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Do a Google search on "Burkhard Heim".

Read some of the entries. Or simply look at the domain names of the pages found.

Then take the following test to see if he's actually a revolutionary physicist of Gallileo's, Newton's, Einstein's or Feynmann's stature, or merely just another 2-bit crackpot.

Do you mean "Occam's" Razor?

Studies have shown that the Mpemba effect is not caused solely by evaporation. See http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/hot_ water.html

It's small, but it's technologically possible to measure. I'm talking about measuring a net effect over an extremely large quantity of electrons.

Available evidence suggests the speed of gravity is at least 2e10 c.

Well, since everyone else has done a pretty good job ripping you a new one on the basic points, and because there is so much wrong with your statement that it would take a lengthy reply to address them all, I will just reply to your final point that, [you] "find no contradiction between real objective science and the biblical account of creation."
Let me start by saying that I am a PHD chemist, and tell you that if you believe in creationism, that is fine (you may be right for all I know). But there is huge contradiction between creationism (and its biblical account) and "objective science".

Read this quick review of the scientific method that I lifted from the following site:
http://phyun5.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/no de5.html
There is more on this site and many others (as a "PHD scientist" I highly recommend you look into it a little further)

1. Observe some aspect of the universe.
2. Invent a tentative description, called a hypothesis, that is consistent with what you have observed.
3. Use the hypothesis to make predictions.
4. Test those predictions by experiments or further observations and modify the hypothesis in the light of your results.

When a hypothesis passes the test it is adopted as a theory that correctly explains a range of phenomena. It can, at any time, be falsified by new experimental evidence. When exploring a new set or phenomena scientists do use existing theories but, since this is a new area of investigation, it is always kept in mind that the old theories might fail to explain the new experiments and observations. In this case new hypotheses are devised and tested until a new theory emerges.

There are many types of ``pseudo-scientific'' theories which wrap themselves in a mantle of apparent experimental evidence but that, when examined closely, are nothing but statements of faith. The argument , cited by some creationists, that science is just another kind of faith is a philosophic stance which ignores the trans-cultural nature of science. Science's theory of gravity explains why both creationists and scientists don't float off the earth. All you have to do is jump to verify this theory - no leap of faith required.

So, I hope this helps. Creationism is NOT scientific, it is based on belief and the unexplainable. While it may be TRUE, it is a "Fallacious" argument, because it can neither be proved nor disproved. An important part of the scientific method is that theories can only be disproved, but never proved unequivocally. All science is based on theories that may at any time be modified or disproved. It is only an unfortunate convention that any scientific theories are given the name LAW, such as "Newton's Law of gravity". These, as all scientist know are only "well-accepted" theories, not truly LAWS.

(For the fun of it I will digress here for a moment. IF god created man as whole and complete object out of the void, why would god not be creating man in the same way in present times. Why would should men and women need to have intercourse with each other to make more people. This is the very tenant of evolution, that each child is merely an evolved, recombination of genetic material (atoms and molecules) of the two people who conspire to continue a very lengthy, continuous, chemical reaction. If the combining of genetic material fails to produce a fully grown person who then conspires to continue the chemical reaction, then this particular genetic sequence will evolve no further. This is a process that is readily observed (rent some porn, "hee hee."), and that is why it is so generally accepted among scientist today.

The 'theory of evolution' is just that, a THEORY. And as such has the onus of standing up to the scientific method. Further it does not try and explain the origin or nature of the universe, for that you will have to pick an argument with an astrophysicist.
I have a hard time believing after your statements that you are a PHD chemist as well, but that is beside the point. Have fun, believe what you want to believe, but don't call it science.

I've heard of exercise. It's that thing I do, every day I work and three nights a week. Excepting when my wrist hurts and/or I feel exhausted, and so go to sleep, which is something I do every night for 8-9 hours. I did mention I was monitoring that.

Also, you seem to mis-understand my sentiment. I do not wish animals to be killed for science, and I wasn't aware that any rats had been killed for this study for that matter. I was simply grateful the study had been done as I see great potential benefits from it. Since the rats had been discomforted for that benefit, I wished to thank them for their part in it, however indirectly.

