MigL

In some ways, I consider myself conservative, ydoaPs. I'm glad I could help. I welcome your county to the 21st century.

Well she did have a 'presence', didn't she... But no, I don't have a copy of GWTW, and wouldn't really care if they took it away ( don't touch my Diehard, though ). The point I was trying to make, however, is the problem with the people and mindset of southerners ? Or is the problem the flag they have chosen to rally under ? Is the problem the German mindset in the 30s or is it the swastika ? The problem is not removed with the banning of the symbol. There will always be another symbol for oppression and hatred.

I've come into this a little late, but I find it strange that the Confederate flag can be viewed as a symbol of all the things wrong with the American South ( past and present ). Maybe Americans put too much significance on flags. Should we also do away with one of the greatest movies ever made ? Gone With The Wind certainly paints a 'rosy' picture of the American South around the time of the Civil war. It makes the Confederate cause seem like a noble one, not related to the slave owning culture at all, and is patronizing to African Americans. Should we do away with it because it might inspire ( crazy ) people who long for 'better' times past ?

Oh, I thought it was a biography. ( you do seem to spend too much time on forums )

Did a little bit myself with Hollerith punch cards and Fortran IV.

Properties of a BH, like mass, entropy and temperature, are defined by the event horizon. They have little to do with what is actually 'inside' the event horizon.

Hey aren't you paid to be working on atomic clocks ? Not fooling around with lasers and making music on a boom-box across the room. What, are you trying to impress a girl or something ?

For a simple ( non-rotating and non-charged ) BH with a spherical event horizon ( probably not too many, if any, of those ), the mathematical radius which describes the event horizon is the distance at which the escape velocity is c. As massive particles cannot move at c, anything which reaches the mathematical radius describing the event horizon will be forced to continue to the possible singularity. This is perfectly consistent with Newtonian gravity. Massive particles from just outside the event horizon however, can escape to 'infinity' ( the definition of escape velocity ), by sacrificing their partner virtual particle to the BH and thereby 'stealing' energy from it. This is called Hawking radiation.

Frankly I think the movie sucked, and disappointed me. After Inception and the Dark Knight trilogy, I expected much better from Nolan.

Mainframe programming ACG52 ? That seems like a 'dead end' career. And studiot, of the four physicists you were aquainted with, I'd be willing to bet the undertaker earns the best renumeration. But who am I to talk, with my BSc, I make toxic, pyrophoric chemicals.

And the only forces which are random and can account for the variable time spent at the instability point are quantum effects ( much like radioactivity ). It makes no sense to discuss a thought experiment which does not take into consideration much of modern physics. We all know classical physics is incomplete. Who are you guys, Einstein, Rosen and Podwolsky ?

This is directed at Spyman... Your assertion is that when cells in your body die, and are the replaced by new cells ( ie you age ), there is a 'natural' ( whatever that means ) continuity of your existence. As opposed to the 'artificial' continuity experienced by the transported clone. So what if you had a miniature transporter that killed off just one cell at a time and reinserted it into your body at the same location as the one that was killed ? Would that still be a natural continuity ? I don't see a difference from the natural cell replacement process. Now what if you had many such micro-transporters, and over the period of one week, a month, a year, you replaced all the cell in your body with 'transported' ones ? You have, in effect, cloned/transported all of you, but piecemeal, so that each cloning/transporting is equivalent to the 'natural' ( again, what does that even mean ) process. Are you still 'you', or is this different ? And what is your reasoning ?

I would look for them in the cones of active vulcanos, John. Or at least use the microbes that I found there as precursors and genetically engineer some for use on Venus.

By international agreements, CharonY, I don't mean land claims, but rather military assistance agreements. The US has definitely pledged to militarily assist in other land claim issues if military force is used, and have moved carrier groups into those areas as a 'show of force' in the past when tensions have ratcheted up. Taiwan, and the islands contested with Japan, come to mind. I don't know how credible SEATO is anymore, it never did reach the level or status of NATO.

