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Yes, he is, but QuantumT is using "you" to refer to all mods, and specifically referring to me in terms of shutting threads down. If the speculative thread dealt with physics, I'm the mod most likely to have interacted with you (over the years) Is it too fast? Well, that depends. We have received comments where people have complained about threads being left open too long, and begging us to close them. The people whose thread was shuttered rarely agree that they should have been locked. Bottom line is that there is no moderation strategy that will please everyone. The mods use their best judgement, built upon doing this for a number of years, and seeing a lot of people come and go. You in particular? In your first thread I tried to nudge you into compliance with our rules. That you needed to be more forthcoming with information. The thread was shut down after you announced "I will not participate in this open forum anymore" But you weren't true to your word. You came back, and to be honest, you lose a certain amount of goodwill from the mods when you pull a stunt like that. Once again, you were not forthcoming with information needed to support your position. That thread was closed, with a note that said if you did present supporting information, you could re-introduce the topic. I don't see where you took us up on the offer. The last one shut down was where you admitted you didn't understand the physics, and yet had a conjecture. I explained that this was not living up to our expectations, and at this point you had twice been given feedback on the matter of being able to support your ideas. Thus I had zero confidence that simply giving some feedback and letting the thread continue would improve matters. That was your third strike. The fact that you are placing the blame elsewhere tells me you haven't absorbed this feedback at all. So the question that I have is how many chances do you expect, when you show no improvement in your behavior?

Glass is a bit different as to why it is quickly cooled to harden. When glass is cooled rapidly the outside hardens first and then the inside of the glass cools and contracts. This puts the surface of the glass into compression. Glass breaks under tension, not compression, so the glass is much tougher. Since there is so much stress in the tempered glass, when it does break it goes into a gazzilion (technical term) pieces. Gorilla glass (think cell phones) is hard because large ions are exchanged for smaller ions in the glass and it again puts the glass surface in compression. If you are familiar with Corelle brand dishes they are so strong because they are made with a glass laminate process and the inner laminate has a higher CTE so when the glass cools after the lamination step the inner glass shrinks more and places the surface in compression. Tempered glass is not permanently hard, if the glass is taken up to the glass transition temperature the stresses will be relieved and the hardness will drop back to 'normal'. I work for a glass/ceramic company and my wife is a glass technologist - could you tell?

He was referring to what she did. She didn't simply make an opinion. She acted upon that opinion and supported a declared enemy of the United Kingdom. That is treason. Except this is a red herring. Because this is not the case. The evidence is not secret, her parent's citizenship is not being revoked, and it's not suspected actions. It's real actions.

Does it apologize to you by saying it’s Siri?

*sigh* Again, it's not the faulty details themselves that get a thread locked, it's the unreasonable adherence to them in the face of contrary evidence. EVERYONE involved in the threads is trying to teach, but only some are willing to learn. It's a shame that all this comes off as "trigger-happy moderation" instead of the attempt to enhance science discussion it's meant to be. Breaks the heart.

Perhaps this is more about not "being able to please all of the people all of the time"? And of course that old adage of it being a thankless job is certainly true. Do we need Mods? Yes. Are Mods going to make decisions that you are going to agree with 100% of the time? No I participate here because it is a science forum, and as such I would hope that the scientific methodology reigns supreme, particularly when ego driven people continually claim they have "bettered" some incumbent theory or model. More then likely they have not. Afterall if anyone really believes they have "bettered" GR for example, why would they announce it on some remote science forum. They would be taking it out to the world and preparing themselves for Stockholm in November and the Nobel prize! In essence science forums being open to any Tom. Dick or Harry, should only be considered as vehicles for asking science based questions, and giving mainstream explanations and reasons by those that know. Also of course many science forums such as this, also have sub forums such as Speculation, Politics etc, noting of course that the governing premise is the scientific method and whatever critical review of said views is needed. There are forums far more stringent then this forum, and also some far more lax. I can certainly direct people to one in particular that has far more discussions on ghosts, Goblins, Alien origin UFO's and conspiracy nonsense such as faked Moon landings and 9/11 alternative crap. Mods are human and sometimes make decisions that all of us are not going to agree with. I certainly did not agree with my forced 3 day holiday and believed it was wrong obviously. But I also recognise my shortcomings in that I will not tolerate bullies and will always give as good as I get, and see the necessity to refute vigorously those that love to attempt to denigrate some aspect of science, wrongfully and without reasonable cause. In doing that I recognise that on occasions I may go beyond reasonable criticism. I am trying to eliminate that undesirable feature of my otherwise incredible persona. As humans, we all I believe have agendas of some sort...some have religious agendas [closeted and un-closeted] and will inevitably love getting on their white charger and conducting crusades against the evil Atheist and the science he pushes...Others simply have over-inflated egos and believe they are capable of usurping current scientific theories, with tiresome 100% certainty and are incapable of accepting any criticism...My agenda is simply science and the scientific method and despite my "forced holiday" believe that in general, this rightly also appears to be the agenda of the Mods and Admins on this forum. And that's why you still have me!!!

