. I have tracked down the paper in Nature Geosciences and have been reading it: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01480-8 It's not entirely clear there is sufficient potential difference to electrolyse water, but the researchers do seem to have evidence that oxygen is produced from the nodules rather than via something else. What the bobble hat persuasion has seized on, of course, is another argument for preventing the mining of these nodules to help the green energy transition. But the interesting thing to me is what the mechanism for electrolysis can be. I can't seem to find any mention of detecting hydrogen, which strikes me as suspicious if electrolysis is assumed to be the process. Or can it be some other process involving reduction and abstraction of hydrogen into the structure of these compounds? The paper doesn't really seem to get into the chemistry. Perhaps someone will pick this up and look into it further.

Yes I suppose that’s right: you could reduce the diffusion of H+ and OH- into each other’s presence by an intermediate reservoir of sodium sulphate. Also by making it a saturated solution, you could provide a reservoir of counterions to allow higher concentrations of H+ and OH- to be eventually reached.

Bikers? What’s your problem with them? More to the point, what does your rant have to do with the thread topic?

heh heh.👍

OK fair enough, that makes sense.

I quote from the Wiki article on SCIRP: "In 2021 Cabells' Predatory Reports described SCIRP as a "well-known predatory publisher".[2] In the Norwegian Scientific Index the publisher and all of its journals have a rating of 0 (non-academic).[18] An academic study published in 2022 stated that SCIRP was "widely known to host 'fake journals'".[3]" From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Research_Publishing It does not sound from this as if SCIRP has improved at all in recent years. It has an office in California but is a Chinese operation, apparently exploited by Chinese researchers trying to get their publication count up. Furthermore the author, John A Macken, seems to be some kind of retired inventor of optical devices, apparently without much background in the relevant cosmological physics: http://onlyspacetime.com/about.html. He also has a YouTube video out, posted in April this year. And he's also published his paper on Academia.edu, a notorious host for cranks of all shapes and size - people like Gareth Meredith, banned from this forum many times, publish there: https://independent.academia.edu/GarethMeredith None of this is how serious scientists go about their business. So it does rather look as if it is likely to be some sort of homespun crankery. [cue the Galileo Gambit?]😉

Hmm, maybe, though an American friend, not specially liberal but urban admittedly, thinks most of the country is ready for a gay president now. Anyway he's quite young so could wait until next time (if there is a next time, which there may not be if Trump wins). I do wonder though if Harris has what it takes in terms of breadth of political experience and communicating. She got eliminated pretty early in the 2020 campaigns, I gather. If she is the nominee, I think one thing she should avoid like the plague is trying to make a virtue out of being a woman and being of colour. That would give off vibes of the "my turn now" entitlement that helped to sink Hilary Clinton and would play straight into the "talentless D&I appointment" narrative. She's got to stand on her real merits, show good ideas and attack Trump effectively. On the last point it would be amusing to see her, or whoever the eventual candidate turns out to be, attacking Trump for being too old and for self-evidently going nuts, both of which are absolutely true. About time someone a generation younger pointed out this Emperor has no clothes.

Thanks for the link. I've added it to my bookmarks, though SCIRP is notorious and has been on Beall's List for ages.

Don't disagree with your basic thesis but, on a point of detail, there are many constitutional monarchies nowadays that are fully democratic. They are not necessarily authoritarian states, as you seem to assume, cf. Spain, the UK, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium.

I’d like to see Buttigieg. That guy could wipe the floor with Trump and would be a real breath of fresh air. CV is fantastic and great communicator.

Utter ballocks.

I suppose in theory it must be limited by the amount of metal cation and sulphate available as counterions, to match the increasing H+ and OH- concentrations on either side. Though I still think there will come a point at which a significant proportion of the counterion movement through the bridge will be H+ and OH-, at which stage neutralisation will increasingly compete with the production of acid and base.

OK that's interesting. I was thinking more about this yesterday afternoon after my original post. I suppose the porous clay pot is in effect a "salt bridge" with MgSO₄(aq) as the bridging solution. At the start, the counterions that move through the pores to preserve electrical neutrality will be Mg²⁺and SO₄²⁻ and it will only be as the acidity and alkalinity build up that a proportion of the moving counterions will start to be H⁺ and OH⁻. So yeah, I think I see how it works now. (It's been half a century since I did this stuff.)

Mind you, that actually happened to President Carter.

Oh Christ it's bloody "Gaiagirl" (Faceurchin, Sarah Ellard, Frank Baker, etc) back again. Oh and now Caronynx: https://www.sciforums.com/threads/florida-man-claims-a-plesiosaur-killed-his-friends-his-son-is-interviewed.166458/. The man strangled by his own thymus gland was my favourite of these stupid stories this person spams around the internet periodically.

I am old enough to remember when we replaced sulphurised sperm whale oil with a synthetic substitute, in a lubricant for the bronze bushes on old-fashioned, journal bearing, railway wagons. Of course they have all been rolling element bearings for decades now, so grease-lubricated.

OK thanks for the description. I think I understand what they are doing. Electrochemistry is not my strong suit but I can see that the anode can generate oxygen and hydronium ions: 2H₂O -> O₂ + 4 H+ + 4e- https://www.chemguide.co.uk/inorganic/electrolysis/solutions.html while the cathode generates hydrogen and hydroxide: 4H₂O +4e- -> 2H₂ +4OH- However what I struggle with is that the implication of the clay pot setup as described seems to be that you would end up with a charge separation, with surplus H+ inside the pot, with no counterion to neutralise the +ve charge, and similarly surplus OH- outside, also with nothing to neutralise the -ve charge. If this started to happen the potential produced would rapidly stop current flowing, bringing the process to a halt. Or, if the permeability of the pot were sufficient to allow the metal cation and SO₄²⁻ to diffuse through it to preserve electrical neutrality, why would it not also allow H+ and OH- to diffuse through, preventing the accumulation of acidity and alkalinity on either side? So at the moment I have difficulty seeing how this setup can produce the effect claimed. But maybe someone with more electrochemical knowledge will comment. On the separate matter of substituting Na₂SO₄ for MgSO₄, I should not think the change of cation will make any difference. As both elements have an electrode potential, E₀ considerably more -ve than hydrogen, it will in both cases be H₂ that is generated at the cathode, the metal cation being unaffected.

I would put this in the general category of: "Let's give parents something else to be pointlessly anxious about". On the whole, if there is nothing wrong with your child, I think you should not spend your time poring over genetics. If there is something wrong, or you yourself have a known genetic condition that might be passed on, then you should be in contact with health professionals.

As a matter of fact biodegradable lubricants, often made from biological sources, have been on the market for many years now. They tend not to be suitable for engine oil, but then as we won't be running IC engines, that problem will go away in any case. As @Sensei says, a wide range of organic chemicals, including polymers, can in principle be made using such things as ethanol or methanol as a feedstock, or starch or cellulose (carbohydrates). So when, probably well over a century from now, the last oil refineries and natural gas synthesis plants ceases to be economic to run, there are options. There is a Royal Society of Chemistry paper reviewing petroleum-derived and biomass-derived options here: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2023/su/d2su00014h .

We will probably continue to use oil or gas for lubricants (lubricants are already made from gas via gas-to-liquids synthesis today) and petrochemicals for another century at least. But as that does not involve CO2 emission, that’s OK.