moth

I've seen popular interpretations of the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment that suggest the result shows the past can be changed. Would that be another argument against a universal "now" or is this just quantum bizaarness? As I understand it this experiment involves a double slit experiment arrainged to either detect which slit a photon takes or allow the photon to interfere with itself as it would if no detector was watching. If the detector is set to determine the path the photon takes and removed after the photon passes through the slit(s) an interference pattern is observed. This seems contradictory because at the time the photon interacts with the slits the detector is in place and the photon should appear particle-like, but after the photon has passed the slits and no longer can interact with them but before it reaches the detector, the detector is removed and the photon appears wave-like as if the past has been altered so the detector was never there. This is all way above my pay grade so I apologize if it's off topic

Its been a few years since i had to use assembly language but i believe the line 'ASCII "KimT"' creates a buffer in your code containing the ascii values for "KimT" in this case. The value 0x000D is an offset from the start of the program to the first character of this buffer, 0x000E points to the second character etc.

At least as much fun as a stack of old Scientific Americans. http://royalsociety.org/news/Royal-Society-journal-archive-made-permanently-free-to-access/ Ever wonder what Newton was up to during the black plague?

C is the carry bit 2C is the same as shifting left one bit so C is in the correct "column".

Depending on what you're trying to do, you may find this camera will work. It's about 100 $ and will control servos directly from the camera board. [edit] Just had a look at the expansion bus on the Blackfin and it looks like you can control 2 servos directly from the camera board or the expansion module. so yes.

It's a little easier for me to see the reordering if I use letters in the series [math]a_{1}=1, a_{n+1}=2a_{n}[/math] [math] (2-1)*(a_1+a_2+a_3+a_4...)=((2a_1-1a_1)+(2a_2-1a_2)+(2a_3-1a_3)+...)[/math] gives the original series back. But the way it's done in the video [math] ((-1a_1)+(2a_1-1a_2)+(2a_2-1a_3)+...)[/math] is a different series so you can't say it's equal to the original anymore. Thanks for the help!

I saw a video on youtube showing infinity = -1. Basically it starts with the series 1+2+4+8+16+... = infinity, then multiplies each term by (2-1) which of course equals 1 and 1 * x = x so you should wind up with an identical series. Now you have 2 series 2+4+8+16... and -1-2-4-8-16... and all the terms of the two series cancel each other except -1 so infinity = -1. I'm suspicious of the result but I don't see any mistake(I'm no math wizz). So I tried the same thing with 3-2=1 but I soon realized any other combination (3-2,4-3, etc)=1 just gives the original series back as you would expect multiplying by 1 to do. Is infinity = -1?

Forget one of the ships for a second, it's just the same problem going the other direction. Replace one ship with a light source that turns on exactly when the remaining ship is traveling .5c and 8 light minutes away heading directly towards the light source. For every unit of distance the ship moves toward the light source the light from the source moves 2 units towards the ship. The distance from the ship to the light decreases by 3 units for every unit of distance the ship travels - so the ship moves 1/3 of the way and light travels 2/3 of the distance. They meet after the ship travels 8/3 light minutes. But we all agree the speed of light is constant from any frame of reference and in this scenario the closing distance decreases by 1.5 times the speed of light and the ship "sees" the light going too fast. some sort of correction is needed to keep lightspeed a constant. but then i'm just a mutt with a screw loose so i could be wrong ;-)

Ontologically speaking, can nothing have properties? Space has properties like permitivity, permeability, and zero point energy, how could it be nothing?

I mean although we have no way of perceiving empty space directly (not tangible), space has properties like distance that can change (mutable). That is assuming Hubble expansion is correct of course. If some unknown force is accelerating distant galaxies its effects seem to resemble uniform expansion remarkably well. Recently, I saw an article about a "time lens" being used to mask events from detection by a laser beam. As I was trying to find out more about this "time lens" I found a paper suggesting such a device could be used to increase the apparent duration of an event making events too fast to be observed last long enough to see what was happening (at least that's what the abstract seem to say - I couldn't download the actual paper). If it is possible to magnify time that would seem to make it somewhat space-like. the links to the articles are here if you are interested.

