I.e., that which laymen refer to as "hauntings" may very well be worthy of legitimate scientific research, regardless of how ridiculous the premise may sound.
The trouble with this sort of thing is that it'd be a lot easier to research if there was an observable (and preferably recordable and repeating) phenomenon occurring (any supposed premise should be entirely irrelevant at this stage - it doesn't matter if granny's screaming "Leprechauns did it!" if there are fish falling from a portal in the ceiling), but these kinds of events just don't seem to want to play ball. I've got no reason to doubt - or take as gospel - what you say happened to you, but that's all it is to me - an anecdote, and you just can't scientifically study an anecdote (unless you're studying the science of anecdotes themselves, I suppose).
So there's very little point in me speculating about it one way or the other. I would suggest, though, that if anything weird happens again you immediately record your experience in as much as detail as you can - notes, voice notes, take photos of the location, even. Human memory is the last thing you want to rely on if you're trying to objectively study an event. The ironic thing is I used to have a brilliant example of this from my own life, but I now can't remember what it was.
I mean, if we're supposed to be a community who believes in science, why would anyone dismiss a hypothesis......I've broached topics you refuse to even consider, let alone debate intellectually.
Saying what your hypothesis is would be a useful start.
how can this explain people seeing things even when their eyes were closed?
I don't know about you, but it happens to me just about every night.
Unless you're referring to them verifiably seeing things they couldn't possibly have any knowledge of in any other way, in which case... [citation needed]
When was any other weapon banned for being "faster, more effective, and more targeted"?
I was under the impression it was because it was considered... well, I'm not sure, not sporting? to blind your opponents for the rest of their lives, as opposed to shredding them instantly with hot slivers of metal death. Exactly why everyone was so enthusiastic to adopt a ban on blinding weapons, took a bit longer with landmines, but haven't got round to nuclear bombs is a bit of a puzzler to me - except perhaps that it's a lot easier to ban something before everyone has them.
Regardless, plants are still just inefficient solar panels whose only advantage is that their energy output is chemical, not electrical, thereby minimizing transmission and storage energy loss.
I'd imagine the materials, installation and maintenance costs are a bit lower.
No it does not. Photons have no rest mass and their relativistic mass is negligible.
But not zero. And in case you hadn't noticed the bright shiny orb in the sky, you get a lot of photons when you convert matter to energy, and their total energy will be equivalent to the total mass converted. I'm sure there's a formula for it somewhere...
Convert that matter to light and space unwarps itself, expanding the universe.
If that's the case - and I'm not at all clear why you've concluded that the universe would expand in any real sense just because some part of space is less warped than it used to be - it's only because the light leaves the local area. But then that light will act to warp whatever space it travels through, leaving the totality unchanged.
Feel free to read his book [amazon.com] and verify his calculations (the cosmology section is not really dependent on his quantum mechanics).
I could just as easily suggest that you read this review and verify the reviewer's claims. It'd be a hell of a lot cheaper, for one thing.
Calling them pseudo-random invites mistaken conclusions.
Calling them just plain random would be to do that. Pseudo- covers it off nicely, I think. Looks like, but ain't. In fact if the sequence is repeatable (given the same seed), they're demonstrably not arbitrary.
Assuming you're genuinely suggesting this as an alternative...
The Shapiro effect is (as far as my understanding of it goes) an effect (the clue is in the name) caused by mass - and it's a delay effect, not a bending one. So what is the mass that's doing the bending? How does the light get bent in just the right way to make galactic discs look more spread out from all angles?
Then please tell me who has already thought of explaining the expansion of the universe by considering the matter-to-energy conversion occuring within stars and realizing that the disappearing matter reduces space curvature, expanding it.
Well, you have, so why don't you do the calculations, write a paper, and win a Nobel prize? From my point of view (that of not being an astrophysicist and only have an interested reader's grasp of the subject) you're the one making the claim, so it's on you to find the evidence.
Besides which, I was under the impression that energy warps space just as mass does (though perhaps you're referring to mass/energy being lost to the space around the star by radiation).
