Deified

I saw him give a lecture in Berlin last year. It was on the extent of human understanding of the origin/evolution fo the universe. I was sitting in the second row during the Q&A, and then I passed right by him on my way out of the building. The whole event was like a rock concert for nerds. Big crowds of people.

I don't think that expansion of space can be said to have inertia. Of course, I'm no expert, but that just doesn't make any sense to me.

Does expanding space have inertia? That's a very curious thought. AFAIK, the rate of expansion is measured by observing galaxies that are approximately relatively stationary.

If you turned the fan around, so it pointed backwards, you would make the boat faster. As you said, it would be a propeller. (boats like this are often used where minimum draft is essential)

String theory. Or rather the ethos that string theory is the only answer and that it is necessarily right. Smolin feels that the tactics employed by string theorists to keep other ideas out of the field (e.g. not inviting proponents of competing ideas to string conferences) are unethical and hurting physics. He dislikes the fact that so much of the available funding is going exclusively to string theorists, when string theory has failed to produce testable predictions for so long. I'm just paraphrasing, I may have gotten details wrong. I haven't read the book, but I've read a couple reviews. There is a review of this book, and Peter Woit's Not Even Wrong in this month's SciAm. On the topic of Motl, Peter Woit claims that Motl offered readers of his blog $20 for any successful one-star reviews of Woit's book on amazon. That seems pretty unethical and downright nasty to me.

This is all very interesting. Really. But just so I'm clear, all of the forces 'unify' (or whatever) at higher energies, in the same way that at higher energies the EM force and W force are the same. In other words, there's no particularly special connection between EM and W; we've just seen them 'unify' in the lab? Sorry if I'm way off.

Can someone please explain to me why it is that we consider the electromagnetic and weak forces to be 'unified' but not the strong and electroweak? As far as I understand it (and I probably don't understand it very far at all) the electromagnetic and weak forces are the same thing at higher energies. I also understand that there is a 'unification energy' at which all the forces are one single force. So why the special status of 'unified' for the electroweak? Is it some relic of past, less complete understandings? Or (more likely) am I missing something? Thanks for any light shed!

That's very interesting about the anti-american stuff. Any word on Charon? The press release said that there would be (initially) only three dwarf planets (Pluto, Ceres, Xena), but as far as I can tell, Charon fits the criteria. Is it one of the twelve candidates? Or is there something I'm missing? Also, Is anyone gonna care? Do you think that this scientific redefinition might have very little effect on public perception. (If we taught kids that there was a lot more out there than just nine planets we might not be having this problem.)

Give me numbers and the sources form which they come. Moreover, what does it matter if some environmentalists are hypocritical. The point is that the vast majority of SUV drivers are simply being environmentally irresponsible. What does it matter who's criticizing them? This isn't a debate. You've presented no thesis. What is it we're talking about again? And for the love of Jebus, it's spelled "hypocrisy!"

The process uses live tissue from the patient. It's already custom tailored.

As my math teacher told us today, 0^-1 is equal to 1! I believed him, why shouldn't I have? The rest of the class did too. Thanks for the answer swansont. What are exactly the concerned equations here? (in the magnetic case)

Does this work for magnetism as well? I suppose it would, but I'm not familiar with this area of physics.

I look at porn. Hardcore porn usually doesn't interest me. I've never liked the violent stuff. I don't know about psychological damage, but not being able to think about anything besides sex because you haven't had any sexual realease in a while isn't any fun either. I have a question in the same theme. Those of you who say it's a question of morality: is looking at nude women immoral? I find the female form to be one of the most beautiful forms that exists (thank you evolution) and I can't understand people who say that it's indecent to have (artful) nude pictures around the house. The nude form has certainly been an artistic theme for lord knows how long. Isn't the earliest known artwork a small statue of a naked woman?