MEMO COPY in re Von Braun and Suzanne.
Kent Paul Dolan
Andre Lieven wrote:
> And, a Google search on the phrase "The Half Life
> Of U235 In A Cyclotron" gets NOTHING BUT this
> thread. Ditto for "U235 In A Cyclotron".
Well, knowing how to use your tools is sort of a
pre-requisite for attempting to prove a negative
using those tools.
For instance, a google search for
u235 cyclotron half-life von-braun
gets around 1400 hits, lots of them false positives,
but at least one of which informs us that von Braun
was student to a professor well known for using the
half-life of uranium to do useful mineral dating to
estimate the age of the earth, and several of which
place cyclotrons in Germany well before WW-II.
It's pretty much impossible to study under a
professor and learn nothing about that professor's
particular hobby horse subject.
It's thus unlikely that von Braun, as a member of
the German scientific community, would have
absolutely nothing, ever, to say either about
uranium half lives, or about cyclotrons.
Cyclotrons would have been useful research
instruments, for example, in Germany's putative
war-time atomic bomb research, so von Braun could
have been called in to talk bomb program scientists
and staff about, oh, say, missile throw weights
versus atomic bomb design weights, or whatever.
> Suzanne, as usual, is a willful idiot *and* a
> shameless liar.
Well, yes, she is, in the general case, but you've
come nowhere close to exercising the due diligence
needed to prove your case against her in this
particular discussion.
FWIW
xanthian.
Sort of as an aside, for conspiracy theorists, this
piece of "speculative" history might suggest a whole
lot more that scientists in the German war effort
would have had on their plates for consideration and
gossip.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/ylzc6hy
The sanity of the author is a bit unweighed, but he
tells a good story for scaring the kids in the dark.
Kent Paul Dolan
Andre Lieven wrote:
>> Andre Lieven wrote:
>>> And, a Google search on the phrase "The Half
>>> Life Of U235 In A Cyclotron" gets NOTHING BUT
>>> this thread. Ditto for "U235 In A Cyclotron".
>> Well, knowing how to use your tools is sort of a
>> pre-requisite for attempting to prove a negative
>> using those tools.
>> For instance, a google search for
>> u235 cyclotron half-life von-braun
> Starts with the first two results being this
> thread. It provides NO articles or citations that
> connect VB with either U235 work, or cyclotrons,
> never mind BOTH...
> The fifth result listed a "Braun U", rather than
> Wehrner. And, the tenth was on the half life of
> Am241...
>> gets around 1400 hits, lots of them false
>> positives,
> Try ALL of them being false positives, aside from
> two for this thread.
> If you wish to suggest that there was a true
> positive, please post it.
> Otherwise, you're trying a Fallacy of Proving a
> Negative.
>> but at least one of which informs us that von
>> Braun was student to a professor well known for
>> using the half-life of uranium to do useful
>> mineral dating to estimate the age of the earth,
>> and several of which place cyclotrons in Germany
>> well before WW-II.
> But, with nary a connection between the two
> topics.
>> It's pretty much impossible to study under a
>> professor and learn nothing about that
>> professor's particular hobby horse subject.
> Sure. But, it is not logical to state that someone
> like VB would speak on such a fast moving topic,
> when his ONLY possible qualification would then be
> at least 20 years *out of date*.
>> It's thus unlikely that von Braun, as a member of
>> the German scientific community, would have
>> absolutely nothing, ever, to say either about
>> uranium half lives, or about cyclotrons.
> No, on the basis of being able to speak about
> either topic by the late 50s, it is highly
> unlikely, because his possible knowledge on either
> topic, never mind on a combination of the topics,
> would have then been at least 20 years out of
> date, in a field where the state of the art was
> moving amazingly fast.
> One might as well expect a designer of the prop
> fighter ME-109 to give a talk to designers of the
> supersonic jet fighter F-104... Ain't gonna
> happen.
>> Cyclotrons would have been useful research
>> instruments, for example, in Germany's putative
>> war-time atomic bomb research, so von Braun could
>> have been called in to talk bomb program
>> scientists and staff about, oh, say, missile
>> throw weights versus atomic bomb design weights,
>> or whatever.
> That's also greatly unlikely, as his only
> expertise in that area would have been for the V-2
> (Then, 15 plus years out of date.), or the
> tactical Redstone missile. VB had zilch to do
> with ANY US ICBM or IRBM project at that time. So,
> he had the same qualification, zilch, to speak
> about ICBM and/or IRBM capabilities. Never mind
> zilch quals to speak of the buckets of instant
> sunshine nuke payloads...
>>> Suzanne, as usual, is a willful idiot *and* a
>>> shameless liar.
>> Well, yes, she is, in the general case, but
>> you've come nowhere close to exercising the due
>> diligence needed to prove your case against her
>> in this particular discussion.
> As I have explained above, yes, I have.
> Further, there is simply NO record of ANYONE
> having given a talk on the half life of uranium
> *in a cyclotron*, period.
> As Suzanne is the positive claimant about that,
> The Burden Of Proof is all HERS.
>> FWIW
>> xanthian.
>> Sort of as an aside, for conspiracy theorists,
>> this piece of "speculative" history might suggest
>> a whole lot more that scientists in the German
>> war effort would have had on their plates for
>> consideration and gossip.
>> http://preview.tinyurl.com/ylzc6hy
> The ONLY thing that this links to is your post.
If you think about it, that would be physically
impossible, as the posting would have to exist
somewhere in a news spool and have a URI before a
tinyURL pointer to it could be constructed, and yet
that pointer was already _in_ the post.
Of course, when I just checked that preview tinyURL
again, it points exactly where it was supposed to
point.
As I said earlier, you need to learn to use your
tools, not just let them mislead you into making a
public fool of yourself.
>> The sanity of the author is a bit unweighed, but
>> he tells a good story for scaring the kids in the
>> dark.
> Suzanne can't even claim to tell any good
> stories...
> Andre
I'm not going to justify that swill you posted with
a point by point rebuttal. If you insist on
remaining deliberately ignorant, are so mind-blind
that you introduce conditions into events that had
no reason to be affecting those events, and are not
literate enough to read what I wrote intelligently,
nor literate enough to review search results
intelligently
[Of _course_ the most precise hits the search
found are to this thread. Do you ever bother to
_think_ before you type?]
which your responses confirm to be the case, me
writing more is a waste of my time. YOU read what
you wrote above (including several deliberate lies)
and see all the places you have (again, if I recall)
made a public laughingstock of yourself.
Then again, if you can't read what I wrote, why
should you be able to read what you wrote?
xanthian.
Oh, and just to give your unjustified smugness that
you _must_ be correct a bit of a nudge, remember
that isotope decay rates slow as radioactive
particles approach the speed of light, and then read
the "Plasma Separations" paragraph here:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/ya8n4ff
So "u235 half-life in a cyclotron" is a perfectly
valid concept.
