Lord Antares

Look, I understand what you are trying to say, but it has no relation to physics. If you are looking at a star which is 10 ly away from you, the light from the star is 10 years old. You could make the case that you are looking into the past. Now let's look at your receding object. Let us say that this objects relays something constant (like light) all the time. The only thing that happens here is that this light takes more and more time to reach you, which is analogous to just observing a more distant object. Hopefully you will understand why saying that it is going back in time makes no sense with this analogy: You are at a dock and a ship is just about to take off to deep sea. There is a person on the ship who constantly throws marbles at you. Any subsequent throw of the marbles takes more and more time to reach you because the ship is receding, increasing the distances from you. By your logic, you would say that this ship is travelling into the past, which makes no sense. It just increases distance from you.

No. If the object is moving towards you, the information will start to come quicker than if it is stationary. By your logic, either this object is travelling into the future or the stationary object is left behind in the past. This is more linguistics and pragmatics than physics. This information you are saying is well known, but no one agrees that this means that the objects are travelling anywhere on a timeline. It would, I guess, depend on the definition of past and present, but as it is now, this doesn't hold water.

That makes no sense whatsoever. The only thing you are right about is that time is (at least how we measure it) a construct and not a real physical property. But everything else is wrong. And your example of there not being light and no time makes no sense. Of course if you remove something elementary like gravity or light, everything else collapses. No one is going into the past, exactly because time is relative. By your logic, a stationary object is going back in time versus a moving object (moving towards you, that is). Nothing is going through the past, but the information is receding, like DrmDoc said.

I don't understand this. Formal learning only begins in college and you haven't finished high school yet. You could use the ~2 years before college to learn a bit of science as a layman which would serve as preliminary knowledge in college. I think you are actually the perfect age to learn science! As for the social thing, I cannot help you, but look; two things: 1) people like you are, on average, best fit for science because they really dedicate their time to it, as opposed to ''regular'' people who might care about a lot of other things before science 2) you are in puberty, the most awkward stage for every individual. A lot of people become drastically different once they enter their twenties. I trust that your social confidence will change for the better, at least to some degree. You are too early in life to become desperate. There are many variables and circumstances to consider, none of which conclude that you are too late for anything.

In a thunderstorm, is the sky between the clouds and the ground negatively charged or NET negatively charged? What is the maximum distance of attraction between a proton and an electron?

I acknowledged that in the next sentence. I wouldn't say that low, but low enough. It is if the second person doesn't credit the first person duly.

But according what you guys are saying, there is a (small) possibility that someone might steal the idea and develop it quicker if it is in its infancy stages. I guess what you are trying to say is: if you compare the amount of help you might get from others, especially professionals to the small chance that someone might see it and steal it for themselves, the former pays off much more. I would have to agree with that. Why is mathematics an exception? Well, in theory, IF you are discussing it with the right people, it might be equivalent to peer review, but I see what you mean. Basically, you know that peers will help for certain, but you don't know how it would work out on an open forum. Peers will also, on average, spend more time on it and go more in depth.

By that I mean, if you have something you really believe to be tangible and reasonbly worked out, you shouldn't post it anywhere, but instead try to finish it. Hence the argument from crackpots that they don't want to post their whole ideas here, as they may be stolen. While it obviously doesn't apply to those specific cases of said crackpots, the general idea of not wanting to post it is sound then. Thanks for this information.

I guess I misunderstood this then: So, as Strange said, it is copyrght infirgement only if the text was copied word for word (or very similarly worded)? Then yes, it isn't safe, but that only proves the point that valuable and evidence-supported ideas SHOULD be protected and wanting to protect them isn't crackpottery in itself. But doesn't that mean that it wasn't rubbish? Sorry to say this but it sounds like he had a better version of it, seeing how it was simpler and it worked.

Thank you for your input. That was helpful. Going by what you said, if Einstein hypothetically posted the complete theory of relativity on SFN, it would actually be protected as it is complete, coupled with calculations, derivations and evidence? And if I stole it and sent it to a scientific journal, he could successfully sue me? Of course, in this hypothetical scenario, relativty isn't known yet. But, if so, this means it only applies to theoretical work and not physically engineered inventions, right? Because the latter require a patent. This doesn't make sense to me. It takes significantly less time for someone to steal an idea and reformat it, rather than invent it from scratch. If you give them, say, a month instead of a week, how would they know he didn't just steal if he didn't have evidence to the contrary? Similar things happened to Newton - Leibniz and Darwin and the other guy (sorry, forgot the name). Although the published it at roughly the same time (and it took years to do so), there were still claims of plagiarism.

