Photons

When an atom has a little extra energy, say from heat or light hitting it, one of its electrons could occupy a higher-energy orbital than normal.  This is an unstable situation, so the electron could return to its ground state, or lowest orbital because this is the more stable energy state.  In order for the electron to drop down to its ground state, it has to give up its extra energy, either by giving off a photon or causing extra vibration in a molecule.  

A photon is a packet of energy.  It is almost incorrect to think of it as a particle, because it is an excitation of the electromagnetic field.  This is two fields, one electric and one magnetic. This is where it is truly magical, because the electric and magnetic fields oscillate perpendicular to each other, and both are perpendicular to the direction in which the wave travels.  The two fields create a self-sustaining electromagnetic wave.  This is what we call a photon of light, and this continues until the packet of energy hits something.  However, this excitation of the electromagnetic field is true for a huge range of frequencies other than visible light, such as radio waves, microwaves, but also ionizing radiation such as higher frequency ultraviolet light, X-rays and gamma radiation.

What is magical about this is that the speed of light in a vacuum is determined by the physical properties of the electric and magnetic fields in a vacuum.  However, this is really fast, and light travels at 186,282 miles per second.

So it is like there is no particle at all, but just excited energy fields.  However, we know that a photon will have a definite amount of energy, and it has momentum, giving it the ability to move particles when it collides with something, such as another electron.  So light is an energy transfer system, sometimes over great distances.

The amount of energy that a photon has determines its frequency.  Higher frequency means higher energy.  The energy of a photon is determined by the equation

E = hf

where f is the frequency and h is Planck's constant.

Photons have no rest mass, which allows them to travel at the speed of light. Other particles, such as electrons, acquire mass through their interaction with the Higgs field. Particles with rest mass, which have inertia, cannot travel at the speed of light.

Photons Are Weirder Than You Think

The Andromeda and Milky Way Galaxies

The Andromeda Galaxy is about 2.5 million light-years from the Milky Way. The two galaxies have so much mass that their mutual gravitational attraction is pulling them toward each other. They will have their first close encounter in about 4.5 to 5 billion years, with about a 90% chance of merging within 10 billion years.

There is little danger of individual stars colliding because the stars are so far apart from each other.

The Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across and is estimated to contain between 100 and 400 billion stars. We don't know the exact number because interstellar dust blocks our view of portions of the galaxy, although astronomers can use infrared and radio observations to study regions that are hidden from visible light.

However, Andromeda, by comparison, is a beast, with an estimated trillion stars and a diameter of about 220,000 light-years. With so many stars, I think to myself that there must be life in there somewhere, and maybe a few civilizations. We will never know because the distances are so vast. Just finding extraterrestrial life in our own galaxy, or even in our own solar system, would be an amazing accomplishment.

Both galaxies are so massive, with such powerful gravitational attractions, that they have satellite dwarf galaxies orbiting them. In the picture, we can see Messier 32 above the Andromeda galactic plane, looking like a bright snowball, and Messier 110 below the galactic plane.

Why Europeans and Asians Evolved So Differently

Where Does Light Actually Get Its Speed From?

We Finally Know More About Humanity’s First Civilization

New Dwarf Planet Hiding in Our Solar System?

Famous inventions from the 1970s that looked like the future

Early electric car...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehl4SCTzPwY

A 14-Year-Old’s New Theory of the Universe

This Ring of Plasma Could Change the World

8K TVs Are Stupid

8K TVs Are Stupid

When 4K TVs came out, some people complained that you can't see that level of detail...

You Don't See in 4K

Much depends upon how big your screen is, how far you sit from it, and whether you are John Coffey. My eyesight has never been 20/20, but even with the corrective lens I got during my cataract surgery, which was a huge improvement, I see more like 20/25. So when 4K first came out, I had a hard time telling the difference between 4K (which is just a marketing name for 2160p) and 1080p.

Although surgery vastly improved my distance vision, it made it harder for me to see up close. I can't see anything up close without reading glasses, and getting the right focus for playing chess has been tricky. I liked my old vision because I needed glasses just for distance, but now I need strong reading glasses to see my phone.

For a large-screen TV, a 4K display makes sense. However, I have two 27-inch monitors, and for these, I feel that 1440p is ideal. On a 27-inch monitor, 1080p is not as good because you can see individual pixels when sitting close, but 4K makes all the Windows and Mac icons look small, so you have to artificially enlarge them to be able to see anything comfortably.

I don't think that a person is going to gain anything by having 4K on a 27-inch monitor. There is a limit to what our eyes can see. Although it doesn't make much difference, 4K requires more overhead from the graphics hardware when playing games, so you can get a better frame rate with 1440p. Although you could run a game in 1440p on a 4K monitor, it is less than ideal because the video output doesn't match the pixels on the screen, requiring the computer or monitor to scale the images.

