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JustJoe has been banned for bad faith arguments designed to waste the time of any who bother trying to correct his horrible science.

! Moderator Note Thanks, it would be my pleasure! Merry Christmas, everybody else!

This should have priority, imo. In the US, Capitalists want workers to revere working hard, not reaching their intellectual potential. I can't even imagine the money that's been poured over the years into campaigns and laws that emphasize this bootstrap mentality where sweating is preferable to thinking. There were an awful lot of free colleges and universities in the US before Ronald Reagan (as gov of CA) started charging for tuition in California, to keep out "undesirables". Much of the reason why there are so many poorly educated white people is because folks like Reagan didn't want smart black people taking over. Perhaps forty years later we can overlook our fear of PoC and decide smarter is better.

I like the boat analogy in that it makes the point that affirmative action programs were never intended to be permanent. They are supposed to be implemented, I'm using college as an example, to help get minorities who start with some academic disadvantages into the college system. Course corrections on the boat. The idea was always that the following generations, raised with the advantages of college-educated higher-earning (sometimes) parents, won't need AA at all. That was the whole point of Senator Daniel P. Moynihan's concept of breaking the cycle of poverty. AA is a ladder out of a hole, not a permanent fixture everywhere you go. If a smart kid has trouble keeping up in school because parents (or a single parent) can't provide homework help, a quiet study space, extra cash for lessons and tutoring, a big shelf of books, trips to museums and arts events, and an array of other amenities that help kids do well in school....well, it's in society's best interest to give him some extra help, because it's in society's interest to have citizens that reach their intellectual potential.

I don't know what the original language was, but I assume it was German. Here I found this German version: And that is 'parts'. But I am not sure how reliable that website is. But googling the whole sentence, I find a few other citations, but no other with the complete text, except other English translations. The few I looked at all say 'parts'.

Try wrapping both parts of the fraction in “\displaystyle{}”: \[\displaystyle{v=\frac{a_{0} t}{1+\displaystyle{\frac{a_{0} L_{n}}{c^{2}}}}}\] I’m not sure how to fix the equation being too tall, and not vertically centred on the equal sign.

Yes, those botflies and leaches always best me at chess.

Can't say that I'm in favor of the Hitler Youth model of litter control. Do we really want the government turning citizens against each other for the righteous goal of nailing scofflaws who drop a gum wrapper in the parking lot?

I think changing the mindset is crucial no matter what we decide to do. So much of the trash generated is convenience-oriented packaging that has to go from manufacturer to distributor to supplier to consumer, then sit on our shelves for a short amount of time. Nobody but the consumer is interested in making products last in the package once you've gotten it home and opened it (see any Ziplock bags inside a cereal box?). I reuse all good plastic and glass containers, over and over if I can. I have a whole collection downstairs that I use to store other stuff, mix a small amount of paint or oil in, fill with water to use as a weight, or any other job where you need a jug or can with a cap or lid. And I keep hoping the laws will change and I can start taking my old containers to fill them up with bulk rice or flour or sugar. Didn't I see a headline a while back about a bacteria that eats plastic and poops out something better for the environment? I'd seriously be willing to get rid of my back yard and turn it into a mulch for little plastic piranha bugs. I'm so sick of wasting resources on a lawn in a high altitude desert. I agree, there's no single fix. It has to be a compound effort. I'm sure the US campaign from the 60s was accompanied by stiff fines for littering, but the message got to me. My family was big on camping when I was growing up, and we always packed out our trash. Keep America Beautiful resonated with me, and as an adult, if there's no trash can I stuff my refuse in a pocket and throw it away later. I know if I toss something on the ground, I'm creating both an eyesore and extra work for someone. Taking care of my own litter taught me not to take my problems and make them other people's problems.

I can't agree with those who think enough people are public spirited enough to keep places basically litter free. The issue has to be a mix of education and enforcement of both those who create unwanted items (trash) and those who spread it. Just go to any school in the UK and watch what happens at chucking out time. Kids unwrapping someinthing and dropping wrappers immediately as they walk. No attempt to find a bin or store the 'trash' for later disposal. Older people used to just flick cigarette butts, matches, vaping canisters anywhere along their path. After I returned from a holiday a few years ago I remarked that I had spent a very pleasant day in Munich, and what a clean city it was. I had only seen 3 pieces of litter the entire day in a city of 3 million people. My friend said yes its clean because of the fines. Harry went out for the night, drank too much and was fined 50 marks (on the spot) for vomiting in a taxi.

