Strange

If you did this "at" (just outside) the event horizon, then you could (in principle) do this. If you tried it inside the even horizon, then whatever you did, your ramp would head towards the centre. Not really. This is something I read (from someone who does understand the mathematics). I just checked and I slightly mis-remembered it. If you are falling towards a black hole, the event horizon is invariant (the same for all observers) and so you will fall through that. But then there is another "personal" even horizon ahead of you. This separates you from all the events that you will never observe because you will hit the singularity before the light from them can reach you. I am going to quote this from another forum, as I think it is a good description of what happens https://forum.cosmoquest.org/showthread.php?109938-What-is-the-event-horizon-of-a-freefaller-into-a-black-hole&p=1823342#post1823342 And, another interesting thing is that the "black disk" you would see if you looked at a black hole is larger than the event horizon. It is actually the photon sphere: http://rantonels.github.io/starless/

We don't know. Current theory, which we know is incomplete, says that everything gets squashed to a single point. We probably need a theory of quantum gravity to give us a more realistic explanation. The best theory we have so far, string theory, describes a black hole as a fuzzball: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzball_(string_theory)

Saussure used the word "signifier", when explaining this idea, as opposed to the signified ( what you call concept). The two together he called a sign. I'm not sure the choice of words makes that much difference. Perhaps you could explain what these profound consequences are? Please go ahead.

I have never heard of these before. I can't believe they have much value. All the grammar checkers I have seen report perfectly good sentences as being wrong. And, even if they could correctly identify grammatical errors, they wouldn't help with things like structure, developing a logical argument, etc. Use a spelling checker and read your essay out loud to yourself. You will spot a lot of errors doing that.

It isn't (just) that people are not competent. It is also the fact they don't have the time, resources, skills, or inclination to look into the issues in enough detail to determine what course of action might be best. And the best course probably isn't representable as a simple, binary "in or out" decision. And, as far as I can tell, most people voted on issues like immigration (where nearly all economists agree that being out of the EU will make no real difference) or "making our own laws" (when the UK will still have to adhere to the same same "EU Laws", which are mainly about trade issues, safety standards, etc, without the ability to influence those laws and so will be worse off in terms of "democratic control"). Politicians, on the other hand, have a full time job which is (should be) understanding the issues plus teams of experts they can call on to help them in that process. They will also be involved in the fine details of what being in or out of the EU means, rather than just looking at the binary choice. So, I would agree that representative democracy is a far better system. Also, if you are going to have a referendum on a major constitutional issue then it is crazy to make it a straight majority vote. For something as important as this, it should have required a 60% or 75% majority. Apparently, UKIP were all geared up to take that point to court if the vote had gone the other way. Nope. I have always objected to referendums, whatever the issue and whatever the result. I have always supported proportional representation, not just when "the other side" has won an election. I'm not sure. For example Norway and Switzerland are sort-of half in the EU. To the extent that many people on the Leave side don't want that sort of arrangement because it isn't really "leaving".

I suspect it is a "spandrel" - a side-effect of our pattern recognition and abstract thought capabilities, perhaps. The latter (and maybe language and even consciousness) might also be side effects of ... something (brain complexity?)

Penrose et al. claim to have seen evidence of the pre-Big Bang universe in the CMB. Others are not convinced. http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/12/07/penroses-cyclic-cosmology/

Without a model, no one can answer that. If the effect is the same as the orphan waves hypothesis, then you need some other evidence to distinguish the two hypotheses.

Mass-energy is conserved.

They are purely hypothetical.

You haven't separated the weight (a property) from the material. Some of it goes in to the kinetic energy of the fission products. Some of it is released as photons (gamma or X rays). None of it is released "pure energy" separate from anything else.

As far as we can tell they look exactly like the waves predicted by theory so "passing through 1 billion other GWs" has an immeasurably small effect, currently.

I have lived in countries where tipping is very unusual (so you will get a big thank you if you leave a tip) or non-existent (I have been followed out of a restaurant by the waiter to give me the money back). I have also lived in places where it is pretty much required (I can imagine a waiter following you out of a restaurant in the US, to ask where their tip is!)

