John Cuthber

OK, so what you did was describe some odd sort of laser as "standard". That's not going to get us very far in terms of answering the original question.

So, you don't want your work classed as part of everything. Doesn't that mean it's nothing? Seriously, as you say, everything is speculative. The "speculations" category is for stuff with no evidentiary base and outside the "mainstream" and, as you say, the definition of "mainstream" is moving all the time.

Actually, I think that's your responsibility. Why does your la=er behave differently from all the lasers I have seen? Of course, maybe it's my observation that's peculiar. Does anyone else see the phenomenon that Studiot is describing? Phase with respect to what? If it's measured WRT the original source then that explains why the difference to the source makes a difference. (having said that, you are wrong about this " an RF detector placed at that point will only measure the amplitude" . An oscilloscope, for example, could show the phase relationship.

Laser beams don't generally do that.

There are about 500 million people in the EU. A few million immigrants (who cares if they are economic migrants or refugees?) wouldn't matter. As I pointed out, the cost isn't that great. OK so £25 billion sounds like a lot of money, but, to put it into context, it is about a tenth of what we paid to bail out the banks when they screwed up. In my view, it's no so much that welcoming these people would be a great gesture, it's that failing to do so is a great shame. And that's before we start looking outside the EU for either accommodation or financial support for these people.

Be careful with approximations like that. I just worked out that the moon does not exist. I calculated it's diameter based on the fact that it subtends a small angle (about half a degree). It has a diameter that's given by the sine of that angle times the distance to the moon. Well, it's a small angle so I can assume that the "small angle" approximations hold. I can find the Taylor series for cosine 1- 1/2 x^2 + 1/24 x^4... Since x is small I can assume that x^2 is too small to bother with and the other terms are even smaller. So the cosine of a small angle is 1 Then from sine2 + Cosine2 =1 I can conclude that sine (x) = 0 for small x So the diameter of the moon is zero time the distance to the moon. So that diameter is zero. So the moon isn't there. In general, the answer to the problem of small number is not to worry about them. Even if you are not happy with them, the maths still works just fine.

I heard the story about the exam grades and television. I have yet to hear how they distinguished cause from effect. With the best will in the world, you have to accept that some kids just are not going to get very good grades because they are just not built that way. Could it be that these, less able, kids are going to spend more time watching TV while their more gifted counterparts are,for example, reading books or playing football? In due course, they will be the ones who get poorer grades, but it wont be because they watched telly.

Not all seaweed is green. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laver_(seaweed) Though I don't understand why the teacher thinks that mushrooms don't count. Perhaps they are saying that the mushrooms feed on decaying plants and those plants were green. There are animals whose life is based on an energy source other than the sun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent#Biological_communities I'm not sure if any of them is used as food by people- but those creatures eat each other.

Two points; only one of the "camps" can be correct, so we ought to find the facts before deciding which one we are in. Many migrants and refugees seek to get to the UK even though we do not offer generous payments to them (They would be better off in Germany, for example.) The most important point is that if we gave all (every man, woman and child) the 250,000 or so people who have come to the EU from Syria £100,000 (a silly sum of money) each it would still cost us less than 0.25% of our GDP. We could afford it. The "crisis" is political - the politicians are trying to find a new scapegoat for their failure to manage the economy.

That's broadly true of the UK's first state pension system. And the system was designed and voted for by the young people who knew that would be paying their grandparents' pensions. They did it because they knew it meant that, in turn, their grandchildren would be paying their pension. That's how it was originally set up. What's wrong with it? Also, leave God out of it unless you can supply evidence for Him.

I am reading this thread on a 900 Mhz Pentium computer running Windows XP. It works OK so I don't need a powerful computer for this.

http://xkcd.com/285/

One of you says "The error in any one measurement is several cm", and the other "an accuracy of 3x10^-2 metres" There's not much in it, and the nearest Km would still easily be close enough to spot a change of 0.1%.

"Well the UK pension system is ..." Which one?

No it doesn't.

And all I see is that you do not understand pensions. It does not matter if I have courage or not. I am not able to predict the future. It would be stupid for me to pretend that I can. So it would be stupid to base my pension on a guess about what will happen in the future. Do you actually have any evidence for the claims you have made?

No. it does not mean that. the system is complicated but here is the simple version. For each year I work I will get 1/80 of my last annual salary when I retire. So, if I retire after working 40 years I will retire on half my final pay. Why do you think that is a problem? Why do you think my pension should depend on how good I am at guessing which stocks and shares will do well in the future?

Which system? There are lots For example the pension scheme I am in is funded and run entirely by the government (I work for the government). There is no involvement from the stock market or from shares/ mutual funds or whatever.

OK, that's your point of view. Perhaps your first step should be to tell us what pension system you mean. There are lots. Then you will need to provide some evidence. In particular, you will need to show that a system that has been working successfully for many years is wrong.

It's easy. All you need to do is ask the aliens on the other planet to build a really big spring, with a hook at the bottom. Aim your space ship at the top of the spring and then it will bring you to a gradual, safe, halt. Just as you reach the ground ask someone to clip the hook onto the spring so it doesn't ping you back into space. Even better, when you decide to take off again, simply get back in the ship and undo the hook. the spring will send you on your way.. Obviously, there are practical issues with this. Of course, you can, in principle, take your own spring along with you in case the aliens are uncooperative or on holiday when you land. It would be rather heavy.

How much would G need to vary before we noticed the change in the orbit of the moon? Certainly 0.1% would mess up the tide tables. How about how big a change in G would it take before our TV satellite dishes were all pointing in the wrong direction?

Vitamin c is a strong reducing agent It can reduce Benedict's solution without boiling. If there's only a little vitamin c then it will produce a little of the yellowish copper oxide and together with the leftover blueish copper salts you get a green colour.

Just a thought, but if you don't have enough money to hire an expert to help, then you don't have nearly enough money to build it. good luck.

The numbers are the solutions to the polynomial, not th e results from calculating it.

Rather than risk spoiling it I will pretend that I think the answer is 500 OK So the polynomial is (x-0) (x-7) (x-28) (x-69) (x-500) And that polynomial obviously is equal to zero when x takes the values 0,7,28,69 and 500. For example, at x =7 the second bracketed expression (x-0) is equal to zero- so the overall calculation is equal to zero because it doesn't matter what you multiply it by- the outcome will still be zero. But I could have copied the numbers from the puzzle into the brackets whatever numbers they were. And I could have put any number I wanted into the last bracket. So, there are always an infinite number of solutions to this sort of puzzle. And I still wonder if you need to check the arithmetic 13 = 1 = 0 + 1 23 = 8 = 7 + 1 33 = 27 = 28 -1 43 = 64 = 69 - 5 but I might have got completely the wrong idea.