shadowacct

OK, now its time for me to come back on this. ParanoiA exactly got the point and he could not phrase it better. I was so extremely patronizing for a reason! I just found it is time to stir up some dust and then it may be necessary to use strong words, otherwise the dust may settle again, unnoticed I really dislike people who try to ram their belief in my throat (something like some Jehova's witnesses try to do when they push their feet in the opening of the door), but the same is true with the way some people over here (only some!) are trying to ram their atheist view into the throat of everybody else without any respect.

I also made a little joke, about Mr Skeptic's one Btw, iNow is just an example, I picked his name, but there are more like him over here

That's as fake as the purple unicorn with its farts, most DNA structure and cell structure is ruptured by the freezing process and you know that. It's only postponing the process of rotting two feet under the grass. One day, the freezers will go out when noone cares about the frozen pieces of meat inside anymore, and then the process sets in, as described above

He is not a christian, he is a charlatan.

This kind of mails really pisses me off. This is utter bullshit. I have had many similar mails. Sometimes they pretend to be christian, sometimes they do not refer to any religion. But whatever they pretend, they are only after one thing. YOUR money! One year or so, I read a nice article about a person in the UK, who actually did respond to this kind of mails. He was told to transfer GBP 5000 or so, but he responded that in order to do that, they first had to pay him GBP 50 or so. This happened quite a few times. After that, he simply quit. This guy collected a few hundreds of pounds, and gave this to some charity organisation .

Yesterday I read in our newspaper that the images of WMAP might be wrong. The irregularities might be caused by dust in our own galaxy. If this is true, then the background radiation is much more uniform than WMAP suggests. This could have large consequences for the theories about the earliest span of time of the universe. @YT: big bang indeed occurred everywhere in our known universe. Probably, spacetime already was infinite at the time of big bang, but a very small area expanded to what is our known universe. Space itself expanded. The "border" we have in our universe is not a real physical border, we simply cannot look away more than appr. 13.7 billion lightyears, because at that distance the light from the beginning of the universe started. An observer, e.g. 10 billion lightyears distance from our position can see part of our universe, and also part, which is beyond our horizon, beyond which we cannot observe anything. Think of the two observers as two points, with circles around them, the circles having a diameter of 13.7 billion lightyears, each circle being the observable universe for that observer. The universe hence is much larger than what we can observe.

I'm getting really tired of this.... this evolution vs. creation debate reminds me of Psalm 119. It seems to last forever . There also is one big difference. Psalm 119 has something to tell. What about this debate??

Assuming the electrodes are inert, you'll get the following: Anode: oxygen gas Cathode: probably some hydrogen gas, but also reduction of permanganate to MnO2. If pH is very low, you even can get reduction to Mn(2+).

That's rubbish and no serious chemistry. Use real chemicals! Toilet cleaner may contain some HCl, but it also contains detergents, perfumes, stuff to make it more viscous, coloring agents, et.c Totally useless for any other purpose than cleaning surfaces. HCl in reasonable purity must be available in any hardware store. It also is called muriatic acid. This acid can be somewhat yellow/green, but simple distillation makes pure HCl (dissolved in water), perfectly suitable for experiments.

Allowing the water to evaporate will not result in formation of FeCl2. The material will be oxidized and at best you'll end up with a mix of hydrated FeCl2 and FeCl3. More likely, you'll end up with a basic ferric chloride. I also doubt whether you can make the anhydrous salt in a dessicator. Many hydrated salts of transition metals tend to loose HCl as well as H2O, leaving behind a basic chloride. Many such salts need drying in an atmosphere of HCl. I'm not sure, however, how strong this effect is for FeCl2.4H2O.

Ah.. yes, the OP definitely meant MnO2. This is a strong catalyst for decomposition of hydrogen peroxide. Question for the OP: What is a characteristic property of a catalyst? What are the decomposition products of hydrogen peroxide.

