StringJunky

Right. Thanks for the clarification.

Nice one Cap'n.

I remember that: Martin, the cosmology expert, posted here it a few years ago

But you could argue a 12" Richey-Chretian with image correction would be better still; where is the optimum point for quality/price ratio an absolute beginner should risk without being left with too much a white elephant if it's not their thing?

Absolutely, I don't think we would live very long if all our pleasure centres were full on all of the time.

I got this the other day and just now remembered I was on SFN. I right-clicked task bar to bring up task manager > selected my browser and clicked End Task to get rid of it. Perhaps it might be worth mentioning to Capn Refsmat; could be a dodgy link somewhere.

If you arrive at the same point in space and time in the road as a 40 ton lorry, is time real?

That's him, the MAD kid. Yes, he was passionate about cosmology and I hope that his forum contributions will be a memorial to his knowledge and generosity far into the future. It's easy to forget that forums are archives as well as in-the-now spaces for communication; our chat today is someones research tomorrow.

Isn't nearly always the case that it can often take decades for a law to be embraced within the collective psych of the population; enacting a law is just the beginning of a long process of acceptance. In fact, I don't think it is necessarily accepted by the prevailing population when the law is enacted but their offspring conform to it later and accept it because they don't know anything else. For some laws to be accepted you have to wait for the younger generation to become the influential generation and the older rebel generation are putting their teeth in a glass at night.

I think that was Martin who I mentioned earlier. Martin used the same avatar in both forums but with different usernames; Martin in SFN.The avatar was a famous cheeky schoolkid from old. Can't remember the character's name. Yes, it's good discussion site for a lot of things and the group of long-term guys here are thoughtful and intelligent which matters as much as the subjects of interest. You can't go. You are part of the scenery. I do understand your post though but it is only phases of being frustrating in terms of a particular subject matter sometimes but this the price we have to pay to have all the good bits... and the good bits are great. The thing I like is the sheer variety of questions SFN gets... some are WAY OUT there. The other thing is I think people have a certain trust for sciency types and will ask questions they may not elsewhere. It appears Martin has died. Shame. Very accessible and informative fellow. Gem.

You mean Markus who was here a bit a go, who liked hiking?

You mean Relativity as in GR? They feared getting drowned in maths from the pros? Doesn't surprise me, they are hardcore and often speak at a level not amenable to amateurs. They don't come down to you, so you have to come up to their level. I don't say all of them are like that because there those great ones that will move to any level like Janus and DH et al that hangout there as well... DH and hasn't been here a while though... not forgetting Martin as well who's fab on astronomical stuff.

You can self-censor what you see by clicking View New Content button then on the far left side of that page select Filter By Forum and choose what you want to see when you press the View New Content button. If you want to see what a pure science forum site looks like go to Physics Forums and hangout there a while. It's a great site if you want it pure with absolutely zero tolerance for anything other than mainstream science talk. It's too dry for me but I go there if I need specific bits of info when searching.

Don't you think a 5 inch Skywatcher or Celestron refractor with motor EQ a better start for a beginner to see if they like it without spending too much and not too physically cumbersome?

Anything with mass curves spacetime.

It'll never happen because those that do know how to do it wouldn't post on this forum. It does serve a useful function in that people can have a play at trying out an idea on a receptive and critical audience to see where their idea or thinking works and fails. On the politics forum: I agree with Arc. It gives an outlet for the political elements in our discussions. By removing particular forums, I don't think it will increase the participation in others. One is not going to make SFN more sciency by killing off non-sciency forums; you'll just get the purer, mainstream science forums 'polluted' by politics, religion etc. I think it's working as fine as it can do. SFN has become the way it is through trial and error with different strategies being tried over the years; it contains the best set of compromises and will continue evolving with changing demands.

I'm open to being corrected but velocity of light can only be c, in a vacuum, but speed of light doesn't have to be, because v is a vector with a directional component. In a medium, 'velocity of light' will become 'speed of light'. https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/whats-difference-between-speed-velocity-296735

It's all about image brightness vs magnification. The more magnification you want the more light-collecting ability you need to offset the loss from magnifying. In the case of refractor scopes this means higher diameter glass and in the case of reflectors bigger mirrors diameter-wise. Regardless of what manufactuers say is the maximum possible (which is limitless) you want the maximum useful magnification. The general rule of thumb is 50x magnification per inch (25.4mm) diameter of mirror or glass . Any more than that and the image will be too dim to be good viewing.A 3 inch (75mm) refractor will give you 150x mag. 4+ inch refractors will be prohibitively expensive so if you want more powerful a reflector will give you more power for the same money. This one will give you 250x max, as it's a 5.1 inch aperture, if you purchase the right viewing lenses; I'm not pushing you towards this particular model but this is the sort of thing I would be looking at power-wise and telescope technology. You are looking £200-£300 GBP for a reasonable level starter amateur scope of this power. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Skywatcher-Explorer-Newton-Telescope-Parabolic/dp/B00CYHSZCC

A typical English council estate has some stunted 50 year old teenagers in them, especially those that are into substance abuse.

A quick Google search in your state suggests Hornbeam or Osage Orange are going to be your hardest woods.

Learning critical thinking in isolation from science takes away its relevance to the real world. A bit like learning maths without any real world examples of its application. A common complaint of teaching maths without it is: "What do I need this maths for when I'm not going to use it in my normal life?"

My guess is they will look at faces that are not average to their prevailing experience for longer because it's novel which makes sense to me because it's new data.

Time can only be what we think it is. You might as well argue we don't don't know the true nature of all things; which is always true and will likely always be true.

Why would we 'invent' time if it wasn't already there? Are we that clever and to 'invent' time dilation when things don't quite fit in with our temporal picture? Do animals know the time and thus know when to mate, which is often just a very specific window in the calender, or are they induced by the cyclic behaviour of their environment?

Yes, you can't better them in that situation. When it comes to weapons being used, our police are spot on and have better toys.