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whiskers

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    Relativity

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Meson

Meson (3/13)

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  1. Remember the It's weird, alright. If you have two spaceships traveling at the same speed, and they are satisfied that their clocks are synchronized, and then they decide that when their clocks both strike 8 they will give identical puffs of thrust out the back, thus accelerating by the same amount - after 8, the observers in the ships will no longer find that their clocks are synchronized with each other. It seems so odd, since as far as they are concerned they did everything completely symmetrically.
  2. Most (all?) pseudoscience has come into existence since the beginning of the scientific method, and copies it, attempting to gain the legitimacy of scientific methods and results. Astrology is very different. It is based upon traditions (and some would say observations) which predate science. It therefore does not need to presume to have a specific scienc-y-sounding mechanism.
  3. So true. If you ask 6 economists, you'll get 7 opinions. Economists have predicted 8 out of the last 5 recessions.
  4. http://www.physicstutorials.org/home/mechanics/1d-kinematics/relative-motion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilean_invariance
  5. Fooled? Maybe not. You know what they say: "motion is relative."
  6. The western astrological tradition is well-aware of the differences between tropical and sidereal coordinates. Gemini is simply used as a name for a particular segment of space which used to house the constellation Gemini. The whole rap about how tropical astrology "didn't keep up" is a straw man. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidereal_and_tropical_astrology Interesting example of how detailed the issue goes: http://www.astro.com/astrology/in_vedic2_e.htm
  7. In curved space-time, motion in a straight line becomes falling downward. http://www.physics.ucla.edu/demoweb/demomanual/modern_physics/principal_of_equivalence_and_general_relativity/curved_spacetime.html
  8. Causal connection or no, western astrology uses the 360 degrees of celestial longitude, which begins at the vernal equinox point, even though the *names* of the signs derive from a time when the imaginative/arbitrary constellations matched up with the seasonal framework.
  9. If I am on an accelerating rocket, I would measure all other local bodies to be accelerating in the opposite direction, with no force to explain their acceleration. If I am merely on a coasting rocket, I would measure all other local bodies to be coasting in the opposite direction, which needs no force to explain.
  10. The issue is not absolute disproof - which is impossible. The issue is what is worth pursuing or worrying about. Without any indication of a tiger in the room, can I state conclusively that there no tiger? No I cannot. Substitute snake or scorpion and you'll see what I mean.
  11. Do you understand that all motion is relative? And that all physics works the same if a constant velocity is added to all particles?
  12. Some people think they have a method that does work. Probably most are deluding themselves. However, it might be that some have something that hasn't been tested, or simply couldn't meet the high bar of the kinds of tests which have been performed.
  13. Fun fact: there are people out there doing heliocentric astrology. Absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence. You could try to start a fire with wet sticks all day long and it wouldn't prove "making fire doesn't work" - certainly you can point to all of the tests which have failed to show any validity and discourage people from pursuing it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_science http://www.theguardian.com/education/2004/may/18/research.highereducation In the western world, the stars don't play much of a part in astrology. Western astrology has signs based upon the seasonal quadrants, not positions of distant stars. In any event, the distance of the stars doesn't prevent them to be visible to us. It is not completely impossible to seek some type of influence there.
  14. If they are point masses and have elastic collision, the video of what happens after collision should be same as reversing the film on what happens before.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elastic_collision
  15. In the 2 body problem, if you just set the bodies down, they'll be attracted toward another and then collide. If either one has some velocity component perpendicular to the line between them, there will be one or another type of relationship depending on the eccentricity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_eccentricity It might be Parabolic, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parabolic_trajectory Hyperbolic, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbolic_trajectory or an elliptical orbit, one special type of which is a perfect circle this page is nice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-body_problem Do Jupiter and Sun orbit their common barycenter? Technically no because of the perturbations of other bodies in the SS, but they would if they were alone.
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