mistermack

I don't think you can generalise, you have to do some pretty intensive detective work on each sample. Sometimes it's simple enough. If the meteorite minerals match the composition of known Mars samples, then you know the source. But the cloud that eventually formed the solar system will have had a long history. If it has metals etc, then it will have been involved in a supernova or neutron star collision, or a long history of both. Maybe the star that went supernova had their own planets, that were blown to bits in the explosion. That would leave a mixture of meteorites floating around, some from a core, others from a crust. I remember seeing a photo of a meteorite that had been cleanly cut in two, with the surfaces polished. It looked like pure iron, and was tested to be a very pure sample of iron. I can't see any other natural process that could form that, apart from a planet sized object that was smashed in some way.

Logical processes, yes you can. But I would say that you temporarily abandon rationality, in order to enjoy thinks like Potter novels. Or you compartmentalise, and your mind remains rational, apart from the Harry Potter compartment.

I would say that rationality is to do with how the thinking matches reality. Whereas logical thinking is to do with how you establish one fact, from another. You can be very logical, and still get it wrong, if your starting facts are wrong, or don't match reality.

While gold is rare, there is a lot of it down below if only we could reach it. (which we never will). One geologist geologist, Bernard Wood of Macquarie University in Australia reckons there's enough gold in Earth's core to coat its surface in 1.5 feet of the stuff. And six times as much of platinum. But even if we could reach it, it would probably cost more in energy costs to winch it up to the surface, than it would be worth in cash. Another surprising fact about gold is that China is the biggest producer, followed by Russia, and then Australia. Not what I would have guessed. https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/earths-inner-fort-knox

I'm no expert, but I believe that most of the heavy metals on the Earth didn't "rain" down from space, they existed in the vast cloud that collapsed to form the sun. When the Sun lit up with fusion ignition, it blasted away the remnants of the cloud, and that clumped together in orbit around the Sun, forming the planets. The heavier metals sank towards the core. The planets did experience a rain of smaller bodies in the early history of the solar system, I think that a lot of comets composed of mostly ice hit the Earth and formed the oceans. And the meteorite collisions are probably responsible for the metals available to us in the Earth's crust. There is evidence of collisions of planets earlier in the Solar system's history. A lot of people think that the Earth was hit by a smaller planet, forming the Earth as we see it, and the moon. That kind of collision would blast a lot of material into space that orginated in the cores of the colliding planets, forming meteorites that are high in metals. Gold is believed to form mainly in a collision of two neutron stars, which produces an explosive event to rival a supernova. The gold in the Earth's crust might well have rained down, in rubble from prior planetary collisions. But most of the gold on Earth was in the cloud that formed the solar system, and now sits deep in the core beyond our reach, due to its density.

In which case there is no limit to the number of different meanings an event can have. So long as there are observers. The meaning of life can be anything you dream up. Which is fair enough. But don't forget that your meanings are imaginary, they really don't count for anything more. They might match up to reality, or they might not. But there's only one reality, whereas there are billions of imaginary "meanings".

If I was hoping to improve the outlook for the coal industry, I'd be in favour of electric vehicles. A bigger demand for electricity generation is surely good news for coal.

You seem to spray the word meaning around, without any real definition. I believe that the word "meaning" and the concept of it, is basically the relationship between an event, and an observer. I write these words, and you derive a meaning. I observe a car crash, and I think that that means someone might be hurt. I hear a loud bang, and I wonder if it means someone fired a gun, or a car backfired. The meaning of human lives just means that we are not extinct, and are still sucessfully reproducing and surviving. It all means nothing to a being on a planet that is a thousand light years away. It all means nothing to a rock, because it has no way of evaluating any kind of meaning. So the "meaning" of your examples is limited to any being that observes them, and has a brain that can ponder them.

What do you mean, by meaningful? You are just making a bald claim, that doesn't really say anything, unless you explain what kind of meaning you are referring to, and how a mosquito or tape worm has that meaning, and to whom that meaning is relevant. A tape worm in a pig in Africa has no meaning for me. It just is. Very like the pig, the plants that the pig eats, and the dirt that they grow in. What meaning, and who to ?

Only when you reach at 0ºK. 😊 No material can be cold, just colder, except at at 0ºK. That's what I call cold.

Why no link? Why did I have to find it myself? Anyway : https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/biden-iran-force-nuclear-weapon-b2122488.html I'd really like to know how this "negotiating" method is different from that of Putin ?

