Bignose

He also wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, when you write something that seminal, then you've earned the right to compare yourself to Newton. So, any chance of something scientific? Or should this thread be closed now because you're refusing to answer questions (in direct violation of the rules)?

There are relations between the unitless numbers CD (drag coefficient) and Re (Reynolds number). What you are asking has been done countless times over. Well before CFD became (relatively) cheap, it was not uncommon at all to make a scale model of an airfoil and put it in a water box. Because through the use of the CD to Re relationships, they could take the corresponding drag measurements in the water box and turn them into an equivalent drag in the air. Really this is all encompassed in the fact that the branch of study is 'fluid mechanics' and both water and air are fluids, despite one being a liquid and the other a gas.

They also did a good job when presenting their results, to be very clear in their communication, define all the terms, and presented evidence that supported their claims. At this point in time, your citing them is disingenuous at best because even if one concedes the first part, you have done virtually nothing anything scientifically meaningful after that. Your citing Newton and Einstein is a logical fallacy. If that was meant to convince us, logical fallacies are not how to to it.

I've been trying. My collaboration has been in trying to get you to make your work more scientific. You've been unwilling or unable to do that. I started all the way back with giving a trivial falsification of the supposed EM nature of gravity. Then you moved to repulsion (not sure if that is still part of EM or not). Then when asked for a simple example -- a geostationary orbit -- you've been noticeably quiet. You're right. You don't have to be here to be the 'teacher'. However, if you intend to try to get other people to understand you idea, don't you think the onus is on you to describe it well? I don't see how you think you can put this back on me because you are the one creating equations with terms you don't even know that they mean. You are the one claiming you're right despite no evidence presented. You are the one claiming to do better than the current mainstream ideas despite it being very obvious you don't even know what they are. You're absolutely right. You don't need to be the 'teacher', you need to put some work in at being a student for a while and learn what it actually means to propose something in a scientific manner and understand the current ideas before declaring they are wrong. Also, p.s. the Lamborghini's crack was meant to be a joke. Obviously sports cars aren't really on the topic at hand, but was intended more to point out that you need to define your terms better.

Really? Really?!? Lambda can be whatever I want? Even a million dollars? Sweet. I'm going to buy so many Lamborghini's now... metacogitans, I am sorry, but none of this is meaningful in a scientific sense. I tried to help. At least I think I did. But you're clearly not willing or able to discuss your idea scientifically. Science doesn't accept "you can make lambda whatever you want". It needs well defined models, with well defined terms, which generate well defined predictions, and so on. We can't even get to the prediction step, because you don't even know what the terms in your own models are. In short, if you really are serious about this, you need to take some time and learn about what actually makes for a good scientific model. Because this isn't it. Sorry.

Then why are you even talking about it?!? To the extent that is it obvious what you are talking about. As presented, R doesn't seem to be defined well. It appears to be a force. Is [math]\Lambda[/math] the cosmological constant? If so, there is a unit error between R and [math]\Lambda[/math]. And now there is an H that you're discussing, but doesn't need to be in the equation. All of this is very confusing to me. And confusing to you, because you admitted you didn't know what R was, and certainly didn't clear it up in that last post. You should define the terms in the equation so that at the best least you know what they mean and you don't have to use 'I think' when discussing them.

Dude, it's your equation. Shouldn't you know? And what is H now? There isn't even an H in your equation. Just R's and capital lambdas. Are you just making things up? That isn't scientific at all. You should know what your equation's terms actually are. Science isn't just making up equations and hoping they are right. Science is the creation of models -- almost always mathematical -- and seeing what predictions those models make. As I actually listed in my post (had you bothered to read it) that 1/length^2 are the units the cosmological constant has. And since you've talked about in this thread, and the cosmological constant is usually written as a capital lambda, I just assumed that that was what your capital lambda was. I could be wrong, but this is on you because of your failure to communicate anything about your equation, and based on the question in your quote above, even understand what you wrote.

