imatfaal

Surely the whole point of an irrational is that it cannot be the quotient of two integers - and if it has a last digit then it has a fractional representation and is rational

I wonder if the HUP would mean that if you measured the timing sufficiently accurately then you would lose enough precision in the position to stop interference. Trouble is with this idea is that I cannot quite work out whether these would be a non-commuting pair of observables (I am guessing the timing would give you direction which would give you momentum; the position and the momentum cannot be known with arbitrary accuracy at the same time) - and secondly not sure if it is enough to make any difference to interference pattern.

Ditto - my Greek ship-board colleagues need to think in these terms. One problem can be solved by following a simple rote method, two simultaneous problems might / might not be amenable to that form of solution, but multiple cascading problems are often exacerbated by the mindless following of the simple solution to one of the individual problems. The assumption that systems will fail and this will not be at a convenient time is crucial to putting the officers and crew in the right mind set to deal with most eventualities. It leads a team towards being able to act in a crisis rather than merely knowing how to solve a problem

This is rubbish - I have studied history (the history of criminal jurisprudence) to a high level and the main thing you learn from a study of history is the contingency of everything and how nothing in society is as factually objective as one might wish. There are papers and papers written about this very topic - my research was a discourse analysis of the criminal confession - and the take home message is that even with highly documented areas of history there is very little agreement on what actually happened but a lot of people telling what they would like you to believe happened.

"Thoughts?" That there has been precious little change in the 1200 odd days since you started this thread - there has been on average around 1 mass shooting per day for the last three and a bit years. The tragedy in California this week was the largest since Newtown which made my look back for this thread thinking that it was prompted by that horrific event - but no, it was yet another piece of savagery which lead to you opening the debate in July 2012. The various threads on this forum show in miniature the debate in America as a whole - and lead me to the depressing conclusion that a majority of people see mass shootings and the deaths of innocents as a valid and proportionate price to pay in order to protect their constitutional right to bear arms. As a European pacifist I cannot square this with my personal interactions on a daily basis with honest, friendly, peaceful and thoughtful Americans - but I cannot see how it can be anything but the case; everyday someone plays out their mental health issues with death and guns - but nothing is done, there is not even an agreement that something needs to be done.

We are a long way from whether Isaac Newton was wrong - but I am certain that you are. Firstly "the box" as a concept is a nightmare when applied to a rigorous academic discipline; it is easy to work and think outside the box in TV-programme conceptualization and other areas needing "blue-sky thinking" - but in Physics, in Philosophy, in Psychology, and Pure Mathematics the entire notion becomes meaningless and counter-productive. These topics are so mind-numblingly vast, so tortuously complex, and so beyond simple human encapsulation that the notion of a box, of any limit to knowledge, of even a clearly defined boundary merely demonstrates a lack of comprehension in the promoter of "thinking outside the box". I think of it as if someone who had been shown a chess set and has been told it is a game who then reprimands Kasparov for not learning to juggle with the pawns. Secondly the clarion call "to think outside the box" is hugely insulting to working researchers and academics. If there had been any interaction between those calling for "thinking outside the box" and those who are actually actively researching in industry or academe (or personally motivated) then there would be a sudden realisation of the flights of imagination of the working Physicist, of the daring insight and neglect of obvious everyday solutions of the Mathematician, of the refusal by Psychologists to limit the scope of their investigations and to accept given facts on society and humanity, and of the openness of Philosophers to internal contradiction, to new thinking and new methods of analysis. To condemn academic researchers as dull and leaden without even scratching the surface of what they have done, what they do, and their dreams of future action is an act of hubris of the highest order. Take a look at what some of the individual academics on this site and other websites actually do when they are not teaching - it is mind-blowing! Yes we do need imagination and daring insight - but we already have it in vast amounts in our universities and research establishments around the world. And yes we do need to ensure we do not become entrenched in staid and dogmatic thinking - but the academy has always shown that it is at the forefront of new thought; it is politics, religion, and the media who cleave to the past and refuse to admit to the benefits of progress and the possibility of sea-changes.

! Moderator Note I guess I answered this in the other thread in physics in which I said that these discussions must be held in Speculations. It would be best if the debate continues here - that allows you and the other participants to voice opinions, bare ideas, and guesses (although we do ask for more meat on the bones later). In the main fora we want a discussion that relies on the sort of science that can be found in texts, articles, and papers. FYG the equations which people like Ed Witten have written to form the mathematical underpinning of some string / brane theories are amongst the cutting edge of mathematics (Witten got the Fields Medal - although this was not for his string / 3 brane maths). If you can introduce equations - it would be superb; but be aware they will be checked rigorously and a frighteningly percentage of the equations presented here are not even dimensionally sound (yet another use of that word!) so please check them before posting

Just as an aside - cos the maths is way way over my head - Arvix papers are openly available to all For instance 1. I went to - arxiv.org 2. Searched on a name - http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+AND+bruce+AND+andrew+james/0/1/0/all/0/1 3. Scrolled past the three papers by collectives which amongst the hundreds of authors will contain almost every common forename 4. Clicked on the link to get the abstract - http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.05405 5. Clicked on the PDF in the box on the RHS to get the article in readable format - http://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.05405v1.pdf And AJB - I don't understand any of your paper either but I am sure it is very impressive and good

! Moderator Note T J MacCaustland Please stop advancing highly speculative and personal ideas in the main fora. The speculations forum is the home for ideas which are not yet backed up by evidence - especially if there is no mathematical model at the base of the new idea. It is acceptable to discuss String Theories as they currently stand in the main fora - they are currently (although to a diminished extent) studied and researched at academic institutions with the full knowledge that they are strictly hypothetical at present but have a beautiful mathematical foundation; but your own personal take on them is not OK - nor can these ideas be used to contradict accepted and evidenced physics. do not reply to this moderation. report this message if you need to argue