I was also not aware that if you remove mass from a volume of space the space within that volume begans to expand faster.
Data including the "movement, type, direction, and speed of unique devices" was recorded from smartphones that had their Wi-Fi on.
All of that was recorded from the phone? Or was it actually only the MAC which was recorded at multiple points and times, which allows the rest to be inferred?
The problem with dark matter observation in this case is that science is based on empirical observation. If you can't see it, can't measure it, and can't even draw inferences from what you can see and measure to detect something indirectly... it's not science.
But we can measure it, and we do draw inferences from what has been measured, and that's exactly what they're doing here - using the measured large-scale behaviour of galaxies - from which we infer the existence of dark matter - to predict what might happen on a smaller scale, like a solar system - a scale on which we are currently not in the position to do observations of sufficient accuracy to disprove the inference (theory).
As I understand it, there's a big empty space in most of our theories and observations that says something should be filling it up
I wouldn't refer to problems in cosmological theories as "big empty spaces." That could get really confusing really quickly.
My bet is that the need for dark matter will disappear when relativistic effects are properly taken into account.
And I bet that at some point during the last few decades of thousands of observations, theories, and calculations by thousands of astronomers, physicists, and mathematicians (some with Nobel prizes, no less), someone would have already thought of this if it was an issue.
Slashdot Mirror
I.e., that which laymen refer to as "hauntings" may very well be worthy of legitimate scientific research, regardless of how ridiculous the premise may sound.
The trouble with this sort of thing is that it'd be a lot easier to research if there was an observable (and preferably recordable and repeating) phenomenon occurring (any supposed premise should be entirely irrelevant at this stage - it doesn't matter if granny's screaming "Leprechauns did it!" if there are fish falling from a portal in the ceiling), but these kinds of events just don't seem to want to play ball. I've got no reason to doubt - or take as gospel - what you say happened to you, but that's all it is to me - an anecdote, and you just can't scientifically study an anecdote (unless you're studying the science of anecdotes themselves, I suppose).
So there's very little point in me speculating about it one way or the other. I would suggest, though, that if anything weird happens again you immediately record your experience in as much as detail as you can - notes, voice notes, take photos of the location, even. Human memory is the last thing you want to rely on if you're trying to objectively study an event. The ironic thing is I used to have a brilliant example of this from my own life, but I now can't remember what it was.
I mean, if we're supposed to be a community who believes in science, why would anyone dismiss a hypothesis... ...I've broached topics you refuse to even consider, let alone debate intellectually.
Saying what your hypothesis is would be a useful start.
how can this explain people seeing things even when their eyes were closed?
I don't know about you, but it happens to me just about every night.
Unless you're referring to them verifiably seeing things they couldn't possibly have any knowledge of in any other way, in which case... [citation needed]
NEVER leaks, he claims, having done it for the first time 2 years ago.
Only 9 years out.
Why not swim to the moon? I mean, aside from the lack of water.
When was any other weapon banned for being "faster, more effective, and more targeted"?
I was under the impression it was because it was considered... well, I'm not sure, not sporting? to blind your opponents for the rest of their lives, as opposed to shredding them instantly with hot slivers of metal death. Exactly why everyone was so enthusiastic to adopt a ban on blinding weapons, took a bit longer with landmines, but haven't got round to nuclear bombs is a bit of a puzzler to me - except perhaps that it's a lot easier to ban something before everyone has them.
Firefox OS is based on Android and their way of doing GPU drivers.
It "share some other parts of the HAL [...] with the Android project" but is it really based on Android, or just derived as Android is from Linux?
The corporation has taken the issue to the Information Commissioner's Office.
This isn't even an actual ban - the company has only been asked to stop, and has done so.
I bid 50 quatloos.
Regardless, plants are still just inefficient solar panels whose only advantage is that their energy output is chemical, not electrical, thereby minimizing transmission and storage energy loss.
I'd imagine the materials, installation and maintenance costs are a bit lower.
No it does not. Photons have no rest mass and their relativistic mass is negligible.
