StringJunky

Any curious member with half a brain can look in swansont's profile,by clicking on his username, and see that he's a physicist and has a PhD in Atomic Physics.

The sense of being 'you' and existing wouldn't be transferred to the new brain...it would just be a copy of you with it's own sense of self and existence. The potential to carry on your work in the way the original you did it still remains though. Does that make sense?

Unless you are writing about established science or peer-reviewed research everything will end up in Speculations...SFN do this to clearly define between amateur and professional peer-reviewed stuff so learners don't get confused. Be happy you have a space to express your ideas.

Just because someone has made significant and valid discoveries in one area doesn't follow that everything they say threreafter is valid. Even Einstein got things wrong. I'm sure that quote is out of context....you need to have sufficient knowledge to give the imagination something to work with...more knowledge equals more permutations of ideas. You can't design (imagine) a car if you don't know all the necessary components and principles (knowledge) required to make one (invention). Knowledge + Imagination = Invention The mark of great intelligence is a high capacity for both.

There has been no space mission that has entered intergalactic space so the answer will be no. Voyager 1 is the furthest (120 AU from Earth) and that hasn't even reached the interstellar medium yet let alone the intergalactic space. http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/

If we assume there are zero atoms in your container, which I think your -30mmHg figure implies, and there are only one, or even a few hundred molecules, per cubic metre as in intergalactic space, the pressure differential is negligible. Pressure, in this scenario, is the rate at which atoms or molecules impact on a surface. Dr Rocket gave you a great explanation and doesn't need proving...logic and little bit of thought is enough. Maybe DrR could tell you the number of atoms per unit space required to make a measurable difference between the inside and outside of the vessel.

Maybe you are not by your classification but you are relative to most people on this forum in Physics and Math's. You add something good and inspiring to the mix that makes up this forum...I hope you stick around.

i wouldn't call all of them liars...deluded by misinterpreting odd psychological experiences as psychic. When I used to take a variety of recreational substances, I experienced a lot of different "psychic" phenomena. Drugs taught me, particularly LSD, that our minds are a product of a machine...our brain...nothing more.

If you were serious about consciousness as an area of study you would be studying Cognitive Neuroscience first not Philosophy. Empirical study should always precede Philosophical study in any given subject where possible imo...it's best not to build a house on sand. When I read somewhere, checking out her biography, that McTaggart and her husband consulted a homeopathic practitioner for some problem one of them had, that was her credibility out the window as far I was concerned.

I talking from the perspective of a newcomer not familiar with science...it can help them. Michel thinks so as well:

If my other points were lost on you that's not my problem...perhaps you didn't understand because you are not a layman and are blind to or lack empathy for the problem. As I said in another thread, it's a personal judgement call on a case-by-case basis whether it's appropriate to make a respondent aware of ones expertise...no mention of mandates by me.

What I found in time is that there is concordance or patterns of similarity in the explanations between people that are explaining the science ideas that has a common professional consensus. None of the designated experts here would wilfully hypnotise anybody AFAICT. If any of the more scientifically astute members sensed that tactic they would call them out for it.

It takes one to know one (like you do)...if you are not one how would you know? I do think somtimes, for example, that swansont should say he does or has helped design clocks for the GPS system and this would help impress upon people that argue with him about SR or atomic physics that he has high level of understanding in those subjects and he's not just making it up and may just accord him due respect for his responses. Qualifications do matter when one is not conversant in a particular subject that one may be interested in...nobody wants to find out later they've been taken in by a pseudoscientist. In subjects like quantum physics where commonsense has to often be suspended in order to understand, knowing that a person is a real scientist can help the sceptic relinquish that commonsense...i write from experience as a layman and how my acceptance of physics more non-classical ideas has increased significantly over the last 2-3 years reading these boards based on the known expertise of the likes of swansont, DH et al. I personally don't need to know now that a person has a PhD because I can spot a bullshitter a mile off but 3 years ago...not so much. You make valid points and I don't disagree with them but sometimes people want to see that authority to give them confidence in the respondent. It's a matter of personal case-by-case judgement on the part of the experts here whether they should use it. imo.

Homie12 has said as much his attitude needs to change...let's move forward with him in like spirit.