Kent Paul Dolan
Hatunen wrote:
> Perhaps Braun had some reason to mention
> cyclotrons and some reason to mention uranium, but
> I simply don't believe he talked about half-life
> in cyclotrons.
Well, as I noted elsewhere, spinning U235 in
cyclotrons was a well known technology to separate
concentrations of it from U238, so he could have
talked about U235 in cyclotrons.
Spinning U235 in a cyclotron has two effects on its
half-life.
1) It lengthens the half life by slowing down time
for the U235 from the viewpoint of the external
observer. This is probably a trivial effect, what
with the half-life of U235 in isolation being around
700,000 years, if I recall correctly, and its time
in the cylotron probably being less than a minute.
2) It shortens the half life by concentrating U235
so that "in isolation" is no longer the case.
This is a non-trivial effect.
A critical mass of U235 has a half-life measured in
fractions of a second plus a very big boom.
Other, smaller size concentrations, such as might
occur in cyclotrons at the target location for
acquiring the concentrated U235, would range in half
life from that short one to the long half life in
isolation.
Therefore, considering the half-life of U235 in a
cyclotron is in fact a valid engineering concern.
You don't want too much of it in any one place, or
you increase your radioactive contamination due to
fissioning U235, and decrease your product yield.
There is therefore no particular reason von Braun
either would be unaware of that concern, or that it
would be surprising for him to mention it, in an
off-handed way in passing, in a public lecture,
long after the basic science was declassified.
Insisting that such an event _could not_ have
occurred shows an ignorance both of history and of
basic science.
For what that's worth.
xanthian.
Kent Paul Dolan
Ye Old One wrote:
> Kent Paul Dolan wrote:
>> Andre Lieven wrote:
>>> And, a Google search on the phrase "The Half
>>> Life Of U235 In A Cyclotron" gets NOTHING BUT
>>> this thread. Ditto for "U235 In A Cyclotron".
>> Well, knowing how to use your tools is sort of a
>> pre-requisite for attempting to prove a negative
>> using those tools.
>> For instance, a google search for
>> u235 cyclotron half-life von-braun
>> gets around 1400 hits, lots of them false
>> positives, but at least one of which informs us
>> that von Braun was student to a professor well
>> known for using the half-life of uranium to do
>> useful mineral dating to estimate the age of the
>> earth, and several of which place cyclotrons in
>> Germany well before WW-II.
> Both fact are very true. However, the use of
> uranium in dating has nothing whatsoever to do
> with a cyclotron.
That has no affect on whether von Braun might have
mentioned U235 in a cyclotron and its half life,
though.
> WvB would not have had anything to do with nuclear
> matters once he started working on the military
> rocket programme.
That certainly would not have been the case in
Germany, may well not have been the case in the US
if he were working on ICBMs.
>> It's pretty much impossible to study under a
>> professor and learn nothing about that
>> professor's particular hobby horse subject.
> True.
>> It's thus unlikely that von Braun, as a member of
>> the German scientific community, would have
>> absolutely nothing, ever, to say either about
>> uranium half lives, or about cyclotrons.
> Why would he?
We can't read his mind, nor make his decisions for
him; personal whim, showing off, making a point in
his lecture are a few of uncountable possibilities.
"Why would he" is a useless argument and a useless
rebuttal.
>> Cyclotrons would have been useful research
>> instruments, for example, in Germany's putative
>> war-time atomic bomb research, so von Braun could
>> have been called in to talk bomb program
>> scientists and staff about, oh, say, missile
>> throw weights versus atomic bomb design weights,
>> or whatever.
> Possible, but in reality it would have been the
> other way round if there had been contact, which
> there wasn't, they would have been telling him how
> big a rocket they needed.
Well, no. He could just as easily have been being
consulted on the issue "how small a bomb do we have
to build". Designing a new, bigger throw weight
rocket is a non-trivial time consumer also (initial
V2s had a horrific failure rate), and Germany was in
a time crunch to get a weapon of mass destruction to
prevent their homeland from being overrun.
Later, in the US, if he were working on ICBMs,
exactly the same reasons for the bomb designers
consulting him would have held sway.
>>> Suzanne, as usual, is a willful idiot *and* a
>>> shameless liar.
>> Well, yes, she is, in the general case, but
>> you've come nowhere close to exercising the due
>> diligence needed to prove your case against her
>> in this particular discussion.
> Rubbish, case proven long ago.
Not so far, IN THIS PARTICULAR DISCUSSION.
Merely declaring a win is nowhere nearly so
convincing as is winning.
You've got a long way to go to convince _me_, for
example, because as a former nuclear weapons handler
and maintainer, I got a rather excellent general
education in all things "nuclear weapon".
So far, most of the arguments against the
possibility of WvB having made the statements
Suzanne recalls hearing have been of the null
quality of your "why would he" above -- people
arguing from gut feelings rather than from facts.
To disprove that he _could_ have made such a
statement, you have to give the widest latitude to
reasons he _might_ have been able to make the
statement.
So far, that hasn't been the case at all.
Arguments that a leading respected scientist _could
not have known_ some basic cyclotron science facts
are garbage, for example.
So far, most of the arguments against the
possibility of WvB having made the statements
Suzanne recalls hearing have been of the null
quality of your "why would he" above -- people
arguing from gut feelings rather than from facts.
To disprove that he _could_ have made such a
statement, you have to give the widest latitude to
reasons why he _might_ have been able to make the
statement.
So far, that hasn't been the case at all. That kind
of response has been dismissed out of hand,
invalidly.
Arguments that a leading respected scientist _could
not have known_ some basic cyclotron science facts
are garbage, for example.
> One of my main points being that once in the USA
> WvB would not have been allowed within a mile of
> any nuclear secrets.
What he learned doesn't much have to have been
secrets, it's just basic science, known around the
world before WW-II began, and also doesn't have to
have been learned in the US; the information was
there to learn while he was working in Germany.
xanthian.
Notice that I'm not arguing that Suzanne _did_
hear any such thing from WvB under _any_
circumstances. Suzanne is far past senile, and she
has long ago suffered a severe disconnect from
reality that affects everything she says.
Kent Paul Dolan
Kent Paul Dolan
Andre Lieven wrote:
>> Andre Lieven wrote:
>>> Kent Paul Dolan wrote:
>>>> http://preview.tinyurl.com/ylzc6hy
>>> The ONLY thing that this links to is your post.
>> If you think about it, that would be physically
>> impossible, as the posting would have to exist
>> somewhere in a news spool and have a URI before a
>> tinyURL pointer to it could be constructed, and
>> yet that pointer was already _in_ the post.