So, what are the units of R? You call it "repulsion exhibited on a particle", that sounds like a force to me. But [math]\Lambda[/math], the cosmological constant, has units of 1/length^2. Given your equation here, R must have those same units, but I don't see how 1/length^2 can be interpreted as a repulsion. Also, "The variables in can be as inclusive as you want." is essentially meaningless. Firstly, it is YOUR equation, not mine. YOU should be defining exactly what this equation means. Secondly, every equation has a domain of validity, whether it is from where math breaks down, or the predictions from that math don't agree well with measurements anymore. 'Want' has almost nothing to do with that. In short, your post here doesn't answer my questions in any meaningful way, and as near as I can tell you have a gross units error in your proposed equation. An equation, I might add, that you gave virtually no context about how to actually apply. If I wanted to be taken seriously, I'd knock this off too. This is the 'Galileo Gambit', trying to bring up others' successful work as some kind of defense of your own. First and foremost, it is a logical fallacy to do this. Your work here is not the same as Faraday, apart from you liked a graphic based on his idea. Secondly, if your own work can't stand on its own, then it is junk. Thirdly, the Galileo Gambit has been tried by countless people -- many even on this forum -- and failed pretty miserably. Please provide objective evidence of your own idea working. Not more story telling. Not more misinterpretations of GR. But actual support for your idea, the predictions it makes, and how closely these predictions agree with measurements. You told me yesterday that you were serious about pursuing this idea in a scientific manner; can you please actually start doing that now?

Just because two things look similar, doesn't make them the same thing. And despite the picture, the 'boost', the 'big name', etc., you still haven't actually proposed a model, gotten predictions from it, and compared those predictions to actual data. That is science. That is what we are waiting on. Anything less is more story telling. And while you may tell a bunch of stories, that isn't science. If you are truly choosing the former above, then you need to propose a model that can then be represented by objective predictions. This almost surely involves math. Again, can I ask that you start with a simple one, like describing a geostationary orbit. This is a straightforward example using the current model of attractive gravity. If you seriously are proposing an alternative, show us how it works. Show us the predictions made by a 'repulsion' only gravity. Show us how a satellite stays in geostationary orbit with repulsion only. Show us something scientific.

You're really heading the wrong way now. Firstly, you can't copyright an idea. What you can do is be the first to publish a new idea in a reputable scientific journal. But, that journal is going to demand the same things people have been asking you in this thread, only 1000-fold more rigorously done. My questions, for example, if you ignore them will just result in your submission to the journal being ignored. Look, science is not based on reputation, or copyrights, or history books. It is based almost completely and totally upon accuracy of prediction with measurement. It is a human endeavour. It has some human failings. But it is far, far, far more objective than it used to be where people judged your ideas solely on your name, whether you were a church leader, or a king, or rich or etc. Today, it is all about how useful your idea is, and usefulness is almost wholly based on how closely your predictions agree with measurements. You have presented nothing of that in this thread, despite being repeatedly asked. I asked, for example, you to use you idea to make a prediction to describe a satellite in a geostationary orbit. This is a very straightforward example that can be easily done with the current mainstream ideas of gravity. Yet, you have declared yourself correct. Despite presenting nothing but stories. You are free to believe what you want, but you are going to receive no interest in the scientific community. Yes, this forum is generally pretty tolerant, and it is our goal to help get you to think about your idea in a more scientific manner. But, you haven't done that yet, and if anything, you're regressed. Because you are declaring yourself right with no evidence. So, you have a choice now. Are you actually truly interested in exploring your ideas in a scientific manner? Or are you just going to continue to declare yourself right and be done with it? You talk about 'advocating about why I could be right'... really this is very straightforward in science. Present us with some objective evidence that your idea makes more accurate predictions than the current mainstream ideas. If you can do that, you will receive much interest from the scientific community. If you can't or won't do that, then expect to be ignored.

There is a concept of rate of convergence of a series that seems like it would be applicable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rate_of_convergence And it is known that different series representation of numbers converge faster or slower. for example [math]\pi = 4 \sum\limits_{k=1}^\infty \frac{(-1)^{k+1}}{2k-1}[/math] converges very slowly (I've seen this called the Gregory series). This one is so poor that is takes more than 300 terms to get pi correct to 2 decimal places. On the other hand the Ramanujan series (actually just one of many he discovered) [math]\frac{1}{\pi} = \frac{2\sqrt{2}}{9801} \sum\limits_{k=0}^\infty \frac{(4k)! (1103+26390k)}{(k!)^4 396^{4k}}[/math] is known to correctly add 8 decimal points of accuracy with every additional term in the series. It is obviously converging faster than the Gregory series. I don't have any proof to say it, but I seriously doubt that all approaches are 'exponential'. The exact rate of convergence would be dependent on the function itself. Edited to fix an error in a formula

Nicholas, I think it would be a good learning experience for you to research SETI@HOME yourself and figure out how you can contribute to the project, if you so desire. I found some links with about 2 minutes of using Google and clicking on links on their site. If you are completely stuck, I'll post some links after several days, but you should be able to find these on your own. Also, it doesn't have to be SETI@HOME. There are a wide variety of open source projects that would gladly accept some help. It also doesn't have to be programming. There are also a wide variety of other projects where you volunteering your time would be gladly accepted as well. You can't expect us to find these for you, or know what you'd be interested in. You need to demonstrate some initiative (this helps your application too, by the way!) and find them on your own.

All? Sure about that? Cercignani, Illner, and Pulvirenti's The Mathematical Theory of Dilute Gases only starts with: "In order to discuss the behavior of a system of N (identical) hard spheres it is very convenient to introduce the so-called phase space, i.e., a 6N-dimensional space where the Cartesian coordinates are the 3N components of the N position vectors of the space centers and the 3N components of the N velocities." Absolutely nothing about randomness at its basic assumption here. Chapman and Cowling's The Mathematical Theory of Non-Uniform Gases, Third edition starts with defining variables for a particle's velocity and position. Then deriving terms based on different kinds of averages over distributions of velocities and positions, like mean speed and density. Nothing about randomness at all. Again, as I wrote above, it is possible to solve the Liouville equation that exactly solves how the entire ensemble evolves in time. But, as with the beginning of the Cercignani et al. text, if you have N particles, you have 6N dimensions required to describe that ensemble. If N is 1000, then your Liouville equation has 6000 dimensions in it! And 1000 particles is almost never enough to describe anything useful. The randomness in the equations comes in because we ensemble average over the distribution of all the particles. We want to reduce that 6N dimensions down to 6, in order to make the possibility of solution at least somewhat tenable. That averaging does introduce some statistical randomness. But, that randomness at this point is only introduced to reduce the dimensionality of the problem. NOT as inherent in the model itself. This may be a subtle point, but an important point nonetheless. The fundamental model of kinetic theory of gases -- billiard balls that undergo perfectly elastic collisions -- do not need randomness built into it. The randomness it displays comes from perfectly deterministic beginnings. This is best evidenced by discrete element modeling simulations. Simulations where 1000s of spheres are modeled completely deterministically and allowed to evolve over time. These DEM simulations demonstrate gas-like behavior without having to introduce any random motion whatsoever.

None of this demonstrated how 'inaccurate GR' is (your words, remember, above). Please take a look at the paper I linked to. It demonstrates just how accurate GR really is. If you are going to stick with your inaccurate claim, please present data similar to that paper that shows GR being inaccurate. Otherwise, look a this impartially. I have a well cited and supported research paper demonstrating exactly how closely the predictions from GR agree with measurements. And on the other hand I have some guy on the interwebz telling me a story about how it isn't accurate. As I wrote above, com'on man, you gotta do better than this. If you are going to claim 'inaccurate', you need to demonstrate it. Not just with a lot of words. But with data to support your claims. Because the claim that GR is pretty darn accurate, has a great deal of data behind it. This is how science works. You have to produce a large amount of data that agrees with you. Not just tell a better story.

sure, but you're the one who started with 'to be fair' and didn't qualify your use of the absolute 'only'. Because we can obviously do more than 'only theorize.'

NK, all I am saying is that while it is not typical for people to download and analyze files, you yourself are not actually doing the analysis. You are just contributing your computing time to the project. A contribution that has some value, but it is not anywhere nearly as valuable as being the one who designed what analysis to actually do, or the one who programmed the software to do that analysis. In short, all I am saying is that unless you can demonstrate that you are doing something more than just downloading files and uploading automated analyses to a server... if I were reviewing your application, I would not put very much weight on this activity. I am not trying to put you down or belittle what you've done. You asked for opinions about what you presented. My opinion is that just running files for SETI@HOME is not terribly meaningful unless you helped write or design the code. Someone else may have a different opinion.

Well, to be MOST fair, you shouldn't say "only theorize". I mean, we also take core samples, we do a lot of mining, lots of crawling into caves, fissures, faults, etc. It is not only a theoretical study, those theories are backed up by what is actually seen and measured as well.

How active is your data analyzing? Are you actually doing anything or is their program just using your excess CPU cycles? I am not super familiar with SETI@Home, but my understanding was that it was using your unused CPU cycles and uploading its analysis to a main server. The user themselves don't need to do anything. If that perception is accurate, then I am saying that a typical user's contributions don't add up to much that would impress most people. On the other hand, if you an active code contributor to the project, that shows a much higher level of involvement.

This needs to be expanded upon, too. Are you actually contributing code to the project, or are you just running the software on your computer when the CPU load isn't very high? Because anyone can download software and run it on their computer, and I'm sorry, but that doesn't mean very much. It is another thing entirely to contribute programming to a project. In the big picture here, I think it should also be said that while the 'big name' universities do carry some importance, it certainly is not the only way to be successful. There is little shame in attending and excelling at a local public university for 4 years and then attempting to apply to these schools for graduate work. For that matter, doing all your schooling at a local school can lead to success as well. Like a lot of things in life, what you get out of schooling is largely a function of what you put in. If you go to the school, take challenging classes, volunteer to help on research projects, do a little networking, at most any higher education institution doors will be opened for you. In the real world, the name of the institution you have received your degree(s) from don't really mean a whole lot, it is your skills, abilities, drive and personality that really matter.

That's what I meant when I commented that we normally deal with the averages of quantities and that there are errors bars around any average quantity. The actual theory is deeper, of course, but if we are hung up on whether kinetic theory is still valid or not, I am hesitant to discuss anything deeper at this time.

Nor did I write "useless". You DID write "The kinetic model of gas doesn't have to be accepted any more." Whatever word choice I make it should be very clear that I very much disagree with this. That isn't really what the kinetic theory of gases states. It starts with billiard balls running into each other. Mathematically, you can describe the entire ensemble completely deterministically, but considering the many quintillions of atoms that makes up a typical amount of gas, usually the average quantities are solved for. That's where the randomness comes in, from the fact that most typically an average is used and statistically there are error bars around an average. But I do think it is important to note that the basis of the kinetic theory of gases does not directly have any randomness in it.

These and many other ideas are just that, ideas. There may be 'theoretical' reasons to support one idea or another, but until objective evidence brought about from tests can be presented, none of it should be taken as facts. The simple truth is that there is no scientific answer to the original questions as asked. And if he's just looking for various ideas, there are a wide, wide range. As far as I know, none of them are really supported by objective facts, just guesses that don't appear to violate some of the proposed models.

Well, ok, I cede to the truly terrible prime finding algorithm . We could make it even worse... to check if is prime, divide by n-1, then n-2,... and so on. None of this sqrt(n) jabberwocky.

The above is the absolutely slowest method to determine if a number is prime or not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primality_test

Survival analysis is an optimization technique wherein the many different inputs into the optimization are treated like 'genes'. The survival part comes from the fact that various solutions swap genes with one another to make children solutions. The least optimal solutions are then killed off (i.e. don't survive). And the surviving solutions are again bred -- swapping genes of the solution. See also evolutionary algorithm, or genetic algorithm. A logistic regression is a technique where you discover the relative weights of the various inputs to create the most accurate prediction of some kind of sorting or categorical determination. A good example is handwriting analysis for optical character recognition. I.e. you sort a digit into the 1, 2, 3, 4,..., 9, or 0 bin. This is compared to a linear regression on which the weights of the inputs are adjusted to best match a given number. Both techniques fall into the broader category of algorithms called machine learning.