The first two having apostolic and historic roots (ie go all the way back to apostles and first Christians) separated in 1054.
Actually all three branches have apostolic roots the only difference being that the Orthodox schism happened earlier than the Protestant one. Anglican bishops still trace their lineage back through the Catholic church to the apostles.
Actually I thought even then it only applied to certain ones when he is speaking "ex cathedra" which he only does when there is absolutely no possibility that he can be proven wrong. It is extremely clear that popes are most definitely fallible (e.g. Galileo) but because the papacy never declared geocentrism as a required belief in an "ex cathedra" manner the Catholic church can breathe a big sigh of relief and still claim that their pope is infallible in certain situations.
Sure you can. "Catholic" means "universal" - and we all know that those "Universal" churches are all just cults (but then again, so are all religions).
No, "catholic" means universal, "Catholic" refers to a specific branch of Christianity. If you use the capital letter it refers specifically to the name and not the adjective. In the same way that not all people who are conservative will necessarily vote Conservative (which is a UK/Canadian right wing party - or somewhat slightly to the left of the democrats if you are in the US).
The only comment I have to make in the other direction is that I am uncomfortable with the probabilities that scientists have suddenly started to give - "there's a 77% chance we are completely correct".
That is not what they are saying. They are really saying "IF we are correct there is a 23% chance that this is just a background fluctuation.". In particle physics we usually have two unofficial rules regarding results. If you have a 3 sigma effect (~1% chance of it being background) then you can claim "evidence for...." and if you have a 5 sigma variation you can claim discovery. This is because it is REALLY easy to make mistakes in a complex analysis and underestimate or be unaware of other possible sources of background. The large safety factors in the unofficial scheme protect us from making ourselves look like idiots when we get something wrong because it is unlikely (but not unheard of) to get something wrong by such a large amount.
The CDMS result is barely over 1 sigma in significance and so is really nothing at all. In fact if you read their arXiv paper they present the result as a non-observation and put limits on the Dark Matter signal which is the honest thing to do. However they clearly have a clever PR machine which has managed to persuade the media that it is something worthy of reporting.
You are misconstruing my post as support for the US actions. My point was simply that governments do act without regard for lawyers when poked with a big enough stick. They do not always react sensibly, e.g. invading Iraq, but they do react so suggesting that governments would be unable to deal with an imminent asteroid impact due to legal wrangling and diplomacy is ludicrous. They might not be able to deal with it due to incompetence but that is a different issue!
Who is focussing on nuclear weapons. My point was simply that it is unrealistic to assume that governments will sit about wringing their hands in the face of imminent danger. They may over react or react stupidly but react they will regardless of what international law or diplomacy may suggest.
Err... WTF are you smoking? Just about every intelligence agency on the planet said before the Afghan campaign that invading Afghanistan would not yield a positive result
The point I was trying to make is that the US did not sit around wringing its hands and going "oh dear, we can't do anything because the lawyers would get in the way" even for something far less severe than an asteroid. I agree that some/most of what they did was not at all sensible - hence my second point about making sure that you have a sane leader.
Yes I'm sure if an asteroid threatens the world leaders will all sit down with their lawyers and fiddle while the Earth burns. What this author forgets is that if your survival is on the line people will generally do what they think needs to be done regardless of what the law, lawyers or anyone else may say. Just look at the US after the 11/9 attacks. The trick is to ensure that you have a leader who can listen to scientific advice and make the right decision based on that and not on what will win them the next election. However, since if they get it wrong there probably won't be another election, they should at least be well motivated!
I was going to suggest that perhaps they were meaning in Ugandan dollars but looking it up Uganda uses the Schilling and it would be a budget of almost 59 billion of those.
would the mass difference make a measurable difference due to gravity ?
My guess would be yes since there is a well established method to measure the historic ocean temperature using the ratio of Oxygen-18 to Oxygen-16. O-16 preferentially evaporates due to its smaller mass and so during ice ages the oceans are depleted of O-16 because it evaporates and forms glacial ice.
How is the specific order of events that lead to the creation of our planet going to tell us anything about the creation of other planets?
