Day: December 4, 2021

Delta Wolf

After a lost week of human self-experimentation to survive multiply mutated Fauci-Baric China Virus, Wolf has obtained answers to a thousand questions. Here are just a few of those answers.

Over the last week, overcoming my SECOND case of the China virus, I have been able to learn quite a bit about the enemy’s weaponry – AND our own.

I was READY this time. PREPARATION paid off, and big-league.

I tried to help others prepare, and ended up helping myself, too.

Ivermectin – The Preparation

OK, people. It is time for THE WOLF to GET PATTON ON YOUR ASSES. As you may know, we now have many of our dear members actively fighting COVID-19, including one (gil00) in the hospital. Several have received Regeneron. Thus far, praise God, we have not lost anybody – and I intend to keep it …

I felt it was important to share what I have learned, and to answer people’s questions, but I wanted to have enough strength to actually do a post – not just a few quick answers lost in the middle of conversations.

I have answered a few questions already – I will try to link to some of those answers. Other answers I may copy here. But most of these questions are being answered here for the first time.

HERE WE GO!

1. Which version of COVID-19 did I have?

singingsoul1

singingsoul1(@singingsoul1) Online Wolverine  Reply to  Wolf Moon December 3, 2021 19:46

Wolf is that [omicron] the strain you and your wife caught? I am wondering since you did not respond as well to Ivermectin?

Where did you catch the first virus covid and where do you think you caught the second virus? You caught two different strains?

What I had this time was almost certainly Delta.

What I had the first time was almost certainly a minor variant of the original Wuhan strain (COVID-19).

Here is the current worldwide geographic distribution according to NextStrain.

Note that the colors are not fixed – the same data may be shown with different colors from one day to the next.

The turquoise color which covers 2/3 to 3/4 of almost every pie chart across the planet is the Delta variant. You can see that it has rapidly become the predominant version.

The various grayish versions (1/4 to 1/3 of each pie) are basically the original Wuhan strains PLUS the gazillion minor morphs of THAT which formed immediately. You remember the “European strain” and the “Washington strain”, and the “New York”, “Italian”, etc. – those were all still basically Wuhan, and those are the variants that are still effectively treated by all the original vaccines and antibodies.

If things had stayed there, the vaccinated would largely not be having breakthrough cases right now. Similarly, I would not have had a “breakthrough case” on my natural immunity.

The purplish and orange versions are other minor variants of concern, some of which were once much bigger concerns, until delta began to predominate. The vaccines still held up fairly well against those, as did, apparently, my natural immunity.

Omicron (red) is barely on the map right now.

It is EXTREMELY unlikely that I had omicron. It is VERY likely that I had standard issue delta variant.

2. How do I know that I had COVID-19?

Within a 24 hour period, I was positive to three tests – TWO antigen tests (BinaxNOW and QuickVue), plus a PCR test run by my primary care physician’s group.

The same tests showed my wife to be negative on Day Zero and Day One of my infection.

However, LATER, on Day 4 of my case, another run of QuickVue showed my wife to be weakly positive.

In my opinion, and with as much experience as I have now, running them, these antigen tests are highly reliable and trustworthy.

But that’s just the beginning.

My new case was, in so many ways, almost identical to the case that I had in January 2020. That case predated the availability of tests. Also, because it predated antibody test availability, I never got an antibody test until 6 months later – which by then was negative.

But now I’m CERTAIN. I had COVID the first time. Same damn disease. THE SAME.

And it all makes sense. DELTA BREAKTHROUGH IS possible for Wuhan natural immunity, IMO. Maybe not for everybody, but it was for me.

3. Did ivermectin work for me?

I strongly suspect that ivermectin helped me avoid serious problems and recover quickly.

I cannot be sure that ivermectin actually helped, but it certainly didn’t hurt. I would be very tempted to use ivermectin again, if I got COVID again.

My wife also used ivermectin, and it seemed to “flatten the curve” of viral load for her, too.

I would be bullshitting to say that I know ivermectin helped, or that my case “proves that it works.” But I can easily say that I strongly suspect that it helped.

4. Did I have any side effects from ivermectin?

Yes, but the side effects were extremely minor, for as massively high of a dose as I was taking.

I decided to roughly follow the FLCCC “triple-dose” (0.6 mg/kg) recommendation for an active infection, because I had two of the conditions that cause FLCCC to recommend the highest dose – (1) likelihood of delta strain, and (2) multiple comorbidities.

