Delta1212

Relativity states that simultaneous events do not occur. To say that events are simultaneous in reality is to state that there is a preferred reference frame. Relativity states that there is not. Now, you can state that relativity is wrong about this if you want, but because relativity states it, you cannot derive a contradiction within relativity. You've assumed that a component of relativity is wrong, and then demonstrated that if you make this assumption then relativity is wrong. That is obviously true, but it doesn't prove a contradiction within relativity. It just proves that if relativity is wrong, then relativity is wrong. Since every experiment we've conducted bears out relativity so far, it's a safe assumption that relativity is not wrong, and that as such, the piece of relativity that you disagree with is also not wrong.

Saying that Earth-like planets are rare because we've found barely any is like saying atoms don't exist because you can't see them with a magnifying glass. We mostly see gas giants not necessarily because most planets are gas giants, but because until the last few years, gas giants were the only planets big enough to see outside of our own solar system with the available technology. That has improved recently, and the last few years we've been finding more and more rocky planets only a bit larger than Earth. This year especially there's practically been a flood of them.

Google "relativity of simultaneity." You cannot say that two events at distant locations are simultaneous because it is always possible to find a frame in which they are not. Your contradiction relies on the assumption that the signals are sent simultaneously from Earth and the Moon. According to relativity, this is an impossible situation, and is thus not a contradiction within relativity.

The singularity would be in all directions the observer could travel in, but couldn't the observer still receive light and other things from outside the black hole? The black hole cannot accelerate the observer to light speed, so any light coming in behind the observer would eventually catch up to it. That would imply that all future directions poit to the singularity, but past directions not pointing toward the singularity would still be observable. Which is weird to try to imagine.

I got 2 in about 5-10 minutes, but I'm doing something wrong with 3, because I'm pretty sure I know what should work, but it doesn't seem to. Once I sit down with a pencil and paper instead of staring at the screen trying to work it out mentally, it'll probably go better.

Usually, when the word 'quantum' is put in front of a word, the effect it describes is not quite as cool as the name would imply (See, e.g., quantum teleportation). This is not one of those cases.

You don't even need a baseball sized rock to destroy it, but you're still underestimating just how much "empty" (in the sense of "does not contain objects that would destroy the spacecraft") space there really is. You could sit on an asteroid in the middle of the asteroid belt and not see another object larger than a dust particle within visual range in any direction, and that's a fairly dense area of space.

Ah, I suppose that would make sense.

I don't think there is any particular reason why they should exactly cancel out, but which would have the greater effect in that situation, I'm unsure.

Because intelligence isn't an end goal of evolution. It's just like any other trait. A peacock could say that mammals have been around for over 200 million years but don't have tails as big and vibrant as they have. A trait is only evolved if it provides an immediate benefit to it's carrier, and high intelligence has some very high energy costs that outweigh the advantages unless you require it to obtain some very high energy food sources (as, e.g. hard to obtain fruit). And, incidentally, I'd look into the intelligence of Corvids if you want to see some smart birds. There have been some (fairly convincing) arguments made for crows and ravens being close to, if not on par with, the intelligence range of dolphins or apes as far as problem-solving and tool use.

A balanced equation looks like this: 1+1=2 An unbalanced equation looks like this: 1+1=3 or 1+1=1 If your equation doesn't balance, something is appearing from nowhere or disappearing without a trace. Any equation describing a situation where it has been proven to be impossible for this to happen must balance.

The speed of light is considered a constant because no matter how fast you are moving, in any direction, you will always observe light to be moving at the same speed, c (standing for 'constant'), which is 299,792,458 meters per second. This implies that time and distance are actually variable depending upon relative speed, which is what Special Relativity deals with.

Yeah, it'd just flicker, though probably too fast to be visible. The laser would turn on. The photons would travel to the sensor. The sensor sends a signal to turn off the laser. The last photons emitted by the laser travel to the sensor. The sensor stops receiving photons. The sensor sends a signal back to the laser to turn on again.

From what I understand, and bearing in mind that quantum erasure is not something I'm well versed in, the measurement at B will look the same regardless of what happens at A (or, at least, the measurement at B when a filter is applied to A is indistinguishable from a measurement made when no filter was applied at A) until you have the results from A where a filter was applied, at which point a comparison will allow you to detect the difference in the results at B. The results are created independently at a distance that would preclude sub-light communication between the detectors to explain the correlation, but the correlation is only observable when you compare the results with one another, and those must be communicated at sub-light speeds.

There's also the point that, as long as the sun is shining, we're a long way from having to worry about the total entropy of our environment in the way you seem to be concerned about.

A photon and an anti-photon are exactly the same particle. There is no difference.

Two things: since it's a science forum, it's almost an obligation to point out that the scientific definition of "theory" is different from its colloquial usage. A scientific theory is a powerful explanatory model with mountains of evidence supporting it. It's pretty much the pinnacle of science. The everyday use of the word is more akin to what science would call either a hypothesis or speculation depending on how it was formulated. Also, you can already more or less do what you suggest. That's what dreaming is. If you're looking for more control and better awareness of what's happening, I'd look into lucid dreaming. It's possible to become aware that you're dreaming and take various levels of control from within the dream without waking up, and there are strategies people use to help them accomplish this on a more regular basis. Just don't buy into all of the New Agey crap that tends to get attached to lucid dreaming by some people.

He wasn't sasying that a 95 year old can expect to live longer than a 90 year old. He was saying that the increase in life expectancy will rise at such a rapid pace that a 90 year old with a 5 year life expectancy would find, after 5 years, that their life expectancy had actually gone up to 8 more years. In other words, life expectancy will increase by more than a year per year. Not that that's realistic either.

You see a lightning flash. 10 seconds later you hear thunder. You see another lightning flash. 30 seconds later, you hear the thunder. The first lightning bolt was closer to you. The thunder represented the sound of something that happened 10 seconds prior. The second lightning bolt was further away. The thunder represented the sound of something that happened 30 seconds prior. The farther something is from you, the longer it takes the signal (light/sound/whatever) to reach you. That means that a signal reaching you from far away will be representative of something that happened longer ago than a signal reaching you from someplace nearby. Light from the sun takes 8 minutes to reach us. When you look at the sun, you're seeing what it looked like 8 minutes ago. Light from a galaxy 10 billion light years away takes 10 billion years to reach us. When you look at a galaxy 10 billion light years away, you're seeing what it looked like 10 billion years ago. The farther out you look in space, the farther into the past you're peering.

The next obvious question: Pen socks don't have mates. When you put them in the dryer, do they disappear entirely or does a mate appear from nowhere?

Perhaps the pens are being converted into socks which then, of course, don't have mates.

None of the three conclusions in your example actually follow logically from the preceding statements. I suggest learning some formal logic because it'll make it a bit easier to pick out the mistakes in faulty reasoning.

I watched the one video and made it about an hour in before the lecture on the history of electricity switched too far over into whackadoo pseudoscience and conspiracy theories for me to bother sitting through any more of it waiting for the challenge to relativity to finally get outlined. When you claim that a machine was designed in the 1800s that would allow you to stand in two locations simultaneously, and then seriously consider a question about whether this could be related to the Philadelphia Experiment, that is the point where you lose me.

Ok, that makes sense.

It's possible I'm missing something and the star isn't the source of gravity in this discussion, but wouldn't the clock closest to the star tick slower than the one farther away?