geordief

You don't think "was" is more definite than "were" ? Does "was" imply specific cases and "were" has more of a general sense? In Google "were" outnumbers "was " by 10 to 1 for the phrase "if it was/were to be done" . In my mind "was" is therefore used and cannot be wrong if it has that uptake. But does it have a different sense?

Penny in the poor box it is 'posters' ' was right, though.(plural) EDIT: maybe "was" was good too(better?)

Yes ,I also thought it was a bad idea. It smacks of picking on people. If it was to be done it should be with posters' consent. I would be happy to give mine though (and I see so does dimreepr) since I am all for clarity of thought and expression-and good communication. . Clarity is next to godliness ,or words to that effect.

Indeed,although there are caveats that this is a speculative area. However ,from what I have read on this or other forums like it ,the underlined part of the following sentence is just wrong and shows up in the BBC article http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-21150047 "What makes more sense is the quantum effect of entanglement. Under quantum rules, no matter how far apart an "entangled" pair of particles gets, each seems to "know" what the other is up to - they can even seem to pass information to one another faster than the speed of light.." Am I right ; is that kind of a sentence a no-no?

"contact" is also a word. I am not qualified to say whether the balance of forces he is describing is actually the case but ,until I hear otherwise it will be my working model. If he wants to call it "contact" then fine but I hope it is a definition that is widely accepted ( a convention). It is best that we all use the same language so far as possible. He makes the point the things never completely occupy the same space. I like that idea but ,who knows perhaps there are exceptions I do not know about......

He explains what is going on. It doesn't matter what words are used to describe it so long as they are understandable and he is describing the same thing as you are trying to understand. It is good to be clear with language but sometimes it doesn't matter so long as you understand what is happening. Words are also tools.

I knew the Cold War wasn't over. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spy_vs._Spy

Here is a link I found http://www.sciencealert.com/how-graphene-could-help-solar-panels-produce-energy-when-it-s-raining

Can it be tested as to whether the theory of GR still applies in the extreme situation where two bodies (not particles) interact at such a remove from sources of mass-energy that we can ,for all intents and purposes regard them as constituting the entire universe? If we consider only the mass-energy bound up in the two bodies in question is it known/expected that they will curve spacetime in the same way as they do when they are just a part of the overall system of macro objects? It is not possible is it that GR will lose its applicability (or need to be tweaked) as such an extreme situation is approached?

Well yes ,I think that is considered to be the salient feature of GR (that it does not treat gravity as a "force" ). As usual I hesitate to pronounce on GR when I have only learned it from forums like this but I would be extremely surprised to learn otherwise.

I thought your final point about curvature and the non treatment of gravity as a force was in line with GR. As a thought experiment, if the two bodies in question are far enough (ie infinitely) removed from all (ie absolutely all) other sources of gravitational attraction does the space time curvature describing the two bodies remain fundamentally unchanged?

I am reading this interesting article about propaganda in WW2 and the thought (not for the first time )occurred to me that the relationship between the individual and society as a whole is an interesting one. http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20161021-the-psychological-tricks-used-to-help-win-world-war-two The analogy of the quantum/classical relationship springs to mind (in all likelihood to be easily debunked)but I wonder are there similar circumstances where there is a micro/macro relationship along these lines? I think .probably I should be including my "individual vs society" example as any one of the fascinating swarm mechanisms that have been the subject of a few TV documentaries over the past few years. The swarm behaviours are ,so I have heard quite easily explainable in everyday physical terms and are not ,therefore mysterious. As an analogy for the quantum/macro relationship we are perhaps still trying to establish (is the macro just a statistical extension of the micro?) might they serve any purpose(if only to differentiate ,perhaps) ?

Tax robots now!! What do we want? D.C.

I thought it did...............................eventually. Are you sure it doesn't?

I am not a chemist but I use vinegar and baking soda. I let them sit for a good while and then flush them through with hot water. Caustic soda is stronger but you have to be careful as it is a stronger reaction and it can be dangerous. There are also proprietary products that have worked well in the past ,but as Fuzzwood says mud may not be affected by chemicals . I have been known to poke a long rigid length of rubber oil carrying piping from tho outside of the house towards blockages in the kitchen but that may not work if you are not on the ground floor. Did you try the plunger ?

Should they have contacted him before announcing it in public? Found out ahead of time if there was likely to be a problem... People have said it was an odd political decision to coincide with the US elections. Perhaps he might not like to be a "pawn in the game " and considers their choice to lack sincerity, If he did then he would be complicit in accepting it.

Yes I saw that too. It seems that Quantum tunneling is one way of modeling Hawking Radiation which has been predicted (but not confirmed,so far as I know) "In another model, the process is a quantum tunnelling effect, whereby particle–antiparticle pairs will form from the vacuum, and one will tunnel outside the event horizon." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation I cannot see in the article above that photons escape . It seems to mention particle-antiparticle pairs.

It is a convention , A facade. It could as easily be the other way round. Mafiosi could affect mawkish emotion to lay out their territory. Being genuine is more important.

Have you got a U-bend under your sink that you can access? Sometimes it is possible to unscrew a bolt at the bottom of the bend which is where there blockage can accumulate. Have you tried a plunger?

Another half -baked idea that I have put in this sub forum (with permission hopefully) I appreciate that Einstein accepted that the speed of light was a constant regardless of the inertial frame of reference without necessarily going into the "why" and I also think it may be the case that he was making his theory before the MM (non) results came through.... So I have this idea (if it is an idea) that we could perhaps regard the maximum speed limit ( which applies to massless particles) as more of a "base" speed that existed at the outset of the universe ( a default speed perhaps ). As the universe evolved particles ,depending on circumstance tend to go slower and slower but never reach pure stasis one with another . We tend to look at things from our perspective of things not moving but we are seeing it a bit like a mirror image of the "natural" order of things As I say ,it is a half baked idea and I would be personally unable to put any flesh on the bone...I would however still welcome anyone saying that they understand what I am trying to say and (I guess) that it is (a) wrong (b) unhelpful or © might have something that could be built on.. ...--or maybe (d) that what I have said is incomprehensible and just wooly "thinking".

I think the mathematical way to prove a negative (which may be what I was getting at) is to assume it is possible and to derive a contradiction from the hypothesis. Can this method be applied in QM?(or used in conjunction with it)? I mean I would like to be able to prove that when I sneeze ,nobody in the region of A. Centauri can possibly catch a cold.

I understand that particles' position in space is described by a probability function that seems to me to imply that there is no part of the universe where the particle might not in theory be observed. Are there in fact places and times where it is possible to say with 100% certainty that a particle will never be observed? If this is the case, is there a mathematical formula to describe that circumstance (in the quantum region)?

Maybe people who understand the process in the round are trying to explain to people who don't and the phrase "do no touch" is a method of getting the latter group to reassess their understanding .Shock tactics? I remember some 50 years ago telling myself that things didn't ever "touch" ,which seemed important to me at that time. But I don't think I had thought it through . It was certainly well before atomic force microscopes were created. EDIT:the use of "really" in the OP is probably revealing. It seems to divide things into "real" and "not real". That may be a bad approach. It certainly jars after all the threads we have had about real vs model. It should be a classification that should be used sparingly perhaps.

Getting very close?