My iMac is 5K, but I run it at half resolution, which is 1440p, and I am more comfortable with it that way. For people who do video or photo editing, 4K and 5K are better.

On a smaller computer monitor, such as one measuring 19 or 20 inches, I think that 1080p might be fine. Most laptops have displays with resolutions higher than 1080p, but because of their size, I don't think that they need to.

Because of the small screen and keyboard, I don't recommend using a laptop as your main computer, but I have used a laptop with an external screen and keyboard.

Roadster Event

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt5p-_tE8d0

Rainmaker

Niagara Falls Walks Back

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i0glOeWtks

The Largest Black Hole in the Universe - Size Comparison

'Clearest sign' of life on Mars discovered

New Planet discovered beyond Neptune (Maybe)

How Life May Have Started on Earth 4.33 Billion Years Ago

The US-China Space Race Has Begun

The claim is that we need to go to the Moon so that we can go to Mars. We don't need to go to Mars. It far too risky and to costly to go to a dead, dangerous planet with a 1/3 of the gravity of the Earth. The radiation on Mars and on the way is too dangerous.

AI Keeps Beating Experts' Predictions *

William Shatner on AI

William Shatner is 95 years old.

BTW, Mel Brooks is 100 years old and is doing a sequel to Spaceballs that will come out when he is 101.

Things You Should Know About Plague

A 100% Fatal Disease Just Found a Treatment

New Cosmic Data Just Closed the Door on Alternative Gravity Theories

Scientists just found a new way to make hydrogen from water

 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261001214017.htm

Why Every Starlink Satellite Is Slowly Falling

Motion

 

WHY THERE ARE TWO TRILLION GALAXIES? | Brian Greene

Why Humanity Will Never Leave The Solar System

There Is Life Hiding Inside Earth

Space Travel

Science fiction romanticizes space travel, but what it really romanticizes is traveling to other worlds and finding alien creatures. Space itself is not particularly romantic and is perhaps best described as "the big empty." Really, really empty. The nearest star is about 4.2 light-years away, and the nearest large spiral galaxy is about 2.5 million light-years away. Between these things is an almost unimaginable amount of nothing, which is not the least bit romantic or exciting. Traveling to another star requires so much energy that it is close to impossible, or at least impractical with our current technology. There are also many problems and dangers. I don't see us traveling to another star for at least a few thousand years. Fortunately, there is plenty to explore within our own solar system.

Oxford Electric Bell

Ancient Life as Old as the Universe

Logorrhea

A Journey Through the Atmosphere

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CerJbZ-dm0

In the video, the person jumps from 19 miles up and survives.

The atmosphere is conventionally considered to end at 100 km, or about 62 miles, above Earth's surface, a boundary known as the Kármán line. In reality, there is no sharp boundary where the atmosphere ends. It gradually becomes thinner with increasing altitude, eventually becoming an extremely tenuous atmosphere that approaches a vacuum.

I saw a video where someone compared the atmosphere to a peel on an apple.  Good thing we have it.

LBN438 Lizard Pillar Nebula

A photographer on Facebook published this image of the LBN 438 Lizard Pillar Nebula, a collection of gas where new stars are born. It is roughly 8 to 10 light-years across and about 1,200 light-years away.

I suspect that nobody has heard of this nebula, but imagine being able to see a completely different part of our galaxy so clearly.

Space is interesting, but it would be almost impossible for humans to ever go there. Maybe thousands of years from now, our descendants will have technology that would make such a trip possible, but it would be extremely costly, probably for very little practical benefit.

This reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon where he said that rather than travel the world, he just looks at pretty pictures online.

How Dark Is It On Pluto?

The THICKNESS of our ATMOSPHERE !?

The Paradox of an Infinite Universe

Nobody has EVER seen an El Niño like this

Tennessee Stellarator Fusion Plant License

On Tue, Sep 22, 2026 at 5:11 PM Larry wrote:

Tennessee grants first fusion license for 400MW stellarator plant

Maybe getting a license is the first step toward building a reactor. I'm not sure whether this represents some sort of breakthrough toward practical fusion. I don't know enough about it to say.

Although practical nuclear fusion would be a tremendous breakthrough for mankind, I am extremely skeptical that we will reach it anytime soon.

If I can believe the numbers I have seen on solar and wind, we should be able to supplement our slowly declining fossil fuel reserves with them. They are not my favorite ways to generate power, however, because of their reliability issues.

For a really long time, I have thought that geothermal was interesting. My reasoning is that there is a tremendous amount of energy inside the planet.

What's the Only Country In The World Without Mosquitoes?

