41

Just Chat! / Re: Is "canceling" someone sometimes justified?

« on: 19/06/2022 16:27:41 »

Communism was well known for providing top notch healthcare to all citizens, something that the west is incapable of.

Yes and no, I think. Just two anecdotes:

Back in the 1970s a friend wanted soft contact lenses - still something of a novelty at the time. Her rabidly anti-communist father said he would pay for them if she wrote him an essay explaining why they weren't available in the USSR. Her diligent research revealed that they were invented in Czechoslovakia and were generally provided free of charge  behind the Iron Curtain.

By sheer coincidence my son suffered acute appendicitis in the UK at the same time as a classmate who was visiting Russia. His diagnosis and treatment were delayed and disorganised and days later he ended up with a scar that looks like a shark bite, having missed death by a few hours. She was hospitalised in an hour, diagnosed and in surgery with no delay, and returned home with two tiny incisions from very neat keyhole surgery.  But her mum (who happened to be leading the school party) said that the food was awful and the nurses unpleasant.

42

Just Chat! / Re: Is "canceling" someone sometimes justified?

« on: 18/06/2022 23:50:30 »

Under communism there was no parliamentary opposition. Nowadays,the leader of the opposition gets poisoned and imprisoned.

Communism provided public services and public ownership of basic industry. Privatisation resulted in a few crooks making huge profits through a bent tendering process and increasing the prices of fuel and food. The government is planning to reduce its healthcare budget. The employment rate has not changed significantly.

43

Cells, Microbes & Viruses / Re: Monkeypox: Could it be similar to cowpox, and just a mild variant of smallpox?

« on: 18/06/2022 23:35:43 »

A bizarre supposition. Or perhaps just badly expressed.

The entirety of those killed by COVID (or indeed any disease) will be those who are susceptible to it.

Those people who are concerned about a disease will generally avoid contact with it or take some prophylactic or remedial measures, thus reducing the incidence or severity within that group.

UK COVID statistics are heavily biassed by the Secretary of State for Health's decision to kill nursing home residents early in the pandemic.

44

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: How would we know whether space,time or spacetime were continuous or discrete?

« on: 18/06/2022 23:14:30 »

What notions of "discreteness" are you using @alancalverd ?

The opposite of continuous,infinitely divisible and differentiable, or smooth. Having calculable but forbidden regions. Having only a finite number of  denumerable steps between any two positions.

Quote from: alancalverd on Today at 17:25:32

If both space and time were granular there would only be a finite number of discrete values of both,

1.   Who said space or time had to be finite?   

My omission ".....between any two points."

Whilst some mathematics necessarily deals with numbers, which are always (if infinitely) granular, a lot of physics is about a notional continuum which is not granular, and is populated by differentials rather than infinitesimals.

45

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: How the atomic model works?

« on: 18/06/2022 23:07:52 »

And please don't use the word "orbit". An object in orbit is continuously accelerating. An accelerating charged particle emits electromagnetic radiation. The electrons in an atom don't, so they can't be in orbit or indeed in any oscillatory motion.

46

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: How would we know whether space,time or spacetime were continuous or discrete?

« on: 18/06/2022 17:25:32 »

Come to think of it, Heisenberg pretty well contradicts the idea of granular spacetime. As you decrease the uncertainty of your position measurement, so you increase the indeterminacy of your momentum. If both space and time were granular there would only be a finite number of discrete values of both, so indeterminacy would be limited and we'd be back to the impossible orbiting electron model of an atom.

47

Just Chat! / Re: Is "canceling" someone sometimes justified?

« on: 18/06/2022 17:14:48 »

So do you approve of the state of modern Russia? In what ways is it preferable to the communist state that preceded it?

Which side should compromise to reunify Korea? What did we learn from Vietnam?

48

Chemistry / Re: In what fundamental forms are energy released when hydrogen burns in oxygen?

« on: 18/06/2022 17:11:56 »

Science is indeed full of strange happenings. But we invent conserved quantities like energy to give us a rational framework for predicting what might happen next.

49

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: How the atomic model works?

« on: 18/06/2022 17:09:30 »

How can Electrons in some physical phenomena return to a precise orbit around the nucleus " with a precise electron radius" after it loses its spinning position ? 