I decided that the same applied to my wife.

To mitigate side effects, I did NOT take the daily amount in a single dose, but rather spread it out in 12-mg pill-pops during the day. But even with the spreading of the doses, and taking them with meals, I felt the following symptoms.

  • desire to sleep after meals
  • “lazy eye focus” for a few hours
  • stomach “not quite right”

None of this was bad enough to quit the drug, or even to reduce the dose, but after 5 days of it, I was absolutely done. I had ZERO desire to take ivermectin any more. I wanted my stomach to return to normal, even if that entailed a greater risk. Given that most of my other symptoms were gone, I didn’t feel like it was much of a risk.

Also, ivermectin has a pretty long half-life, so after 5 days of super-high-dosing it, I’m probably STILL flushing it out of my system.

My wife experienced the same stomach issues. She was ready to give it up after 6 days.

5. What about the Zelenko / Raoult protocols?

Yes. I credit azithromycin every bit as much as ivermectin, and I have more direct evidence that it helped me.

This is where the reasoning gets very complicated.

In early 2020, I was immediately impressed by the work of Didier Raoult (hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin) and later by the clinical real-world proof of Zev Zelenko (added zinc and moved treatment to outpatient prophylaxis). I was absolutely convinced that early azithromycin was key to stopping the killer pulmonary symptoms of the disease, and basically turned it into “just another weak, influenza-like coronavirus”.

Although it turns out that azithromycin has its own powerful antiviral activities, the main thing it did, in my opinion then and now, was to prevent any type of pneumonia from setting in. This is critical if you want to stay out of the hospital.

Thus, as soon as I started detecting what I considered scary lung issues (burning lungs, basically), which was almost immediately (end of day zero, middle of day one), I decided to begin TWO ADDITIONAL PROTOCOLS.

The first was a modified Zelenko protocol. I increased my zinc to my maximum levels ever taken, plus quercetin as natural capers (clearly the bad influence of Aubergine). My wife and I also began using elderberry syrup as an additional zinc ionophore.

However, the real key was adding azithromycin – 2 days at 500 mg, and 2 days at 250 mg. The very first dose resulted in an immediate improvement in my lungs.

There is simply no arguing against the clinical record of success of the Zelenko protocol. I trusted it in my scientific reasoning in 2020, and I trusted it to treat myself.

I get far more mileage out of real-world clinical studies like Raoult’s and Zelenko’s, than out of Fauci’s little “double-blind” – whoops – I mean “double-chump” scam studies that can be manipulated against both doctor and patient by lying, phony, deceptive, agenda-filled, biased, compromised, fake-neutral parties.

The whole idea of double-blind studies falls apart when the researchers and patients are innocent DUPES and CHUMPS, and the people who are supposed to be honest referees in charge of neutrality are in fact dishonest manipulators like NIH, CDC, CEPI, Gates, WHO, and all the rest.

In contrast, studies like Zelenko’s and Raoult’s are pretty much open source. No Fauci-type con-man is in charge of fake neutrality. This being a neutrality I have little care for anyway, because I don’t care what exactly saved the people – simply that they were saved.

Yeah – I’m biased in favor of MEDICINE ITSELF.

The protocol works, end of story.

Fauci’s “studied ignorance” of clinical success is exactly why the man should have been fired DECADES AGO. He’s not a doctor – not a patient-treating one – and he should not be in charge of doctors.

HOWEVER – I do have to admit – azithromycin was even harder on my gut than ivermectin. Four days was all I could take. My stomach was always double-queasy if I took AZM with my IVM. There was NO WAY I was going to do a fifth day.

But YES – the stuff worked, and IMO kept my lungs “infection-free”, knock on wood.

Thank you, Doctors Raoult and Zelenko!!!

6. What about antihistamines?

Absolutely. The same well-proven clinical success that Zelenko had with azithromycin, was also evident in the results from the Spanish nursing homes. It would have been negligent not to take an antihistamine, in my opinion.

That, plus some additional reasoning I will explain below.

Based on the recommendations of people here, I chose Claritin (loratadine), and quickly found that I tolerated it easily at the recommended double doses.

I experienced a very, very slight dryness of the mouth, but that’s it. Just to be careful, I tended to keep the dosing closer to 1.5 instead of double, but in the absence of all the other drugs I was taking, I would have been more rigorous about the double dose, without consequence.

