MigL

Photons and neutrinos are massless composite particles ? What of gluons ? If your objective is resolving some unanswered questions, I don't see how creating many more unanswered problems achieves this. Galaxy rotation curves, the raison d'etre for dark matter are not simply a result of missing mass in the disk of the spiral, but also of the distribution of the missing mass.

D Trump had better check with his boss, E Musk, before making any more demands.

From your link "With new data, the universe's biggest mystery could be settled by the end of the decade.” IOW, It isn't settled yet, as more data is needed. Which means they don't know yet. I know ... Why don't we just give it a name to indicate we don't yet know the expansion mechanism. Something like 'Dark Energy' maybe ?

Saying 'Good Bye' got you a +1

The 'Laws' of the universe follow from symmetries. See Noether's Theorem. The Isotropy and homogeneity of the universe and its 'Laws' is due to causal contact, which means parts cannot be separated by a distance that light ( information ) cannot have travelled in an expanding universe, so, at some point in time, the universe must have been small enough to be in causal contact, See Inflation Theory. Scientific models have to be reproducible, and make testable predictions. The reproducibility and predictions have to be quantified, otherwise you are just 'hand-waving'. And that means math.

By the 1500s, the 'Black Death' had wiped out over 30 % of Europe's population. The very unequal feudal system of baron landowners with large numbers of serfs working the lands for barely subsistence came to an end, as the fewer remaining workers began to demand actual wages to work the land. Covid-19 had started to have the same effect as many people refused to return to minimally paying jobs after the pandemic. Quite a few restaurants and coffee shops had to close for lack of hired help, and governments are having to raise minimum wage to assist small businesses finding help. That seems to pale in comparison to a jackass like E Musk, who is currently worth approx. 440 Billion, demanding a yearly compensation of 56 Billion. He spent over 250 Million propping up D Trump's election campaign, such that he now controls the direction of the American Government ( finally lobbyists aren't the biggest problem anymore ), and yet, all the 'little' people ( non-affluent, uneducated ) voted for this Government thinking they'd get a better deal. P T Barnum underestimated the number of suckers born per minute. ( sorry, current American politics always gets me angry, so much so that I tend not to post too often as it ruins the rest of my day )

Perhaps Russia is a little too vague ( V Putin stays quiet, lets his puppet D Medvedev make the threats ) about their nuclear posturing and threats, INow. A much clearer example is North Korea and KJU. For the last 30-40 years they've been extorting and blackmailing with nuclear threats and missile tests.

I actually think it looks good on Justin Trudeau, who went to have dinner with D Trump and kiss his ass; meanwhile D Ford, Ontario's Premier, said "We don't want to do it, but if we are forced, we will cut off electric power to the 5 neighboring states we sell to". Can you guess who used to have their lunch money taken by the bully in grade school ? As for the moron Republicans who voted for D Trump so he could win, and the idiot Democrats who didn't bother to vote, and let him, this is the kind of shit you end up with ... Here's what happens when the world's richest man buys the presidency | Opinion

Unfortunately that is what folks believe, contrary to all evidence but also simple logic (i.e., differences in outcomes, priorities, goals, mechanisms, procedures etc.). Funny ( sad, actually ) how poor, or middle class, uneducated people vote to elect millionaires and billionaires thinking that they will look out for their best interests. Give them about 4 years to 'smell the coffee' and wake up.

The highlight of my summers, as a kid, was going to Niagara-on-the-Lake to watch the air show. I would eat ice cream at Avondale Dairy and watch the small planes. Then a huge shadow would cover us as the Avro Vulcan made its yearly low level overpass. Fantastic. V Putin should be worried if Europe finally decides to grow some balls and say enough is enough. Russia has the equivalent economy of Spain, have lost close to 700000 men, through killed or injured in action, still haven't taken Ukraine almost three years after the two week special operation was supposed to end, and had to call on North Korea for help. I would think Germany, England, France, or even Italy would have taken the fight to Russia so that their citizens could see what is really happening. I realize Ukraine won't do it, but a few Storm Shadow cruise missiles into the heart of Moscow would wake a lot of people up. They fire an 'experimental' IRBM and everyone is wringing their hands; how many more do you think they have ? And judging by the 'capabilities' of their Armed Forces so far, I would imagine their nuclear arsenal in in a similar sorry state. Do you think V Putin and his generals don't realize this ? All Russia has left is boisterous bravado.

Or, if you're a tyrant who doesn't want to leave Office, after being soundly defeated in a fair election, you may think you're justified to stage a treasonous violent coup on the Capital.

