MigL

You mentioned True Romance in yesterday's 3{29 pm post. I suggest you watch the movie True Romance, especially the part where retired cop, Dennis Hopper, explains the origins of Sicilians to mobster, Christopher Walken, in an effort to avoid torture by being killed swiftly. WARNING: Some may find video offensive and disturbing. View at own risk. ( incidentally, I am a native Italian )

Your posts make my head hurt. They are lik fingernails on a chalk-board. Very annoying.

I may have vocalized ( or typed ) that, JC, but there are at least 43 Senators who believe that isn't incitement. That pompous ass must be feeling rather smug. I hope his wife serves him divorce papers soon.

I say we storm the Science Forums headquarters where the vote was taken to change the interface. Apparently, that ( and much worse ) is now legal. And there's still criminal charges pending against D Trump, in New York and Georgia, that help me sleep better at night.

Is there no justice ? First the sham that was the OJ trial. Followed by the two Impeachment trials of D Trump. And now, this new interface ! Science Forums was one of the only places where I could still use Internet Explorer. Not any more ...

I fail to see why JC deserves two demerit points for pointing out that not being able o vote 'your conscience' is a fault of the American Political system, and that both dominant parties engage in this behaviour that Swansont finds scary. It's not like this is a new thing, or for Republicans only; why wasn't he scared before ? ( Sorry JC, I can only restore 1 point, but I liked your R Burns ) You know, the Democrats control the Presidency, the House and the Senate. They had better start getting used to criticism, as the ball is now in their court. And before someone says "Any mistakes they make should be forgiven because the Republicans and Trump were much worse.", I shouldn't have to remind you that THAT is 'whataboutism'.

As an 'atheist', I don't have a problem with the concept of God. The concept can be interpreted in many ways, and we are in no position to prove/disprove any of those conceptual interpretations. What I do have a problem with is exactly the 'human understanding' that has proven so easily corruptible by a few, to take advantage of the many, through the ages ( and continues to this day ).

M McConnel has publically stated that Senators are free to vote their conscience regarding the Impeachment. Whether re-living those scary moments on video ( so many that I hadn't seen before ) is enough to push a few more Republicans to do what is right, and restore some sanity to the American Political system, remains to be seen. The GOP must realize that if they don't vote to execute the impeachment, allow D Trump to form a new political party, and run for office again, it will split the Republican base, and they won't regain the Presidency/House/Senate for a very long time. They are basically caught between a rock and a hard place. Damned if they vote to impeach, and damned if they don't. Hopefully the American Government doesn't waste too much time relegating D Trump to a sad part of American history. There is still a pandemic going on; one that has killed almost TEN times as many Americans as were killed in combat in Vietnam.

It would me much more impressive if we knew the origin of the protein containing meteorite. Keep in mind that during the Earth's history, it has been bombarded by many asteroids. The one that hit the Yucatan Peninsula 65 Million years ago. for example, sent a lot of debris into space, along with quite a bit of organic material. If some of that material finds its way back to Earth, as meteorites, it is not really extra-terrestrial.

I have no idea what ASD is, or how it could lead to a ToE. On the other hand, ADS, or anti deSitter space, which, in correspondence with Conformal Field Theory, has resulted in many advances in non-perturbative String Theory/Quantum Gravity, and is the basis of the 't Hooft/Susskind Holographic Principle, just might have a chance.

The 'speed of light' is NOT just the speed of light. It is the maximum speed for any information transfer. If we can't see it ( somehow ) because it is travelling faster than light, it cannot have any other effect on us either.

All previously encountered wave motion was dependent on a medium, so the assumption was, light being a wave, it needed a medium. This 'medium', the aether, would have had to have very inconsistent properties; such as extreme 'stiffness' to account for the fast speed of light, yet offering no resistance to objects moving through it ( MM proved it doesn't impede the Earth's motion at all ). Einsteinian relativity did not need a 'medium' for light, his theory is self-consistent and holds up to experiment extremely well. So the aether was discarded as unnecessary. It wasn't so much disproven, but if it did exist, it would have such incredible properties as to be undetectable.