Hmmm... again cold hearts and hot heads. This kind of discussion leads to nothing. Only Retrograder got it right. That is the attitude which can really help us further in our understanding. Please stop "evangelizing". Both camps do harm to science, _and_ to religion. MrSandman, feel free to believe that God created the world appr. 7000 years ago, but why must others be told all over again? Is this essential for your belief? I hope not. On the other hand, from a scientific point of view, most other posters may be right, but does it really add anything to the discussion evolution vs. creation? Both camps are ramming their point of view through the throat of others and that makes me sick . This is not the core message of christian faith. Narrowing down the set of possible options for how the world came into being to young earth creationism is narrowing down the greatness of God and the beauty and mystical thing of Gods creation. Why could God not have worked in a different way? The Genesis account is not meant to be read as a sciencebook, it tells that God created universe and why He created this. It is not a record of how He precisely created this. I understand that this leaves open LOTS of questions, but if you are honest, then you accept the challenge. I personally have lots of questions on evolution also, and not everything is clear to me, but if you look around, then there is overwhelming evidence for evolution, and you cannot deny this. What you try to do is bending, deforming, and pushing things in such a way, that the evidence does not seem like evidence anymore, but most likely that is not the right way to respond to this evidence. All creationist explanations, that I have seen, require so much bending, deforming, and pushing that they make these explanations HIGHLY unlikely. To my personal opinion, the whole quarrel evolution vs. creation is not a scientific discussion, but a discussion with an agenda behind the visible agenda. Some people (only some) use evolution as a device for actively fighting against religion. Many others follow those few anti-religion people, thinking they are doing good things for science, but unfortunately they do not see the agenda behind the visible agenda. In response to this, many christians (but also muslims and other religious people) react with a stubborn young earth creationism, not because of the scientific importance, but in an attempt to 'rescue' their religion. Both camps abuse the Genesis account. The hardcore agressive atheists read it literally, so thay can say: "See these fairy tales? Do you see that we are right, we at least have lots of SCIENTIFIC FACTS!". The young earth creationists read it literally, because this useless quarrel has blinded their eyes so much for the true message of the word of God, that they simply forget that and only focus on one little aspect of the word of God. Finally, there are two victims: 1) Science. The discussion is so far, that even questioning some aspects of evolution makes you suspect and a person generating new "wild" ideas in this area is regarded an heretic. Sometimes, however, "wild" ideas can open completely new lines of thought and can open up doors to new insights. That is what makes science such a fantastic thing, and in this area of science there hardly is any room for this anymore. 2) Religion. The true nature of religion is not a concrete belief in some book/scripture, but it is a personal relation with God, the people around you and the world in which you live. This discussion creationism vs. evolution narrows down religion to only one little aspect.

Hope the following helps, but you have to write your own reaction equations. I hope to add some understanding with my reply, and if you give reaction equations, then we can have a look at them. As iNow suggests, this is not a spoonfeeding forum, but many people are willing to help you understand things. 1) Dissolving of solid, subsequent ionization. Ammonium ion is a (weak) acid. There will be an equilibrium. Which one? 2) Magnesium dioxide? This does not exist. There is a compound, called magnesium peroxide, MgO2, but this is not a normal oxide. I suspect this question is ill-posed. 3) Have a look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metathesis_reaction_(chemistry). You get an aqueous metathesis reaction. 4) Look at the redox potential table for metals and compare this with the potential for 2H(+) + 2e --> H2. Do you think magnesium will react?

John, the oxidation could also go as follows: 2MnO4(-) + H2O2 + 6H(+) ---> 2Mn(2+) + 3O2 + 4H2O As a side reaction then we could have: 4H2O2 ---> 2O2 + 4H2O Sum both reactions left and right, and you get equation (5) of the document. This is interesting. The reaction can have any stoichimetry, with linear combinations of my two equations, but apparently only one combination is really happening. You are right with your second point (at least for the acidic situation). EDIT: The combination, which really happens is based on the half-equations. For lower than 5H2O2, there also would be oxidation of water (through the acid). For higher than 5H2O2, there also would be decomposition of H2O2.