>> Of course, when I just checked that preview
>> tinyURL again, it points exactly where it was
>> supposed to point.
>> As I said earlier, you need to learn to use your
>> tools, not just let them mislead you into making
>> a public fool of yourself.
> <yawn>
So, rather than an apoiogy for lying to me nad the
group, that's your level of intellectual integrity
when presented proof that you were lying through
your teeth, and besides being a liar, being a
mindless incompetent fool in the process?
Do you have any question why you are held in such
deep contempt here and considered not worthy of
participating in civilized discussions?
You have no responses when you are humiliated but to
evade by waving around your invincibly ignorant
armament of "that's an argument fallacy" in response
to things for which you _have_ no valid response, so
that you don't have to think about them.
That puts you right at adman's level, an evasive,
compulsive, very public liar.
Do enjoy your hard earned reputation, I certainly
would not want it.
xanthian.
Kent Paul Dolan
Hatunen wrote:
> But I refuse to believe vB talked about it in this
> "class" Suzanne took.
"I refuse to believe" is an argument style every bit
as invalid when you use it as when any creationist
uses it to ignore the factual support for evolution.
> Single, or isolated, atoms don't have a half-life;
> half-life is a property of groups.
False, which makes the rest of your argument a waste
of time to have typed.
The half life of an isolated atom is well defined,
and is the middle
[probably the mean, since while the distribution
curve is unbounded on the right, the curve damps
out exponentially to the right; which should be
fast enough to keep the integral under the curve
finite, but I'm not going to pretend to
integrate the curve in my head]
of the distribution of times when it might decay.
The curve damps out because while the probability
for any time interval is the same if it still exists
at the beginning of that interval, the probability
for the interval is decreased by the probability
that it has already decayed and so does _not_ exist
at the beginning of the interval.
That is, decay is a statistical property, with a
probability distribution, but that distribution
applies every bit as much to one atom as it does
atom by atom to a mole of atoms.
If it did not, nuclear decay would be impossible,
because groups of atoms don't decay, only single
atoms do.
xanthian.
The difference with masses of U235 is that decay is
no longer only the spontaneous kind considered
above, but may also be induced by the decay products
of neighboring atoms, changing the half life of many
adjacent U235 atoms compared to the half life of one
isolated U235 atom.
Kent Paul Dolan
Andre Lieven wrote:
> VB never worked on any ICBMs. The Redstone was not
> even an IRBM, rather it was a battlefield weapon,
> with a range barely greater than that of the V-2.
And yet again you entertain us with your adamant but
incorrect opinion, this time by a failed attempt to
divert the discussion.
One need not "work on an ICBM" to "work in the ICBM
program":
As Germany fell in 1945, Von Braun surrendered
to the American military. The arrangements that
he made would have him working again on rockets
-- this time for American military efforts --
while his Nazi peers were being tried and hung
in Nuremberg.
His work of the next 10 years culminated with
the 1953-54 birth of the ICBM. The terror and
death that he had transported across the English
Channel was now able to travel across
continents.
http://www.systemtoolbox.com/article.php?history_id=1
Von Braun worked on the American
intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)
program before joining NASA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun
The development of the world's first practical
design for a ICBM, A9/10, intended for use in
bombing New York and other American cities, was
undertaken in Nazi Germany by the team of
Wernher von Braun under Projekt Amerika.
The ICBM A9/A10 rocket initially was intended to
be guided by radio, but was changed to be a
piloted craft after the failure of Operation
Elster.
The second stage of the A9/A10 rocket was tested
a few times in January and February 1945.
The progenitor of the A9/A10 was the German V-2
rocket, also designed by von Braun and widely
used at the end of World War II to bomb British
and Belgian cities.
All of these rockets used liquid propellants.
Following the war, von Braun and other leading
German scientists were secretly transferred to
the United States to work directly for the U.S.
Army through Operation Paperclip, developing the
IRBMs, ICBMs, and launchers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICBM
The progenitor of the ICBM was the German A9/10,
which was never developed but only proposed by
Wernher von Braun.
http://en.allexperts.com/e/i/in/intercontinental_ballistic_missile.htm
Werner von Braun's missile design team considered
themselves in competition with the developers of the
first US ICBM, the Atlas D, with the strong
implication that WvB and team thought they _were_
working on ICBM development.
Many engineers, including famed rocket designer
Wernher von Braun, worried that the Atlas'
design could not survive the intense aerodynamic
stresses placed upon it the early phases of
launch, so much so that von Braun's design team
derisively referred to the Atlas as a "blimp" or
their "inflated competition."
http://www.century-of-flight.net/Aviation%20history/space/Atlas.htm
Was Werner von Braun directly involved in the ICBM
program? Why yes, he was. Was his interest improved
when smaller bombs were developed that could be
lofted with achievable rocket technology, just as I
discussed earlier? Why yes, it was.
From 1951 to 1954, the Atlas project was poorly
funded and had a low priority. However, in late
1953, the Atomic Energy Commission achieved a
breakthrough in nuclear weapons, making smaller
and lighter bombs available. In early 1954,
studies by the von Neumann Committee and the
RAND Corporation both recommended that the Air
Force pursue ICBMs. Project Atlas was given the
Air Force's top priority status in May 1954.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower elevated it to
the highest national priority in September 1955.
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1955.html
The Google search
Werner.von.Braun ICBM
got 11,100 hits. This is enough of a sample to make
the point.
Once more, yammering without having your facts in
place has just let you prove yourself a fool before
the newsgroup readership.
What else is new?
You do this times beyond counting, and never learn
from your mistakes.
xanthian.
Kent Paul Dolan
Ye Old One wrote:
> Kent Paul Dolan wrote:
>>> Kent Paul Dolan wrote:
>>>> Well, yes, she is, in the general case, but
>>>> you've come nowhere close to exercising the due
>>>> diligence needed to prove your case against her
>>>> in this particular discussion.
>>> Rubbish, case proven long ago.
>> Not so far, IN THIS PARTICULAR DISCUSSION.
> Rubbish, case proven a long time ago.
>> Merely declaring a win is nowhere nearly so
>> convincing as is winning.
> She lost as soon as she gave the subject of the
> mythical lecture.
I'm sorry? Suzanne up to now is NOT A PARTICIPANT in
this thread. It is not her against whom you must
make a case, but me and others telling you that your
opininos bear no resemblence to the facts of the
matter.
>> You've got a long way to go to convince _me_, for
>> example, because as a former nuclear weapons
>> handler and maintainer, I got a rather excellent
>> general education in all things "nuclear weapon".
> Then you will understand that a lecture on "The
> Half Life of U235 In A cyclotron" would be very
> short:-
Mentioning something in passing in a lecture is a
long way from giving a lecture on it. You are
arguing by extending the discussion's coverage
ridiculously far beyond its factual limits.
