MigL

Again I display my ignorance of your processes... If an Impeachment hearing is like a court case, is the 'prosecution' only allowed witness testimony, or can they actually subpoena evidence ? I'm thinking here, of the transcripts/tapes of the 'perfect' phone conversation.

Seems kind of strange that a sitting President cannot be removed from office after committing an obvious crime. That effectively puts him above the law. One step closer to dictatorship.

Is anyone watching/following the Impeachment Hearings ? Seems the 'quid pro quo', or bribery as the rest of us call it, was pretty blatant. But I've been watching sporadically. I'm not familiar with the 'path' from hearings to actual Impeachment. What needs to happen to finally get rid of clown Donald ?

Rather than type out my views, I'll let M O'Dowd explain in this PBS video, which agrees rather closely with my understanding... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8gV05nS7mc&vl=en He basically goes on to explain that as we travel backwards in time, geodesics converge to a singular point ( IE become un-physical ), just as they converge to a singular point ( in the future, this time ) in a Black Hole. The geodesics cannot continue on the other side of the 'singularity' in either the Big Bang's case, nor the Black Hole's case, so you cannot ask "What came BEFORE the Big Bang ?" or "What happens AFTER reaching the center of a Black Hole ?" That would be the same as North of the North Pole or South of the South Pole. He does go on to explain ways around this like bounces and eternal inflation, and while there could be 'time' before a bounce or our own specific Big Bang ( of many ), there is no guarantee that it would be the same 'time'.

I would have to differ Mordred. The fact that we can tack SR onto QM to obtain Dirac and QFT does not change the fact that QM says nothing about time, and treats it as a background stage on which events happen; An 'absolute' stage. GR, on the other hand, does say something about the absence of 'absolute' frames; it has no background stage.

Depends on your primary goal, INow. If your aim is to win the election, it is probably best to motivate your base, and get as many as possible to come out and vote. If your aim is to form a government which is for ALL the people, it is probably best to also appeal to people who would normally vote for the other party. I think most politicians opt for the former, and in a two party system like the US has, it has lead to the divisive politics and extreme polarization that hampers effective government and gets nothing done.

Already saw it last week! Bufofrog came back from two days hence to last week and showed it to me.

Just what you need. Another filthy rich guy who is going to represent the needs and wants of common American people.

Accelerating protons, deuterium nuclei, tritium nuclei, or alpha particles to the speeds at which they fuse is equivalent to high temperature. Extremely high temperatures ! I thought you were considering COLD fusion.

Those lights and radar returns are 'angels' and they are performing 'miracles' in the sky. Surely we should have an investigation of these Religious phenomena. Seriously Moon, when it comes to UFO and aliens, your mantra seems to be 'Absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence.' Why do you not apply that criterion to Dieties/Creators ? Why do you need the concept of 'aliens' so explain some unexplained events, but you are perfectly rational in the case of religion, and don't need the concept of 'God' to explain other unexplainable events ? Not trying to ridicule you or anything of the sort, but would like an explanation for the line of thinking in one case as opposed to the other.

Then, since each electron and each positron we observe is the time slice of space-time at that particular moment, of the ONE electron whose world lines are looping through all space-time, we should observe roughly equal amounts of electrons and the time reversed positrons. BUT, we don't ! ( J A Wheeler is one of my 'heroes" so I'm familiar with his proposal; to R Feynman IIRC )

Had a Prof in University, D W Lepard, very bright, one of the nicest guys you'd ever meet, and always well dressed, who had a bad nervous twitch. Maybe too much coffee and not enough smoothies.

Never much liked organized sports. Probably because I was a scrawny teenager ( till I got my 1st gym membership in 1976 ), and would always get picked last for teams. And since my late 30s, I lack binocular vision so I have really bad depth perception ( can't catch a ball, or follow a golf ball in flight ); haven't used my golf clubs in about 10 yrs. I do watch soccer ( football ), mostly Premier League and North American MLS ( go TFC ! ) even though I'm of Italian descent ( Serie A is corrupt and can be boring ),

They don't behave that way at all. If an electron and positron were both Planck scale BHs, upon collision, they would form a slightly larger BH. Instead they annihilate and radiate. And the release of EM radiation is something which a resultant BH could never do.

