Strange

Well, there is an exact value. You just can't write it down as a number.

You can configure your editor to use only spaces (and, in most cases, to convert existing tabs to spaces)

! Moderator Note There are. You should restrict your discussions to those threads and not pollute the rest of the forum. Thank you. ! Moderator Note You have not been banned. You are still here. So stop playing the martyr. Grow up.

I think there are two slightly different factors here. Firstly, we know that CO, CO2 (or water or table salt) are not elemental because they can be broken down into, or synthesized from, their constituent parts. (We also know that their constituent parts are elemental, because they cannot be broken down or synthesized from other atoms). The other important point is that the component parts only combine in simple integer ratios. This tells us two things: that the compounds are not just simple mixtures of carbon and oxygen. There isn't a mixture that is half way between CO and CO2, with intermediate properties, for example. Also, just mixing C and O in those proportions does not lead to the compound. There needs to be a reaction (with the release, or absorption, of energy). A mixture of two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen is not water, it is just a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. I guess one could (with effort) come up with an explanation of these facts based on an assumption that carbon and oxygen are continuous elemental substances that are infinitely divisible, but still always combine in constant ratios (and with a minimum quantity). But it is much simpler to explain it in terms of them being made up of particles that can only combine with a fixed number of other particles. In Dalton's time, you could perhaps argue that this atomic theory was just a hypothesis. But then the model was developed further (with valence electrons to explain the number of other atoms that an atom can combine with, and so on) and now we able to manipulate and image individual atoms. (And even split them, despite their "atomic" or elemental nature.)

! Moderator Note Except that is exactly what you have claimed repeatedly. I would ask you to explain but there is obviously no point because (a) you are not able to and (b) the entire premise is nonsensical. DO NOT open another thread on this subject.

! Moderator Note This has nothing to do with the Earth being a star. Which it obviously isn't. Do not post any more ridiculous ideas like this.

Farage has already been making typical moronic comments about the UK being excluded from the ban because "it is now an independent country"

But it is wrong, so why should we consider it. They do detract from the light beam. The amount of light in the laser beam itself will be less when it passes through a medium with a lot of particles that scatter the light than if it went through a vacuum. Eventually, all the light would be scattered and there will be no beam. Yes. (Apart from the philosophical "tree in a forest" question of "how could we know" ) Correct. At the extreme, if there were no scattering because the laser was in a vacuum then it would no be visible from the side. I'm not sure what you think doesn't happen. Photons (light) gets scattered from the laser, that is why you can see it in a medium with a lot of particles present. Not sure why. Some of the light waves are scattered from particles and, as Huygens showed about 400 years ago, each particle can then be thought of as a new source of light. The total amount of light remains the same (apart from what is absorbed) but now you have light waves going in all directions. In the wave model, the wavefront gets spread out over a large and larger sphere. The surface area of that sphere increases as the square of the distance, therefore the brightness falls off as the inverse of the square of the distance. Confirming the well-known inverse square law. In the case of photons, then they get more widely separated as the spread out from the source (again, by an inverse square law). If we consider that there was a single flash of light, then eventually there will come a point where there are gaps and not all observers will receive photons and will not see the flash. If it is a steady source of light (a distant star or galaxy, for example) then at any moment some of these distant observers might see a photon and others not. But a moment later the one who didn't see a photon might get one. And maybe some of those who got a photon before won't get one now. So, on average, they all get smaller and smaller numbers of photons with distance. As they get further away, the average number of photons they get over time will fall in an inverse square law. They will never stop seeing photons. There might be photons occasionally passing to the left or right that they miss, but eventually they will detect one. And note that this is not just a random example based on theory. This is what is actually observed to happen. Either in very low light conditions (where, for example, night vision scopes use photomultipliers(1) to go from an undetectably small number of photons to a large enough number to allow the eye to see them) or for light from distant galaxies (where we receive single photons from the source). (1) I don't think photomultipliers based on the photoelectric effect are used anymore So you don't like the photon model and you don't like the wave model (despite that fact that they both work). What do you like?

! Moderator Note Moved to Speculations ! Moderator Note Note that the rules of this section of the forum require you to support your claims with, for example, evidence or a mathematical model. If you are unable to do that in your next post, this thread will be closed.

They couldn't. Just chance. Imagine throwing a large (but not infinite) number of grains of rice into a large crowd (like a football stadium full, for example). Some people would get a handful of rice, some would get 1 or 2 grains and some would get none. The problem seems to be that you are thinking of light as something continuous, more like water, say. If you filled the stadium with water, then everyone would get wet! i don't think you are being thick. A lot of people struggle with this, I think. The problem is one of scale and our intuitions. We are used to thinking of light as continuous and infinitely divisible, because that is how it seems to behave in everyday situations. And there are such a large number of photons in most light sources that it is pretty close to being continuous. That is why using the photon model isn't very helpful in a lot of cases.

It does happen. You seem to be assuming that light can be infinitely divided. It cant be.

Then the remaining ones don't see anything. There are plenty of things we can't see because not enough photons reach our eyes.

I thought that is what were doing.

I tried to fix the formatting for you (manly so I could read it!)

If they are not receiving photons, then they won't see it. There are not an infinite number of photons so an infinite number of people cannot see it. Or, to put it another way, if you are an infinite distance away you will not be able to see it. If you are just a long way away then your chance of receiving a single photon might be very small. There are galaxies that are so distant that we only receive single occasional photons from them. Images are created over long time periods when enough photons have been received to create the image. Some galaxies are sufficiently faint and far away that we never receive any photons from them: they cant be seen. Or a more practical example. There are reflectors on the moon left by the Apollo mission. The distance to the moon can be measured by shining a laser and detecting the returned light. The moon is so far away and the mirror is so small that it is very hard to detect the returned light. In fact, very often no returned photons are seen because there are just too few of them. This has been improved with newer telescopes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Point_Observatory_Lunar_Laser-ranging_Operation

The energy of a photon of red light is about 3x10-19 joules. That means for a 10W laser (typically used for a light show) there are about 3x1019 photons per second. That is a pretty large number. About 100000000000 photons for each of your 200 million observers.

Your thought experiment might be better described in terms of a light source radiating equally in all directions. Then if there were an infinite number(1) of observers around it(2) then not all of them would receive photons because there are not an infinite number of photons to be seen. (1) infinite-1is still infinite (2) not practical but...

You seem to have missed the bit that said: "unless the photons scatter off of something (e.g. dust)." When you see a laser beam projected into the sky, you are seeing the light reflected by dust and water particles in the air.

! Moderator Note The rules of the Speculations forum require you to support your claims with evidence. If you do not provide support for this (plainly nonsensical) claim in the next post this thread will be closed.

! Moderator Note Moved to Speculations

Nothing at all. Many people are comforted in their beliefs. Your use of the Heinlein quote is an example of a logical fallacy. Just because science has has been wrong in the past does not mean that everything is wrong. Just because some things that were thought to be impossible later turned out to be possible does not mean that anything is possible. Your naive belief that it may be possible in future to imagine a test for Last Thursdayism is based on this same fallacy.

Nope. This is pretty much identical to religious belief.

Nope. There is no such thing. Even you can't imagine one, and you believe anything is possible. 🥁bdum-tish

In your opinion. In the opinion of the simulators, you might be crazy to do it any other way. (This is why this is not a scientific hypothesis. Like solipsism, Last Thursdayism, or god-did-it, absolutely any fact can be considered evidence for or against it. Any opinion about the model can be equally well countered by another opinion. Neither can be supported by testable evidence.)

Nothing wrong with that, as long as you understand that it is an unscientific (but philosophically useful) idea.