> WvB: The half life of U235 is 703,800,000 years.
> It is the same at anything other than relativistic
> speeds and we cannot produce those in a cyclotron.
> The end.
As explained by me in several other postings, that's
not the only way "half life of U235 in a cyclotron"
can be meaningfully discussed.
>> So far, most of the arguments against the
>> possibility of WvB having made the statements
>> Suzanne recalls hearing have been of the null
>> quality of your "why would he" above -- people
>> arguing from gut feelings rather than from facts.
> Well, I would assume that you would apply a little
> common sense to the evaluation of the evidence.
I have been, I wish you would start doing so. Your
mind is so poisoned against Suzanne, that you cannot
hold a sane discussion of anything on which she has
expressed an opinion. That's just shameful.
>> To disprove that he _could_ have made such a
>> statement, you have to give the widest latitude
>> to reasons he _might_ have been able to make the
>> statement.
>> So far, that hasn't been the case at all.
> Rubbish. Do you honestly believe that one of the
> leading rocket engineers of his time, generally
> recognized by history as being second only to
> Korolyov, would have lectured on "The Half Life of
> U235 In A cyclotron"?
That "do you honestly believe" is just more use by
you of intellectual dishonesty in a discussion. What
I may or may not _believe_ is of no interest in this
discussion. What you can or cannot _prove_ is.
You are the one claiming that was the subject of his
lecture, rather than merely a phrase spoken in his
lecture. Doing so is dishonest.
>> Arguments that a leading respected scientist
>> _could not have known_ some basic cyclotron
>> science facts are garbage, for example.
No response? Without one, the rest of your argument
is bankrupt.
> The facts are that there is nothing whatsoever to
> lecture on "The Half Life of U235 In A cyclotron".
> It would be a nonsense lecture ever to the general
> public. To say it was a lecture given to
> university level students who were learning real
> physics is just beyond belief.
Who has said that besides you?
> The concept of a lecture on "The Half Life of U235
> In A cyclotron" is what seems totally invalid.
Why? It is a perfectly valid engineering concern,
affecting all of worker safety, cyclotron useful
lifespan, and product yield.
> But anyone knowing even basic nuclear physics
> would not lecture on "The Half Life of U235 In A
> cyclotron".
Apparently you are not someone knowing even basic
nuclear physics, then. Certainly you are not someone
knowing the engineering techniques to maximize
product yield rate over the lifespan of a cyclotron.
>>> One of my main points being that once in the USA
>>> WvB would not have been allowed within a mile of
>>> any nuclear secrets.
>> What he learned doesn't much have to have been
>> secrets, it's just basic science, known around
>> the world before WW-II began, and also doesn't
>> have to have been learned in the US; the
>> information was there to learn while he was
>> working in Germany.
> When? Where?
Einstein, for example, German born, came up with
E=MC^2, the basis for describing atomic decay
mechanisms, while working as a clerk in Switzerland.
It quickly became the darling of the international
physics community.
When was that? Oh, yes, 1905, 34 years before the
second world war, and significantly before the first
world war. That German researchers were interested
and participated in furthering that research during
that interval is well known. From the time Einstein
returned to Germany in 1914 until he fled Germany in
the run-up to WW-II, he was one of those German
scientists. There were thus decades of unclassified
research results available for perusing by anyone
who cared to remain scientifically literate in that
era. Surely that describes von Braun.
> And please explain what you think a lecture on
> "The Half Life of U235 In A cyclotron" could
> possibly contain.
Quite a bit of science and engineering techniques of
which you are not aware, but the "mention" on which
this discussion is focused was not a "lecture", you
are exaggerating dishonestly in an attempt to make
an invalid point.
Do keep trying, if your hatred of Suzanne won't let
you desist, but stopping to think first might serve
you better.
xanthian.
Kent Paul Dolan
Mike Painter wrote:
> Kent Paul Dolan wrote:
>> Ye Old One wrote:
>> Mentioning something in passing in a lecture is a
>> long way from giving a lecture on it. You are
>> arguing by extending the discussion's coverage
>> ridiculously far beyond its factual limits.
> The reason this thread is here is because Suzanne
> insists that the lecture was on the half life of
> U235 in a cyclotron.
I'd rather say that the thread is here because some
people too full of their own ignorance insist that
no such subject could 1) be meaningful or 2) be
discussed by von Braun, because of course as an
eminent and very public scientist he would have kept
himself uninformed about almost all of science
except his narrow niche or expertise.
> It was not mentioned in passing and ther is she
> does not even say that rockets were mentrioned in
> passsing.
That ought to win some chez watt award for sloppy
writing. WTF were you trying to say, one more time?
And yet:
Suzanne up to now has not posted _anything_ to this
thread, nor has any direct quote from her been
posted to this thread, so this thread, despite its
title, is not about her, but about its contents.
1) it is about whether von Braun could
reasonably have mentioned "U235 Half Life in a
Cyclotron". I've more than proved that it would
have been reasonable for him to have done so.
2) It is about whether von Braun was a
contributor to the US ICBM program, as everyone
except a few revisionists here accept as
well documented historical fact.
>>> Well, I would assume that you would apply a
>>> little common sense to the evaluation of the
>>> evidence.
>> I have been, I wish you would start doing so.
>> Your mind is so poisoned against Suzanne, that
>> you cannot hold a sane discussion of anything on
>> which she has expressed an opinion. That's just
>> shameful.
> The evidence presented supports the idea that no
> such lecture happened.
What evidence -- that "evidence" trying to prove a
negative by "absence of evidence is evidence of
absence"?
When did that become considered coherent thinking
here?
> If he was there he probably did what he did on all
> other such talks. Discuss rockets and try to
> recruit.
Most likely so. Suzanne is in her 70s, religous far
past the point where it becomes a mental illness,
and tragically senile.
The "in her 70s" part made me laugh uproariously
when someone here wrote of the danger of her
reproducing.
She may well have expanded a "casual mention" to the
contents of the whole lecture, if only because it
was the only thing that has stuck in her memory this
long.
> If you examine the evidence concerning Suzanne and
> her claims you will find that she rarely expresses
> opinion. What she says, according to her is
> gospel truth.
Again, quite so. She lacks all that capability for
uncertainty that makes sanity possible.
> I've seen no exceptions to this since she first
> told me that the word "inane" does not exist and
> that I meant to say "insane".
Yes. Another vocabulary revisionist, UC, just reared
its ugly snout up from the slime again, and of
course we've never rid ourselves of backspace,
Martinez, spintronic, nando, and several others who
have each their own private (and incompatible) sets
of meanings for English words understood quite
otherwise by those unenlightened masses who are us.
> <snip>
>> That "do you honestly believe" is just more use by
>> you of intellectual dishonesty in a discussion. What
>> I may or may not _believe_ is of no interest in this
>> discussion. What you can or cannot _prove_ is.