Please understand my position. I'm a library assistant and RSI is endemic to my profession, notable by the volume of relevant literature: http://lib.ucr.edu/ergolib/printreading.html

A lot of my colleages suffer from/have suffered from RSI injuries, and so this study has been of interest to them. We are all aware of the dangers of aquiring a life-long disability associated with this profession. We all wish to avoid those dangers, and understanding how RSI can induce definite and measurable symptoms -before- sustaining a lasting injury is a great boon.

I'm sending the article to my Workplace Health and Safety Officer, as a potential new factor for calculating the production down-time of a repetitive strain injury, and as a potential future way to detect RSI.

I'm also sending it to my lecturers at university where I study librarianship. From past experience they'll be interested in sharing this article with my fellow students, since they try very hard to prepare us for the reality of life as information professionals. (I'm getting ALIA*1 certified. All computer geeks know the importance of certification when trying to getting employed :D)

If I were geographically proximious I'd volunteer to be part of the human trials. It really is not an inane study from my point of view.
---
*1 http://www.alia.org.au/

PS: You implied that Dr Ann Barr and Dr Mary Barbe were pseudo-scientists. That wasn't very nice.

What is observable and testable in said bacteria and insects is not, in fact, evolution, but rather natural selection and intra-species adaptation; the emphasis of "strong" traits in the gene pool as opposed to "weak" traits. [...] While it is certainly irrefutable that a species itself can change over the course of time, as this is observable, it is another thing entirely than to presume that, even given millions of years, one species becomes another entirely different species.

Ah. What is a "strong" trait, and how is this in any way different from mutation? I suggest you read up on some observed instances of speciation. Evolution has been observed creating novel species, whose members can interbreed with themselves, but cannot interbreed with members of the parent species.

One change, but requires various changes to the genetic code to be functional; the actual sac that the blood builds up in, the duct that the blood is projected through, the muscles around the sac that constrict to project the blood, the nerves that enable the muscle to contract, and the instinct to use this ability are all different parts of the genetic code, and without any one of these traits, the ability will not work, and the changes do not give the toad an advantage.

The "irreducible complexity" complaint. Not a very good argument. See also the Reducibly Complex Mousetrap. (If you're really interested in this particular question, yes, some papers on the evolution of defensive blood-squirting have been published, though this seems to be a fairly technical topic for the lay reader.)

Mathematically, it's possible that all of these traits appeared simultaneously, but it's also an extremely minute chance.

Unless they didn't appear simultaneously, in which case the probabilities don't matter. See the articles refuting "irreducible complexity," above.

Additionally, the 'jump' from unicellular organisms to multicellular organisms is a bit of a stretch. What kind of a genetic change is required to make the difference between a 'colony' of individual unicellular organisms to become one single multicellular organism?

How do you define the difference between a colony and a multicellular organism? You'd just be drawing a line in the sand. (You might challenge that in a "true" multicellular organism, only some cells handle reproduction, and the rest are designed to die without ever creating a new organism. But the entire advantage of a colony is that some cells are able to die while the colony itself survives! As soon as cells band together, there is evolutionary pressure to program some of them to "commit suicide" by becoming body structures for the benefit of the colony.)

Furthermore, the mitochondria and chloroplats found in various cells are believed to have originited as parasites that eventually began to help their host. But these organelles are now a part of each cells genetic code. We already know that traits acquired through an organisms lifespan do not change their genetic code, and a parasitic organism is hardly a trait either.

You're simply wrong. Mitochondria and chloroplasts are not "part of a cell's genetic code." Mitochondria and chloroplasts have their own genetic codes, indepedent of the host cell's genome. Additionally, mitochondria and chloroplasts are only ever produced by binary division (like bacteria), and cannot be "manufactured" like other cellular structures such as ribosomes. See 'endosymbiosis.'

There are myriad things like these that just don't stand up to the kind of scrutiny that science demands; all theories, scientifically, must be considered to be false until they can be prove

Einstien [sic] didn't work with scientific labs and big telescopes. He was really a theortical physicist. He proposed a theory that didn't have evidence for it until 8 years later. They are only finding direct evidence of some his work now. Yet his work was taken seriously, scientifically reviewed and is taught in science classes even though some of it has no direct evidence.