For those who need a refresher on the use of antihistamines against COVID…..

The Zyrtec Rebellion

Everybody underestimates Spain. The last letter in “PIGS” is far less of an insult than an error. Years ago, when I was at a conference, and Japanese industrial spies were getting me drunk (it was a great red wine), I decided that I had to give them SOMETHING for their time and effort, if only …

Now – here is some important new reasoning I had.

In the FLCCC protocols, and the Zelenko protocols, there is very little if any “over-the-counter” patient control in terms of things which could possibly pre-address and prevent the “cytokine storm” problem – particularly any drug that is available on an outpatient, OTC basis.

In the FLCCC protocols, aspirin is the main anti-clotting drug with something approaching that function. In the original Raoult and Zelenko protocols, HCQ’s antirheumatic functions combined with azithromycin’s actions seemed to suppress pulmonary capillary clotting, although neither did so as well as steroids.

The fact is, however, that the Spanish nursing home study had extremely good success preventing cytokine storms by simply using antihistamines on ALL patients, both as treatment and as prophylaxis. The entire emphasis of the approach was not so much to prevent disease, as to simply limit the disease.

To me it was a no-brainer to add an antihistamine to prevent inflammatory clotting – something that I knew already I was susceptible to, because of my first case of COVID, after which I lost lung function.

Loratadine turned out to be a VERY high-bang-for-buck fix for me, because it also dried nasal and sinus secretions, helped my breathing, reduced lung congestion, and generally decreased symptoms.

Thus, I found that adding an antihistamine had both clearly observable short-term benefits, and very likely long-term benefits.

I highly recommend adding this protocol during COVID treatment. It’s completely OTC as well – the Medical Mafia in Washington simply can’t stop it.

7. What about aspirin?

LINK: https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/aspirin-lowers-risk-of-covid-new-findings-support-preliminary-israeli-trial-681127

Absolutely. Aspirin is a “must”, IMO.

Multiple studies have showed that aspirin, even at low doses, is both protective against getting COVID-19 and also protective against hospitalization and death. The numbers are substantial, too.

This is, again, part of the FLCCC protocol, and pretty much a no-brainer.

I started off using half a regular aspirin, but quickly found that it was just one more drug beating on my stomach.

Switching to low-dose aspirin worked nicely to make any stomach symptoms go away. I also found that I did not need more than 1 or 2 low-dose baby aspirins to control fever. I was able to routinely drop my fever back to near-normal with either 81 mg or 162 mg of aspirin.

Now, my doctor’s practice recommended acetominophen in case I had a high fever, but I never came close to needing it. As it was, I did not want to risk my liver in ANY WAY with all the other high drug doses, so there was NO WAY I was going to add dangerous acetominophen to the mix.

According to the literature studies, even a single baby aspirin per day was enough to show the protective effect. Thus, I made sure to always take 81-325 mg aspirin per day, and will continue with at least 81 mg/day for some time to be determined.

8. What about HCQ?

Not this time, but I would not rule it out in the future – particularly in the absence of ivermectin.

When I got my ivermectin, I had the opportunity to get hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin as well. I chose the latter, but decided not to bother with HCQ I would likely not use.

I let ivermectin be my “drug of choice” for fighting COVID, for many reasons, including the greater safety profile and better understanding by doctors’ groups, including FLCCC. I am satisfied that I made the right choice in ivermectin, but quite frankly, it would have been a good thing to have some HCQ on hand as well.

Anything that kills viruses, is better than their “stupidity of spike identity” vaccine.

9. Did I gargle?

Yes. I used FLCCC-recommended and study-backed Listerine “with essential oils”, and the benefits were obvious.

Actually, ALL the Listerine variations use the same “essential oils” – pick any of them. Some of the time, I used one that also packs zinc chloride, to really screw with the virus.

At first, I went with warm saturated sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) gargle, which was the gargle used by the Spanish nursing homes.

Warm bicarb is actually a really good solution, in terms of soothing the throat and decreasing viral load (as experienced through reduction of key symptoms), but it doesn’t really do a lot in terms of opening up breathing passages.

In contrast, Listerine gargle was EXCELLENT for helping to clear breathing passages, AND to decrease viral load in the throat and mouth. The beneficial effects even extended to the lungs. I only needed to do it 2 or 3 times a day, and the effects lasted for hours afterwards.

