Iggy

Right, the velocity would be (365242/365243.09)c... nearly c, and he arrives nearly as fast as light does. It all works out.

Assuming your numbers are correct, ET's velocity is v in: [math]365242.199 = \frac{854.4}{\sqrt{1-v^2}}[/math] v = 0.999997c light would take 365242 days to make the trip and our long fingered friend would take 365243.09 days with that velocity (both from Earth's perspective). So... your calculation for ET's proper time (854.4) was just about spot on.

"pay" is an analogy for "appoint". YOU mentioned "if I hire". YOU said that and brought it into the discussion. I was merely carrying along the analogy while responding to your mention of it. Right. You said that the decisions of the court were decided politically. Let me quote... Yet, 9 times more of the court's decisions are not so politically decided. Why does this scientific fact do nothing to dissuade your opinion? I have my guess You can't help yourself. Did Picasso paint this? How about this, and this, and this and this, and this, and this, and way more than I have time to list and link. Picasso frequently painted in realism, and he was very good at it. Your belief that Picasso could only do (or was expected to do) expressionism reflects your belief that justices nominated by republicans can only (and are expected to only) decide for republican policies. In neither case is it true. Yet , it ws the court of Chief Justice Warren and Chief Justice Burger (considered to be staunch conservatives before they were appointed) that ended up legalizing abortion (Warren was retired yet his agenda carried on). I mention their names only because it demonstrates why a litmus test like you propose doesn't work. One has no idea what political temperament a justice will have afterhand when nominating them and approving them beforehand.

If you prepay them, and you can't fire them, then I suppose you can expect anything you want from them, but there is no guarantee you'll get it. The thing you keep saying, and the thing that is not true, is that they are dependent on you after you pay them. They aren't. You want to see a specific example where you mischaracterized with no citation and I corrected you with a citation? Fair enough, and easy enough to find... Members of congress are specifically prohibited from being federal judges by Article 1; Section 6; Clause 2 of the constitution. That clause was specifically written because, like wiki says... Law makers cannot also be the Judiciary. So... there you have it Here in the US, our Supremes are nominated by the president. In the UK, from what I remember, your Supremes are nominated and chosen by committee (a committee on which the PM does not sit). Since the main force of your critice has to do with the President nominating appointees, I have to say, the criticism you've leveled is rather US-centric.

I passed this when catching up in the thread, and I have to say it is the best worded summary of the situation I've encountered, or could imagine encountering. Michel, velocity is travel distance divided by travel time. It has been that way for thousands of years. You can obsess yourself pink with the idea of travel distance divided by observation time, but that isn't velocity, and if you plug that thing you invented into relativity then you're going to get a nonsense answer. I get why you're doing it. In post 54 you made a small mistake. You were arrogant about it. Two posts later you realized your mistake, but all that meant is that you would now have to spend 100 posts covering for your mistake though hell and high water, because that's what I've seen you do two or three times before. You err and forever more spending your time covering for your error despite *everyone* trying to explaining the error to you. Ask yourself, is that the best approach? Someone who dissembles rather than admitting a mistake and learning from it? The mere fact that you can't solve the 'apparent velocity' of an object the same way you solve it for light should be enough for you to say "Wait a minute, something is wrong with what I'm doing". The fact that you get a different 'apparent velocity' depending on the observer's position in space should be another. But, you won't. You can't. You can't say that. You would rather write hundreds of nonsense posts than have someone correct you, and I don't even think you know you're doing it.

You can't. The numbers you're talking about come from the equation, [math]f_\mathrm{obs} = f_\mathrm{rest}\sqrt{\left({1 - v/c}\right)/\left({1 + v/c}\right)}[/math] I can plug in the relevant numbers to show... [math]f_\mathrm{obs} = f_\mathrm{rest}\sqrt{\left({1 - 0.5}\right)/\left({1 + 0.5}\right)}[/math] [math]f_\mathrm{obs} = f_\mathrm{rest}\sqrt{1/3}[/math] [math]f_\mathrm{obs} = f_\mathrm{rest} (0.577)[/math] and 0.577 is the number you're talking about. I can derive the equation I gave from the equation for time dilation plus classical Doppler shift if you like. Point is that those numbers do take time dilation (and by extension, length contraction) into consideration No number is an island. I can tell you 4. 4 what? 4 apples? No number stands on its own. It either refers to something or it means nothing. It is. Until you can find the numerical value of red and blue shift without time dilation... well... yeah...