Actually, Einstein had evidence for this theory from the get-go. At the mid-19th century a discrepancy in the percession of the perhelion of Mercury was found. Astronomical data and the Newtonian prediction disagree to the tune of 43 arc-seconds per century. This was one of the phenomena analyzed in Einstein's initial paper in 1916. As I try to explain below, there is overwhelming evidence that general relativity is highly accurate theory. It is certainly not the final theory (as stated, it doesn't jive well with quantum field theory), but it's one of the best scientific theories of all time: it's amazinginly simple and yet is accurage to within our measurement ability for a wide range of phenomena.

In fact, Eddington's observation of the bending of light from distance stars, originally hailed as a confirmation of GR, later turned out to have such large measurement errors to be completely useless. In this respect it is imperative to note that if light has mass (as predicted by special relativity [E=mc^2]) then light would also bend due to Newtonian gravity. The difference between Newton and Einstein here is a factor of two in the predicted bending, which is very small in any case.

Many more predictions of GR have been verified since. For example, the fact that the rate of passage of time depends on the gravitational field. I apologize for the bad pharsing (it would be technical to give details), but the actual experiment is easy to describe: you take two atomic clocks and synchronize them. You then put one at the top of a tower. Put the other one at the bottom of a well. Wait a few months then bring them together to the same point. You will say that less time elapsed from the point of view of the clock that felt the weaker graviational effect (i.e. the one from the tower).

As to "or the vast majority of my life, Newtonian physics will be good enough" -- I hope you will never have to rely on a GPS then. A GPS unit calculates its own position by comparing timing signals sent to it by several satellites. The effect described above (that time flows differently for the sattelite compared to the unit on earth) has to be accounted for or the system will not work. The fact that the GPS system can measure locations and distances to an accuracy of 1 metre can be considered a very accurate test of general relativity (among other things -- there's also a special relativistic time-dilation effect here, coming from the velocity of the satellite in orbit).

Finally, tests of general relativity in the so-called ``non-linear'' regime (i.e. for strong gravitational fields) were recently done. The slowing-down of one double pulsar system and then another due to gravitational radiation were measured to agree with GR models to good accuracy. For more info read what the Alfred Nobel Foundation have to say.

I should also point out that GR is rarely taught at science classes, or even to undergraduate physics majors. It is simple, but it requires considerable mathematical sophistication to even understand what it says (let alone compute with it).

"Prediction CAN be a useful aspect of science (say, for engineering purposes), but it is not a necessary one."

It's sad that there are so many people posting to a geek site who do not understand the scientific method, the whole thing dissapears down a rabbit hole if you dont make and test predictions. The obvious answer to your senario is exactly the method by wich science moves forward. Science does not find absolute answers and never will (unless the ID types manage to get their own way). Science simply holds up the simplist and most complete explanations known to man, truth, as any scientist will tell you, belongs to the Gods :).

Scientists as a whole are not opposed to the teaching of ID but they are opposed to teaching it as science, as the GP post stated, "ID is 100% non-verifiable and is useless for precition". It is the same reasoning that ensures atheism is not taught as science.

To sum up, you can call ID anything you like, religion, philosophy, fiction, god of the gaps, debate by loophole.... Scientists are understandably pissed off because calling it science involves either...

a. Fibbing.

b. A redefinition of science that puts a religious trump card (sticker) back into the scientific method.

The dark age of Europe: A triumph of religion over reason.

Seeing the photon rendition reminded me of virtual photons. I wonder how such art would represent virtual particles?

Now, I have seen said in many places that virtual photons are the carriers of the electromagnetic force. With infinite range, the carrier would have to be of a class like a photon.

What I haven't seen yet is a cogent explanation as to why a "colorless", chargeless particle could carry both the attractive (positive to negative) and repulsive (positive-positive or negative-negative) forces. I've seen some amazing somersaults and backflips like this, but little else.

Nah, the formula is right E=mc^2, except the mass m is the RELATIVISTIC mass, defined as m_0/sqrt(1-(v/c)^2). m_0 here is the mass of the body at rest. But indeed, the rest mass m_0 is a better quantity to use. See for example http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/S R/mass.html

See Arnold Menke's Funny or Curious Zoological Names and Douglas Yanega's Curious Scientific Names for a lot more weird names.

