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Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / Re: How does natural selection work?

« on: 18/03/2022 21:25:35 »

Hi.

    The main details for natural selection have already been presented.    Most DNA alterations are just random mutations  etc.

    I haven't studied Biology for years but this was one of the more "funky" or convention-defying contemporary ideas that was discussed back in the day.   It's useful to suggest that your DNA doesn't always dictate what you do, sometimes it can be the other way round....

    There's a small chance that DNA transcription to produce proteins isn't always a one-way process.   There are viruses with RNA reverse transcriptase enzymes so that RNA can be converted to DNA.   This opens the door to the possibility that information may sometimes flow in that direction from RNA to DNA which might then get incorporated into the nuclear DNA of the cell.
     Lets take a simple model:   A host organism has a physically demanding environment in which it must survive and to do this it is using a lot of muscle and this exercise is building more muscle in the usual way.   This means there is a lot of RNA in the cytoplasm that encodes for muscle proteins.   If a virus gets on board, some of that RNA can be reverse transcripted into DNA which could end up getting incorporated into the nuclear DNA stores.  The host organism now has two (or more) copies of the gene encoding for the muscle protein, so they are likely to get a higher transcription rate of RNA encoding for that protein from then onward.  This means there has been a permanent change in the amount of muscle protein the organism will synthesize - but, more importantly, if that change has occurred in the germ cells of the organism then this change is passed on to future generations.
    The effect is minor, if it happens at all, but it's interesting.   It's the possibility that the actions of the organism during its life might influence the DNA.   The whole set of circumstances falling into place, like accidental incorporation into the nuclear DNA, would only be a one-in-a-million chance but that is precisely the sort of scale we're talking about for evolution over many years.  It probably isn't going to be the main route for evolution but it could be a boost to the process.

Best Wishes.

2

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: How did this rocket stage gain the energy to get to the moon?

« on: 07/03/2022 20:34:49 »

A rocket that is launching a probe to the Moon needs to put the probe (and itself) into an orbit which has an apogee (farthest distance from the Earth) that is around 370,000km (the Moon's average distance from the Earth). But you don't want to aim for the visible center of the Moon (or your rover will crash at high speed, and not rove very far). You want to miss the Moon slightly, so the probe can enter Lunar orbit (by the smaller probe firing it's smaller rockets).

Now the booster is in a very elliptical orbit that has an apogee (farthest distance from Earth) of around 370,000km, and a perigee (closest distance from Earth) that is in Low Earth Orbit, perhaps a few hundred km, and an orbital period of a few weeks. If the operators are responsible, they will give the booster another boost when it is out near the Moon to (1) use up all the fuel in the tanks, so it doesn't explode and spread shrapnel into low earth orbit and (2) increase the perigee so that it doesn't come zipping past the ISS and other valuable satellites every 2 weeks.

So you now have a rocket booster in a very elliptical orbit around the Earth  every few weeks, reaching out as far as the Moon; and the actual Moon passing through the path of that orbit about every 4 weeks. Sooner or later, their paths are likely to cross, and in that encounter, the Moon comes off in better shape than the rocket.

Before there is an actual crash, there will probably be several near-misses (including the first, intentional near-miss), and some of the Moon's momentum is transferred to or from the rocket body; the Sun's gravity and solar wind also push around the booster (which is now basically a large, empty, aluminium can). That puts the booster in a somewhat chaotic orbit, making it harder to trace back the orbit to its origin, or to pinpoint many years into the future exactly when it will crash into the Moon.

Oops! overlap with Halc...

3

The Environment / Re: Is hydrogen a better fuel source for the environment?

« on: 15/02/2022 23:20:24 »

That is 3 times the drag for the same distance at 3 times the speed, that is very convenient.

No, it is 9 times the drag force, over the same distance. Energy = force x distance.

4

General Science / Re: Why did our brains evolve to perceive 12 musical notes?

« on: 30/01/2022 20:51:52 »

Our modern Western instruments are "even-tempered", with the frequency of adjacent notes differing by the 12th root of 2 = ¹²√2.
"Counting up 12 notes" = "Raise ¹²√2 to the 12th power", and you end up with a frequency ratio of 2, or one octave.
- With this tuning, you can play a musical piece written for any (Western) key.

