John Cuthber

Thanks for pointing out the exact date (27 Aug) when it got too icy to pass through. Up till then it was Summer and you could sail there. Which is what I said. So it's hardly misrepresentation- hype perhaps, since it's not quite the pole.. Of course, the details of when you can sail how far North will depend on the weather. The point remains that there's less ice than there used to be.

The first page you cite there is just silly. It says things like "From the 2013 IPCC Report This is a gross misrepresentation of data. The Antarctic ice sheet has not been losing mass—the East Antarctic ice sheet, which contains about 90% of the world’s fresh water, is not melting–it’s growing! The same is true for Antarctic shelf ice. The only part of Antarctica that may be losing ice is the West Antarctic Peninsula, which contains less than 10% of Antarctic ice." But it ignores that fact that you can now sail to the North pole in Summer So who is really doing the gross misrepresenting?. It is true that the Antarctic ice is growing at the moment. We know that, and we know why. http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/09/17/stronger-winds-explain-puzzling-growth-of-sea-ice-in-antarctica/ so it doesn't in any way detract from the basic point. But avoiding any reference to that explanation is grossly misrepresenting the truth.

Who said that?

"Reputation awaits for the one who solves it first." How? I don't think he has posted here since he died n years ago Incidentally n-2 is a square number. However I guess solving the problem by knowing one of the names of that spiral and googling it doesn't count.

Have you read the title of the thread?

Did I miss something? The universe has a centre (with or without a black hole). As far as the observable universe is concerned, the observer is at the centre of it and that observer isn't a black hole so PG is simply wrong about that.

It's kind of difficult to distinguish a drug from a poison, ask Paracelsus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus#Contributions_to_toxicology In any event, i'd go somewhere else for pizza next time. A letter to the local paper (not naming the pizza joint) asking if anyone had experienced similar problems recently might be informative.

Because others don't think that. And, if anyone thinks I'm going to buy beer by the half-litre any time soon they are sorely mistaken. The Pint is the fundamental unit for beer.

Time travel is not just possible, but inevitable. we all drift through it at a rate of one second per second (measured in our local frame of reference).

"99% of numerology is based on healing the world, metaphysical cleansing and all other areas of human suffering." No, 100% of it is used to spread nonsense. A couple of thousand hits on google for Hitler's birthday and numerology suggests it's exactly the sort of thing numerologists talk about. If that sickens you (and, perhaps it should) then drop numerology. (Churchill's birthday, for comparison got just 77 hits) Come to think of it, drop numerology anyway: it's silly. Citing a comedy website as evidence brings us firmly into the territory of Poe's law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law In any event, this whole thread has nothing to do with chemistry and should be in speculations or the trash-can.

And you think that predicts something that was published 16 years ago. Do you do other forms of comedy?

I'm not a doctor but you might want to look at this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scombroid_food_poisoning It wasn't a tuna pizza by any chance?

I'm guessing mainly water but with oil and sand in it. Why are you asking?

When did you predict that? " I'm thinking Nobel prize." I told you he was funny.

I realise we are not likely to get him to see sense, but he's funny. "although it really lacks any reality my physics knowledge is way beyond many members of this forum" I still want to see him explain how he "predicted" something from 1992 Over to you Pure G.

The paper cited says "The fundamental properties of light derive from its constituent particles—massless quanta (photons) that do not interact with one another1. However, it has long been known that the realization of coherent interactions between individual photons, akin to those associated with conventional massive particles, could enable a wide variety of novel scientific and engineering applications2, 3. " The dates of the references are 1992 and 1997. Are you saying that you posted 16 years ago?

"Thisis why I un friended you Ajb " LOL

That's not just not chemistry, it's word salad. The particular choice of units is arbitrary- you can do chemistry perfectly well in BTU rather than Joules and using pound-moles rather than gram-moles. There's nothing to stop you using rankine rather than kelvin. The point is that this change of units will change the numbers. So, if some compound has a melting point and boiling point that correspond numerically to Hitler's birthday, we know it can't be significant because, if we used the other set of units, it would no longer be true. That's (one reason) why numerology is bunk. So we know that this "Now you may see why numerology, ... may be one of the dozens of ways to describe this in our day and age" makes no sense. We know that numerology is baseless.

