Lord Antares

Oh, sorry, I forgot that the speed of sound is different for different materials. Understood. Thanks for the math. I understand what you mean. It takes time for acceleration as well, so less compression will happen. I mentioned relativity once in reply to Bender because it was relevant to the question. I didn't think of it that way. I thought, because the rod is one continuous object, no speed greater than the speed by which you move it would be reached.

Hm, this is interesting information for me. What if one person pushes the rod, and the other pulls it? I suppose the issue of general relativity is that they can't pull it simultaneously per se, but if they each pull/push it one year before the other, would this ''shockwave'' meet in the middle? What would happen then? Aha. So I would assume that this elastic effect has a proportional relation with the amount of force with which the object is pushed? What would be the difference in travel time with the most elastic objects and with the least elastic ones? Is such information known?

No you aren't.

So they were right. But doesn't that mean that the same thing happens when you push a pen, just on a smaller scale? Then both ends of the pen don't move simultaneously, but there is a small delay instead? Doesn't that mean that the pen actually gets a bit shorter until this force gets to the other end? And doesn't that then mean that when a star moves, that both ends of the star don't move simultaneously, but instead this movement travels through the star until this reaches the other end? If this is true, I've been completely oblivious to it.

Imagine a stick of wood that was 1 light year long. There are two people holding it, one on either side of the stick. Before I proceed to my questions about this scenario, I would like to clarify something: In another thread, I was told that one person moving the stick wouldn't be instantaneous on the other end, but move at the speed of sound because of its elasticity. At first, I didn't understand this remark at all but I think I do now. I think what they mean to say that the stick would be very, very thin relative to its length so that it wouldn't be sturdy when held from both ends. I was thinking of a much wider stick. Imagine the length to width ratio of the stick to be that of an average shovel. If it helps further, imagine it to be a cube instead of a stick. I just want to remove the issue of elasticity (if it can be removed, of course). So would the movement on both ends in that case be instantaneous? I will post my questions after that has been answered, as they depend directly on the answer.

But the conditions suited it enough to be able to spawn life in the first place. If the environment was too harsh for this life, it wouldn't have developed there. He seems to suggest that with his polar bear example. And this just reinforces the idea that life adapts to the environment, not that life migrates drastically due to unsuitable environment. You and I both said that the conditions are never too harsh for an animals living there as it wouldn't be there. Any and all mutations are very small and very small. That is the main point.

Yes, and that's equivalent to the polar bear being flown to Sahara. I already addressed that and don't want to repeat myself. Because there is no reference. There is no known natural example of this, as I said. Completely wrong. Life developed under perfect circumstances for it. It didn't develop in a random environment and then adapted to it. It wouldn't have come to existence if it was in the wrong environment. You're not listening at all and I have lost interest in replying to you. You main issue is that you somehow assume that fish grew legs all of a sudden, then felt the need to move to land. They developed very small mutations over a very large period of time. Nothing that would warrant them changing the environment. EDIT: ^ What he said. That's what I'm saying with this last point. There is no need to expand on this. It is sufficient.

Because no one said anything that is wrong. You did. Strange reinforced what I was saying. This is a more sensible question than the original one. No, this doesn't imply that. This is the part you don't understand. First of all, life DID start out ''magically'' adapted to its environment. The first living organisms developed where they did because the environment suited their needs. They didn't develop in the sky and then migrated to the ocean because it was more suitable to them. Yes, but those generations didn't live in the particularly cold and warm environment to begin with. I see what you're getting at. The good questions is: then why did the species start adapting in the first place if the environment suited them perfectly. In that respect, you are somewhat right, but not to the extent that you're thinking. They adaptations are always very, very minor. A species would never be forced to go from a very hot to a very cold environment. That never happened. The polar bear, if flown to Sahara, would seek the best sutiable environment for it and then adapt to it. This is correct. But in nature, it would never be forced to do this. I understand you're using an exaggeration, but the exaggeration doesn't work here. So, to reiterate, a species would never require such a drastic change that it would need to seek a different environment.

This is actually baffling to me. I don't know why or how it happens. However, this is getting off topic again (in a topic that was split for being off-topic) so I would implore you not to respond to this anymore. I have questions about this and will probably start a new thread asking them. zztop and Sensei gave good replies which were in line with what was being asked. I will leave it to madmac to address them as they were his questions about gravity.

