swansont

It depends on the context. Profanity is not necessarily protected, especially if it's directed at another person - the so-called "fighting words" exception (Chaplinsky test).

There's random statistical uncertainty as well. You collect a range of data for some measurement. While each one may have a very small measurement uncertainty, the standard deviation may be larger. This gets smaller with the sqare root of the number of dsata points, so the answer is to take a lot of data. Add to that systematics, which are not random, and so don't average out.

Let me preface this by saying that GR is not my area. But I think that there is a binary pulsar observation, where they measure the orbit decay that is predicted by GR, and gravity radiation is predicated on gravity not being instantaneous; further, I believe the results are consistent with the speed of propagation being c with a high degree of precision. I think that any GR that had instantaneous propagation would run afoul of that observation. But feel free to try. As for "A quick refresher: A proof is anything that proves a conjecture correct using well-established theoroms. Your proof didn't work." Theorems and proofs are math, not science. But I concede that gravitons are not part of GR; I was reading it more generally (as it were). Here you go

Profanity is pretty much content-free, so I don't see how it inhibits freedom of speech anyway. But, as was alluded in another post - what is considered profanity is arbitrary anyway. Generally, "Poop" is benign, "crap" is somewhat crass, but s**t is profane. But they all refer to the same thing.

"Observe" is not to be construed as direct observation - any measurement counts. But in the end, you have to test it. If you can't disprove its validity, how do you know it's right?

Matter moves close to the speed of light all the time in particle accelerators. It would not be a problem, from a technical standpoint, to change that to c/2; the problem is just that there's no interesting science to be done under those conditions.

What do you call a girl with one leg shorter than the other? Eileen What do you call a Japanese girl with one leg shorter than the other? Irene What do you call a quadraplegic in a pool? Bob What do you call a leper in a hot tub? Stu What do you call a water skier with no legs? Skip What do you call a dog with no legs? You could call him 'cigarette' and take him out for a drag now and then, but it really doesn't matter - he won't come when you call, anyway.

The electrons were either already there or created in the decay.

Feel free. Don't recall where I heard/read it, but it popped into my mind while reading this thread.

Never wrestle with a pig. You just get all dirty, and the pig enjoys it.

The orbital electrons are ignored in the discussions, but the atom will eventually lose or gain any extra electrons necessary. When discussing the behavior of the nucleus in the decay, the atomic electrons are basically irrelevant. In the act of the decay, extra electrons may be stripped from the parent atom. So you don't know the exact charge state of the daughter. But, as overall charge is conserved, electrons will eventually be available to form a neutral atom.

That was the point of the original question. If you know its density and atomic mass, you can infer the radius.

You'll get credit for doing an online poll, which is a massively unscientific method of polling?

Astronomers use right ascension and declination. The Earth is the center of the coordinate system. Most stars and galaxies are so far away that the parallax is negligible.

Define "alive."

If there's a university nearby, ask around in the chemistry or physics department. If you have a dewar (aka thermos) or a cooler they might give you some. LN2 is relatively cheap. And lab-made ice cream using LN2 is pretty good!

Consider a train. When the engine starts moving, it pulls/pushes all of the cars along. For electrons, the push goes at the speed of light - when an electron at one end of the train moves, the one at the other end feels it at a time c/L later. But the train itself moves very slow. But current is the number of electrons moving past a point per unit time. The key here is that there is more than one track - copper atoms, for example, are spaced only a couple of Angstroms apart, and each can potentially contribute a conduction electron to current flow. Here's a quick estimate: a 1 mm thick wire is several million atoms across, or 1012 or so atoms in area, giving 1021 atoms per meter. An amp is 6.25 x 1018 electrons per second, so these 1021 electrons only have to move 6.25 mm/sec to give you that current. (The thermal speed of the electrons at room temperature is much higher than that, but that's random and doesn't contribute to net current flow)

velocity and force are vectors. The x-motion and y-motion are independent. So no matter what you do in x, the y motion is unaffected.