You really don't know what you are talking about do you? We know that there are roughly 90 elements in the periodic table that are not so radioactive that they would kill you if you put them in the body. We also know how strongly each of those elements onds to silicon. We know how strong the bonds to silicon in asbestos are. So we know what could- even in principle- react with asbestos. There aren't many contenders. Of those 90 or so, only two will do it: oxygen and fluorine. So, that tells us that there are not many options for destroying asbestos. Strong acids, very strong bases acid fluorides very high temperatures. We also know that all of those are harmful. You seem not to have noticed that 200 years ago we really didn't know a lot. We are now vastly better informed. It would be a shameful waste of time and effort to go looking for this "philosopher's stone" that you are after when we could spend the effort doing something which might help, for example: reducing exposure to asbestos. treating the diseases that exposure to asbestos causes. Or we could follow your pipe dream and look for something which we know can't exist. Do you actually have any evidence for this assertion "Technology can also help such as future nano's probably can track down asbestos fibers then destroy their chemical structures!!. " or is it just wishful thinking?

"Of course the solid substance or gas should'nt harm cells only destroy the asbestos fibers chemical structures is tricky to do but not impossible but is a challenge!!." That is probably impossible. There are not many materials which destroy asbestos, and they all damage biological materials.

" And what's more, did they do it by directly detecting radiated alpha particles?" Possibly- they may have used the gamma rays that polonium also emits (and which newspaper reports forget about) "Was Polonium 210 in fact detected chemically?" Almost certainly not. There was very little of it. It takes something like 20ng of 210 Po to kill someone. Even allowing for the fact that they used a lot more than the minimum lethal dose it's unlikely they used as much as a microgram. Finding that dispersed among roughly 100Kg of tissue would be difficult (though not impossible) by chemical analysis.The alpha emission spectrum would have been characteristic enough to get an initial indication and the half life would have confirmed it. Part of the reason it took a while was that nobody thought to check. The use of a relatively pure alpha emitter will have made it much more difficult to spot the radiation, but certainly not impossible. You need the right equipment. . Re " My query was about detecting, or the impossibility of detecting, alpha radiation. " Did this "A Geiger–Müller counter, also called a Geiger counter, is a type of particle detector that measures ionizing radiation. It detects the emission of nuclear radiation — alpha particles, beta particles, and gamma rays " answer it?

Just a thought, if the dispute rumbles on long enough the US will end up defaulting on its debts. That will probably crash the world's economy. Those of us "outside looking in" can clearly distinguish between the two groups who are in a position to avoid that. One side one the election, and with it the right to govern: the other side didn't. Only one side has the moral high ground here.

The idea that you can't detect alpha emitters after they are ingested is flat out wrong. A case in point would be the late Mr Litvinenko. It's difficult, but that's largely irrelevant since the dust emits a variety of types of radiation so you can monitor it using beta or gammas . also as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geiger_counter says, "A Geiger–Müller counter, also called a Geiger counter, is a type of particle detector that measures ionizing radiation. It detects the emission of nuclear radiation — alpha particles, beta particles, and gamma rays " Overtone. You said "Works for me - I can see relevant info about the problems at Fukushima emerging from such a comparison. I have no way of making it myself, because the nuke people have hidden the relevant data about Ivy Mike" Then you greet that information (which wasn't actually hidden- you just didn't look for it properly) , not with the spirit of scientific inquiry, but with this "So?" Make up your mind.

"1) Note that the "goalposts" - a description of what kinds of data would be relevant in a comparison of the radiation exposure risks and other continuing problems between Ivy Mike and Fukushima (two quite dissimilar events - fairly difficult to compare, as requested, "straight up").- although not exhaustive, are reasonably explicit and completely consistent with all my posting here" Note also that they are different from those goalposts set out and accepted originally. "Works for me - I can see relevant info about the problems at Fukushima emerging from such a comparison." but written off as impossible/ impractical because "because the nuke people have hidden the relevant data about Ivy Mike (if in fact it was ever collected)." " With the comment "but if you can do it more power to ya." So he did, and that's when you moved the goalposts. so this "What happened there was that "Cuthber" committed what should be a moderated offense on this kind of forum - that's a flagrant and ugly type of trolling, and that poster needs to rethink their behavior." looks a bit silly. What I did was point out that you moved the goalpost to get round the fact that you said something that plainly wasn't true. You said "the nuke people have hidden the relevant data" And Moontan showed that data- data that you had said would be useful if we could get it. Then you tried to cover your (slanderous) error by saying that the data wasn't important anyway.

Thanks for posting that. It's very interesting. I guess I should point out that The guys at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are not the only group who looked into the issues involved. Other countries have also got expert groups. Those groups are generally very well informed and composed of experts in the fields involved. On the other hand, they don't get (or generally seek) much publicity.