Really? I don't mean moving the whole way, I just mean by several centimeters. How is that possible? That would mean that the stick actually gets shorter by several centimeters for some time, just by pushing it. EDIT: Addressed to strange.

Really? I wasn't aware of that. It seems a bit counterintuitive, but I will suppose you're right. You do mean sun's gravitational effects, not visual, heating, etc.? Then yes, the speed of gravity is c. But it's not really relevant, because that could never happen. The amount of mass/energy will always stay the same in out universe, to my knowledge. A mass couldn't appear out of nowhere as per his question. But then again, I might have misunderstood his question.

In general relativity, gravity isn't really a force, it's just the bending of space time. So I guess, in a sense, he would say zero force. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. I actually think he's asking a different question. I think he's asking something like this: If a mass appeared out of nowhere, how long would it take for it to bend all of space? I would guess instantly because it is mechanical. The same way that moving the end of a 1 light year long stick would be instantenous, instead of taking 1 light year. But that's not really a valid question because, as far as I know, no gravity has ever appeared or disappeared after the big bang, so even that hypothetical scenario is useless as it could never happen. So all of the gravity there is is already in effect. There can be no ''speed of gravity''. So that's already off-base to mainstream science. I suggest you keep on topic and in line with the plates, as you have been told by a mod. EDIT: Sorry imatfaal, I wrote this before you replied. I basically told him to stay on topic so I won't be veering off mainstream science any further.

I assume you mean a plate of infinitesimal thickness. No. No. No. A plate of infinite size implies an infinite universe, which is already a big assumption. Still, the answer would be infinite force. The answer doesn't change.

Yes, this is true. But generally speaking, his assumption doesn't hold water. No, this is wrong. A polar bear would never find itself living in Sahara. This cannot happen. You seem to assume that evolution happens very rapidly, like in 1 generation or 2. Pinpoint any time in the evolution of fish and you won't find one instance where it lived in the wrong environment. You are simplifying it too much and not considering that this happened over a million years and each change was tiny. No, it doesn't contradict itself. You can try to read posts more carefully. This statement (which came just after what you quoted) is the point: Do you see my point? It wouldn't have to be in that position in the first anyway. So if it was FORCED to live in an unsuitable environment, it would adapt to it. But in nature, it wouldn't be living in that unsuitable environment in the first place.

What? A mammal wouldn't evolve a thick coat in a hot environment. Why would it? If it had thin skin in a cold environment, it would evolve a thick coat, but it if had thin skin, it wouldn't be in that cold environment in the first place. So the question is not really valid. Find one species that lives in the wrong environment. You'll find that there aren't any. Animals don't change environment because of their genes. Their genes get changed because of the environment.

Sorry. I thought you were being sarcastic about that. Thanks for the compliment. It means a lot to me. To be fair, you criticized me for using made-up terminology in post #1, whereas you only provided the correct one in post #21, which I thought was a bit unwarranted. I had to make something up to better convery my thoughts. I only used my terminology once after your post but just to connect yours to mine so that it would be clear what I meant. You criticized that as well, hence my comments about the attitude. I just want to let you know, I have respect for your knowledge, but you need to understand that I need clarification for a lot of things, since I am in no way a mathematician. I agree with the sentiment that the threads with serious technical content are what makes this forum. So let's leave all of this attitude and approach chit-chat behind and get back to the content. One more thing tho: I had to leave for work so I wanted to point a few things out quickly without having time to respond to the real questions. Ok, so... Can you elaborate a bit? I did say that it's different if you don't know the result so you give odds. I said that the odds are 1 after the event has happened or if you know for sure that it is going to happen. Is there something wrong with this? Well, I would define probability as likelihood of an event happening. That's what I considered to be practical odds (again, using my terms just to show what I meant). So, for me, the practical odds of a coin toss or a die roll are 1 in 2 and 1 in 6 respectively. The odds of both are 1 in 1 if either the result has happened or can hypothetically calculate the physics of the coin/die landing after the initial toss/throw. I called these technical odds. From my understanding of your posts, I used the priori approach for the former. The latter, from what you said, shouldn't be really considered probability because you always know the result. Am I understanding you correctly? I will adopt the proper terms but first I need to understand completely what they mean. I am also not sure how the subjective approach works. What is the relevance of assigning the probability of 1 for something you can't be certain will happen? What would the odds of 0.6 mean in the subjective approach? That you're a bit less certain and you also can't know the result? That's what confuses me. Can you elaborate a bit on that? Let me know if I need to answer some other questions

Yes, that's my point. First, he said that he doesn't use electromagnets. Then you pointed out that it could be done with a permanent magnet. Then he said that's impressive and asked you how it's done, which indicates that he doesn't know and therefore, couldn't be using it for his motor. That's what confuses me the most.

