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My opinion of him went down considerably when I learned he has tried to rubbish philosophy: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2014/05/20/pigliucci-pwns-neil-degrasse-tyson-smbc-teases-pigliucci/ He doesn't seem to understand that science is both rooted in philosophy and poses philosophical questions. So I suspect he's a bit shallow. I'm sure he knows his science but I would take anything he says about other matters with a pinch of salt.

I lean towards spacetime as a mathematical entity. What has increasing curvature near a massive object? The math. Curved geometry. No sheets, no bowling balls, no stuff. Like going to the bowling alley without equipment and saying, I'm ready, dudes, I brought pi, f=ma, and a couple other maths with me. What breaks down at the singularity? The equations do. It's math being employed to do things that it's hard for math to do. JMAPCO (just my astrophysics-challenged opinion)

It isn't reasonable, it's just one extra low-P thing to cross off the list. And I meant more in ongoing investigations. One can't inspect equipment or give post-flight physicals to people in the 1940s. I just meant investigators should strive to rule out even unlikely scenarios so that the investigation data isn't tainted later because someone says oh they didn't eliminate that. E.g. if something caused a short in some industrial equipment, I would think a cat crawling in there was improbable but I'd still check for burned fur or whatever.

Agreed on that, there are cases where the witness really didn't want the attention. One would tend to give those witnesses greater credibility. Doesn't mean a mistaken identity wasn't involved etc etc. I tend to have more respect for the cases where it's clear the motivation has nothing to do than generate monetary gain or attention seeking.

I personally don't base my opinion of any physicist by how popular they are in the media etc. Yes they tend to excel at taking complex topics and simplifying for the public which is very useful and beneficial. It generates interest to help generate new students as well as enhances interest for research etc. So that's never a bad thing. However I tend to focus on their research papers etc. Neil DeGrasse papers aren't bad but someone like Sean Carroll has a wider range of recommended literature. However that's just me

It's best to regard spacetime as simply the arena where the SM model of particles/fields reside. It really is simply a volume that uses the Interval (ct) to give time dimensionality of a length. Spacetime curvature under this describes the particle paths and the easiest way to understand this is to use parallel transport. (The equations of the EFE also uses parallel transport) If spacetime is flat two parallel beams of light will remain parallel. If you have positve curvature those beams will converge. If you have negative curvature they will diverge. For gravity use the same manner. Draw two lines at some distance apart and connect them to the CoM. You will notice those lines converge as you approach the centre of mass. Another useful tool to understand why particles follow different paths is to realize that all particle motion obeys the principle of least action. (This includes Feymann integrals as well as spacetime geodesics). Terms such as fabric etc gives false impressions of spacetime being some material or substance. It really is simply a metric that describes a volume and spacetime paths (null geodesics for massless particles such as photons). What affects the paths is all matter and force fields of the SM model. The coupling constants collectively give rise to the mass terms (mass is resistance to inertia change). They also have strange stars that suggest with certain neutron stars all quarks become strange quarks. Some models really stretch the imagination but surprisingly enough do have enough viability to warrant research. As for myself I study some of these as they often include unique ways to mathematically describe fields and states that I find useful for model developments. They also have papers suggesting a dark sector of a wide range of particles such as dark photons etc. Yeah I don't agree with the theory myself I ran across it a few years back.

Free entertainment. Even leaves one with a fuzzy feeling that they learned something.

My thoughts are, he's a good teacher at a certain level, IOW he's read at least two pages past his student's, but doesn't understand the question of puberty... I'm with @Eise +1, just late to the conversation...

All All good Found a decent article for the OP though older describes the proton-neutron ratios of exchange in our atmosphere due to cosmic ray interaction. " At sea level, neutrons contribute about 10 percent of the total radiation exposure to man from cosmic rays (ref. 1). Neutrons reaching the Earth's surface are principally created in the Earth's atmosphere by the interaction of the primary cosmic rays with oxygen and nitrogen nuclei at high altitudes and in the subsequent development of a hadronic cascade down through the atmosphere. (Relatively few neutrons are present in the primary galactic cosmic radiation or solar radiation reaching the Earth because their radioactive half-life is approximately 12 min.) Two nuclear reactions are important in the production of cosmic-ray neutrons: direct inelastic reactions producing "knock-on" neutrons, with energies from about 1 MeV to well in excess of 1 GeV, and evaporation " https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19760008919/downloads/19760008919.pdf

The moon near the horizon seems bigger; this is known as the moon illusion. There is some debate as to the exact cause - there are several possible contributing factors. One is the difficulty in judging distance to things on the horizon - an object in the sky can be further away than those on the ground and still be visible. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_illusion

Capitalism isn’t necessarily to blame, at least not as much as our failure to include negative externalities into the costs paid by producers and consumers of goods and services. Manufacturer doesn’t get fined for poisoning the water. Consumer doesn’t get taxed for continuing to buy goods from that manufacturer. The cycle of water poisoning persists while healthcare needs skyrocket and economic burdens get shifted (shafted?) to everyone downstream who weren’t ever even involved in the transaction. Carbon taxes were an attempt to address this and it want capitalism that made it fail. It was politics and short term self-interest among plutocrats.

And even if it did capture some pollutants, they make another claim that you can harvest biomass from this for use as a 3D printing medium. Why are we make everyday items out of polluted materials? If we don't want to breathe them, is touching them on the daily a good idea?

For instance, yellow-orange laser light has a frequency of about 5x10**14 Hz. The binary light frequency is equivalently 1x10**110001 Hz. How this makes a difference is of course a mystery, but adding mirrors to the situation is just going to add to the delays since the path is less straight. Yea, about 6 to 45 minutes depending on how far away Mars is at the time. 6-45 minutes later is not 'before it was sent'. Zero justification for the suggestion otherwise has been given.

Maybe later, I'm watching a film ATM... 😉