somecallmegenius

Got it. Thank you elfmotat for the clear derivation and everyone else for your contributions. So, from the above derivation, E = mc2 is the energy resulting from unleashing the rest energy of a certain mass. However, that brings a question to mind, since c is the speed of light in vacuum, do we have to divide the rest energy by the index of refraction of the medium in which the conversion happens to obtain the actual resulting energy?

Perfect. Thank you. The answer I was looking for. So, basically, the approximations become more and more inaccurate as the value of v/c increases. So, swansont is the real deal after all...

Ok, thank you, that is a good reminder of a fact which I forgot I knew. It also allows me to properly rephrase my question. What I mean is, does the definition of momentum change when going from classical to relativistic physics? I mean does the equation E = 1/2 pv, change as v approaches the speed of light (relativistically relevant speeds..)? Does the kinetic energy of a moving object slowly shift from E = 1/2 pv towards E = pv as v increases?

I already knew that part. Now, as a start it would be helpful if you told me where Einstein derived that equation from and what it logically means, and no I will not accept the standard pythagorean theorem explanation, because if you are gonna go that route, you'll have to tell me why E, mc2, and pc form a right-angle triangle.

I have always wondered why the energy of a photon in vacuum is equal to E = pc (where p is the momentum of the photon, and c is the speed of light in vacuum) and not E = 1/2 pv (where for a photon v = c) as is the case for the kinetic energy of any moving mass. Of course, I understand that photons are massless, but can anyone clearly explain how E = mc^2 and not E = 1/2 mc^2 and prove that in a theoretical non-empirical way??

I agree with your idea in most cases. However, there are cases when it is tyrant vs people such as what is happening in Syria right now, and what has happened and still happens in some countries in Africa repeatedly. Nevertheless, it is unfortunate that popular revolutions often lose their pure "for the people"-essence slowly as they progress towards impeaching or discarding the tyrannical government, with the post-revolutionary authorities sometimes even becoming as "bad" as the dismantled government or even worse.

Athena, those are some great ideas you have there. Particularly, the one about the dehumanization of human life in order to justify killing, and the one about the policies written by committees that are disbanded after the policy is written. Moral training should be taught in schools because, unfortunately, most moral values and ethics are learned, and are neither innate nor instinctive. If you ever write a book about this I would be glad to read it. And I am relatively young, so hopefully, people with principles and moral values will never be extinct. As parents or future parents, we have an unshakable responsibility to pass on our values and principles as a nation to our sons and daughters, albeit while giving them the chance to think for themselves. Kind of like this: "My dear Son/Daughter here are my values, I will explain them to you and tell you the consequences of ignoring them or not abiding by them, however, now that I have given you the whole story, feel free to modify or alter them in however way you deem fit for your future, but always be wary of the consequences of such changes. Mainly, how they would affect society as you know it, and wether you would want to live in a world where this set of changes to the moral system apply." Nevertheless, what with responsible parents decreasing in number by the day, such principles would be much better applied and taught through the educational system... In short, Athena, write that book and I will be sure to read it, and if it is as good as the ideas you mentioned, I'll endorse and promote it.

Your point about jumping to the beat of authority seems valid within the context of our western world and modern democratic countries. However, it is unfortunate that in some countries, third-world or otherwise, significant numbers still jump to the beat of authority. Such individuals are willing to hold ,and act upon, beliefs that would be repulsive to any informed individual from a modern society. Many Middle-Eastern and African nations still struggle with large cults of personality and terrorist organizations: Hizbullah (which is actually kind of a cult of personality), the LRA... Actually, throughout history, many such large groups that are/were considered ruthless or evil actually grew around one person or a few personalities who had warped beliefs that were disseminated to the masses coated with some attractive slogans which guaranteed they would catch on with a "sufficient" number of people, or what I'd like to call a "human critical mass".