How One Company Secretly Poisoned The Planet

 https://neeeeews.blogspot.com/2026/05/how-one-company-secretly-poisoned-planet.html

Some Surprising Eponyms

The Ontological Status of Phenylalanine In Sugar Free Sodas

https://neeeeews.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-ontological-status-of-phenylalanine.html

The Most Important Thing that Ever Happened

Trump says some childhood vaccines will be split into separate shots

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZZDSBxKvXo

I'm quite disappointed with Trump.  This is an issue that has been very thoroughly studied.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5ETZy1pmiI

Google AI:

There is no credible scientific evidence demonstrating that vaccines cause autism. Decades of rigorous global research involving millions of children have consistently shown no causal link or association between vaccination and autism spectrum disorders. [1, 2, 3]

The overwhelming scientific and medical consensus is supported by major global public health organizations, including the National Academy of Medicine, the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and the National Medical Association. [1, 2, 3]

The Origin of the Myth

The belief that vaccines cause autism stems from a single 1998 case series published by Andrew Wakefield in The Lancet. The study suggested a link between the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism based on just 12 cherry-picked children. It was later discovered that the data was fraudulent and methodologically invalid. The Lancet fully retracted the paper, and Wakefield lost his medical license. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Key Scientific Findings

Since then, numerous large-scale epidemiological and cohort studies have definitively debunked the link across three major areas of concern:

The MMR Vaccine: Massive global studies tracking millions of children across the U.S., Denmark, the U.K., and Japan found absolutely no difference in autism rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated children. [1, 2]
Thimerosal (Mercury Preservative): Although thimerosal was removed or significantly reduced in childhood vaccines globally as a precaution over two decades ago, autism rates continued to rise. This demonstrates that the preservative does not trigger autism. [1, 2, 3]
Immune System Load: Research confirms that an infant’s immune system is fully capable of handling multiple vaccines at once. Cumulative exposure to childhood vaccine antigens does not negatively impact neurodevelopment or increase autism risk. [1, 2]

Why the Misconception Persists

The primary driver of the myth is temporal coincidence. The first noticeable signs of autism typically manifest in toddlers around the exact same age that children receive their routine early childhood vaccinations. Because these two events happen around the same time, it can easily lead to the false assumption that one caused the other. [1, 2, 3]

The Actual Causes of Autism

Autism is a complex neurodevelopmental condition that begins well before birth. According to the Autism Science Foundation, the primary causes include: [1, 2]

Genetics: Strong hereditary factors account for most cases, with single gene variants and familial risk playing massive roles.
Prenatal Environment: Structural brain differences originate in the womb and are tied to factors like advanced parental age, maternal metabolic disorders, premature birth, and prenatal exposure to certain infections or severe air pollution. [1, 2, 3]

The rising prevalence of autism diagnoses in recent decades is not due to vaccines, but rather to broadened diagnostic criteria, improved universal screening, and significantly higher awareness among parents and healthcare providers. [1, 2]

Owls can actually be adorable

Scientists Explain How Do You Pronounce URANUS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQTKGXmITZg

I prefer the more polite pronunciation.

This Woman Cured Her Cancer with an Insane Method

There have been reports of COVID-19 shrinking tumors, but not consistently.

The Universe Is Speeding Up...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRxvK9m6d6I

Spy on the world

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83tdcto6AZc

Super El Niño

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VNx03S0VK0

Psychiatrist: “Everyone Is Wrong About The Lindsay Clancy Case”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOtNDXOypQg&t=471s

The correct statistic is that there are roughly 10,000 live births in the United States daily.

We Are Witnessing Cancer's Downfall

The Brutal Reality of Traveling to Another Star

Science fiction presents us with a false image of space travel, making it seem as though it will eventually become as routine as airline travel. Consider the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey where a spaceship has a stewardess who serves meals. Likewise, science fiction is full of planets that are not too different from Earth and are compatible with human life, giving the impression that the human race can expand out to the stars without too much difficulty.

There are five things that make interstellar space travel nearly impossible.

1. Earth-like planets are very rare. We are unlikely to encounter worlds that would be worth traveling to.
2. Space is full of deadly radiation that is difficult to shield against. This becomes exponentially worse at high fractions of the speed of light. At those speeds, even simple interstellar dust particles become explosive missiles that could destroy a spacecraft.
3. The distances are so vast that interstellar travel becomes extremely difficult.
4. The energy requirements are enormous. We simply don't have the resources to accelerate a spaceship to anything approaching relativistic speeds.
5. The cost is enormous. It could take the resources of an entire planet to create an interstellar ship.

If we wanted to send a probe to a nearby star, we would have to send a computer AI with heavy shielding at a modest speed and be willing to wait 50,000 years for the ship to arrive. However, if we did this in the near future, it could be self-defeating because future generations will likely be able to create faster ships that could arrive in a fraction of the time. Being able to create a ship twice as fast a thousand years from now would make the first ship we send pointless.

