Although there a many doubter, to me it doesn't matter whether this one person reached that age (his relative may argue or not), what matters is that it won't be uncommon in 70 years (those in their 50 and 60 could go beyond that). A number of technologies are reaching their tipping point.
So far we have not come up with a single intervention of any kind, "technology" or not, that increases the human maximum lifespan by a single day. Nothing that actually slows down aging in humans. Nothing. What we are doing is preventing premature death. We are having a greater fraction living to the same maximum longevities already observed.
So far the only interventions that actually extend observed maximum longevity in rats are regimes of privation that would be considered torture in humans, and could only be maintained by perpetual imprisonment (like lab rats).
Tell us about some of these promising "technologies".
You mean physics isn't finished yet!? Oh the horror!
Physics has always been "in a muddle", from the time before Newton, in the sense you assert since there has never been a time when we thought we understood it all.
There was a short time at the end of the 1800s when some made a silly claim that physics was complete, around 1888 when electromagnetic radiation was discovered. Except for the Ultraviolet Catastrophe prediction that all hot objects would radiate infinitely high frequency photons, and the photoelectric effect that had already been discovered in 1887 that could not be explained. And then new unexplained physics started showing up every couple of years in the 1890s. The non-existence of the ether shown in 1892, the discovery of X-rays, radioactivity, the electron, Curie's work showing that an enormous mysterious energy source existed inside the atom...
...As for the latter: we still don't really know how dark matter works, and maybe it has its own forces (some oddball ones have been proposed).
And that is the motivation discussed in the cited paper, that this could be related to dark matter.
Asserting that we "know" that dark energy is a fifth force, in the same sense as the other four forces in the Standard Model, is claiming more than we actually know at this point. Maybe it is, but there are no good theories at this point that make it one, and it could be something quite different from the particle/force models physicists have been working with. Physics derived from the behavior of the Cosmological Constant in General Relativity may be some really new physics.
This was a superior shower, one of the best I have seen. I watched from the outskirts of Wrightwood, CA; elevation 1800 m just 20 km north of the Los Angeles basin but with an SQM 19.05 sky, a measure of sky darkness. due to mountain shielding of the light dome (the Milky Way is visible). This published list of darkness comparisons: rates this as "Typical for a suburb with widely spaced single-family homes.".
Starting at 12:40 a.m. (when I went out and started viewing) I saw 5 spectacular Earth-grazing fireballs leaving persistent glowing trails, with apparent colors of white, reddish, and greenish. In two hours of total viewing time, ending at 3:30 a.m. (I did some driving around testing different viewing sites), I saw 91 meteors, with the peak right at the end when the radiant in Perseus was high overhead, and it had hit about 80 meteors and hour in a 15 minute period.
It would still give off the same total energy, shifted into the IR...or much lower. I wonder if they detected longer wavelengths.
I also wonder if thjs impacts the estimate for total number of galaxies at 100 billion.
Good questions.
No, this being a ground-based instrument, they could not look at the infrared wavelengths you are thinking of. The James Webb Telescope will be the perfect instrument to investigate this when it is launched in two years.
Yes this will gave some impact on estimated galaxy counts.
BMI is antiquated as a measure of health because it completely ignores body composition.
As a weight-lifter, I am very well aware of the limitations of the BMI since it declares everyone with a lot of muscle mass "overweight" or even "obese" even if their body-fat is in the low single digits.
But it is an excellent tool for studying populations, where the odd individual to whom it does not apply are averaged out of importance. This is what the BMI was developed for, and it is well proven in this role.
It is a useful tool for assessing the health status of most individuals also, but not everyone. Healthy weight increases with age, it is normal and healthier to carry somewhat more weight, but apparently there is no age-adjusted scale available, strangely enough. It is less accurate for very tall people (though an adjusted BMI scale is available for this). And it is useless for people will a lot of muscle mass, as I mentioned above.
It is annoying that most health advice sources ignore these caveats, or seem utterly unaware of them.
The diamond ring and the family car are both 20th century inventions. I thought the rule was spending 52 weeks income on a car and 4 weeks income on a diamond ring. Now it's 21 weeks for a suburban necessity and 13 weeks for a shiny decoration. What strange priorities for a not so brave, new world.
Having a car as a 20th Century invention is rooted in the undeniable utility of having a vehicle that can transport people and goods long distances quickly.
