swansont

I'd just like to note that people asking for citations are not giving anyone a hard time. They are asking for the data that backs up an opinion. —— I will cover my previous point again, since it seems to have been ignored in the ensuing melee. The TIME article clearly states that it's the tropical temperature, not global temperature. As such, it is premature to declare the TIME article (and, by extension, the Nature article from which it was derived) as invalid, since you are comparing different measurements. Proceeding under the assumption that the number must be wrong, without data, is NOT "giving you a hard time." If you think the number is wrong, find studies that have measured the tropical temperature increase. Cite them. I'd also like to note that the claim that the air temperature must rise faster than the water temperature is patently false. The air temperature need not change at all to have the water temperature rise, if the air is already warmer than the water. You can do a test. Pour a glass of cold water. Let it sit in a room with the thermostat at a constant value. Does the water warm faster than the air?

You can't fool me. It's turtles all the way down.

No, actually; this is a common misconception. The speed depends on the tension and the mass per unit length. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/waves/string.html

One is a global average, while the other is a tropical measurement?

Please restrict your discussion in this thread to your thesis. Diatribes about the problems with science can be discussed elsewhere.

And here I was expecting a story of an epic battle with Mothra …

Argument by quotation is really nothing more than argument from authority.

Fear the unknown. The unknown is eeeeviiiiiil. Been there, done that (for nanotech) I'm not sure where the distrust in the unknown becomes "this is immoral," though. Translation: Nobody cares until there is a crisis. We haven't been able to blame any miserable event on nanotech. Yet. Implicit argument: the MSM is a useful tool for educating the public about science & technology issues. Bwahahaha! How useful is CNN at this, now that they've announced that they're dismantling their S&T reporting unit?

You can model them that way — they exhibit that behavior. I refer you to the link I gave in post #6. It'll tell you the same thing, because you're asking the same question. How about asking a different (hopefully better) question?

V=IR You can't dictate that the current and resistance remain constant and have a different voltage.

Excuse me? I have not previously posted in this thread. (This is one reason many prefer people to use the quote function.)

I don't think that's a valid critique. Science has never been about "pure logic" — that was part of the approach of the philosophers; science is empirical. Uncertainty has always been a part of science, due to its inductive nature. Medicine is a poor example to use, and what you've given here is not very specific. If mutually exclusive alternatives legitimately exist, then you don't have a theory. Did you have an example in mind for this?

Martin's right about the difficulty of imaging — you generally won't be able to get better than the wavelength of the light as the scale of the resolution.

If it doesn't look like scientific discourse, part of the reason is that there is often precious little science to begin with. One different thing in "actual scientific discourse" is that the scientist with the fundamentally mistaken notion is more likely to recognize the flaw when it's pointed out, and the discussion simply ends at that point. And the topic will be better-situated within science to begin with. The standard discussion here will go along the lines of A: Blah, blah, blah B: That's word salad (no scientific basis) — or — That violates relativity/conservation of energy/science principle of your choice C: Picks apart some specific part of the post A: Repeats claim D: Repeating doesn't make it right; points out the lack of math and rigor A: Repeats claim, with the addendum "I don't do math" B: Without rigor it's not science A: Think outside the box, man! It's a conspiracy of the high priests of science! Stop attacking me! Censorship! Actual scientific discourse, on the other hand A: blah, blah, blah B: That doesn't work. The divergence of B is zero, so there has to be a return path for the flux line. A: Ah, of course. — End of conversation — I think you may find, upon closer inspection, that there is a great willingness to share knowledge on the boards, as long as the poster is willing to put forth some effort to understand. The extrema in this case are the lazy poster who is essentially asking someone else to Google for them, because they want some easily-obtained bit of data ("what's the mass of the earth?). At the other end is the poster who comes here not seeking knowledge, e.g. "relativity is crap and you're all idiots for believing it." They set the confrontational tone themselves. Within P & S you are far more likely to see the latter behavior, but overall it is at the far end of the distribution. The issue here is sampling.

"What's the mechanism?" was a valid objection to Wegener's hypothesis. Asking the harsh questions and seeing what survives is one of the ways of science. Within science, those definitions don't apply. There are many examples of lay definitions not matching up with (or even contradicting) the science definitions. (e.g. "coincidence")

And does not weigh the same as a duck.

And one should also note that Wegener did not have nearly as much evidence as is available today, and he did not have a working mechanism. The development of the idea of plate tectonics is what allowed continental drift to be accepted. (One should also note that it wasn't a case of Wegener vs everyone else) In many ways, this is a good example of science. It is not enough to have an explanation for something — that's not a theory. You have to have a complete enough model that other ways of explaining phenomena don't work, you have to have to have evidence to back you up, and you need to make predictions. You need to be able to test it, in a verifiable way, to see if it's wrong. You need rigor. Wegener's story also has the cautionary tale that it sometimes takes a while for the process to unfold.

As previous posters have stated, the behavior is angular momentum, but is not due to any physical motion such as rotation or revolution about some axis. The fractional or whole number notation is the projection of the angular momentum vector along an axis. The notation AlphaNumeric mentioned means that the various components don't commute — you can't know them simultaneously. So we choose one axis to look at (usually labeled as the z axis) and measure the value of the projection of ther angular momentum onto that axis. Then, in units of [math]\hbar[/math], you can have half-integral or integral units of angular momentum, e.g. 1/2 or 1. This is quantized, so changes in the projection of the spin happen in whole units, so a spin 1/2 particle can be "spin up," with [math]\frac{1}{2}\hbar[/math] or "spin down, with [math]-\frac{1}{2}\hbar[/math], but no value in between. Similarly, a spin 1 particle will have a projection of 1, 0 or -1.

I realize this is motivated by a desire to be helpful, and your desire to improve the quality of the boards is appreciated. However, it should be noted that the staff isn't going to act based on behavior exhibited elsewhere. As along as a poster abides by the rules here, they are welcome to post questions and stimulate discussion. If they are breaking the rules, though, all bets are off.

No, "do quantum particle's travel back in time" is something you've asked before, and has been addressed. If you want to discuss it further, you need to phrase a question which incorporates the information you have been given. Merely restating the question is insufficient and at some point becomes trolling.

Why not? The swath of the populace that insists that we're not animals. Who likely are pretty much the within the group who voted against gay marriage.

Relative to the moon, the force on the near side (N) is greater than the force on the earth's center © , which is greater than the force on the far side (F). [math]F_N>F_C>F_F[/math] In our frame, we feel no force from the moon, so subtract FC from everything. Now FN is positive and FF is negative

Magnetic jewelry is usually explained by having one pole of the magnet pointed into the body — one is supposed to impede growth and the other to enhance it, so the polarity depends on your goal (e.g. with cancer you'd want to impede growth, while for injury you desire increased circulation) Here's the problem: magnetic fields loop around. For ever north pole field penetration of the body, the field line has to exit, which looks exactly like there's a south pole penetration. They simply can't work as advertised.

There's no such restriction. CP violations occur that turn antimatter into matter. The key to Klaynos's explanation is that the vacuum fluctuation has less energy than a real particle/antiparticle pair. The additional energy comes from the black hole.

Because the founding fathers understood the issue of minority rights, but the concept apparently didn't make it in to the California constitution. Amending the constitution should be hard to do. The various opinions posted here only serve to underscore that.