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Question of the Week / Re: QotW - 19.10.20 - Why does wiping my car turn water to ice?

« on: Yesterday at 17:28:49 »

If undisturbed, supercooled liquid water can form all sorts of metastable short-range polymers that do not crystallise at 0 deg C. It doesn't take much to precipitate crystallisation and the spread can be very rapid, producing feather patterns on a previously-wiped surface in a matter of seconds from a small starting point.

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General Science / Re: If we need to colonize Mars in a hurry, how do we choose the best people?

« on: Yesterday at 17:21:40 »

I have always advocated a one-way trip to Mars, and whilst the sperm bank is an excellent idea, I think the next generation might benefit from one adult male role model.

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General Science / Re: If we need to colonize Mars in a hurry, how do we choose the best people?

« on: Yesterday at 10:01:01 »

The "Eve hypothesis" suggests from mitochondrial analysis that homo sapiens is entirely derived from one female. Despite interbreeding, we've managed to get from Ethiopia to Mars in 200,000 years and invented computer games, so maybe it's not really a problem.

I think BC is wrong - my projection is that we will need to bring some kids with us to avoid a big generation gap.

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Physiology & Medicine / Re: Does mobile phone tower radiation pose health problems?

« on: Yesterday at 09:53:12 »

The man had no work clothes or hard hat, which other employees have. The man walked about slowly while on his phone and looking about. Even for the slow pace of SA workers he was taking his time and not appearing to have an objective.

Government health & safety inspector. Also explains parking an unmarked van out of sight and skulking in.  Probably made some fatuous order about switching off the light at night (might attract aeroplanes or keep the neighbors awake) too.

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Technology / Re: Is this a stunning breakthrough in petrol engine thermal efficiency?

« on: 20/10/2019 17:03:39 »

But my point is that stating fuel consumption in terms of passenger miles per gal/litr only shifts focus from the large amounts of fuel used per flight. It is I think an accountancy measure rather than a scientific measure

Rubbish! The whole point of transport is to move people or stuff from A to B, and you measure the efficiency of any modality by the quantity of fuel needed to shift one unit of payload (passenger or ton of freight) one mile. The fuel required to move an empty train or ship is enormous and the efficiency thereof is zero.

Nothing NEEDS to be moved, and commuting to an office is surely the greatest waste of time and fuel ever invented. We move stuff (including ourselves) because we want it somewhere else - though I don't know of anyone who would rather be in an office than at home.

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Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / Re: Does philosophy/ethics play a role in the "GMO or synthetic biology revolution"?

« on: 20/10/2019 16:18:20 »

9 million cows in the US may soon be unable to re-produce. A disaster.

Not for the cows, many of which suffer greatly during calving. Nor for the environment. Bit of a bummer for the farmers, perhaps, but there's plenty of choice of subspecies.

A mistake by flawed science of the past that in this case could wipe out the cow.

No, just those breeds that can't. They are all derived from wild species, so there's still a decent gene pool available.

Recent developments in animal ethics

Philosophical arrogance. The RSPCA was founded in 1824, American Humane in 1877. Time to catch up with reality!

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Physiology & Medicine / Re: Does mobile phone tower radiation pose health problems?

« on: 20/10/2019 08:19:37 »

Warning lights are not always required on towers under 200 ft high unless they are close to an airport (for obvious reasons) or charted as official sea or river navigation marks. Is this an exceptionally tall phone mast or in a navigationally busy area? I've had a mobile phone cooked by the weather radar of a 737, so you may need to expand your spectral analysis.

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Physiology & Medicine / Re: What frequencies of ultrasound are absorbed or not by human body?

« on: 19/10/2019 23:03:03 »

They are all absorbed. The higher the frequency, the stronger the absorption.

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General Science / Re: If we need to colonize Mars in a hurry, how do we choose the best people?

« on: 19/10/2019 17:20:50 »

Important to have a spread of ages. Rapid colonisation demands a majority of 16 - 20 year old females, but this will produce a 20 year gap before the next generation. The cycle will gradually become indistinct but it might make life easier in the medium term if they began with a few older and younger people.

And just in case it turns out to be difficult to feed everyone, have a few really old blokes on board. By the time the next generation has developed teenage appetites, the old scientists will have done our job and died.

So a resilient and sustainable colony would look quite different from a "human blitzkrieg".

Now any feminist will tell you that a woman can do anything a man can do, and with only 0.38g surface gravitation, that will include heavy lifting. So just me and 49 chosen ladies - one pilot, then any Olympic medallist with a degree in medicine, agriculture or engineering is welcome to apply.

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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Was the Big Bang the beginning of the universe?

« on: 19/10/2019 17:02:52 »

I even made up quotes from obscure non-existent American studies.

Congratulations!

If you don't already know about it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair is a good summary of a famous spoof. It also invokes the concept of "postmodern philosophy". Now if "modern" means "now", "postmodern" must mean "tomorrow"/. Isn't this what us humans call science fiction?

I think we are making progress! The expansion of the universe is due to philosophers filling all the empty spaces with bullshit.

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Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / Re: Does philosophy/ethics play a role in the "GMO or synthetic biology revolution"?

« on: 19/10/2019 14:49:10 »

validity of concept

More meaningless words! If by "concept" you mean "hypothesis", then science is all about testing the validity of hypotheses. There are some concepts such as energy, that have significant utility. Linguistic precision is important. The "definition of a concept for the origin of life" is meaningless, but a sound hypothesis for the primordial evolution of living things would be interesting.

thinking (philosophy as a science) about what is actually done may become essential

I've never knowingly done an experiment or developed a product or process without thinking about it first, and my clients, shareholders colleagues and regulatory authorities think about it too, when necessary. What are we trying to measure/demonstrate/build? Why? And more importantly, why not? "Fishing" is only undertaken in very restricted circumstances. George Bush Senior (not the idiot son) explained his Balkan strategy thus: "No President should commit ground troops unless he can tell them who they are fighting, what they are fighting for, how they will know they have won, and what will happen when they go home." Pity GW and the British Arselicker didn't listen, but I've never met a scientist who didn't apply the same criteria to any planned venture.