The "requirement" that every marriage requires a large investment up-front in a diamond is purely the product of a marketing campaign by a diamond cartel (i.e. a price-fixing monopoly). Here is a brief, but honest as far as it goes, account by an organization dedicated to selling you diamonds. Note that the founding of the American Gem Society, in 1934, precisely coincides with the start of the De Beers cartel hard sell. It is striking that a trade organization, founded as part of a marketing scheme, does not try to hide its own origin.
Lengthier accounts of this bizarre pure luxury business are easytofind.
Regarding those "guidelines" (treated as "rules" by the industry) for how much to spend in a diamond ring - if you let marketing literature tell you what you should spend money on, you are perhaps typical, but still you are just being a patsy.
When I got married, no diamond was involved. It was a ridiculous waste of money, absolutely not an investment (they are virtually impossible to resell, the industry makes sure of that), and at that time a prop for the Apartheid regime. That last reason had ended, and recent "conflict diamond" rules have greatly reduced the tendency of diamond purchases to support mass murderers, but not ended that last problem entirely.
As a statistician (well, once upon a time) let me say that the median is one of three averages. The averages are the median, the mean, and the mode. Each is an average with certain characteristics and areas of utility. If you've got a normal bell curve they are the same number.
For most purposes involving income the useful averages are the median or the mode. Not the mean, which is unduly influenced by extreme values. (I didn't read the article, so I'm only commenting on your response.)
Thanks, I have been peeved about this for a long time. The mean is the easiest to calculate (you only need to retain the total and the number of items), and for many purposes is the most useful (for budgeting for example). And so it is not surprising that in common, non-technical discourse "average" and "mean" are treated as identical.
But then we get the would-be pedants who introduce more technical and precise terms ("median" most often, "mode" is fairly uncommon) but continue to use the average=mean imprecise common terminology.
Resale value varies a lot by car and by condition, but to have some numbers, lets look at a car that is worth 1/3rd it's upfront cost after 6 years, vs 10% after 10 years. The difference in depreciation is then 11% vs 9%, per year. If that were the only cost of car ownership, that would be significant - you could get a 20% better car by keeping it for 10 years instead of 6.
But other costs matter too. Maintenance (which does get worse over time), insurance, gas, parking, tolls, etc. So you're maybe looking at being able to get a 10% more expensive car at replacement time by keeping the car for 10 years rather than 6. That's not even a step up to the next model for most manufacturers.
So, for the same money, do you get better value by getting a $30k car every 6 years, or a $33k car every 10 years? Seems very subjective to me: if you value "newness", the former is a better deal, if you don't the latter, but it's a small enough difference either way.
What is a "20% better car"? Is there an objective absolute "car goodness" measurement scale I never heard of?
You seem so deeply embedded in the "car resale and buy new" paradigm that you cannot see that there is an entirely different way to manage you car needs. Buy a car and keep it on the road until such time that the repair costs are no longer economical when prorated over the additional mileage gained, or ti simply becomes too unreliable. I keep my car costs low by buying used (mostly, sometimes new) and then never selling the vehicle while it still runs, subject to the repair cost and reliability criteria just mentioned. "Resale value" is a piece of paper to me, I never resell until end of life.
But you are the source of the good deals on the used car market. Keep it up. I may buy your depreciated but perfectly serviceable car.
If you value "newness" you are absolutely going to spend big additional bucks over the years to satisfy this predilection. If you don't the difference is "not small either way" it is huge.
And the Chlorine and Bromine from sea water doesn't?
That's right it doesn't. It requires a special transport mechanism - like a completely chemically inert gas - to transport any chlorine or bromine up the ozonosphere, and then break up under ultraviolet exposure. The halogenated hydrocarbons that do this do not exist in nature. We created a transport mechanism where none existed naturally.
Keep asking questions, you will keep learning (as long as you heed the answers).
IUPAC uses both words about equally often and considers both valid - and they're the authority on the issue (this is actually a change from their earlier stance, where they had tried to force aluminium as the standard).
That is not really different from what the poster you are replying to said. IUPAC made the name "aluminium" official, the rest of the world adopted it, the US refused to go along, and finally IUPAC gave up and allowed the idiosyncratic American usage as an acceptable one.
Fortunately they are sticking to their guns regarding the metric system.
...How about air travel? No good alternatives there for liquid hydrocarbon fuels - at least not that I can think of. Ships and ocean-going vessels? I don't think there are any realistic alternatives there. Manufacturing? Nope, lots of oil-based products still needed.