No, you do not affect the energy of a donkey when you observe it. I really don't think you should argue with swansont like you know what you talking about, when you know he's a working physicist and has likely forgotten more than you and I know.

If you are talking about publishing a scientific paper then it isn't necessary. But you may lack the knowledge and experience to write a paper that would be accepted. There are occasional papers published by non-specialists working with experts in the field. For example, I think there was a paper published on the migratory habits of snails based on some work done by an amateur scientist for a TV program in the UK. I am not aware of anything like that in physics, though. There seems to be more opportunity for amateurs to make breakthroughs in mathematics.

For as long as you can resist your own vanity.

Since BBT has nothing to do with the creation of the universe, can we assume you think the maths are wrong because you've misunderstood them?

The selected item should be highlighted in the HTML page when selected. I would guess that one of the higher level divs might be what you want (eg. .sideNavBox) As for the code required, it would be something like: div.sideNavBox { background-color: lightblue; } https://www.w3schools.com/css/css_background.asp

The UK's high treason is defined as this: "Offences constituting high treason include plotting the murder of the sovereign; committing adultery with the sovereign's consort, with the sovereign's eldest unmarried daughter, or with the wife of the heir to the throne; levying war against the sovereign and adhering to the sovereign's enemies, giving them aid or comfort; and attempting to undermine the lawfully established line of succession." And I agree. She deserves a trial to determine the punishment. But until then, she's already been convicted of high treason against the United Kingdom.

There is a lot of hatred on social media about her. Mainly from the brexit types. I can understand the resentment. Legally I presume we should have taken her back then prosecuted her, but, meh, whatever - you make your bed you lie in it. She might actually be safer out there than back here anyway. There are right wingers seething with hatred towards her - I have no inclination to argue her defence. She left the country to join a terrorist group that is openly at war with us - why should we care about her now?

To protect against stealing intellectual property there have been introduced patents. U.S. patent cost between $10k-$30k. So better if your idea is worth something otherwise you will end up with a lost of huge amount of money. And you need to be prepared to license and/or start production right away after acquiring patent. You will need to earn money to sustain patent (maintenance fee) You might find interesting to read this article "The Top 5 Mistakes Inventors make with their Invention": http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2015/07/18/top-5-mistakes-inventors-make-invention/id=59286/

I am not aware that "ideas" are stolen very often. There are occasional examples of plagiarism, where someone will pass off someone else's work as their own. But with so much research published on the Internet, anti-plagiarism software can detect this (even if people change a few words). If the research has immediate and valuable commercial possibilities, then the researchers are quite likely to set up a company (with patents, trademarks, etc) to exploit and protect their work.

And lacking due process. And almost certainly not legal.

Hi Lizwi, This is an interesting question and I have some views about this! Unfortunately in academia there is a battle with this question. The research groups I have worked in have all been open minded about publishing and sharing their work for furthering the knowledge in that area. In many ways you want people to use your work as a basis because then you have instigated that line of research which might lead to a whole bunch of other people's work you are interested in and hopefully they all look to you and appreciate your initial work. The larger science community has to get on board for initial research to become industrially viable and actually useable. On the other hand, you don't want people to beat you by publishing the exact work you are currently working on or want to publish next. It is sometimes good to reach out and collaborate with 'competitors' for the good of science and scientific politics. If you're not willing to do that then it becomes a race. Many of these races for publication results in papers which are sub standard and needed more time and effort on. Of course, it is common to never list your own ideas and 'future work' in extensive detail within the paper but make this more general!

Davisson and Germer confirmed the hypothesis, but that wasn't originally why they were doing the experiment. They started a year before deBroglie presented his thesis. But the theory did indeed come before the experiment showed the results.

Slow cooling allows certain structures to grow larger, especially if there is any kind of crystal structure to it. Quenching drastically shortens that time frame. You have to heat the material up past a certain point for this to work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quenching "A type of heat treating, quenching prevents undesired low-temperature processes, such as phase transformations, from occurring. It does this by reducing the window of time during which these undesired reactions are both thermodynamically favorable, and kinetically accessible; for instance, quenching can reduce the crystal grain size of both metallic and plastic materials, increasing their hardness."

For goodness sake look at the DSE again, the evidence is all before you. Particles go through one by one. the over time the pattern is a wave interference. It's nothing to do with philosophy and totally to do with science. It was unexpected (well it was over 100 years ago) but that doesn't mean it isn't science. Some of the best science has come from the unexpected. Maybe most of the best stuff actually.

Give me a break.

No worries very few layman grasp all the ramifications until they spend time studying on something I describe in the above manner. Here is a little hint though what I described is a homogeneous and isotropic scalar field. This is precisely the type of field that the cosmological constant matches in observational evidence and is modelled as such. Here is some handy study material specific to the cosmological constant. http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.3966 "why the prejudice against a constant"http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0508052 "In an expanding universe, what doesn't expand? Richard H. Price, Joseph D. Romano Here is a handy analogy to understand how local mass ie a galaxy doesn't expand due to the cosmological constant. First ask yourself a question, why does the moon orbit the Earth and not the Sun whose mass far exceeds Earths mass? Well the simple answer is that local to the Earth (where the moon orbits, the gravitational field of the Earth is stronger than the Suns gravity. A similar thing occurs with galaxies, local to the mass of a galaxy, the gravitational force is stronger than the cosmological constant. The only areas that expand are in the voids between large scale structures. This is where gravity is too weak to counter it far far away from mass sources.