Correct. The person who recommends you to be hired doesn't make you dependent on them forever more in every subsequent decision, unless they are your boss and can also fire you. That isn't the case here. This is as common as common sense gets. I understand that anti-Americanism is fashionable regardless of how illogical it is, but this is a science site. Simply disagreeing with, and mischaracterizing, everything cited isn't expected (at least, by me). The court acts "that way" 10% of the time. If you want to call 10% "not always" then you're welcome to do it. Nobody can't see through that mischaracterization, nor identify the bias from which it originates. They don't act overtly political. See my last post to which you did not respond. They may, on occasion, act ideological. But, judicial ideology isn't the same as (and doesn't even parallel) political polity.

Uh-huh We are up to Constitution 17.0. The bible can't be changed. The Constitution can. Perhaps you'd like to discuss 'the constitution vs. the bible' it in another thread. The constitution protects individual rights against the majority. The second amendment is a constitutional right exactly because. as John is so keen to point out, more deaths are caused by guns than by their absence. If the moral outrage of society were the only concern then we could ban guns outright like John advocates. But, banning something from an individual demands an equivalent deference be paid to that individual. There are people in this country who would be dead today if they did not have a firearm. You have to look that person in the eye and tell them "You have to die because I am going to take away your means of defending yourself. It's ok, because people less responsible than you use the tool that saved your life irresponsibly, and I'm mostly concerned with them" There are other ways. A president needs only ignore impeachment, make an executive order enforced by the army, and ignore the constitution. Your idea that guns can't be banned without ratifying a new amendment assumes that political leaders don't do illegal things. That's a very sweet thought, but history doesn't bear it out.

Alkalinity of soil and water, water supply, oxygen supply, temperature. isolation from other species, the availability of pollinating insects, the presence of herbivores and their particular diet, the survivability of the plant's seeds in the digestive tract of resident herbivores, soil composition, soil consistency, depth of soil before one reaches rock or clay, and a host of other things.

It would not have cooled down, Regardless of whatever causes heat in earth's core, the amount of heat escaping through its surface is only 75 erg / cm^2 / s (or, 0.078 W/m^2). You can find that here. Or, verify it in Allen's Astrophysical Sciences. So, earth is losing next to none of its internal heat. It's losing it very slowly. That said, very little of Earth's internal heat came from the sun. It comes mostly from conservation of energy. When particles collapse from high gravitational potential to low, their potential energy is converted to kinetic. The kinetic energy of particles confined to a small volume is converted to heat. So, when earth formed there was a tremendous amount of heat created through no effort of the sun. It is still bleeding that off... very slowly.

The current model isn't the only theory where every part of the universe is equally old. The only thing one needs to assume is that the laws of physics are the same everywhere. It is pretty plainly said in a derivation of the FLRW metric that I once read and should find... So, there you have it. A universe consistent with special relativity in which the laws of physics are equivalent everywhere implies the existence of cosmic time (which, can roughly be translated, that all parts are equally old).

This was the diagram you had before: I recreated it and added the scenario I asked about: The two different observers, earth and B, measure a different apparent velocity (given the method you proposed for finding apparent velocity). I know you're going to object for reasons I can't quite unravel, and that's fine. I look forward to it. But, I think this particular line of questions has played itself out. We've added confusion on top of confusion on top of confusion and I don't think it's helping anything.

"clear like a crystal" he he That was good. I can't tell what's going on with that. There are no world lines where I would expect them. Let me draw the scenario... I have to run a couple errands this morning first. It'll take a sec.