But Pythagoras and friends (who developed the basis of Western harmony) would have objected to this tuning, as it does not produce exact small-integer ratios between the frequencies. They would have described the tuning as "off".
- Before the "even-tempered" tuning was accepted, "Concerto in D Major" had to be played on an instrument tuned for that key.
- Some people prefer "perfect tuned" instruments, and some electronic instruments even let you switch between even-tempered and perfect-tuned (in various keys).

...or you could follow Alan's advice, don't fret about it, and just play a violin.

5

COVID-19 / Re: Do heavy colds help prevent covid infection?

« on: 13/01/2022 20:18:46 »

The classic "cold/flu symptoms" are actually a side-effect of Interferon, a signaling molecule produced by your body when it detects a viral attack.
- Interferon activates the immune system
- Interferon also slows down some normal cellular functions, so the virus can't hijack them

A unique "stealthy" feature of COVID is that it suppresses production of interferon by infected cells, so that it can spread "under the radar", infecting not only you, but those around you before symptoms appear.
- It makes sense that if your Interferon levels are already high due to the common cold, an incoming COVID virion would have a harder time gaining a foothold in your body

 See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferon

6

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Immortality

« on: 13/01/2022 08:15:25 »

One of the problems with immortality is entropy: We can't beat it.

One novel solution I heard is this (at least for people living in The Matrix):
- Computing is very efficient on quantum computers (at least in theory)
- But quantum computers need to be very cold, and that takes lots of energy when the world around us has a temperature well above absolute zero. (Running a refrigerator increases entropy)
- One idea is to locate your quantum computer in deep space, where the ambient temperature is 2.7 degrees above absolute  zero; so you have much less energy wasted in your refrigerator
- For those thinking on a much longer timescale, if you wait for the temperature of the universe to drop to less than 0.001 degrees above absolute zero, you probably won't need a refrigerator at all!
 

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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is clockwise the predominant direction for solar systems and galaxies ?

« on: 11/08/2021 16:44:42 »

But does the rotation of the galaxy have an effect on the rotation of the solar system? Are we side on, are we  coplaner with the galaxy and rotating backwards?

Not particularly, no.

The plane of the galaxy (yellow) meets the plane of the solar system (red) at an angle of just over 60 degrees.
Here a diagram of both, with the celestial plane (the blue plane passing through our equator) also included.

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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Can you handle old pipe X-ray radiation shielding?

« on: 30/06/2021 10:38:09 »

Nomenclature. It certainly becomes "irradiated" but not "activated".

And the lead coats are not always a Good Thing. Two of Her Majesty's Specialist Inspectors required a client of mine to  wear a lead coat when handling very high energy gamma emitters. This (a) slowed him down so his exposure was extended and (b) increased his skin dose through secondary emission. Thin lead sheets are actually used in industrial radiography as "intensifying" screens to convert a few incoming high energy photons to large numbers of low energy photons and electrons that are absorbed by the x-ray film (or operator's skin).

Not a game for amateurs. But the lead itself is fairly innocuous if undamaged.

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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Could the core of a body have repulsive gravity?

« on: 27/05/2021 21:43:35 »

Any 'body' has mass, and mass is correlated with positive gravity, meaning that if you took the core of the body away and replaced it with a hollow ball of much less mass that is strong enough to take the pressure, the body in question (sun say) would have less gravity. Hence the core adds to the gravity, and contributes positively.

There is such a thing as negative mass density, and it very much does repel.
Imagine an infinite grid of objects of equal mass at regular distribution. Each will just sit there, being balanced in all directions by gravity from all the objects distributed evenly around it. Now consider the same arrangement but with one of the objects missing. This creates said negative mass, resulting in a chain reaction starting with the immediate neighbors of this 'hole'.  All the objects will, by negative gravity, be repelled by this low density region, making the region bigger and accelerating the effect.