>> You are the one claiming that was the subject of his
>> lecture, rather than merely a phrase spoken in his
>> lecture. Doing so is dishonest.
> He is NOT the one making the claim. Suzanne is the
> one who makes the claim. She goes to great (and
> contradictory detail) explaining the event and
> what the topic was
He certainly IS among the ones making the claim IN
THIS THREAD, since neither Suzanne as a participant,
nor quotes from Suzanne as a background, appear
here.
> <snip>
>> Quite a bit of science and engineering techniques
>> of which you are not aware, but the "mention" on
>> which this discussion is focused was not a
>> "lecture", you are exaggerating dishonestly in an
>> attempt to make an invalid point.
> It would appear that you have not followed the
> thread that prompted this one.
Where is it written that I have any responsibility
to have done so? I don't know the title of the
thread, It is unmentioned here that I can find.
there is no link to it in this thread.
There were 6500+ articles waiting to be read by me
when I opened newsgroup talk.origins this morning.
It is not a reasonable expectation of anyone here
that they have read every article posted, nor even a
representative sample thereof.
I'm sure I read less than 5% of what is posted here,
and am still unhappy at the time required to weed
out threads that should have terminated by the first
posting being universally ignored, and instead drag
on for hundreds if not thousands of follow-ups.
> According to Suzanne it was a lecture, or class,
> or a class with only one session, or a class that
> needed more space for that particular session.
> The subject was as I have stated above.
As she best remembered it, if the events happened at
all. That does not affect in any way the discussions
here, which concern themselves with the two subjects
I have listed above, not about Suzanne's senility.
xanthian.
Kent Paul Dolan
Ye Old One wrote:
> Kent Paul Dolan wrote:
>> Ye Old One wrote:
>>> Kent Paul Dolan wrote:
>>>> Ye Old One wrote:
>>>>>> Well, yes, she is, in the general case, but
>>>>>> you've come nowhere close to exercising the
>>>>>> due diligence needed to prove your case
>>>>>> against her in this particular discussion.
>>>>> Rubbish, case proven long ago.
Probably you ought to abandon saying "rubbbish" when
your thinking flaws are highlighted.
>>>> Not so far, IN THIS PARTICULAR DISCUSSION.
>>> Rubbish, case proven a long time ago.
You are growing repetitive in your old age, too.
Do you remember the cause of repeating the same
action and expecting different results?
>>>> Merely declaring a win is nowhere nearly so
>>>> convincing as is winning.
>>> She lost as soon as she gave the subject of the
>>> mythical lecture.
>> I'm sorry? Suzanne up to now is NOT A PARTICIPANT
>> in this thread. It is not her against whom you
>> must make a case, but me and others telling you
>> that your opininos bear no resemblence to the
>> facts of the matter.
> Since my opinions are based on the facts...
In your opinion, which as documented below is in no
wise a correct one.
>>>> You've got a long way to go to convince _me_,
>>>> for example, because as a former nuclear
>>>> weapons handler and maintainer, I got a rather
>>>> excellent general education in all things
>>>> "nuclear weapon".
>>> Then you will understand that a lecture on "The
>>> Half Life of U235 In A cyclotron" would be very
>>> short:-
>> Mentioning something in passing in a lecture is a
>> long way from giving a lecture on it.
> I agree.
>> You are arguing by extending the discussion's
>> coverage ridiculously far beyond its factual
>> limits.
> Nope. Her claim was that he lecture, specifically,
> on "The Half Life of U235 In A cyclotron". She did
> not claim, at any time, that he was there to
> lecture on any other subject.
You have not reproduced that claim _in this thread_.
>>> WvB: The half life of U235 is 703,800,000 years.
>>> It is the same at anything other than
>>> relativistic speeds and we cannot produce those
>>> in a cyclotron. The end.
>> As explained by me in several other postings,
>> that's not the only way "half life of U235 in a
>> cyclotron" can be meaningfully discussed.
> Then how could it be discussed?
I'd rather not be assigned the task of chewing your
food for you merely because you have been reduced to
gumming it. I've answered that repeatedly here, go
read what has already been written, or leave the
discussion.
>>>> So far, most of the arguments against the
>>>> possibility of WvB having made the statements
>>>> Suzanne recalls hearing have been of the null
>>>> quality of your "why would he" above -- people
>>>> arguing from gut feelings rather than from
>>>> facts.
>>> Well, I would assume that you would apply a
>>> little common sense to the evaluation of the
>>> evidence.
Yes, we get quite a few arguments from "common
sense" from adman and the ilk. Can you do better
than that?
>> I have been, I wish you would start doing so.
> I have done, from the start.
Not so, as multiply documented below and elsewhere.
>> Your mind is so poisoned against Suzanne,
> No. It is against the lies she spouts and the
> ignorance she shows.
Sorry, no, I stated the case correctly the first
time. If you were sane on the subject, you'd ignore
her, which is all she deserves from anyone.
>> that you cannot hold a sane discussion of
>> anything on which she has expressed an opinion.
>> That's just shameful.
> What is? To counter and/or expose he lies and
> stupidity? In what way is that shameful?
Do you have this functional illiteracy problem with
increasing frequency these days? I meant what I
wrote, not the words with which you tried to replace
what I wrote. Your behavior with respect to Suzanne
is shameful.
>>>> To disprove that he _could_ have made such a
>>>> statement, you have to give the widest latitude
>>>> to reasons he _might_ have been able to make
>>>> the statement.
>>>> So far, that hasn't been the case at all.
>>> Rubbish. Do you honestly believe that one of the
>>> leading rocket engineers of his time, generally
>>> recognized by history as being second only to
>>> Korolyov, would have lectured on "The Half Life of
>>> U235 In A cyclotron"?
>> That "do you honestly believe" is just more use by
>> you of intellectual dishonesty in a discussion.
> No, it is a question to you. Do you have an answer?
No, it is an argument by blind idiocy by you.
Do you have any reason at all to believe that a
reknowned scientist could _not_ have espressed
opinions on a subject both pertinent to his trade
and perfectly real?
Note that, unlike you, I'm not challenging your
belief for its honesty, but for its lack of factual
support. You are trying to prove a negative, a
Herculean task on its best days, and you are trying
to do it by waving your hands and by blindly
asserting nonsense, rather than by arguing
coherently.
>> What I may or may not _believe_ is of no interest
>> in this discussion. What you can or cannot
>> _prove_ is.
>> You are the one claiming that was the subject of
>> his lecture, rather than merely a phrase spoken
>> in his lecture. Doing so is dishonest.
> Wrong. She is the once claiming that.
Not _here_ she isn't.
