exchemist

There are no recordings of any "UAP" , only of the fireball which was widely reported and has a completely conventional explanation.

That's putting it mildly. It is plain that the object did NOT land anywhere that has been found - and most likely did not reach the surface at all. Given this fireball was reported by 21 different individuals, spread across 4 states of the USA, it clearly must have been a very high altitude phenomenon and travelling very fast. This is not AT ALL consistent with something "landing" in someone's back yard - and then mysteriously taking off again. Aha, I thought as much. So you are trying to drag in other - unrelated - reports, over a period of years, as evidence that this incident must have involved an alien landing, even though the evidence from the incident itself is pisspoor? I'm afraid it doesn't work like that. We are discussing this one incident, to see what merit the claims have. The evaluation stands or falls on the quality of evidence from the incident itself.

The limit is due to the amount of static charge that can accumulate on the ball at the top of the generator before discharge occurs. There is no capacitor present. Once discharged the belt has to run for a number of seconds before a second discharge is possible. It's diving back into my ancient A-Level physics but, as I recall, you can calculate the charge present on a conducting sphere to generate a given electric field strength. And you know when the breakdown field strength of air is exceeded, because that's when it discharges, to whatever object is brought a certain distance away from it. Thinking more about it, though, you may have a point in that the above is arguing the charge is low, rather than the current i.e. the rate of charge flow, during the instant of discharge. If it all discharges in a microsecond, ten the instantaneous current could be high, I suppose.

From what I have seen, there is no "cascade of events". The fireball, we can safely say, is a perfectly normal phenomenon. So forget that. It's only function in this tale has been to make some people panic and start imagining things. There are no "credible documented accounts of encounters with beings of unknown origin" anywhere in this episode, so far as I can see, nor have any "military" people been involved, just a few cops who saw nothing themselves either. There is no "entire story" to fabricate, just a small group of people who got in a panic and called the cops. Where are you getting all this extra stuff from about documented sources and military people?

Surely the operation of something like a Van de Graaf generator would explain why this isn't entirely a myth? High voltage, but very little charge, so you get a shock but little current and no danger.

Nothing “crashed”, that’s obvious from the widespread fireball sightings I linked earlier, but which you have opted to ignore. So all we’re left with is the uncorroborated testimony of these panicky people. The video footage shows nothing. It’s a total non-story.

Quite. Seeing what you want to see. But for me the fireball reports (21 of them) from across 4 states is pretty decisive. I searched "1st May meteor Las Vegas" and got that link straight away. Funny that people predisposed to attribute these reports to aliens don't take the elementary precaution of running a few simple checks before committing themselves to their preferred version of events.

That's fairly obviously a meteor, or re-entry of some space debris: https://ams.imo.net/members/imo_view/event/2023/2408 Note that sightings were reported across four US states. So it clearly wasn't a local phenomenon, like a spacecraft landing in the vicinity of the town. And the "alien" picture could be anything at all. Move along ladies and gents, nothing to see here.

Not at all. I'm choosing to focus on the observations because you've had a good run with @Mordred on the derivation of the theory and I can't do that as well as he can, as I'm only a chemist. But in the end, in science, observations are what count. How the theory was derived may be interesting intellectually, but the test of a theory is whether it predicts observations correctly. You seem not to have engaged at all with the examples on time dilation and mass-energy equivalence I gave you earlier. Why is that?

I can't follow you here. Invariance of the speed of light has been observed, time dilation has been observed (I gave you an example) and mass/energy equivalence has been observed (I gave you an example). If you want to argue that the observed invariance of the speed of light is some kind of artifact of the measuring process (is that what you are claiming?), you still have to deal with these other observations, which are predicted by SR.

The independence of the speed of light from motion of source and receiver is an observed fact. It is idle to pretend otherwise. All of SR follows from that observed fact. And all observations predicted by SR are found to be correct in practice. Whether Einstein's logic was sound or not doesn't really matter. Nature behaves, so far as we can tell, as if SR is correct. If you want to argue about the logic that's fine. But do not pretend the observations are wrong.

I believe baptism originated in a Jewish purification ritual involving immersion in water: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual_washing_in_Judaism#Full-body_immersion It seems likely that this is what John the Baptist may have been inspired by.

Well the observational facts are that the predictions of SR are correct, so you have a big problem there. I gave you some examples earlier in the thread. And it all derives from the observational fact that the observed peed of light is found not to depend on relative motion between source and receiver, or between observers. It contradicts classical physics, sure, but it seems to be the case. Just as in quantum theory the behaviour of atomic scale entities does not confirm to classical physics either. One of the big insights of c.20th physics was that nature does not have to conform, at all scales and in all circumstances, to what looks to us like common sense. But I'll observe your discussion with @Mordred with interest.

That's perhaps a useful clarification on your part. Do I take it, then, that you accept that in practice SR accurately accords with observations? If so then your issue, presumably, is with Einstein's reasoning when he set out the theory, rather than arguing that SR does not work. Do I have that right?

What is this paper and in what reputable journal has it been published?

This looks like an attempt to brush aside the inconvenient fact that SR is found to work in practice. That is not what one does in science.

If it has no frequency I don't see how it can be a wave. The term "scalar wave" seems to be favoured by cranks, according to Rationalwiki: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Scalar_wave

Presumably if information can't be transmitted faster than light then initiating the motion at the shoulders would result in the hands moving later, or something, wouldn't it?

Chemically speaking, plastics are organic, being made of molecules with a carbon/hydrogen backbone.

What can it mean to say an electron has awareness, or has a purpose? How do you think this would manifest itself?

Good point.

It did not need to. The whole point of the theory is to explain how adaptations can arise, purely through more successful reproduction of creatures with a trait that happens to be an advantage. This is basic. You can read about it anywhere. The evolution of the eye can be traced to creatures with light-sensitive patches on their skin. Those that had them could move towards or away from the light and this would have enabled them to find more food or escape more predators, so they reproduced more and handed on the advantage to their offspring. Etc. This is how it works, not by an organism “knowing” anything.

Disappointing. I had hoped it would be something to do with chocolate.

The Beer-Lambert law seems to have been formulated in 1913. Apart from that I can't think of any c.20th "laws", offhand. I'm speculating, but I suspect the notion of "laws" went out of fashion along with the "classical" absolute and deterministic worldview of science, which Einstein, Heisenberg et al threw out of the window in the first two decades of the c.20th. Most "laws" seem to be named after the person that formulated them - and to be broken in practice.

I thought this happened over a week ago and the police had closed the case. Later note: I'm wrong it was over a month ago. And nothing was found:https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-06-09/las-vegas-police-investigate-reports-of-alien-sightings Can you provide a reference to the claim of a large round depression?