But not zero. And in case you hadn't noticed the bright shiny orb in the sky, you get a lot of photons when you convert matter to energy, and their total energy will be equivalent to the total mass converted. I'm sure there's a formula for it somewhere...
Convert that matter to light and space unwarps itself, expanding the universe.
If that's the case - and I'm not at all clear why you've concluded that the universe would expand in any real sense just because some part of space is less warped than it used to be - it's only because the light leaves the local area. But then that light will act to warp whatever space it travels through, leaving the totality unchanged.
Feel free to read his book [amazon.com] and verify his calculations (the cosmology section is not really dependent on his quantum mechanics).
I could just as easily suggest that you read this review and verify the reviewer's claims. It'd be a hell of a lot cheaper, for one thing.
Pronounced "*nom*"
Calling them pseudo-random invites mistaken conclusions.
Calling them just plain random would be to do that. Pseudo- covers it off nicely, I think. Looks like, but ain't. In fact if the sequence is repeatable (given the same seed), they're demonstrably not arbitrary.
they are images bent by the Shapiro effect
Assuming you're genuinely suggesting this as an alternative... The Shapiro effect is (as far as my understanding of it goes) an effect (the clue is in the name) caused by mass - and it's a delay effect, not a bending one. So what is the mass that's doing the bending? How does the light get bent in just the right way to make galactic discs look more spread out from all angles?
I say old bean, looks like you're trying to dash off a missive to an aged aunt. Mind if I give it a bash, what-what?
Then please tell me who has already thought of explaining the expansion of the universe by considering the matter-to-energy conversion occuring within stars and realizing that the disappearing matter reduces space curvature, expanding it.
Well, you have, so why don't you do the calculations, write a paper, and win a Nobel prize? From my point of view (that of not being an astrophysicist and only have an interested reader's grasp of the subject) you're the one making the claim, so it's on you to find the evidence.
Besides which, I was under the impression that energy warps space just as mass does (though perhaps you're referring to mass/energy being lost to the space around the star by radiation).
I was also not aware that if you remove mass from a volume of space the space within that volume begans to expand faster.
They're not gods
No, but I think it's reasonable to assume they're a bit ahead of the average Slashdot poster in this department.
(and there's no Nobel prize for mathematics).
Two ways out of that one:
a) as it was meant to be read:
by thousands of [ astronomers, physicists, and mathematicians ] (some with Nobel prizes, no less)
b) I didn't say what they won the Nobel prizes for. Mathematicians have won Nobel prizes.
Data including the "movement, type, direction, and speed of unique devices" was recorded from smartphones that had their Wi-Fi on.
All of that was recorded from the phone? Or was it actually only the MAC which was recorded at multiple points and times, which allows the rest to be inferred?
The problem with dark matter observation in this case is that science is based on empirical observation. If you can't see it, can't measure it, and can't even draw inferences from what you can see and measure to detect something indirectly... it's not science.
But we can measure it, and we do draw inferences from what has been measured, and that's exactly what they're doing here - using the measured large-scale behaviour of galaxies - from which we infer the existence of dark matter - to predict what might happen on a smaller scale, like a solar system - a scale on which we are currently not in the position to do observations of sufficient accuracy to disprove the inference (theory).
As I understand it, there's a big empty space in most of our theories and observations that says something should be filling it up
I wouldn't refer to problems in cosmological theories as "big empty spaces." That could get really confusing really quickly.
My bet is that the need for dark matter will disappear when relativistic effects are properly taken into account.
And I bet that at some point during the last few decades of thousands of observations, theories, and calculations by thousands of astronomers, physicists, and mathematicians (some with Nobel prizes, no less), someone would have already thought of this if it was an issue.
24 (and higher) bit colour and full alpha channel transparency.
How to Peep the Perseid's Peak
"Peep" is synonymous with "look," not "see," so this should be
How to Peep at the Perseid's Peak
Carry on.
Why is traffic analysis more of a threat than the ability for the government to read the contents of your emails?
Obama on Surveillance: "We Can and Must Be More Transparent"
...now that we've been caught.
You don't even have to send the poems. Who's going to check?