>>>> Arguments that a leading respected scientist
>>>> _could not have known_ some basic cyclotron
>>>> science facts are garbage, for example.
>> No response?
> Ah! Selective reading. Did you skip over the bit
> below?
No, your writing below provided absolutely no
counter-argument to the paragraph above. Once again
your functional literacy comes in question, this
time because you cannot read your own writing for
content.
>> Without one, the rest of your argument is
>> bankrupt.
And it remains so to this moment.
>>> The facts are that there is nothing whatsoever
>>> to lecture on "The Half Life of U235 In A
>>> cyclotron".
That contention displays only your ignorance.
>>> It would be a nonsense lecture even to the
>>> general public.
That is yet another falsehood from you.
>>> To say it was a lecture given to university
>>> level students who were learning real physics is
>>> just beyond belief.
Since the subject matter would indeed be "real
physics" as well as "real engineering", I'm a bit
confused why someone who claims the educational and
experiential chops you claim is unable to believe
that a group of university science students could
not be interested, even enthralled, with such
subject matter.
>> Who has said that besides you?
> It is becoming clear that you have not read the
> thread.
Surely you don't expect me, discussing the contents
of _this_ thread, and only of this thread, to be
responsible for the contents of some unknown-to-me
earlier thread possibly long gone.
>>> The concept of a lecture on "The Half Life of
>>> U235 In A cyclotron" is what seems totally
>>> invalid.
>> Why? It is a perfectly valid engineering concern,
>> affecting all of worker safety, cyclotron useful
>> lifespan, and product yield.
> Not it is not - it is total nonsense.
And again you display in your argument by assertion
only your own ignorance. Just which one of those
subjects do you contend is not a concern when
enriching uranium by cyclotron-spin-separation type
techniques?
>>> But anyone knowing even basic nuclear physics
>>> would not lecture on "The Half Life of U235 In A
>>> cyclotron".
>> Apparently you are not someone knowing even basic
>> nuclear physics, then.
> Since I've written on the subject, lectured on the
> subject and edited books on the subject, yes I do
> know more than a lot of people on the subject.
Once upon a time, perhaps. Today? Demonstrably not..
>> Certainly you are not someone knowing the
>> engineering techniques to maximize product yield
>> rate over the lifespan of a cyclotron.
> WTF are you talking about? What "product yield"?
The product of a device concentrating U235 is called
"enriched uranium", just to improve your knowledge
base.
It can be concentrated in a cyclotron, though the
method actually put into production was a variation
of the cyclotron. Any device working as a large
scale mass spectrometer would do the job.
Concentration of the product within the concentrator
mechanism is important for all of the following
reasons:
1) Enriched uranium decays in bulk faster the more
of it you have clustered in one location, until you
reach the critical mass, at which it explodes. The
intermediate cases mean that the more you
concentrate it in one location during enrichment,
the less product you get proportional to the energy
you have invested in enriching it.
2) Faster decaying enriched uranium emits greater
numbers of neutrons which make surrounding
structures radioactive more quickly, to the point
that they are ultimately unusable. This is the
tragedy of most fission reactors, and why the
disposal of their decommissioned structures is so
difficult and controversial. The problem isn't
merely that the surrounding structure is
radioactive, but that the irradiation physically
damages that structure, weakening it or changing its
designed characteristics to some unwanted ones. The
same applies to the structure of any mass
spectrometer device, such as a cyclotron, used to
enrich uranium. That is also a concern for most
enrichment systems, that's not a problem unique to
cyclotrons, it's just that cyclotron style
enrichment technology was part of the early bomb
creation efforts.
3) Both the direct radiation from the concentrations
of enriched uranium (even ignoring that they are
decaying faster) are larger the larger those
concentrations are, and the indirect radiation
resulting rrom neutron irradiation "poisoning" of
the surrounding enriching device structures, which
in turn is stronger the more the rate of neutron
irradiation exceeds the ability of those product
atoms to decay away in turn (and thus instead
accumulate in greater quantities), the more
radiation hazard exists for the persons operating
and maintaining those enrichment devices.
In all three cases, keeping concentrations of U235
in a cyclotron enrichment device as low as feasible,
by harvesting and removing that enriched product
yielded, to safe storage elsewhere, is an
engineering Good Practice.
So much for your vaunted knowledge and teaching of
physics.
Just FYI, I used to teach nuclear safety to my
submarine shipmates.
>>>>> One of my main points being that once in the
>>>>> USA WvB would not have been allowed within a
>>>>> mile of any nuclear secrets.
>>>> What he learned doesn't much have to have been
>>>> secrets, it's just basic science, known around
>>>> the world before WW-II began, and also doesn't
>>>> have to have been learned in the US; the
>>>> information was there to learn while he was
>>>> working in Germany.
>>> When? Where?
Let's see. He was consulting on the A9/A10 ICBM
program, which would have been a useless exercise if
the only thing something that expensive could
deliver was a couple of tons of TNT, so presumably
it was intended to be a WMD.
Just where do you think those working on the bomb
side were going to discuss how big, and how
configured, the bomb had to be because of the nature
of the explosive?
Oh, yes, with its rocketry consultants, who had to
build something capable of delivering that payload
within specifications.
You might want to pretend to yourself that each side
could somehow discuss the matter without revealing
any of its own classified information, and somehow
still come up with a mutually compatible design, but
that's not how things work in the real world.
Remember the Mars rocket that went burrowing in
because one part of the team was working in metric
units and the other part in English units?
Design teams interchange information _obsessively_
to make sure nothing like that has been overlooked.
The more high profile and more crucial the project,
the longer the design interchanges go on being
double and triple checked for errors.
Just FYI, for example, I worked on the Polaris
Missile. No part of my work _required_ that I know
how its payload functioned, I wasn't allowed (or
qualified) to mess with it, but somehow that top
secret information became part of my training
anyway, because sometimes Stuff Happens, and it is
better if the person trying to cope knows the
context in which the situation is occuring.
When a rocket scientist is told that the electronic
components of the rocket must be shielded with
appropriate shielding from a certain flux rate of
neutrons, putting "oh, its a fission device" into
ones meme set is so trivial that not doing so would
be the surprise.
>> Einstein, for example, German born, came up with
>> E=MC^2, the basis for describing atomic decay
>> mechanisms, while working as a clerk in
>> Switzerland. It quickly became the darling of
>> the international physics community.
> So what? What has that got to do with his not
> being involved in nuclear research in either
> Germany or the USA?
Do you have these reading comprehension problems
often?
Did you see "for example" up there?
You get distracted and lose the train of thought too
easily, as in your recent vendetta against some
trivial belief of a senile old woman.
We're talking about German scientists in general,
with Einstein serving merely as an easy example.
Since he was famously working and publishing on
quantum mechanics (which he disliked and distrusted)
and publicly debating, it with Niels Bohr while in
Germany between the wars, he very much _was_ working
in atomic theory.
