Airbrush

A cable news report I just saw says Ivanka Trump will meet with Al Gore today. Anyone with an advanced degree in climate science, with the most peer-reviewed articles published in respected science journals. If Morgan Freedman places a phone call to Donald, do you think Donald will refuse to take the call? Then Morgan will use his actor's skill in persuading Donald to think again. Many more celebrities believe in the significance of climate change than not. They will get in line placing calls to Donald to let Donald know what they think about climate change. So I think he can flip flop on this without too much trouble.

Very well said, and that explains much. I was not aware of an inconclusive climate debate going on. But what can be simpler than a great animation that shows the north polar caps melting away and the dark water absorbs more heat? That is a powerful picture. Or a visual on sun rays being trapped in the atmosphere. If someone expresses doubts about the veracity of that animation, there should be a panel of REAL, widely recognized, climate experts to moderate and to pass judgment on those doubts.

So if we don't know where to look it is possible for Pluto-sized dwarf planets to exist far out among the Kuiper Belt and never be detected, because there may not be nearby objects that can be gravitationally affected by it.

It looks like Trump has never had much interest in science. Recently he modified his stance on climate change and said he is "open minded" about it. That tells me his bubble is slowly bursting. Influential people are making phone calls to Trump and informing him about the reality that exists outside his bubble of total approval for 70 years. Ever since he became wealthy he has had limited interests and science was not one of them, because he has been totally self-absorbed in being a dictator in the business world. Anyone who is interested in science, like the folks who post here, would have seen many science documentaries in their lifetime. Never have I seen a science documentary about climate change that was in denial. I disagree with those who say a debate on climate change is pointless and may actually lose. When the facts come out and the facts are illustrated by effective animations, cutting-end CGI, the deniers lose. Fake science can be easily debunked, real science cannot.

If Trump's side is really supported by less than 1% of climate experts, then state that in the debate and how are Trump's non-experts going to counter argue? "I may not be a climate expert, but I am a smart person and I deny climate change." They cannot, they lose the debate. Trump has already indicated it is an "even battle". The media is generally in agreement with climate change and I think most educated people and celebrities are also. There could be a Climate Change Concert. So should we just give up and allow Trump's stance to define the USA?

But isn't an infinitesimal divisor a non-zero value? As the divisor approaches zero, the fraction's value approaches infinity. But a fraction's value using a zero divisor is undefined, so infinity is also undefined. Infinite density is undefined, right?

That is not a reason for not having a "big spectacular TV event debate". Trump should love that, the SPECTACULAR, one of Trump's favorite words. With some hype it could achieve tens of millions of viewers. Climate change can be broken down into understandable animations. Let's see the climate deniers animations, allow a panel of verifiable experts (only real, reputed, peer-reviewed climate scientists) be the judges. Trump's denial of climate change is based on the Evangelical belief that God would not create the human-caused, climate change dilemma.

I don't understand what you mean. Density becomes infinite, for a finite amount of mass, only when the volume equals zero. What am I missing? I'm not an expert.

You need infinite mass and/or zero volume. "Infinitesimal" is not small enough.

That is why there should be a push for a "big-TV-event" definitive debate on the subject, a great debate with spectacular numbers of viewers. Let Trump bring forth the experts to debunk climate change. Allow viewers to vote.