Hmm. I just went to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady_State_theory And the word plasma was not mentioned even once in the article. Even though many flaws have been found with this theory, and I don't believe in it myself, your reply is very presumptive. The Plasma universe is pretty much separate from the soon to be debunked SST, and any overlap that may exist is not essential, otherwise it would have been mentioned at least once in the wikipedia article.

I'd watch that movie. However, I didn't mean that the internet should be directly connected to our brains in the physical sense. I believe that the internet as it currently stands, already is a version of such a global brain, and that's what I have been discussing for the past two posts. Believe me I'm the last person to want viruses downloaded onto people's brains... I value my brain, perhaps too much...

By opening up any new avenues of online communication and sharing, you risk the abuse of such avenues through their use for nefarious plotting, hacking, cyber-attacks, and other malicious activities. However, what I meant to say is that with the internet, all that has already been done and most, if not all, countries have implemented detection and control methods of such activities, examples include: the Cyber Defense Agency in the Baltimore-Washington area, NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (NATO CCD COE), the NSA's cyber defense boot camp, in addition to the many cyber-police departments, proxies, firewalls, security firmware, and antivirus and anti-spyware programs already in place across the globe. The existence and constant growth of such measures are exactly why I believe it won't be a big deal, it is because people are just as well protected online, if not better, than they are in other aspects of modern life.

The same way we account for them in a democratic society. Sociopaths and psychopaths have been contributing to the internet since its creation. Some harm has been done, but it has been and will continue be very dilute harm, since the overwhelming majority of people are NOT sociopaths or psychopaths. So, there, your question is answered.

Well, as long as "The Global Brain" maintains a peer-to-peer configuration and not a server-client one, I can't really see how it would harm the global collective. Basically, as long as individuality of choice is not omitted from the equation, and each individual's right to participate or not participate in any and all aspects of such a "brain" is maintained, then why not. I coin the term "Democratic Intelligence", meaning a "Global Brain" based on the main principles of democracy, a perfect example of which would be the American Constitution. To make it even clearer, if you count each person's footprint on the internet as an ever-growing collection of neurons and synapses, then in a Democratic Intelligence, each such collection has a choice to grow or connect to any other collection on the internet (or in the global brain). Each individual even has the choice to shrink his collection, by deleting messages or posts, social networking accounts, and even entire websites he/she has previously created.

Actually, one more thing. By twisting tmpst's first post on this thread, you made an unforgivable fundamental mistake. tmpst's proof that 0/0 = 1 => 0=1 is perfectly correct (based on your assumption of 0/0 = 1) and in your twisting of it you denied a key mathematical concept, which is the fact that by saying that 0*0/0 equals 0* (0/0) = 0 (as you showed) but does not equal (0*0)/0 = 1 (as tmpst showed), you are basically denying the associative property of multiplication which says: When three or more numbers are multiplied, the product is the same regardless of the grouping of the factors. For example, (2*3)*4 = 2*(3*4). I.e. 0 = 0*0/0 = 0*0*(1/0) = 0*(0*(1/0)) = 0*(0/0) (Which you showed = 0) = (0*0)*(1/0) = (0*0)/0 = 1 (which tmpst showed) Therefore, what you call your "hypothesis" not only brings about the contradiction 1 = 0 as tmpst showed, it also violates one of the essential properties of multiplication, which is the associative property. So, there you go. Go to sleep kid, and when you wake up, put your mind to better use... If you do say anything after this, other than "I agree", then you are arguing for the sake of argument, and your goal is not to arrive at a logical conclusion, but to raise anarchy and mayhem...

Even though alpha2cen usually hits the language barrier, or he trolls, I can't possibly know... I can discern a valid point in his reply, how accurate would our observations of star movement towards or away from the galactic center really be. Also, since the theory David Levy is defending claims that all stars "made" at the galactic are moving away from the galactic center. It would be difficult to use them as reference points. Therefore, how would we go about measuring our separation from the center of our galaxy? I want to know? Hopefully, an expert can reply to this and let us know.