Recent content by AgentSmith

How could we possibly know what it looks like? I have tried to imagine a block universe, and came up with a 4-spheroid with lots of pulsating "pimples" that come and go, due to QM. Its nothing but my imagination. The movie Transtellar probably did better.

In Niven and Pournelles Footfall , the Climbing fifthp is what the science fiction writers group ends up calling humanity. Climbing as in ascending, rising, etc.

The only job left for philosophers is to question everything and anything while never reaching answers. Time is change in the spacetime continuum.

A great novel by great authors. That fifthp was integrated into the Climbing fifthp

An alien with an octopus-like form with many appendages could evolve into a tool user and tool-maker. At least some of the appendages would have to have some strength, others extreme dexterity.

Who do they think they are trying to convince. We're not real.:bow:

What is the difference between spacetime and fundamental space and time?

The original series was like a breath of fresh air in the vast wasteland of television. Of course my real favorite was My Mother the Car. o_O

We are now into the 21st century. Hopefully we have progressed a bit.

No way to get an exact value through experiment. Glad you're here to tell me these things, professor. Of course they could have chosen any value whatsoever, but that would be pretty d**m stupid. Ya think there is a reason they chose not to be stupid?

deleted OP I know that. But still the new definition had to fit within experimental results. (We could and have set it to 1, but there would be a ripple effect.)

The committee did not pick a value out of thin air. It was ultimately based on experimental values.

Alternative theories have failed verification attempts of one sort or another. Something is out there that has mass but does not interact with the electromagnetic force. We can always hope that a TOE or quantum gravity will resolve the problem, but...

Hugh Everett, who more or less invented the many-worlds hypotheses of QM, stated, or rather showed, that the wave function never collapses. He was roundly criticized at the time, ca. 1960-65, and left physics, but had his defenders, and has recently been sort of rehabilitated.

There is a difference between mathematical constants like Pi, and physical constants like c. The latter are experimental, while mathematical constants not.