I feel the same way about sending humans to Mars. It is such a perilous and expensive journey, just to go to a big, dead rock with about a third of Earth's gravity. We will never have a viable colony on Mars because the planet is simply too hostile. It is far too cold, has significant radiation hazards, and its chemical makeup is not conducive to human life.

It seems possible, if not likely, that life could have existed on Mars billions of years ago. Finding that out might be interesting, but we don't have to send people to Mars to study the planet. We can send unmanned probes much more cost-effectively.

The future of humanity does not involve expanding out to the stars, at least not in the next few thousand years. Although we could create orbital habitats, these will never be cost-effective. The real future of humanity involves making the best use of the resources on planet Earth. We need to manage the planet well while slowing population growth, which creates more competition and conflict over natural resources. The vast fortunes that we spend on space exploration could be better spent managing our existence on Earth.

We live on Spaceship Earth, which is traveling around the galaxy at 140 miles per second. Not all the stars in the Milky Way travel at the same speed, so in 1.29 million years, another star will come within 0.14 light-years of our star. That is close enough to send a space probe. We just have to be patient. 😀

Magnetism #Science #Magnets

@alexpoiry3988
5 days ago
If anyone is interested, I think this is a ferrocell. Basically there is a small amount of very dilute ferrofluid trapped between 2 transparent plates. The edge lighting scatters the light so you can see the effect of the magnetic waves.

The Life Expectancy Lies That Won't Die

Do Animals Know They're Pets?

Joe Rogan Is Blown Away by What Homo Erectus Could Do

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1uQRGo8sMc

Homo Erectus emerged around 1.9 to 2 million years ago in Africa.  They went extinct roughly 110,000 years ago.  They also evolved into other human species.

I suspect that they didn't seem much different to our ancestors.

There is some evidence of different human species interbreeding.  This includes humans and Neanderthals, but also Homo Erectus with Denisovans.

Modern Europeans have about 1% to 2% Neanderthal DNA in their individual genomes, with essentially 100% of people with European ancestry carrying these traces.

The one thing ‘Breaking Bad’ couldn’t show you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUxDyPEck7g

Can technology solve all our problems?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6me9riotp0&t=987s

The Fake Disease That Proves You Can’t Trust All Health Advice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IngbpPJFrgk

Do THIS After a Bad Night of Sleep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbHSZ07n_lg&t=323s

The Wedge-Tailed Eagle is a MENACE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1iPo-kTqGs

The Math Problem That Breaks Evolutions' Timeline

FYI

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: John Coffey <john2001plus@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Aug 28, 2026 at 2:37 PM
Subject: Re: The Math Problem That Breaks Evolution’s Timeline
To: Grant

Grant, 

I have been hearing similar arguments for at least 40 years, going back to my biology student days in the early 1980s. During my education, my position went from being unsure about evolution to being convinced that it is correct.

I think that people misunderstand both entropy, which applies to a closed system and not to the Earth as a whole, and evolution.

According to Google, every human child typically receives about 50 to 90 new mutations that were not present in either parent's DNA. I view every biological organism as a new genetic experiment. The changes in one generation might not be significant, but these changes accumulate over time and combine with changes from other individuals.

It is unlikely for organisms to remain exactly the same over long periods of time. There are a few exceptions where organisms have been so successful that they have remained essentially the same for tens of millions of years. However, I think it is unlikely that humans will be the same tens of thousands of years from now, given that humans have changed somewhat over the last few tens of thousands of years.

I prefer a more traditional view of God, in which He is the creator of the laws of physics and not constrained by them.

The simpler explanation for the origin of species is not that they came from other worlds or that some form of magic created them. The simpler explanation is that they arose naturally through the laws of nature as evidenced by the clear observations we have made.

--

Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com

On Fri, Aug 28, 2026 at 2:27 AM Grant wrote:

John,

When I was young I would have agreed with you completely.  In Jr High, my math teacher, Dr Edwin Hershey, believed Darwinism but also believed in scripture and God as the creator.  Personally I had spiritual experiences testifying of a loving Father, but I accepted science without significant questioning.  More recently, a geological engineer friend lent me a book by the head of the geology department at the U of U who likewise believed in God but accepted Darwinism as one of His tools and didn't see a conflict.  They held that God directs nature but didn't create the laws, a little like my wife creating and maintaining our garden but not making the plants from nothing.  I.E. from youth I was taught that God did not create the laws of nature but rather mastered them including laws we do not yet know or comprehend.  He also has somehow mastered time or else how could the prophets correctly foretell the future, such as Isaiah, Daniel, David and Book of Mormon prophets detailing events of Christ's birth, ministry, crucifiction and resurrection, plus foretelling events of our day, including the return of the Jews to Jerusalem, the Civil War starting in South Carolina (JS) and world wars and earthquakes coupled with signs in the heavens such as our numerous solar and lunar eclipses including the moon turning to blood which many will shortly witness.  Natural disasters aren't new, but the apparent increased frequency and severity are consistent with prophecy. As I studied more science (e.g. 2nd Law of Thermodynamics) and engineering this whole creation process would require even more time than timelines suggest, which is what this author is saying about whales and implying in more general terms.  

