Jump to content

imatfaal

Moderators
  • Posts

    7809
  • Joined

  • Last visited

3 Followers

About imatfaal

Profile Information

  • Location
    St James's Park
  • College Major/Degree
    Birkbeck - postgrad Law
  • Favorite Area of Science
    History and Philosophy of Science

Retained

  • lazy do-nothing mudslinger

Recent Profile Visitors

103447 profile views

imatfaal's Achievements

Genius

Genius (11/13)

2.5k

Reputation

  1. Where did you go?

  2. imatfaal

    Triangle

    Actually I am struggling to see an easy solution - I am pretty sure that with enough leg work I could manage a complex very involved answer; but these sorts of questions tend to resolve to a few lines of proof. Just cannot see it yet - maybe I have missed something obvious
  3. ! Moderator Note OK - Last chance. I asked everyone to be nice and stick to the topic, I asked for no more proselytizing and quoting of bare verses from books. And now we are way off topic and we are still getting verses of a holy book quoted. On topic from now on.
  4. ! Moderator Note OK so many things are acceptable in the lounge - rampant tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories are not. This is a scienceforum - one of very few which are moderated - not a conspiracy forum of which there are hundreds. Please peddle your wares elsewhere - even in the lounge we need a modicum of groundedness. Thread locked. You may still open threads to ask simple SCIENCE based questions. But any other huge screeds will just be locked.
  5. Is Mary Winehouse a bastard mix of Amy Winehouse and Mary Whitehouse? A great soulful voice who sings about censorship and the decline of family values if you sit in quiet room and listen to your favourite tune on FM radio, DAB radio, tape, cd, bad encrytion, good encryption, etc. You will notice a difference but you pay your money and take your choice of where you draw the balance between money and fidelity.
  6. Does quite a lot of threatening in general. And it invades a lot more countries. I didn't say that it didn't apply in the initial formation too. It is just that if your government start talking about regime change as the endgame of a large scale military intervention then how can you still claim the moral high ground. And how can you dismiss North Korea's ravings as solely rampant paranoia when said country's integrity and sovereignty is threatened by an elected representative of the highest level.
  7. Can someone explain why the above does not work just as well as follows: North Korea must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
  8. It is the fodder of life long memories - who wants kids to remember the trip to disneyland when they could have great memories of the trip to see the sun go dark To be honest I think the idea of packing up the station wagon and heading of to see the total eclipse of the sun with wife, curious 4 year-old, and 8-week babe in arms (congrats to you and la iNow btw) sounds like the beginning of a Great American Novel. And as if to prove my point: I reached up to grab the nearest John Irving I could find - the first chapter is called The Inadequate Lamp Shade (clearly a reference to the eclipse) and the first line is "One night when she was four and sleeping..." (Admittedly it goes a bit dark from then on in). A bibliomancy for the 21st century - do things if they might make a good plot for a novel
  9. Agree on that. But from a purely mercenary viewpoint it might be worth learning. I was offered a 7 figure salary to work in one of the Gulf states - in my industry English is used almost exclusively so I wouldn't have needed to be able to already speak Arabic (expected to learn eventually). However in many other industries you can change your salary by an order of magnitude by working in the Gulf - but you need good Arabic (and to tick other boxes too). I value my way of life too highly to move to a brutal dictatorship - but many others value the ability to provide a much more affluent lifestyle for themselves and family as more important..
  10. ! Moderator Note This thread is on how people, and how will people in the future will, respond to Islam. It is not open season on attacking any religion nor for proselytising. Two post containing just transcripts of verses from Koran have been hidden.
  11. Which is exactly why we use less poetic, or preferably mathematical descriptions. Time has been dilated - each tick of his clock has, from an earthbound perspective, taken longer. If he had kept a (impossibly good) telescope trained on the earth he would not have seen any discontinuities or jumps into the future - just a (quite complicated and let's not go there quite now) change in the way time passes. If the earth-bound scientists had kept a telescope trained on him again they would has seen him do everything he did with no jumps or gaps.
  12. ! Moderator Note The answer is obvious and would help mankind immensely - however as I have moderated in this thread I am bound not to take a substantive part in it
  13. Not sure that your question isn't a false dichotomy. Firstly we like relativity as an explanation as the calculation of the expected time dilation via the schwarztchild metric was predicted and then found to be accurate; it is always better when it is this way around. Secondly, your wording is dubious - time is dilated, clocks which are running normally in their own frame, can tick slower or faster when viewed from a different frame which is in relative motion, at a different gravitational potential, or both in the case of an orbitting satellite. You need to be very careful when using terms like travelling into the future - it is the marrying up of linguistic terms like that and the mathematical formalism of the physical theory which causes many of the problems of understanding. Clocks at a higher gravitational potential tick faster when viewed from the persepective of a local frame at lower gravitational potential and vice versa. Clocks in relative motion tick slower when viewed from the local frame which the observer deems to be at rest. "Travelling into the future" does that mean the same?
  14. ! Moderator Note OK stop with the silly sniping - everyone! If you cannot participate in a thread on religion without descending to logical fallacies, insulting behaviour and boorishness then just steer clear of these topics. Posts about another member, or about their characteristics, or the failings you perceive them to have will be treated as hijacking and or abusive. Keep on topic and keep it acceptable
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.