Radical Edward

oh yeah faf, I forgot, thanks

No it isn't, and they made no such assumption. The original experiment was performed in 1887, and confused physicists for many years. Einstein actually incorporated that result into his work. Do you actually have an experiment that proves that aether exists?

essentially, the refractive index in a crystal may be dependent on the polarisation of the light entering the crystal. If the refractive idex is different for two diffferent polarisations (say different for the x and y directions, where z is the direction that the light travels along), then a phase shift is experienced by one of the polarisations relative to the other (becaise one polarisation can travel quicker than the other), this may then result in the polarisation of the light entering the crystal being changed, depending of course on the thickness of the crystal and also the wavelength of the light. This is essentially what is responsble for quarter wave plates and so on. as an interesting note, sellotape is actually a pretty good quarter wave plate. orient two polarisers so that they are orthogonal, and no light passes through them, and then put a piece of tape between them and you'll see plenty light come through because the tape has changed the polarisation. nifty.

It was thrown out by the use of a michelson Morely interferometer, which demonstrated that there was no aether. It wasn't thrown out to accomodate Einstein, it was just never included in his theories in the first place since there is actually no evidence of an absolute space existing.

furthermore, the 'inexperienced patent clerk' bit is a misonception. Einstein was actually pretty well qualified. being a patent clerk was just a job to bring in the money.

that's no current theory that I've heard of.

is the concept of a point really relevant? it seems to imply absolute space to me.

how do you know it's going to lead to catastrophe? and what is the nature of this catastrophe?

what specific points?

flew into what?

what magnetic field... heh. oh and transporting goods from earth would be stupid when there is a good supply of everything you need in the apollo amor carbonaceous chondrites. faf: what current figures? I'd be interested in seeing any proposed techniques.

we get a free supply of lead umbrellas.

photons are an excitation of the electrical field. think of it in the same way as a water wave, drop a pebble in a pond and the energy travels to the edge of the pond, however at no point is there a general flow of water in the direction of the wall.

stick to photons, many of the other force carriers have mass. In fact it is their mass which is related to the fact that they only have a short range.

it is still an enforced loss of freedom, but then arguably there is nothing wrong with it since we do the ame to cows, and our only claim to that being right is that we are a superior species, which in the case of the matrix, the superior species is the machines.

if you do the maths, there is actually an infinite amount of vacuum energy, so there really isn't any violation.

in order to answer this question you have to first think about what you would accept as a proof of reality. Generally speaking people accept empiricism as reality, with the exception of religious people who have a god or spirits of some sort who are generally regarded to have no empirical existance whatsoever, people accept the view of empirical reality, though they often say 'prove you're real' without accepting it. Generally though they accept a fist to the nose as a pretty good indicator that the offended scientist really is quite quite real.

cloanaid are onto a winner here... if it turns out the babies aren't clones, it's not all that likely the parentsa are going to try sueing them to get their money back.

take a peek in the dictionary at the word 'propaganda' ... you might learn something.

no, they only succeed once.

that's the abstract.

threat to what? world peace?

MrL.... I'm going to create a super hero, model it on you, and call it EmpiricalMan

the mai nreason people want to use hydrogen is because it is a clean fuel, also it explodes really well when ou rupture the tank, so that car accidents will look just like they do in Hollywood.

what's an artificial environment though?