In the scriptural and scientific observation, simpler organisms came before more complex ones, and plants had to prepare the way for the animal kingdom.  My personal conclusion (not doctrine) is that perhaps evolution, according to updated Darwinism, could have resulted in all the life forms we have but they were generally developed elsewhere over much more time on other worlds.  God then followed the creative sequence from Genesis which per my interpretation matches the order from textbooks where plants largely preceded animals (in order to have oxygen for the animal kingdom) and protected sea life came before birds (dinosaurs) and mammals and finally man.  Under this scenario, God placed on earth a variety of life in the sea and then placed seeds upon the earth for grasses, trees etc. and then later placed various species of mammals, culminating in anthropoids and hominids.  There were destructive periods as well and he finally placed Adam and Eve in a garden in Eden. Were they the culmination of evolution or created from scratch?  I don't think it matters, but they were grand beings who were expelled from Eden for sin and entered the already "lone and dreary world" where creatures had been dying for millions of years as evidenced by fossils, coal and limestone formed in the depths of the oceans.  Personal belief: We are principally descendents from Adam and Eve, corresponding to written histories, and most of the hominids died out with the mammoths, saber tooth tigers and giant land sloths at the last ice age and from subsequent wars; however, Adam's posterity gave us written records and greater civilization, but there were a few men already in the world, so Cane, for instance, had no problem finding a wife after he killed Abel and was forced to leave.  

Summary:  My scientific/mathematical concern is that more time is required to create all the coordinated extremely complex diversity than is allocated by geologists and anthropologists.  My engineering training says "don't reinvent the wheel", meaning if there is a god or gods (including alien theories), planting seeds and placing animals on earth is much easier and less time consuming than waiting for them to evolve and stay on the right productive path, which is statistically virtually impossible per the principle of entropy, without a divine overseer.  

DADS LOSE 1% OF THEIR BRAIN AFTER THIS?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h76e5oTVg2E

Scientists Discover Alzheimer’s Immunity - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRwPwL65ru4

The Math Problem That Breaks Evolution’s Timeline

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BlzH_46Wd4

@john2001plus

0 seconds ago

What a waste of time.

The main problem with these arguments is that they don't take into account the massive parallelism taking place across the entire species, with genes coming from multiple ancestors and genetic errors accumulating over many generations. The genetic pool is effectively a soup of randomness. Nature weeds out the worst combinations, with up to half of all pregnancies terminating spontaneously before the mother even knows that she is pregnant.

The other problem is that we know evolution happened from the evidence in the fossil record and from genetics. Two facts are strongly supported by evidence:

1. The Earth is very old.
2. Simpler organisms came before more complex ones.

Where did the more complex organisms come from? You could say that they were created by God, but we don't have good evidence for that. The scientific explanation is that complex organisms arose from simpler ones.

Is this trans thought experiment just wrong?

@john2001plus
16 hours ago (edited)
A person's feelings about their body do not make a man a woman or a woman a man, nor is it possible to make the switch.  A trans person will never be able to produce children. The changes are cosmetic only and don't change the fundamental reality of a person's biology.  It seems to me that people are sold a lie about gender affirming care.

From what I read, some people do benefit psychologically from surgery.  However, this is a serious operation that does irreversible damage to the body, with potential complications.  Maybe psychological care would be more appropriate?

Some of us didn't exactly win the genetics lottery. We have to deal with the reality of our bodies instead of some fantasy.  Surgery only becomes needed when it is medically necessary.

WHY YOUR CAT IS A PERFECT PREDATOR #cats #wow #kitten #animals - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_j-elaxQQY

Vacuum Tubes

I saw one of these tube testers in the 1970s, maybe at a TV repair shop. I think that my dad simply bought a replacement vacuum tube for one that had gone bad in a TV. He was good at fixing things.

Vacuum tubes work like transistors in that they allow a small current to control a much larger one. This is necessary for the amplification of radio signals that are very weak. In the case of the vacuum tube, electrons on a grid block the flow of the larger current.

Given how primitive this seems, I am impressed that something as complex as a cathode ray television could be made with these tubes. The response time to controlling the current flow would have to be in nanoseconds to deal with VHF signals. Furthermore, they have to control the path of the electron beam on the cathode ray tube.