This is not correct, it is appr. 10 times its own volume. 1 liter of 3% H2O2 contains appr. 30 grams of H2O2, which is just over 0.88 mol of H2O2. When this decomposes, it produces 0.44 mol of O2. At standard pressure/temp this is close to 10 liter of gas. Again incorrect, you get 4 times the amount of oxygen: Simple decomposition: H2O2 --> H2O + ½O2 Reaction with permanganate: H2O2 + 2MnO4(-) --> 2MnO2 + 2OH(-) + 2O2 You see? Four times as much oxygen per unit of H2O2. This theoretical amount in practice can be approached quite well, if H2O2 is dripped into a solution of excess KMnO4. If done the other way around, then you'll get a much lower amount, because of catalytic decomposition of H2O2 by MnO2. When H2O2 is added to strongly acidic permanganate, then things are even slightly better, because the manganese even is reduced to the +2 oxidation state, which is even better than going to the +4 oxidation state, and also, there hardly is catalytic decomposition of H2O2.

I am not an expert at all in this subject, and I am willing to look into this in more detail, but I have severe questions. But if you think you have answered my questions, then that is your good right. No need to discuss this further, my conclusion is that I have to find better places to search for answers. This is my last post in this thread. As I said before, arrogance reigns over here.

This is unbelievable! So, asking critical questions is not allowed anymore? Who is the scientist over here? But it doesn't matter. If this is the way to go over here, then I'm done with this thread! Arrogance is reigning here!

What dttom does is correct, and what you propose is incorrect. YOU will introduce inaccuracies during the calculations, not dttom. If you ever do any calculations with finite precision input data, then use higher precision for intermediate results and only perform rounding steps at the end. This is exactly what dttom does! The only point of debate might be whether the rounding in the last step should be 0.392 g or 0.3915 g, but that's all and it only is a minor point.

My problem is not acceptance of evolution, I hardly doubt that this occurred and still occurs. But I am wondering about the underlying mechanisms. It is not a matter of acceptance, there is evidence for evolution (geological track, DNA). But it is more a matter of the how. A similar thing I have with other sciences, such as the theory of gravity. I perfectly understand this (and even did a lot of computations with it), but it still does not explain it to me. What is gravity? What is it really? We can describe it very accurately (in fact, amazingly accurately) but still, we are struggling about its precise nature. A similar thing is true for evolution. We have quite good descriptions of what happened and about the time scale on which things happened. But these are descriptions, just like we have for gravity. But what is the driving force? Selection most likely is part of it, but I have the strong feeling there must be more. We don't have the full answer (yet), and that also is something a good scientist always must keep in mind. There remains a lot more to be discovered. Finally, there is the question of the 'why'. But this is not the realm of science. Then we go to philosophy, ethics, religion. From a scientists point of view, I would already be very happy with a deep understanding of the 'how' question. We solved the 'what' question to a fair extent, and we are just touching upon the 'how' question. The 'why' question is a deeper question and I have personal ideas about that, but on a scienceforum I don't want to bother you with that .

For a second order system with two eigenvalues l and l + f, the full solution, with two freedoms A and B can be written as y(x) = A * exp(l*x) + B * exp((l+f)*x) Let f--->0 and apparently, this reduces to a single solution of the form c*exp(l*x). But now comes the 'trick'. As long as l and f are constants (and they are, we have a time-independent and linear differential equation), then we may choose A and B as functions of l and f, they still are constant. Choose A = b - c/f, and B = c/f, with b and c constants. For any f not equal to 0, we still can obtain any solution with two eigenmodes l and l + f by proper choice of b and c. For f, equal to 0, the situation seems erroneuous, but if we rearrange the terms, then you see your result: y(x) = b*exp(l*x) + c/f*(exp((l+f)*x) - exp(l*x)). The second term goes to the form d*x*exp(l*x) when f--->0. I hope this explanation makes sense to you. A similar form of reasoning is possible for triple sets of eigenvalues, or even sets of larger multipicity. You'll see that for each set of multiplicity N, the solution, corresponding to that set, will be a polynomial of degree N-1 times exp(l*x), with l the eigenvalue of multiplicity N. So, what really happens is that for a set of multiplicity N, the N eigenmodes simply blend into a single eigenmode, with a polynomial factor. In the case of two equal eigenvalues, I would not call this as having two corresponding solutions exp(l*x) and x*exp(l*x), where one of these corresponds to one of the eigenvalues and the other to the other eigenvalue. No, I would say that the set of eigenvalues has a corresponding single solution of the form P*exp(l*x) + Q*x*exp(l*x), with P, Q constants. So, each unique eigenvalue l in a system has a single corresponding solution of the form (A0 + A1*x + A2*x^2 + ....)*exp(l*x), where the polynomial factor has degree N-1, with N being the multiplicity of eigenvalue l.

