Ophiolite

Isn't that a prerequisite?

Correct. It is the best solution the investigators have been able to come up with. It is unlikely to be the only one. It would likely require a very bizarre combination of circumstances to come even close to the same results. (For bizarre translate that as "too improbable to be worth considering". Pass.

The growth in mass from in-falling material is minor and is partially offset by the loss of atmosphere from interaction with the solar wind. Over the lifetime of the planet, to date, the increase in mass is a small fraction of 1%. That is insignificant. More often? Saturn does, has not, cannot and will not enter our atmosphere. In your further posts I would encourage you to take more care editing them, so that your thoughts can be properly understood. The only point I can gather from the above relates to the claim of a hollow moon. The moon is not hollow. No NASA engineer has ever claimed it was. Perhaps you are misunderstanding the comments made when the LMs used for manned landings were crashed into the moon. The seismic activity was akin to the moon "ringing like a bell" and that is "as if the moon were hollow".

Possibly, but I discerned how the calculator worked without reading any of the words. (And trust me, if I was any worse at maths than I am, I wouldn't know how many of me there are.)

Are you serious? Are you sure it is your students who are slow and not you? If that sounds offensive, I apologise, I am just astounded at what your difficulty is! A quick glance shows two numbers entered, 10 and 200. It hardly needs anything more than inspection to see that is 5% and sure enough 5% is reported in the box labelled "percentage bar". This is then represented graphically by a pie chart. Where does your confusion lie? (And how is typing the numbers into a couple of boxes any faster than doing the same thing on a calculator, or for straightforward percentages, in your head?

That suggests that it is not actually critical thinking. Can you give an example of where and how you have used critical thinking? The scientific method, arising out of philosophical roots, has been modeled and sculpted and honed and improved over the course of centuries by the greatest minds that have ever lived, then applied with immense success by tens of thousands of scientists. What are the odds you have come up with something almost as good? (Remember, apply your critical thinking.) Should I stand by and see you hurt yourself? Should I stand by and allow you to waste your imagination and drive and curiosity on a fruitless task? If you don't want to have your ideas questioned then don't post them. I am curious as to what reaction you were expecting. Did you expect agreement? Praise? Applying critical thinking one might have expected exactly the reaction you got. The demands of philosophy are every bit as rigorous as those of science. Philosophy does not give one license to waffle and perform brain burps. I think I gave it more than ten minutes and my conclusions, expressed in post #2 and apparently ignored by you, is that your premises are wrong and therefore your conclusions are worthless.

I agree with you that it is evidence of a simulation. Unfortunately it is, at best, circumstantial, and is also evidence for many other possible explanations. Put another way, the weirdness is consistent with what we might expect from some forms of simulation and therefore, simulation is not ruled out, but it is not strongly supported either. Or it could be a way of saving bandwidth/storage capacity. The programmers could be indifferent to our interest in simulated sub-atomic particles.Given that possibility it tends to undermine your insistence that "it looks like it's being scrambled on purpose". Since I haven't built, do not plan to build and am incapable of building a simulation, my attitude to drones would seem to be irrelevant. I suggest it is very risky to project what you think would be your approach onto the alien intelligences who you suspect established the simulation. (The clue is in the word alien.)

Hi slochemist, welcome to the forum. I am so distant from highschool chemistry no good idea occurs to me. However, what about a variation of the tea experiment. Could you measure the amount of sugar in various soft drinks? Or the amount of caffeine, since several of then contain that also? The main reason I replied was to compliment you on your English. It is very good. There are some minor changes of style that wold make it flow more freely, but it is clear and easy to understand. Good luck with the research.

I would be amazed if any serious scientist denied the value of intuition in identifying, classifying and tackling problems. Intuition likely plays a much larger part than it is accorded in any formal description of the scientific method. However, the value of intuition lies in suggesting questions, and directions, and solutions, and approaches. To actually reach and validate the answer requires systematic investigation and structured argument. You would deserve praise if, and only if, you could demonstrate that you had arrived at your prediction by a sound method of reasoning and investigation. Anyone can make a wild ass guess and be correct. That's not the same as being right.

Two points: 1. You have no evidence to support your beliefs. 2. Your understanding of the past is badly wrong. Progress did not stop 4,000 years ago. There were advances in metallurgy, agriculture, military techniques, political structures, cartography, and so on.

