swansont

Democracy as we know it isn't just having elections and majority rule. As with these quotes, I think it includes individual rights to protect the minorities from the whim of the majority du jour, and also a low tolerance for systemic corruption. It's all based on the consent of the governed — the state has no intrinsic power; it only has what the people grant it in order to govern effectively. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner. Liberty is a well-armed lamb. ~Benjamin Franklin Majority rule only works if you're also considering individual rights. Because you can't have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper. ~Larry Flynt I also think Ringer has an excellent point about knowledge; that's another limitation on state power.

Temperature is frame dependent, but absolute zero would be the exception if it could be achieved, since it would look like uniform motion; if all of the atoms could be at rest, they would all move at some velocity in any other frame, and that would be indistinguishable from center-of-mass motion. You can talks about temperature gradients in a material, but it still has to be a macroscopic effect. A metal bar with one end in ice water and the other end being heated by a flame will reach a steady-state condition, and you could talk about the temperature as a function of position along the bar. But not for individual atoms. Heat flow is from high temperature to low, but it is possible for a slow moving atom to give energy to a fast moving atom of the same mass. It just isn't likely, so the average effect (for a large collection) is in the other direction.

US productivity has been rising at an average rate of between 2.5% and 3% annually for the last 5 years. (That's a 10-year average, so the actual recent increases have been even larger). All the while GDP rose, fell and is rising again. Looking at the longer view, average US productivity has been increasing since WWII. That's higher efficiency in the workplace. Where is the inefficiency that leads to growth? I would think that inefficiency is driven out of a capitalist market from competition. Isn't that the way it's supposed to work? http://seekingalpha.com/article/204083-official-gdp-productivity-stats-tell-a-different-story-of-u-s-economy

"Quantified length?" No, that's not why. You adjust the frequency to stay near resonance of the atom. If it's moving you have a doppler shift for which you must compensate as the atom slows down. There's also a trade-off between maximum cooling and minimum temperature, so you can do multiple-stage interactions where you trap atoms and then change the frequency to cool them further.

Energy is conserved. The kinetic energy is given by [math](\gamma - 1)mc^2[/math] where [math]\gamma[/math] is the same factor we use for time dilation and length contraction

Temperature is a property of a system, so it doesn't make sense to talk about some atoms within a system being at a different temperature. Electrons within the lump are colliding, and nuclei/atoms vibrating, which releases radiation. Actually it sort of does. A single atom at rest does not have to be in the ground state. But you can't talk about a single atom being at 0K, you have to have a collection of atoms to have temperature make sense, so by quoting temperature one implies a group of atoms. The fraction of atoms in a thermal distribution with excited states depends on temperature. So a bunch of atoms at absolute zero would necessarily be in the ground state.

! Moderator Note Further discussion on atoms near 0K has been moved to http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/54745-behavior-of-systems-near-absolute-zero/

Bose-Einstein Condensates are often referred to as the fifth state, at least recently. What you're describing sounds a lot like a plasma, albeit a very, very hot one.

There's a difference in saying that you are taking a concept from a theory and what the theory actually states. Now, can we get back to the topic being discussed?

The speed of light is currently a defined value, i.e. it is exact. If you want measurement error, you can look at measurement errors of quantities that depend on the constancy of c. The second, for example, is realized to about a part in 10^15. The meter is determined to better than a part in 10^11.

That's not really a description of how a BEC would behave. "Acting as one atom" means the system is coherent, not that the entire system reacts to one being hit by a photon.

Mass increasing with speed, i.e. relativistic mass, lives on in part because pop science won't let it die. The main issue with its non-demise is that the misconception doesn't cause any immediate problems.

I guess it's a good thing that there are no other professions where the very accomplished members have egos.

To get to the lowest energy state means that the ensemble is very cold, so the deBroglie wavelength is large. Saying the particles are far apart loses meaning, because the wavelength is comparable to the separation distance.

Non-standard physics or interpretations of physics belong in speculations. Antimatter is not generally regarded as being energy of empty space. If you want to attempt to explain why this concept might be useful and/or valid, please do it in speculations.

No. Yes.

As soon as you measure velocity, KE becomes relativistic? My car is relativistic when I look at the speedometer? The problem isn't that the math is wrong. The problem is that the math doesn't accurately describe nature when v/c approaches 1. which makes it a physics model issue, not a math issue.

The particles are in the same state, but they are not entangled. Entanglement means not knowing what state the particle is in.

Primal mass? Never heard of it. Topics not part of accepted physics belong in speculations.

! Moderator Note I think this belongs in politics, but I'm not sure what the point is. I don't see why it was posted in Speculations. Can we buy a vowel here, Pat? Li'l help?

Sacrificing cheese nips pleases the gods more than sacrificing bunnies. Premise: sacrificing cheese nips is ethical. *discuss*

They are continually interacting. You aren't likely to maintain state coherence for any appreciable length of time.

Do the calculation… You need the period to be shorter than 10^-14 sec. At 1 mm separation the linear speed at the wheel edge needs to exceed the speed of light. You could but there's no need; the acceleration responsible for the EM emission is provided by curving the path. You use magnets with a linear accelerator. Energy isn't a substance.

! Moderator Note Questions (if you want an answer) tangential to the OP should be asked in a new thread

AFAIK the anti-Hydrogen experiments at CERN are aimed at testing this. ATRAP and ATHENA