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Gamma radiation is produced in large tropical thunderstorms

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Re: Gamma radiation is produced in large tropical thunderstorms

#121

Post by mgsouth »

Andys wrote: post #119
vanderZwan wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What is holding the tape to itself, what is making it sticky, if not chemistry?

For pressure-sensitive-adhesive tape (cellophane tape) it's mainly fuzzy static cling--wetting and van Der Waal's forces [1]. Wetting is when two substances (even solids) intermingle at their interface. van Der Waal's force is when a negatively-charged area of one molecule lines up the a postively-charged area of another.

[1] https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/everyday-innova...

Re: Gamma radiation is produced in large tropical thunderstorms

#122

Post by vanderZwan »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #120
vanderZwan wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

So, I guess you don't have a biology background but: species diversity is usually judged by 16s rna diversity, which generally doesn't get swapped around. 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…

No, and while I worked for molecular neurobiologists for two years at one point in my life, that just taught me that I don't have the slightest clue how DNA works.

You're missing my point though: you replied to someone who talked about biodiversity with a remark about genetic diversity (probably without realizing it, which would be a classic case of attribute substitution[0]). Even I know that biodiversity is not limited to genetic diversity, as a quick trip to Wikipedia will confirm[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribute_substitution

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiversity

Re: Gamma radiation is produced in large tropical thunderstorms

#123

Post by Am4TIfIsER0ppos »

sneak wrote: post #105
andai wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yesterday I considered writing a web scraper completely from scratch (just sockets). Without HTTPS, this is trivial. Of course, you lose out on much (most?) of the web, but I have a feeling most small / interesting sites would still be accessible. I have found that, given a random sampling of web content, an extremely small fraction of it is interesting or useful to me (nor indeed is hardly any of it what I would con…

Even if you moved the entire TLS web to non-TLS, this is no longer trivial. The web requires Javascript to render, full stop. Fetching and parsing HTML alone is totally insufficient.

> The web requires Javascript to render, full stop.

Then how the fuck am I reading this let alone replying?

Re: Gamma radiation is produced in large tropical thunderstorms

#124

Post by andai »

benterix wrote: post #108
sneak wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you moved the entire TLS web to non-TLS, this is no longer trivial. The web requires Javascript to render, full stop. Fetching and parsing HTML alone is totally insufficient.

> The web requires Javascript to render, full stop. A small correction: some parts of the new web require JavaScript to render. That's why on many websites teh experience is better without JS. To be more specific, several paywalled websites can be accessed just by turning the JS off. You could even say the opposite is true in these cases: JS is being used to prevent text rendering.

A while back I disabled JS in my browser. I think I even disabled image loading. This resulted in a vastly improved experience. You'd think mere adblock would get you most of the way there, but the difference is staggering.

Re: Gamma radiation is produced in large tropical thunderstorms

#125

Post by fwsgonzo »

andai wrote: post #124
benterix wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The web requires Javascript to render, full stop. A small correction: some parts of the new web require JavaScript to render. That's why on many websites teh experience is better without JS. To be more specific, several paywalled websites can be accessed just by turning the JS off. You could even say the opposite is true in these cases: JS is being used to prevent text rendering.

A while back I disabled JS in my browser. I think I even disabled image loading. This resulted in a vastly improved experience. You'd think mere adblock would get you most of the way there, but the difference is staggering.

That's been my way of browsing for a while now and I agree it works for the most part. I have no intention of going back.

It's especially nice to have JavaScript disabled by default, so I can enable one script at a time until it becomes readable. But not so many scripts that it becomes unreadable again.

Re: Gamma radiation is produced in large tropical thunderstorms

#126

Post by throwawaymaths »

vanderZwan wrote: post #122
throwawaymaths wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I guess you don't have a biology background but: species diversity is usually judged by 16s rna diversity, which generally doesn't get swapped around. 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…

No, and while I worked for molecular neurobiologists for two years at one point in my life, that just taught me that I don't have the slightest clue how DNA works. You're missing my point though: you replied to someone who talked about biodiversity with a remark about genetic diversity (probably without realizing it, which would be a classic case of attribute substitution[0]). Even I know that biodiversity is not lim…

What metric do you want. In any metric up to and including ecosystem roles, microorganisms will be more diverse than macro.

Oh did you want size? Yep. Microorganisms make colonial hyphae which are bigger than any living organism except maybe some colonial trees.

Re: Gamma radiation is produced in large tropical thunderstorms

#127

Post by LorenPechtel »

Andys wrote: post #106
vanderZwan wrote: post #85

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?

No. "Gamma rays" in modern scientific usage has a specific meaning: radiation coming from the nucleus or from annihilation reactions (electron + positron is considered a gamma source despite not involving a nucleus), not from the electrons. The energy bands actually overlap, you can't always tell whether a given photon is without understanding it's source. (The lowest energy gamma rays actually fall in the UV part of the spectrum.)

And what they're saying is the energy of the lightning is acting as a particle accelerator. aka atom smasher. And there's a surprising level of atom smashing going on in the big thunderclouds.

Re: Gamma radiation is produced in large tropical thunderstorms

#128

Post by LorenPechtel »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #97
lazide wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need to write for an (average) 6th grade reading level - maximum. So think 4th grade most of the time. How many 4th graders have any clue what a mega volt is? How many do you think have personal experience with 150 mega volts?

How many have experience with AA batteries these days? How many with 100 million of anything, enough to get an idea of how much bigger that is than one of the thing? Probably all about the same numbers.

Plenty of AA batteries around. And AAA for that matter. At the low end the fancy battery packs can easily be more expensive than what they're powering. Li-Ion is choose only one: cheap or safe.

Re: Gamma radiation is produced in large tropical thunderstorms

#129

Post by vanderZwan »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #126
vanderZwan wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, and while I worked for molecular neurobiologists for two years at one point in my life, that just taught me that I don't have the slightest clue how DNA works. You're missing my point though: you replied to someone who talked about biodiversity with a remark about genetic diversity (probably without realizing it, which would be a classic case of attribute substitution[0]). Even I know that biodiversity is not lim…

What metric do you want. In any metric up to and including ecosystem roles, microorganisms will be more diverse than macro. Oh did you want size? Yep. Microorganisms make colonial hyphae which are bigger than any living organism except maybe some colonial trees.

Are you willfully ignoring my earlier point that pointed that out and concluded that therefore sneakily comparing megafauna to microbes is disingenous?

Re: Gamma radiation is produced in large tropical thunderstorms

#130

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

sneak wrote: post #117
benterix wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good, so you understand perfectly the reasons for us all attempting to abolish use of port 80.

I think everybody understands the benefits of HTTPS, there is no need to discuss that. But the fact remains that forcing everybody to move, even old static websites where potential impersonation and MITM attacks matter little, turned out not so painless as the advocates had proclaimed.
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