$ 100bn per month is $ 1.2 trillion USD per year of funds from Big Pharma funneled to bio-tech that funds the synthetic biology revolution.

'Twas ever thus, and ever should be. Individual  genius tends not to flourish in big corporations - you can spend more time in the boardroom than on the workbench. But venture capitalists are always looking to sponsor small companies with big ideas, and once the pioneers have demonstrated the feasibility of their idea, it's time to sell out to a corporation with enough muscle to put it into production. I've just done it twice in a year, and I'm delighted to get on with the next invention and not have to worry about Phase 3 clinical trials, packaging and marketing.

life could be transformed....

meaningless journalese. The nearest anyone has come to a definition of life is "the abstract property that distinguishes living things from non-living things". You can't modify an abstract by combining physical entities.

The world shift away from meat is illusory. Meat consumption in China is rising faster than it is falling in the West. However www.iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2058-7058/18/7/46/pdf is an article I wrote 14 years ago that explains why it would be useful to reduce the population of farm animals as a test of the carbon dioxide global warming hypothesis. My thesis was developed for the World Bank by a couple of American economists and is now part of UN and UK longterm policy. I'm pleased to see the NAS* is now on board.  Watch out for a film "Eating ourselves to Extinction" which should be out next year (it was promised for this year - I hope they haven't edited my scene out!)

It is absurd to suggest that other species do not have minds like ours. Only a priest or a philosopher could promulgate such ignorance of the obvious facts. Indeed priests are proven guilty by eliminating the "nefesh" of other species from the christian translations of Genesis. Why? Because there was money in bear-baiting! So economics is guilty too.

What effect will the $ 1.2 trillion USD of Big Pharma investment for 2019 have on plants and animals?

None, compared with the effect of 7 - 8 billion people eating them. Or killing each other in order to acquire land to grow more. 

I hoped to discover more intelligent arguments with regard to the motive to start such a great endeavour

I answered that some way back. "More" or "better" is the motive for any endeavour, and in an honest marketplace, a better product earns more money. Stormzy is worth a lot more than Mozart ever was, QED.


*As this was the organisation that told the Wright Brothers "there is no conceivable use for the airplane", maybe it's not such a good endorsement - but we all make mistakes.

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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: A Question of Motion

« on: 18/10/2019 23:28:20 »

lf the muzzle velocities are the same, and the muzzles are level with each other, the trajectories will be the same.

It is oddly counterintuitive that if you fire a bullet horizontally and drop a bullet from the same height at the same time, they will hit the ground at the same time. This is particularly important for long-range sniping where the bullet may fly for around 2 seconds, during which it will fall 64 feet. "Aim high" is more than just encouragement.

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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: A Question of Motion

« on: 18/10/2019 19:52:53 »

No big deal except the bomb accelerates downwards until it reaches terminal speed, so one side of the "triangle" is curved. Glide bombs and parachute mines have different trajectories but the principle is always the same - vector addition.

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Physiology & Medicine / Re: Does mobile phone tower radiation pose health problems?

« on: 18/10/2019 19:47:16 »

Waste of time. If you look at the meter you will get sick.

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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: A Question of Motion

« on: 18/10/2019 17:25:12 »

No need to go into space to do this. When you cut the string, the weight will fly off in a straight line at 25 ft/sec away from the axis of the spacecraft  and 22000 ft/sec in the forward direction. This is standard ballistics for moving  vehicles if you ignore air resistance and gravity (which you can in space, of course!) . Gunners and bomb aimers spend a lot of time drawing such triangles in their studies.

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Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / Re: Why is a human a human? Why didn't we evolve into something else?

« on: 18/10/2019 17:14:40 »

Stopped? Homo sapiens hasn't been around very long in evolutionary terms, and has already formed several distinct subgroups. There is no absolute definition of species and whilst it is possible that modern caucasians have traces of Neanderthal ancestry, for instance, it is much less likely that any other racial group does - we have branched in evolution. The only reason we are all assigned to a single species is that we are fully interfertile and can fully coexist with each other in any of the ecosystems that each other inhabit, but there is nothing to prevent the emergence of a new species that dominates and succeeds in some corner of the ecosphere.

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Physiology & Medicine / Re: Does mobile phone tower radiation pose health problems?

« on: 18/10/2019 14:49:49 »

With you in spirit, good buddy, and possibly Skype if the experiment progresses. If it turns out to be really interesting, maybe a trip to SA is called for. Happy to chat with the university guy, whoever. An RF spectrometer should at least give you the relative intensities of everything, and a power meter will give you the absolute total, so you can work out the action spectrum from both records.

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Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / Re: What is life?

« on: 18/10/2019 14:42:41 »

There is no consistent definition of "species"  - it's a label of convenience for whatever is different from anything else. But a mule (equus mule) is an animal bred from a female horse and a male donkey and they are all sterile but alive. By all means muck about with the genes and make something that looks like a mule but is fertile (you will probably need to make two!)

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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: What would replace clocks if we're travelling close to the speed of light?

« on: 18/10/2019 14:27:44 »

We are already travelling close to the speed of light. The clocks seem to work ok.

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Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / Re: What is life?

« on: 18/10/2019 09:57:07 »

If you modified the genes of a mule, it wouldn't be a mule.

A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. Horses and donkeys are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes.