Sisyphus

Again, don't worry about increasing or decreasing rates. Does it make sense that in an expanding universe, farther away objects are receding faster?

If at any point you reduce their velocity to zero, then yes, they'll fall directly into one another, because there's nothing else in the universe to influence them. In our universe, of course, they won't, for at least two reasons: 1) The universe is the pretty much the same in every direction, so there is no net pull except for nearby objects. 2) Space is expanding too fast for objects 1 septillion light years away to ever meet.

Hello, Hawkin'sDawkins. Welcome. pywakit, this is a hypothetical situation. We're placing two objects 1 septillion light years apart in an otherwise empty universe where space does not expand or contract. That's the start. So yes, they did just pop into existence.

That's a bit mixed up. More distant objects receding faster would be a consequence of any expansion at all, not just accelerating expansion. So before worrying about whether the rate of expansion is speeding or slowing down, first just imagine what a constant rate of expansion would look like. If every light year of space increases by x every year, then an object 10 light years away recedes at a rate of 10x per year, an object 20 light years away recedes at 20x per year, etc. Hence, farther away objects are receding faster. Make sense so far? Another thing to consider that might be helpful. It's true that looking at farther away things is looking into the past, in that the events you are seeing happened longer ago. However, also remember that you're still seeing it in the present, and that all that time between then and now, the light has been traveling through space from there to here, while the space it was traveling through was expanding. So light that has been traveling for longer has also had more time to "stretch" and redshift.

So isn't that implicitly what is meant by "what caused God," if "God" is simply defined as "that which caused the universe?"

But "God creating the universe" would be an event, no?

There is in academic publications. (You wouldn't know it around here, but philosophy the academic discipline has nothing in common with "philosophy," i.e. "this makes sense to me, but I don't have to support it." "Real" philosophy has more in common with mathematics, though more abstract and wider in focus.)

So the question is why is there motion in the universe? Because the initial conditions of the universe were not in a stabile configuration. Why not? Because it was not completely uniform. Why not? Good question. Presumably because of random quantum effects.

Output>Input? No? Well that's all that matters. Disconnect the battery, and let it power the lights in the building.

This is in the classical physics forum, so I was assuming no gravitational waves, and no cosmic expansion. I let "black hole" slide, since point masses suit classical physics problems just fine.

I don't see what edible vs. inedible has to do with anything, other than maybe public perception. Does increasing the supply of biofuel necessitate a decrease in food supplies, or not? Meh, our agricultural policy as a whole is pretty much a joke, apparently because of the wildly disproportionate influence of the agribusiness lobby. Take a look at this Nicholas Kristoff op-ed from December 2008; http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/opinion/11kristof.html?_r=1&em I'm all for supporting renewable domestic energy, but I'm pretty cynical about that goal remaining primary. Is biofuel really worth it?

That's kind of a screwy scenario to begin with, with three equal bodies. What is the point of having three and not two? Anyway, no, they don't fall into one another. They just have very very very slightly modified orbits. If you take a circular orbit and reduce its velocity at some point, it becomes an elliptical orbit with its apogee at the point where you reduced the velocity. If you think about it, it's equivalent to just using more or less charge in Newton's cannon.

Ok, terms: heat is a transfer of energy. Things do not "have" heat. They have energy. The measure of average kinetic energy of particles is temperature. Transferring energy in the way you describe, by "knocking particles together" until the average energy of the two bodies evens out, is called conduction. However, photons (light) also have energy, which they transfer to whatever they hit. This is called radiation. It is the sun's radiation, its light, that keeps all of us alive.

I just don't get the circular reasoning, because it sounds like saying the same thing twice. "Creatures with adaptive traits are selected." "Creatures are selected for their adaptive traits." That's the same thing. What is the logic that they're "irreconcilable?" That's what makes me think they're using terms incorrectly. Seriously, can anyone at least rephrase the claim to make it intelligible?

The moon travels around the Earth (well really, they both travel around their common center of gravity, but for simplicity's sake it doesn't really matter) in an approximately circular path. At any given moment, the moon's acceleration is directed towards the Earth, and its velocity is perpendicular to that acceleration. (In fact, this is true for anything traveling in a circle.) The moon is constantly falling towards the Earth, but because of its initial velocity it continues to miss us. That's what an orbit is. Here is another common illustration of how orbits work: http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/newannon.htm

For one thing, according to the authors, natural selection contains a logical fallacy by linking two irreconcilable claims: first, that creatures with adaptive traits are selected, and second, that creatures are selected for their adaptive traits. Anyone have any idea what this means? Are they using the term "selection" differently than everyone else? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedAlso, guys, this has nothing to do with philosophy. "Philosophy" /= "whatever bullshit pops into you head."

Empiricism in general is about justification, not "truth." So really, there is no part of physics where Aristotelean logic applies. I'm pretty sure continuous mathematics can't be represented with Aristotelean logic, either, and obviously physics employs calculus. Disclaimer: I only vaguely remember studying logic.

More importantly, to ensure that its users receive the constant public attention they crave, the iPad will emit the phrase "Hey, does that guy have an iPad?" every eight minutes.

Er, yes. They collide at escape velocity.

They bump, after falling for many many times the age of the universe. The set up is they have an initial relative velocity of zero. An orbit requires a sideways component to velocity.

Superconductors are useful in levitating because they are perfectly diamagnetic, which means they repel all magnetic fields. This means it is much easier to get a stabile configuration than with, say, iron magnets, that are going to try to seek out one pole of the repelling magnet. Diamagnets, on the other hand, will seek out the point of minimum field strength, which is usually in empty space.

Some other features: http://www.theonion.com/content/infograph/apple_finally_unveils_ipad

As a purely classical physics question, then yes, they fall towards one another. Also, I wouldn't say this: I understand what you mean, but technically you can't block or interfere with gravity. It's just that the "background noise" of all the stuff in the universe is pretty much the same in all directions, so the net effect is zero except for nearby objects. BTW, 100 million light years is about 1.5*10^17 times the radius of the Earth, so the force of gravity towards the Earth at that distance is about 1/2.25*10^34 as much as standing on the surface. So figure an acceleration in the range of 0.000000000000000000000000000000004 meters per second per second.

Actually, it's nothing that remembers anything. But thank you for correcting my notion of what the claim actually is. Interesting. So it's even sillier that I thought, in that not only does water "remember" what it was once in contact with (but is now "diluted" to the point where no molecules of the "remembered" substance are still present), but its able to distinguish between what will and won't have a positive effect, and "forget" the negative ones! The point still stands that: 1) No coherent mechanism is proposed. 2) The incoherent mechanisms proposed (namely that water has memory) flies in the face of everything demonstrable we know about chemistry. 3) Despite lots of attempts and an obvious motive to demonstrate efficacy, no trial without obvious flaws has ever gotten a result other than identical results to a placebo.

It's a good thing that solutions diluted to nothing don't still have "imprints" or whatever, as that would mean any given glass of water would be "imprinted" with billions of different substances, millions of which would be deadly poisonous. And if bleedingly obvious logic isn't sufficient, homeopathy has also been demonstrated to be worthless whenever it has been tested.