I would think the biggest difference is that ,whereas for an undergrad degree a Prof is teaching you about a subject so that you learn the basics, for a graduate degree you are learning about a subject independently ( you do have an 'advisor' ) and develop your own 'tools and skill set'. IOW a PhD candidate will independently research and learn, to become an expert in a specific subject.

The Sun cannot collapse because of radiation pressure. If nuclear processes in the Sun's center were to stop ( once enough iron accumulates in its center ), there will be a partial collapse to what is termed a white dwarf star. Further collapse is prevented by electron degeneracy pressure ( see the Pauli Exclusion Principle ), and that is how it will spend the remainder of its life. IF our Sun was a couple of times more massive, electron degeneracy could not stop the crush of gravity, and it would collapse even further, until neutron degeneracy would stop the collapse and our ( more massive ) Sun would then become a neutron star. IF our Sun was about ten times more massive, even neutron degeneracy could not stop further collapse. As a matter of fact we don't know of any mechanism that could stop the gravitational collapse of such a massive object. Gravity would squeeze it small enough that our best theories stop making sense , and we can't even investigate/observe because the universe throws up an event horizon around it that prevents any information coming back out.

There is no lower limit on the size of Black Holes, just on available mechanisms for their formation; gravitational collapse of stellar sized objects that lose antagonistic radiation and degenerate pressure, or additional mass acquired by a neutron star from a companion or interstellar gas/dust. Both methods result in sizeable Black Holes. However primordial Black Holes, formed in the hot, dense soup shortly after the Big Bang, could form in any size, and could have evolved in two ways. They could have 'evaporated', due to their high temperature and resulting Hawking Radiation. These small BHs could have or be currently reaching the end of their 'evaporation', where they discard their event horizon and explode in a large gamma ray burst; we don't see any observational evidence of this happening anywhere. Or they could have become the 'active' seeds of the supermassive BHs ( and their surrounding gas/stars ) we see in most all galaxies. These active BHs are numerous in the distant past ( great distances ) in newly forming galaxies, and are usually termed Quasars.

Didn't have the will or the time to read all of your crap. Skipped to the last sentence. The Higgs particle doesn't 'assign' mass to anything. Rather certain specific particles interact with the Higgs field ( of which the Higgs particle is a manifestation ) and thereby gain the property we call mass. Much like the interaction of a particle with a field can give it the property we call kinetic energy or potential energy. But you are right, space-time is a field ( look up what that means ) in GR, and 'matter' is simply manifestations of their specific QuantumElectroDynamic and QuantumChromoDynamic fields, as per quantum field theory.

Do cartoons feel pain ?

This is what I was referring to as "Off topic". And if my reply to this is off topic, then so is the post that prompted my reply, and deserving of a similar warning, Strange. Not to mention all the others he has brought up that are similarly off topic. By all means, enforce the rules, but do it equitably.

Thousands of years of military strategy turned on their head by Curious Layman...

I don't think Mistermack got that, Dim. Come on guys, you wanna bash girlfriends, that's allowed. But mothers, daughters and sisters are off limits. ( although this locker room talk may seems appropriate in this particular thread about sports )

Off topic, but why would the US gain from orchestrating a 'hot' war between the Ukraine and Russia ? The Ukranians are no angels ( corrupt government ) but they were moving away from the Russian sphere of influence, towards Western integration ( after much needed government reforms ) and possibly even into NATO. Then Russia destabilized and took over the Crimean peninsula ( they needed a seaport for access to the Mediterranean so they can retain their status as the European boogey man ). And you think the Americans started the hot war in eastern Ukraine ? What, so the Ukraine can take over Russia ?????

I would have to differ INow. Sexualization occurs in your own mind. There is no 'action' involved; that would be what you probably mean, and of course treating/acting that way is wrong But telling someone what they can and cannot THINK ( even about someone else ) is dangerous.

You don't need to convince me. I've lost all vision in my left eye due to ganglion damage ( where the optic nerve curves into the back of the eyeball, the 'cup' area ) from Glaucoma And even after filtering operations, medication is barely keeping pressures in check in my right eye. re-growing these nerve cells would restore my vision.