Maybe in finances. I have had 6 (!) interview rounds for an introductory level tech job before. No job offer too, after all those rounds.

This kind of narrative is really targeted more at investors than it is consumers. The modern investing environment is focused on finding "unicorns" - startups that hit a valuation of >$1B before being listed on the stock exchange.

The problem with this approach extends beyond dodgy statistics. This is the logic behind companies that prioritize growth above all other goals, including profit. But it also means that potential "unicorn" companies are pushed to focus their efforts on areas that will encourage faster growth and not to worry about anything that isn't directly tied to growth. That is how you get tech giants like Uber, Air B&B, WeWork, and the much laughed-at MoviePass, none of which are profitable and all of which are actually old company models sprinkled with just enough technomagic to seem new. Some (MoviePass) fail faster than others, but all of these companies throw investor money into an endless war over user growth so they can justify more investment.

It is a question of timescales. Capacitors are typically used to “smooth out” power over timescales of nanoseconds to seconds (super capacitors can sometimes go up to minutes or hours). Batteries can smooth out power over timescales of minutes to years.

Batteries are also better at “clamping” to a certain voltage, while capacitor voltage is typically more variable.

The ant on a rubberband example does not work for the universe. Even if the Hubble constant was constant with time, the universe expands exponentially, not linearly (so the “universe” rubberband length goes 1,2,4,8; not 1,2,3,4). An ant on an exponentially growing rubberband cannot reach everywhere.

A note on the “size” of the universe - you will see articles referencing the size of the “observable” universe. This is just the bit of the universe that we can see. As /u/mfb- says, there is currently no known “edge” to the universe.

However, the current “observable” universe is likely the most of the universe we will ever see. This is because the universe is expanding. After a certain distance, things are moving away from us faster than the speed of light. Those objects are unreachable to us now (and probably forever). You can think of it like a moving walkway that is moving faster than a person can run. Even if you run full tilt against the moving walkway, you will not reach the other side.

So there is no “edge” in the sense of a wall or something, but there is a limit to what we can see and (as far as current models predict) a limit to what we will ever see.

I would argue it is connected. SP2 hybridized carbon atoms form bonds at 120 degree angles because that is the most efficient packing for electrons around the atomic nucleus.

It isn’t exactly the same, but both situations arise due to a most-efficient-packing problem (and the hexagon happens to be the optimal packing in both cases).

It will be close to 0. Charge imbalances create very strong forces to rebalance the charge. Space also isn’t completely empty, but it is filled with charged particles that will quickly move to rebalance any charge. This is especially true around earth, where we sit in the solar wind (the stream of charged particles coming from the sun).

To add to this, the earth is also frequently not a large enough capacitor, especially for higher power applications. Large radio stations and radar stations often have a metal mesh placed on or under the ground nearby to make the “earth” a better capacitor. Lightning discharge spikes often extend deep into the foundations of buildings, or sometimes have a spike that extends below the foundations of the building, to get a better ground connection.

So the earth is often assumed to be infinite during the initial design stage, and if it turns out not to be “infinite” enough we can supplement the “earth” so that our design still works.