EdEarl

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_physics#Cosmology_and_general_relativity

Money smothers ethics. Some are not affected, but they typically don't own newspapers, radio or television stations. One can get reliable information via social media, but money infects it, too. Those who worship and control money seem willing to protect their stuff regardless of consequences. Thus, we face climate deniers who seem to be willing to allow a climate catastrophe rather than allow renewable energy to replace their cash cows of oil and coal. Although, I suspect they are buying renewable energy systems to replace their cash cows. Money is power. Thus, eliminating money will not change the situation. Those who seek power using money will change to assure their power is not interrupted. IDK if there is anything we can do to assure ethics rules.

I installed BOINC on my openSUSE/KDE system, but it fails, and I don't know why nor who to ask for help.

Wikipedia lists ten unsolved cosmological/relativity problems that current science cannot explain, which means the current scientific consensus must be questioned. In addition, no consensus exists afaik about the beginning of the Universe; rather, scientists have followed clues backward in time to a small fraction of second, about 10−36 seconds. Only speculations exist for events before that time, because no experiment can be done at this time to confirm or refute the speculations. So, does your postulation fit all the existing observations, and does it solve or purport to solve something currently unknown or unresolved?

Oh, true. I was just young and gullible.

Oh, wrong that news and editorial are mixed and confuse people? Or, something else? I'm sure I got the Mark Twain quote right.

Obfuscation is opprobrious.

I thought I had an original thought, then learned someone in history beat me to it.

At one time news and editorials were separated and one could rely on the news. Today, one must be vigilant and knowledgeable to distinguish editorial from news. Since people watch the news to learn about current events and attitudes, we have a misinformed public. I'd like to see the FCC levy fines for mixing editorials and news, but corporate controlled congress limits the power of Federal regulators. Maybe things only seem to have changed, because Mark Twain said:

I love chocolate:) There are known unknowns, for example how does space-time compress and expand, is it a continuous field or a mess of quanta acting as an ideal gas--poor. To make any progress on one of these unknowns, one must learn everything there is to know about it, so you don't make obvious mistakes, so your hypothesis fits all that is known, or you know enough to challenge something that has a consensus. Many scientists have already spent years thinking about these things; thus, it would be remarkable if someone here actually makes a contribution.

IDK your purpose, but there are about 1.6B Muslims in the world and there have been about 250 terrorist attacks since 2012. I didn't try to characterize the attacks as Muslim or otherwise. Wikipedia says there were about 1M Muslims as of 2011. 1.6B/250=6,400,000

Medusa seems complex compared to a laser and light sail. In addition, Medusa parts that might "wear out" are traveling on the ship, where repairs cannot be made, or additional mass is required for replacement parts and robots to perform repairs. The laser would be near Earth and accessible for repair. The light sail has nothing to wear out. The simple solution is usually preferable. Why add the complexity of Medusa?

I'm confused about your use of progress. You seem to be saying progress is not moral progression, but the two are linked. Either no moral improvements means progress is null, or progress is null means no moral improvements; which one? What do you mean by progress?

I think we would all like the world to be a better place, without war and other atrocities in which men respect each other; it's an improbable or impossible ideal. We often react emotionally and demand an eye for an eye, but as Gandhi said, that would make the whole world blind. Someone must stop the chain reaction. The important warmth is in peoples hearts; it makes no difference whether Greece or Turkey is warmer than Belgium. You want to protect yourself, which is natural. You cannot solve the world's problems. You might be able to make you, your family, friends and country men safer by excluding foreigners. However, excluding everyone would create unintended and unforeseeable consequences; others in this thread have mentioned some consequences. Lets consider another ideal. Suppose Belgium excludes people and creates an ideal society, in which everyone has everything the want, but the outside world deteriorates into chaos. I contend Belgium would be invaded and your countrymen would loose all. Now, consider a more realistic situation, where there is little difference in lifestyles between Belgium and the rest of the world. Someone villain would surreptitiously cross your border and create chaos. In fact, closed borders would inevitably create some kind of black market with villains crossing regularly. I submit that there is no safety in closing borders, it is an illusion. I need to go play with my grandson now; otherwise, I would continue to try to make a case for being kind and open as our best opportunity for (almost) global peace. bbl

It's just bad. Squaring as L Meow is doing may not be as few multiplications as your method imatfaal, but it seems like a good method to me, and I think the number of digits to write will not change much as Acme said in #13.