May I interest you in de-differentiation? A process where a differentiated cell decides to try something new and becomes a state that has higher flexibility and then changes again to a new job- but slightly different then those that differentiated directly into the role? I assume it is a process exclusively developed to annoy the heck out of cell biologists.

OMFG ! Can you see air ???? Yet we are able to build planes that use properties of air to stay aloft and fly. What the hell are you talking about Phi probably has more Physics knowledge in the nail of his left pinky finger than you have in your head. About the only good thought you've had since you joined is that we might as well ban you.

It should also be noted that at least in US Colleges can only use factors such as race in admission only in a fairly limited sense. Specifically, they are only allowed to use it in order to create a diverse learning environment. While it can (and hopefully) does help underprivileged groups, I *think* they are not allowed to use that as justification. While only tangentially relevant, it should also be added that a minority of colleges use such mechanisms and it is banned in a few states for quite a while already. At the same time, if you ask folks some think that this is a dominant selection mechanism. I.e. similar to other efforts of equity, folks overestimate what is actual done (i.e. the level of course correction) relative to what is actually happening. And certain news outlets heavily use the assumed impact and treat it as reality to manufacture outrage. Edit: I should add that there is apparently a playbook/script of sorts by conservative groups that try to associate e.g. critical race theory and affirmative action with racism, gender identity to sexual exploitation/grooming and so on. While this was the purview of the extreme fringe, they have gotten sufficient traction that they have entered the mainstream (as evidenced by politicians espousing such rhetoric). So it is not just shitty reporting, as my post might have suggested.

So your theory is that mass has been disappearing from galaxies all this time? I don't think there's any variation in sizes or rotational speeds of galaxies, so that would be a counterargument. If mass had been "evaporating" from galaxies, younger ones (farther away) would have been larger or rotating faster than older ones (nearer) are now, and that hasn't been observed. People occasionally hypothesize that maybe current theory inverts what's really happening, so things like the speed of light and the gravitational "constant" have been changing instead of space expanding. But that's not mainstream theory, and no one has presented any compelling arguments for preferring those ideas, so you should post questions like this in the Speculations area.

For those that want to better understand expansion and redshift including the three types of redshift. Doppler Gravitational redshift Cosmological redshift Read this article I wrote years ago http://cosmology101.wikidot.com/redshift-and-expansion

It's a FOX News perspective that ignores the centuries when those folks were being actively suppressed. It focuses instead on how unfair it seems to do more than simply remove the suppression. This perspective complains that "extra privilege" to correct the problem is unfair. I've never understood the stance. I've been on enough boats to know that if you're off course, it's not enough to simply return to center. You need to overcompensate, steer hard to port for a while before coming back to center, because you were headed too far to starboard.

No, there aren’t, but… 1. If you think there are, show evidence of it 2. What you believe doesn’t matter. It’s what you can show. IOW, evidence is necessary.

Can you elaborate? What extra privileges are the less privileged being empowered with?

In human fossils significant bran growth was seen around 2 million years ago. While cooking would be difficult to pinpoint as the relevant factor, a study in 2004 (Stedman, H., Kozyak, B., Nelson, A. et al. Myosin gene mutation correlates with anatomical changes in the human lineage. Nature 428, 415–418 (2004) https://doi.org/10.1038/nature0235) has found a mutation in a gene that leads to weaker jaw muscles, estimated to have occurred about 2.4 million years ago. In related primates, the jaw muscles are connected to large skull crests, which are absent from modern humans. Thus, the author speculate that when our jaw muscles stopped putting stress on the skull, the crests were not important anymore and might have opened the way to further skull growth. However, it has also been argued that some fossils still showed small brain sizes as recent as 1.8 million years ago (early Homo erectus). Now I don't know much about the consensus in terms of first fire use, but using wiki a range of 1.7 - 2 million years ago are mentioned. While the evidence from that time does not seem definite, it would line up with the fossil data for brain growth and myosin gene mutation. It does appear that fire use 1 million years ago is rather certain, so if we used this time point the largest discrepancy between fire use and brain growth would be around 1 million years ago (though certainly not millions). I have also read that folks speculate that beyond cooking meat, the simple act of pre-processing food (e.g. mashing and cutting) could have contributed to the lack of need of large jaw muscles and such tools were around since at least 2.6 million years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang#Observational_evidence

Long winded posts that jumble ideas together without separating into paragraphs, that talk about subjective concepts with no objective evidence, on a science forum of all places, and that no one bothers reading. Generally, a waste of everyone's time; seems very troubling to me.