The OP's opinion is easily falsified. His question gets asked time and time again, but the answer never changes. So it would seem, time is independent of change. ( sorry if I'm being snarky, had to put my cat to 'sleep' today )

Even in 'progressive' Canada, different areas have different minimum wages. In Ontario, our min wage is $14.25/hr, while JC's Nova Scotia is substantially lower at $12.55/hr. ( highest is Alberta at $15/hr and lowest is Saskatchewan at $11.32/hr ). Then again, this is in Canadian dollars, but at least we have universal Health Care. These areas have different costs of living associated with them. The costs of housing and rent, in particular, are wildly different. Average home prices in areas of BC, Alberta, and Ontario top $1 million; in my area ( outside the Greater Toronto Area ) even old wartime homes are selling for $1/2 Million, and rent, for such a house, would run to $15-1600/ per month. While a $15/hr wage might allow you to pay the rent in Nova Scotia, it definitely won't cut it in Ontario. Minimum wage needs to be adjusted to differing geoeconomic areas.

Making sweeping assertions about consumers having more money to spend and businesses hiring more people, or prices going up and causing inflationary pressures, and even businesses laying off staff because they can't afford to retain them at the new wages, are just opinions . Studies have been done, and the findings are that different regions are affected differently. This article summarizes some of those findings and includes links to some of the studies Minimum wage: Updated research roundup on the effects of increasing pay - Journalist's Resource

I would seriously consider 'opening' a book. Preferably a science book.

Then why do you keep comparing them ? ( sorry, couldn't resist that ) Interesting that none of you Americans can wear masks. AOC isn't wearing one, and MTG isn't wearing it properly. ( also, what's with the presumptuous 3 initials )

I never thought I'd be suggesting the internet should be regulated. And not that I have any respect for people who use hedge funds to make large amounts of money. But when a bunch of teens on Reddit can use the power of the internet to inflate the stock of a failing company to deprive those hedge fund managers of their money, is that just retribution for a practice that should be better regulated, or, an abuse of the internet's power akin to Russian meddling in American elections, or disseminating lies to gullible followers on social media. Either way, this will wreak havoc with pension funds, and possibly hurt a lot of people. What do you guys think ? ( or are you trying to unload your inflated Game Stop stock as we speak ? )

Makes you wonder how 4.1 million solar masses could be concentrated within a radius equivalent to the orbit of Uranus, in the region Sagittarius A, of our galaxy. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermassive_black_hole "The star S2 follows an elliptical orbit with a period of 15.2 years and a pericenter (closest distance) of 17 light-hours (1.8×1013 m or 120 AU) from the center of the central object. From the motion of star S2, the object's mass can be estimated as 4.1 million M☉,[73][74] or about 8.2×1036 kg. The radius of the central object must be less than 17 light-hours, because otherwise S2 would collide with it. Observations of the star S14[75] indicate that the radius is no more than 6.25 light-hours, about the diameter of Uranus' orbit. No known astronomical object other than a black hole can contain 4.1 million M☉ in this volume of space." Or how they could possibly take a picture of one https://www.space.com/first-black-hole-photo-by-event-horizon-telescope.html I need a Dimreepr to Human dictionary.

While tunneling has been postulated as a mechanism for Hawking Radiation ( along with some other mechanisms ), see here [hep-th/9907001] Hawking Radiation as Tunneling (arxiv.org) Hawking radiation will only come into play once a Black Hole is small enough that its 'temperature' exceeds the CMB temperature of 2.7o, otherwise the BH is an absorber of radiation, making it grow ( and get 'colder' ). As for 'White" Holes, you would think the 'tell tale' radiation from such an object would be readily detectable. And while GR may allow for their existence, it is not a guarantee of such, and none have ever been detected.

Mordred has probably gotten busy with 'real life', and doesn't have as much free time to devote to forums. We all await his return.

My condolences to his family and friends. he was an interesting individual, and one of many who went 'missing'. I am saddened to find out what actually happened to him.

I'm an old person too, Col. yes, IOW = in other words I believ I was the one who originally mentioned the need for a co-ordinate system, back on page 11 of this discussion. Maybe my idea of a metric is not the same as yours Markus, and if not please elaborate so that we may all understand better. Is the metric not a measure of the deviation of the co-ordinate space ? It surely isn't a measure of actual deviation in 'real' space. (IOW, space-time has no actual 'fabric' that bends )

This is getting serious ! Now we're going Biblical on each other. Just kidding. Didn't know so many of us atheists could quote the Bible.

Interesting but somewhat confusing. You want a differentiation between the mathematical description, and actual, physical space. You have stated we have the mathematical description, but haven't yet tackled what we mean by actual, physical space. IOW, we have the model, but what is the actual reality ? ( and Dad says we don't know, which you agree is valid ) I would assume, as a scientist, you know how science works. We build models ( mathematical models, not toys ) and test them against reality to find their limited areas of applicability. The only model that is 100% applicable is the reality itself. I have to ask, how else would you model actual, physical space, if not mathematically ??