swansont

Throwing the ball is an unbalanced force. YT's post summed it, as it were, rather succinctly: +70 - 70 = 0 The ball will drop to the ground.

Zero temp doesn't mean zero energy, though. Electrons are still in their orbitals and have energy, so there is still an EM force. It's the center-of-mass KE that goes to zero.

Time doesn't slow down for the observer - the observer sees time slow down for the other person.

Basically. Angular momentum is conserved, so what spinning you have defines an axis for the whole system. Any orbits that are not primarily on the ecliptic, or are very eccentric, will intersect, so you get collisions of any objects that have coelesced that have those orbits. What survives are objects near the ecliptic with fairly round orbits.

Virtual states can have any energy, AFAIK. They are not real states, which is what you are describing.

Actually what you are describing is the Thompson voltage. Thermocouples use the Seebeck effect, which is a combination of the Thompson effect and the Peltier effect.

There is an exception. Electron capture' date=' which happens in proton-rich nuclei, has a small dependence on environmental effects. Under high pressure, you basically squash the orbits a bit, so the electron spends more time closer tothe nucleus and thus increasing the capture cross section. "Hensley et al. (1973) demonstrated that the electron capture decay of 7Be to 7Li is increased by 0.59% when BeO is subjected to 270 " 10 kbars pressure in a diamond anvil." (from this link)

The QED explanation is that the photons are being absorbed and re-emitted by virtual states of the medium. The absorption/emission time delay causes the slowdown, but the photons travel at c. If the photon is absorbed and a real state is involved, there will be scattering and loss. The classical explanation is that the permittivity and permeability change, causing the wave propagation speed to be smaller.

The ecliptic is the idealized plane for the earth's orbit, and the other planets lie close to it, but not directly on it. That's why there are not eclipses and occultations every time planetary bodies line up radially. We just had a lunar eclipse last full moon, but we don't get one every full moon (inclination is about 5 degrees). We had a transit of Venus in June, and will have another in 2012, but then not for more than 100 years (and didn't have one at all in the 1900's), becaus Venus's orbit is inclined with respect to the ecliptic by 3.39 degrees. Here is a table of planetary data. You can see that, except for Mercury and Pluto, the planets are all within 3.39 degrees. And the orbits are elliptical.

You appear to be thinking of gravity as some sort of engine. Energy doesn't get "used up" so there doesn't need to be a source. Gravity (and E&M and nuclear) exterts a force, and what we measure as energy is a result of that - a force is equivalent to a potential gradient, and vice versa. You also may be running into the problem that physics explains how nature behaves, but at a fundamental level, it does not explain why.

AFAIK the Sunday Telegraph isn't a scientific journal, thus no peer review. The quoted areas were written by a science correspondent, so you don't know how much he got wrong in summarizing things. He says that the experiment was in an airtight container, which to me does not imply a vacuum. But there are no details on any calculations of lift rotating body might achieve. I also can't reconcile the "10 runs," "1 part in 7000 difference" and "can't be explained by experimental error." The statistical error on 10 runs is 31%. The next statement about spinning bullets seems to ignore the lift you get from the bullet. Oh, and then there's the aether that keeps getting mentioned. So take all of that with a huge grain of salt.

If you mean that in the "preposterously funny" sense, then, OK. Kind of like cult films. "Plan 9 from Outer Space is an enjoyable movie" and all that. But the reliable information content of that site is pretty close to zero.

Length contracts in the direction of motion. Moving clocks run slow.

For #2: There is nothing that distinguishes the two observers or their frames of reference, so the effects they see have to be interchangeable. Thus, they both see the other one as length contracted. Each one can assume that they are at rest in their own frame, as long as those frames are inertial.

No...I've been faking it.

And I disagree, especially with the last part. Any reorientation of the axis has to happen from an external cause. You can have wobble, when the rotational axis and center-of-mass axis don't coincide, but you don't appear to be talking about that. Forces that are internal to the system can't change the angular momentum. You can change the moment of inertia, but that will be coupled to a change in rotational speed.

Bwaaaaa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! You have to be freaking kidding.

How so? And being "affected by gravity" and changing gravity aren't the same thing.

Getting to absolute zero is forbidden by the 3rd law of thermodynamics. Martin's right - nanoK-ish temperatures is the best anyone's done (which is pretty darn good) in dilute gases that form Bose-Einstein condensates. I don't think anyone had tried to measure the gravitational attraction because it's so small compared to the electromagnetic interactions on that level. I don't know of any theory that makes gravity vary with temperature.

It's a measure of the elasticity (or inelasticity, depending on how you look at it) of an object in a collision.