Einstein's Theory Improved?

skaet writes to tell us that A Chinese astronomer from the University of St Andrews claims to have fine-tuned Einstein's theory of gravity. Dr Hong Sheng Zhao has created a 'simple' theory which could "solve a dark mystery that has baffled astrophysicists for three-quarters of a century." This new law seeks to discover whether Einstein's theory was correct and if dark matter actually exists.

Comments

Re:Murder vs. kill

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A word about semetic languages like Hebrew, Arabic, and Amaharic: they have a rich infix morphology. What this means in practice is that various inflections of Hebrew words (an English example of inflection is the addition of -s to the end of a verb in the third person, for example, I say versus he says) involve swapping the vowels in a word (but the consonants stay the same).

Indeed, most verbs in Hebrew have a three consonant "root" (some have two). Depending on the tense, person, number, and gender of a verb (Hebrew verbs, unlike say, French verbs, agree with the subject's gender as well as number), the vowels in a Hebrew verb will change (and a prefix or suffix may be added as well).

All of this is just a roundabout way of saying that any word with say, a k-t-v root will have to do with, in this case, writing, whether it's katav or kotev or what have you.

This is why all semetic languages evolved writing systems where the vowels are generally not written: vowels simply don't have much semantic value in semetic languages. It may seem weird at first, but it's actually rather logical if you're exposed to it for a while.

Now, I'm not Jewish, so I don't know exactly, but I remember reading that the religious texts in fact were marked with the vowel diacritics -- that in fact, the vowel diacritics were invented for the sole purpose of reminding Rabbis how the texts should be read, as Hebrew was a dead language for a millenium or more.

Native speakers have little need for them, as it is clear from context what the vowels should be. Thnk abt t, vn n nglsh y cn ndrstnd lrght, and in English the presence or absence of vowels can actually change the root meaning of a word!

Anyone who is actually Hebrew-speaking and/or Jewish feel free to correct me. My Hebrew is very bad.