Anyone catch the first episode of the new season of "How the Universe Works"? It was about the new "Planet 9" that scientists think exists about 100 Billion miles from the sun, or an average of 20 times the distance from the sun to Neptune and Pluto. They think it is about 10 Earth masses and 2 to 4 Earth diameters in size. My question is since such a large planet could exist far outside our usual solar system without our knowing it, does that mean there could be many planets the size of Pluto or larger in that region without us ever being able to detect them? "...The most useful result, from Batygin’s perspective, was one that went beyond the question he and Brown had set out to answer. Their initial problem had been to explain what could drive the paths of six very distant, recently discovered KBOs. But as they developed their model, it consistently produced a few objects that moved on a completely unexpected path, perpendicular to the plane of the solar system. As he worked on the calculation, Batyagin hadn’t known of any real objects that behaved that way, but the model kept demanding them. This, he thought, “must be strong counter evidence for Planet Nine—because we would have seen those orbits.” That’s when he asked Brown—the observer of the pair—what he thought. Brown produced the data for a KBO with an odd track. “We plotted the real data on top of the model” Batyagin recalls, and they fell “exactly where they were supposed to be.” That was, he says, the epiphany. “It was a dramatic moment. This thing I thought could disprove it turned out to be the strongest evidence for Planet Nine.” ​"...For now, Planet Nine seems the only satisfactory explanation for everything now known about the outer suburbs of the solar system. “If Newton is right, then I think we’re in pretty good shape,” says Batyagin. “We’re after a real physical effect that needs explanation. The dynamics of our model are persuasive.” And yet, he adds, that’s not enough. “Until Planet Nine is caught on camera it does not count as being real. All we have now is an echo.” http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/01/a-new-planet-or-a-red-herring/426810/

Trump may receive phone calls from important public figures, such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Angela Merkel, or someone Trump actually respects who will say to him, "Hello Donald, WTF are you doing?!! Are you fxxxing mad? Climate change is here and it is real!!" Donald may only understand blunt talk from someone he respects. Business owners get to be dictators in their empire, but the office of POTUS is NOT a business. Trump may flip flop, but only after he gets yelled at and cussed out. The reason for this is because as a dictator, and the biggest frog in his pond, he has gotten away with cussing out his employees. I was the bookkeeper for a short, old man who owned a small restaurant and because everybody had to say "YES" to him he was an unbearable dictator. Since I was also the HR guy, many employees complained to me. In 10 years I watched him skim off over $1,000,000 of revenues tax free (no sales tax, no income tax, no city tax), but I could not say anything about it. Finally he got into trouble for being too abusive of the men and sexually harassing the women. He was well hated. He was removed from his position and his daughter took over. Interesting none of his waiters were women, because they would be sexually harassed.

"One notable feature of string theory and M-theory is that these theories require extra dimensions of spacetime for their mathematical consistency. In string theory, spacetime is ten-dimensional, while in M-theory it is eleven-dimensional. In order to describe real physical phenomena using these theories, one must therefore imagine scenarios in which these extra dimensions would not be observed in experiments..." So why stop at 4 spatial dimensions? There could be any number of dimensions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-theory

Kepler found our very circular solar system is not typical. Odd elliptical orbits and Hot-Jupiters very close to their star are common. The larger planets are discovered first. There is no limit to variations on solar systems

We are in uncharted waters. He could do anything, but it will be hard for him to continue to avoid reality.

My assumption is the office of POTUS is like a magnet to information from sources Trump was previously unfamiliar with, including security briefings. He was inhabiting his bubble of success. It will be hard for Trump to avoid this new deluge of urgent information.

Trump may not "change" but daily he is being intensively "educated" by the real experts. He successfully avoided reality for 70 years. But now his bubble is bursting as we speak. He will modify, he will flip flop, on some issues.

How do you think this will play out over time? It seems to me that soon, if not already, Trump will come to reality about climate change. He tweeted that climate change was a hoax and when confronted with his tweet by Clinton in the debates, Trump's response was to deny he said that "No, I didn't" like a 5-year-old who was accused of a misdeed and deflects. Either he was ignorant on the subject or was playing that card for the benefit of his supporters. Now when finding himself in a room with authorities on the subject it will be hard for Trump to continue denying human activity on global warming. There should be a big, definitive, televised debate on the subject, so we can get past this. http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-climate-20161127-story.html "The president-elect is unabashed in his disdain for America’s global warming policy. He has placed a staunch climate-change doubter and antagonist of mainstream science in charge of reshaping — or as Trump has suggested, dismantling — the Environmental Protection Agency. He has talked frequently about reneging on the historic Paris global climate treaty the U.S. took a lead in drafting. And he has said he wants every federal green-energy program eliminated. Environmentalists take little comfort in Trump’s recent comments that he accepts “there is some connectivity” between human activity and climate change and that he has an open mind about it, as what he’s said elsewhere and done so far suggests otherwise. And even those comments gave scientists cause for alarm. “You can make a lot of cases for different views,” Trump told the New York Times, casting doubt on the finding by more than 90% of climate scientists that emissions are accelerating global warming. “I’m not sure anybody is ever going to really know.” ​Yes Donald, maybe we will never "really know" so let's assume it doesn't exist for your convenience, you reality revisionist, and when it happens you will be long gone.