Re the OP question - Before the internet I was unaware there were so many idiots in the world. Forewarned is forearmed.1 Note: 1. I believe this small post is so constructed to reinforce whatever opinion the reader may already have of me. Such skill, such self awareness!

You are allowed to do so. No one i stopping you from doing this. Many millions of people and many branches of several faiths have no difficulty reconciling evolution and belief in God. So, if you are agonising over this you can stop right now. Of course you are allowed to say you believe this. However, anyone who states this, or who states the opposite needs to bring some argument and evidence to the issue if they expect their belief to be taken seriously. There is a massive amount of evidence for the reality of evolution. There is only some very circumstantial evidence and a weak logic chain for us being the only life in the universe. (The same is true of the reverse argument.) I accept that you are confused. Many people are not. This, perhaps, is because they choose to go on the basis of evidence and reason, rather than "belief". For example, if you went by evidence and reason you would understand that the universe probably does not have a centre. You would also understand that the majority of people who have thought about it accept the Bible as a mix of myth, history, poetry, law, philosophy, etc. Many scientists (probably most) would accept that not all questions can be answered by science. However, science has been remarkably successful at answering many important questions in great detail. If the universe was created, the creator definitely made it a problem that could be solved in large part using the tools of science. As noted previously, you are free to believe this, but without evidence you are not likely to convince many people. (I take it from your comments on drugs that you never drink alcohol and avoid coffee.) The pyramids were not built as long ago as 8,000 years. But even if they had been the surprise would be if they were not still standing. Our knowledge of structural mechanics, erosive forces and the like would lead us to expect that they will be standing many millenia hence. We have some quite detailed knowledge as to how they and many of the other pre-historic edifices were constructed. You would be aware of this if you acquired your understanding from articles written by serious, dedicated researchers rather than from documentaries and books focusing on, or produced by the words of charlatans out to make a quick buck from the gullible. I refer you to my response to your first paragraph.

But not when you are skillfully and elegantly metamorphosing a phrase to make an amusing point.

No we are not. How dare you! Why are you always picking on me. It's flagrant, flagrant... flagrant something.

We can compress atoms? If so my ignorance is revealed as being ever deeper. No surprise there.

Isaac Newton proposed his First Law of Motion, which states: "An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an external force." In other words, if something is moving at six miles an hour, or 66,000 miles an hour, it will keep on doing so unless some force is applied to change that speed, or its direction. For us this can seem counter intuitive. If we roll a ball along the floor it stops. If we throw one through the air it goes up for a while, then comes down. But in the first case its movement is opposed by friction. In the second case gravity and air resistance are at work. Does that help?

Wrong again. Perhaps I am being provocative, but I assure you it is not deliberate. As far as I can see there is a restriction being imposed through the interpretation of the rules. Perhaps, it is not my reading comprehension that is fault.

Have you tried looking at online courses? The Khan Academy has a sound reputation: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/chemistry

Indeed. The day you learn nothing you are either dead or practically dead.

Given frictional heating of the air by the disc during rotation means this experiment is basically about the movement of hot air. How ironic.

waitforufos's post was implicitly a discussion and a provocative critique of Obama's legacy. The fact that I found his remarks offensive and ignorant is really beside the point. By all means, let us pretend such views do not exist by suppressing them. I felt the moderator action was misguided. That is an opinion. Nothing more, nothing less. I leave it to the moderator staff to decide whether or not I am breaking the rules.

I have no meaningful reply, but do not wish you to think I was ignoring your remark. (There is a flaw in swansont's argument, but frankly I don't want to spend the two hours it would require to expose it, so work on the basis that on this point I'm full of shit and can be safely disregarded.)

Of course some white people are surprisingly ignorant, lacking critical thinking skills and having only the most basic elements of intellect. Sometimes we don't have to look far to find them.

Valid point. My counter argument would be that it is better to get these arguments into the open so they can be dismantled with facts, rather than allowed to fester and build in a self-serving thought-ghetto. At the root of my several posts on this matter is my fear that some members (and staff) are prejudging all of a members posts based upon their perception of the character of that poster. If this occurring - and it seems to me that it sometimes does - then this is simply wrong. I feel compelled to speak against it.

Don't get your knickers in a twist. If it was so bloody obvious I would have noticed it.