Yes, what Dave says is an important addition. A nice counter example, where g ◦ f is an identity map, while f ◦ g is not an identity map: Function f from R to RxR: f(x) = (x, x) Function g from RxR to R: g(x, y) = x (g ◦ f)(x) = g(f(x)) = g(x,x) = x (f ◦ g)(x, y) = f(g(x, y)) = f(x) = (x, x) ≠ (x, y)

Yes, with open eyes, but also with a critical mind. If they mention that according to one scientist's calculations, a camera-like eye can form in 364000 years from a very simple structure, then I would like to see more detail on this. Any more references? Links? I simply don't believe this, without further evidence than someone referring to "one scientist's calculations". I agree that evolution of the eye still is happening and sure, eyes of future species will differ from eyes of current species. But this does not answer my questions. I see the analogue and I like it (it at least partially answers my question). But still, I have an important question about this. In the 'shakespeare' analogon, the outcome already is known and so we can keep letters at the right place. I also see that in this case, the process of typing the correct word boils down to 11 parallel processes, one process for each letter. As soon as all 11 processes have finished, we have the desired result. This is much better than having a single process with 26^11 possibilities, which have to be fulfilled.In evolution, however, the outcome is not known and we have no criterion, on which we can decide in the right direction or not. Also, intermediate steps can be less fit than both the starting point and the end point. The 'shakespeare' analogon has a nice property, that it is monotonous with repsect to fitness. The closer to the desired word, the more fit. In evolution, I really think that this monotonous function of fitness is not a correct assumption. There may be local minima of the fitness function, and I would expect it to be VERY hard to overcome such local minima, especially if the steps, taken by the process are small. I'll keep this analogon in mind, however, and think about it, and see if it can be adapted to solve the problem of non-monotonous fitness and unknown outcome.

Although I do believe that evolution occured, I don't think this is a good explanation. I have to believe that evolution occured, simply because of the overwhelming evidence, but mathematically speaking, I simply cannot understand it. For instance, your point (3) about the evolution of the eye is incomplete. From what did the eye evolve in 364000 generations? And really, an eye can be described in 3640-ish bits? You must be kidding. Describing an eye, with all its intricaties, its interactions with other subsystems, its chemical composition, etc. etc. would take millions, probably hundreds of millions of bits. Books full of texts are written about the eye... and still, all these books together only capture a tiny fraction of what the eye really is. Now look at the human genome, how many bits are needed for describing it (using the best available compression techniques available)? Still many billions of bits. Assume, that initially, appr. 3.5 billion years ago, there was no information or just a few tens of bits of information (e.g. simple organic molecules), then it would take zillions of years to evolve to human beings, much more than the universe exists now (appr. 14 billion years) and even more than earth exists and could sustain life after its initial very hot period (3.5 to 4 billion years). In some way, I have a feeling that this reasoning is flawed. I do not have the expertise to pinpoint what is wrong, but given the tremendous complexity of current life forms, this mechanism simply is too slow. It is remarkable that evolution has gone so fast. In just a few billions of years it has resulted in what we see now. I personally think that there still remains a lot to be explained and that no definite answers are found. We can fairly well do descriptive evolutionary science, but the underlying mechanisms still are far from being understood near 100%. Selection most likely is an important part of the underlying mechanism, but there must be more than that. I don't believe in a single silver bullet, which explains it all. Probably many different mechanisms are working (have been working) "cooperatively".

Oh come on... if I read all these responses, then most of you (not all) are as religious as all the others. Religion is about hope, about a better future. Your god is science. You expect all from science. The problem is not science itself (actually, I think science is great and VERY interesting and I do science). The problem is that science is adored as a new secular god. Nothing new... old wine in new sacks. Keep your eyes open, do you really think all those old religions have nothing to say? These old books really have very little useful information?? Throw away your roots and history... you also throw away your hope and future. This does not mean that we should stop science. No, not at all. Let's put our best efforts in it and try to advance. But we should stop that adoring of this secular god. Its blinding us and in the long run it will even kill science itself.