In 1914 he advanced to the most prestigious and
best-paying post that a theoretical physicist
could hold in central Europe: professor at the
Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft in Berlin. Although
Einstein held a cross-appointment at the
University of Berlin, from this time on he never
again taught regular university courses.
Einstein remained on the staff at Berlin until
1933,
http://www.phy.hr/~dpaar/fizicari/xeinstei.html
The quantum revolution of the mid-1920s occurred
under the direction of both Einstein and Bohr,
and their post-revolutionary debates were about
making sense of the change.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohr%E2%80%93Einstein_debates
Quantum mechanics among other things helps describe
and understand atomic decay.
>> When was that? Oh, yes, 1905, 34 years before the
>> second world war, and significantly before the
>> first world war. That German researchers were
>> interested and participated in furthering that
>> research during that interval is well known. From
>> the time Einstein returned to Germany in 1914
>> until he fled Germany in the run-up to WW-II, he
>> was one of those German scientists. There were
>> thus decades of unclassified research results
>> available for perusing by anyone who cared to
>> remain scientifically literate in that era.
>> Surely that describes von Braun.
> Ah! You are not aware of how secret the Germans
> kept anything that could possibly be of military
> use?
And you are not aware how utterly useless atomic
theory looked to governments until someone thought
of making it into a bomb?
Of course, the fact that those debates described
above were _public debates_ makes utter hash of your
contention that atomic theory at that time between
the wars, or in 1905 as seems to be your objection
here, was somehow kept classified, or was something
of which von Braun must have been ignorant.
Essentially, you are making up your facts as you go
along. If you want an apology for this behavior, by
you, being called "dishonest", you'll see the heat
death of the universe first.
> Are you aware that his university thesis was kept
> classified by the army, and was not published
> until 1960?
No, I'm expecting you made that one up too.
He did not graduate in Germany but in Switzerland,
getting his PhD in 1905, from the Polytechnic
University there.
How, pray tell, did "the army" keep his thesis
classified until 1960?
Just which "the army" would that be?
> One of the reasons so many scientist[s] left
> Germany in the inter-war years was because they
> were not allowed to talk outside their own small
> group.
A more motivating one was of course the ongoing and
increasing persecution of minorities, especially the
(on average better educated) Jews. One does not have
to be a member of a minority currently being
persecuted to decide that such a society is not one
where one wishes to live ones life.
And once again, see "public debates", above. I'm
sure that repression occurred after the 1933 Putsch,
but by then the cat was long out of the box about
basic atomic theory.
>>> And please explain what you think a lecture on
>>> "The Half Life of U235 In A cyclotron" could
>>> possibly contain.
>> Quite a bit of science and engineering techniques
>> of which you are not aware, but the "mention" on
>> which this discussion is focused was not a
>> "lecture",
> Well, incorrectly she keeps claiming it was a
> class, but we have worked out that it was a
> one-off lecture (if indeed it did take place)
And of course, if you don't even know whether it
took place at all, you are caught in a cleft stick
by the well known rule of logic that any claim
whatsoever can be proved true for the members of an
empty set, which in turn makes what you think you
have "worked out" purest nonsense.
> and she has, from the start, claimed that the
> subject of the lecture was "The Half Life of U235
> In A cyclotron".
>> you are exaggerating dishonestly in an attempt to
>> make an invalid point.
> I formally request an apology from you on that.
You are not going to get one, nor are you deserving
of one. In point of fact, you continue here your
habit of dishonest discourse.
You expect readers to magically have knowledge of
stuff posted in some other unreferenced and
unidentified thread, and insist to yourself that it
must be context for this thread.
That is an ignorant presumption.
All that I've read in THIS thread up to the time of
my prior posting was about a _mention_ of "U235 half
life in a cyclotron" _during_ a lecture; now you
want to change the ground rules retroactively.
That is dishonest of you, full stop.
> I have in no way either exaggerated or in any way
> been dishonest about this subject.
See above; see below, see everything you have posted
in discourse with me in this thread. Argument by
assertion and insult seem to be your stocks in
trade.
>> Do keep trying, if your hatred of Suzanne won't
>> let you desist, but stopping to think first might
>> serve you better.
> I think that you should first go back and read the
> bloody thread.
I'm reading _this_ thread, not some other one of
which I'm not aware and which I've very likely
already killed the contents (I always do that for
threads started by a large and growing number of
miscreants here, Suzanne among them, as having no
possible content worth reading in either the oP or
any of its follow-ups), and I am discussing only the
claims made in _this_ thread, which, frankly, have
long left any mention of Suzanne behind.
> You have clearly missed most of her harpic claims,
> and ignored the many people that have tried to
> deal with her lies.
And again you engage in dishonesty. I was a member
of that battle, for quite a long time, as the
archival Usenet record will affirm,
And again you display your obsession wiih somehow
"defeating" a person too far off in her own world to
recognize your victory if you were able to achieve
one. Do you really this is healthy behavior on your
part?
I've merely had the good sense finally to realize
that conveying reality to someone who is as senile
as Suzanne, is a waste of my time, and that the only
workable response is to ignore her.
You are edging yourself rapidly into the same
category, and probably not just for me, considering
how often I see your 'nyms initials in threads
[which I promptly ignore under the "if you have to
insult your target in the subject line to get
hir attention, you are not worthy of that attention"
rubric, making it rather sad to be a Tony Pagano].
xanthian.
Kent Paul Dolan
> Precisely. But half-life is a property of a group
> of atoms.
The number of things people here are convinced they
know that simply aren't so is astonishing, except
that Einstein already explained the phenomenon.
"Zwei Dinge sind unendlich: Das Universum und
die menschliche Dummheit. Aber beim Universum
bin ich mir nicht ganz sicher." - sehr h�ufig
zitiert, z. B. auf welt.de
http://de.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
Individual atoms have perfectly well defined
half-lives, as I said earlier. Let's let someone
more facile with the needed vocabulary explain the
blatantly obvious One More Time.
A half-life often describes the decay of
discrete entities, such as radioactive atoms. In
that case, it does not work to use the
definition "half-life is the time required for
exactly half of the entities to decay". For
example, if there is just one radioactive atom
with a half-life of 1 second, there will not be
"half of an atom" left after 1 second. There
will be either zero atoms left or one atom left,
depending on whether or not the atom happens to
decay.
Instead, the half-life is defined in terms of
probability. It is the time when the expected
value of the number of entities that have
decayed is equal to half the original number.
For example, one can start with a single
radioactive atom, wait its half-life, and
measure whether or not it decays in that period
of time. Perhaps it will and perhaps it will
not. But if this experiment is repeated again
and again, it will be seen that it decays within
the half life 50% of the time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-life
Now can we get back to not being addictedly
argumentative ignoramuses?
xanthian.