I have to side with Strange here, there is nothing to discuss. You made a claim about inventing a new motor but cannot provide evidence because it isn't patented yet. There is nothing we can say here. Do you have any suggestions how we should approach you and what we should be discussing? Seeing how you reacted to this post: I think we can assume that it doesn't run on permanent magnets either. It's not hard to see how people wouldn't believe you. You must realize that it's only sensible not to believe what you have no evidence for. But he said it runs on electricity.

The most probable answer is that it was moved, in which case it's not your fault. But the issue remains that you refuse to answer the important questions and instead choose to focus on the most trivial things. You have given 0 evidence and 0 reasons of how you concluded this theory of yours. I don't know why people keep responding to you anymore. It's clear that you do not want to discuss anything related to science. I, for one, am out of here.

Hey studiot. I'm not sure why the attitude. I thanked you for providing the correct terminology. I made no unfounded claims. Maybe you misunderstood my intent? Of course. When I said: I merely wanted to further clarify what I meant. I did not say that my definitions are the ones to be used. Hey hey. No need for such sarcasm. I did not make any statements that change the rules of mathematics. I just wanted to elaborate my stance. But you only introduced to me the correct usage in post #21. Surely, you must understand that I couldn't have gone back in time and used the correct one. But I am. I just said I don't understand it. Shouldn't I admit that instead of proceeding to discuss something that is not clear to me? I like you so I will give you the benefit of the doubt of assuming that you misunderstood my intentions.

Ah, so that's what they are called. I called them techical and practical odds. I called the anterior practical, and posterior technical odds. Not sure why this approach would exist. Isn't it synonimous with saying ''it's probably going to happen''? According to these definitions, I was talking about the priori approach. @Strange - I don't like to discuss paralel universes and such due to their highly speculative and inconclusive nature. I guess that's ironic since the same can be said for some of my questions. @wtf- I didn't reply only because I had nothing to add. We agreed on the basics of probability and we agreed that the other questions are unanswerable.

Sorry. I didn't want to click on that because I'm at work. I certainly couldn't listen to the pronunciations. Not that they would make a difference. Anyway, I did go throught the link and the first thing I noticed is Czech seems suspiciously unfamiliar. Then I realized these are questions about Indonesian. I can tell with a certain degree of certainty that Europeans and Americans wouldn't be able to guess this. I have no clue what a single one of those could mean. Some of the questions give only 2 or 3 possible answers, which yields a considerable chance of guessing correctly due to luck. So if I, for example, click randomly on all of those and get a result of about 40%, that doesn't mean there is any correlation between Croatian and Indonesian. That's why I don't think this is the best way to research this.

Two things: 1) According to the rules, we should be able to respond to your post without having to click at external links. Could you just copy and paste the text so we can answer? 2) Shouldn't you ask us about what language we speak as well? Because, I am pretty certain that Slavs would be able to guess much more correctly, while I don't think English speaking folk would be able to guess at all. (well, it depends on the word, I guess) I myself speak Croatian which has some similarities to Czech, so I can understand some words and even sentences. Similarly, I can guess some meanings in Russian, Polish, Romanian etc. So would providing our first language be helpful?

I don't believe he wants a discussion of any sorts. I engaged in conversation with this person to see what basis he has to believe in any of this and how he would explain and defend his opinion. He never did any of that and instead proceeded with off-topic remarks and accusations. I think it's clear he doesn't have any evidence and he doesn't intend to answer any of our questions. Also, he might have posted this in the religion section to bypass the stricter rules in other forums. This has nothing to do with religion, it's more fit for biology or speculations.

No. It doesn't only depend on one, it depends on both supply and demand. For example, if the demand is high but supply is low, the prices would skyrocket. Only if there was an equally high supply would the prices balance out. Prices are currently high because demand is low, but supply is even lower. High supply = low prices High demand = high prices Combine for balanced effect.