Bender

It depends. For two random objects in a random position in space, the clocks won't be ticking at the same speed, although if you carefully choose those two points, it is possible. If you could see the clocks in those distant galaxies, the clocks would be ticking slower. In the time between one tick reaching us and the next tick reaching us, the space between us increased, and thus the second tick had a larger distance to travel.

The homogeneity of the universe is strong evidence of inflation theory, which states that when the universe was really young, it expanded really fast. Space did indeed expand faster than light, but the matter in that space didn't move faster than light relative to that space, so no problems there. In fact, galaxies far enough outside the observable universe are expected to still be receding from us at a rate higher than the speed of light, which is why we'll never observe them. One of the reasons inflation is introduced is because otherwise the universe before inflation would have been too big to reach thermal equilibrium, and there should be much larger variations in the cosmic background radiation. (At least, that is how I understood it)

That mentality might get you through a couple of courses, but won't get you a degree in any of the universities and colleges I am familiar with. It is typically expected of students to find their own sources and do their own research.

Yes, while not important for the regular coin flipping, that would be important for flipping it on its side. I don't know what the tolerances on these coins are, but you probably want to use the same coin every time.

That is a control problem. The point of a coin flipper would be that you cannot control the coin after it leaves the machine. Also: quadruple inverted pendulum.

Which is why I said that in that case it is only "pretty likely" to happen, a probability somewhere in the neighborhood of 50%. There were a lot of molecules thermally vibrating around at the time of abiogenesis. Even a teaspoon of water contains about 10^23 water molecules. If the water contains only a tiny fraction of molecules of the kind that are required of life, that is still a very, very large amount of molecules. You are right that they probably died off. They might have died off millions of times, yet at one point, it didn't die off, because dying off is only very probable and there are a lot of molecules. A nice example of spontaneous assembly can be found in this video, where some rudimentary blocks organise themselves in a sphere simply by shaking them, which represents thermal agitation. Also, the fact that you (or anybody else) don't know has no influence whatsoever on the chance of the life showing up.

Since the machine wasn't built to flip a coin on its side, it is probably not accurate enough. Engineers generally don't build things more accurate than required, because that is usually a lot more expensive. So I expect no amount of calibration would help. An American nickel has a 1 in 6000 probability of landing on its side. You can definitely increase that probability a lot by calibrating the machine. If I had to design a new machine for exactly that, I might try giving the coin a spin around its vertical axis.

I once read a travel guide to Belgium which said it is customary to leave a 10-15% tip, while most locals don't tip at all, or at best round up.

We don't have high standards for service and care almost exclusively about the quality of the food. Extremely long waiting times can be a cause for complaints, but that's not necessarily the waiter's fault. In fact, when going to the US, it can be a bit annoying how often you get asked whether everything is ok. I'm used to be left alone while eating. I'll signal them when I need something. In general, when not happy with a restaurant, we don't go there next time. There is plenty of other places to go.

Indeed you don't want to draw too much conclusions from one data point. It is refreshing to see that some people can actually read an argument and allow their perspective to be changed . If you see some threads here, that must be a very difficult thing to do.

In some countries, you tip because the servants do not get payed sufficiently (or at all, in some places). So by not tipping in those countries, you are really only punishing the servants. It can even be seen as very insulting if you tip too little or not at all. In Belgium I also never tip. Waiters get paid decently enough here.

The quote is as it appears in the book, translated as literally as I can. The adjustments refer to physical constants, such as the charge of an electron, as he discusses the anthropic principle. It is a book used in college (if you skip the titles indicated as harder) and university.

I'm wondering: is the question: "Can a force be exerted between two massless particles, or is it always necessary for one of both sides to be matter?"

As far as we know, it happened only once in a couple of hundred million years. After that, the conditions were gone. It might have happened more often, but one could have outcompeted the others or different rudimentary life forms might have merged somehow. It would be impossible to find any evidence of the former, and difficult to find any for the latter. For the arguments sake, let's just assume it happened once. If it happens on average once every 5 billion years, then the probability of it happening in the first 250 million years is about 5% (it is actually less, but close enough). If it happens on average once every 250 million years, the probability of it actually happening in those 250 million years is about 63%. So which hypothesis is more likely? The one where our observations are pretty unlikely (5%), or the one where our observations are very likely (63%). Compare it to going somewhere, and the day you arrive, it rains. If that is the only observation you have, will you conclude that rain is rare in that location? Note that if the average occurrence is only once every 5 billion years, it is still pretty likely to happen within the lifespan of the Earth. If you want that to be unlikely, you have to decrease the likelihood to e.g. once every 50 billion years, which in turn decreases the likelihood of our observation to about 0.5%.

Atheism is only the lack of a belief in any god. While there are atheists who do have a belief that there is no god, that is definitely not a requirement.

I won't leave it, since I didn't shift any posts We have only one data point, which states that life started within at most a couple of 100 million years after the conditions were there. If it was rare enough that it would only happen, on average, after 5 billion years, then our single sample is pretty unlikely. It does not provide strong support of that hypothesis. So, yes, it might be rare, and we might be on a planet where it happened extraordinarily quickly. It might also not be rare, a hypothesis which aligns better with our one data point.

Again, there are no meaningful answers that say anything about the probability of us living in a simulation. If we are, our creators might not consider us to have consciousness, because, like many humans, they think only their kind can be conscious.

We know it happened quickly after the circumstances where suitable. We also know that if different life forms have to compete for resources, only the "fittest" survive. It would be pretty hard for any new candidates to compete with all the life forms that have adapted to all possible environments. In other words: the circumstances are not suitable to give abiogenesis a fair chance, so conclusions about its rareness cannot be drawn.

It depends on the requirements and the design. If you have a large enough supply of water and/or manage to cool it down quick enough, it will never reach boiling point. Typically, you don't want salty water in steel tubes.

To conclude this: leaving it rest for a week resulted in a rusty brown precipitation that I could filter out, leaving a pretty clear solution.

In a couple of years, you can use Galileo, which will be more accurate and more reliable for civilians. In a couple of months, you can already buy galileo-ready smartphones. I did a paper on the accuracy of gps at university. You can increase the accuracy by measuring the atmosphere with a laser and compensating for it (IIRC, thickness and water content are important). If used for relative rather than absolute measurements, an accuracy of 2-3 mm was possible. Perhaps someone did better by now.

If no life is left to maintain the oxygen level, it will be gone pretty quickly. Oxygen has a tendency of reacting with nearly everything that isn't already oxidised. I have no idea how long it will take, but even if it takes millions of years, that has little to no impact on the entire duration. Except if the probability of abiogenesis increases dramatically under an oxygen atmosphere and it would happen even before the oxygen was gone. Depending on how life on earth was removed, there could be a lot of other chemicals left to accelerate the process.

I must admit it looked easier at first. The typical practicum setup can use a less noisy tilt sensor and often has a higher frequency.

Indeed!

Your entire argument fails because of the fact that this statement is demonstrably false.According to it, atheists or animals cannot cooperate, while in reality they do.