I don't know where you read that. We have no way of actually knowing what happens inside a black hole, but we can apply our current theories to the inside and say what we expect to happen. The definition of the speed of light becomes complicated when you start considering gravity. But, as far as I am aware, even inside a black hole the speed of light is still a (local) speed limit. And all observers will measure the speed of light to be the same. Not sure what this means. The gravity of a black hole is determined by its mass, in the same way as any other massive object. Again, things get complicated inside the event horizon as the radial space dimension gets swapped with the time dimension. Changes in gravity travel at the speed of light. The gravity around a black hole is static and not dependent on the speed of light. I am going to quote imatfaal's reply from another thread as he put it so well:

Except we don't. At different times and places, people have had different theories about these things, based on what they knew at the time. There are still quite a number of people who are convinced the world is flat. They can use any evidence to the contrary to support their theory. There are people who insist that the Earth is stationary at the centre of the universe. Although this is probably wrong, it is impossible to disprove. But it is also irrelevant. You cannot use the existence of some notion of truth to argue that therefore philosophy is always correct. Apart from anything else, this leads to contradictions. You have chosen something we know to be factually wrong. This is closer to what you call "absolute truth". And your premise that "fish live in water" is not logical. A premise cannot be "logical", by definition. Only the conclusion derived from the premise can be described as logical. This suggests that you are using the popular definition of logical as "something that makes sense". In fact, your premise is not even completely true. There are fish that spend time on land. You seem to have a very ill-defined and confused idea of what separates opinion from unsound speculation. Maybe you should look up the definitions of valid and sound logical arguments. Perhaps you should also read some of the philosophical literature on the meaning of "truth". It is not a simple concept (not even a single concept). And then a botanist comes along and tells you that it is not a coconut but instead the similar looking fruit of a different tree.

My understanding is that we don't yet have enough accuracy to test this idea. They claim there is evidence of this. Others are more sceptical. We will have to wait and see. To test your idea, you would need to predict exactly what the effect would be.

Part of your question is (I think) answered by the fact that velocities do not increase linearly in relativity and so you would need to use a relativistic formula for the acceleration caused by the force of gravity (assuming it is valid to use this Newtonian approximation in this scenario). This is a different question. My understanding is that as you approach a black hole, the event horizon is always ahead of you. So in this case you would "observe" (I'm not sure you can) or calculate the event horizon as being smaller than the stationary observer (or at least, when you pass the point where they think it is). Excellent answer! The only thing I would add is that inside the event horizon, the radial direction to the singularity becomes your future. And we all know there is no escaping that...

Without a model describing what to look for, there isn't any way of testing this idea. As the waveform corresponds very closely to that predicted to be produced by the source, it seems that any such effect must be very small. There are people looking for other effects in the details of the waveform, but these will probably have to wait until detectors are more sensitive to draw any conclusions. For example: https://www.universetoday.com/135690/gravitational-waves-permanently-alter-nature-spacetime-1/

Not true. I am stationary relative the chair I am sitting on. And to the whole house. And even the entire town. (Although, interestingly, not the whole country, as parts of it are moving at different rates!)

This is not university-level stuff. This is basic schoolboy physics. http://www.mathcentre.ac.uk/resources/uploaded/mc-web-mech1-5-2009.pdf http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/vectors http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/higher/physics/mech_matt/vectors/revision/1/

This seems contrary to the usual way forces work. Can you explain why?

That is not evidence. It is, at best, a hypothesis. And can you quantify this claimed effect and show it is significant?

What is the evidence for that?

Indeed. But we re talking about movement in 4D space-time. The movement is in the time dimension - which is reduced to one of the two dimensions in the analogy, the other being the spatial separation. You can say "there is no movement in time" but if so you are just rejecting the entire model based on this analogy and then no one can answer your question.

Even if it does, you have to apply some rational thought to the ideas you have, in order to filter out the nonsense. I am reminded of the story of someone who kept having amazing ideas in his dreams, that contained the secret of the universe. But they faded from his mind within minutes of waking. He decided to keep a notebook by his bed to write down his thoughts as soon as he woke from a dream. In the morning he found his notebook full of things like "the smell of peanut butter pervades all".