MigL

Looks like he might have set his hair on fire a couple of times, and had to trim it back. Besides, if you wanna hear some AC/DC pipe music you should listen to 'It's a Long Way to the Top ( if you wanna rock and roll )'. 'Thunderstruck' is stripper music ( so I've been told ).

Yeah, no physicists ever invite me over for dinner parties. Come to think of it, the only other person with a Physics degree that ever invites me over ( actually I just show up ) is my older brother, MigF.

Why are you letting your grandma play in the middle of the road ?

Tried that once in the middle of a Canadian winter. ( took two days to un-stick my tongue from the pole of the stop sign )

I didn't know the UK was considering overriding international law, and not following the agreement that has brought peace to Northern Ireland, in an effort to get itself out of the mess that Brexit has become. Any 'good' US president will comment on international matters with respect to keeping peace and stability in the rest of the world. The current president just threatens the rest of the world.

Not really Zap. When you add up the people who voted for D Trump, and the people who are indifferent to bad government that they can't be bothered to vote, you end up with the disaster that is the current US government. Either way, you get the government you deserve; only about 28% ( 55% voter turnout, 28% Clinton, 27% Trump ) of the electorate was against a D Trump presidency, or cared enough to go to the trouble of voting. Do you think they know better now, and you'll get more than 55% of eligible voters participating n November ? There are many times I'll be in casual conversation with friends/acquaintances, and a question will come up which I know the answer/solution to, but I feel the need to intentionally dumb it down, or even worse, just smile and say nothing at all; I guess I don't want to be perceived as an aloof, know-it-all. And I'm far from it, I can just imagine the trepidation of some really intelligent and well educated people. ( you're not very popular if you start talking about Black Holes and Quantum Gravity at the next dinner party; you may not get invited back )

I like 'tagliatelle' noodles ( wide fettuccine noodles ) with Bolognese sauce. Oh, and some crusty Italian bread ( certainly not rye bread ) to sop up leftover sauce, and a good quality Chianti. What time is dinner ?

I don't believe it for one minute ! Not the part about the steel bar of soap, but a Polish guy making Bolognese sauce.

So this dark matter 'grid' would be a geometric field that 'fixes' trajectories of test particles. Sounds an awful lot like the geometric field of space-time 'fixes' trajectories along geodesics; also known as gravity. But since you want to modify GR to account for the observed galactic rotation curves, are you, in effect, proposing MOND ( Modified Newtonian Dynamics ) gravity? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Newtonian_dynamics

Sorry Koti. I wish Venus was like it was depicted in 1930s pulp sci-fi also. ( Edgar Rice Burroughs novels ) PH3 is a strong reducer ( stronger than ammonia ) and readily oxidized ( actually burns ) to Phosphorus Pentoxide, or to Phosphoric acid if water is present , so it doesn't last long. Since the Venusian atmosphere is strongly acidic, the other method for producing large amounts of Phosphine ( if actual, much higher than in Earth's atmosphere where it is due to bio-decay ), by reaction of white Phosphorus with Sodium/Potassium Hydroxide, is probably a non--starter. Thanks for the link, Area54

Don't really know much about the event. Always thought it was a sudden return to ice age temperatures after glaciers had been retreating for several thousand years. The usual explanation is the start of a warming trend after the peak of the last glaciation about 20 000 years ago, which resulted in ice covering retreating from the Ohio valley to Northern Canada, and from central Europe to the Scandinavian countries. The resultant rise in sea levels submerged the Siberia-Alaska land bridge and the sudden influx of fresh water disrupted mid-oceanic flows which bring warm equatorial waters north; the temperature drop which followed, about 12 000 years ago is what I know as the Younger Dryas event. Maybe you could explain what effects have been attributed to this 'cause', and how aliens and Elvis fit into all this.

Yeah, I make Phosphine ( see my profile ). I won't go into specifics, but it involves the continuous conversion of white Phosphorus to 20-25% red Phosphorus ( with heat ), and then reacting the slurry in very high strength Phos acid at temps of 300 degrees with superheated steam sparging, according to this patent https://patents.google.com/patent/US3371994A/en None of the required conditions seem unlikely to be found on Venus, so I would suspect a geological process, rather than bio-decay, as the cause ,IF it does turn out to actually be Phosphine.