And while bio-fuels or alternatives can take up some of this, we're a long, long way from having a realistic capacity to make up the difference. What am I missing here?
This is what you are missing. Air travel consumes 6% of world liquid fuel production, ships consume 4%, production of plastics and other chemicals consumes 8%. All together this is only 18% of world liquid hydrocarbon consumption. Elimination of 80% of petroleum use would have an astounding effect on the industry.
The true believers keep saying this. What the hell - are you all poor at math?
The average age of cars on the road right now is around 11 years. If every single new car buyer, starting right now, bought an electric car over an ICE car, you have a minimum of 11 years before a mere half the cars on the road are electrics.
Over a decade - that's your best case scenario, where everybody stops buying ICE immediately and buys electric. But that is not what is
happening, is it? So that's your lower bound - 11 years.
...
You aren't in a strong position to be mocking people's math abilities. A generation is usually taken as 25 years. Only 10% of the vehicles on the road are 20 years or older. Note also that the number of miles driven per vehicle drops at the high end of the lifespan - you don't see many heavily driven commuter cars that are 20 years old. So the mere fact that they exist and are in use does not mean they are significant over-all contributors to mileage driven or fuel used.
Besides, people have been predicting the death of the oil industry since the 50's, and it's always been "20 years out".
Citation please? Any evidence that "people were predicting the death of the oil industry" in the 1950 or 1960s? You wouldn't just be making this up, right?
Slashdot Mirror
Although there a many doubter, to me it doesn't matter whether this one person reached that age (his relative may argue or not), what matters is that it won't be uncommon in 70 years (those in their 50 and 60 could go beyond that). A number of technologies are reaching their tipping point.
So far we have not come up with a single intervention of any kind, "technology" or not, that increases the human maximum lifespan by a single day. Nothing that actually slows down aging in humans. Nothing. What we are doing is preventing premature death. We are having a greater fraction living to the same maximum longevities already observed.
So far the only interventions that actually extend observed maximum longevity in rats are regimes of privation that would be considered torture in humans, and could only be maintained by perpetual imprisonment (like lab rats).
Tell us about some of these promising "technologies".
You mean physics isn't finished yet!? Oh the horror!
Physics has always been "in a muddle", from the time before Newton, in the sense you assert since there has never been a time when we thought we understood it all.
There was a short time at the end of the 1800s when some made a silly claim that physics was complete, around 1888 when electromagnetic radiation was discovered. Except for the Ultraviolet Catastrophe prediction that all hot objects would radiate infinitely high frequency photons, and the photoelectric effect that had already been discovered in 1887 that could not be explained. And then new unexplained physics started showing up every couple of years in the 1890s. The non-existence of the ether shown in 1892, the discovery of X-rays, radioactivity, the electron, Curie's work showing that an enormous mysterious energy source existed inside the atom...
...As for the latter: we still don't really know how dark matter works, and maybe it has its own forces (some oddball ones have been proposed).
And that is the motivation discussed in the cited paper, that this could be related to dark matter.
Asserting that we "know" that dark energy is a fifth force, in the same sense as the other four forces in the Standard Model, is claiming more than we actually know at this point. Maybe it is, but there are no good theories at this point that make it one, and it could be something quite different from the particle/force models physicists have been working with. Physics derived from the behavior of the Cosmological Constant in General Relativity may be some really new physics.
This was a superior shower, one of the best I have seen. I watched from the outskirts of Wrightwood, CA; elevation 1800 m just 20 km north of the Los Angeles basin but with an SQM 19.05 sky, a measure of sky darkness. due to mountain shielding of the light dome (the Milky Way is visible). This published list of darkness comparisons: rates this as "Typical for a suburb with widely spaced single-family homes.".
Starting at 12:40 a.m. (when I went out and started viewing) I saw 5 spectacular Earth-grazing fireballs leaving persistent glowing trails, with apparent colors of white, reddish, and greenish. In two hours of total viewing time, ending at 3:30 a.m. (I did some driving around testing different viewing sites), I saw 91 meteors, with the peak right at the end when the radiant in Perseus was high overhead, and it had hit about 80 meteors and hour in a 15 minute period.
It would still give off the same total energy, shifted into the IR...or much lower. I wonder if they detected longer wavelengths.
I also wonder if thjs impacts the estimate for total number of galaxies at 100 billion.
Good questions.
