Strange

There have been similar experiments with images and even dreams. But it's not clear to what extent what is learnt from one individual can be used to "decode" someone else's visualizations: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/reading-dreams-scans_n_3016895 Yes and no. There are features common to all languages. And there are features that are unique to pretty much every language (or language family). For example all languages have words that are functionally equivalent to verbs, nouns and adjectives. So that probably represents something about the way the brain organises information. But which things are verbs, nouns and adjectives varies enormously between languages. So "hungry" is an adjective in English, a noun in Italian and a verb in Japanese (actually, there isn't a word for it in Japanese but...) There is something called the Sapir-Whorf(*) hypothesis which suggested that the language people speak controls or limits the things they can think about. But it is not, in general true. So, for example, some languages have fewer words for colours than others but that doesn't mean that, for example, a Japanese person can't tell the difference between blue and green; they just happen to use the same word for both. However, having words for concepts does make a very slight difference to how the brain processes things. So a common method in psychological tests is to time how long people take for a particular task. And it turns out that in a language that has more words for colours, people are fractionally faster to match the colour of objects. Or in languages where the grammar categorise objects by their shape, then people are fractionally faster to identify shapes. But this is milliseconds and there is probably more variation within a language group than there is between any two people from different language groups. (*) No, not the Klingon

I assume that if the system were trained on a Chinese or Japanese speaker then it would recreate sentences in that language. The same parts of the brain are involved in all cases. It does raise the interesting question whether there would be anything common in the brain activity of someone saying "eat a banana" vs "バナナを食べる". If some part of the brain represents the absract concepts of eating and the thing being eaten.

No. Did you not read the rules when you joined? ! Moderator Note Moved to a more appropriate forum. Please do not hijack threads with off-topic comments

Not related to this specifically, but science doesn't really say whether things are "true" or not. The best we can say is that one or more studies have produced evidence to support a certain conclusion. The more studies there are that confirm that (and none completely disprove it) then we can be more confident in the accuracy of the idea. But, always in science, there is the possibility that new evidence will show previous ideas to be wrong. So ... ... you have pretty much answered you own question: there is one study that indicates that this might be true (if the study's methods and results are confirmed by others) Pretty much what it says in the article: "a new study, which found that people who identify as straight had a physical response to same-sex porn, with their eyes dilating involuntarily." Does "eyes dilating involuntarily" mean "not straight"? Who knows.

! Moderator Note This thread seems to fall somewhere between preaching and religious conspiracy; neither of which sit well with this forum. We have a Politics section for expressing your appreciation or dislike of the current President's policies. I can't see any reason for this to stay open.

Who is "he"? What is the source of this text?

Please provide a reference to support this claim. Everything I have ever read about evolution says it is based on natural selection (of heritable traits that vary in the population). There are hypotheses that social activity and cooperation, altruism, etc can be explained by evolution. So your statement seems to be exactly the wrong way round. Unless you can provide an example, I don't think anyone can answer that. You are a fine one to talk about "incoherent rambling".

There is a system called The Astronomer's Telegram* where astronomers post information about their observations so other people can follow up and make their own observations. This is particularly important when there are things like a new supernova or black hole merger, so that multiple observatories (professional and amateur) can quickly look to gather as much information as possible. Astronomy is one of the few sciences where amateurs discover new objects and provide useful data from their observations. * http://www.astronomerstelegram.org/

QuantumT has pointed out the main problems with using positrons. However, maybe worth noting that in semiconductors (so most of the components in your phone/computer) the current is carried by both electrons and “holes”, which are positive charge carriers created by an absence of electrons. Also, although nerves are often described as carrying electrical pulses, this is not like electricity running through wires. It is actually a cascade of chemical reactions that pump calcium ions through membranes. And in electrolysis, the current though the electrolyte consists of differnt types of ions. Not by a long way! As well as the examples above, one could speculate about a technology that used protons instead of electrons (they wouldn't flow through a metal wire, but you might be able to come up with some other way of using them). Or even muons; they decay after about 2 microseconds, but that might be long enough to do something with them.

The Express is not the worst tabloid in the UK. But I certainly wouldn't use it as a source of reliable information. Why not? Because it is a British tabloid. Also not renowned as a source of reliable or true information. It sounds like you are getting your news from sources that I would dismiss as being either completely untrue or extremely inaccurate.

There is no evidence that dogs can either transmit the virus or become ill from it: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/animals.html

I have no idea why they have done the entire website as a single image. (http://boblazar.com/images/boblazar.com_010.jpg) It is a very odd thing to do. This is another very odd passage: You can't see stars that are behind the sun. And when we do see objects that have been gravitationally lensed it is extremely obvious and would be a terrible way of making something invisible. The website owner appears to be: Jon Farhat (Visual Effects, Second Unit Director, Assistant Director, Writer) https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0267331/

And there is the fact that we see galaxy collisions where the "extra mass" (dark matter) has separated from the visible mass of the galaxy. Or galaxies with no dark matter (so no "wormholes). Or the fact that the amount of dark matter we observe is also required by simulations of the early galaxy to produce the large scale structures we see. Or the baryon acoustic oscillations that produce peaks and troughs in the CMB power spectrum, which require dark matter to explain them. And why would the distribution of these wormholes follow that produced by simulations of dark matter? Maybe you can come up with ad-hoc "lemon juicer" ideas to explain each of these (and the other evidence for dark matter actually being matter). But they can all be explained by one thing: a novel form of matter that we cannot currently directly detect. We have been here before, so it is not a particularly shocking concept. And, not surprisingly, each time there is a new "undetectable" particle it is harder to find than the previous one (because if it weren't harder to find, we would already have found it!)

