Strange

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalence http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equivME/ I just assumed this was common knowledge. Yes. This is one of the reasons that gravity is non-linear in GR: the energy of the gravitational field contributes to the gravitational field. Not in the case of relativistic mass (because they are not moving relative to themselves). Mass energy equivalence (see above).

It doesn't matter what form the energy is: you can heat it up, increase the energy in chemical bonds or increase the energy in nuclear bonds. It is just energy. And therefore equivalent to mass.

The term is used for that situation simply because there is a measurable change in mass. But there is nothing qualitatively different between nuclear binding energy and chemical energy (or thermal energy). It is all energy and all equivalent to mass. Note sure why. It is the loss of energy that causes a change in mass. In a closed system there is (by definition) no loss of energy. Allow the energy to leave and the mass is reduced.

About 2 seconds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_neutrino_background

Not really, apart from e=mc2. Perhaps because it is immeasurably small. There is some discussion here: http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/chem03/chem03534.htm

If there is more energy in the bonded form, yes.

The mass is mainly due to the energy holding it together: overhwelmingly the binding energy of the quarks in the protons and neutrons; a small amount from the energy holding the nucleus together (which is released in nuclear fission/fusion); and tiny amounts from the Higgs mechanism and chemical bonds (electrostatic forces).

According to string theory. But there is no evidence for such things yet. There are also various theories about smaller particles making up the fundamental particles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preon But, again, no evidence for any of these.

The speed of light is constant. That means it is the same everywhere and at all times - and, more importantly, for all observers regardless of their state of motion. (Your phrase "it is everywhere at all times" doesn't really make sense) Not as far as I know. Electrons flow along wires. Electrons move through old-fashioned CRTs. Electromagnetic waves travel through empty space (not sure what that has to do with "stationary electrons", though). Other waves, e.g. sound, need a medium. Time does exist.

They are all point particles so "smaller" doesn't really have any meaning.

This is trivially falsified by anyone with a pair of magnets. Feel free to admit you are wrong.

I don't think this "size" should be interpreted as the actual size of the neutrino; they are effectively point particles. I assume they are talking about something to do with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: as the energy of the neutrino is reduced, the uncertainty in its position increases (or something). Because they have much less energy, these neutrinos would have much less energy which makes them much harder to detect. However, detecting these could tell us all sorts of important things... (that I barely understand!)

This is a bit clearer in Gullstrand-Painlevé coordinates: http://jila.colorado.edu/~ajsh/insidebh/waterfall.html

Good point. I was thinking purely in terms of a macroscopic object like a spaceship!

The journey would take 25.05 yerars at the speed of light (that is what light-years means) so if we put 25.05 years / 30 minutes into google, we get 439,167 - that is is how many time faster than the speed of light you would have to go. But ... That is measuring the time from the point of view of someone on Earth. From the point of view of the people on the spaceship, we don't need to travel anywhere near that fast because of time dilation. If the spaceship travelled at 99.99999999974075% of the speed of light, then for the people on the spaceship it would only take 30 minutes. (It would still take 25.05 years from the point of view of people on Earth.) Note that, realistically, travelling at 99.99999999974075% of the speed of light is pretty much impossible. Plus you would need to allow time to speed up and slow down.

That is a good point. Galaxies are not expanding and so, under the suggested coordinate transform, they would not be shrinking. What would be shrinking is the units we measure distance in. But again, only on a large scale (because expansion only occurs on the large scale).

It depends on what you mean by "position". I am proposing a thought experiment where the galaxies are fixed to the grid so if a galaxy is at the (xyz) position (3,4,5) on the grid, then it will still be at the same coordinates after you stretch the grid. However, because the grid is stretched, that galaxy will now be further away from the point (2,3,4). Therefore, from the point of view of the people in each galaxy, there relative position has changed. Yes, you can choose a different set of coordinates where that is true. In reality, it is more complex (you have to deal with the speed of light and other physical constants changing) and, for most people, less intuitive.

Note that you can define scaling in different ways. For example, Adobe Illustrator has a both a Transform and a Transform Each command; these have different effects when applied to multiple (grouped) objects. Given the wider context of the question, you can scale the relationship between the objects while treating the objects themselves as "atomic"; i.e. unaffected by the scaling operation. If you apply a scale factor in this way you will find that the rate at which the separation (or gap) between objects changes is proportional to how far apart they are. Without the objects themselves changing size. We observe something similar in the universe.

The relative motion of (distant) galaxies is not due to their motion through space. Consider a simple example of a 3D grid of points. If you put galaxies at fixed points within the grid and then allow the grid to expand, then those galaxies will all get further apart (at a rate proportional to how far apart they are) even though they do not change their position in the grid.

It is not clear how your wording is significantly different than the usual one. The main reason that "expansion of space" is used as the description/analogy is because the metric (the way distances between events) is defined is in terms of space-time. Of course, you could write a description of relativity and cosmology using "gap" instead of space/distance (e.g. "1 AU is the gap between the Earth and the Sun"; "the relation between the recessional speed of galaxies and the gap between us and them is called Hubbles law"). But I'm not sure what the point is. Do you want to change "time" to something else as well? Perhaps "tick"; then we can say, "relativity models the universe as a four-dimensional gap-tick manifold." There are some people (typically those with unscientific "personal theories") who try and argue that "space" is some sort of material substance rather than just part of the geometry of the universe. It sounds as if you are on the right side of that particular bit of silliness. So, I am not sure what you are objecting to.

While this might be true (and I can immediately think of a few reasons why it might not be) it is way too complex to be practical. It takes massive amounts of computing just to model a relatively simple chemical reaction from first principles. And "from first principles" means using a number of simplifications and approximations; actually doing it using quantum theory is impossible. http://xkcd.com/435/

The odds are always 50/50.

So if you are not willing to justify or present evidence for your position this is pretty pointless. And here's me thinking this was a science forum.

Although, you again ignore the fact that there is evidence consistent with one point of view and none that supports the other. So it is only "consciousness exists independently of matter" that is an unsupported belief.

Never. Scientific knowledge is always provisional and based on the best evidence we have at the moment. I guess PeterJ would like every statement of (apparent) fact to be prefaced with "As far as we know..." or "The evidence is consistent with..." and suffix it with "... based on our current understanding." But that soon gets very tedious so we state things like "gravity is caused by the curvature of space-time" as if they were facts. Whereas, what we really mean is that "our current best theory very successfully models gravity as the intrinsic curvature of a space-time pseudo-Riemannian manifold however this is not compatible with quantum theory and so will probably be extended or replaced at some time in the future".