I think we've found the problem. I proposed no such thing. The observer is 1.333 light-years from earth. The world line is 1.333 light-years from earth. The world-line is not on the axis of the diagram you had previously drawn, but an axis is not a world-line. An axis is just a label. It labels the lines running horizontal on the diagram. You can put it wherever you want and it makes no difference. *I did not put the observer off his world line* I don't know how more plainly to say it. My question makes perfect sense. What 'apparent velocity' does an observer 1.333 light-years from earth measure for the blue line? If that question doesn't make sense then there is something seriously wrong with your 'apparent velocity'. I'm not asking you the 'apparent velocity' observed from earth by the observer 1.333 lightyears from earth. I'm asking you the 'apparent velocity' observed 1.333 lightyears from earth by the observer 1.333 lightyears from earth. Putting the observer off the y axis is not wrong. But, it doesn't matter. Put the axis on the observer if you want. I want to know the 'apparent velocity' of the blue line from the perspective of an observer 1.333 light-years from earth. Put the y-axis right on top of him if you want. I don't want to know anything about any other observer. How is this not clear?

An observer can be anywhere on a diagram. You can imagine you are that observer if that somehow matters to you. You can make the Y axis the world line of that observer if that somehow matters to you. (by the way, those last two don't matter at all). My question: Imagine an observer at x = 1 and 1/3rd. That is to say, on your diagram, an observer is at x = 1.333 at rest (parallel to earth's world line). He is 2/3rds of a light-year from point R just like the earth observer is, except on the other side. What does he measure as the 'apparent velocity'? It isn't going to be the same as earth. Are you saying that this observer doesn't have an 'apparent velocity', because that alone would invalidate the velocity you've invented. Are you saying that there can't be an observer there? Because, I'm pretty sure there can be an observer 1.333 light-years from earth and motionless relative to the earth. Are you saying that "you" cannot be that observer? Because, I'm pretty sure you're just as capable of occupying a spacecraft as anyone else. I think you're just refusing to answer the question because you know it gives you an inconsistent answer. Either that, or you don't know how to find the answer. If that is the case, let me know and I'll solve it and explain the solution.

You can draw the Y axis wherever you want. The position of the y axis doesn't tell you (or imply anything about) where any particular world line is. Do you want me to draw you a diagram where the Y axis is exactly where I said the observer was in my last question so that you can answer it?

Finding a republican who supports something similar to Obamacare doesn't even *imply* that "Republicans were frothing at the mouth to kill Obamacare" is untrue. No bill passed by Obama has been hated more widely or deeply than Obamacare. Romney himself said that his first act as president if he were elected would be to repeal Obamacare. By the way, it wasn't "originally a republican idea". An economist came up with it (whose name escapes me), but they both took it from that original idea. Having an ideology does not necessarily make one biased. Supporting judicial restraint gets a judged branded conservative. My point was that Roberts supports judicial restraint, not that he is a blind conservative. He believes judges should limit their power by not over-interpreting the constitution. That is a perfectly reasonable an unbiased approach. It isn't an approach I personally agree with, but it isn't biased and it isn't political either. That said, everyone is biased. If it were not ok for a justice to be biased then there would be no justices. No, that's 90% less than your stated position allows. You skipped quoting the part where they do. 90% of Supreme Court decisions are not split down what may be perceived as ideological lines (vs 10% that are). Of only the decisions that are split in some way, four times more are non-ideologically split, than those that are. The court is clearly willing to accept good legal argument regardless of ideology or political implications. Members of congress are specifically prohibited from being federal judges by Article 1; Section 6; Clause 2 of the constitution. That clause was specifically written because, like wiki says... Law makers cannot also be the Judiciary. I don't know where you're getting these things. Did you hear me say "Judicial conservatism doesn't parallel political conservatism"? A judge can be conservative in his rulings and his decisions and also be apolitical. Judicial ideology and political policy are two different things. Having the former doesn't ensure anything about the latter.

How many waves there are over a distance in an instant? That honestly doesn't make sense to me. I'm trying to understand what you mean, but I really don't follow. The numbers 0.577 and 1.732 have time dilation worked into them. That isn't just the classical Doppler effect. It is that plus time dilation. You can't assume that those numbers are correct while also assuming, like you said before, that the numbers can be found without time dilation. We know through experiment that time dilation is a necessary factor. The only way to ignore time dilation is to call it by a different name.