I doubt that the reputations of these scientists are harmed by the knowledge that they may have had senses of humour.

See Arnold Menke's Funny or Curious Zoological Names and Douglas Yanega's Curious Scientific Names for a lot more weird names.

I doubt that the reputations of these scientists are harmed by the knowledge that they may have had senses of humour.

• CO2 levels: http://earth.usc.edu/geol150/variability/images/ca rboncycle/berner.gif
• Temps: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/temperature/ first chart.

The fellow you replied to may have been talking about corn-based ethanol. What you may not know is that those folks at Archer Daniels Midland who make the ethanol in American gasoline 18.9 MJ of energy per kilogram of ethanol produced. See, it costs more (in energy) to farm and distill that ethanol than you get back out of it. It's a black hole. It's a stupid idea.

'Course, this is only because we subsidize corn so much in this country. The Brazilians use sugarcane, which can be farmed much more energy-efficiently, and which is why the Brazilians are now laughing their asses off at the Americans.

(See, Brazil has cut back enormously on the quantity of petroleum it imports. America hasn't. Yeah, this is what we should have had, if we'd responded to the 1970s oil crisis in a more sensible way. Now we're acting surprised and pretending no one could have seen this coming. Pfah.)

--grendel drago

"Why does it matter if a signal can get someplace faster than it could have gotten there via photons?"

Special relativity.

"If I send a message from A to B and it gets there instantaneously, and B sends a message back to A a fixed time later, it will be received by A after A sent the first message. No time travel."

No, B's signal will get there before A sent the original instantaneous signal. It is not a matter of "B's clock looks like it's behind A's," it is that B's clock is behind A's, and that instanatneous signal will actually arrive in B's (and A's) past. What you're doing is assuming a preferred frame of reference, that one station's measure of time is more valid than the other's, and special relativity says that cannot be.

"The only causality broken would be that A could tell B "there's some light headed your way, it's going to show you our sun going nova, the light should get there in about 4 years,"

No. If A was 4 light-years away, B would get the signal 8 years before the nova got there, or 4 years in the past. A, looking at B, would see B's calendar and see that B is 4 years behind (and it's not that B "appears to be" 4 years behind, otherwise it would be possible for A and B to get different measurements for the speed of light), so that instantaneous signal would reach B 4 years ago.

You're assuming A's reading of A's clock is more valid than A's reading of B's clock, and that's not allowable in special relativity.

"The pulses are encoded to distinguish one from the other (e.g. a time stamp as in NTP). When the pulses come back to A, A knows precisely how far apart they are, and so can send out a pre-arranged signal, and then (at the appropriate time) do something "simultaneously" with the other station (of course, B can also calculate the time difference, so they both know what time it is "now" on the other station). If there's a third station C, also at exactly the same time rate as the other two, is there any way that C won't be able to be in synch with both A and B (i.e. getting a consistent time difference for the two)?"

Time and space are not constant, only the speed of light is constant. Time and space change in relation to each other to maintain that constant ratio. According to C, moving at relativistic speeds, the distance between A and B is different than what A and B measure. And while A and B may see C as being half-way between them, C, moving towards A, will see itself as being closer to A than to B. Similarly, while A and B may believe they are in synch with each other, C, moving towards A, will see A's clock ticking faster than C's, and B's clock ticking slower than C's.

As in the barn and the pole "paradox",, if C is going at relativistic velocities towards A and away from B, A's signal will reach C before B's does, so they will not be simultaneous.

A's and B's clock interpretations cannot be "more right" than C's interpretation, or otherwise A's and B's measurement of the speed of light would be "more right." However, even if C is moving at half the speed of light towards A (accordin to A), A's light-based signal will reach C (according to C) at speed c (not 1.5c), and B's light-based signal will reach C at speed c (not 0.5c).

"Why can't A, B and C all "go off" simultaneously?"

It can only happen if A, B and C are all at rest with respect to each other. Otherwise, time dillation throws the clocks out of psynch. Once C moves, C's clock will start to tick slow (according to A and B), and even after C comes to rest again, C's clock will still be behind.

