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  1. Re:Please explain to this non-physics-type geek on Data Review Brings Major Setback In Higgs Boson Hunt · · Score: 1

    The Kaluza-Klein model implies intrinsic mass for a charge, else the gravitational fields implied would self dissipate. Requiring a well defined and self stabilizing horizon demands the combination of one subluminal dilation horizon and another opposing superluminal dilation horizon.

  2. Re:There is a very good reason on Senator Wants to Tax Internet Shopping · · Score: 1

    This is so. Taxes should apply to business revenue and personal income for the most part. Anything else is mostly double counting. Non revenue and non income taxes are for residual needs of government, or for other sorts of public purpose. Residual need includes providing for government real property, or for outside purchases by government of goods and services, or to fund services with a direct impact on private property value. Other public purposes include environmental and social impact fees.

  3. Re:Strange Matter on Stellar Wormholes May Exist · · Score: 1

    Michio Kaku explains in his book, HYPERSPACE, that, in the theoretical construction, worm holes are the goal, and exotic matter is the deduced means or source of this effect. Unfortunately, both the source and the effect are contradictory to more fundamental properties of spacetime. Actually, superluminal spacial horizons do not have end points, they are conserved out to infinity by reason of the Bianchi identity, "The boundary of a boundary is zero". Exotic matter is likewise inconsistent; the negative mass is just fine, but its repulsion by ordinary gravitational fields is contrary to every other result of general relativity - the equivalence principle is broken for instance.

  4. Re:Directories on File Organization — How Do You Do It In 2011? · · Score: 1

    Definitely get people their own account; this is basic. Instead of logging out the other person, just use the switch user feature.

  5. Re:WE DON'T HAVE THE MONEY on Obama Calling For $53B For High Speed Rail · · Score: 1

    The US is still effectively in a depression, that is with economic output less than 90% of full potential. By approximate macroeconomic estimate, cutting government spending by 1.4 trillion would reduce output by almost another 10%. As has been commented, austerity programs like that have an established record of not leading to prosperity until more than a decade has passed.

    A national debt can be justified as a mortgage against the depreciated value of national infrastructure, and also against the current value of the economic training of the population. Even if the debt exceeds the mark, then pay as you go investments in the structure and people are still justified and necessary when there is slack in output. I really do not think that austerity works very well.

  6. Re:Why Is It Wrong to Call This ESP? on Journal Article On Precognition Sparks Outrage · · Score: 1

    Solid objects, liquids, chemistry, and even colored light are not explained by classical spacetime, nor by classical thermodynamics. Quantum mechanics is needed for any possibility of explanation of a human being. And everyone acknowledges that QM is not classical.

  7. Re:As a voter who normally leans Democrat... on Democrats Crowdsourcing To Vote Palin In Primaries · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's better in the long term for the country to have rational debate at election time. And straightforward behavior by voters can encourage this. Else even the reason-based coalition will go decadent.

    I wish that the Republican coalition would deprecate the opinions of their corporate clients and superstitious voters, so that they can compete with the Democratic coalition on matters of government integrity and efficiency.

  8. Re:What?! on Super Principia Mathematica · · Score: 1

    This is not Steven Rado, writer or reviewer, as has been explained already. Robert Louis Kemp cites Rado as one of his sources.

    As for the physics in Kemp's book, the immediately accessible feature to me from the previews is the radical theism involved. It is not unlike Newton's radical theism, that God is an implementer of arbitrary mathematical designs, as well as an arbitrary puppet master when he wishes. You should consider the position of Spinoza and Leibnitz as an antidote to Newton's assertion of faith. They apparently came to an agreement that mathematical systems exist out there wherever they can because there is no mechanism for a cosmic censor to prevent it.

    There are dubious things to be seen in the mathematics, but I did not slow down into crawl gear to prove my impressions. Why would there be an aether? Why are photons standing waves with only a fixed number of wavelengths? How can a photon overcome the dipole nature of its fields to become a polar charge when orbiting the location of the charge?

    Naturally, I prefer my own manuscript on controversial physics.

  9. Re:What exactly is varying? on Fine-Structure Constant Maybe Not So Constant · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Writing as an outside critic of academic physics, I am still very appreciative of the old paper by Max Planck on the constants of physics. The paper is a prime part of relativity theory (the theory of invariants as it is better termed).

    The speed of light, the Planck constant, the gravitational constant, the magnetic constant, and the Boltzmann constant serve to define units of measurement. So any variation of those constants only reduces to some weird physical observation that is correctable by fixing the calibration, not to a provable variation of the constants.

    If the charge of the electron changes, then you have nonconservation or nonlocal transfer of charges to deal with. These alternatives are mathematically intractable; the Bianchi identities that apply to conservation are very hard to dispose of.

  10. Re:Evangelicals require more than others on Given Truth, the Misinformed Believe Lies More · · Score: 1

    There is the patriarchal fantasy of reproduction where the mother is thought of as only fertile ground for the growth of the seed that is implanted by the patriarch. So abortion infringes on patriarchal property. I think that the Catholic Church fell long ago to this illusion.

