Strange

Who says it is a "scientific" invention? What is a "scientific invention"?

Your references seem to confirm that the compass was invented first in China and maybe independently later in Europe (and possibly elsewhere). It doesn't mention Italy specifically. Edit: Just spotted this line from wikipedia: "traditionally Flavio Gioja (fl. 1302), an Italian pilot from Amalfi, has been credited with perfecting the sailor's compass by suspending its needle over a compass card, thus giving the compass its familiar appearance" So is your point that an Italian developed something that looks more like a modern compass? As the OP presumably wasn't able to post links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_compass Seems more like history, to me.

There is a detailed article about the current status of the ALPHA project at CERN to measure the properties of anti-hydrogen: http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/71088

On the subject of writing ... I heard of an interesting experiment on vision. When you look at a page of writing, it all appears to be there, fully formed. But that is an illusion created by the brain. They did an experiment where they used eye-tracking so that only the word you are looking at is displayed, the rest of the text is replaced with X's or nonsense. To the experimental subject, the page of text appears completely normal. To someone looking over their shoulder, it is a page of nonsense, with words being displayed momentarily all over the place. (They did a similar thing with colour, to show that the mind creates a colour image of the full scene before us, even though only the central part of the visual system has colour perception.)

You seem to have this backwards. We know the current energy density, we know the current matter density. From this we know the amount of matter relative to energy. The energy corresponds to potential matter-antimatter pairs in the early universe and therefore we know the amount of matter left over relative to the total amount of matter-antimatter pairs. (It is roughly one billionth.) Summary here: https://home.cern/topics/antimatter/matter-antimatter-asymmetry-problem More detail here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baryogenesis

Cool. I didn't know that! W10 is a great improvement over W8 (but not enough to make me switch back!)

They don’t create any more energy than they have to start with as mass.

You are quite correct. The difference is that the pagefile is used by the OS while it is running and so is protected. The hiberfile can be deleted but will just reappear unless you turn off hibernation. (I’m not sure if Windows 10 still has an explicit hibernation mode, or if it all comes under “sleep” - I stopped using Windows when Windows 8 was released!)

Maybe we should be able to see a graph of changes over time!

You probably can't (and shouldn't) delete pageful.sys. This is used for virtual memory; i.e. when the memory is getting full, some data that is not likely to be needed is "paged" to disk, and data that is needed is fetched from disk and put back in memory. If deleted the file you could lose data and cause the system to crash. (So, hopefully, it won't let you delete it!) Somewhere deep in the settings, you can turn of virtual memory, but unless you have many GB os real memory installed, this will probably mean the system can't run some programs- and not many programs at the sae time. The hiberfile.sys file is used to store the state of the system when you hibernate the machine. If you never want to use hibernation, then you can turn this off in power settings and the file will disappear. (I think windows keeps the file around permanently to ensure there is space reserved for the hibernation data.)

At that time the universe was so dense that it was opaque. Any photons produced would be almost immediately absorbed (and re-emitted and absorbed ...) It wasn’t for another 380,000 years that the universe cooled enough (to about 4000K) to be transparent. At that point light could travel significant distances. And we still see the radiation from that time.

You are back to straw man arguments. No one says that. And another straw man. Your rejection of the information about models provided previously is an example of the No True Scotsman fallacy. Obviously, you should not take our word that models exist, we are not authorities in the subject and don't even claim to be. But your inability to find evidence for the existence of climate models is surprising. It took me a matter of seconds find 3 million references among which there are several descriptions of models, their testing and results. For example: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3402/tellusa.v28i6.11316 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3402/tellusa.v29i4.11362 https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JCLI3629.1 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-006-9211-6 https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/BAMS-89-3-303 https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI3884.1 http://elib.dlr.de/95697/ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2007JD008972/full https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2009JCLI3361.1 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-001-0200-1 And so on and so on. Many of these are about comparing or testing multiple models so this would appear to be evidence that the models do exist and are tested. If you want to get more details, and possibly the source code, of any of these models I would suggest contacting the researchers directly. You will certainly have more chance than asking random people on a science forum. (I know another science forum where at least one person working in climate science posts occasionally but I am not aware of anyone working in the field on this forum.) But maybe finding descriptions of models in peer reviewed journals is just an argument from authority. And yet another straw man. Do you have to work on these or do they come naturally.