The Listerine gargle was also excellent before sleeping, to have a peaceful night’s rest, with clear breathing.

In my opinion, the gargling protocol is really key to helping end things quickly.

NOW – there is some difference between what I experienced and what FLCCC recommends. FLCCC only recommends (at the moment) Listerine for prevention – they DROP IT for early treatment, and recommend ONLY the other types of antiseptics (cetylpyridinium, povidone-iodine, chlorhexidine) once you get the disease. Yet, honestly, I was totally satisfied with the performance of Listerine for TREATMENT, and would not hesitate to use it again.

This may be an individual thing. As they say, your mileage may vary.

10. What about povidone-iodine gargle?

I didn’t use it this time, but I may very well try it next time!

I was not aware that you can just buy this stuff OTC, but yeah – it’s a product. In the studies I read, povidone-iodine was THE BEST in lowering viral load in patients. It did better than Listerine – not by a whole lot, but enough that it might be worth it.

So if you can’t stand Listerine of any kind, or Scope, or whatever – consider trying this one.

11. Did I get the monoclonal antibodies?

Yes. In “better late than never” fashion, I got the mAb infusion after the treatment with ivermectin and azithromycin was already finished, and my fever was gone.

I was fever-free when I got the antibodies, and fever free when I left the infusion center. Shortly after that, I became exhausted and had a fever again. In another 24 hours, my strength was back and the fever was gone yet again.

Basically, I was treating Delta with more Wuhan antibodies like my own, which had already only provided some protection.

I cannot really be sure if the antibodies helped. I personally found that they knocked me out, increased my fever, and made me suffer a “day of exhaustion” that I had otherwise MISSED thanks to ivermectin.

Were they beneficial? Possibly, but I can’t be certain.

My wife got the antibodies somewhat earlier in the progress of the disease, because she got them at the same time I did, but her case was tracking mine LATE by roughly four days.

The antibodies didn’t completely finish her case, but she really only had one more day of disease after the “antibody down day”.

I would say that antibody infusion was far more likely to have helped HER than it was to have helped ME.

If I had to choose between antibodies, aspirin, loratadine, azithromycin, and ivermectin, I’m not actually sure which one I would toss. I consider EACH of them, just one more tool to make sure the disease stays contained. Use as many as you can get.

12. So what happened to my “natural immunity”?

Try some “AND” logic.

It’s still there – waiting patiently for a disease that no longer exists.

This blurry snapshot from NextStrain is from a “play mode” view of the data, where you can watch the genetic data being added in accelerated time. I have focused the active band on early 2020. The “19” and “20” strains are pre-delta – they were well within the window of my natural immunity, which was probably generated by a strain within what they are now calling 19A.

Follow the evolution forward in time, and you can see the massive shift to delta versions, shown in turquoise and indigo below.

SO – what I have now is DOUBLE natural immunity to TWO HUGE CHUNKS of older/existing COVID-19/20/21/22, the now-rare “gray” stuff and the very common “blue-green” stuff.

You can see, though, where OMICRON in RED is now forming. Whether I have any, some, or no immunity to omicron is an open question. HOWEVER, I would much rather have combined natural immunity to TWO groups of COVID variants, than three, four, or even five vaccines.

We have to start being very scientific about immunity, including in particular natural immunity, which is IMO the BEST response to highly mutating diseases, just as it has ALWAYS been.

Fauci is gaslighting us. Ignore him.

Until the poisonous dwarf is removed from power, do your own science.

https://youtu.be/p_yOSM7ujM0

Start HERE:

This link in particular, to keep checking up on SARS-CoV-2 – an EVOLVING GROUP OF VIRUSES.

https://nextstrain.org/ncov/gisaid/global

W

2021·12·04 Joe Biden Didn’t Win Daily Thread

Hey China!

Or rather, “Hey Chinese Communist Party and your entire array of servitors, ass-wipers, and fellators!”

You’re not even worth my time this week. When you decide to act like civilized people, maybe I’ll give you a lesson or two in how non-barbarians behave.

Hey BiteMe!
(Or, Whoever Has Their Hand Rammed Up That Putrefying Meat Puppet’s Ass)

[Language warning]

You and yours have caused a lot of injury. Literal injury with your war on people who don’t want to take an untested vaccine. When people die in an emergency room because a hospital won’t admit them because they haven’t had their clot shot, that’s a crime.