I don't know but I do know that I'm glad you weren't around in the 18th century to question why on Earth anyone would ever want to waste time studying electricity. Knowing how planets form might appear useless to you today but who's to say that in 300 years time it is not extremely useful for targeting interstellar probes or identifying planets and asteroids with useful ore deposits.
We would not be where we are today if we only researched topics for which we can see the immediate applications. That's not to say that all curiosity driven research will end up being useful but it is impossible to tell which topics will be the essential ones to know in 100+ years.
"Although the proposed engine will consume energy for manipulation of the particles, the propulsion will occur without any loss of mass," says Feigel.
I'd like to see how that works. The one thing that even non-physicists know is that energy is equivalent to mass (E=mc2). This applies to all power. However the mass loss of a battery which discharges is negligible compared to the total mass hence it is usually neglected for energies below nuclear. Unless they can show otherwise my very strong suspicion is that they energy needed to manipulate the nano-particles will be identical to the energy needed to emit a photon of the same momentum. Until they can show this I do not see anything to be excited about.
Newtonian Mechanics are valid, just not as accurate as Relativity.
Newtonian Mechanics are a valid approximation in certain circumstances to the underlying fundamental physics that, as far as we know, is relativistic. Relativity is not "just more accurate" it is, as far as we know, a fundamental description of reality. It might be that there is an even more accurate model of reality of which relativity is an approximation, but we do not know that for certain.
What manager of a movie theater would be stupid enough to push this through? Do they not realize how much VERY bad publicity this is making for his theater.
Perhaps a manager who thinks that holding a surprise party in the middle of a cinema and singing happy birthday while everyone else is trying to watch the movie might just annoy his other customers? It just goes to show that even stupid laws can sometimes be used to good effect.
Cleaning something with chlorine or hydrochloric acid or something similar to break out the active ingredient from other ingredients, for example.
...and all the extra, often unknown chemicals, that come along with herbs are somehow ok?
I didn't say natural chemicals are magically better... I said they seem to have less side effects.
Exactly so somehow identical chemicals behave differently because one was produced in a lab and the other in a field. Perhaps what you are referring to is that sometimes the production methods do not produce identical chemicals and the similar, but not the same, chemical behaves differently. In this case it is usually because research has shown that the different chemical is either more effective or causes fewer side effects than the "natural" one. Hence you are left with a risk vs. reward benefit. The new drug has been shown to be better but might have strange interactions that are rare enough not to have been seen.
Even conceding that medicine is still far superior because when a strange reaction is observed it is noted, confirmed and either the drug withdrawn, changed or careful instructions on when not to use it are issued. I have yet to see this happen for herbs so even if there are strange and dangerous side effects people will keep on suffering from preventable interactions.
Other people, however, who believe that herbal medicine might make them feel better while they find a better solution are just taking advantage of all the options to them, and as far as I'm concerned, they should.
The problem is WHY do they think that herbal medicine will make them better? They think this because companies making herbal products are not held to the same strict standards of honesty as the normal medicine. Would it be ok for someone to setup a fake charity and scam money off the public? As long as nobody found out about it those donating would feel happy about being generous so that would be fine right?
The herbal version tastes better (I'd rather drink a mug of tea than take a pill).
You'd place taste over effectiveness and safety? Really? If so then I suppose you can get child versions of some medicines with flavours added. However since you swallow pills you generally don't taste them.
For mild conditions, the exact dosage is not particularly important.
I think most people would regard a stomach upset as minor so you might want to read this.
The processed version is more expensive
Probably true but I tend to regard my health and safety as actually worth something, don't you?
No, being produced by nature doesn't make it magically better, but it does often (most times) produce significantly less negative side effects than the man made versions.
Ok lets do a thought experiment. In the first case I will produce water artifically in a lab by burning hydrogen in the presence of oxygen. In the second case I will go out and find some water lying around in the natural environment. Now please explain how the lab produced water will create more side-effects that the "natural" water. Your statement is exactly the kind of "natural chemicals are magically better" type of argument that I was complaiing about!
You may not know the dose, but it doesn't really matter, if it works.
