MigL

You've gotta be kidding.. "The country most closely resembling Israel in behavior and policy in the modern age has been South Africa with its apartheid and "homeland" policy" Palestinians living in Israel enjoy benefits of citizenship, political officea nd freedom of sex and religion. They do NOT on their own soil governed by Hamas. Maybe if Hamas chose to smuggle in food and medical supplies instead of thousands of rockets through the 'walls' and 'fences' the Israeliis build they would better serve their people.

This is not about interpretation Barfbag, whether Bohr's ( Copenhagen ) or Everett's ( many worlds ) . This is about the paradigms of Quantum Mechanics where something like an electron is only 'measurable' when it is observed, and its nature entirely probabilistic. In effect, the experiment, or the way we observe it, determines the outcome as it collapses the wavefunction in a specific way. The very idea of 'the electron is here' or 'the electron has this much energy' ceases to have meaning at a certain scale. The best we can do is say there is a XX% chance of the electron being found here, but as any good weatherman will tell you a 50% chance of rain does not make rain a reality. When a photon going through a polarizer here can alter or fix the 'reality' of another entangled photon, whether 1 mile or a million miles away, as in the EPR paradox, what does that say about our notion of 'reality' ? So, at the quantum level, would the moon exist if it wasn't being observed ? We could answer yes, but then we'd have to believe that Quantum mechanics was incomplete ( hidden variables have been disproven ) or wrong ( it is the most tested and accurate modern theory )

It would be alright if everyone in the apartment complex hired a murderer to kill you. The Palestinians have 'hired' Hamas as their representatives knowing full well their intent to exterminate the Israeli Jews. Get your analogies straight ! By the way what's a Godwin ?

You're right Hamas doesn't pose a threat to the whole world and isn't killing millions of people, but then again, neither was Germany. They were only a threat to Austria, Chekoslovakia and Poland before the Allies developed the 'nads to declare war. And sure the Germans were allowed back to the 'table', and so will the Palestinians be. Nazis, however, will never be and neither should Hamas. Being more powerful doesn't automatically make you wrong, unless, it seems, if you're Israeli.

Come on Strange, cut him some slack. I know that you know that a strict interpretation of quantum mechanics raises questions about the validity of the 'concept' of reality.

If the physicists were 'good' physicists, they would immediately recognize the problem and do the appropriate tranforms to relize they are both 'accurate'.

So this is how 'proportional response' works. If I choose to commit a crime, like stealing $500, then the punishment has to be proportional, i.e. I can only be fined $500. This doesn't seem like much of a deterrent at all, does it ? It seems to me that if we replace Gaza Palestinians with German people and Hamas with Nazi, no-one would have any problem with the killing of a disproportionate number of German 'innocents' during WW2 to stop the Nazis. Or was that OK because the Allies weren't Jewish.

While true that Israel was 'founded' after WW2 by the British on Palestinian soil, don't forget that Palestine was founded after WW1 ( along with other middle eastern countries ) on the lands of the broken up Ottomann Empire. As others have already stated trying to go back the several thousand years to find the original cause is futile. If people really want peace they need to forget the past and learn to live together. That being said... The life expectancy of people living in the Gaza strip means that there are very few people left alive from before Israel annexed their lands, so while it may be their ancestral land it is not their land. I may as well claim most of europe, middle east and north africa since my ancestors were roman. If the people of Gaza elect Hamas they are responsible for Hamas' policy of extermination of all Israelis. The germans after all, elected Hitler and even though democratically elected, the rest of the world saw no need to support him/them. The people of Gaza maintain that the Israeli blockade deprives them of basic human rights to food and medicine. Then how did they get the more than 4000 missiles shot at Israel ? Is this not an argument for a stricter blockade ? And why no complaints about the blockade on the Sinai ( Egypt ) side ? Any country has the right to defend its people. If missiles were raining down on your city you would expect your government to put a stop to it, even if some of their innocents were killed in the process. Why are the Palistinians not governed by Hamas relatively peaceful ? It seems Hamas is the instigator and are perfectly willing to use their own people as pawns in their battle with Israel. Proportional response is nonsense. Just because only a few Israelis are dead doesn't mean the response has to avoid killing any mor than a few Palistinians. It is called deterrence for a reason. The consequences of your actions are terrible enough to dissuade you from performing those actions. Israel is far from innocent, but in this case, at least, I feel they are justified. The Palistinians of Gaza need to elect a government that cares enough about the people to want less death and more peace.

Isn't that always the problem with these 'surveys' or 'studies'. Failiure to isolate extraneous variables leads to results which are dubious or inconclusive at best. If I remove my 'politically correct blinders', I can see barfbag's point of view and maintain that the best parents are the ones who provide an environment where their kids feel loved, are nurtured and helped in their intellectual and emotional developement. This is of course independant of their sexual orientation. By the way, I consider myself conservative ( fiscally, not so much socially ) and am therefore 'right wing' ( who comes up with these labels ? )

The mathematical model used for the calculation of the vacuum, zero point energy uses harmonic oscillators ( doesn't everything in physics ? ) at all points and then considers boundary conditions to obtain a cut-off energy. Like you said Mordred, this gives a value over a hundred orders of magnitude higher than expected. This is the only model I've ever come across. Can you explain or point out a source for info on Higgs field metastability and its connection to false or real zero point vacuum energy and the cosmological constant.