I’m going to address here the insult on top of the injury, because I am among the insulted. I still have my health but apparently you want me to live under the 8th Street Bridge (which actually isn’t on 8th Street, but whatever, that’s what the I-25 overpass over Cimarron is called), so maybe if you have your way that won’t be true for long. Dreadful time of year to become homeless.

No, you’re just trying to make me unemployed, because I won’t take your fucking shots.

Well, that threat is NOT going to work. I. Won’t. Take. Your. Fucking. Shots.

And neither will any of my coworkers who haven’t already had them…and those people who got the shots are a small minority. Most of those got the shots before we began to understand how nasty they truly are.

One of my coworkers was thinking he might have to knuckle under at least until he found another job…but don’t you even think (you do sometimes think, don’t you?) of finding that encouraging.

Don’t think that, because his resolve has hardened.

You’re LOSING.

You LOSER.

You Chinese-bought ratfucking traitor.

I would love to see you die an agonizing, humiliating death. (This isn’t a threat, because I am not threatening to cause that death. I am just announcing my intention to party if it happens.) It would be just recompense for the way you’re killing America…and millions of Americans.

His Fraudulency

Joe Biteme, properly styled His Fraudulency, continues to infest the White House, we haven’t heard much from the person who should have been declared the victor, and hopium is still being dispensed even as our military appears to have joined the political establishment in knuckling under to the fraud.

One can hope that all is not as it seems.

I’d love to feast on that crow.

(I’d like to add, I find it entirely plausible, even likely, that His Fraudulency is also His Figureheadedness. (Apparently that wasn’t a word; it got a red underline. Well it is now.) Where I differ with the hopium addicts is on the subject of who is really in charge. It ain’t anyone we like.)

Justice Must Be Done.

The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.

Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

Spot Prices.

Kitco Ask. Last week:

Gold $1786.70
Silver $23.18
Platinum $961.00
Palladium $1838
Rhodium $14,500

This week, markets closed as of 3PM MT.

Gold $1774.20
Silver $22.61
Platinum $940.00
Palladium $1900.00
Rhodium $14,850.00

A general decline except in the more obscure platinum group metals (palladium and rhodium). Was that big breakout just a flash in the pan?

XXIX Where did the Helium Come From?

A go-back:

You have actually seen the Cosmic Microwave Background.

Do not watch this entire video.
Why someone felt compelled to record 32 minutes of TV static is beyond me.

About ten percent of TV static is actually the cosmic microwave background, being picked up by your TV set’s antenna.

OK, on to this week’s edumacation.

I dropped this into Part XXII on Powering Stars.

We know, now, that intergalactic gas consists of about three quarters hydrogen and one quarter helium. This gas is hot enough to radiate in X rays, but we can analyze the spectra.

There is only a trace of lithium in this gas, maybe a tiny bit of beryllium, and absolutely nothing else.

This is gas that was never part of a star. This is the original composition of the universe. [At least, as far as ordinary matter goes…but THAT is a future story.]

Part 22

…and it turns out this is a big clue.

I also mentioned, in part XXVII on the Cosmic Microwave Background, that Alpher and Gamow had predicted the cosmic microwave background on the basis of other work they were doing.

I’m now going to discuss that “other work.”

The best info I can find on the abundances of elements in the universe, before stars formed and started making heavier nuclei, is that, by weight, the universe is ~75% hydrogen 1 (one proton, zero neutrons), ~25% helium 4 (two protons, two neutrons), 0.01% each of hydrogen-2 (also known as deuterium, one proton, one neutron), 0.01 percent of helium-3 (two protons, one neutron), and 0.1 parts in a billion of lithium-7 (three protons, four neutrons). This is measured in nebulae consisting of gas that has never been a part of a star.

Alpher was a graduate student working on his PhD under Gamow in 1949; and he performed the first theoretical calculations on what sort of “stuff” ought to have come out of the Big Bang.

Gamow, before sending Alpher’s paper in for publication, added Hans Bethe (1906-2005) to the list of authors. Bethe was indeed a well-regarded astrophysicist (he did a lot of the work in figuring out how stars form elements, and would eventually win the Nobel Prize in 1967 for his work), but he had nothing whatsoever to do with this bit of research on the Big Bang. He had no idea his name was going onto this paper.