True, and playing Russian roulette is not dangerous if the chamber is not loaded with a bullet. The problem is how do you know in advance?
Medicine has a place. "Alternative" medicine has a place....people have been "successfully" using them for thousands of years.
You are right. Alternative medicine has a place as the collected mix of superstition and knowledge that eventually grew into real medicine. Herbs are primitive, natural drugs just as caves are primitive, natural houses. People used caves successfully for thousands of years but I've never heard anyone argue that a cave is a better place to live than a house just because it is natural.
Before you make a comment like that you should compare the LHC performance to the restart of the Tevatron at Fermilab (and this was a restart not a new accelerator!). Having been there when it was happening the number of power cuts was far in excess of what the LHC has experienced so far. Indeed at one point the power cut out about twice a week which was far more of a problem for the Tevatron since it took almost a day to make enough antiprotons.
Eh... there are some legitimate herbal, non-mainstream medicines...
This is potentially even more stupid than other alternative medicines. To take a herbal medicine means that you clearly believe in the active ingredient (because it is the same in both) but that you would rather take an unknown dose of it with various impurities and other chemicals added. Why on Earth would you not want to take the carefully manufactured version of the same chemical where the dose can be carefully controlled and there are no unknown impurities? Being produced by nature does not make the chemical magically better.
More surprising is that being British (and no, that is NOT synonymous with gay) means that you can't give blood in Canada. Apparently we are all contaminated with mad cow disease. I've tried explaining the the British government has been that way since well before BSE existed but CBS just aren't interested.
There are plenty of Americans who take Astrology WAY too fucking seriously
Astrology is not a complete waste of time. To paraphrase a well-known British astronomer: "Astrology has proven one law of science: there really is a sucker born every minute!".
When I'm asked what sign I was born under I usually respond that I'm not sure but it probably said something like "Maternity Ward". Depending on the response you can then easily tell whether it is worth continuing a conversation....
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I'm tired of this fat jolly asshole violating our airspace every year.
Actually you should be far more worried about him violating the laws of physics.
The first two having apostolic and historic roots (ie go all the way back to apostles and first Christians) separated in 1054.
Actually all three branches have apostolic roots the only difference being that the Orthodox schism happened earlier than the Protestant one. Anglican bishops still trace their lineage back through the Catholic church to the apostles.
Actually I thought even then it only applied to certain ones when he is speaking "ex cathedra" which he only does when there is absolutely no possibility that he can be proven wrong. It is extremely clear that popes are most definitely fallible (e.g. Galileo) but because the papacy never declared geocentrism as a required belief in an "ex cathedra" manner the Catholic church can breathe a big sigh of relief and still claim that their pope is infallible in certain situations.
Sure you can. "Catholic" means "universal" - and we all know that those "Universal" churches are all just cults (but then again, so are all religions).
No, "catholic" means universal, "Catholic" refers to a specific branch of Christianity. If you use the capital letter it refers specifically to the name and not the adjective. In the same way that not all people who are conservative will necessarily vote Conservative (which is a UK/Canadian right wing party - or somewhat slightly to the left of the democrats if you are in the US).
If Dark Matter exists you already have some at home, probably a lot more than you expect in fact!
Something with no energy means it has no movement.
Or no mass.
You mean "AND no mass.": E^2=m^2c^4+p^2c^2 so both mass and momentum must be zero for zero energy.
The only comment I have to make in the other direction is that I am uncomfortable with the probabilities that scientists have suddenly started to give - "there's a 77% chance we are completely correct".
That is not what they are saying. They are really saying "IF we are correct there is a 23% chance that this is just a background fluctuation.". In particle physics we usually have two unofficial rules regarding results. If you have a 3 sigma effect (~1% chance of it being background) then you can claim "evidence for ...." and if you have a 5 sigma variation you can claim discovery. This is because it is REALLY easy to make mistakes in a complex analysis and underestimate or be unaware of other possible sources of background. The large safety factors in the unofficial scheme protect us from making ourselves look like idiots when we get something wrong because it is unlikely (but not unheard of) to get something wrong by such a large amount.