Look up the dipole repeller for an example of exactly this, a region of negative gravity expelling all nearby galaxies in all directions. This was apparently only discovered 4 years ago. There's also the cold spot repeller, even larger and further away.

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The Environment / Re: Can we use the energy underground to replace fossil fuels?

« on: 26/03/2021 20:48:01 »

the imminent development of cheap simple fusion plants makes it even less likely that it will ever come to pass.

Could you give further information, please,  about the imminent development of these "fusion plants"?

They would be so exciting, and would solve all our energy problems! 

Alas, I don't think you will reply.

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General Science / Re: SPAM TUB SPECIAL - The Washing Machine SPAM Service Center

« on: 17/03/2021 23:42:27 »

So my washing machine caught fire today
The good news is I was able to get my washing and drying done all in one go.

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Just Chat! / Re: Member type

« on: 22/02/2021 07:28:59 »

I think if you have any questions about Chris’s member they would be best sent in a pm. He doesn’t expose details to us despite his nakedness! 

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Just Chat! / Re: What exactly is a "full English breakfast"?

« on: 10/02/2021 00:13:20 »

One memorable morning in the last century I had breakfast in St Bartholomew's Hospital staff restaurant, with an American x-ray sales rep.

Leathery eggs swimming in grease, bacon cut from the uppers of an army boot, 20mm black armor-piercing sausages, postmortem hypostatic tomatoes, cold rubber toast with frozen butter, and lukewarm bilge in a coffee cup.

At the checkout my colleague asked "How can you f**k up an English breakfast?"

"800 years of practice, sir" was the smiling reply.

What's his face from eastenders tell a simpler joke.

Guy asks for an English breakfast but says I would like you to cook it my way. "Hows that"? the chef replies.

"I want the beans cold on top, tepid in the middle but burnt on the bottom, I want the egg to be the same, I want the fried bread so fully of oil it leaks all over the plate and covers everything in grease, I want the sausages black and hard so when you try and get them with the fork they spring off the plate"

"I dont have time to do all that" replies the chef.

"You found time yesterday!" Replies the guy

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COVID-19 / Re: Cure for covid 19?

« on: 09/02/2021 09:59:21 »

Hey! I got there first! Give credit where it's due!

But thanks for the tip - maybe my curry needs a drop of hydroxychloroquine or drain cleaner to give it that magic kick.

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COVID-19 / Re: Cure for covid 19?

« on: 08/02/2021 11:01:47 »

Reading the small print, it seems to suppress excessive cytokine response, not cure the infection, but that's all to the good: patients recover quicker (or don't die) and probably end up with significant immunity. If the side effects are tolerable, it would be a good thing to prescribe at the onset of symptoms.

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Just Chat! / Re: Is the jig up?

« on: 02/02/2021 21:43:54 »

Considering that a bunch of amateurs have made a fortune from share trading on "Gamestop" shares via Internet forums, is it revealed that the reptile conspiracy of the upper classes perpetuation has always been facilitated via opportunity that only they had access to up until now?

This is a culmination of forces, the internet has allowed chat rooms to organise and the possibility for smaller members of the public to trade. The lock downs have got people on the internet with cash not spent going out to be invested they also have more time to research. That's one side. The other is these people are annoyed about the 2008 crash and are also annoyed about the repeated socialism for the rich,  where failures of the wealthy are paid for by the public while their profits are kept, they pay hardly any tax yet benefit the most from government protection. This has led to a lot of anger and its justified.

On top of that hedge funds have for decades now been shorting companies and driving their stock to 0 so they can buy them cheep destroy them and then sell off the pieces for huge profits. Those actions have gutted the first worlds manufacturing and lost millions of jobs to the economy. That combined with corporations shipping jobs off to Asia simply to save on labour costs had also compounded the effect on wages across the first world, effectively wages have not risen in the west since Thatcher and Reagan started this neoliberal agenda.

Corporations are profiting from wars yet paying none of the costs.

With that backdrop, people noticed the hedge funds were targeting GAME STOP with a few other companies for destruction.  And decided to save them. There is also the point of the lock downs destroying main street business' and companies like Amazon profiting from that.

