swansont

One thing that I don't think was mentioned is that college costs have been rising faster than inflation, and household income. My tuition in 1980, about $5k (rough estimate, plus room & board, another ~$2k), is about $16k in today's dollars. However, tuition at my school is now about $45k. I took out about $10k in loans over my 3.5 years in school (Grants and scholarships plus my parents covered the rest, and I graduated early because of the cost) My total cost was perhaps $25k, meaning I took out loans covering 40% of the cost. Even if someone can cover the same fraction today (harder, because costs have risen faster than inflation and median income), 3.5 years is ~$175k, and 40% of that is $70k. That comparison does not reflect the possibility that a larger financial aid package might be available, but still: the financial burden of people who went to school years ago is smaller than it is today, so the complaint about debt forgiveness needs to account for that — it's the reason that it's now necessary. The real answer there is political suicide, so nobody will come out and say this, but it's "If you wanted debt forgiveness 15 years ago, you should have elected people back then who wanted this to be a priority, but you didn't" In the US we do, to some extent. Mortgage interest, for example, is tax-deductible. Any outrage directed at helping people pay off their student loans can just as easily be directed at helping people pay off their mortgage.

Counterpoint: Why would he be telling people to fire her, when they had no power to fire her? —- A preview of Bolton’s book just got reported. Scoop from the NYT “President Trump told his national security adviser in August that he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats including the Bidens, according to an unpublished manuscript by the former adviser, John R. Bolton.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/26/us/politics/trump-bolton-book-ukraine.html He had to get security approval, so people knew this was coming.

But you’d be able to tell the difference between gravity and an acceleration if there was no difference. The question to answer, I think, is how do you compare the clocks? Show what happens to the signal.

No, it isn’t. You have several equations and calculations, but they don’t support your claims.

one can buy these - Google “Galton board” I have one in my office.

That set of goalposts has already been moved.

Not sure why it matters, since you have implied that there is a medium with physical properties. This just seems like a distraction.

We’re not referring to relativistic mass, so this is moot.

That’s not enough of a well to make light travel in a circle. I know this because I can see things. Let’s assume a region with no other energy or mass. But the light doesn’t go in a circle. So these particles can’t exist in free space. Or anywhere not near a black hole.

What is the evidence that this energy well exists? Mass is required to make light bend (a lot of it) but aren’t you claiming photons do this on their own? That’s its mass. why doesn’t it travel at c?

EM radiation has an electric field. If that’s a high enough amplitude, you can cause field ionization.

no, it’s zero, as is anything that travels at c Photons have momentum. Reflection, absorption and emission all involve a change in momentum of the target. All of physics is arguing with this. p=E/c m=0

We’re discussing power use. What does the code say about how much power I used last month? It’s all anecdotal.

You might find the video in this thread helpful https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/87347-why-hidden-variables-dont-work/

No, it means you need three coordinates to locate a point, using some coordinate system. Corner of 5th and Elm, ninth floor. Not inherently a volume.

Anecdotes for me, but not for thee...

Photons, which contain oscillating electric and magnetic fields, have zero mass. Any static field you might find can’t be disassociated from the mass that creates the field. The whole system has mass. But you’re talking about a vacuum, so this is moot.

— "De Broglie waves are light waves in a deep energy well, and the associated velocities are the speed of light at the local energy density" I can send matter waves and light along the same path, and the light travels at c while the matter waves don't. So this is rubbish. — As for your calculations about the electron in a Bohr orbit: 1. You don't clearly explain what you are doing, and why (so there's no incentive to try and check for errors) 2. The Bohr model is wrong and not the QM model, so what's the point? (so again, there's no incentive to try and check for errors) — The classical radius is not the physical radius of the electron. It's another item where the classical prediction (if you can call it that) fails to match up with QM and experimental results. Any line of discussion based on it being a physical value is doomed to failure. — How do you get a photon to move in a circle? — I second Mordred's question about fermions

So you're the arbiter of what's insulting or not? That's what you've set yourself up as, with the first couple of posts, and now this.

This isn't about relativity, as such, but about doing a proper experiment. If you don't do that comparison you haven't demonstrated that the differences aren't in the hardware. The clocks are uncalibrated. Such an experiment wouldn't pass peer-review.

It doesn't have to. You're casting this as all-or-nothing and that's not the situation. Any local generation you add reduces the grid capacity requirement. If your solar provides you 500 W at some time in the day, then your demand from the grid has dropped by that amount. It's cloudy? Then solar drops, but then, demand probably does, too, as it's generally cooler when it's cloudy. If you can generate all of your power from rooftop solar that's wonderful, but the point is that any local generation of power reduces stress on the grid. Since demand is not constant, if the grid can handle transmission of peak demand then it's not an immediate problem if peak demand does't go up. One of the nice things about solar is that it roughly tracks the demand. AC demand is highest in the afternoon, when the sun is shining, which is when you are generating maximum solar. If your increased demand for e.g. EV charging is at night, so you are off-peak, and grid capacity is there. You and everyone else.

Rooftop solar exists and is not speculative. Why do you get to invoke the difficulty of adopting EVs while discounting the possibility of the solutions being adopted at an equal pace?

So what has inertia in light propagation?

Starlight on a particular path — that which ended up at the telescope — followed that path. Light heading to Jupiter would not have traveled a shorter path by passing near the sun. But the question here is : shorter than what? There's only one path to get from point A to point B that follows the laws of nature. It sounds like you are trying to apply the principle of least time (Fermat's principle). That the path taken by light will be the one that has the smallest travel time, but that's not physically the shortest path in situations like materials with different indices of refraction.

Why not? If someone says something blatantly untrue, isn't it intellectually dishonest not to consider all the possibilities? There's lying and ignorance. What other possibility is there for blatant untruths? I know that in certain conversations, pointing out someone's error is considered rude. But that's not the paradigm under which science discussion operates. As have I. And just scientists — no need to disparage them by calling them nerds. Which, given your position here, I'm sure you'll you'll agree.