The CDMS result is barely over 1 sigma in significance and so is really nothing at all. In fact if you read their arXiv paper they present the result as a non-observation and put limits on the Dark Matter signal which is the honest thing to do. However they clearly have a clever PR machine which has managed to persuade the media that it is something worthy of reporting.
You are misconstruing my post as support for the US actions. My point was simply that governments do act without regard for lawyers when poked with a big enough stick. They do not always react sensibly, e.g. invading Iraq, but they do react so suggesting that governments would be unable to deal with an imminent asteroid impact due to legal wrangling and diplomacy is ludicrous. They might not be able to deal with it due to incompetence but that is a different issue!
Who is focussing on nuclear weapons. My point was simply that it is unrealistic to assume that governments will sit about wringing their hands in the face of imminent danger. They may over react or react stupidly but react they will regardless of what international law or diplomacy may suggest.
Err... WTF are you smoking? Just about every intelligence agency on the planet said before the Afghan campaign that invading Afghanistan would not yield a positive result
The point I was trying to make is that the US did not sit around wringing its hands and going "oh dear, we can't do anything because the lawyers would get in the way" even for something far less severe than an asteroid. I agree that some/most of what they did was not at all sensible - hence my second point about making sure that you have a sane leader.
Yes I'm sure if an asteroid threatens the world leaders will all sit down with their lawyers and fiddle while the Earth burns. What this author forgets is that if your survival is on the line people will generally do what they think needs to be done regardless of what the law, lawyers or anyone else may say. Just look at the US after the 11/9 attacks. The trick is to ensure that you have a leader who can listen to scientific advice and make the right decision based on that and not on what will win them the next election. However, since if they get it wrong there probably won't be another election, they should at least be well motivated!
I was going to suggest that perhaps they were meaning in Ugandan dollars but looking it up Uganda uses the Schilling and it would be a budget of almost 59 billion of those.
would the mass difference make a measurable difference due to gravity ?
My guess would be yes since there is a well established method to measure the historic ocean temperature using the ratio of Oxygen-18 to Oxygen-16. O-16 preferentially evaporates due to its smaller mass and so during ice ages the oceans are depleted of O-16 because it evaporates and forms glacial ice.
How is the specific order of events that lead to the creation of our planet going to tell us anything about the creation of other planets?
I don't know but I do know that I'm glad you weren't around in the 18th century to question why on Earth anyone would ever want to waste time studying electricity. Knowing how planets form might appear useless to you today but who's to say that in 300 years time it is not extremely useful for targeting interstellar probes or identifying planets and asteroids with useful ore deposits.
We would not be where we are today if we only researched topics for which we can see the immediate applications. That's not to say that all curiosity driven research will end up being useful but it is impossible to tell which topics will be the essential ones to know in 100+ years.
"Although the proposed engine will consume energy for manipulation of the particles, the propulsion will occur without any loss of mass," says Feigel.
I'd like to see how that works. The one thing that even non-physicists know is that energy is equivalent to mass (E=mc2). This applies to all power. However the mass loss of a battery which discharges is negligible compared to the total mass hence it is usually neglected for energies below nuclear. Unless they can show otherwise my very strong suspicion is that they energy needed to manipulate the nano-particles will be identical to the energy needed to emit a photon of the same momentum. Until they can show this I do not see anything to be excited about.
Newtonian Mechanics are valid, just not as accurate as Relativity.
Newtonian Mechanics are a valid approximation in certain circumstances to the underlying fundamental physics that, as far as we know, is relativistic. Relativity is not "just more accurate" it is, as far as we know, a fundamental description of reality. It might be that there is an even more accurate model of reality of which relativity is an approximation, but we do not know that for certain.
What manager of a movie theater would be stupid enough to push this through? Do they not realize how much VERY bad publicity this is making for his theater.
Perhaps a manager who thinks that holding a surprise party in the middle of a cinema and singing happy birthday while everyone else is trying to watch the movie might just annoy his other customers? It just goes to show that even stupid laws can sometimes be used to good effect.
Cleaning something with chlorine or hydrochloric acid or something similar to break out the active ingredient from other ingredients, for example.
