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Their definitions are so vague I think it'd be cool if there was some way of making replacement words with really well defined meanings to become official, lol. If I could chose, I'd make em this: knolligence - measure of how knowledgeable somebody is (for example, barack obama is more knolligent than a young teenager from a rough neighborhood) thoughtance - measure of the complexity of somebody's mind (for example, a human is more thoughtant than a monkey because it can comprehend say, mathematics) applicance - measure of the ability of the mind to use existing knowledge/logic for things (for example, a geneticist who is nearing a cure for cancer is more applicant than say a historian who learns purely for interest sake (no offense lol)) predictance - measure of the ability of the mind to use knowledge/logic/prior-experience to make predictions (for example, a mother who sees her child hanging around with a bad crowd would be predictant to warn him of peer pressure) tbh I dunno how you couldn't survive using these 4 words in some discussion, and I think It'd make articulating the specific type of 'intelligence' a lot easier than actually using intelligence and wisdom as your .. adjectives.

I guess that makes sense, thanks a lot hehe So say if it wasn't nuclear fuel at all, if it was simply some experiment which gives an outcome depending on the density (which the nuclear fuel thing as an example of) would there always be some compensating effect that would prevent a sort of, 'fracturing of reality' where one observer sees an outcome because of his reference frame and another observer sees some other outcome because they're in a different reference frame? Or is this a special case, due to the geometry of the nuclear fuel and the atoms changing enough to account for the probabilities of collisions and things staying the same?

As anyone would say, I suggest like trying your absolute hardest at high school, will keep the options open and will make your life a lot easier. (and ofc its cool to get good grades xD) My advice on choosing the field of science is to go with whatever you can see yourself doing for a long time and which seems to have unending interest for you. I chose physics because I love all the stuff with time 'bending', weird quantum phenomena, the deep array of particles in the standard model, all that stuff. ..Instead of say biology, which, with all do respect to biologists, ends up grossing me out constantly. Also if you want to understand something properly, where this understanding would take several years to build up, but you really want to understand it for interest's sake, I'd say go for that, since it'll keep you motivated and interested in the subject till you get to where you wanted to go. For me that's quantum field theory and general relativity, am still not quite there yet but so far the journey has been unending in interest. If you found something really fascinating in chemistry or biology which you really wanna know then.. yeah.

o_o Fair enough hehe, this is one of these times where my ignorance on this particular issue must be submitted to I guess. Kind of boggles the mind when you think that a complete and consistent set of axioms for all mathematics is impossible, its as though mathematics itself has like a built in self-destruct mechanism or something

Why not? :S I mean say you need logic for some parts, but there are some parts that need something other than pure logic to derive them. That'd mean you'd need some kind of empirical findings from the physical world to guide you, but isn't mathematics meant to be totally independent on the physical world?

I am reading these but will wait for the final conclusion you guys reach before I make any concrete replies or questions, if you don't mind hehe

You mean that whatever the critical density is, it will depend on other things that change between reference frames, and not just the length contraction effect? If so I guess that'd make sense, since it'd be a crazy violation of .. loads of things .. if the ship both got destroyed and didn't, ofc. thanks

Now there are still things I don't know about in relativity but I thought of this the other day (by that i mean many, many months ago) and I thought it might be post worthy xD this will sound a little unusual but bear with me So say you have a spacecraft with a group of incompetent, suicidal aliens inside, trying to develop a nuclear weapon to kill themselves with. They're doing this by trying to squeeze a piece of nuclear 'fuel' so that it reaches a particular density where, if you fire a neutron into the fuel, you could get a successful nuclear fission reaction going, triggering the nuclear fuel and causing it to destroy the spacecraft and them inside it. Now I'm hanging around on in space still relative to this spacecraft, which is moving relative to me at a constant velocity. Now because it's moving, the principle of length contraction comes into play, saying that from my perspective, the alien spacecraft is compressed in its direction of motion. So if I were to measure the density of the nuclear fuel that the aliens are using, I'd get a larger answer, because the length of the block of the fuel is reduced, smaller volume, so a higher fuel density. So say that the aliens make several attempts to blow themselves up with the nuclear fuel, but because these alien scientists are somewhat incompetent, they fail consistently, because they haven't squeezed the fuel enough for a successful reaction to get going. However I'm watching from my safe vantage point in space and I see them moving past make making an attempt to 'ignite' the nuclear fuel. Because I see the fuel as being at a higher density, the reaction IS able to get going (the atoms in the fuel are just close enough for the neutrons to, on average, hit another uranium nucleus say, and continue the reaction), and the experiment works and the ship gets destroyed and they all die. How is this possible if from their frame of reference, the fuel wasn't able to ignite because it wasn't compressed enough, and so they are still alive from their frame of reference?

Thanks for the replies, @spyman Ah I see, that does sorta makes sense (would make a lot more sense if i'd have finished special relativity by now) @swansont I'm guessing you mean a similar thing to what spy said, where it'd cause problems with causality and things would be going back in time, so we should see things going back in time but there isn't any evidence for that so far

Well I think mathematics is pure logic. I mean like there is no difference between mathematics and logic at all. Just so happens that logic can be used to quantify physical properties, most of the time scientists would call the areas of logic used to quantify things as 'mathematics' but I think it's far more general than just quantifying things.

I've learned through many youtube videos on things like special relativity and just general physics that there is no way to send information faster than light, because objects cannot move faster than light. This feels like a bit of a naive question but.. surely in the future it's possible for some loophole around the speed barrier to be found, or some kind of particle that does go faster (maybe a tachyon) to be found, and then could you send information faster than light? Just saying it seems like a pretty useful thing to do if it could be done

Well I'm not convinced you can really make this generalization to everybody, most people in britain for example were told the 'santa story' and I know lots who aren't really deceitful... I'd like to think I'm an example of somebody who was told this as a kid and grew to not be deceitful. Also for the average parent they don't see it as deception because they know eventually the child will know the truth, either from hearing it frmo his friends or the parents themselves, and until then it's just some nice wishful thinking for the kid. I'm not sure I could really look my future kid in the eye and tell him/her a story like that of christmas, knowing it's just made up :S

nice work

Well in my opinion, when it comes to things like 'santa claus' and the easter bunny and these kinda things, since they're such small lies, I guess its justifiable telling them to a kid, especially since they'll learn it isn't true when they get older. If, however, it was one of these things where there isn't evidence for it (such as the lack of evidence for the existence of santa claus) and you teach it to a kid as undeniable, unquestionable truth and never teach them to be skeptical about these kinda things, then there's a much more obvious problem there. In short I think things like telling your kid to be good around christmas so that santa will give them presents is a little questionable but ultimately harmless.

first year of a masters degree (I guess in some sense im still new to physics) you?

Hello everyone, I'm new here, call me hys I'm a first year physics student, about to switch to theoretical physics. (as a question has anybody done this themselves in the past? if so, what kinda career prospects does this bring up?)