Why push? If beyond the big bang is a perfect vacuum, wouldn't that vacuum suck the universe apart as inflation?

Part of the definition of "fascism" in Wikipedia: "....elite-led but populist "armed party" politics opposing socialism and liberalism and promising radical politics to rescue the nation from decadence." ​Sounds a little bit like Trump? "Drain the swamp" "Crooked Hillary" "Crooked Media". Trump has fascist mannerisms, even the exaggerated postures of Mussolini. A better title for the discussion should be "Trump / Modern Dictators". Just look at all the similarities between Trump and various modern dictators. Trump says something then says he never said that, as if to revise reality itself. Remember he lived his entire life in a bubble of approval from all yes-men, yes-women, yes-wives, yes-children, and especially yes-lawyers. That rather spoiled the lad.

The Alt-Right had a rally in DC and on film they captured the speaker Richard Spencer and many members saying "HAIL TRUMP" (or Heil Trump?) and giving the Nazi salute. Trump has not specifically denounced this, but issued a generalized denunciation of racism. http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Are-white-nationalists-Neo-Nazis-Alt-right-Hail-10628963.php "He (Richard Spencer) railed against Jews and, with a smile, quoted Nazi propaganda in the original German. America, he said, belonged to white people, whom he called the 'children of the sun,' a race of conquerors and creators who had been marginalized but now, in the era of President-elect Donald J. Trump, were 'awakening to their own identity."

Does anyone know what Trump's strategy against ISIS could be? He says he will get tough with ISIS, will do it very quickly, and he knows more than the generals, which I suppose means he has listened to Gen Flynn and maybe some other dissenting generals or military analysts. He also says that the battle of Mosul did not have the element of surprise. General MacArther and Patton would be "spinning in their graves" if they knew we didn't surprise ISIS. It seems to me what Trump plans to do is to send spies or drones into occupied territory to figure out where the ISIS leaders are located, then carpet bomb that entire area, and to hell with collateral damage. Do you think that is Trump's ISIS strategy?

"Members of the Obama administration whom I’ve spoken to this week are pained about many aspects of the election result, but this particular set of information stings especially badly to those who are aware of it. Had Clinton won the election, an easy narrative would quickly begin to emerge of how the Obama administration picked up an economy that had fallen to pieces and nursed it back to strength — handing over a rosy situation to its successor." "[Trump] has not taken office yet or done anything that could conceivably merit credit, but data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta shows that wages are growing at their fastest pace in eight years. Nobody noticed in the heat of the October campaign, but data released last month also showed that American wages reached an all-time high point."​ Seems stupid that the Clinton campaign didn't make a major issue of positive trends, something to repeat over and over, the way Trump cleverly does to imprint HIS message. Clinton lost the election, among other reasons, because of her stupidity and the stupidity of her campaign. I'm sorry to say that because I voted for her, but she shot herself in the foot one time too many, by what she failed to do.

"...Can someone explain in a simple way why we don't remember the future & only past? I read its about correlations but don't really get it." I thought long and hard about this and the best I can tell is because the future didn't happen yet. That question was a piece of cake. "How will a brain form out of empty space?" It doesn't, first a universe of matter must pop out of "empty" space through a big bang. Then that matter rearranges itself over cosmological time, under special circumstances, until you have life, then a brain.

Let's start planting Azollas. Anyone know of some giant lakes we can dedicate to this project?