Recent content by fando

When was ST ever called Physics? Is it official or something? And wasn't the testable part supposed to be the existence of supersymmetric particles? What happened to that?

A Hoax! This just in, it was all a hoax! http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/comments/peterlynds.html http://www.thequantummachine.com/ I'm going to start trusting my baloney detector more. :)

That's a pretty interesting effect, bout the X-Prize. And I'm not surprised that the unmanned missions have been relatively unscathed. I know that there's a faction at NASA, esp. JPL, that feel that the manned part of NASA is a complete waste of resources. I'm inclined to agree because we can...

Yeah, I was thinking that Lynds is proposing nothing new. The real question is, does he really have something that will make new physics? Wheeler calls him 'bold' and I'm inclined to think that it's just a polite put-down, unless it's actually a hoax.

Um, hello? The paper is hyperlinked in both my first post and second. Again, in full blown URI format: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001197/

Hmm.. it works fine for me in both Windows Adobe and Linux gv. Perhaps upgrade? http://216.239.53.104/search?q=cache:AP2Udx6uxwkJ:philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001197/02/Zeno%27s_Paradoxes_-_A_Timely_Solution.pdf+zeno%27s+paradoxes+a+timely+solution&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 by google. If that doesn't...

An article about some Peter Lynds fellow and his mind-blowing theory of time that has "rocked the physics world" appeared on Slashdork. Naturally enough, my combo quack and hoax detector started beeping. Well, here's his paper. I don't have time to deconstruct it, so I ask the community here...

If you want to go hard core, take a peek at Kippenhahn and Weigert's Stellar Structure and Evolution. It provides a comprehensive overview of stellar modeling, including various numerical and computational methods of simulating stars. To keep things simple, you probably want to avoid varying...

Yes, in a manner of speaking. I was abducted from my room and showered by a group of dorm mates dressed as aliens.

Let's start with the most obvious: What are you going to do for insurance? In California, insurance is required to register a personal car. It's probably the same in many states. Otherwise, check with those national solar car racing groups for advice. Find out how they were alowed to drive...

Perhaps on a deeper level the Yeti, etc are merely ancestral memories of our mortal enemies, the Neanderthals? ;) That would go a long way in explaining this crop of nonesense.

Hmm, that line needs a little more explanation. What I meant to say was that the math that gives rise to "ict" can only work in Euclidean, or flat, spacetime. It won't work in curved spacetime. For that, we need differential geometry, and we don't need no "ict" for that.

Great stuff! I think I have an idea of what rough edges need polishing. Thanks for the pointers and papers!

I'll provide another answer, which I hope helps people understand. The imaginary component ict in special relativity is just an artifact of the math chosen to work with the theory. In Gravitation, by Thorne, Wheeler et al, they do away with this in favor of math that doesn't use ict. There...

For eyepieces, get a 26mm super plossl and a 9.6mm and maybe a 15mm. The 26mm is standard for scopes of that size and the 9.6mm provides an almost optimal magnification. If your scope does not have a drive, then using the 9.6mm eyepiece can be a pain because it will be hard to keep the subject...