Strange

On the other hand, according to the researchers who did the work: No exactly surprising. It would be surprising if the Earth were exactly the median age, median mass, media distance from a median star. It is an interesting piece of research which you are cheapening by your ridiculous misinterpretation of it.

You are so desperate that you are seeing things that are not there. That study shows that the Earth may be fairly unusual. It doesn't say it is the centre of the universe. And it certainly doesn't say anything about god. Even if the Earth is not the most average, median type of planet in the galaxy, so what? The most dramatic thing you can deduce from that is that there may be fewer "Earth like" planets than other types. As we don't live in a science fiction novel and are not going to be colonising them, it is hardly relevant. For god's sake, grow up and start acting rationally. What next? A cloud that looks a rabbit proves the Earth is special? Don't be an idiot. If you don't even understand the article, you are in no position to lecture others.

Hopefully it never becomes dogma.

Another popular use of aqua regia is to redirect traffic to one's blog.

Exactly. There is not a discipline of "experimental philosophy" (well, there is: it is called science) nor is there a technology based on applied philosophy. The strength of philosophy is its rigorous analysis and questioning of ideas. This can be applied to any subject such as ethics, mathematics, morality, or science and greatly strengthens those subjects. (Of course, there is a common misuse of the word "philosophy", analogous to the abuse of the word "theory", that we often encounter on science forums: that is as shorthand for "random ideas I have made up".)

If anything Freud invented is consistent with modern neuroscience that is purely by chance, not because he did any scientific studies of the brain, or human behaviour or anything else. Luckily, modern psychology has moved on to become a more science-based discipline.

No. Apart from anything else, the proper velocity of these distant galaxies is effectively zero. That is why the increasing speed with distance is not due to acceleration. The accelerating expansion means that the scale factor is changing with time. Proper time is local by definition. If you are worried about light propagation time, you are probably not dealing with proper time. I know of no physics that assumes zero travel time (for significant distances)

The challenge with using a publisher is getting them to look at the thing, never mind publishing it! Self publishing is not expensive. There are print on demand services where, I think, the cost comes out of your sales. And ebooks cost nothing to produce. I don't know whatAmazon and others charge for selling them, presumably a fixed fee and/or percentage. But with self-publishing you have to do all your own marketing and publicity. Vanity publishing is the worst of both worlds. You pay them (a lot, frequently) and then they do nothing to promote it. It would be worth him joining one or more writers' forums to get some more specific advice. From what I have read, having a good cover design can make a huge difference - by catching people's eye and giving an impression of quality. When you say "just finished", does that include getting it reviewed by other readers? How many edit/rewrites has he gone through? Several writers' forums have a facility where you can submit work to get reviewed by other members. Scribophile is very good: http://www.scribophile.com/

Correct. It doesn't. It is a deviation from that which shows that expansion is accelerating. Any simplistic explanation is probably going to be wrong. You don't believe in the time that your watch shows? Extraordinary.

Wikipedia has a few references that might help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viviparity#Evolution

The rate at which the objects orbit and merge is dependent, very precisely, on their mass. By comparing simulations of a range of different size black hole mergers they can determine the mass of the two black holes. The characteristics of the "ringdown" phase after merger are dependent on the final mass. From all this, the amount of energy radiated is know. By comparing this with the received amplitude, it is possible to calculate the distance.

I don't think you understand. You seem to be mixing up a steady rate of expansion, which necessarily results in the speed of separation being proportional to distance, and accelerating expansion. That does not represent acceleration. That is a constant rate of expansion.

What reason is there to think the situation is any different?

Despite the examples of "laws" that have been shown to be wrong? Such as conservation of energy - first, special relativity shows that is not general enough so we get conservation of mass-energy. Then GR shows that even mass-energy isn't always conserved. Newton's "universal law of gravitation" isn't universal. And so on. That is an interesting one. It was a straightforward mathematical derivation from Maxwell's equations (and the assumption that Galilean relativity is correct). So it would be hard to imagine it wouldn't be correct. So I would say it was stronger than a hypothesis but, arguably, not a tested theory at that point.

No. The increasing speed with distance is due to a constant rate of expansion. It is just simple arithmetic. Consider a number of galaxies separated by the same distance (far enough apart that the expansion of space is significant and the same between all of them). At time 0, they are 1 unit apart: A.B.C.D.E.F After some time they are 2 units apart: A..B..C..D..E..F After the same time again, they are 3 units apart: A...B...C...D...E...F And so on: A....B....C....D....E....F Now, if we look at the distance between B and C, for example, it increases by 1 at every time step. But the distance between B and D increases by 2 at every step. So the distance between B and D is increasing twice as fast as the distance between B and C; i.e. the speed of separation is twice as great. Choose any pairs of galaxies and you will see that apparent the speed of separation is proportional to the distance between them. Take two objects far enough apart and the speed of separation will be greater than the sped of light. (But that is OK, because the speed of light limit is a local thing, whereas these objects are in different frames of reference.)

Exactly. It is derived by applying the theory of special relativity to Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism (aka Maxwell's equations - which I suppose could be called the "laws of electromagnetism" but, again, I don't think I have heard that usage).

That's exactly what I meant. None of those fit the scientific usage of the word. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory

Luckily, I never said that so I don't have to support it or retract it.

It was an equation derived from theory. Now it has been tested and confirmed, I guess you could say it has the status of a "law". But I don't think it is generally called that. I would describe a law, in science, as some sort of mathematical relationship either derived from theory or purely by observation; e.g. Hubble's Law was created by Hubble from observational data. But it was also derived from GR a few years earlier.

This questions seems to have come up a lot in various places. I'm not sure why; the only advantage seems to be the fact that nothing can block the signal. But given the practical difficulties (basically impossible with foreseeable technology) it probably isn't worth thinking about.

There is no uncertainty. The paragraph you quote [a bit of] is about interpretation: the existence of non-linearity is not in doubt, just whether you describe this as "gravitational energy" or not. So it comes down to a matter of definitions. So the "law" of conservation may be valid for some definitions of energy (in some circumstances) but not for other definitions. Again, the law is not necessarily universal.

That depends on the "law". Newton's gravitation has no mechanism. A mechanism is implied (at least) by the Einstein Field Equations. It also depends on what you mean by "wrong".

That is a rather loose definition of science that probably could perhaps also fit philosophy. Philosophy is not an evidence based discipline though, which is what distinguishes it from science. Psychology can be, and today often is, a science. Sadly, it has a history of people like Freud associated with it. I don't know what your "etc" covers. Perhaps some of them are science and some aren't.

The first couple of results from Google: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/energy_gr.html http://motls.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/why-and-how-energy-is-not-conserved-in.html

Exactly. So there are conditions where Newton's universal law of gravitation does not apply (it predicts the wrong value). So it is not as universal as the name implies. That is true of all laws. (In some cases, we may not have found the conditions where it doesn't apply!)