Kent Paul Dolan
> OM wrote:
>> Andre Lieven wrote:
>>> OM wrote:
>>>> ....Did you *have* to bring him here, Andre?
>>>> It's not as if we don't have enough of them of
>>>> our own fracking up the place.
>>> I wanted to do so, in the hope that the ssh
>>> participation could provide the
>>> evidence/argument that would nail this isue.
Funny how that worked out.
>> ....I know you and I have had our differences
>> over the years, but be totally fracking honest
>> with me now: has this *ever* worked? Have we ever
>> converted any of the whackos and CT nutters?
> The thing is that the person whose views I had
> hoped to shift by means of more evidence from well
> informed people *isn't* a whacko or CT nutter.
Talk about being damned with faint praise.
Of course, Paul Harvey would be sure to add the rest
of the story,
When Andre claims to be trying to change my mind, he
has no stake in the effort.
He isn't going to see the results.
Having been repeatedly called on his numerous lies,
Andre, coward to the end, chose to shoot the
messenger, with a killfile placement, and ran off
tail between his legs hoping to be helped by people
not part of the discussion, but whom he suspected
knew whereof they spoke, not a burden Andre takes
willingly on himself.
> Thus, I cannot accept the analogy.
Andre cannot accept a lot of things, like reality.
> It does happen that otherwise reasonable people
> can, and do, often enough, get the wrong idea
> because of all sorts of things, like "This is how
> I remember it", and they *can* be moved towards
> the actual facts, *if* a sufficient amount of
> evidence that shows that the facts do not line up
> with what they recall.
>> I'm serious, sir. Name. Me. One.
> I pay so little attention to any group's actual
> nutters, that even if one did rejoin the sane, it
> is not likely that I would see it.
I find it hilarious that having run for shelter to
sci.space.history, Andre has promptly gotten his
head handed to him from multiple directions.
He has learned that the facts which he had been so
adamantly denying
in an attempt to disparage the lifework of
Werner von Braun, apparently a carryover from
his dislike of von Braun's also well documented
use of slave labor
and replacing with his agenda-plagued invented lies,
were in the case exactly correct.
Life is good.
Thanks for all the help, ssh folks.
Not that Andre will in any way change his habits of
invincible ignorance and blatant lying
this is not the first time he's pulled this
garbage in talk.origins, with me off and on as
his opponent, and I seem to recall him
killfiling me last time, too, must have had an
expiration attached somehow
but thanks for trying.
xanthian.
Kent Paul Dolan
Ye Old One wrote:
> Hold on, the A10 was never built.
So what?
So called "expert commentary" from the
sci.space.history ranks confirms that Werner von
Braun "worked on" ICBM technology _in Germany_, full
stop.
You are now reduced to holding the untenable
position that "to design" an artifact is not "to
work on" such an artifact, or on such a class of
artifacts.
_Lots_ of artifacts never get past the design phase,
or never get past the prototype phase, or, come to
that, never get past the brainstorm session
winnowing phase, or the bean-counting stage.
In this case, Germany's ICBM effort failed to
prevail over funding problems, political
considerations, and time constraints.
_Lots_ of efforts find their eventual fruition in
some other context than the ones in which their
initial efforts began.
In no case does that contradict that those artifacts
were "worked on" by the participants of those
various and perhaps earlier and unsuccessful efforts.
You are trying to _redefine_ what it means to "work
on" something. You join that despicable coterie of
vocabulary natterers who plague talk.origins
I suggest you either stop spewing arrant and obvious
nonsense, or STFU entirely.
You seem to have deteriorated far past the point of
being able to participate honestly here, and that's
simply shameful.
xanthian.
Kent Paul Dolan
heekster wrote:
> The ICBMs of the US and USSR were never used.
Not true.
There were none of them used "in anger", but they
were most certainly used "in testing", and probably
several of each flavor expended that way.
My submarine the USS Nathan Hale, and its two crews
shot two Polaris missiles down range in early 1969,
carrying instrument packages instead of warheads.
Each was flawed in a different way, and the Navy
wanted to know how important such flaws were, that
is, whether they were substantial enough to justify
yanking the missile from the arsenal.
One had failed a nozzle steering test exactly once,
but passed all follow-on testing.
When it was launched, the nozzle again froze up,
causing the missile to spun out of control roughly
1/2 mile (o.81 km) up.
The missile had to be destroyed by the range safety
officer.
The other one one was discovered to have the solid
propellant delaminated from the missile airframe for
more than a human body length.
Despite that flaw, when launched, it landed at the
downrange target within nominal accuracy.
My team got to shoot off the latter missile, which
means we didn't get to see it fly.
That in turn meant that we did get to see the
spectacular explosive demise of the failing missile
launched by the other crew.
I wouldn't have missed seeing that for anything,
though we watchers (guests on a destroyer) ended up
right under the falling debris.
I've described the details of that debris fall too
many times elsewhere to feel justified in reporting
it again here.
xanthian.
Kent Paul Dolan
alextangent wrote:
> What the statistics tell us (if we use them
> properly) is that n radioactive atoms after a
> period that is their (collective!) half- life,
> will give us 50% decayed, and 50% undecayed.
Totally false, and not even close, showing a
profound lack of understanding of the subject.
Would you like to go learn the right answer and then
come back here and present it, or would you rather
have it dictated to you?
> We can't say the same of a specific atom.
For the same reason the first claim is false, this
one is also false.
You (and others here) are entirely confused about
what "half life" means. It most certainly does not
specify the time in the case of a single atom at
which that atom _must_ decay. That has nothing _at
all_ to do with the meaning of "half life".
It also does not guarantee that at a certain time,
exactly half the atoms in a group of atoms will have
decayed.
Sheesh.
xanthian.
Kent Paul Dolan
Hatunen wrote:
> I bow to your slight correction. I should have
> said that half will have decayed, and the more
> atoms involved, the more likely that exactly half
> will have decayed.
Again, a contention that is not only entirely wrong,
but entirely backwards.
The corrections you are being given are not
"slight", they are correcting fundamental errors in
your comprehension of the subject.
If there is one atom involved, the likehood that
exactly it (since atom _means_ indivisible) will
have decayed by its exact half life is exactly 50%.
If you are about to die of to-date incurable cancer,
and a treatment is suddenly offered that gives you
a 50% chance of survival, that looks like a pretty
good way to bet your life.
If there are 2,000,000,000,000 atoms involved, the
chance at their exact half life that exactly
1,000,000,000,000 of them will have decayed is a
fraction so trivially different from zero that you
bet your life at much worse odds every single day of
your life.
The same offer as to alextangent: would you like to
go out and _learn_ your subject matter, before
babbling about it here?
xanthian.