Naming conventions like technical/applied/engineering Physics are essentially engineering. As I like to tell the ring wearing engineers I work with ... "All those fancy equations you work with, for heat transfer, flows, stress/strain, etc., I once used to derive from first principles."

No. My original post stated it was an estimate.

Some didn’t vote. Some voted for 3rd parties. Some voted Trump. Some of Joe Biden’s voters weren’t democrats in the first place. Doesn’t matter. Just found your premise misguided. Really ? Voter Turnout in 2024: Democrats’ Low Enthusiasm Fueled Trump’s Win - WSJ Maybe in 2028 they will be outraged enough to be bothered to vote. This time a lot of them simply didn't care.

In 2020 Republicans got 73 Million votes and Democrats got 81 Million. In 2024 ( votes are still being counted so just estimates ) Republicans got 74 Million, or almost the same as 2020, but Democrats got 69 Million. Why did 14 Million Democrats fail to vote in this election ??? D Trump has been election campaigning for the last 4 years. K Harris started in the middle of August, a couple of months ago. And America would rather be run by an idiot than a competent woman. What other reasons for the loss do you need ...

I hope the 'checks and balances' are robust enough to last the 4 years.

Lies, about the economy, inflation, and other things like xenophobia and border issues. No. The lies are the same as 2016 and 2020. The difference is his opponent; he lost to a befuddled old man in 2020, but managed to beat two competent women in 2016 and 2024. When is the American population going to lose their fear of a female President ?

HEY ! WHAT ARE YOU AMERICAN MEMBERS DOING AT YOUR COMPUTER SCREEN ? GET YOUR ASS IN GEAR AND GO VOTE ! ( sorry for the yelling )

It seems the problem is easily recognizable, and has been known about. We have even discussed it on this forum. Up until a century ago, Physics was done by taking experimental evidence, and 'fitting' a theory to it. Sometimes things progressed smoothly, such as Faraday's work leading to Maxwell's, which ultimately led Einstein to SR and GR. And sometimes WAGs had to be resorted to when unsurmountable blocks were encountered, such as Plank's resolution of the UV catastrophe or deBroglie's wave nature of matter that allowed progress from the Bohr atom to the wave formulation of QM. But these were still easily verifiable with experiment. Since those times, theoretical Physics has vastly outpaced experimental Physics, maybe it's just more 'glamorous'. or , maybe the cost of the experimental work has sky-rocketed, I don't know, but the costs involved with LHCs, Space telescopes, LIGO, etc. that are needed to verify our theories will only grow, and the result is theory and experiment diverging even more. We have no way of testing theories involving String theory, or LQG for that matter, dark 'stuff', nor the interior of Black Holes or the universe before the recombination era, but we might someday, and it will necessitate a possible large 're-structuring' of the Physics we take for granted, as by then, theoretical work will have gone even further. So, while we all recognize the problem, no solution is forthcoming. Should we stop theoretical work until experiment catches up ? I don't think so. Who knows, some of these 'outlandish' theories, and their beautiful math, might be 're-purposed for more 'mundane' Physics.

There had been reports as far as 2-3 weeks ago that significant numbers ( up to 10% ) of life-long Republicans were abandoning the party. Not because the Harris campaign swayed them, but because of Trump's ineptitude, mean disparaging disposition, constant lies, and 'open mouth/insert foot' syndrome. This last week especially may have handed Kamala Harris the keys to the White House.

Who should have children? Anyone who wants that responsibility; children tend to make people better versions of themselves. Who should not have children? Mothers whose sons post inane topics on SFn, and whose name has 'FM' in it.

But the argument was specific to the proton, and its associated stability. Are ubstable neutrons not held together by those same gluons that 'represent the unbreakable SU(3) symmetry' ???

For several pages you've been making the argument that the proton is the fundamental SU(3) 'particle, because it doesn't decay, and associated 3rd law considerations. Then you make the jump to using the volume of the proton as the fundamental unit in the calculations. What thermodynamic considerations allow for a volume to be a fundamental unit ? Certainly not the same ones that allow fir a proton to be a fundamental unit. After all, other particles share a similar volume, and they are not fundamental as they decay. If you don't quit going round in circles attempting to explain yourself, you're going to get dizzy.

There are racist and sexist Democrats also; they are, after all, politicians and human. But the Republican leader, D Trump, has normalized such behavior, and so most Republicans express such behavior, and are not ashamed of openly doing so.

OK. Multiply the number of protons in the universe by 20 ( 5 % x20 = 100 % ) which gives 20 x 1080 , nowhere near 10123 though, is it ? You are actually using the VOLUME of the proton in your calculation. And still haven't justified its use.