Element 115 (moscovium) has a half life of about half a second, so is not very practical as a target. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscovium (And I doubt that element 116 can be produced by firing protons at the nucleus.) "Immediately decays"? It is true that the half life of livermorium is less than that of mosocvium; but it is not immediate. Livermorium decays via alpha decay. In other words, it emits a helium nucleus (a pair of protons and a pair of neutrons bound together). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livermorium It does not emit anti-protons. That would violate all sorts of conservation laws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_law And anyway, what would be the point? This can only be of interest to people who think that antimatter=magic. What are you going to do with these anti-protons? Presumably combine them with some protons to generate energy. But you can't get any more energy out of that than you put in. So the whole process of accelerating some protons, transmuting 115 to 116, then capturing the anti-protons and then generating some protons for them to interact with, then controlling their interaction and directing the energy ... all takes energy. And must run at less than 100% efficiency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics So you are going to get less energy out than just using shooting the original protons out the back of the rocket. Or using the heat from the rapid decay of the moscovium (you will be left with no useful fuel after a few minutes, anyway). There is nothing to critique here. This is just meaningless word-salad from a bad SF book. No references here because there is no such thing as "Gravity-A waves", "Gravity B waves" or "Gravity Amplifiers". Also, gravitational waves (which do exist) are not directly related to gravity. Gravitational attraction is not a wave phenomenon. Also, gravity is only attractive; there is no practical or theoretical reason to think that somehow causing gravitational waves (if that is what the ignorant author means) to interfere would cause any gravitational effect (either pull or push). Gravitational waves cause stress (stretching and shrinking) in directions orthogonal to their direction of travel. This effect is too small to be significant, unless you are a few miles from two merging back holes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_wave Gravity waves are something completely different. They are a phenomenon in fluid dynamics and have nothing to do with gravity (in the sense implied here; they are caused by gravity, not a cause of gravity). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_wave It is almost as if the author doesn't know what they are talking about. And are just stringing together a bunch of words they don't understand. See anyone can do it.

I think it depends. If it has been closed because the subject was inappropriate or was of a nature that led to bad behaviour by all participants, then no. If it was in Speculations, would someone else really want to take over the job of arguing for a personal theory (given that almost all such theories in Speculations are nonsensical to some degree). But if the thread was closed just because of the OP's behaviour or if some interesting question warranted further discussion, then quite possibly yes.

It is not clear what this means. (Clearly specifying what you want to do is 90% of the work in programming; the rest is just syntax.) What is the text file? In other words, what does it contain? How does it relate to the image file you want to create? Is 500x500 measured in pixels or some other units? That program appears to read several gif files and combine them in one. I can't see how this is related to your initial description of what you want to do. it depends. Are you using mages that are already this size? Are you scaling an existing image to this size? Are you creating a new image of this size?

Not. Especially as it is probably all made up. "Almost all" is meaningless. And in what proportions? After all the, Earth contains almost all the elements in the periodic table. So if a sample contained the most common elements in roughly the proportions they appear in nature, then it would not be particularly surprising. If it contains "almost all of the elements" then that is not surprising. There are harder to obtain elements. Again, if contains "almost all of the elements" then that is not surprising. That is, presumably, a purely subjective opinion. And based on the other nonsensical claims, not worth considering.

I had just come to the same conclusion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(52768)_1998_OR2

By tracking its position over time and calculating the orbit. Why wouldn't they? But if you are going to doubt them (and every other observer tracking it) then you might as well assume the the whole world is fake. Everything is just an act put on to fool you, like The Truman Show. No. Because NASA (and other astronomers) are scientists. Why would you trust "another site"? What is this "other site"? No. If you search for "finding reliable scientific information" you can find lots of articles that will help you. (Of course, I can't guarantee all those will be reliable!)

TerryHiggins has been banned as a spammer (we don't normally list spammers, but a couple of people had engaged in the discussion)

I would say that a thread in Speculations is "owned" by the OP. The purpose of such a thread is for the OP to present, and defend, their idea. It is not a general free-for-all general discussion of related topics. If they are not willing to engage, or they otherwise break the rules, then the thread will be closed. That is usually the case. But in the case of flagrant violations of the rules, we reserve the right to just shut things down. If I am guessing correctly which thread you are talking about, I think sufficient members involved in the discussion had complained about the fact that the OP lecturing, rather than discussing or answering questions that it was reasonable to close it. The OP had had several months, 124 posts and 5 pages in which to answer questions instead of treating the forum like a blog. The only way of enforcing that is to close the thread. It is not always explicitly stated, but there is a general principle that the OP cannot start another thread on the same topic. If other people's posts haven't changed the OP's attitude after 5 months, I'm not sure that giving them a couple more days would make much difference. If people think that there was some aspect of the discussion worth pursuing, they are free to open a new thread to discuss that. If everyone (or many people) have contributed to the thread being closed (eg. because it has degenerated into an exchange of insults) then the note will address all those people. In the case of a thread like this, the problem is entirely the OP's behaviour and so the note is addressed to them. Note that we also get complaints about letting threads go on for too long, even when it is clear they are not going anywhere.

How do you determine which it works for and which it doesn't?

As he clearly doesn't know what he is talking about, I would suggest that his claim that the material consists of "a combination of Tholium, Silver and Silicon in discreet areas" is probably just a made up story. His "analysis" is a work of fiction.

You need to provide some evidence for this. (Or, to put it another way: I don't believe you.) Your claim that "There are no reliable tests for a specific COVID-19 virus" appears to be false. For example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6988269/ https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/peiris-protocol-16-1-20.pdf?sfvrsn=af1aac73_4 https://academic.oup.com/clinchem/advance-article/doi/10.1093/clinchem/hvaa029/5719336

Unless you are building a UFO, apparently.