So why did Gamow put his name on the paper? So that the list of names would be Alpher, Bethe, and Gamow. Which looks a lot like “Alpha, Beta, Gamma” which, before they were Covid variants, were letters of the Greek alphabet, which, back then, every working physicist and astronomer knew (and that’s why so many of those weird baryons in the “particle zoo” ended up with Greek letter names). It sounds even more like it when you consider that the “th” in Bethe should be pronounced like a “t”, German having lost the th sound centuries ago.

What a prankster!

Alpher was not happy; his PhD dissertation now had him sharing credit with two prominent physicists and he feared that people would assume he had done very little of the actual work. Of course, this is now one of the most famous stories of how geeky scientific humor can be, so the truth of the matter is well known.

That first “Alphabet Paper” doesn’t hold up perfectly, because we now know a lot more than we did then, but it’s a major landmark in the history of cosmology. It got the Big Things right.

So what do we understand about this process now?

About one second after the Big Bang, the universe was a very hot, very dense mass of stuff. So hot and so dense even protons and neutrons couldn’t survive; they’d be blown apart into their constituent quarks with all the gluons (strong force carrying particles) being exchanged between the quarks (and the gluons themselves). It’s very hard to force a quark to separate from a proton or neutron; this universe was hot enough, with particles slamming into each other hard enough, that the neutrons and protons couldn’t even form and stay together in the first place. No sooner would a neutron or proton form than it would be smashed apart again.

It was at one second with the temperature about two billion degrees Kelvin and falling, that this began to change. Protons and neutrons could form without being immediately blown apart again. (This is analogous to the formation of atoms at about 300,000 years after the Big Bang; the temperature became cool enough to let electrons orbit nuclei unmolested.) This is called “proton neutron freezeout.” [Note: I am getting inconsistent search results as to exactly when protons and neutrons began to form.]

The ratio seems to have been about one neutron for every six protons. This is because the proton is a lower energy combination and would be formed preferentially.

Ten to twenty seconds later, temperatures dropped low enough that if a neutron got stuck to a proton, it would stay attached. Before this time, an extremely energetic photon was liable to come along and blow the thing apart. But now deuterium (1 proton, 1 neutron) could form.

There’s an important but subtle difference here versus hydrogen fusion in stars. It’s very difficult to form deuterium in a star because there aren’t any free neutrons there. Two protons have to overcome their mutual repulsion, and one of them has to undergo positive beta decay at the same time, to form a deuterium nucleus. This, on average, takes about nine billion years to happen inside of a star.

The reason there aren’t any free neutrons inside of stars is that free neutrons are unstable. They have a half life of roughly 880 seconds, which means in well under one day, they’re all gone. The reactions going on in stars, in fact, don’t release fresh neutrons either.

But right after the big bang, there are plenty of neutrons; they were just formed. And a neutron has no trouble sticking to a proton–there’s no mutual repulsion in this circumstance, it just has to be moving slow enough to stick rather than ricocheting off.

Over the next ten to twenty minutes, just about every neutron was consumed this way, and any that weren’t didn’t last long. In this time some of the neutrons did decay before they could find a proton; so the ratio was now one neutron for every seven protons.

Deuterium is stable–just barely. Nucleons would really rather be part of a a helium 4 nucleus, which can be formed by combining two deuterium nuclei. And indeed, almost all of the deuterium then combined with other deuterium to form helium 4 (two protons, two neutrons). Helium-4 is very stable indeed.

And at this point the universe was already too cool for carbon to form, as it does in older, heavier stars. And after about 20 minutes, it was too cool for deuterium and helium 4 to form; anything that hadn’t found a “mate” by this time, never would–at least not until stars formed.

So with one nucleon (or baryon) out of every eight being a neutron, starting with an original inventory of sixteen particles, there are two neutrons and fourteen protons. The two neutrons (and two of the 14 protons) end up in one helium 4 nucleus, and the twelve remaining protons become hydrogen. By mass, that’s 1/4 helium, 3/4 hydrogen, by counting atoms, on the other hand, it’s 12 hydrogen atoms to one helium atom.

Some helium 3 also formed, but it’s as rare as deuterium that didn’t happen to combine.

A very small amount of beryllium 7 and lithium 7 formed; the beryllium 7 decayed by positive beta decay into lithium 7.

