Strange

Gaia? Barely a hypothesis. I can't work out if it is trivially true (the Earth will always reach some sort of "balance"; life will evolve to fit changing conditions, etc.) or metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. I can't see how anyone could describe it as a "major historic breakthrough".

It works. That's all you can ask of physics, really.

It doesn't say anything about the medium: http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath242/kmath242.htm (LIke QED, it is a mathematical abstraction that works.)

I know this is one interpretation. I feel uncomfortable with it because that also implies that a C60 molecule also "goes through both slits" (http://vcq.quantum.at/publications/all-publications/details/247.html - I believe they have also done this with larger molecules now). Isn't an alternative interpretation that it is just due to the non-locality of quantum effects (c.f. entanglement) so that the probability of a photon taking a particular path is determined by the entire experimental setup (however large). This seems to fit better with the sum over histories approach in QED (and the fact that effrects are not localised in time as well; as in the delayed choice quantum eraser experiments).

Feynman has something to say about that in his lectures. I'm not sure "why" is really in the scope of physics. If you can answer "why" at one level, you can always just ask "why" again about the answer. It is a never-ending rabbit hole.

The Curies - well, that was one of the counter-examples I thought of And, of course, it wasn't just the two of them; they exchanged information, materials, ideas, etc with other chemists and physicists. Einstein and Darwin may have published works as the sole author and be the people most associated with the corresponding theories. But it is rather a stretch to say they worked alone. They took ideas from many other people, discussed their theories with others as they were developing them, etc. I know Lovelock invented a few things and has been a spokesman for environmental matters but has he been responsible for any "major historic breakthroughs"? Counter examples: The structure of DNA The big bang theory Continental drift Almost every aspect of quantum physics ... And look at the number of theories and laws named after groups of people: Titius–Bode law Church-Turing thesis Bose-Enstein statistics Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein effect Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric But that is, of course, meaingless. I don't have any quantitative evidence to argue the point. But the lone (and possibly maverick) scientist image seems like a myth to me.

Feynman's lectures on QED explain this: http://vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8 Also available as a book. I don't think it is anything to do with the medium (is it?)

Really? I am struggling to think of many examples. Especially in the last couple of centuries. (I wondeer if the OP should be moved to the "Arrogance versus Genius" thread as an example for discussion.) Where will we find details of these breakthroughs?

Experiments would be hard as this depends on the gravitation of the gas cloud, which will be very weak and insiginificant for any experimental set up. You could use a simulation to model what happens (which is, of course, what astrophysicits do).

Similar. But not the same. Answer what? Do you have a question?

Well, I guess that depends how fast it is rotating. After all, if it isn't rotating then it will collapse, due to its own gravity. So if it is rotating slowly it can collapse, as well. No doubt there is a rotation speed above which it won't collapse. I don't know if any such clouds have been identified.

Er, it is a speck.

That's the point I'm trying to make. If photons are fundamentally quantised then a single photon can only go through one slit and arrive at one point on the screen.

I don't see how that is relevant. IF the photon hits the screen then it does it within the areas where you would expect constructive interference. But it does it at just one point in that area. So you cannot detect the interference pattern from one photon. Because there isn't one. You can't even detect the pattern from 2 or 10 photons. But, in the case of a single photon, there aren't waves from both slits.

A search on Google Scholar shows nearly 7,000 results for "psychedelic brain scan" with over 400 of those being in 2013.

Can you clarify what you mean by that? Are you suggesting that the ceasium atoms would behave differently on Neptune and Jupiter (by a factor of 1.62)? Or are you just saying that Neptune-seconds and Jupiter-seconds are different lengths? The first of those obviously needs some justification. The latter is trivially obvious.

In the classical view, the waves are split and go through both slits, enabling inteference. Is this possible with a single (indivisible) photon? Note that each photon hits a single point on the screen (it isn't spread out across the interference pattern). The inteference pattern only becomes apparent in the distribution of the positions of large numbers of individual photons. I don't think you can explain this in terms of the waveform "in" each photon.

Because evolution is (usually) very slow and it can take many generations for significant changes to occur in a population. (And note that evolution is about the population niot individuals.) There are exceptional examples where a new species is created in a single generation, but these are very rare.

I'm not sure how you can do that when there is only one photon (and, being a quantum, it is indivisible). Also, how does this apply to things like electrons and molecules (which show the same behaviour)?

Evolution! Do you look exactly like your parents? I have known families who have had one white and one black child (with the same parents). There are even cases of this where both parents were "white".

Are you trying to relate this to the size of the photon? I'm not sure that works, unless you are assuming something abut the timing/distance between photons. Remember the experiment works even if you send individual photons through the system one at a time. As far as I know, there is no limit on how separated the photons are; you will still get the interference pattern.

The numbers I have seen of expected extra deaths from radiation around Fukushima are indistinguishable from noise compared to the normal number of deaths. I don't think anyone is asserting no harm from Chernobyl. There have been a large number of deaths attributed to the accident although the estimates vary enormously.

Not that long. Visible light has a wavelength between about 380 and 740 nanometres. (That Wikipedia page is the German equivalent of the one I linked to above)

I think the dead man thing was about looking at the evidence to try and reach a conclusion, rather than just jumping to a conclusion without considering the evidence, and possibly contradicting the evidence.

I'm not quite sure what that means, but it appears to be wrong. No, it appears to be right... I think it means, "something which is mathematically wrong, will not give correct the results in experiments". Which is correct. Experimental data is used to falsify incorrect models all the time; that is how science works. For example, experimental data would show that the OP's incorrect mathematics gave the wrong results. Experiment confirms the correct results of relativity (and other models).