What the Flu Does to Your Body

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5-dE2nCzjM

Evidence of Zoonotic Origin for COVID-19

The metal that was worth more than gold

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_uTfdk5CPE

3 Body Parts That English Does Not Name

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xruwt9zRecg

China Catches First Reusable Rocket

https://youtube.com/shorts/OAdYZNqnSRc?is=hW3z_HXY-VwTF8Pe

Where Do Conspiracy Theories Come From?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4Nu52D7VF4

Why Humanity Will Never Leave The Solar System

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyl3X88KEgg

This echoes pooints I have seen in other videos.  Long distance space travel seems too dangerous.   Even going to Mars is very risky.

I have long speculated that in some distant future we might send android robots, with human personalties, to the stars.  By coincindence, I'm listening to the "Bobiverse" audio book series about that same topic.

Re: Christian DESTROYS Evolutionist Teacher

To: J

Of course, this video comes across as staged rather than spontaneous.

My degree is in biology, and my education convinced me that evolution is the best explanation for the diversity of life.

I'm not going to claim to know everything, but I do try to stay well informed about the subjects I have opinions on.

I feel that the video is full of inaccuracies, and I don't think a real biologist would respond the way the person in the video does.

The claim that there are no transitional species is simply false. The fossil record is incomplete and never will be complete, but many of the species we have discovered can reasonably be viewed as transitional between earlier and later forms. For example, there is a well-documented transition between land mammals and whales and dolphins.

However, every time paleontologists discover a new fossil that fills a gap—for example, if they connect species A and C by finding an intermediate species B—critics simply argue that we are now missing the transitions between A and B, and between B and C. The expectation of an infinitely detailed fossil record is unrealistic. Fossilization is a rare event, and evolution often proceeds relatively rapidly in response to changing environmental pressures, leaving comparatively few fossils from those transitional populations.

There are a couple of facts that are strongly supported by the evidence:

1. The Earth is very old.
2. Simpler organisms appeared before more complex ones.

How did the more complex organisms arise? One could argue that God created them directly, but we do not have physical evidence for that. The simpler scientific explanation is that complex organisms evolved from simpler ones. Many creationists try to challenge the mechanisms by asking questions such as, "How could this possibly work?" But even if we did not fully understand every mechanism, that would not change the historical evidence that evolution occurred. The evidence tells us that it happened.

That said, we do have a good understanding of the mechanisms involved. DNA replication is not a perfect process, and extremely small mutations occur in every generation. If too many harmful mutations accumulate, the organsim is often not viable. In fact, roughly half of all pregnancies end in spontaneous miscarriage before the mother even realizes she is pregnant, often because of chromosomal or other genetic abnormalities.

Some mutations, however, are neutral or beneficial. Those mutations increase genetic diversity, and that diversity gives populations a better chance of surviving changing environmental pressures. Over many generations, natural selection acting on that genetic variation can produce the large-scale evolutionary changes observed in the fossil record and in living organisms.

Some limited evolution has been observed in organisms alive today.

P.S. I meant to add that birds are part of Theropods that make up dinosaurs. Many theropod dinosaurs shared characteristics in common with birds, such as feathers.


Birds have been reclassified as avian dinosaurs, with only the non-avian dinosaurs considered extinct. I'm not totally comfortable with this change in classification. It seems to me that birds are different enough from what we think of as dinosaurs to be considered separate from them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theropoda

"Birds are the only extant members of Dinosauria, and are a type of paravian theropods."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird

The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic

Several lines of evidence support the hypothesis that the Huanan market was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic and that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from activities associated with the live wildlife trade there. Spatial analyses within the market show that SARS-CoV-2–positive environmental samples, including cages, carts, and freezers, were associated with activities concentrated in the southwest corner of the market. This is the same section where vendors were selling live mammals, including raccoon dogs, hog badgers, and red foxes, immediately before the COVID-19 pandemic. Multiple positive samples were taken from one stall known to have sold live mammals, and the water drain proximal to this stall, as well as other sewerages and a nearby wildlife stall on the southwest side of the market, tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 (24).

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715

Why Farmers Put Fish in Rice Fields

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DV6dO0lj0pU

Why Fauci's Pardon Won't Protect Him From This

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_1u6wW8uMI&t=808s

@john2001plus

Rand Paul is using Fauci as a punching bag, trying to implicate Fauci for the pandemic, implying that it was created in a lab, to which Fauci provided a modest amount of funding to catalog bat viruses.  However, none of this is supported by evidence, so this is just a witch hunt.

Many conservative commentators that I like regularly make statements about the pandemic that aren't supported by research.  The truth is that masks and the vaccines slowed the spread of the disease.  I have read the studies.  The truth is that the vaccines reduced overall mortality at all ages.