An even smaller amount of lithium 6 is expected to have formed, but the amount is less than we could measure today.

As you might imagine, the original proportion of neutrons to protons matters greatly (if there were more neutrons, more deuterium and helium could form). Another parameter that matters is how many photons there are per baryon. That, in fact, matters a great deal. You can plug different photon/baryon numbers into the theory and get wildly different concentrations of the end products H-1, H-2, He-3, He-4 and Li-7.

This photon-to-baryon ratio is actually usually expressed the other way around; as baryons to photons, and the value that results in what we actually see today is about six baryons for every ten billion photons.

Here’s a chart showing the different densities (hydrogen-1 is not drawn, it’s 1 and everything else is relative to it) versus the photon/baryon ratios.

In this chart the actual values are shown as circles, and they all correspond to the same photon/baryon ratio at the time of nucleosynthesis.

Now most conceivable combinations simply can’t be gotten out of the theory. You can imagine, for instance, there being twenty times as much deuterium as hydrogen-1; but there’s no photon/baryon ratio in the theory that will let that happen. The mere fact that there is a match for four numbers at the same value tells us the theory is solid and hence we can be pretty confident how many photons there were at that time, versus baryons.

This number can be used to determine how much “normal” matter there was in the early universe…and it’s about 5 percent of the critical density. This is strong evidence that most of the total amount of matter we detect by its gravitational effects (about 30 percent of the critical density) is not normal matter, but rather “dark matter.”

Whatever the heck that is.

Back in part 27 I discussed what the universe looked like 300,000 or so years after the Big Bang. Now I’ve talked about 1 second to twenty minutes.

Dammit, Steve, go back one more second! What was going on at zero seconds!? Tell me!!!

Well, I can’t. Nobody can. At least not in any sort of detailed, physical way. To get past 10-47 seconds with even a wild guess, we’d need a quantum theory of gravity…which we don’t have. And the situation isn’t much better for any time before about 10-6 seconds.

The universe changed multiple times in that first second, and (going backwards toward zero) things were at higher and higher temperatures (energies). We have no real way of knowing what was going on at any energy higher than we can generate in particle colliders. (This is yet another reason cosmologists pay attention to particle physics–places like the Large Hadron Collider are the only labs that can reproduce conditions in the very, very early universe. They just can’t go back to zero.) Thus the closer you get to zero, the more and more speculative things get. (And yes, there’s a lot of speculation; but at least it’s educated speculation.)

I normally shy away from the speculative stuff, but I’m going to make an exception here.

Probably the most important speculation is that between 10-36 seconds and 10-32 seconds (in other words, about the amount of time it takes for a RINO to stab us in the back given the opportunity), the universe went through an epoch of really fast “inflation” where it increased in size by at least a factor of 1078. I think that sets a new record for most gigantic number I’ve ever used in one of these posts (other than a passing reference to a centillion, which is 10303). Now this isn’t solid by any means, but such a thing would explain a few things we do see today, quite adequately. For instance, the uniformity of the cosmic microwave background. If inflation happened, then different parts of the universe that (otherwise) could never have interacted with each other did interact with each other, and the universe had time to become nearly uniform in temperature and density. So most cosmologists are pretty confident that this did happen, at least until a better idea comes along. And even if this is the correct explanation, of course the picture gets refined with each piece of new data. And no one really has any solid notion what could have caused “inflation” to happen.

The “Big Bang” term itself is a placeholder for something we’re pretty sure happened…but cannot describe in any kind of meaningful detail. Questions and (largely unbridled) speculation about it abound.

In the meantime, though, we at least have a good, solid notion where all the elements came from. The hydrogen and helium came about mere moments after the Big Bang, and everything else was made in stars or from dead stars. (Even though stars make helium, most of the helium “out there” is still original, Big-Bang helium. On the other hand, the helium here on Earth is not from either source, but rather from alpha decays since the earth formed.)

And we have one more line of evidence for “dark matter.” One that doesn’t depend on our understanding of gravity.

Next: A big surprise.

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

China is Lower than Whale Shit

Remember Hong Kong!!!

Whoever ends up in the cell next to his, tell him I said “Hi.”

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

China is in the White House

Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for His Fraudulency Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden is Asshoe

China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.

But of course the much more important thing to realize:

Joe Biden Didn’t Win

乔*拜登没赢 !!!
Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!!
Joe Biden didn’t win !!!