111–120 of 136 posts
I wonder if this is in any way responsible for the increased biodiversity there - maybe a slightly higher mutation rate?
Makes sense. Isn’t this one method that new crops are made, by radiating seeds and seeing what new diversity arises.
This somehow reminds me of the fact that you can produce (surprisingly high-quality) x-rays by unrolling scotch tape in a vacuum chamber[0][1]. I wonder if it turns out to be related in any way. Thunderstorms aren't a vacuum of course, but I dunno, maybe all that frozen hail being thrown around can bumping into each other still involves a similar underlying mechanism somewhere. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/nat…
When objects collide or are separated, aren't we really just witnessing tiny chemical reactions, all involving the absorption and/or release of energy?
The process that causes tape to produce to x-rays when peeled in a vacuum in this example does involve a change of energy states, but not in a way that we'd consider a change in chemical composition.
I wonder if this is in any way responsible for the increased biodiversity there - maybe a slightly higher mutation rate?
The genetic diversity of rainforests is largely an illusion and/or evo biologists looking for taxpayer funded safari expeditions. Most of the biodiversity in rainforests is in megafauna and insects, largely because the megaflora are fumigating the shit out of the soil. If you want a very high degree of biodiversity the place to look is temperate deserts, where the microbial diversity is extremely high -- probably bec…
> If you want a very high degree of biodiversity the place to look is temperate deserts, where the microbial diversity is extremely high
This sounds a bit like that "you have more bacteria in your gut than you have cells in your body" fun fact. Which may be true in terms of individually countable cells, but in terms of weight it's another story.
In the same sense comparing the genetic diversity of megafauna and insects in one region to those of the bacteria in another is a bit disingenuous imo, because that's comparing two different ecosystem "categories".
IIUC, bacteria tend to leak genetic material between each other. Genes get swapped around a lot, and if some combos don't work out, well, there are uncountably other bacterial cells around. Meanwhile, megafauna and insects have much smaller populations that only swap genes through sexual reproduction, which recombines genes a lot more slowly. It's not a fair comparison.
Positively charged particles end up at the top of the storm while negatively charged particles drop to the bottom, creating an enormous electric field that can be as strong as 100 million AA batteries stacked end-to-end. Or put another way, 150 MV. What's with this media obsession with using obscure non-SI units?
In my neck of the woods it's called "journalist units": three soccer fields, five blue whales etc. Somebody even created a website to facilitate conversion but unfortunately the TLS certificate has expired and Cloudflare now blocks access. Article in Danish: https://ing.dk/artikel/lynch-nu-kan-ogsaa-journalister-faa-s...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_units_of_measu...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my neck of the woods it's called "journalist units": three soccer fields, five blue whales etc. Somebody even created a website to facilitate conversion but unfortunately the TLS certificate has expired and Cloudflare now blocks access. Article in Danish: https://ing.dk/artikel/lynch-nu-kan-ogsaa-journalister-faa-s...
The Register also have one: https://www.theregister.com/Design/page/reg-standards-conver...
https://www.theregister.com/2007/08/24/vulture_central_stand...
Positively charged particles end up at the top of the storm while negatively charged particles drop to the bottom, creating an enormous electric field that can be as strong as 100 million AA batteries stacked end-to-end. Or put another way, 150 MV. What's with this media obsession with using obscure non-SI units?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you still use telnet?
No, it's no longer practical for any purpose. I mostly use openssl instead, e.g. for testing if my SMTP server is up and has a valid cert: openssl s_client -connect myhost.com:25 -starttls smtp Telnet stopped being useful a long time ago, is no longer shipped by default, and there are better tools to do things it was used for decades ago.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you print "40 millions", and it turns out to be 39, you've lied That’s not what lying is. To tell a lie is to intentionally state as fact something you know to be false. Being wrong isn’t lying.
What about being so negligent in checking your facts that any reasonable person would know they’re wrong, but continuing forward anyway?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When objects collide or are separated, aren't we really just witnessing tiny chemical reactions, all involving the absorption and/or release of energy?
I think that's a reasonable question, but no, I wouldn't say that that is the case. A chemical reactions is by definition the kind that involves changing the chemical composition of the molecules involved (yes, that's a bit handwavy, I'm not a chemist). The process that causes tape to produce to x-rays when peeled in a vacuum in this example does involve a change of energy states, but not in a way that we'd consider…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The genetic diversity of rainforests is largely an illusion and/or evo biologists looking for taxpayer funded safari expeditions. Most of the biodiversity in rainforests is in megafauna and insects, largely because the megaflora are fumigating the shit out of the soil. If you want a very high degree of biodiversity the place to look is temperate deserts, where the microbial diversity is extremely high -- probably bec…
> Most of the biodiversity in rainforests is in megafauna and insects > If you want a very high degree of biodiversity the place to look is temperate deserts, where the microbial diversity is extremely high This sounds a bit like that "you have more bacteria in your gut than you have cells in your body" fun fact. Which may be true in terms of individually countable cells, but in terms of weight it's another story. In…
And until recently, the dogma was that there were more insect species than bacteria species (it could make sense, as insects reproduce sexually so there's more opportunity for genetic drift), but hoo boy were we wrong (we now know from DNA panning experiments, our estimates on bacteria were low because it was mostly only culturable bacteria we were counting).