OK. So I looked it up on the Usenet Physics FAQ here. I may be reading this wrong, but it looks like a change in terminology as to what is actually included as General Relativity.

Mod parent up, this one is right. GP is WRONG!

To add to something to the general debate, I once found this

Einstein's conventions and interpretations were sometimes ambivalent and varied a little over the years; however an examination of his papers and books on relativity shows that he almost never used relativistic mass himself.


from this source.

glass

BZZZZT! Thanks for playing! Here's your consolation prize:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/Glas s/glass.html

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/Glas s/glass.html Short answer: Don't know. Could be either.

BZZZZT! Thanks for playing! Here's your consolation prize:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/Glas s/glass.html

> Can anyone explain if the curent theories still speculate that eventually all the matter in the universe will be sucked up by black holes? Also, once that happens will the black holes (as the only remaining objects in spacetime) start attracting each other?

Here is the most interesting thing I've ever read about the fate of the universe.

Lets see where this is on the crackpot index

-5 starting
195 for capital letters
10 for evolution being a religion
50 for having no testable predictions

I make it to be about 250. That's pretty good for a short post.

Before Einstein explained the precession of Mercury's perihelion, many scientists believed there was a planet Vulcan inside Mercury's orbit. Some even "spotted" it.

(For the "spotted" link, search on "Vulcan".)

You can also read about it here.

See here. Brazil has had their "Proalcool" program for the last thirty years, and it's just coming to fruition now. They use a less energy-intensive process, with sugarcane instead of corn, and doing so, they've managed massive cuts in their oil imports. That's not really something you can fake.

Corn may be a bad source of ethanol, and Archer Daniels Midland may be liquid evil poured into a suit, but that doesn't mean other folks can't do it right.

See a rather good writeup of the issue.

--grendel drago

Van Allen Belt:The inner radiation belt extends over altitudes of 650-6,300 km (up to one Earth radius). This ring is most concentrated in the Earth's equatorial plane.... The outer radiation belt extends from an altitude of about 10,000-65,000 km and has its greatest intensity between 14,500-19,000 km.

Lagrange Point: There are actually five Lagrange points in the Earth-Sun system, which I'm assuming the parent article refers to.*

L1 and L2 are 1,500,000 km from the Earth, well outside both Van Allen Belts. L3 through L5 are even further away! Currently, NASA's SOHO observation satellite is at L1, and WMAP is at L2. (Source)

*There's five Lagrange points for any two bodies in direct orbit, including the Earth-Moon, Mars-Phobos, etc.

http://phyun5.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/no de6.html#SECTION02121000000000000000

Now we reverse the method, getting a theory and look for things in nature to prove it.

What should be done is to take facts we know about now and work backwards to find out what happened in the beginning. There are serious holes in our understaning of the origin of the universe mainly because we cannot see it right now.

I weep for current scientific processes and the future until we can get scientists who are more interested in explaining nature from a neutral standpoint rather than a try to get famous by shocking everyone standpoint.

+5 ignored by peers, and is bitter

+5 (indirectly) referenced Galileo

Diagnosis: kook.

• Evaporation could reduce the volume to be frozen
• Cold water can contain more disolved gasses, which can alter the freezing point and the ability to form convection currents
• Hot water will form convection currents faster, which aids in the cooling process

IIRC, the explanation for the ice-cube-trays-in the-freezer 'anomaly' seems to involve the specific temperatures of the two samples, the insulating sides of the tray (minimising heat loss via conduction), enthalpy of vaporisation and the temperature gradient in the water. But don't quote me.

What appears to be a comprehensive exposition on the matter can be found here here.

It is called the Mpemba Effect.

More on this phenomenon (history en possible explanations) here

> More than half of the top 25 were biology questions. You'd think physics would be a little more strongly represented.

If you're interested in the physics questions you can cut out the journalistic middle-men and read John Baez's Open Questions in Physics. I found it informative, entertaining, and for the most part comprehensible to a moderately well informed non-physicist.

Wikipedia has a List of unsolved problems broken down by field, but the field lists I read didn't strike me as particularly well done. YMMV.