It's good that you are seeing the various positive qualities of this forum and hopefully over time, as I did, why things are the way they are here but even then it is constantly evolving with each new insight gleaned from discussions like these. It is the very nature of the Speculations forum to have threads that are mostly failures in terms of scientific validity and people shouldn't feel dispirited when their thread is put there because it is important in terms of SFN properly disseminating the established scientific picture to distinguish between professional science and amateur science, otherwise, non-scientific members will end up confused as to what is properly "scientific" and what is not. Quite honestly, I think people with speculative personal ideas should be at least happy that their ideas actually do have a space to go in to be aired for consideration by real and up-coming scientists...most science forums will trash them on sight. If your idea gets shot down with evidence and logic don't get upset...it's not personal....it's the nature of scientific peer review to do this clinically and dispassionately. I used to think some of the experts here were rather terse in their responses but realise eventually they are not here to nurse damaged egos. Tip: Leave your ego at home...put out your idea...take the criticism...thank the respondents for their views...post-analyse what people said. Failure is a crucial part of learning. As my grandad used to say: the man that never made a mistake never made anything. Embrace your mistakes.

It's just a more emphatic version of "No"....I suspect he's confident it's wrong.

From Wiki. This not the full answer but does highlight the distinction between "heat" and "temperature": What Physics Explains Already Physicists already explains the misconception between Temperature and Heat Energy. In his blog, Ethan Siegel, theoretical astrophysicist, explained the misconception about the Coronal heating problem as follows.[33] "while the surface of the Sun is very hot, at something around 5800 K, the Corona comes in at temperatures over one million Kelvin. Mysterious, mind-boggling and inexplicable by the laws of physics, right? " Except that temperature is not the same thing as heat! The Sun's surface is much, much denser than the incredibly rarified corona, so that even though the Sun's photosphere is less than 1% of the corona's temperature, it emits energy at a rate that's over 40,000 times the amount required to heat the corona up to its high temperature. We even think we know why: the wave heating theory, where energy can be transferred over long distances from the solar interior to the corona. Remember what temperature is: a measure of the mean speed of the particles. Similar to how two balls—a tiny one and a very massive one—dropped one-atop-the-other will lead the tiny ball to rocket upwards at an incredible speed, the problem isn't getting a few particles to have a very large speed. The problem also isn't unique to the Sun; if we take a look at Earth's upper atmosphere, where it gets really rarified (above 80 km), we find that it does the same thing in terms of temperature! The problem is that we associate temperature with heat in our minds, but the "very high temperature" corona contains almost no heat! But if we look in terms of heat, the Sun's photosphere contains much more than the corona; the corona merely reaches higher temperatures.

Yes, I see what what you mean but I'm just considering gravity.

The problem with that analogy is it's only representing 2 dimensions (the sheet) but it looks 3D in any illustration. i visualise a cube, as representing a portion of space, with grid lines in it in such that it's made up of lots of smaller cubes. I then visualise an object ebedded in the middle and those grid lines bend all around it; the degree of curvature in the lines diminishing with distance. I make no attempt to imagine what gravity is, only how the mass acts on the grid co-ordinates. Am i far off thinking like this?

Bonobos, IIRC, are completely indiscriminate in which members they will engage sexually with regardless of age, gender or familial connection...there are no taboos. They seem to be quite unique amongst apes in this respect. I wondered how sexually 'amoral' they would be in the absence of a learning environment amongst already practising Bonobos.

Has a couple or more Bonobos ever been separated from another group at birth such that they couldn't have learnt this behaviour and do they still exhibit this sexually appeasing behaviour between themselves as they grow up in isolation? Hope that makes sense. I'm wondering if it's a learnt custom or instinctual.

What's with the big bold font? You've made it harder to read and annoying not easier. Strange as it may seem, this type of presentation doesn't make your posts any more convincing than if you used normal font.

Dark Matter and Energy have been hypothesised by qualified scientists who have years of training and the requisite math's ability to contemplate the problems left in science that these two ideas are trying to solve...not some guy sitting at his pc suddenly having a "eureka" moment and feeling a compelling need to share it with the world. There's a big difference, in terms of effort and eventual consensus, between a peer-reviewed idea and a back-of-the-envelope one. This is why the latter ends up in Speculation. The overall tone of your posts will ensure you a short stay here if you persist with it. May I suggest you shut your mouth for a while and just follow the flow of the forum and see how it operates and, hopefully, it will make sense to you why things are so?

Airbrush I don't know if you might find "Stardust" by John Gribbin a useful start on your question...it's a popsci book on stellar recycling...I enjoyed it as a layman and it's not expensive in paperback or ebook.