No, this being a ground-based instrument, they could not look at the infrared wavelengths you are thinking of. The James Webb Telescope will be the perfect instrument to investigate this when it is launched in two years.
Yes this will gave some impact on estimated galaxy counts.
Management will look at this study and conclude "this proves if you pay people too much, it impairs their performance".
They will then seek to apply this lesson to their entire (non-executive) workforce.
there is such a thing as "good bacteria" but never mind, this process will kill it all. sterilizing away most of the nutritional benefit.
Because protein and calcium are unimportant sources of nutrition in milk? These are unaffected by pasteurization.
What "nutrients" are actually lost? Do tell.
BMI is antiquated as a measure of health because it completely ignores body composition.
As a weight-lifter, I am very well aware of the limitations of the BMI since it declares everyone with a lot of muscle mass "overweight" or even "obese" even if their body-fat is in the low single digits.
But it is an excellent tool for studying populations, where the odd individual to whom it does not apply are averaged out of importance. This is what the BMI was developed for, and it is well proven in this role.
It is a useful tool for assessing the health status of most individuals also, but not everyone. Healthy weight increases with age, it is normal and healthier to carry somewhat more weight, but apparently there is no age-adjusted scale available, strangely enough. It is less accurate for very tall people (though an adjusted BMI scale is available for this). And it is useless for people will a lot of muscle mass, as I mentioned above.
It is annoying that most health advice sources ignore these caveats, or seem utterly unaware of them.
(Homer murmur) Hamster sandwich....
The diamond ring and the family car are both 20th century inventions. I thought the rule was spending 52 weeks income on a car and 4 weeks income on a diamond ring. Now it's 21 weeks for a suburban necessity and 13 weeks for a shiny decoration. What strange priorities for a not so brave, new world.
Having a car as a 20th Century invention is rooted in the undeniable utility of having a vehicle that can transport people and goods long distances quickly.
The "requirement" that every marriage requires a large investment up-front in a diamond is purely the product of a marketing campaign by a diamond cartel (i.e. a price-fixing monopoly). Here is a brief, but honest as far as it goes, account by an organization dedicated to selling you diamonds. Note that the founding of the American Gem Society, in 1934, precisely coincides with the start of the De Beers cartel hard sell. It is striking that a trade organization, founded as part of a marketing scheme, does not try to hide its own origin.
Lengthier accounts of this bizarre pure luxury business are easy to find.
Regarding those "guidelines" (treated as "rules" by the industry) for how much to spend in a diamond ring - if you let marketing literature tell you what you should spend money on, you are perhaps typical, but still you are just being a patsy.
When I got married, no diamond was involved. It was a ridiculous waste of money, absolutely not an investment (they are virtually impossible to resell, the industry makes sure of that), and at that time a prop for the Apartheid regime. That last reason had ended, and recent "conflict diamond" rules have greatly reduced the tendency of diamond purchases to support mass murderers, but not ended that last problem entirely.
As a statistician (well, once upon a time) let me say that the median is one of three averages. The averages are the median, the mean, and the mode. Each is an average with certain characteristics and areas of utility. If you've got a normal bell curve they are the same number.
For most purposes involving income the useful averages are the median or the mode. Not the mean, which is unduly influenced by extreme values. (I didn't read the article, so I'm only commenting on your response.)
Thanks, I have been peeved about this for a long time. The mean is the easiest to calculate (you only need to retain the total and the number of items), and for many purposes is the most useful (for budgeting for example). And so it is not surprising that in common, non-technical discourse "average" and "mean" are treated as identical.
But then we get the would-be pedants who introduce more technical and precise terms ("median" most often, "mode" is fairly uncommon) but continue to use the average=mean imprecise common terminology.
Again, not addressing the article.
Do the math.
Resale value varies a lot by car and by condition, but to have some numbers, lets look at a car that is worth 1/3rd it's upfront cost after 6 years, vs 10% after 10 years. The difference in depreciation is then 11% vs 9%, per year. If that were the only cost of car ownership, that would be significant - you could get a 20% better car by keeping it for 10 years instead of 6.
But other costs matter too. Maintenance (which does get worse over time), insurance, gas, parking, tolls, etc. So you're maybe looking at being able to get a 10% more expensive car at replacement time by keeping the car for 10 years rather than 6. That's not even a step up to the next model for most manufacturers.
