MigL

I suggest some research, even Wiki, of the Greece-Turkey tensions and conflicts, especially the Cyprus situation. It has briefly turned 'hot' a few times, but it is exactly because both are members of NATO ( Turkey is NOT EU ) that pressure could be brought to bear and hostilities stopped ( but tensions remain ). Similarly if Canada were attacked, the UK is duty bound ( NATO treaty ) to come to our aid, along with the US, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the rest of the 30 odd member states, including Poland, Hungry, Greece, Turkey and all of the former Yugoslav states. And no, Hungary was not part of NATO in 56, but of the Warsaw Pact. Australia and New Zealand, on the other hand, belong to SEATO, to which the US and UK were also signatories, but it hasn't been as successful' as NATO; it doesn't have its own headquarters/command and member states like French Indochina and Pakistan have dissolved or left. I would stress that NATO ( and to a much lesser extent SEATO ) is the military alliance since shortly after WW2, while the EU grew out of economic ( strictly ) European alliances that were formed during the 50s, and which C DeGaulle tried desperately to keep the UK out of ( until the 70s IIR ). It is NATO that has contributed to the peace; an attack on any member state is an attack on all of them. You don't think it was the EU that stopped Russian expansion of the Warsaw Pact ( more accurately Warsaw Occupied Possessions ) westward, do you ? The UK, as an independent state, will continue its downward spiral to irrelevance ( along with the other former European Great Powers ) in the face of competition from other resource rich states, like Russia, China, India, Brazil, and the North America block. A United Europe, though, has clout, power, and can't be pushed around by anyone. The UK could have remained a part of SOMETHING, instead you guys voted to become irrelevant, and go begging to others for trade deals. I can't wait until Prometheus has an opportunity to vote on re-joining the EU; hopefully the rest of you come to your senses in sooner than 20 years.

I'm an aviation fanatic; I would have traded places with you in a minute. Which ironically enough, was started by the French; remember Dien Bien Phu ? ( you guys should have gone to their aid according to the Entende Cordiale ) There are also tensions between Greece and Turkey, both NATO members, and possibly the one thing keeping hostilities from going 'hot'.

Or a lit match... No seriously, get rid of it altogether and buy a long garden hose.

😄 Yes, maybe. You recognised what was in the back of my head when I wrote that... Let him sleep on it … He'll give you an answer in the morning.

I don't know where you live, but if there was a leak in the grassy area, you would notice much greener grass in one spot, after a dry period. ( typically end of July- August in North America/Europe ) Again, I don't know where you live, but if you get freezing weather in the winter, and you do replace the pipe, you might want to go deeper than a foot.

In the good old days, theoretical Physicists used to add dimensions to make problems more tractable; Kaluza-Klein and SString theory come to mind. Now the Holographic Principle is going the other way, and subtracting dimensions. But is this an indication of 'reality', or just a mathematical 'trick' to facilitate modelling of that 'reality' ?

Oh, now we're talking future wars on the European continent ? You are not old enough to have lived through the last war, Studiot, and be afraid of another's impending start. The economies of Europe, especially the two major protagonists of the last two World Wars, France and Germany, are too interconnected. (starting a war with another country also using the Euro devalues both their currencies ) As it stands now, the Franco-German economic behemoth controls the Eurozone; the rest of the countries ( most of which are facing economic difficulties ) simply ask "How high ?" when France or Germany say "Jump". It would have been good for the smaller economies of Europe, to have a 'partner' in the UK.

Thanks for the clarification guys. Its always a good day when you learn something new.

OK. Ken Wilson : When you subtract the infinite virtual chickens that went everywhere, you're left with the renormalized chicken across the road. and Why does a hamburger have less energy than a steak ? Because it's in its ground state.

While that is obviously true, what then is the cause of the curved trajectories ? Is a geodesic not an indication of curvature ?

Evolution of a Physics problem through the ages... WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD ? Aristotle: It is the nature of chickens to cross roads. Isaac Newton: Chickens at rest tend to stay at rest, chickens in motion tend to cross roads. Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road moved beneath the chicken depends on your frame of reference. Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast. Wolfgang Pauli: There already was a chicken on this side of the road.

Not exactly sure what you are after, but IIRC, Einstein used an elevator with holes on either side through which light shines, either stationary in a gravitational field, or accelerating upward. The fact that there is a deflection from the horizontal for the accelerating elevator then implies that the stationary one in a gravitational field must also experience that deflection due to the equivalence principle. Geodesics, or allowed paths in spacetime, are an indication and measure of space-time curvature. In GR, timelike geodesics describe the motion of free falling massive test particles. Convergence of the test particles ( moving closer together as they fall ) would indicate a gravitational field with a central point source ( CoM tidal effect ). Lightlike geodesics for massless particles ( or null geodesics ) describe the 'curvature' experienced by the light beam as it travels from one side of the elevator to the other. It would deflect downward, whether the elevator is accelerating, or in equivalent gravity. If Markus logs on tonight, I'm sure he can give you a much more 'in depth' explanation.

Soooo. No food trade from the EU, and no food from North America. Bangers and mash, and fish and chips on alternative days, then ? That pizza is starting to sound good right about now, Dim.

Ooooow ! Wives, sisters, and girlfriends maybe. But mothers and daughters are off-limits.

I would think your parents left you something much more valuable than an inheritance Area54. They left you valuable life lessons, like caring and getting along with your siblings, and anyone else you care about. Dig deep Charles, your cynicism may have buried those same lessons your parents taught you.

I don't see what the problem is. D Trump was right. Large portions of the American population HAVE developed 'herd mentality'.

What have you got against pizza, Dim ? Its the perfect food. If your objection is harm to animals, milk, for making cheese, is an animal byproduct. If you are strictly vegan, there is soy or almond milk cheeses made with lemon juice/vinegar instead of rennet. So a grain pizza crust with tomato sauce, vegetarian cheese, and vegetable toppings can be completely vegan. And if you're worried about the mushroom pizza toppings being grown in manure-rich soil, don't worry, a chlorine wash will take care of the problem .

I would think 'viral shedding", in amounts large enough to cause infectious transmission, doesn't occur for some time after initial infection, as cells need to reproduce the virus in effective amounts. And I would think shedding of dead and partial viral fragments would continue to show up in testing for some time after the initial infection is no longer contagious.

And while I know that Chlorination levels are lower in the UK than other countries' water supply, you are still drinking it.

One of the few things you've said I wholeheartedly agree with.

There is no 'politically correct' law, or police; some of us are 'politically incorrect' quite often. But I'm fairly stubborn, so hard to ignore, and I haven't gotten banned, yet. ( although some complain about my sense of humor )

Maybe you should have treated your kids better, Charles.

Not following you. Newtonian mechanics adds speeds linearly and there is no asymptotic limit at c, like there is in SR. You could add speeds as high as you want, without limit. But to reach infinite ( Newtonian limit ) speeds you'd still need infinite energy.

By the late 20s, when the Quantum revolution was in full effect, A Einstein was 50 years old. Well past the time when most ( if not all ) Physicists make ground-breaking contributions to the field. Lets cut him some slack. I nominate A Eddington as an arrogant SOB for how he treated S Chandrasekar.

No. As far as I know, in Newtonian mechanics, if you are moving down the road at v, and you throw a ball forward at v, the ball will be measured to be moving at 2v with respect to the road. The deviation starts to be non-trivial as v approaches relativistic speeds. In Newtonian mechanics v + v = 2v even if v=c , while SR tells us that is an impossibility.