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Solitons, or at least soliton-like equations. That's my bet.

Einstein was working in that direction but the math for non-linear equations was not up to it back then and even now it's not clear exactly what set of non-linear equations, in three space dimensions + time + whatever else, gives Solitons that behave exactly like the observations. Also from what I have read he was not taking into account the strong and weak nuclear forces. Plus back then quarks were unknown?

Perhaps string theory is another sort of approximation that makes the math easier, but it might be too approximate to fit the observations. Time will tell but smells to me going from a zero dimensional particles to a one dimensional strings, vibrating in N dimensions, is the wrong approach. Feels to me better to take on that three spatial dimensions etc and find what works.

In a way it feels to me not unlike Wolfram's explorations into cellular automata, emergent behavior that we can not predict, only catalog and compare. That's discreet math but hey, not a bad analogy?

There has been some explorations into continuous automata, which looks like another sort of approximation, maybe more relevant to soliton-like phenomena.

I have not studied any of this deeply, just an intuitive feel.

Some references for the curious:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
http://www.applet-magic.com/pa...

really, one case against the piles and piles of data in other countries that show, overall a clear reduction?

Figures you don't seem able or willing to cite. I suppose we're all just supposed to take your word for it? Right; and I'm the King of Wales.

You are nothing but a cherry picking bastard.

Sayeth the cherry picking bastard who selectively quotes statistics that support his position, and ignores one's that don't, like these.

Yea, you just keep telling yourself you've got the moral high ground here. Maybe, eventually, you'll convince someone else of that.

Well... they can make it so hard to travel by planes people will just takes trains or cars. And then terrorists can just place a bomb on a bridge before a train full with 500 people crosses it, or inside a tunnel... Heck... just get a truck full with fertilizer or something and shove it in a tunnel and wait for the train to hit it.

Actually, you don't even need bombs or stuff like that, it's enough to just pulls out some screws from the railway or to just shove some big nails between two track segments to derail a train.

The point is the whole security is silly... you have planes with 100-300 people and maybe goes down... tough luck, there are literally several plane crashes worth of people dying daily: http://www.applet-magic.com/mortality0.htm 120 people die each day in car accidents and thousands die due to health issues... if only those billions spent on wars and security theaters would be redirected for health care and for improving security on roads and improving infrastructure...

The Average Daily Mortality in the U.S. for Victims of All Ages, 2002 was 6706.

That implies an error rate of about 1/2 of 1%.

The mortality among adults under age 45 is much lower, of course, but still run about 3500 each week. In 1/5 of those cases, the cause of death may be most simply defined as "Other."

those rat bastards will find a way to pass the costs onto the consumer.

You sir, have no idea how right you are. Basically, whenever a tax is levvied, the supply curve (how much product a producer produces) shifts up and left the tax amount. (See first few diagrams on this page)

When you have a monopoly position (like MS does), that demand curve (the "\" curve) gets more and more verticval because you kinda need MS prods to survive. Thus that "Deadweight Loss" to consumers, not to MS, is much higer than that of MS.

Sucks balls, huh?

That is sad if your high school physics taught that... IIRC, 0.5*mv^2 = kinetic energy, not force.

High school physics have long taught this little gem. It's too bad it's incorrect. Not to mention that many people don't know that it's incorrect. For example, a quick googling comes up with links like this one.

Aside from relativity considerations for KE, I'm not sure what you are referring to that is "incorrect". The link you mentioned seems blatantly in error by stating that "F=mV2" (by which I assume they mean F=mv^2), simply because the units do not match on both sides of the equation: "F" is kg*m/s^2 which is Newtons (force), while "mv^2" is kg*m^2/s^2 which is Joules (energy). I imagine it is a typographic error of some sort?

If we are to include relativistic considerations then, we must begin with the full equation:

E = (mc^2)*(1-(v/c)^2)^-1/2

Note that in this equation, "m" is "rest mass" and that the equation reduces to "E=mc^2" for stationary objects (where v=0). The page I linked to illustrates the derivation for actual KE, concluding that the error factor of the simplified equation "KE=0.5*mv^2" is:

1 + (3/4)(v/c)^2 + (5/8)(v/c)^4 + (7/16)(v/c)^6 + ...

Hence, for v/c=0.1, the Newtonian formula for kinetic energy is in error by less than one percent. For v/c=0.5 the error is approximately 20 percent and at v/c=0.8 the error is more than 50 percent.

"Every action has an opposite and equal reaction", therefore

Total Energy in a System = mv2

"As an object approaches the speed of light, its mass grows to infinity", therefore
E=mc2

I'm sorry, but I'm not quite following; maybe you're going to fast for me. e.g. I don't see how Newton's Third Law entails "Total Energy in a System = mv2". Similarly I don't see how you derive "E=mc^2". Could you please elaborate?

It's not directional, it's dimensional!

I'm not clear of the distinction you are making between "direction" and "dimension". From my perspective, a "direction" is a unit vector within the framework of many orthogonal dimensions. Dimensions are often defined by such unit vectors.

My original point was that (from my understanding) "relativistic mass" increases only in the dimension of its velocity, and not in orthogonal dimensions. e.g. if a mass is travelling at 0.9c in the +x direction, the relativistic mass increases only in the x dimension, requiring infinitely more energy to accelerate it in the +x direction towards c. However, in the y and z dimensions, the "relativistic mass" is equal to the "rest mass".

You see, Einstein explained that everything in the Universe has a "velocity" of light speed.

I once read something similar to this which basically argued that everything travels at the speed of light, and it explained slower objects as actually traveling at a high speed in other dimensions (of which we are unaware) such that the sum of these vectors has a magnitude of c. I suppose it's possible, but I didn't know that that was what Einstein was saying. Of course, I'm just a novice at this point.

Now if we apply this to dimensions, an object at complete rest in our universe is going infinitely fast through time. An object traveling at light speed is a perfect rest through the fourth dimension.

I haven't really studied time dilation in depth yet, but my current rough understanding is that there can be relative compression or expansion (dilation) of time between two frames of reference. Is time dilation spatially directional like relativistic mass?

In light of this, I don't quite understand your two statements:

1) an object at complete rest in our universe is going infinitely fast through time. "Completely at rest" and "infinitely fast th