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Strange

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Everything posted by Strange

  1. It does. I have never noticed it before! (I wonder how long before I feel the need to use it ...) Has proof of what? That his joke is funny? Or that you have no sense of humour? Or ... The phrase "get over yourself" comes to mind.
  2. Not necessarily. We might be half-way through the process of the universe going to hell in a handcart. (You have another thread with your less optimistic view of the state of the world.)
  3. 1. So there is evidence for human ancestors after all. 2. So yo think crows are more human than chimps? 3. That doesn't provide any evidence that writing was the single largest step in mental development. Also, if that were true it would make writing (a largely mechanical skill) a bigger leap than the development of language. That seems implausible. So citation still needed. 4. I guess he was using sarcasm to highlight the irrelevance of your comment.
  4. I don't think there is a mechanism for reporting status updates, is there?
  5. We understand gravity at least as well as any other fundamental property such as charge. Possibly better, because we can describe gravity in terms of a more fundamental thing (geometry).
  6. So you think it is better to make stuff up (and claim it is "reality") rather use evidence-based science?
  7. A buckyball cannot move at the speed of light but can be in a superposition of states. Hypothesis falsified.
  8. No one is ignoring them. However, it may be even more foolish to exaggerate and claim they are the basis of every phenomenon, including those that don't exist.
  9. Einstein didn't get his Nobel for work on GR. And, as pointed out you before, there are many better experiments that confirm GR. And refraction is not the reason for the colours in the sky, as you were told before.
  10. You might be interested in China 's QUESS mission http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2016/aug/16/china-launches-world-s-first-quantum-science-satellite
  11. If you are looking for "meaning" then you might find that in art, poetry, religion and maybe even science. But if you want something useful that *works* then only science will do.
  12. It is possible to derive Newtonian gravity from GR, for example: http://www.astro.ex.ac.uk/people/sing/Notes/12.EinsteinFieldEquation_NewtonianLimit.pdf But I certainly don't understand that! You can't prove that gravity is space-time curvature. All you can do is test the predictions of GR and see that they give better results than other theories.
  13. Why does searching for that only find results on vi racconto? Why nothing published?
  14. How do you know what reality is (with such confidence)?
  15. There is no evidence that gravitons exist. And, apart from that, a black hole would not need to emit gravitons any more than a magnet emits photons. Gravity would be mediated by virtual gravitons (in the same way that magnetism is mediated by virtual photons). These are not really particles and so the problem doesn't arise. As gravity is (currently) described in terms of space-time curvature, the existence or behaviour of gravitons is moot.
  16. Also, great scientists have to be extremely creative - but they also need the discipline to check their ideas before proclaiming that they are right.
  17. I see no evidence of that. The problem only arises when people think their creative ideas are a substitute for evidence. "Truth" (in the sense of scientific theories) is absolutely not democratic. It is based on which theory is the best fit for the evidence. The "crackpots" you refer to tend to think that it should be democratic: that their opinion should carry as much weight as scientific evidence.
  18. Or, perhaps more likely, the end of civilisation will occur because N. Korea fires a nuke on Japan. Or perhaps the USA will pull out of NATO and Russia will take that as permission to roll the tanks into Europe. Or ... Basically, you are inventing an "end of the world" scenario (that is not likely) and then saying: "see, coincidence". You are still expected to make sense.
  19. I wouldn't trust that (presumably unpublished) paper. There are a number of errors in the first few paragraphs. The whole point of science is to get away from this sort of subjective judgment. This is wrong for a whole variety of reasons. For example, the Millikan oil drop experiment works because the drop of oil is given a net charge, while most matter has zero net charge. Further, we can block the electromagnetic force but not gravity. Neutrons have no charge but contribute a significant amount of the mass (and hence gravitation) of most matter. There are many more reasons why this cannot be true.
  20. It wasn't Einstein that did this experiment. It was Eddington. The sun doesn't have a "helium atmosphere". The outer layer of the suns atmosphere (the corona) has a density about 1 billionth that of the Earth's atmosphere. So any refractive effects would be minimal. I think (but don't know for sure) that the stars measured were much further away than the corona anyway. However, the 1919 experiment is generally considered to be pretty flawed and inconclusive. So I wouldn't worry about it too much. It has been repeated since then with much better results. And, of course, there is a lot of other, much better, evidence for GR anyway.
  21. Is there any evidence that this is bad? There has been a vast amount of research on the comfort and productivity of keyboard layouts.
  22. But there are things smaller than atoms and proteins, so what is the point of using them to measure the distance travelled?
  23. Strange

    Massless things

    So you think the theory is only valid for specific values where it is measured? Do you apply this to all theories? For example, we have Newton's F=ma. Do you think that is only proven correct for the specific values of F, m and a that have been tested? And for other values it might not work?
  24. Yes (probably). But my point was more about made-up factoids, that could be easily checked, being used as a weapon (against anyone) and almost no one bothering to check the actual data. I am more concerned by the lack of critical thinking and analysis than by who happens to be chosen as POTUS.
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