swansont

And you understand this violates the 2nd law, but don;t see how it violates it. [quote name=CaptainPanic;501046 The radiation originating from any object includes' date=' as was already mentioned, pretty much all wavelengths. Let's assume a perfect black body (see: graph), which does radiate all wavelengths. I still don't see why with a perfect lens you cannot concentrate the light so much that it will heat up an object to a temperature higher than the source of the photons. Just focus it on a really really tiny spot. The flux of photons should become so great that a higher temperature can be achieved? I understand perfectly that the energy balance will not be breaking the 2nd law of thermodynamics. The total energy of all photons originating from the source of photons will always be greater than on the "really really tiny spot". But why wouldn't it reach a higher temperature? That does not necessarily go against the 2nd law (look at heat pumps and your fridge: it's possible). I think that for determining the temperature that is achieved somewhere we must look at the flux (photons / receiving surface area) and the wavelength. This flux can be concentrated immensely using lenses. As insane_alien has noted, it's because you're adding energy. The objection of the 2nd law is for spontaneous processes only, and passive optical systems. And here's the issue: you insist that you focus the light down. You can't. You can see this with ray tracing: in order to get a small focus, you need parallel light, but you don't have that. You can try to get it with two lenses - one to capture light and the other to concentrate it. Put an object at the focal point of the other lens, and it will give you parallel light. But that means the source has to be infinitely small, and you've already said that it was bigger. Put another way: only one point on the source can be at the focal point of the lens. The rest must be away from the focal point, and these all map to different points near the focal point of lens #2. The spot you get will be larger than you have assumed. (This all ignores the fact that you can only collect half the light with a lens, but adding mirrors doesn't solve the problem.)

Because, as I said, GR reduces to Newtonian gravity (as it must) for weak gravity cases, and Newtonian gravity explains the tides quite nicely.

It's not. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, unless he presents a falsifiable hypothesis with evidence to back it up.

Yes, lenses can concentrate light, but the profile at the focus is a Fourier transform of the profile as it hits the lens. The profile which corresponds to an infinitely small spot is a plane wave, which is the ideal case used in approximations, but in reality cannot be achieved. Many beams are described by a Gaussian profile, which gives you a finite-sized spot. You can exploit this if you want to spatially filter the light by filtering out higher-order modes. You put a pinhole at the focus, and get a nice zero-order Gaussian beam output (or something a lot closer to that) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_filter All of that assumes one frequency. You have the additional problem of chromatic aberration — the focus will depend on the wavelength, so any broadband IR will have different focal points for different wavelengths. Another effect that will prevent an arbitrarily small spot.

"Opposites attract" (as applied here) is a qualitative summary of the electrostatic force equation. One cannot extrapolate it to be a law which could be applied in a general case.

Can you find the current if I don't tell you the conductive properties of the material? About the presence of an external field?

I don't see why that makes the wall any less real. Because it tells how nature behaves. We can exploit that to do things, e.g. build machines, or just know how nature behaves. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged The OP implies that if our eyes can't detect it it's not real. The instrument, though, has a wider dynamic range than our eyes. So, case in point. The OP also implies that wavelengths outside of human vision aren't real. Yet radio waves work, and a high dose of gamma or x-rays will make you sick and/or kill you. Basically, the belief/religion comment discards any notion of how the process of science works, and is a display of profound ignorance about that process. Hopefully the discussion here has/will correct that.

There is no such law.

General relativity reduces to Newtonian gravity. It explains the tides exactly the same way that Newtonian gravity does, that there is a gradient in the force which varies with distance. You need to present scientific support for your assertions, and you have been given several suggestions on how to go about doing this. "Proof by repeated assertion" was not one of them. If your discussion does not start containing some scientific content, it will be closed.

If A and B are the same size, then the IR flux will be equal when they are at the same temperature. B will never be hotter than A. That is fully compliant with thermodynamics. If A and B are different sizes, then you have to worry about other restrictions — you can't focus light down to an arbitrarily small spot, and you can't capture all of the radiation. But you end up with the same result that B will never be hotter than A.