Why would anyone want to discuss a "theory" of yours that was based on misinformation? If you want to continue talking about an idea like that, just 1) fix the mistakes, 2) gather more supportive evidence, and 3) open a new, better thread! We close the bad ones so we don't waste time on the under-supported and poorly founded concepts. These are easy to spot because the poster starts soapboxing and repeating the same poor points. Petty reasons? Having bad information and trying to build a theory from it is hardly petty. You don't build a house on a poor foundation. Instead of crying about spilt sour milk, you should be figuring out a better way to present a fresh, thoughtful, rigorous approach that might better persuade skeptical science-minded folks your idea has merit. If at first you don't succeed... remember that one? Only a fraction of human ideas are right, after all.

I can honestly tell you the mods on this forum are far less rigid than many other forums I visit. On forums with less rigidity the posters run amock with all sorts of rules violations and a total lack of any actual science. I find this forum has a decent balance between enforcing the rules, and allowances depending on the nature of the posts. It is the primary reason this forum is my preferred choice.

Well yes, we know of four 'fundamental forces' in the Universe. All have different effects at different ranges or over different distances. Strong nuclear, weak nuclear, gravity and electromagnetic. For the first two the clue is in the name 'nuclear'. They are active within atoms or between sub atomic particles. So they do not answer your question here. They are basically too short range. That leaves gravity and the electromagnetic force. At ranges close enough to consider bonding of atoms to form molecules the elctromagnetic force outweighs gravity many times over. The electromagnetic force is entirely responsible for bonding atoms to form molecules. However it does this in conjunction with motion of charged particles, which can be very complicated. Ionic and covalent bonding is the result of the electrostatic part of the EM force The theory you are looking for is called the Lennard Jones potential https://www.google.co.uk/search?source=hp&ei=v9FrXMShJIneavuTofgC&q=lennard+jones+forces&btnK=Google+Search&oq=lennard+jones+forces&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0j0i22i30l5j0i22i10i30.820.12012..12582...0.0..0.108.1936.28j1......0....1..gws-wiz.....0..0i131j0i10.2W3nAzSDPBE Which leads to Lennard Jones forces. At greater ranges gravity also plays a part, for instance it stops our atmosphere flying away. Does this help?

Originally, there are two major divisions of science - Natural sciences and Social sciences; Natural sciences are disciplines designed to predict and explain events that occur in our natural environment (Physics, Biology, Chemistry...), while Social sciences are usually fields of academic scholarship which explore aspects of human society (law, history, sociology...). From this, it is clear enough to state that natural sciences study the psychical world, and social sciences study human behavior. This being said, we can easily decide in which category does Linguistics fall; Linguistics is known as the scientific study of language and its form, meaning and structure, including the study of grammar, syntax and phonetics. However, Linguistics is a rather vast field of study and it can be divided in specific branches, such as psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, computational linguistics, etc. According to this official and standard definition, Linguistics seems to fall under the category of Social sciences - since it studies a certain aspect of human behavior. However, linguistics tends to have different aspects of which some of those aspects belong to natural sciences, while others belong to social sciences. For instance, the aspects of linguistics that are related to natural sciences are neurolinguistics or biolinguistics. I think that this mix does not make linguistics and entirely social science, nor an entirely natural science, making it an interdisciplinary subject. But the fact that linguistics not being an entirely social science is not the problem here. The problem is the attitude that people have towards the two main divisions of science; Namely, the majority of people don't really value social sciences as much as natural sciences. And since most people put linguistics under the category of social sciences, they tend to automatically doubts its scientific credibility. But, i don't completely blame them, as they might have a good reason for their opinion. Another important argument as to why some sciences or disciplines of study may not be considered as "real sciences", and that has nothing to do with the fact that one particular science is considered as social or natural; A scientific study must have a valid approach and methodology, based on strong evidence, and not some claims or theories that cannot be subjected to an observational state. And only when these standards are met and achieved, the field of study that is in question can be considered as a real science that has some sort of validity in the overall scientific community.

I'm so sincerely glad you got a better job , since this cite obviously is not your vocation , and the presentation surely is either way boring .But thank you for "reading" the numbers.

So you're saying that the age of a molecule affects its properties? Old ones work better than new ones? Clouds last only a "few thousand seconds"? That doesn't sound like science to me. 1. Water vapor has a broader IR spectrum than carbon dioxide, so the claim of "feedback" is utterly specious. 2. Water vapor represents ~15,000 ppmv, versus ~410 ppmv for carbon dioxide. 3. The Keeling Curve is scientific fraud, designed to mislead and deceive, which science should never do.