> But I'm all for answering the evolution questions if it'll stop my in-laws from giving me creationist literature.

Facts, answers, and explanations aren't going to make creationists blink an eye.

Sorry, I think the term "jerk" in my original post was taken out of context. For example, see third derivative/jerk/jolt.

No, you can accelerate at 1g indefinitely, and your fuel requirements will remain constant (ignoring decrease in ship mass due to fuel utilization). However, your velocity will not increase indefinitely, but rather will approach c asymptotically. You can still cover astronomical distances in a reasonable period of time, but because of time dilation the time elapsed in the outside world becomes very long. See the relativistic rocket

For a more in depth discussion, see the discussion of gravitational radiation on the USENET physics FAQ. It says, in brief, that gravitational radiation (ie., changes in the gravity field, such as a sun dissapearing) travels, depending on which theory you read, either at the same speed or a tiny bit more slowly than electromagnrtical radiation (ie. light).

on the glass (which is a fluid)

Not really.

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/Glas s/glass.html

It was proved that the mathematical model matches the observed results, atomic clocks in accelerated reference frames, explaining the orbit of Mercury and all.

E.g. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/relativ /airtim.html

http://phyun5.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/no de98.html

But with everything being relative, couldn't you see it that the Earth was flying around at near light speeds in relation to you, while you were standing still?

Yes.

So then why does the time pass slower for you than the other way around?

The Earth sees time pass slower for you, and you see time pass slower for the Earth. However, if you go out and come back, everyone will agree that you're younger than people who stayed behind on Earth. Reconciling this is the basis of the twin paradox.

That's Newtonian. The relativistic acceleration equations are different. See this FAQ for the correct equations, which will tell you how long (in either proper or inertial time) it would take to reach a given speed, as measured by an inertial observer initially at rest with respect to the body -- with some calculations for 1 g acceleration.

(For instance, to reach 0.77c requires 1 year of subjective time or 1.19 years of objective time; for 0.97c, it's 2 years subjective, 3.75 years objective; for 0.99999999996c it's 12 years subjective, 113,243 years objective.)

There is quite a bit of very convencing physical evidence for both special and general relativity. Here's the first google item returned, but there's lots more out there to read. http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/S R/experiments.html

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/hot_ water.html

[The reformulated diesel] showed the greatest reductions in PM emission rates with reductions ranging from 5 to 43%. The OXyG B-60 showed some promise in reducing PM emissions for the highest emitting vehicle, but had PM emissions rates comparable to those of the in-use fuel for the remaining vehicles. The soy-based biodiesel blends had slightly higher PM emissions rates than the CARB fuel for 4 of the 7 vehicles, with comparable PM emission rates for the remaining three vehicles.

From what I've read, you have a better chance of detecting a black hole by looking for the effects of its gravitational field on light that passes nearby. It should warp the apparent positions of stars.

Even glass flows.

OK, I'll bite. Which particles would those be?

Light is more or less massless and is forever frozen in "time".

No, light is exactly massless. More or less.

I wonder which of these categories the Great Library of Alexandria falls into...

Planet Earth to Sharp'r: there are things that pre-date the US of A and (oh the horror of it!) even Capitalism! I know, unbelievable, but true.

The concept of a library is linked to free dissemination of information, which scientists and scholars since times immemorial considered crucial for development of knowledge. The "for profit" part is a rather late addition of the Capitalist era. It worked so "well" that shortly after most governments realized that they'd better do something or soon they will find themselves with a population of uneducated farm hands and all scientists living aborad. Enter public and government-assisted university libraires.

Unfortunately, as of late, this seems to be more and more forgotten and it appears that we will have to re-learn the old lessons all over again ... the hard way.

Cathedral windows aren't thicker at the bottom because the glass flowed over the centuries, but because of how the panes were constructed; they were thicker from the very beginning. See this FAQ (skip down to the "persistent myth" part).

Whether glass is a "solid" depends on your definitions. See this FAQ. Some might call it a high-viscosity liquid, some an amorphous solid; some might say that it's solid on short timescales and liquid on longer; some might say that it's neither solid nor liquid.

That'd be the church. http://phyun5.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/no de52.html