Hey, I've got one: There once was a man with a doubt All the mistakes pointed out He asked left and right He wasn't too tight But his questions were nothing about I hope it helps.

Since you are not a believer, the voices in your head would not be those of God but rather of your neighbors, FBI, maybe aliens (if you believe in them), etc.

I would imagine that as you said there would be some consistent results influenced on what each religion prescribes god to be and also load of random made up answers that were influenced by personal experience. In which case the survey would be quite pointless. God has never spoken to me in any form, so until he/she/it does then I will remain skeptical at best. Then even then, if i started to hear voices other than my own, I would be looking to seek some psychological help to begin with.

[math]\displaystyle{v=\frac{a_0 t}{1+\frac{a_0 Ln}{c^2}}}[/math] Hmm..... I thought I got an "unknown environment" error when I did that before. Thanks, that's perfect.

Very interesting point! +1 And what about the compatibility problem in all its facets - would a very advanced civilisation even be recognisable as such by other species, or would they just blend into their natural environment so well that it would be really difficult to detect their presence at all, even from close by? We always imagine alien structures to look overtly like a piece of manufactured technology, but really, there’s no guarantee that this must be so.

[math]v = \frac{a_0 t}{1 + \frac{a_0 L n}{c^2}}[/math] Letters too small, eqn too tall. I have at least 15 lines of math, plus explanatory text. Don't want to make too long of a post or make people squint too much.

It wasn't a dig nor was I talking about you. Generally speaking I think others dismiss you too quickly due to the fact the topic is aliens, but I feel that you tend to make a distinction between those things that are phony and those that are genuinely unexplained.

@Lorentz Jr You can do it better - use nested frac commands..

The false perception that we are perceiving and thinking and acting in the present when there is actually a significant time lag has intrigued me - a little bit, or maybe a lot of predictive power needs to be involved in doing that.

No, it doesn’t. Not according to mainstream physics. Our rules require you to have a model and evidence in order to advance this as speculation.

I'm not sure that the projectile is a runner at all. If you add energy to a star, you're surely delaying the day that it goes supernova, or swells up like our Sun will. You may be just turning back the clock, making the star effectively younger. I know we can't possibly forecast what might be possible in a million years time. (or not possible) Your guess is as good as mine, probably better. But both are just shots in the dark. Maybe if astronomers were to witness an exploding star, that should not have exploded, that might be grounds for suspicion. I personally don't think that there's much of a motive for destroying aliens, or them destroying us. I think that there must be billions of uninhabited Earthlike planets out there to exploit, if that's what they want. And the way that technology accelerates, if they are ahead of us now, they will always be ahead of us, so there's no real need to fear that a less advanced culture might overtake us. Unless they live and function at a much higher tempo, I guess.

One of the lowest of the estimates out there. CJCS (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) has it at 40,000 civilian casualties. My guess is that this is due to differing definitions of what are war caused deaths/injuries, some including more indirect causes. Everyone counts someone killed or seriously injured by munitions landing near them or being shot, but not everyone may count the heart attack of someone who was running away or digging out or cases of people dying of pre-existing health conditions due to interruptions in medical care and/or medicine supplies. There would also be deaths of despair for which war conditions were the precipitating factor. If this seems pretty grim, add in what happens in terms of deaths from freezing (and fleeing) if Putin's current campaign against power utilities is not countered by further western alliance donations of anti-missile systems (like the Patriot missiles now planned).

Indifference strikes me as much more probable than overt aggression. To use an analogy, I don't know anyone who is personally hostile to a low tech tribe living deep in a remote forest, but our desire for cheap lumber (or razing forest to grow crops) might result in their loss of viable habitat. Without intending genocide, we could wipe them out with indifference and lack of creating a special preserve. The probability of advanced civs that dismantle rocky planets for resources seems low, but I agree that it's not zero. Ten thousand years ago or earlier, Earth would have not shown any obvious signs of intelligent life to a casual observer or a planet-cracking robot, so any possible ethical reservations might have been moot. Seems like it's very much a human 21st century mindset to consider another ET race as exploitative in this way. Another factor not much discussed is the loneliness factor. If advanced civs are rare, would they want to go around wiping out possible future companions who would make the vast bleakness less lonely? Yes, that depends on their character and emotional makeup.