They don't. The concept was abandoned in the 1920s.

50

New Theories / Re: what is temperature?

« on: 18/06/2022 17:07:49 »

Which is why temperature is defined as a measure of average internal kinetic energy. 

And the fact that A has more internal kinetic energy per particle than B does not guarantee heat transfer. There must be some means of exchanging that kinetic energy.

But as you say, it is extremely difficult to establish thermal equilibrium in a simple experiment.

51

Cells, Microbes & Viruses / Re: Monkeypox: Could it be similar to cowpox, and just a mild variant of smallpox?

« on: 18/06/2022 17:02:42 »

Review your concept of the social norm. It has changed considerably in the last 50 years.

The repression of social interaction during COVID lockdowns had no effect on birthrate in the UK. 

52

Chemistry / Re: In what fundamental forms are energy released when hydrogen burns in oxygen?

« on: 18/06/2022 16:58:36 »

1. Yes, about 286 kJ/mol of hydrogen.

2. In a stoichiometric mixture, mostly kinetic energy of the resulting water molecules, with some photons from the flame area. In an excess of either gas, some to most of the kinetic energy will be dispersed among the molecules of the excess gas.

53

Just Chat! / Re: What can be done to improve the dire conditions in Nepal?

« on: 18/06/2022 14:45:12 »

By "money" you presumably mean "foreign money". The sovereign monarchy of Nepal has  been around for about 300 years, long before the RAF (I think you mean Army pensions) or even the identification of Everest on western maps. Whatever the internal currency, it seemed to work OK and still does: there is agriculture, manufacturing, and internal trade, so we must assume that money has changed hands for at least that length of time in Nepal.

54

Just Chat! / Re: Is "canceling" someone sometimes justified?

« on: 18/06/2022 14:39:49 »

No, Gorbachev ended the regime, and at first at least, it was okay.

That was 30 years ago. Do you approve of what has replaced it?

55

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: 18/06/2022 14:34:36 »

From it follows another question, how far can they reach? North pole?

Probably not. Dust carried on hot southerly wind will mostly be deposited with rain on mixing with cold northerly air. It happens fairly often in the south of England. Obviously some high-altitude dust will find its way to the poles as it always has done, but not in a storm front.

56

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: 18/06/2022 14:31:14 »

And make it a question. Are duststoms becoming more prevalent?

Almost certainly, as agriculture expands and rainfall contracts.

57

New Theories / Re: what is temperature?

« on: 18/06/2022 14:29:34 »

If the kinetic energy causes heat transfer,

It doesn't. Internal kinetic energy is heat. Temperature difference causes heat transfer.

58

Cells, Microbes & Viruses / Re: Monkeypox: Could it be similar to cowpox, and just a mild variant of smallpox?

« on: 18/06/2022 14:26:47 »

The reason men tend to father fewer children in their later years is due to declining opportunity, not fertility, as humans mostly copulate within a narrow age cohort and female fertility declines rapidly after age 40.

The UK birthrate has declined at about 0.45 - 0.50% per year since about 2000. There is no evidence that lockdown had any effect.

Always worth checking the facts before posting on a science forum.

59

New Theories / Re: what is temperature?

« on: 18/06/2022 10:37:55 »

Internal versus external. I think most people would understand.

If you want to make things complicated for yourself, solve the equations for the velocity profile of laminar flow and thermal diffusivity through a boundary and a moving fluid. In fact there's no need to solve them:  write then down, or just draw a diagram, and you will see why the boundary material doesn't need to "know" anything.

60

Cells, Microbes & Viruses / Re: Monkeypox: Could it be similar to cowpox, and just a mild variant of smallpox?

« on: 18/06/2022 10:25:55 »

Yes, the people under threat from corona are beyond biological reproductive age.

My grandfather fathered his last child at the age of 84. Two friends who have been unable to work as pilots for the last 2 years thanks to "long COVID" are in their fifties, and would have died if they had not spotted the symptoms of hypoxia. I don't know any  younger victims but there are plenty of examples of folk in their twenties still disabled by this odd disease.

But I defer to your superior medical knowledge.