As you are being obtuse, I will try and explain more slowly. You reject "argument from authority". Not an entirely unreasonable. One should, as the quote from et pet says, be sceptical of authority (note that Sagan does not say that authorities should be rejected, however). So here is the problem I was trying to capture: 1) In the case of climate change, in particular, you insist on seeing the evidence for yourself. You will not accept the statements of climate scientists that there is evidence, that they have models, and that these models are tested. You regard these statements from climate scientists as "argument from authority" and therefore not acceptable. (Even though, as in all good science, the models, data, evidence, tests etc have been reviewed by other [often rival] scientists. But it seems you think they all form a single authority that is not to be trusted.) 2) The facts in a textbook are (hopefully) based on evidence. You accept the statements in the textbooks as being accurate because they say that there is evidence for these facts. However, this reporting of facts is accepted even though it appears indistinguishable from "argument from authority". You are being told that there is evidence for Einstein's theory or for continental drift or evolution. And that is accepted because ... is isn't climate change. These two positions seem inconsistent, if not hypocritical. Your justification was: "That is because climate 'science' is making lots of wild claims which impact my life." But the safety of an aeroplane or car has the potential to have an even greater impact on your life. And yet you are happy to accept the authority of the car manufacturers that they have models, that they have tested those models and that therefore the car is safe. If you are really sceptical of argument from authority, would it not be more important to investigate the safety of automobiles before worrying about the longer term risk of climate change?

Yes. Not quite. It would get slower and slower and then disappear. You would never see it stuck there (despite all the popular science articles) because it would fall through the event horizon in finite time and so there would be a finite number of photons available to be seen.

Yes.

Not necessarily, because the (coordinate) speed of light is not constant. More here: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/BlackHoles/fall_in.html I don't think there is an unambiguous or unique way of comparing lengths. It will be different of the ruler is in free fall or hovering at the event horizon. It might even depend on which coordinate system you use.

You are trying to apply concepts from special relativity to a black hole. That is doomed to failure! The coordinate speed of light (the speed of light as measured by a distant observer) at the event horizon is zero. Also, the "rate of time" does not approach zero. Coordinate time (the "rate of time" the distant observer sees) goes to infinity: clocks go slower so a second gets longer and eventually becomes infinite at the event horizon. (This might just be a confusion in the use of words; "rate of time" is ambiguous at best.)

If that is what you were saying (in your “billions” comment) then I apologise for getting completely the wrong end of the stick!

My (limited) understanding is that it is generally thought that different amounts of matter and antimatter were formed initially and so these didn't quite cancel out.

OK. So not because of some "denier" teacher at your son's school.

It is not a straw man because I was asking a question (did you miss the "IF" in there?) But if you accept that climate change is happening, you are willing to accept some of the statements made by climate scientists about their evidence. But you are not willing to accept their statements about the models they use? It is the scale and rate of change that is different from any period in the past that we have data for.

And no one is denying that. I am just pointing out that you appear willing to accept the word of an authority that the evidence exists for every field of human endeavour except climate change. (Not sure what set theory has to do with it, but never mind.)

It is exactly about what YOU accept. That is the only reason for discussing an argument from authority. Obviously, when my engineers come to me and say, "yes the design works to spec" I don't just say "OK" and sign off millions of dollars for manufacturing. I ask to see the data. But ... and this is the key point you seem to be missing ... BUT when I then tell the marketing people, who in turn tell YOU that the device works according to spec, YOU accept it because I am an authority with the relevant expertise and access to the evidence. I am not going to release the simulation data to YOU so YOU can check for yourself. YOU have to take my word for it. YOU accept my (or my company's) authority in the matter. The same is true in medicine; if your doctor suggests some medicine or intervention, you don't demand that a full double-blind trial is run in your presence. I doubt you even ask to see the published papers on the proposed treatment. You will accept the expertise and authority of the doctor and his sources. And so on and so on in every area of science and technology. Except, of course, climate science which for some reason you hold to higher standards. Or, at least, view with greater scepticism.

True. But at some point, you are going to have to trust the person providing the evidence. Unless you want to recreate every single scientific result yourself.

So all text books are of zero value. I should not believe that atlas I just bought. I must go out and survey the world myself. Not really. We hear exactly the same arguments from people arguing against the theory of evolution, or the Big Bang, or GR, or just proposing their own favourite crackpot theory. Even the people who claim Shakespeare didn't write his plays make exactly the same arguments. By the way, what is your alternative if all climate science is wrong? There is no climate change? (False, based on the evidence.) There is but it is no different from what has happened before? (Also false, based on the evidence.) Or that it is as dramatic as the evidence shows but the case is different? (No evidence of other influences of sufficient magnitude have been found.) That is pretty much what people have been trying to tell NortonH.