So, for the same money, do you get better value by getting a $30k car every 6 years, or a $33k car every 10 years? Seems very subjective to me: if you value "newness", the former is a better deal, if you don't the latter, but it's a small enough difference either way.
What is a "20% better car"? Is there an objective absolute "car goodness" measurement scale I never heard of?
You seem so deeply embedded in the "car resale and buy new" paradigm that you cannot see that there is an entirely different way to manage you car needs. Buy a car and keep it on the road until such time that the repair costs are no longer economical when prorated over the additional mileage gained, or ti simply becomes too unreliable. I keep my car costs low by buying used (mostly, sometimes new) and then never selling the vehicle while it still runs, subject to the repair cost and reliability criteria just mentioned. "Resale value" is a piece of paper to me, I never resell until end of life.
But you are the source of the good deals on the used car market. Keep it up. I may buy your depreciated but perfectly serviceable car.
If you value "newness" you are absolutely going to spend big additional bucks over the years to satisfy this predilection. If you don't the difference is "not small either way" it is huge.
As you say, do the (real) math.
And the Chlorine and Bromine from sea water doesn't?
That's right it doesn't. It requires a special transport mechanism - like a completely chemically inert gas - to transport any chlorine or bromine up the ozonosphere, and then break up under ultraviolet exposure. The halogenated hydrocarbons that do this do not exist in nature. We created a transport mechanism where none existed naturally.
Keep asking questions, you will keep learning (as long as you heed the answers).
Blah blah blah.....I want some cool pics for my desktop. blah blah blah.
You'll get them. The most famous Hubble images are false color anyway.
Its operational spectrum does extend into the red-end of visible light. The shortest light it is designed to observe is orange-red.
Probably not. Rotting cadavers are nauseating, and stressful to the living, but they are not health threats. Really, they are not.
Let the Internet decide to name the newly discovered elements. Like we did Boaty McBoatface.
Indeed. What could possibly go wrong.
http://iupac.org/elements.html
IUPAC uses both words about equally often and considers both valid - and they're the authority on the issue (this is actually a change from their earlier stance, where they had tried to force aluminium as the standard).
That is not really different from what the poster you are replying to said. IUPAC made the name "aluminium" official, the rest of the world adopted it, the US refused to go along, and finally IUPAC gave up and allowed the idiosyncratic American usage as an acceptable one.
Fortunately they are sticking to their guns regarding the metric system.
That this will nearly equal the success of Windows on a phone, and Windows based digital media products (aka "Zune").
They are staying in the niche markets where quality matters more than price...
They are staying in the niche markets where the margins are much higher.
Isn't that what I said?
No no, you are both wrong. They are staying in markets where they make more profit........
You are all describing three sides of the same coin (yes, coins have three sides).
Impressive piece of understated sarcasm. Well done!
...How about air travel? No good alternatives there for liquid hydrocarbon fuels - at least not that I can think of. Ships and ocean-going vessels? I don't think there are any realistic alternatives there. Manufacturing? Nope, lots of oil-based products still needed.
And while bio-fuels or alternatives can take up some of this, we're a long, long way from having a realistic capacity to make up the difference. What am I missing here?
This is what you are missing. Air travel consumes 6% of world liquid fuel production, ships consume 4%, production of plastics and other chemicals consumes 8%. All together this is only 18% of world liquid hydrocarbon consumption. Elimination of 80% of petroleum use would have an astounding effect on the industry.
I think it will probably take one generation.
The true believers keep saying this. What the hell - are you all poor at math?
The average age of cars on the road right now is around 11 years. If every single new car buyer, starting right now, bought an electric car over an ICE car, you have a minimum of 11 years before a mere half the cars on the road are electrics.
Over a decade - that's your best case scenario, where everybody stops buying ICE immediately and buys electric. But that is not what is happening, is it? So that's your lower bound - 11 years.
...
You aren't in a strong position to be mocking people's math abilities. A generation is usually taken as 25 years. Only 10% of the vehicles on the road are 20 years or older. Note also that the number of miles driven per vehicle drops at the high end of the lifespan - you don't see many heavily driven commuter cars that are 20 years old. So the mere fact that they exist and are in use does not mean they are significant over-all contributors to mileage driven or fuel used.
...
Besides, people have been predicting the death of the oil industry since the 50's, and it's always been "20 years out".
Citation please? Any evidence that "people were predicting the death of the oil industry" in the 1950 or 1960s? You wouldn't just be making this up, right?