joigus

Yes, thank you. It's true that it's usually stated that the Earth is a closed system. This might be true if you are calculating, say, primary production over a series of years, for which the flux of matter is irrelevant. Certainly not in the long run. I hope you agree with this.

I don't know, to be honest. I suppose whether you work on marine biology or epigenetics, it is of little consequence to your work. The discipline I would assume it is likely to influence more is evolutionary biology. But again, I don't really know. I figure it would be difficult to evaluate the actual level of impact on scientists' minds. This people say over and over, but is not true. @exchemist seems to agree with me in this point. Mind you, I'm sure he knows volumes more than I do about these matters. Here's my point: Is that of little consequence? I don't know. I do know it has been argued that fluxes of cosmic rays due to relatively close supernova explosions might have been responsible for certain extintion events. so I wouldn't bet my bottom euro on it being totally inconsequential. Is the Earth to a good approximation a closed system for long periods of time? Probably yes. But it is an approximation. It is certainly true that the Earth was not a closed system during the late heavy bombardment, when even whole chunks of the Moon might have rained upon "us". It wasn't either 65 mya, when the Chicxulub crater formed and swept away all the dinos, AFAWK. At times like those, the Earth certainly opened the gates, and dramatically so.

Thanks, MigL. It was a closer shave than it seems now though. If Guéhi's header had gone in... I'm glad for the political consequences in Spain in terms of inducing a certain feeling of unity. This will last a couple of weeks, I reckon. I know very little about hockey though. Have TML been finalists many times with little to show for it? Something similar can be said for Netherlands in the World Cup.

Vance's views on Ukraine could change tomorrow. After all, his views on Trump seem to have changed overnight in a manner of speaking. Meanwhile, identity politics can only be addressed by picking a VP that embodies it. We've seen it before in a different version. They're going for a demographics of males in their 30-somethings to 40-somethings who feel they'be been left aside by identity politics for too long now. I could be wrong, as politics is not my thing, let alone American politics...

This is pretty much like searchable and non-searchable at the same time. Which is basically Swansont's point.

Agreed. One has to be quite far away from equilibrium for anything "interesting" happening. @exchemist has made a point that's always been on the back of my mind as a considerable objection, or at least an obstacle, to the Gaia hypothesis, which is the one about homeostasis. Geological processes generally are one-directional and relentless, so it seems difficult to see them as part of a global flow of inter-dependent feedback mechanisms that would lead to this stasis (quite distinct from thermodynamic equilibrium, as you justly point out) that homeostasis represents. Also, @studiot added this careful distinction between closed and isolated systems which, whether or not is crucial here, could be important. For example, the Earth continually receives an influx of particles from space, although it reflects basically just light. This makes the Earth a system that's neither closed (energy) nor isolated (matter), strictly speaking. But these processes are perhaps slow in comparison to typically life-related cycles. Can the same be said about geo-processes like weathering or recycling of material in subduction zones? I wonder. I wonder as well whether the fact that the Gaia hypothesis has been given considerable creedence may be because some processes are faster, while other (geological, cosmic) are far slower and act more as a background that's fixed or periodic of much higher period for the purposes of the bio-processes to adjust. Does any of that make sense, even if it's a tad vague?

Yep. I was minding my own business when all of a sudden I thought, 'I gotta find me some peace. Hey, I know, what better way to do it than engaging in a conversation with Dim?' No. You cannot press me into watching that video. You either make the point here or let it go. Those are the rules of this game as I understand them.

We the people?

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stendhal_syndrome Now, From Google search. I think both are related, aren't they? Was that perhaps your intended topic?

What is your approach? General relativity does not satisfy the superposition principle, and it would take quite some work to see what would happen to this otherwise purely hypothetical configuration of extremely intense fields if the sources generating them got really close. Maybe @Markus Hanke can tell you more. OTOH, there are practical reasons why you wouldn't wan to be anywhere near a NS or a stellar-mass BH, with their extremely gnarly accretion disks. AAMOF, there are practical reasons why you wouldn't wanna be anywhere near a stellar anything. Even a heavy, whopping, magnetically-active planet could kill you. Example: Jupiter. Don't get anywhere near Jupiter unless you want to die fast.

https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/some_1?q=some https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/massive?q=massive https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/black-hole?q=black+hole

Ditto. It started with a note that sounded poetic to me, which I always appreciate. Then suddenly I'm led to psychogeography. I'm told by Google: Stendhal syndrome?

Yes, let's.

No. I meant "evolution-wise".

Simple changes can have limitless consequences. You must look downstream.

It's OK, I understand. England would be my favourite in any other instance too. We hedge our bets in Spain. That's why we secured Alcaraz in Wimbledon's final too. Double the chance of getting a happy ending come Sunday. ...or double the disappointment though if both fail.

I don't know. It seems to me that you're making more sense than you ever have. Technology can have (and has had) this effect of re-wiring us into the universe in new and unexpected ways. Full of potential.

Patriotic fervour strikes when and where you least expect it. I know the feeling. I will take a seat on this one too.

Blather cannot be disproved. So much the worse for the blatherer.

Not even pseudo. The Sun is a big factor, and drives many reactions, keeping all those cycles going, as stated before in the thread. Otherwise all those cycles would grind to a halt in geological time, probably.

Far from it.

Thanks, Mordred. I'm all in favour of sterile-neutrino hypotheses. I recently tried to draw attention on Turok et al.'s idea of time-symmetric universe with sterile neutrinos being responsible for dark matter. For very long I've thought the next development is much more likely to come from a wildly new reinterpretation of familiar ideas than the familiar interpretation of wild new ideas.

Today I learned about the existence of ECC (elliptic curve cryptography). A cryptographic method which seems to bee just as efficient as RSA, but with smaller-size keys. Thanks to @Ghideon.

Very interesting, thank you! I'm very far from being an "expert" on cryptography, btw.

Within the confines of propositional logic (binary logic, that is) a proposition cannot be true and not true at the same time. I suppose that's what you're pointing at here. It makes sense to discuss whether a proposition is true or not true. It makes sense to discuss whether a proposition contradicts another, and therefore only one of them can be true. Truth is a value you assign to a proposition. A function, if you will. You do not assign truth/not truth to truth itself. Does that make sense?