Fauci deserves at least some credit for dealing with a major crisis under difficult circumstances.  Instead, people want to condemn him over actions they find questionable.  It is easy to second-guess people when you are not the one facing tremendous responsibility.

Scientists Regrow Teeth Using Human Saliva

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLesHyxwxs8

Lightning bolt strikes Chinese rocket

 https://weather.com/2026/07/25/science/space/lightning-bolt-strikes-chinese-rocket

What Climate Science Actually Says vs. What You've Been Told

Satellite growth

---------- Forwarded message ---------

From: Larry

The number of active satellites in orbit has grown exponentially from about 1,400 in 2015 to about 15,000 currently. As many as 100,000 are expected to be in orbit within the decade

Where Did Ancient Humans Go to the Bathroom? The Surprising Truth!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-C-jNrmNYg

We know that roughly 60 thousand years ago, humans built the first permanent structures.*  

However, farming wouldn't come along until the neolithic period, about 11 to 12 thousand years ago.

Either way, humans would have some sort of civilization to manage their affairs, even if it was primitive.

* I had previously read that a drought in Africa had nearly wiped out the human race, forcing a small population to live along the southern coast of Africa.  They came out of this drought roughly 50,000 years ago, beginning the Upper Paleolithic period.

However, I keep reading different numbers as to when this occurred.  Some sites say 60,000 to 70,000 years ago.  However, Google AI is telling me that it started 190,000 years ago.

ChatGPT  tells me the following...

The confusion comes from the fact that several different events are being conflated. They are not all referring to the same thing.

Here's a rough timeline based on the current evidence:

• ~300,000 years ago: Homo sapiens first appears in Africa.
• ~195,000–130,000 years ago: There is evidence that human populations went through one or more severe bottlenecks, although their causes and severity are still debated. Some researchers link these to long periods of climatic stress, while others argue they resulted from a combination of factors. This is likely what Google AI was referring to.
• ~74,000 years ago: The eruption of the volcano at Lake Toba occurred. It was once thought to have nearly wiped out humanity, but that hypothesis is no longer widely accepted.
• ~70,000–60,000 years ago: Southern Africa experienced periods of severe drought associated with changing climate. Archaeological sites such as Pinnacle Point and Blombos Cave show that coastal populations survived by exploiting seafood, shellfish, and other marine resources. These populations also developed sophisticated stone tools and symbolic behavior.
• ~70,000–50,000 years ago: Modern humans began expanding out of Africa, eventually reaching Asia, Europe, and Australia.
• ~50,000 years ago: The Upper Paleolithic began in Europe. This date marks the appearance of advanced stone-tool industries there, not the end of an African drought. Humans had already been behaving in "Upper Paleolithic" ways in parts of Africa for tens of thousands of years.

The statement that "only about 7,000 humans survived" also needs some qualification. Older studies often estimated an effective breeding population of only a few thousand individuals. More recent genetic studies usually estimate an effective population size of roughly 1,000–10,000 breeding individuals, which does not mean there were only that many people alive. The actual census population may have been several times larger.

So the dates you've seen correspond to different ideas:

• 190,000 years ago: An early proposed population bottleneck.
• 70,000–60,000 years ago: A later period of climatic stress in southern Africa and the expansion of coastal populations.
• 50,000 years ago: The beginning of the Upper Paleolithic in Europe.

The version you previously read—that a drought reduced humans to a relatively small coastal population in southern Africa that later expanded—is still a plausible summary of one influential hypothesis. However, archaeologists today tend to view the story as more complex, with multiple climate fluctuations and population bottlenecks rather than a single catastrophic event that almost exterminated humanity.

What’s the only country in all four hemispheres??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE_oLmpXpO8

@john2001plus  1 minute ago 

Why are there 4 hemi-spheres? 

I was guessing the United States, because we have 14 official territories in the world. 

What about the British Empire?  Does it still exist?

Only One English Word Has This Property

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EupTKqL3f1E

China Launches Nuclear Battery That Lasts 5000 Years

K2-18 b could have dimethyl sulfide in its air. But is it a sign of life?

https://www.astronomy.com/science/k2-18-b-could-have-dimethyl-sulfide-in-its-air-but-is-it-a-sign-of-life/

Something Dark Is Spreading on Mars

Re: Cyclospora

On Sat, Jul 18, 2026 at 5:12 PM Grant  wrote:

Here in Utah, Taco Bell is highly suspect because they get their lettuce from Mexico.  

For a long time I liked to eat salads.  But lettuce doesn't keep very long and now I am highly suspicious of things like that.

I eat Roma tomatoes for the higher lycopene content.