So this action was a defense of high street shops and a way to claw back some money from people that have spent decades profiting from destroying the economy.

These companies are not producing anything they are not adding to the economy.

Have the rich been funding themselves by ripping off the poor for centuries that they only had access too, and is it over now?

Not over this is a game changer.  The elites wont just sit back and do nothing they have already been, using their media to claim these groups are like domestic terrorists or racist. They are currently claiming falsely that the wall street bets crowd are now buying silver which is a lie they are not.
They used hate speech as a justification to close the chat rooms Robinhood the trading app, refused to allow its users to buy anymore stock and only allowed them to sell, after the stock price crashed and the hedge funds got out of their short positions,  trading on Robin hood was allowed but people were only allowed to buy one share. The chat rooms are now back working.

If anyone deserves the title domestic terrorist its the hedge funds and banks Max Keiser has been calling them domestic terrorists for years.

If anyone does decide to buy silver they should only accept physical delivery, never paper.

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General Science / Re: Can you derive x = -1 from x^2 = 1?

« on: 29/01/2021 19:21:50 »

x² = 1
x² – 1 = 0
(x+1)(x–1) = 0
x = 1 and x = –1 both satisfy the last equation

18

COVID-19 / Does the Oxford vaccine stop the illness, transmission, or just symptoms?

« on: 07/01/2021 17:26:05 »

We got this question from listener Jo:

Am I right in thinking vaccines are designed to work on one of three outcomes? 1) a vaccine for the illness, or 2) a vaccine for transmission, or 3) a vaccine for stopping symptoms? And that a vaccine cannot work on all three?

Within this framework the Oxford vaccine is a number 3), a vaccine to stop symptoms. However, symptoms tell us we have COVID and that we are at risk to others as we can transmit the virus. These signs and symptoms allow us to make the right decision to protect others by conducting a test and self-isolating. Therefore, does this not suggest that those having the new vaccine can become super spreaders of the virus as they will not know they have it because they have are asymptomatic? Asymptomatic does not mean they are not transmitting the virus to others.

My mother, an 80 year old diabetic, is having her vaccine next week. My partner has MS and will not be vaccinated for at least 4 months. Therefore, does this now mean my mother can be a walking talking COVID super spreader and by visiting her I now put my partner at risk?

By not focusing on the anti-transmission vaccine, could this cause a new strain of the virus?

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New Theories / Re: Was the light speed problem really solved by Einstein in 1905 ?

« on: 05/01/2021 11:56:04 »

    Was the light speed problem really solved by Einstein in 1905 ?

 Einstein did not truly succeed in eliminating the ether, and Einstein himself never realized this. Few, if any, physicists realize this. The ether always haunted the thinking of the physicists.

Then you haven't studied Einstein much.

"More careful reflection teaches us, however, that the special theory of relativity does not compel us to deny ether."
 -Albert Einstein

"Recapitulating, we may say that according to the general theory of relativity space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether. According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense. But this ether may not be thought of as endowed with the quality characteristic of ponderable media, as consisting of parts which may be tracked through time. The idea of motion may not be applied to it."
 -Albert Einstein

You can easily find the full text by searching for...

Albert Einstein - Ether and the Theory of Relativity, 1920

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That CAN'T be true! / Re: The nature of light and the size of the Universe.

« on: 03/01/2021 20:46:42 »

Since STEREO images are photos - not 2D slices of 3D map of region, post-processing can only be in the form of color filters, and can in no way affect objects (adding or erasing) and their relative position to each other.

They are not photos, since the cameras are nowhere near the point of view presented (which is something like Jupiter, depending on where in its orbit that is).

I notice that the image you post is about 300 pixels across, and with Earth in the center, perhaps 150-180 pixels between Earth and the sun.  Earth, Venus, Mercury, and even the comet seem to consume several pixels, meaning the image does not have these object focused down to their actual size.

The moon is a light-second away and the sun is about 500 seconds away, making the moon about a 3rd of a pixel from Earth.  That means it isn't in the picture because it's too close to distinguish the two at the resolution presented.