I hadn't realised that things had reached levels of depravity like that - deliberately and clandestinely infecting unwitting subjects with potentially fatal diseases; and all at the same time as we were hanging Nazis for doing the same thing

also a considerable amount (although I have no idea of whether the proportion is large or small) would be held as elastic potential energy manifest in the stretching of the large arteries. The blood flows because the heart in systole pushes some of it around AND because the large proximal arteries (most notably the aorta) are stretched and will revert to normal shape and size during diastole causing blood to continue to flow. You can think about this by looking at the increase in pulse pressure from the young and fit to the old and not so fit - this increase is due (in part) to lowering of aortic compliance and thus need for heart to work differently The formula for linear springs is Elastic Potential Energy = 1/2 kx^2 where k is the spring constant and x is the displacement - I am sure there will be a 2d and 3d equivalent (I would think you would need the 2d) but I really do not ever recall seeing them

! Moderator Note thanks Boss. Thread Locked as this is a duplicate

I cannot remember which was the first book I left half finished - but doing so was immensely liberating and has cut down on me spending too much time reading tripe in the mad hope that it will get better.

It is good form to group top and bottom together ie GMm then over r^2 . Having another part of the top after the bottom risks a missing bracket and the last multiple being put on the bottom. For sums like this it is often easier to separate the powers of ten and the coefficients - ie (22+24) - (8*2 + 11) = 46 - 27 = 19 6.674*5.972*7.374/(3.844^2) = 19.89 so the answer is 19.89 x 10^19 or 1.989 x 10^20 N this means you can do the first bit just handling the powers of ten and get a very reasonable estimate without using anything but your mental arithmetic

It was the lack of central accounting of this terrible statistic that was one of the reasons which prompted me to start the thread And that need to be cautious and and extra careful is wrong - I should not pay for a "lack of respect" for duly appointed authority with my life. Your last point is obvious but needs repeating - with over half a million (1.1 million full time staff of which 745k are sworn officers plus 45000 from central agencies) you are going to get bad apples. But the rooting out of those bad apples should be a prime ambition of the police authorities themselves - whereas what we get from the evidence is that the authorities are determined to cover up all instances of impropriety and law-breaking

And the observed behaviour of fast rotating pulsar / binary star pairs fit the predictions of spin rate loss if and only if gravitational waves are being emitted - the system needs to disperse energy if it is to to inspiral in on itself (as is observed) and this can only be explained by gravitational waves. Gravitational waves are well evidenced via secondary observations - it is only in the direct measurement that we are struggling; and gravitational waves are a firm prediction of straight GR

a is the intersection with the y axis - ie when x is zero, cosh x/a is one, and y is equal to a What information are you working from in order to reach a value for a?

! Moderator Note New Question by Mike B split to new thread.

I really do not know if that is correct Robin - but as a exercise in critical thinking I applaud it; your idea makes perfect sense and even without evidence by introducing a counter-hypothesis it shows that the logic of the quoted section of the OP is potentially flawed. I am pretty certain the solar wind is essentially neutral on a large enough scale (Debeyer Length for plasma?) After a bit of google-fu here is Bad Astronomy on the subject - debunking a book http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/mccanney/solarwind.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34915169 And again the city, police department, and politicians of all hues have conspired to keep video footage hidden - it is only because a court has ordered release of footage on wednesday that this seems to have been brought to a head And yesterday we reached 1024 http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database#

! Moderator Note Can we ensure we don't turn this into another Guns in the USA / Police Violence / Black Lives Matter debate please? We understand your contention but it bears within itself the seeds of total derailment of this thread on the Paris Attacks by Islamic Fundamentalists. Feel free to open a thread in Politics or in Psych regarding the different responses to various forms of violence - but here we are discussing Paris Attacks (very broadly - but not broadly enough to accept these branches)

Or very very old. Some of the child psych experiments of the 50s and early 60s would - quite literally - get you locked up if you tried them now. The general view is that many experiments carried out in the past were immoral and unethical - that's why we have ethical research committees which prevet (prevent?) experiments nowadays. But that said - most experimenters were not the "mad scientist" then, and they are not now; the MERCs unfortunately make life massively more difficult for responsible researchers because the Committees have to guard against the fringe element who might push the bounds of acceptability. Perhaps we have gone too far - but when you see some of the films or read the reports of some truly nasty experiments you realise that we must continue to be careful.

In as much as the Church follows the Bible (I realise that is very limited) then yes. The entire system of Equity - the law of trusts, much of land law, lots of property law, personal rights (basically half a year of a three year law degree) - comes from Church/Canon Law via the Court of Chancery. For many years there were dual jurisdictions in England - the Crown and the Church, Law and Equity, the Court and the Chancery; these were only really changed in the Judicature Acts of the late 19th. And Equity held sway over Law - an equitable right could be used to shield oneself from a legal challenge.

! Moderator Note John 3 16 I left this thread-branch open in the hope that it would allow some questions to be answered - from my perspective this has happened. Arete has provided a referenced and cogent argument which refutes your points - forum rules dictate that any response to this should be a scientific and rational counter (preferably with citations); it is not acceptable for you to move on with a "Yeah - but what about this..." argument. You can ask for clarifications, challenge assertions, criticise logic etc. - but you cannot just ignore the fact that your argument was refuted and move on to the next spurious contention. If you have genuine uncertainty about another question then feel free to open another thread

! Moderator Note Can we ensure we don't turn this into another Guns in the USA debate please.