Pictures characterize gravity waves somewhat like ripples in ponds because they are 2D trying to represent 3D; thus, misleading. I can't imagine a video that would be authentic, but maybe someone can. It seems we are left to our imagination. Not z! That destroys my notion of how they propagate and seems to violate locality. How can they be so limited?

That sounds like gravity waves traveling through space-time is analogous to sound traveling through air. Space-time is filled with virtual particles; do gravity waves move by compressing and decompressing virtual particles? I suspect the answer is no; although, they would move with space-time.

Light waves are photons traveling through space. Ocean waves move water up and down as the wave moves horizontally, sound waves compress and decompress air or other matter. Are gravity waves the movement of gravitons or Higgs bosons, space-time being compressed and decompressed, Higgs field perturbations, or something else?

I used the calculator on my Linux system; the Windows calc would probably do the same.

Real - but again acquired and re-learnable. I have done the self-experiment on blue cheese; I hated stilton and it made me queasy to even smell it. Twelve times I ate it - now I love the stuff. To be honest by the tenth or eleventh time I was converted. Phobias can be treated in exactly the same way. We are really quite simple animals When we stop eating something, our tastes change similarly. Many years ago, I loved cheeseburgers, but heard they might be causal of heart attacks; thus, I stopped eating them. It wasn't immediate, instead of eating them regularly, I did so infrequently. Over years, I ate them less and less, then didn't eat one for several years. Then, I took a bite of one my wife was eating, and I'd lost the taste for cheeseburgers; the fat sat thick and almost tasted rancid. That was more than twenty years ago, and the last time I tasted a cheeseburger. My desire for them is gone.

There are a number of sites that give advice about DNS unlocker and its cohorts, for example: https://malwaretips.com/blogs/ads-by-dns-unlocker-removal/.

Laser beam and light sail. I agree, if a spacecraft carries fuel it cannot be really small.

Sorry, I'm a bit dyslexic and missed that point, and do not think you are stupid.

There are about 16 exoplanets currently known within 100 ly that are similar to Earth. Now, we cannot image any of them well enough to know anything about their atmosphere, if any. There may be more found within that radius. It seems likely that as we learn more about these 16 planets, some will not be suitable. About 50 exoplanets are currently known within 3500 ly that are similar to Earth. I think 10%c is very ambitious for anything we make, and the larger it is the less likely we can make it go that fast. Our best chance of making a drone that can travel that fast is to keep its mass small, such as a ping pong ball, but afaik no one is working toward it atm. That 10%c is 18,600 miles per second; whereas, our fastest spacecraft has gone 38,600 miles per hour = 11.7 miles per second. It's Voyager going that fast, which was launched in 1977. It seems unlikely we will push anything 10%c within 250 years since we have made virtually no progress toward that goal in 40 years.

I believe you will get little opposition to your supposition from the scientific community; although, there are some, really a few, such as the Amish, who object to modern things. Even they have adopted modernity to a smaller degree than most. On the other hand, many of our conveniences bring a heavy cost, for example the cost of climate change. We have begun to replace fossil fuels with renewables, but many more cleanup projects must be done. Some are one-timers and some will be continual or continuous projects. Installation of renewable power systems to replace fossil fuels is a one time project, but maintenance of renewable technologies is on-going. The ethical and cultural challenges are far more difficult and seem to be blocking our worldwide changes so that everyone has basic necessities, a condition necessary to minimize suffering and abate greed.