At Planck scales/energies all four forces are expected to be equivalent in strength, ie unified. At this scale even gravity, or more appropriately, space-time, is thought to be 'discontinuous or 'granular'.

OK I see what you're saying. I guess I' just used to thinking in terms of the satellite following the space-time curvature and not accelerating.

OK Imatfaal, I'll bite. In your force pairings, where the earth and the satellite are both attracted to the barycentre, what is the balancing force which pushes the earh and satellite outward to balance the inward gravitational pull and keep the orbit stable ?

So say you had a bucket of water, Delta1212, and you started rotating it, you would see the water rise up along the edges until it overflowed the lip of the pail. Now what if you kept the pail stationary and spun the universe around it. Would the water aong the edge still rise ? I think this is known as Newton's bucket and Ernest Mach had some interesting things to say about it and rotating systems WRT the universe.

A fall is an orbit and an orbit is an extended fall. Anything in orbit is weightless. If your argument is that an object isn't just following a spacetime path, but the force of gravity is keeping it orbiting then what is the balancing force ? Remember that there is no centrifugal force unless you are in the frame of the orbiting object. To an external observer there is no balancing force. The problem with using a scale to measure the force is are you measuring the force exerted on the scale by the cup or on the cup by the scale ? Or are we misunderstanding each other ?

Let me re-state my previous position... An object in free fall is weightless, while an object like a cup sitting on a table has a weight. We measure this weight in Newtons, a unit of force. An object which has a weight of x Newtons feels a force while one of 0 Newtons feels none. Ergo an object in freefall feels no force while one at rest, on a table, does.

Sorry studiot, I wasn't trying to be critical of your explanation. I was offering an example of the 'strange' consequences of QM and a historical footnote. Don't read more than I wrote into it.

Maybe this is a little off topic as it has little to do with thermodynamic aspects, but I always thought you could have a process, reversible or irreversible, where there is no entropy change due to the process involving few particles and proceeding in infinitesimally small steps. Please correct me if I'm wrong and explain. If the above is true, is this not just a case of time reversal symmetry of CPT ? And I always thought that C, P and CP violation has been confirmed. and so the general feeling is that some process must also violate T symmetry ( for simple systems of course ), and only the product CPT is inviolate.

Not quite true studiot. With QM there is also a probability that the ball is outside the channel ( tunneling ). Originally the wave interpretation of electron orbitals dictated that only orbitals with whole number waves were allowed as you cannot have partial waves. It was Max Born who supplied the probability amplitude interpretation.

It seems everyone is trying to outdo each other with the math and losing any semblance of common sense/ As imatfaal has stated, when angular separation between the two test probes is zero, it is easy to see that swansont is right. However the situation does not change or become more complex when the angular separation is 180 deg ( or anywhere in between ). This is because although the large earth mass is accelerated towards the heavier test probe, the lighter probe has, in this case, a larger acceleration since it is drawn to the larger COMBINED mass of the earth and heavier test probe. I.E. they hit the ground simultaneously ! Is this not simple perturbation ? You cannot have different situations arising when the action ( as in Lagrangian ) is the same. This is dictated by conservation laws and symmetry.

Let me get this straight. If we have an object composed of two different parts of very different densities such that they have a coincident centre of mass, and we drop said object from great height, xyzt is claiming that there will be a measurable shearing force between the parts of differing density ???? This is absurd ! Keep in mind that mathematical models are just that, they can be applied wrong, and the ultimate test is weather they conform with experimental reality.

I think it was waaaay back in post #11 that xyzt stated that two test probes of different masses, if dropped simultaneously, would separate during their descent. He stated that swansont must be wrong in his assertions. It seems to be very easy to prove. Put two differing test weights in a bag and drop them from altitude. Does the bag rip and allow the heavier weight to land first ? If you go over a bridge in your car are you pinned to the roofliner during your descent because of the differing weight of you and your car ? Is that why we wear seatbelts, to hold us down ? Someone was definitely wrong, but I don't think it was swansont.

Actually he does have a point studiot, better atomization leads to more efficient combustion. Most efficient fuel injection systems are going away from throttle body into tuned runner injection to port injection or even direct chamber injection as on diesel engines. This is done to avoid the knock-out of fuel particles as the air accelerates through the runners. The point of combustion is not to have the fastest explosion possible, that leads to knocking unless initial timing is retarded severely. Higher octane gasoline actually slows the combustion allowing for timing to optimize power extraction. Maybe John C can provide some further insight into the combustion process, or do we have an automotive engineer in the house ?

Your edit was accurate md65536, Considering how vast the cosmos is arc.........gravity acts the same all over,

Thanks for pointing that out Janus. But at least Ringworld has the slight possibility of acheiving stability for a brief instant, like a pencil falling to the ground and landing on its tip. Torusplanet, on the other hand, cannot even form, like a pencil that's glued to your hand and can't drop.