I have concluded that a moderate amount of chips with salsa is healthy, and a good substitute for salads.  The high fiber is filling and helps with appetite. 

Tortilla chips are high in resistant starch, which is linked to some health benefits.

Google AI says...

Yes, lycopene is highly beneficial. It is a potent antioxidant found in red foods like tomatoes, watermelon, and pink grapefruit. It protects your cells from oxidative stress and is associated with a lower risk of heart disease, prostate cancer, and strokes. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

For maximum benefit, consider these key details:

Better with fat: Lycopene is fat-soluble. Eating lycopene-rich foods with healthy fats (like cooking tomatoes in olive oil or eating them with avocado) boosts your body's absorption by up to 4.4 times. [1, 2, 3]
Better when cooked: Heating and processing tomatoes (e.g., in tomato paste, sauce, or salsa) actually makes lycopene more bioavailable than eating them raw. [1]

Yes, salsa contains lycopene. Because tomatoes are the primary ingredient in traditional red salsa, the condiment is packed with this powerful antioxidant. Lycopene is linked to reduced inflammation, better heart health, and a lower risk of certain cancers. [1, 2, 3, 4]

The bioavailability of lycopene actually improves when tomatoes are cooked, processed, or mixed with a little fat (like avocado), making this flavorful condiment an excellent way to boost your daily nutrient intake. [1, 2, 3]

Yes, resistant starch is highly beneficial. It bypasses small intestine digestion, reaching the colon intact to feed beneficial gut bacteria. This produces short-chain fatty acids (like butyrate) that improve gut health, stabilize blood sugar, increase satiety, and support heart health. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Key benefits of resistant starch include:

Blood Sugar Control: Because it resists digestion, it does not cause blood sugar spikes. Some research indicates it can also increase insulin sensitivity. [1, 2]
Gut Health & Digestion: It acts as a prebiotic, nourishing your microbiome and protecting the lining of the colon, which may lower the risk of colorectal cancer. [1, 2]
Weight Management: By fueling the production of satiety hormones like GLP-1, it helps you feel full longer. [1]

You can naturally incorporate resistant starch into your diet by eating legumes, seeds, unripe (green) bananas, and whole grains. Additionally, cooking and subsequently cooling starchy carbohydrates (like rice, pasta, and potatoes) turns them into resistant starches. [1, 2]

Yes, corn tortillas contain resistant starch. The traditional process of making them—called nixtamalization, where corn is soaked in an alkaline lime solution—alters the starch and naturally increases resistant starch. [1, 2, 3]

You can boost the resistant starch content even further by cooking and cooling them (e.g., storing them in the fridge), which causes the starches to crystallize and become more resistant to digestion. For example, fresh corn tortillas might contain roughly 2.6 g of resistant starch, but this can increase to over 3.5 g after being chilled in the refrigerator. [1, 2, 3]

Google Is Training a New A.I. Model to Decode Dolphin Chatter—and Potentially Talk Back

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/google-is-training-a-new-ai-model-to-decode-dolphin-chatter-and-potentially-talk-back-180986434/

Cyclospora

“You can and should continue to eat fruits and vegetables, but you might want to take additional precautions depending on where you live,” says James E. Rogers, PhD, director of food safety at Consumer Reports, who notes that so far, the majority of infections have been reported in Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, and Kentucky. “If you’re in one of those states, I recommend avoiding eating lettuce and salad greens until we know more, but currently, there is no data to support avoiding fruits and vegetables generally.”

https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/you-shouldnt-avoid-fruits-and-vegetables-due-to-cyclospora-a9570579349/

"Doom Runs on Everything" Just Went Way Too Far

Photographer recounts how bison attack in Yellowstone unfolded

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0Or_SWgVXM

Human vs Computer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsY6iChNzf0

It’s never too late to exercise

https://www.thegoan.net/global-goenkar/it%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%E2%84%A2s-never-too-late-to-exercise/53125.html

Why Can't We Eat Predator Meat ?

turning CO2 and water vapor into ready-to-burn methane in a single step

turning CO2 and water vapor into ready-to-burn methane in a single step

You Have to Poop in the Eiffel Tower

Why Are We the Only Human Species Left? What happened to others...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCr6NteWSQ8

Roughly 70,000 years ago, an ice age in Europe caused a massive drought in Africa.  Most of the human population died off, with roughly 7,000 individuals surviving along the southern coast of Africa.  However, these people built the first permanent dwellings, invented many new tools, and learned to fish.  

Once the drought receded, these more technologically advanced humans began spreading out.  In a couple of thousand years, they would reach other continents.  They likely outcompeted, if not killed, other species of humans.

People of European descent still have a small amount of Neanderthal DNA.  Decades ago, there was a report of a skull found in Israel that was half Neanderthal and half Homo sapiens.