Ophiolite

I think this thread might be more at home in pseudo-science.

The news footage shown in the UK was of an individual who appeared conscious and aware of their surroundings. The date of the footage was not given. Ifthat footage represented her current state than my lay opinion is that an illegal killing is about to take place. Whatever the rights or wrongs of this decision I am appalled that she is to be allowed to die. This is moral cowardice on the part of society as expressed in the law. If one has a pet that is beyond hope we end its life with an injection. This is simply euthenasia wrapped up with a pretence that it is not in a manner that makes the entire painful process even worse, in almost every sense.

I'm on very shaky ground here. That was why I specifically specified a stellar black hole. You would be torn apart by the tides, because the gravitational force would be dramatically different from one end of your body to the other. I'm sure someone here can do the math faster than it would take me to find the relevant equations, then check my answers a dozen times. (pretty please.) However, how large did you mean. I believe some see the Universe as being a black hole, and we are alive and functioning inside it. Of course, we didn't fall through the event horizon.....

I await with interest the response of one or more bona fide physicists to this suggestion. I suspect that while it is theoretically possible it is practically impossible. In theory all the atoms of an object, say a vase of flowers might randomly move up at the same time, so that it momentarily levitated. In practice this is not going to happen. While you are sugesting a technological approach to remove the random element, one suspects, regretfully, that this will prove impossible.

I was going to post a remark about one of the more famous exceptions to this general tendency, the brachiopod Lingula. I decided to check on whether it was merely the genus that had survived 500 million years from the Cambrian, or had one or more species remained unchanged since then. Instead I found this interesting paper that rejects the notion that Lingula can be considered a 'living fossil'. One is reminded of the idea that you cannot step into the same river twice. Edit: Oops. Forgot to post the link yesterday and now I am having trouble relocating it.

React in what way? A black hole is a singularity. The density of matter in a stellar black hole may not be infinitely dense, but it is, arguably, unimaginably dense. Any distinction between 'particles' has been obliterated, so what are you actually asking?

Are you actually serious, or are you just trying to wind us up?

Aardvark, thank you for saving me the bother of replying to Cadmus's inaccurate statements. I agree with everything you have written. (That may be a first!) Sayonara, the substituting of other countries names does tend to run out of steam after you have used the couple of obvious ones: but that doesn't reduce the fun.

At the moment I appear to be living in a blizzard. However I can still see from my window the remains of a castle that lies just of the edge of my property and a stone circle about 400m away. The castle was the family seat of the Leslies, but is now reduced to one wall, the remains of a watch tower and some rubble (that was doubtless pillaged to provide the masonry for my house when it was built 150+ years ago.) Mary Queen of Scots stayed in the castle for a few nights. Oliver Cromwell ordered it to be burnt to the ground. The occupants bribed the soldiers to disobey the order. They burnt straw at the windows as Cromwell passed up the road towards Inverness, thus fooling Cromwell. The stone circle is small one, but typical of many throughout the north east of Scotland, with a large recumbent stone and around a dozen uprights. Some photographs and information in this link. http://www.ifb.net/webit/balquhai.htm The snow has stopped now, so I can see across country to the sites of two battles: the Battle of Harlaw took place between the Lord of the Isles and 'the rest' in 1411 and is a mile away on a small plateau. Five or so miles beyond that is the hill of Barra where Robert the Bruce fought in 1308. If I go to the other side of the house I can see an isolated hill atop of which is an Iron Age fort, and on the slopes of which the Roman Legions destroyed the Pictish army in AD84. So, you may have gathered, that what I rather like about living here is being immersed in a countryside that has a diverse and dramatic histroy stretching back millenia, and that is close enough to reach out and touch.

Before seeing your second explanatory post, and knowing you to be indigent, I had deduced the humour. Will some other moron now declare that platonic, relating to love, and plutonic relating, indirectly to lava, would give us, were we to follow the practice in written Hebrew of omitting vowels (or so I understand) the words lv and lv. Spooky.

Some twit may come along, for example, and witter on about the interesting similarity between 'platonic' a deep seated love. And 'plutonic', relating to deep seated igneous rocks. We could then diverge to discuss the etymological origins of the two words. This could turn out to be the longest thread ever. (Unless some sensible moderator locks it at this point.)

Not necessarily.

I think you'll find that Mokele, and others, did not get their theories 'out of some magazine', but through University degree courses and post graduate research. You might want to consider giving their comments more weight.

Please read what I am writing. Those galaxies that appear to us to be at the 'edge' of the Universe would view us, eventually as being at the 'edge' of theirs. The Universe appears pretty much the same wherever you are in it. This is a fundamental axiom of cosmology - BigBang or Steady State. Did you actually read the link to the SciAm article?

Do you believe in reincarnation? Were you once Charles Dickens?

Coquina: For one thing - if we are so damned concerned about "human rights" why aren't we involved in stopping the mass genocide that goes on in some African countries? Aardvark:I'm surprised you used that argument, it is illogical and misleading. .......Going by the record of your previous posts that argument is beneath you. Ophiolite:It's not beneath me!! Selective righteousness is not morally acceptable, at least to me.

Thresher.Edit: Link added to decrease obscurity of response. http://www.disastercity.com/thresher/

Syd, all the things you mentioned have centres because they exist within the confines of the Universe. The Universe does not exist within anything. It is either infinite, and so without a centre, or finite, but doubled back on itself, and so without a centre. Just as you can stretch a balloon to far, you can stretch the analogy to far. I am an ignorant peasant when it comes to cosmology. I scarcely know a differential from an intgral. But everything I have read on the big bang seems to agree: no centre.

Agreed. I acknowledged as much with references to Taiwan and Tibet. What other examples were you thinking of?

Perhaps it could have a centre, but the fact is it does not have a centre. It's Universe shaped. No. That is not necessary. Yes it did.Refer to the link posted by Bettina in another thread that addresses this far better than I ever could. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=0009F0CA-C523-1213-852383414B7F0147

Google produces over 3000 hits, including this link to a professional group dedicated to macroorganisms! http://www.ibma.ch/pg_macroorganisms/

Because the Big Bang happened everywhere. There is no centre to the Universe, no preferred location.

Not ignoring it at all. The quotes were there for a double purpose:a) Irony. b) To provide an opportunity for someone to bring up the opium wars. The impact the events of this period had on how the present leadership view foreigners should not be underestimated. You would be taking a different line from many specialists in the field. The only reason the variants of Chinese might not be considered languages, but merely dialects is that they do not have a unique written form. (The minor differences you mention for HK represent an emergence of written 'dialect'.) You missed the key adjective: I wrote that the Chinese had a justifiable sense of pride. My contention is that to a greater extent than perhaps any other nation' date=' the Chinese are [u']right[/u] to be proud. Ophiolite:The chinese people are comfortable within a patriarchal, dictatorial political environment. Cadmus:Just as we are "comfortable" with our government and the propaganda that our government feeds us. "Am Morgen geht die Sonne auf und am Abend geht die Sonne unter" Ophiolite:In the meantime they will resist attempts to interfere with their internal government (which in the West we will call improving human rights), Cadmus:So what is your point here? This thread explores the risks of supplying China with arms. I am suggesting that the Chinese mindset is territorially defensive, not territorially expansive.

Remember that Yellowstone's beauty is the result of several previous cataclysmic eruptions. Also NY hasn't always had it easy, as this excellent summary of the state's geology will reveal. http://gretchen.geo.rpi.edu/roecker/nys/nys_edu.pamphlet.html