It's an interesting concept, if it is indeed more predictive than Dark Matter. But I'm naturally sceptical of new models that are tailored to fit a known phenomenon. The tailoring can be pretty creative, and you don't always get told what wiggling has been done, to get to a destination that you already know. Even if Mond IS a better predictor of the motion of stars, it doesn't mean that it's based on a principle that's right. Comparing the Dark Matter idea, and Mond, they are both hypothesising something unknown, causing an observed phenomenon. But Dark Matter is more logical. Mond is talking about gravity not behaving in the way in which it has been observed and measured time and time again, just because the field is low strength. I haven't seen any suggestion of a mechanism why that should be so. DM speculates on the presence of an unknown form of matter. That's not exactly without precedent. But it also needs to be "tailored" to each galaxy to fit. Having a guess, I'd say that DM is a more likely scenario. I can't conjure up a hypothetical reason for gravity to go haywire, just because the field is low strength, but I can imagine a previously unknown form of matter being identified. Of course, the fact that I can't picture it doesn't make it any less viable.

This is unfair to pigs. If humans were kept like pigs, we would smell worse than pigs. Human pee and shit smell worse than that of pigs. Especially when it's gone a bit stale. And human body odour, if we were kept like pigs, would be really rank. So the title should make it clear that, if we got down in the mud with pigs, they might well end up smelling like us.

Settling a lawsuit in the US doesn't really tell you anything. Cases are often launched with the calculation that, innocent or guilty, it's better and cheaper for the accused to settle. You need deep pockets to fight, and the juries are notoriously unpredictable.

Wikipedia says : "In French spelling, aspirated "h" (French: "h" aspiré) is an initial silent letter that represents a hiatus at a word boundary, between the word's first vowel and the preceding word's last vowel. At the same time, the aspirated h stops the normal processes of contraction and liaison from occurring.[1] The name of the now-silent h refers not to aspiration but to its former pronunciation as the voiceless glottal fricative [h] in Old French and in Middle French.[citation needed] " It's all greek to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspirated_h

And yours.

That's why you'll never see an Abe Kennedy.

No such thing as an instantaneous occurrence. In a zero time interval, nothing can happen. I know what you mean, a lifetime can be considered a series of events. But that applies to any event, you can break it down to smaller events. But in the context of the age of the universe, a human lifetime is a very brief event, of no consequence at all, and not worth dividing up into smaller events. So the word event is flexible. But the one thing it doesn't mean, is an intantaneous snapshot.

No. Consider a camp fire. Does it go out, each time a stick is burnt? No. The fire is an event, not an instantaneous thing. You can't have a camp fire, without lighting it, feeding it and eventually letting it burn out. People are like the fire. We are an event, not an instantaneous thing. So we have a beginning and an end and exist over a time period.

A shotgun or homemade gun isn't really the ideal weapon if you planned to escape anyway. Not if the target victim has protection. This guy must be a nut-case, as he was 100% sure to get caught in that situation. Probably a narcissist like the guy who killed John Lennon. Or paranoid, with an obsessive grudge against Abe, or politicians in general. Jill Dando, the UK Crimewatch presenter, was murdered with a homemade or home-altered gun, and they never traced the killer, but she was alone when she was killed.

In the USA, of course it's easy to get what you want. But in Japan maybe not so easy. Even in the USA, it might be better to reload a cartridge you found in the woods for an asassination, since it wouldn't be traceable to you. This guy made his own gun, so it wouldn't be surprising if he made his own ammunition.

Even if a philosopher managed to "think" himself to Mars, he would still die within seconds. I think if I had to go, I'd rather let the scientists organise it. Horses for courses

Can you re-use a fired shotgun cartridge?

I would say, yes of course it is. But I would argue that a black hole's gravity isn't a result of things happening inside the black hole, it's more the result of it's existence. Same as any other body.

Unfortunately, the genie is out of the bottle now. The gun looked like a homemade short barrelled shotgun, although it was just a glimpse on the video. The sound also sounded like shotgun ammunition, but there was a lot of echos. Now that one person has done it, other nutters will be paying very close attention. I don't have any details, but you would imagine that shotgun ammunition would be less restricted than handgun or rifle ammo, so Japan will probably have to clamp down on it, if that was the case. And even if it wasn't, the possibility is still obviously there. Another possibility is that the killer adapted a replica gun. That's a pretty common thing in this country, it's amazing that replicas are not heavily restricted or banned. After all, it's only nut-cases who would be affected if they were banned.