Strange

There is nothing particularly serendipitous nor new about this. As this thread has shown, a lot of people have seen this and spent a lot of time analysing it. It doesn't appear to reveal anything new about gravity (or anything else). By the way, Wikipedia has a good page on the meaning and use of "serendipity" in science and engineering: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serendipity I don't see how that applies in this case. This is more a case of "wonder": isn't it amazing that a simple object can behave in this rather unexpected way (and be so complex to fully analyse)

Your phone is only going to transmit of licensed frequencies. (Unless you are planning to build your own transmitter that uses unlicensed frequencies. Which would be a bit pointless as there would be nothing to receive it.) Contact the telecom companies and ask how much it costs for a web gateway. This is provided as a commercial service (e.g. as used by your company). If this is for your company (who apparebtly already subscribe to such a service) then you just need to get the documentation.

At a fixed location, the gravitational field will be constant (*): is that what you mean precise and regular? If not, what do you mean? (*) Ignoring minuscule effects such as the Moon, etc.

No, a "page" (a Cauchy surface) represents a "slice" through space-time at given time; one of those "pages" can be considered to be "now". A foliation represents the way you decide to slice it into pages. (But there is no unique way of dividing space-time up in these slices and so so there is no single, unique "now" that everyone will agree on.) [if I have understood it correctly!]

Citation needed. Citation needed. Then why haven't you shown the math? Please show the math that supports this claim. Please show the math that supports this claim. What does "infinite statistics" mean? And please provide a reference to someone saying that black holes have "infinite statistics". Gravity is the bending of space-time so I don't understand what you are saying here. Citation needed. It sounds very confused and largely incorrect. And completely unsupported by evidence or mathematics.

I would have thought that was obvious. For example, Newtonian gravity and GR are completely different explanations and yet, in the appropriate domains, produce identical results. The same is true of the classical view of electromagnetic radiation and the quantum view (QED). Science is about producing models of relaity; in general the simplest model that is appropriate will be used. Given the title and the amount of time spent on this, I assumed this was the main point of the thread. I don't know about anyone else, but I find your definitions totally incomprehensible.

I don't know what it means. Are we talking lux, lumens, watts, joules ...

Your clock should tell you only one thing: the time. By definition. What does "quantity" of light motion mean? What is two litres of light motion? And the stupid smileys.

If the sun turned into a black hole (about 3km across) it would not make any difference to the Earth's orbit. (But it would get very cold.)

That would be about the size of a grape, rather than an apple.

There is no reason to believe it exists if you can produce no evidence for it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot That is not "thinking outside the box", it is just making stuff up. You are, of course, free to believe that the world is populated by undetectable pink unicorns, but that is totally irrational.

I suppose it is possible (although the statement doesn't seem to make much sense). But unless you have some evidence for this "undiscovered frequency" I think we can just ignore the suggestion.

Is there any truth in that statement? No. However, it is interesting to note that the LHC collides hadrons (the clue is in the name) specifically protons. The thing about hadrons is that they are composed of quarks and are held together by the strong force. The energy of the string force provides nearly all the mass of a proton (or neutron). Also, if you try to split a proton into its quarks, then the amount of energy required just causes more quarks to be created which then form new hadrons (such as protons). So there is an example of where energy (the kinetic energy of the protons) is converted to new matter.

Firstly, that equation is about the relationship between mass and energy, not necessarily matter and energy. Also, it may be worth pointing out that for of the equation is incomplete. As such, it is only valid for massive particles at rest. The full equation is e2 = m2c4 + p2c2. BBN? More importantly, expansion is not a speed. It is a proportional increase in distance between points in space. As such, the relative velocity between two points depends how far apart they are. There are (and always have been) points that are sufficiently far apart that they are separating at greater than the speed of light. Conversely, there are points which are sufficiently close that they are not (and never have been) separating at the speed of light. Finally, converting energy to matter, or vice verse, does not depend on speed. There are many mechanisms for converting energy into mass, and mass into energy. What does "bipolar" mean in this context. ajb mentioned binding energy. There is also pair production: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_production There is no evidence (yet) that the LHC has created dark matter particles. You might be interested to know that one of the people who did groundbreaking work in stellar nucelosynthesis (the source of all matter except hydrogen) was Fred Hoyle, a lifelong opponent (and namer) of the big bang theory (and very good friend of Lemaitre, the founder of the big bang model). Yes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_confinement_fusion

It is traditional to cite source when referencing articles and papers. I assume you mean this wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole And this paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0306213 I am not going to try and understand everything in that paper; it is too long and complex. However, if "up to 40%" of mass is converted to energy, then at least 60% of (rest) mass is accreted. Plus the kinetic energy associated with that mass. Plus some of the radiated energy that the mass is converted to. So your extrapolation from 40% to 100% appears entirely baseless. I am also puzzled by the fact that you reference an extremely detailed paper full of analysis and data and then say "we know very little". I cannot imagine what you mean by the word "know" when we obviously have a huge amount of theoretical and observational data.

The fatalities from a given strength of earthquake seem to depend on the quality of buildings, more than anything else. This was a very bad quake, but there have been similar events in Japan, say, with few casualties. And I don't think this is purely a matter of money, but education and regulation. "Just say no"? Suggesting no one lives in Japan, California, New Zealand, Southern Europe, South America, ... doesn't sound very practical.

I don't think you should think that. This is a good forum for asking about and discussing science. They just have very strict rules about expressing your own personal "theories". When I have time, I will try and get back to some of your questions in more detail....

Arguably, they can't afford not to.

These questions are all answered in the links I provided. If you are too lazy to read them there is not much I can do ...

That doesn't make sense. If it can't be tested, it isn't a hypothesis. And it's not clear you know what the word "theory" means. That is not really how it works. And even if someone does start with some imaginative speculations, they soon have to turn it into a (mathematical) model in order to make testable predictions. We have one theory: general relativity, that tells us pretty much everything we know about black holes. There are attempts to connect this to quantum theory, but that is one of the big challenges in current science. What is the one "fact" you think we know about black holes? As theory is the best level of understanding an explanation available in science, you obviously agree we have a solid understanding of the concepts related to black holes. (And there is never "proof" in science.) Erm, that is not a very useful "fact". That is true of the space you occupy as well as black holes. You should probably learn a little about what science knows of black holes.

Not at all. I have found that people who present their personal opinions as fact, aren't usually interested in learning. If you asked questions, I might be more verbose! (Also, I just don't have much time right now.)

This sounds the wrong way round. By definition, we can't know what happens to matter inside a black hole. However, the effects of matter accreting outside are very obvious and the subject of much active research. We know quite a lot about black holes. Although, as with all science, there are many open questions.

What do you mean by "needed"? If you are looking for the minimum set required, then it is less than 7 (there is a lot of redundancy in instruction sets and high-level languages; for example, if-else and switch-case are equivalent, as are while and for loops). I think you can get away with: move data from one location to another add two data items branch to an address conditional test But a typical microprocessor has hundreds of instructions.

Two things: 1. Science does not deal with how things "really are". That is philosophy. 2. It is entriely possible our current theories will be overturned one day. But that will require evidence. I don't think anyone said that.

What do you base that on? But in general relativity (the theory which predicts dark energy) space is not "something". Yes it does. That is what "negative pressure" means: an "outward force" which accelerates expansion. It didn't pop into existence. The amount of dark energy is proportional to the volume of space so at some point, there is enough to counter the effects of gravity and cause accelerating expansion.