I didn't say natural chemicals are magically better... I said they seem to have less side effects.
Exactly so somehow identical chemicals behave differently because one was produced in a lab and the other in a field. Perhaps what you are referring to is that sometimes the production methods do not produce identical chemicals and the similar, but not the same, chemical behaves differently. In this case it is usually because research has shown that the different chemical is either more effective or causes fewer side effects than the "natural" one. Hence you are left with a risk vs. reward benefit. The new drug has been shown to be better but might have strange interactions that are rare enough not to have been seen.
Even conceding that medicine is still far superior because when a strange reaction is observed it is noted, confirmed and either the drug withdrawn, changed or careful instructions on when not to use it are issued. I have yet to see this happen for herbs so even if there are strange and dangerous side effects people will keep on suffering from preventable interactions.
Other people, however, who believe that herbal medicine might make them feel better while they find a better solution are just taking advantage of all the options to them, and as far as I'm concerned, they should.
The problem is WHY do they think that herbal medicine will make them better? They think this because companies making herbal products are not held to the same strict standards of honesty as the normal medicine. Would it be ok for someone to setup a fake charity and scam money off the public? As long as nobody found out about it those donating would feel happy about being generous so that would be fine right?
The herbal version tastes better (I'd rather drink a mug of tea than take a pill).
You'd place taste over effectiveness and safety? Really? If so then I suppose you can get child versions of some medicines with flavours added. However since you swallow pills you generally don't taste them.
For mild conditions, the exact dosage is not particularly important.
I think most people would regard a stomach upset as minor so you might want to read this.
The processed version is more expensive
Probably true but I tend to regard my health and safety as actually worth something, don't you?
No, being produced by nature doesn't make it magically better, but it does often (most times) produce significantly less negative side effects than the man made versions.
Ok lets do a thought experiment. In the first case I will produce water artifically in a lab by burning hydrogen in the presence of oxygen. In the second case I will go out and find some water lying around in the natural environment. Now please explain how the lab produced water will create more side-effects that the "natural" water. Your statement is exactly the kind of "natural chemicals are magically better" type of argument that I was complaiing about!
You may not know the dose, but it doesn't really matter, if it works.
True, and playing Russian roulette is not dangerous if the chamber is not loaded with a bullet. The problem is how do you know in advance?
Medicine has a place. "Alternative" medicine has a place....people have been "successfully" using them for thousands of years.
You are right. Alternative medicine has a place as the collected mix of superstition and knowledge that eventually grew into real medicine. Herbs are primitive, natural drugs just as caves are primitive, natural houses. People used caves successfully for thousands of years but I've never heard anyone argue that a cave is a better place to live than a house just because it is natural.
Before you make a comment like that you should compare the LHC performance to the restart of the Tevatron at Fermilab (and this was a restart not a new accelerator!). Having been there when it was happening the number of power cuts was far in excess of what the LHC has experienced so far. Indeed at one point the power cut out about twice a week which was far more of a problem for the Tevatron since it took almost a day to make enough antiprotons.
Eh... there are some legitimate herbal, non-mainstream medicines...
This is potentially even more stupid than other alternative medicines. To take a herbal medicine means that you clearly believe in the active ingredient (because it is the same in both) but that you would rather take an unknown dose of it with various impurities and other chemicals added. Why on Earth would you not want to take the carefully manufactured version of the same chemical where the dose can be carefully controlled and there are no unknown impurities? Being produced by nature does not make the chemical magically better.
More surprising is that being British (and no, that is NOT synonymous with gay) means that you can't give blood in Canada. Apparently we are all contaminated with mad cow disease. I've tried explaining the the British government has been that way since well before BSE existed but CBS just aren't interested.
There are plenty of Americans who take Astrology WAY too fucking seriously
Astrology is not a complete waste of time. To paraphrase a well-known British astronomer: "Astrology has proven one law of science: there really is a sucker born every minute!".
When I'm asked what sign I was born under I usually respond that I'm not sure but it probably said something like "Maternity Ward". Depending on the response you can then easily tell whether it is worth continuing a conversation....