I had something similar happen to me yersterday. I couldn't upvote one specific post. I tried with the one directly above and it worked. It worked fine before that. It was just one specific post. Have you tried upvoting another post?

This. It doesn't mean his image was vertical. His phone might have have auto-rotation enabled so he thought it was vertical, but instead he was just holding the phone vertically. This would not be an issue of the forum.

For example, if someone posted something that turns out to be correct on a forum without their name attached to it and someone stole it without contacting the originator and claimed it was his own. Would there be some kind of procedure (asking for the password, checking browser history etc.)? Also, if the ''thief's'' theory went through and someone linked to their forum post as being the first instance of the theory, what would be the procedure there? Also, out of curiosity, what are some of your ideas that were used by other people?

Yes. People who make great inventions/discoveries almost invariably protect their ideas and make sure they are the first to publish them to an article. Would you think it would be unreasonable to say that if everyone made their ideas public before publishing them with their name attached to it, that no one would EVER steal them? I don't doubt that you wouldn't, but there are many different people and many variables. I don't doubt that there are people who would do that.

I see what you mean, but in a hypothetical scenario where a person actually posted a full, comprehensive and ultimately correct theory on this forum, would it theoretically be protected by his name and timestamp? I would think there could be some complications with that. Hmm. No, but only because people protect their ideas. I understand this, but then every thread in the Speculation forum is bound to fail, if you go by this, right? I mean, it might serve well for a learning person, i.e. it might educate the OP or other people, but it will never result in a discovery, exactly as swansont said? I haven't thought of it that way.

Why tho? I have seen you and others say this in the past but what warrants this? Of course, I can understand that, from a perspective of someone who doesn't believe his theory will be successful, you think it's ridiculous. But from the perspective of the writer of the theory, who believes it holds merit and that it will be successful, surely it would not be unreasonable to want to protect it? These people with new theories would be stupid if they didn't care to protect it, wouldn't they? I get that the ridicule about it stems from the fact that usually people want to protect the worst and most senseless theories, but the core logic behind wanting to do this is sound. I don't agree with the criticism and I would not say that wanting to protect your theory implies crackpottery in itself.

I would guess that many, if not most of these accounts are people who register to ask a question and then disappear soon thereafter. In fact, that's exactly what I did but I came back for more questions and eventually decided to stay.

It's in the first sentence of the text. It certainly does talk about the comparison of chimps and humans. So it hasn't been misinterpreted, but I will be looking forward to someone knowledgeable stating the validity of the research.

I'm not saying anything of the sort. I'm talking about the speculations forum primarily since the thread is about that. You said that complete and comprehensive theories are better published somewhere other than an internet forum. It also goes without saying that incomprehensive, speculative theories are better off somewhere else as well. So what DO you think should be posted in the speculations forum? That is my question to you. Are you arguing that the Speculation forum is not needed?

I think both of you missed my point or I am missing yours. There are two possible scenarios: The theory is comprehensive, useful and backed up by evidence in which case you say you should send it to a journal instead of SFN. If the theory isn't comprehensive and backed up by evidence, then it shouldn't be posted on SFN either. Therefore, nothing at all should be posted in the speculations forum?

Of course a well-observed and complete hypothesis is best published in a journal. A person well educated in science knows this. My point is that threads in this forum need to be supported by evidence and expanded upon when questioned. You almost invariably need a large text to present a coherent hypothesis. Absent that, it will fail the speculation forum regulations. So basically, what you are saying is, don't publish new theories at all on this forum because: 1) you have a good, complete theory - publish in a journal 2) you have an incomplete, speculatory theory - don't publish it on SFN either. Do you see what I mean?

But the point of the Speculation forum is to provide an extensive hypothesis. We just talked about how people don't include information or mathemathics in their speculations. Wouldn't the entire paper be preferred for the purposes of the Speculation forum? If they don't include everything, they their speculation will be considered a failure as it is incomplete. I guess they could post a snippet and then answer questions afterwards in order, but they will likely be jumped on for not including evidence and math in the first place.

Why not? Do you exclude a link to a document or blog?

It depends how you look at it. The question is not as straightforward as you think it is. If you want a simple answer, then yes, for the most part, the universe is silent as there are very few particles which would create sound.

What do you mean? Where there are particles, there can be sound. There is no sound in a vacuum as sound propagates as movement of particles. The less dense your area of particles are (i.e. air), the slower sound moves. The more dense it is (i.e. water), the faster it moves. So no, the universe is not completely silent. It is for the most part simply because there are very few particles in deep space.