Sorry if I seem off-topic here, but you've implied that length can not be frame dependent because space is empty volume - nothing to expand or contract. If expanding space is not causing recessional velocity to increase with distance then some force must be acting on those bodies to accelerate them. If expanding space IS causing the universe to change this way then space can be mutable even if not tangible. Changes in space itself are a simple way to explain both recessional velocities and (with time dilation) a constant speed of light. You seem to be abandoning Occam's razor in favor of a desire to make space fit some pre-conceived ideas about it.

I was thinking about the supernova and Cepheid variable data that is used to support the idea of Hubble expansion. You've said you don't believe the expansion of space is possible but didn't specify if you also disputed the evidence for the motions of distant galaxies moving away at velocities which increase with distance.

I don't know if space and time are entities. Since there are working mathematical models of space and time I have to wonder if it's possible to model nothing, but I'm not sure if not nothing is something. Do you agree that recessional velocities increase with distance or are those observations that show they do in error?

What is the ontology of distance? If it's just the space between two points then what is "it" that is expanding to create Hubble expansion? Or is that just another crazy notion like time dilation? It seems to me like your efforts to refute spacetime demand more definition of time than space, which you seem to accept as obvious.

Are you thinking about Hubble's law? that would tell you how the distance between two points in space changes over time. I don't think it's quite the same as how "fast they are traveling" but more like how much more time it would take for light to travel from one point to the other. As for why it seems to be accelerating i don't know.

what is a time lens ? Is it what it sounds like or is it techno-speak? I'm sorry if this topic exists already. I searched and found nothing. This article about optics seems related. How similar are diffraction in space and dispersion in time? Does an event dispersed in time form patterns like diffraction? Just curious.

If there were 4 dimensions the answer would be simple. Just like walking around a white room with a black square on the wall, depending on where you stand in the room you may see a square, rectangle, or even diamond shape. Wouldn't we expect to see a 4-d system work in a similar way? Depending on your kinetic energy relative to another system you have a different perspective on that system (length contraction) and if that 4th dimensional motion were through the "time dimension" (one direction is faster time passage the other direction is slower time passage) a different rate of time (time dilation) would seem natural.

I was just wondering if anybody knows whether any monitoring was done after the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki to see if radiation reached the U.S.? Short of a China syndrome type of meltdown or a fire in the spent fuel holding ponds, I'm guessing much more radiation was released from the bombs, is that correct?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJkurPs9smA you people who don't believe the "truth" need to watch more chinese news . what is going on? a coordinated disinformation campaign or madness of the crowd ? if it's the end it's time to party not cry.

I wasn't really thinking about predictive models. I was thinking about the Lorenz butterfly yesterday and it got me wondering if strange attractors ever showed up in models of governments or politics. Maybe there is a topography of strange attractors that make up a political landscape?

It occurred to me a functional approximation of our democracy could be something like electorate is a function of the number of people who vote (and that is a function of what the public believes), electoral_college is a function of electorate, and president is a function of electoral_college PRES(E_C(E(PUB(b))) . It's probably lame because i'm not a mathematician, but the more general question - mathematics can describe so much of nature can it describe government? If so, might we discover new maxima in the equations, or are people so irrational their government must also be psycho?

Anybody can jump from an airplane with no parachute at least one time. Have you seen the ? Most people do use a parachute to land, but a couple of years ago this guy had a plan to land on a mountainside or skijump type of ramp. Some people combine the wing suit with a strap-on jet pack for even more fun(but they use a parachute to land).

It sounds reasonable when you put it like that. Must have been the vodka that made it seem strange.

Of course, the dreaded frame mixing. Thanks for setting me straight.

my loose analogy of a photon is a changing electric field causes a change in the magnetic field of "space" which changes the electric charge of "space", but how can something change if no time passes?