Mart

There's no horizontal accleration. I think you mean the acceleration parallel to the incline and the acceleration at right angles to the incline

Pythagorus would have agreed with you - he believed the universe was fundamentally mathematical. He also believed that eating peas was a sin. As I understand it theories are descriptions not prescriptions meaning that we make models of the universe's behaviour. Our ideas have to explain its behaviour. If it has to obey the solutions of our equations then that turns my ideas upside down. I suppose the pre-Copernican astronomers might have thought that the heavens obeyed their system of epicycles. Maybe the heavens did?

The cat according to Schroedinger IS in a superposition of states while it's in the box. Started live, then into box, then after a short time either dead or alive.

Agree about the why. My question was about the how - like how does that happen. We try to find explanations. Hot air rises because . . . Boats float on water because . . .

In this thought experiment a live cat was placed in a box with some device which could render it live or dead after some specified time. Schroedinger noted that the device's outcomes could be represented mathematically (his wave equation). Because the outcomes of the equation are "indeterminate" (unknowable until known) he suggested that the cat's status was indeterminate and it was in a "superposition of states" that is, neither live or dead. Do you think that (a) Schroedinger was trying to point out the absurdity of applying QM to the world in which cats live or (b) you know the physical process whereby a live cat can be rendered neither live or dead by being placed in a box

Directly? You mean where the sun "is" or where we see it. The image we have now of the sun depends on light that left the sun 500s ago. It's a similar problem to shooting at a transverse moving target. I imagine some careful calculating would be required.

QM is fundamentally a method of calculating the outcomes of certain events. I have no problem with that or of applying relativistic corrections to equations. In that sense QM and SR can be made to work together. However, QM predicts brilliantly but fails (or refuses) to explain. If accurate prediction is all that is required then there is no problem. Most people want explanations as well as predictions.

Not crazy at all. This is my point. These are attempts to unify QM theory and Relativity theory because they are seen to be on their own incomplete. Einstein claimed that "Relativity teaches us the connection between the different descriptions of one and the same reality" but it can't be doing what he claimed because it doesn't include QM.

Quantum Mechanics wasn't designed to explain how creatures evolve. It's a theory of physical interactions not biological ones. Einstein was a physicist not a biologist. Quantum Mechanics and Relativity both deal what Einstein called the "one and the same reality". By this Einstein meant physical reality. Einstein could not accept a basic principle of QM that there was an unavoidable randomness in the behaviour of the physical world. This means that the constructs of Einstein's Relativity theory don't include randomness and therefore are at odds with those of QM. Yes, they are two ways of making very accurate predictions about the behaviour of certain aspects of the physical world but the problem for physicists is that they do it in fundamentally different ways and therefore some physicists see a need to unite the two ways.

What do you mean. What is a rest frame? Please don't say that it's a frame at rest!

Einstein thought so. But that's appealing to his personal authority. Would it be the end of science as an activity if there was a complete scientific theory.

Some' date=' not all. Thanks for your help. If you come up with any thoughts about the [b']big[/b] distance problem let me know. Perhaps you'll be able to throw some light on it.

Interesting! Is Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity a theory of the connection between the different descriptions of reality. Or is it a description of the connection .....? Whatever it is, it doesn't connect with Quantum Mechanical Theory. So it's a pretty incomplete theory or description.

Interesting method. Two points. First, would this mean that X was measuring his relative velocity by reference to the part of the ruler next to him (like where X's clock is) and thus Y (by extension!) would effectively be present at X ? Second, how could this be made to work if the distance between X and Y is large - maybe light years?

OK. We've got a clock to measure time. 10 metres? What about the ruler? How's that used? A bit of detail please.

m stands for distance measured in units of space (metres, inches, etc) s stands for time measured in units of time (seconds, years, etc) m/s^2 means how speed changes with time. m/s = speed and m/s^2 = change of speed with respect to time on a clock

In your earlier post #8 you said . So how do get to know their individual velocities? What experiment can you do? Tell me.

Could be. Woud they need to remember what side did what? If so, by making the distances in the maze larger you could get info on their short/long term memory.

I'm not sure what you mean by a definition. Distance is measured with rulers and time is measured with clocks. Forget apples. Think two people moving relative to each other. In space. How could they each measure their individual velocities?

Light travels slower in more dense media (used to explain refraction). A vaccuum is most often conceived as a totally empty medium. Could be that it isn't. Virtual particles .... ?

I need to make something clear. This is happening in empty space apart from the apple (and any other apples). Where's the ruler come from? We'll allow apples to be sentient. It could be a person.