John Cuthber
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Everything posted by John Cuthber
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Origin of COVID (hijack from Rand Paul Called Fauci a Liar)
John Cuthber replied to Alex_Krycek's topic in Biology
We hardly need to. The existence of a level 3 in between tells us that that what they were doing was nothing like what you would do if you were working on a bioweapon- as the daft conspiracies suggest. Any "gain of function" stuff would be BSL4. You seem to be missing my point; I'm not saying that the virus didn't "escape" from that lab. I'm saying that it was outside the lab before it went into the lab. And, because it was in the environment, the transfer to people and the growth to a pandemic was pretty much inevitable with or without the lab. It may well be that some of the first humans infected worked in that lab. But that's not the same as saying that they were, in any way, culpable beyond run of the mill ignorance. They were just monumentally unlucky. They were doing what they thought was BLS2 work in a BSL2 lab. -
Origin of COVID (hijack from Rand Paul Called Fauci a Liar)
John Cuthber replied to Alex_Krycek's topic in Biology
There's no "could" about it. It does indicate substandard precautions. However, my point is that you can't do research on human pathogens without suitable precautions for long- because you die. Anyone involved in the field knows this. So the fact that they were not even wearing gloves shows that they did not think they were working with anything "nasty". So all the "gain of function" conspiracy theories are wrong. -
Origin of COVID (hijack from Rand Paul Called Fauci a Liar)
John Cuthber replied to Alex_Krycek's topic in Biology
That's pretty close to proof that they were not working on"making" a virus that would affect people. The virus may have escaped from a lab,but it wasn't "engineered" there. -
Nor were the people of Germany in 1923- until it happened.
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That rules out the Dollar, the Euro and Sterling... and all the others.
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We are, pretty much, discussing the spherical cow in a vacuum here. Yes, in practice it wouldn't be perfect, but in principle, it works. Would it radiate? Would it "sort of radiate" because the normal BBR would be blue or red shifted, meaning that it would reflect more or less than would be "expected"?
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I'm fairly sure I could make a balloon out of conductive rubber and put a motorised pump inside it to move air in and out of a cylinder (also within the balloon). It's absurd, but not unphysical. As long as it stayed spherical, I can't see what polarisation any resulting radiation would have. That's going to make it hard to emit photons.
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They probably said that about paper money. That is Plan A.
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There will never be more than 21 million bitcoins, and we currently have 18 million of them. So, the "mining" cost will soon stop. the figure of 1123 KW Hr per transactions is... puzzling. domestic electricity prices are of the order of £0.10 per KW Hr. Which implies that each transaction costs something like £100. And that doesn't seem plausible. Is that comparison the equivalent of taking the production cost, which for a Dollar bill is about 5 cents cost and adding it to the cost of every transaction involving that dollar? So, if I buy a book for ten dollars,the transaction cost is 50 cents for the price of preening the dollar bills. The bitcoin only needs to be "minted" once.
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How does consciousness arise from within the thalamus?
John Cuthber replied to fredreload's topic in Speculations
Before you discuss why or how something happens, you need to establish that it happens. You need to start with " does consciousness arise from within the thalamus?" Because the obvious answer is "no". Do you have a reason to think otherwise? -
Do you mean... like cash? I'm fairly sure that the blockchain ensures that all crypto-currency deals are exceptionally well documented. Just like all forms of money.
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It turns out that Rand Paul is well aware of lying. https://www.factcheck.org/person/rand-paul/
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Even if you take the claim at face value, it does not make sense. If I give the local university money to research hair restorer, and that university also does research on chemical weapons, am I funding chemical weapons? If they say they spent my money on the weapons, does that mean I funded them, or does it mean they stole my money and misused it? So the interesting question is why is Rand Paul making allegations which do not even make sense? And the other question is why is the OP repeating them?
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Ionisation in radioactive decay of atoms
John Cuthber replied to Arnav's topic in Modern and Theoretical Physics
Say you have some uranium (VI) fluoride UF6, and it decays. It spits out a helium nucleus and forms Thorium and helium. But the helium nucleus is shot at at a huge speed. So, according to the conservation of momentum, the Thorium nucleus must be kicked the other way by the recoil. It is usually set moving so fast that most of the fluoride ions simply get left behind. Indeed, most of the outer electrons get left behind too So you get a mess of fluorine, helium, thorium (as ions) and electrons all moving in different directions. -
Ionisation in radioactive decay of atoms
John Cuthber replied to Arnav's topic in Modern and Theoretical Physics
Sometimes. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja01009a040 But usually the energy released tears up the ions involved. -
How much pressure do you need to make air go near lightspeed?
John Cuthber replied to pewguin's topic in Classical Physics
I suspect the temperature is so high that atomic nuclei get torn apart rather than fused. It's completely beside the point. -
We don't need to rely on your guesswork. We know that ice sublimes in a vacuum. We also know how the melting point of ice changes with pressure. Raising the pressure reduces the melting point by about 0.01C per atmosphere of pressure.
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If the equation given here https://www.raeng.org.uk/publications/other/23-wind-turbine is correct, the available power for a 1 metre radius wind turbine in air with a density of 1.2 kg/m^3 travelling at 8 m/s is is 381 Watts. For a 1 metre diameter blade the available power is 95 watts. I can't be bothered to inbox you, but the best help I can offer is "check your maths".
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Sign rule for multiplication
John Cuthber replied to neonwarrior's topic in Linear Algebra and Group Theory
Because , if you take away a debt, from someone, they end up in credit. -
In principle, nothing. Three will be limitations due to strengths of materials. The big difference is that the same amount of pumping will only move a big piston by a small distance.
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Release of internal energy. Supercooled water is unstable. It does. It draws it from whatever created the temperature difference in the first place. On Earth, that's generally the Sun. It's nothing magic; just physics.
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Deep Sea Base - Why be there? The Diamond Anvil Cell
John Cuthber replied to DeepSeaBase's topic in Engineering
Interesting , but impractical. Those observing the experiment would drown. I'm kidding, but the "observers" of these experiments are things like X-ray machines and lasers which don't take kindly to salt water. -
Are you taking the p***? If you supercool water (for example in the cylinder of some "engine") and then induce it to freeze- say by shaking, it warms up to 0C as it freezes.
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It is also why pressure vessel testing is done with liquids (usually water) rather than gas. Fundamentally, the idea depends on having a large "cold body" that you can use for cooling. And if you have that, you can use it to run a "stream engine" with, for example, butane, as the working fluid.
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What is the size and shape of single optical photon?
John Cuthber replied to Duda Jarek's topic in Physics
Nice graph. But the y axis is electric field strength, not "height", so you can't say that the photon has a width. You would be saying something like the width is "x volts per meter". Does that help in any way?