You gave an example earlier where the decision supposedly fell down political lines, so a counterexample should take the wind from your sails. Republicans were frothing at the mouth to kill Obamacare (the popularized name of a new law here). The case went to the supreme court and Chief Justice Robers ended up being the swing vote. He is a Bush appointee, and one of the most conservative justices. No case had more political pressure from republicans in recent memory. They really wanted to kill this thing. He decided to uphold the law to the consternation and complete dismay of the Republican party. You cannot say that they make decisions on political grounds. Some justices may make decisions on ideological grounds, but that is different. For example, Justice Roberts may have upheld Obamacare *because* he is a conservative Justice. The more conservative a judge, the more they believe in judicial restraint. Upholding Obamacare is an expression of judicial restraint, as well as being politically anti-republican. Judicial conservatism doesn't parallel political conservatism. Judicial conservatism has to do with interpreting laws conservatively, and political conservatism has to do with appealing to conservative people. The supreme court collectively decides not to hear most cases that are referred to them. Of those that are heard, half are decided unanimously. Only 10% are split down what one might consider ideological lines. What does that mean? It means that 4 times more split decisions are non-ideologically split versus those split down ideological lines (let alone political lines). You want to say "they make that decision on political grounds" on the sole basis that they were nominated by an elected official. But, the statistics completely disagree with you. Judges value their political independence because the Judicial branch of the government is historically, and by design, a non-political branch of government. What more does it take to convince you?

"A panel of experts" is too vague. I need the name of a specific person. Who makes the ultimate decision about my reading and writing habits, and why are they more fit than myself in doing so? BTW, the "common good" is exactly what you betray every time you censor someone, and the censor you advocate would also be telling the administrator of this site how it should be run. Who is qualified to do that?

I'm afraid that didn't make any sense to me. Are you saying that the procedure for finding 'apparent velocity' changes depending on what you are measuring? Your idea of 'apparent velocity' sounds inconsistent in that case. Actually, let's set that aside for a second, because you're going to end up with different 'apparent velocity' depending on where the observer's position is in space as well, and that's an even bigger inconsistency. Imagine an observer at x = 1 and 1/3rd. That is to say, on your diagram, an observer is at x = 1.333 at rest (parallel to earth's world line). He is 2/3rds of a light-year from point R just like the earth observer is, except on the other side. What does he measure as the 'apparent velocity'? It isn't going to be the same as earth.

.299 792 458 m / s It is the red triangles on my diagram (see below). Yes. Or, one light-year per year. That is the normal velocity of light because it is the x distance between M and R divided by the t distance between M and R. M is 2/3rds of a year above R and 2/3rds of a light-year to the left of R. Please find the 'apparent velocity' of the blue line from R to E using the same method, and let me know what it is. I really do appreciate this. Thank you.

There are *not* two instances of the star. There is one instance of "tar observes star" (this is an event that happens on earth), and there is a different instance of "star emits light", (which, believe it or not, happens on the star). They are two different events. Time separates the events. This has almost nothing to do with relativity. It is just common sense. "star emits" happens before "earth observes". Can you please punch numbers into "the above understanding", so that I may have an example to show "where length contraction and time dilation are unneeded"? Thank you. Please tell me in meters per second what the 'apparent velocity' of light is. Thank you.

Degrees are not units of speed. One doesn't measure the speed of light with a protractor. Saying that the 'apparent velocity' of light is a medium sized angle makes no sense. In post 54 you accidentally divided the distance traveled by the time observed trying to find velocity. That was a very small mistake. You needed to divide the distance traveled by the time traveled. It is better to go back and recognize what happened than trying to invent a new kind of velocity and a new kind of physics to work with it.

The Supreme Court agreed in 2008 saying, 1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. -District of Columbia v. Heller What's interesting is that there was an earlier decision, United States v. Miller, 1939, that put limits on the type of weapons that could be owned by limiting them to those conceivably used by a militia. It held that a shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches couldn't be protected by the second amendment because... In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. The significance attributed to the term Militia appears from the debates in the Convention, the history and legislation of Colonies and States, and the writings of approved commentators. These show plainly enough that the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. 'A body of citizens enrolled for military discipline.' And further, that ordinarily when called for service these men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time. -United States v. Miller, wikipedia The supreme court reused the language I bolded in 2008 when saying that handguns couldn't be banned in DC. Weapons commonly used for non-criminal purpose (eg hunting and self defense) can't be banned.