Here is a screenshot of the Washington Post editorial today on the NIF news. (I hope this is okay, in terms of the rule about posting just links to commercial websites - this is really just a screenshot archive, quite safe to click on): https://archive.ph/vS6fX

The breakthrough would be if people stopped doing things for money..

It was, but not anymore: Mistermack, I gave you +1 for that. Real-life standard is not only about technology, but also about ethics, morals, so your ideas have no prospect of being put into practice in the real world. As we evolved we became less prone to mass murder, because that is what you suggest (I wonder why moderators are allowing that). Here in Romania we have brown bears in some cities (not only in small villages), in search for food, and we are not allowed to eliminate them. How can you possible think that a civilized society would allow (and finance ...) mass murder in such a huge scale (planets, with all live on them; and even solar systems, by damaging the stars). This is insane. Please don't discuss such things in a science forum, unless you mention it in order for us to be prepared for such an attack. You didn't mention anything about how we can defend us. You only mentioned radio silence (but didn't elaborate). Instead you insisted on how to attack ... Aliens are not an immediate danger. Sure, we can consider not to advertise our presence, but not necessarily to hide in caves and/or keep radio silence (no mobile phones, no GPS, etc.). If you are concerned about the survival of our species, you should consider/discuss how to avoid mutual annihilation, how to avoid/survive an asteroid impact and how to avoid being destroyed or enslaved by machines (A.I.).

Right , so you are saying a tiny tiny portion of space existed before the big bang that was surrounded by nowhere ? Sorry but it sounds absurd because it is absurd . Nobody can prove that nowhere ever ''existed'' , it is more likely that there was somewhere meaning lots more space than a tiny tiny portion .

From what I have read there is no evidence that space is expanding or has ever expanded in any way . There is evidence by the Hubble observation that observable matter is receding away from our observation position . Space itself isn't observable by any means because it does not emit or reflect light . ''Space existed at the time of BB (the "~10-43" point). The BB has happened everywhere in that space.'' I thought you did imply this , perhaps I misunderstood your post , my apologies .

I believe my conscious self will live on forever regardless of whatever physical form I take. If I'm a dog in some other suit (living body) worn by my soul, I will be aware of myself as a dog. I could be a woman someday too. I probably should not even worry about what happens when I die. Only time will tell. What will be, will be. This is a philosophy forum, actually. I never said I was a master writer. I'm here brainstorming. I'm just trying to throw out what is on my mind. Most humans naturally consider the possibility of an afterlife. If there is 'another life' waiting for me, I can only hope it beats this one. Scientists should be open minded enough to consider the possibilty of a hereafter. Did you know some medical doctors are even religious persons? Nobody is twisting your arm here to repsond or read what is here. That's all. That said, MigL, how do you feel this morning?

''Observations of distant galaxies and quasars show that these objects are redshifted:'' Observations of space isn't possible so how can anyone conclude an expansion of space ? If redshift is deemed to be a Doppler like effect , then the observations show receding galaxies rather than an expansion of space . The measure between distant galaxies can expand but in no way does this imply an actual expansion of space itself . Also what do you mean by redshift exactly ? Does science observe 750nm or there about ?

Might as well ban me if on here you are going to ignore the actual physics and make up a load of rubbish . You know very well how we see and how we observe visible matter . You know very well that space does not emit or reflect light . I don't want to be part of a forum that is going to directly lie to people just to keep a theory ''alive'' . No offense but you are making this forum come across as ''religious'' rather than scientific . I also suggest other members quit this forum because it is nothing more than an American power trip ! Again , another moderator who wants to preach instead of discussing . Tm is right what he said about scientists Not true

Does electron-proton attraction have more strength than electron-electron repulsion ?

So, an all-knowing scientist/prophet has written the holy text of the big bang theory and we should all believe, because those who do not believe in the exact wording shall be punished. Intepretations of the holy words are not allowed, nor any type of criticism, especially, if you are not familiar with the higher spheres of cosmology and do not hold a certain title granted by exclusive members of this high society. Is this the science we deserve after paying our taxes? Lol (common, this is a little joke, please laugh)

I can conceptualise the big bang but not without there being space . I actually think the author messed up , they should of said there was the absence of light and matter rather than the absence of space which is absurd in my opinion . A hot dense state has to occur somewhere is my belief because nowhere doesn't exist .