You got it. If you want to heat something hotter, you can't limit yourself to "passive" thermodynamics (i.e. letting thermal energy move around on its own). You have to convert other forms of energy into thermal energy.

[Obiwan]Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them. [/Obiwan] Instrumentation is far more reliable than eyesight. I take it you're using "theoretical" to mean "guesswork" or something similar, and you couldn't be more wrong. Scientific models are tested to eliminate alternate explanations. That's why falsifiability (and if you're wrong, being verifiably wrong) is so key to the process. However, science is not about searching for truth. It's about constructing models to explain how nature behaves. Much of nature is invisible to us, yet we still need to know how it works in order to exploit it. So I'll savor the irony that you used a computer — which depends on the actions of electrons — to type your statement that it's like a religion or belief system.

Allow to pass through (if we're thinking classically). i.e. no resonant absorptions. Well, IR is a large range of wavelengths, and so you run into the same problem, but you don't need to focus the light down to its minimum radius to concentrate the light if the target is large enough. Ah, but the target emits IR, too, and the lens works both ways. The hotter the target, the more it emits. If the target is hotter, it's sending more energy back to the cooler object. You can't win. The best you can do is an equilibrium where they are at the same temperature.

But you took the long way around. Their kinetic energies are equal because they are at the same temperature, which is how temperature is defined — you used this information to show the answer, when you noted that speed depends on temperature and mass. Temperature is proportional to the average KE of the molecules, and they are at the same temperature. Therefore, they have the same KE. KE = 3/2 kT Done. No mass, no speed. Not necessary.

The oceans are raised more because they are more fluid than the solid earth. Fresh water is affected by tides, too. We just don't see it because of the scale — you need a large separation between points, and lakes just aren't big enough to have a noticeable effect. If the interaction were magnetic, there would be no energy issue at all. We'd have generators in our homes and cars. Everything would run off of them. Fossil fuels would never have been developed. Build one and run it to tap into this energy, and then we'll believe you. It should be easy if you're right.

"Weird" is basically "not behaving classically." Entities do not have well-defined trajectories — they behave as waves. Their energy is quantized, which makes certain interactions (where we determine their location to some degree) make it seem like that they are particles. They can interfere with themselves.

This falls under the category of the brachistochrone problem. One can show that the fastest path is a cycloid.

Electrons are leptons, and from that description, matter.

Various types of glass transmit IR to some extent, as do other transparent media like sapphire. IR is EM radiation, so it will bend. However, the index of refraction is typically wavelength-dependent, so the focal length will be different.

So how do you explain the spike at 3.5 and 12.5, when the wind is blowing in the opposite direction? The lack of a signal at 4? The weak signal at 7-8, as compared to the signal at 8-9? Why does the radiation dose rate (on your site) not match up with the ionization curve?

But you found it worth mentioning both texts. Then what's the point?

It's not your choice to make, really, if you want to communicate effectively. If what I mean by mass is different from what you mean by mass (or whatever term you wish to choose), then the discussion grinds to a halt right there. Common terminology is like the "handshaking" the fax machine (or any other communication protocol) does at the beginning of the transmission. Without it you are lost. You are Humpty Dumpty, saying, "When I use a term, it means whatever I choose it to mean — "nothing more, and nothing less," and then it's impossible to discern what was actually said, because none of the words are meaningful to anyone else. And you'll run into the problem wherever you go.

It's the same author, so these are not two independent instances, and besides that, it doesn't matter (as it were). A handful of people using a particular terminology does not make it the standard.

The images you posted were hotlinks, meaning that they will only appear here as long as the originals are available on the web. If the original images are yours, then you can take them down yourself. Nothing more to see here, folks. Move along.

What is your fundamental thesis - that it's real? Thanks, we already know. That it's electromagnetic? No, it's not. The tides affect all the water, and more, not just one of the charges of ionic material dissolved in it. The solid earth feels tides, too.