  11. Re:So far, I'm not impressed on Quantum Physics For Everybody · · Score: 1

    It is a response to the assertion that all ordinary forces are electromagnetic. Without Pauli exclusion, there are no solid bodies, but only points neutralized out of the plasma.

  12. Re:So far, I'm not impressed on Quantum Physics For Everybody · · Score: 1

    Electromagnetism alone does not get you a solid surface. Nor does gravity. This is one of the failure points of classical physics, a side effect of the small scale where the premise of spacetime, the existence of the metric, goes out of range.

  13. Re:No mathematical background? on Quantum Physics For Everybody · · Score: 1

    The best route out of the arcane "math" is the correct geometric representation of physical objects. Physicists have a really bad habit of using the wrong tensor rank - not the same as what operates out there.

    Just try calculating Kaluza-Klein charges using the wrong tensor rank. But they can be simply drawn when the right tensor rank is used.

    It is quite true though that quantum mechanics can not be drawn like this.

  14. Re:Funnel Time on BP Robot Seriously Hampers Oil Spill Containment · · Score: 1

    This well is a blow-out. The pressure of the well exceeds water pressure.

  15. Re:here's a counter example on Inertial Mass Separate From Gravitational Mass? · · Score: 1

    It is not the case. Instead it would be:

    mi1*a1 = mi1*mg2*G/r**2
    mi2*a2 = mi2*mg1*G/r**2

    Conservation is closely related to the equivalence principle.

  16. Re:Inertial mass must equal gravitational mass on Inertial Mass Separate From Gravitational Mass? · · Score: 1

    No, the original post was right. The inertial masses are equal in the example, so in a bouncy collision they will exchange velocity.

  17. Re:here's a counter example on Inertial Mass Separate From Gravitational Mass? · · Score: 1

    Your charges are not the same scenario. This is because electrostatic forces obey the third law of motion, and the unmatched gravitational sources do not obey. I appreciate very much this bouncyballs example.

  18. There was no Hardball. on BP Says "Top Kill" Operation Has Failed · · Score: 1

    Chris Mathews dropped his hardball this week when he let a petroleum academic explain that worries about the casing were restraining the use of the mud and pumps. The obvious point is that the casing is deficient by design if it can not tolerate a top kill operation.

  19. Re:ABC News admits that the kill shot stopped earl on Gulf Oil Leak Plugged? · · Score: 1

    It seems to me that success would be indicated by an increasingly accelerating decrease in the flow. Isn't this so?

    Maybe they are already injecting junk.

  20. Re:ABC News admits that the kill shot stopped earl on Gulf Oil Leak Plugged? · · Score: 1

    According to MSNBC at a bit after 7:00pm CDT the mud pumping was resumed. The plume in the video now is tricolored, and new cracks in the pipe seem to be present.

    Can I deduce that this halt in pumping was authorized by the government? Is there a continuation of a stop gap cover up by the corporation?

  21. ABC News admits that the kill shot stopped early. on Gulf Oil Leak Plugged? · · Score: 3, Informative

    My little calculation using the units calculator at the Linux command line shows that 20 minutes is roughly, within a factor of ten, the endurance of a column of mud when its pumping is halted.

    The pumping is now reported to have halted around midnight. It is a stretch for me to imagine that the mudding job is not now mostly undone.

    My viewing of the leak video 4 hours later did not encourage me to think that the leak was capped. I thought that I saw light colored natural gas, ruddy brown petroleum, and black petroleum exiting the leaks. Now the only change is that the black substance is not apparent, and the ruddiness is intermittent.

    Somebody might want to try to correct this impression, please.

  22. Re:It is being tested- more or less on The End Of Gravity As a Fundamental Force · · Score: 1

    To the contrary I say. The theory predicting the Higgs boson is defiantly incompatible with general relativity.

  23. Re:aren't the 2 linked? on Researchers Discover "Magnetic Current" · · Score: 1

    So the whole issue is a misinterpreted electrostatic polarization then.

  24. Re:Maxwell Equations on Researchers Discover "Magnetic Current" · · Score: 1

    Yes, all of those distinguished physicists were untrained in, and not knowledgeable about, the utility of the Bianchi identity taken together with the full application of the principle of general covariance.

    Take two solid rings interlinked; embed monopoles in one and charges in the other. Give one a spin and then watch the ensuing unbalanced creation and destruction of angular momentum. Travel past at near light speed and see the no longer simultaneous transfer of energy from one ring to the other.

    Magnetic monopoles are not a target of the LHC that I have heard of. But Higgs bosons are a publicized target, and they seem to be distorted versions of what would be better studied with a knowledge of general relativity.

  25. Re:Maxwell Equations on Researchers Discover "Magnetic Current" · · Score: 1

    Ah, you found the symmetry. In Einstein-Davis (unadulterated spacetime) a negative oriented volume of blue-shifted space is equivalent to a red-shifted and positive oriented volume.

    Anyway, regions of blue shift repel other regions, but are attracted by regions of red shift.

    In the contest of mechanics, red-shifted volumes contain positive mass, and a blue shift implies negative mass.