Recent content by Zmunkz

links/books with more info? I replied to this yesterday, but apparently the post didn't take. Trying again! @Bill_K, I was wondering if you could provide a source that does a good job clarifying your points here. I was under the impression that quantum fluctuations produce real energy...

So is your underlying question if the cosmological constant implies fine tuning? Or are you looking for feedback on your mathematical reasoning? If the first, I'll refer you to Victor Stenger's "the fallacy of fine tuning", or Leonard Susskand's "the cosmic landscape". Both conclude, as did...

I hear you -- I certainly don't expect to find an answer to the instrumentalism vs realism debate here. Perhaps you could still elaborate, however. I was more hoping to see if there is a "communal leaning" on this issue. Some models, such as general relativity for instance, are taken by many...

I am no expert on this stuff, so please forgive any errors. I've read some Feynman and seen his diagrams showing a particle and antiparticle pair getting spontaneously created, moving apart slightly, then re-combining and annihilating a moment later. The Feynman diagram expresses this as a...

Yes -- I've not seen it phrased like that, but I think you are saying the same thing. In textbooks it is often a train or a spaceship said to be moving at some speed. That speed is given relative to a reference frame, and represents "v" in the equation.

I think you are missing a ( 1- ... ) in your denominator. In any case: t=time measured to pass in the moving frame t(p)=proper time measured to pass in a still frame v=speed of the moving frame measured from the still frame c=speed of light in a vacuum

In principle... probably, yes. Every interpretation of a model has implications along with it, and it is just a matter of time before someone clever enough comes along and sees a way to measure the reality of one set of implications verse another. I am not that someone, however. All I can add...

I'd write this off as a bad analogy. I think his point is just that the subset of the photons whose which-path information was potentially indicated but then erased continue to interfere as if no which-path information had been taken in the first place. When I read this passage many years ago...

For all the details about what really does happen, check out this article: http://www.dailycognition.com/index.php/2008/10/27/what-would-happen-if-you-were-exposed-to-outer-space-without-a-suit.html But as the OP stated, death from asphyxiation...

It is definitely possible. In the case of the vacuum energy of space, we are pretty sure it is a non-constant constant. I am not sure if this could be observed directly, but I imagine there would be clever indirect ways we might deduce such a thing, at least for some variables. The idea that...

Although phrased as his own idea, this is not. I've heard Einstein attributed to this sort of interpretation on some of those science channel shows, like Through the Wormhole (or one of those). I've never been able to find a technical discussion of what this interpretation comes from, or if...

What you are saying is only true if you are talking about motion of the universe as a whole, with respect to... something other than the universe. I do not think an infinite inertia argument makes sense regarding motion within the universe. I am also not sure an infinite universe necessarily...

I don't believe this is correct. If the universe were the surface of an N-sphere with an infinite radius, it would be both infinite and bounded, no?

I don't think you are going to find a very satisfactory answer to this... Except for the label itself ("spin"), there is not really anything in common between a physical object spinning, and the spin number of a particle. It's just a tag identifying what a particle will communicate to other...

"Does this mean that quantum physics only exists for slightly more than a century, since it didn't exist before it was observed?" The answer to that part is: no. Quantum mechanics existed before it was observed by us for sure. Such things as the formation of galaxies, and possibly the Big...