Your estimates for population growth are unrealistic. Why not just 'seed' Venus with anaerobic microbes which will trap the carbon of the atmosphere in biological forms. This will ultimately result in an oxygen rich atmosphere and large oil and gas resources in several million years.

Analyzing 'unstable' behavior, whether a ball on a dome, a pencil balanced on its tip, or even our universe in a non-expanding initial state, is problematical when using idealized conditions. In reality, it is impossible to isolate the deterministic, macroscopic domain from the indeterministic, quantum domain. The amount of time a system remains, or can remain, in an unstable condition, is ultimately determined by the magnitude of the influence of the quantum domain on the unstable, macroscopic, system. Einstein, in his Brownian motion paper, showed how a system, that should be completely deterministic, of little colliding 'billiard' balls, is in fact totally random and indeterministic due to the major influence of quantum 'jiggling'.

"so sod 'em when they moan" StringJunky ? Never heard that one before.

The problem is the international agreements that are in place. Even if neighboring nations can't challenge China ( many can give it a respectable fight and a black eye ), it will draw in others ( US for one ) and next thing you know, we're back in the Balkans and its 1914.

Thank you Delta1212, you have made my point much more eloquently than I previously did. Every time some little bit of information, or some quantum state, changes in just one atom of your brain, you are not 'you' anymore. There may not be any displacement ( to Mars ), but the old 'you' is just as dead as if it went into a meat grinder ( minus the pain, what are you, Spyman, a sadist ? ). Other than in your memories, the old 'you' is gone. So is there a difference if the change is accompanied by an instantaneous displacement to Mars ?

Any classical motion, even chaotic, is deterministic, by definition. Chaotic motion is just a rapidly diverging effect, which requires vast computational power to model. But, theoretically, it can be done. But I suppose, even at the macroscopic level, quantum effects will become apparent, and non-trivial, after a large number of iterations ( Mr. Heisenberg will have his 'pound of flesh' ) and so, one could say that there is no such thing as a completely deterministic system.

I don't understand why they would recoil, Nicholas. There is no way for them to undergo a classical collision. Once any part of their event horizons merge, there is no escape. I'm thinking it has to do with the spin and the properties that it gives to the dual event horizons. Do you have anymore information on the subject ?

Also ascribing a 'newness' to youth rebellion is not accurate. The young have always rebelled against their elders, whether now, 100 yrs ago, 1000yrs ago or even 10000 yrs ago ( it's active even in the animal kingdom ), and is one of the main driving forces for social change.

If you wanted to replicate yourself, you would need to copy two things. The individual atoms and molecules that make you up ( the easy part ), and the information that these atoms hold. This information is encoded as a property of the individual atoms. In effect their quantum states. Now, if you could copy their quantum states exactly ( QM and Mr. Heisenberg say you cannot ), you at this exact point in time would not be the same 'you' as one nanosecond before, because these states are time dependant. In effect if your 'death' and your twin's re-materialisation on Mars was instantaneous, you would have no clue that anything had happened other than that your location had instantaneously changed. If you had twin teleporters, the second on Mars, and you were killed here on Earth, instantly re-materialized on Mars, instantly killed on Mars, and instantly re-materialized as a third 'you' back on Earth, There is no experiment you could perform that would indicate anything had ever happened. So how would it make any difference to you ? The only way you would know something had happened, is if an independent observer had witnessed the whole thing and told you about it. but that is not how we define consciousness, is it ? You don't need an independent observer to validate consciousness. And I still think this is a worthless thought experiment because it's based on un-physical principles and assumptions. ( and you would think that would stop me from being opinionated and offering my 'two cents' )

While a co-ordinate system can be curved... Take a sheet of graph paper and bend it. ...the only way to make that co-ordinate system 'thicker' or 'denser', is by altering the cell spacing ( scale ) of the graph paper. The effect of mass-energy on space-time is usually modeled as curvature of the co-ordinate system. But I'm sure it could also be modeled as varying scale on flat space-time. It would yield the same results as GR, but be a lot more complex. Is this what you mean by 'thicker' space-time ?

Thicker or denser space-time implies that space-time is much more than a co-ordinate system. So please tell us how it can have a 'thickness' or 'density'.