I've been 'itchin' for a good political discussion ( Politics Forum has been pretty slow, even with Ten oz's return ) But you give me nothing to argue with in the above, iNow. Bang on analysis of the sad state of American politics. Not that I want to see the Democrats lose the upcoming election, but D Trump has certainly given them enough 'Ammunition' in the last 4 years. They seem to be running an "I'm not D Trump" campaign. When are they going to start making him account for his record ? No-one even mentions the fact that he was impeached for collaborating with foreign powers who are again trying to influence the election. Or that Iran is now a great threat because of his provocative actions and the fact they are building a deliverable Nuclear bomb again due to his unilateral dissolution of an agreement not to. Nor to his contempt of institutions and countries, like NATO, Europe and North America, traditional allies of the US for at least the last century, and instead fawning over dictators like V Putin and Kim Jung Un. And the hundreds of mis-steps that have led to the death of 200 000 people ( so far ) due to Coronavirus. When are Democrats going to start throwing all the crap that has made the US a laughing stock, in the faces of his supporters ? There are only two months left; if he wins again, there won't be much complaining, just crying.

Technically, you're right. Dr Zaius, member of the Ape National Assembly, Minister of Science and Chief Defender of the Faith, was an orangutan. Don't know what role gibbons played in their society.

Gibbon, an ape, as in Rise of Planet of the Apes ? Or E. Gibbon, as in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ?

This will soon turn into a discussion about equal opportunity vs equal outcomes. Equal opportunity should be available to all ( it currently isn't ). Equal outcome depends on how bad you want it ( not what's provided for you ). Exemplified by spoilt rich kids who have everything provided for them, and they never even try. While immigrant kids, who have seen what their parents have endured, work their asses off to better themselves.

Apparently Dark Matter is 'darker' than previously thought. It seems that the gravitational lensing produced by Dark Matter distributions in certain galaxy clusters is up to 10x greater than expected from galactic rotations and orbits ( motions ). Indcating that not only are we in the 'dark' as to its make-up, but also distributions and/or properties. https://www.msn.com/en-ca/weather/topstories/astronomers-discover-a-surprise-twist-in-the-mystery-of-dark-matter/ar-BB18Wylr?ocid=msedgntp

Only the second part of the above is right. You SHOULD think that if you had an excess of 1charged particle per billion, billion, billion, billion particles those planets, stars and galaxies would fly apart. The electromagnetic force exerted by a proton is 39 orders of magnitude than its gravitational force. Hence, weak, in comparison.

Even pzkpfw's cat ( avatar ) is distressed by the lack of rigorous thinking in your argument. He's slapping his forehead in disbelief.

I find your post funny, because I can relate. ( my friends would think I was a pompous ass if I used those words in conversation ) Looks like you've mastered the art.

I was gonna say maybe they should use that laser technique to initiate D-D or even H-H fusion. But if it draws that much power, I doubt they would produce a net continuous excess.

You would then have lots of money in your youth, would not try very hard in your Physics/Math studies, drop out and never invent a time machine. So you would not be able to go to the past and become a rich youth. So you would become a great Physicist and invent a time machine, go to the past and get rich. But then there would not be a time machine. But then there would. And so on, and so on ( groundhog day time loop ? ) Damn, I hate paradoxes ...

Sorry for not being very clear Zap. Relativity doesn't just refer to Einstein's theories; the majority of our measurements are relative to something else. For example, the speed of a ball I throw at you is measured with respect to me and you; based on that you can calculate the kinetic energy, and the force with which it will hit you. But if you measure the speed of the ball with respect to the Earth' orbit about the Sun, it may be moving backwards. Or if measured with respect to geordief's absolute frame at the centre of the universe, it may be moving close to the SoL, making calculations of the type mentioned non-sensical. Don't get me wrong, there are things that are absolute, but we do have ways to deal with it. In physics we distinguish measurements made on an absolute frame or scale. Think of the temperature scale. When we measure relative to something else on the same scale, we call it 'gauge'.. Think of your body being at 100V potential, touching a live wire, and feeling only a 20V shock.

A 'preferred frame' implies that you can hang a co-ordinate system onto an event, and that origin point is at rest with respect to everything else in the universe. That is what the fictitious centralized Big Bang scenario does. Essentially, it breaks relativity. ( and not just Einsteinian relativity, but all the way back to Galileo's time and earlier )

"Would having a preferred frame imply the existence of preferred frames ?" Seems painfully obvious.